[Phil]

Have a niece that was at the concert. She was along the perimeter so she was able to dive into some bushes for cover and was unharmed.

Edit. Found out she scaled a 15' fence with her BF and was able to get refuge over at a Hooters.

I was fishing with her dad on Saturday. Everyone is broken up about it.

[kenberg]

These things are senseless and, because they are senseless, what happens to whom is just random. I am glad to hear that there were bushes nearby to dive into.

[Winstonm]

White guy with no apparent ties to Islam commits mass murder with weapons that have no sporting use. Sad! The 400 yard difference between the shooter and his victims negates the NRA past claims that arming victims is the best defense.

Isn't it time to end the gun craziness?

[Vampyr]

 Winstonm, on 2017-October-02, 13:14, said:

White guy with no apparent ties to Islam commits mass murder with weapons that have no sporting use. Sad! The 400 yard difference between the shooter and his victims negates the NRA past claims that arming victims is the best defense.

Isn't it time to end the gun craziness?

Well, people who are in favour of gun control talk, while the NRA has a well-funded lobby organisation. Perhaps think about fighting fire with fire.

[Winstonm]

 Vampyr, on 2017-October-02, 15:16, said:

Well, people who are in favour of gun control talk, while the NRA has a well-funded lobby organisation. Perhaps think about fighting fire with fire.

I can't afford this kind of arsenal:

Quote

Paddock had been registered as a guest in the hotel since Sept. 28.

Authorities seized at least one full-automatic rifle and as many as 19 other firearms from the room, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing an unnamed law enforcement official. The cache included AR-15-style and AK-47-style rifles and a large amount of ammunition. Sources also told The New York Times that at least 20 firearms were discovered in the hotel room.

Paddock is reported to have smashed hotel windows prior to the shooting with a hammer-like device. A law enforcement official said two rifles with scopes on tripods were found positioned in front of the broken windows.

[Al_U_Card]

Could he not have fired into the windows to break them? Perhaps some cyanide in "free" drinks distributed to concert goers? Crazy people will do crazy things that, somehow, make sense to their addled brains.

The problem is not that there are the means available, the problem is a society that values other things as more important than the mental and physical security of its constituent people. Fewer restrictions and more assistance would work but that requires diverting profits to the benefit of those uninvolved in the profit-making transaction. Divert some of the profits to prevention and protection and you might improve the situation.

[Vampyr]

 Winstonm, on 2017-October-02, 15:46, said:

I can't afford this kind of arsenal:

Not sure that lobbying with guns is the best approach...

[The_Badger]

Just read the headline that the gunman had amassed 40+ weapons. Sickening. The United States have only themselves to blame for allowing carte blanche gun ownership.

Maybe the Second Amendment needs serious amending. There's not even a fine line between having one gun for self-defence in your home, and stockpiling your own personal militia.

[awm]

 Vampyr, on 2017-October-02, 15:16, said:

Well, people who are in favour of gun control talk, while the NRA has a well-funded lobby organisation. Perhaps think about fighting fire with fire.

There is in fact a pretty well funded lobbying group, lead by former mayor Bloomberg and former congresswoman Giffords. However, this is very much a partisan issue with people lining up behind their "team" and in general when roughly half the country is lined up on each side of a major issue it's very hard to affect significant change -- as demonstrated by the Republicans' failure to repeal the ACA despite having majority control of both houses of congress (and the presidency).

[hrothgar]

 awm, on 2017-October-03, 01:06, said:

There is in fact a pretty well funded lobbying group, lead by former mayor Bloomberg and former congresswoman Giffords. However, this is very much a partisan issue with people lining up behind their "team" and in general when roughly half the country is lined up on each side of a major issue it's very hard to affect significant change -- as demonstrated by the Republicans' failure to repeal the ACA despite having majority control of both houses of congress (and the presidency).

But half the country isn't lined up on either side of the issue.

The positions taken by the NRA and congress aren't even representative of the wishes of the majority of NRA members!
Take a look on surveys of NRA members wrt background checks and the like.

The leadership of the organization had (pretty much) been captured by the gun manufacturers.

[cherdano]

All the best to your niece, Phil. It would take me a long time to recover from witnessing this first hand. (And she isn't even counted in all the figures we see in the headlines.)

[Vampyr]

 hrothgar, on 2017-October-03, 03:51, said:

But half the country isn't lined up on either side of the issue.

The positions taken by the NRA and congress aren't even representative of the wishes of the majority of NRA members!
Take a look on surveys of NRA members wrt background checks and the like.

The leadership of the organization had (pretty much) been captured by the gun manufacturers.

Has the approach of suing gun manufacturers for deaths and injuries been tried? That might make a big dent in their deep pockets.

[awm]

 Vampyr, on 2017-October-03, 04:03, said:

Has the approach of suing gun manufacturers for deaths and injuries been tried? That might make a big dent in their deep pockets.

There's actually a law forbidding this. Bernie Sanders even voted for it (his position on guns is not so far left as some might like).

