But Seriously...

Let's be honest here. All of the things that have been suggested so far might have some infinitesimal effect on crime. The fact remains though that if we have guns available to the general public, there's going to be some level of criminal activity with them, whether that's murder, robbery, mass shootings, etc. The only way to eliminate or even significantly reduce these actions is to ban and confiscate all guns from the American public. This requires revoking the 2nd amendment. It's the only way. We can go through all types of ideas on what "sensible gun legislation" means, but in the end none of it has any real effect on gun incidents, especially given the skills and motivations of those writing the legislation. I'll point out once again that under the Brady Bill, John Hinckley Jr. would have still been able to legally purchase the gun he used to shoot President Reagan and Jim Brady, the bill's namesake.

We as a society have to either decide to ban all guns or accept the fact that there will occasionally be incidents like the one that happened in Las Vegas. We do that with cars now. The number of people killed in Las Vegas was roughly the same as the number of people who die in an average week in cars in just California. We all get in cars regularly and accept the fact that the utility far outweighs the risk of death. We have to also continue to decide whether the 2nd amendment and the utility it brings is worth the cost of gun deaths. So far that answer has been yes.

 

I have issues with this:

1. Do you have certain mental illnesses in mind or think any treatment/diagnosis should be a disqualifier? If the former, you should name them, and if the latter, then you've got to provide some additional reasoning. I need more convincing that someone who went to see a therapist because she was feeling sad after her mom died is too unstable to ever be allowed to own a firearm. Which leads to #2:

2. The biggest problem with this reasoning, as stated, is that it only flags for people who have sought or received mental health treatment. People with undiagnosed mental illnesses who never seek treatment - and I think it goes without saying that people with untreated mental illnesses are more both more likely to be the victims and perpetrators of crime - won't be caught by simply checking their health records. This mostly just punishes responsible people while doing nothing to address the irresponsible ones.

 

I don't know who I was more annoyed with, the frantic hysterical passengers with their 1000 KIA claims and no regard for other pedestrians, or the cab driver with her "what huh?" demeanor charging them for the getaway drive. Rapid gunfire + running crowds = shut up and Di Di fucking Mao.

 

I agree with this. Not that I favor a total gun ban or mass confiscation program, but if you really want to stop all mass shootings like this, it’s truly the only way. However, if you want to see what another civil war looks like, go ahead and pass that legislation.

 

The mental health debate de-incentivizes and stigmatizes people seeking mental health treatment. I can't think of a single worse thing to do to get gun violence under control.

I disagree that solving our current issues requires the suspension of the 2nd Amendment, and the subsequent confiscation of all of our 400 million plus firearms. We can take measured, common-sense steps to secure the firearms we have, track who owns them, and enforce the laws we have better.

 

Personally I'm still amazed that there is no mandatory background check requirement. Never mind an additional fingerprinting requirement.

To be a teacher you have to get a background check and get fingerprinted. You have to have basically nothing worse than a speeding ticket anywhere in the US. To own a gun, you just have to not do anything too bad... in that particular state.

Let's start with the small, common sense stuff first. Big ideas are great. But when all your i's aren't even dotted and t's aren't even crossed, you're setting yourself up for failure.

 

You might be right. Based on what we know so far about the shooter, what law would you pass to prevent what happened in Las Vegas?

 

Based on what we know, so far, there is literally nothing that could have prevented that (unless you wanted to do something insane like "no large gatherings in an open area").

They were reporting earlier that he bought the semi auto's legally and modified them (illegally) to shoot semi auto.

 

I think when it comes to the actions of an isolated person that somehow thinks it's ok to murder scores of people, the law isn't the problem. This feels like the failure of a society to neutralize the feelings of despair, hate and ignorance of the value of human life.

In short, the problem here is that he had no friends, neighbors, family members to change his view that humanity is worthless. That's not something the law can correct. In effect, the blame lies on us for not being better, kinder people until after something like this happens.

Regarding laws to reduce gun violence, I suggested a few earlier in the thread that I hope fall between "this can't be prevented" and "we must end the 2nd amendment and magically disintegrate the millions of weapons in the 'wrong' hands already".

 

Or you could just ban semi automatic assault weapons.

I don't know how feasible it would be, but I feel like some sort of national registry/tracking system for the purchase of guns and ammunition would be good for tracking purposes, but also for flagging instances where people are stockpiling tons of guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

 

Actually, in this scenario, disallowing guns in the hotel would have stopped this from happening. Only if they had a real way to enforce it. Like a bag scanner or metal detector. If all the hotels in Vegas decided to make that a policy, you wouldn’t stop all shootings between people but you could at least prevent someone from bringing a full arsenal up stairs and making a Normandy beach style post.

 

You don't know what those words mean. Are you parroting a meme you saw on occupy democrats?

 

You'd have to first define "assault weapon" and if you go with the most popular definition, that being Diane Feinstein's, then it's any gun that looks scary.

 

I can shoot my pump shotgun as fast as I can pull the trigger on my AR. In fact my 870 has replaced my AR for hog hunting now, alternating 00 buck and slugs. The name "assault rifle" scares people, the black gun, but really you look at how many rifles out there can be fired with roughly the same ROF, and there's not a big difference. Is two rounds a second vs a round every 1.5 seconds gonna stop someone? You're talking semantics at that point.

Another thing I frequently hear is regulating magazine capacity. Limiting high capacity magazines. Do you know how quickly you can change magazines though?

 

Is there a way to limit the firing capacity of weapons? If it's possible to limit high powered rifles from firing more than 2,3 or 4 rounds at a time it might go a long way to stopping this kind of tragedy.

 

And within that you have a bolt action, pump, break barrel, and lever action. Of those, with a little bit of practice, you can shoot pump, bolt, and lever action astonishingly fast.

My semi-auto AR I use almost exclusively for hunting. Coyotes and hogs. I don't think I've ever shot more than 2-3 rounds in a "burst" out of it, because shot placement means everything and the difference between a kill shot, injury, or a miss is dependent on how fast you are able to reacquire your target in the sights (which you can't do when shooting rapidly). When hog hunting I use my 20 round clip because the gun rests easier on it than the 30 rd, though I only fill it with 10 rds to cut down on weight. Only when I'm target shooting (skeet are fun, cheap, reactive targets) do I fill up the entire clip, and the 30 rd banana clip it came with is gathering dust somewhere because it's just cumbersome and not practical to use.

I say this, to give people an example of how an AR is "typically" used.

 

Looks like he used a bump stock and not a natively automatic weapon. And that’s a 30 round mag. Pretty standard capacity for a gun like that.