[hrothgar]

 Vampyr, on 2017-October-03, 04:03, said:

Has the approach of suing gun manufacturers for deaths and injuries been tried? That might make a big dent in their deep pockets.

https://en.wikipedia...rce_in_Arms_Act

The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) is a United States law which protects firearms manufacturers and dealers from being held liable when crimes have been committed with their products. However, both manufacturers and dealers can still be held liable for damages resulting from defective products, breach of contract, criminal misconduct, and other actions for which they are directly responsible in much the same manner that any U.S. based manufacturer of consumer products is held responsible. They may also be held liable for negligence when they have reason to know a gun is intended for use in a crime.

The PLCAA is codified at 15 U.S.C. §§ 7901-7903.

[Winstonm]

 The_Badger, on 2017-October-03, 00:45, said:

Just read the headline that the gunman had amassed 40+ weapons. Sickening. The United States have only themselves to blame for allowing carte blanche gun ownership.

Maybe the Second Amendment needs serious amending. There's not even a fine line between having one gun for self-defence in your home, and stockpiling your own personal militia.

The problem with the second amendment is that its meaning was co-opted by the NRA. Its purpose was to arm state militias in order to counter the strength of a federal army. It is obsolete.

[kenberg]

Possibly we should have two threads. Phil spoke about his niece and he is not the only person to have direct personal reasons for grief here. I am not at all saying that gun issues should not be discussed. But I, and probably others, have reservations about giving our views on guns in general on a thread started by someone expressing concern about his niece. So maybe I will start one.

[Phil]

Ken, I dont want to wait too long after the event to re-energize this discussion and i dont mind the focus shifting away from me and my kin.

Im pretty sure BBF are generally like minded individuals that think the USA gun regs are out of control. Weve already had umpteen discussions about Sandy Hook, Paris, Orlando, so there isnt anything new to add.

My blood pressure shot up yesterday when the NO SPIN ZONE called the shooting 'the price of freedom'. I wonder how O'Reilly would feel if he had a family member getting peppered by some nutcase that obtained firearms LEGALLY.

Cherdano, thank you. We are good here.

I hope that one of these days an event like Las Vegas will act as a catalyst for change. The demographic for a Jason Aldean concert would be more supportive of looser gun laws than the crowd at Pulse. But as Richard says above, its the gun manufacturers that are pushing this 2nd amendment crap.

[barmar]

There's a good article in this month's Scientific American about the widespread belief that owning a gun for self protection makes one safer, and the fact that the majority of research contradicts this notion.

And to the point someone made in the other thread that crazy people will do crazy things even without guns. While that's true, guns make it far easier to do mass violence. Probably no argument in a bar or road rage incident has ever spontaneously erupted into a poisoning. You can kill or maim someone with a knife, but you can't kill 50+ people from a safe perch hundreds of feet away.

[kenberg]

 Phil, on 2017-October-03, 09:10, said:

Ken, I dont want to wait too long after the event to re-energize this discussion and i dont mind the focus shifting away from me and my kin.

Im pretty sure BBF are generally like minded individuals that think the USA gun regs are out of control. Weve already had umpteen discussions about Sandy Hook, Paris, Orlando, so there isnt anything new to add.

My blood pressure shot up yesterday when the NO SPIN ZONE called the shooting 'the price of freedom'. I wonder how O'Reilly would feel if he had a family member getting peppered by some nutcase that obtained firearms LEGALLY.

Cherdano, thank you. We are good here.

I hope that one of these days an event like Las Vegas will act as a catalyst for change. The demographic for a Jason Aldean concert would be more supportive of looser gun laws than the crowd at Pulse. But as Richard says above, its the gun manufacturers that are pushing this 2nd amendment crap.

Ok, I will then paste here whart I said in the thread I just started;

Quote

I know people who keep a gun in the house for self-protection. For the most part, I think this is a bad choice. Often they seem way too confident of what a gun can do for them. If the other guy in a confrontation also has a gun, someone will die. The argument is that if a person has a gun then at least he has a chace of surviving the confrontation. Yes, there is some truth to this, but the best approach, usually, is to avoid the confrontation. Most, not all, violent confrontations could have been avoided. A person without a gun sees a good reason to avoid a violent confrontation. A persoon with a gun often has a very unrealistic idea of how safe this will make him in a violent confrontation, and so he has less reason to avoid it.

We need some new laws. I believe that. But laws are at least partly an expression of attitude and culture. We need proper priorities. We need to praise those who can find ways to avoid confrontation rather than those who successfully prevail in confrontation.

I do realize that there are bad people out there and that we need to protect ourselves. But reaching for a gun should be near the bottom of the list of options. Far too many people place it near the top.Changing our cultural attitudes, even if this is sort of vague, would help a lot I think.

A bit more. I see the NRA pretty much as I see cigarette manufacturers. Whatever the merits are of a freedom to smoke, and I am glad Madison didn't slip that one in, they are making a lot of money doing things that lead to a lot of suffering and death. I started smoking when I was 14. It was just what people did then. It was stupid. It is now sen as stupid by a large number of people. We need to have this cultural shift about guns.

[barmar]

 Phil, on 2017-October-03, 09:10, said:

I hope that one of these days an event like Las Vegas will act as a catalyst for change.

Two decades ago we got the Brady Bill, but it took over a decade between the shooting and passage of the law.

If the shooting of Congressman Steve Scalise didn't do it, it may be impossible with the current Congress. They didn't act after Newtowne (little children!), Emanuel AME Church, or the Pulse night club -- I'm not sure Las Vegas will be any different.