7 ms·

Yet another licensed and legal weapon.

by pnutjam 9y ago

mieseratte 9y ago
Yet another mentally ill individual who did not get the treatment they so clearly needed.
- nielsbot 9y ago
  Why not both?
  - frockington 9y ago
    With everyone hyper-polarizing anything with guns and/or mental health its hard to remember this is an option
  - mieseratte 9y ago
    I never implied the two were mutually exclusive.
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  Not every shooter is mentally ill. In fact, most mentally ill people are more likely to be victims of violence than the perpetrators. Most shooters are just shitheads, not mentally ill, and to constantly conflate the two is to add additional stigma to mental illness. In addition, if this truly was a mental health problem, Congress could increase funding for mental health treatment by the end of the week, Trump could sign it by the middle of next week, and we could see an increase in people getting treatment by the end of next month. The fact that we're not seeing that leads me to believe that most know this isn't as much of a mental health problem as people think.
  - ctdonath 9y ago
    A very common factor in such mass murders is the use of antidepressants. Having seen up close what happens when someone on such medication misses a few doses (extreme & systematic rage), I'm stunned that there has not been intense investigation into the correlation.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - DanBC 9y ago
      People always mention mental illness, but other things are more common: being male; having a conviction for domestic assault; having a drug or alcohol addiction; having a TBI. Other countries prescribe anti-depressant medication in similar quantities to the US, and those countries don't have the same problems of violence that the US does.
      - mieseratte 9y ago
        > having a conviction for domestic assault; > having a drug or alcohol addiction; > having a TBI I know the YouTube incident, specifically, was not a mass-shooting incident (4+ casualties, not including the shooter) but the comment you replied to specifically mentioned mass-shooting. That males are overrepresented seems fairly self-evident, but is there a noted link between DV, TBI, and addiction(s) with mass-shootings? I've never heard that angle.
- ricochet310 9y ago
  Mental Illness and Social Media do not seem to mix well.
f4rker 9y ago
On the same day there was a drive by shooting in the UK Doubt that weapon was legal Gun laws dont stop criminals Murder is already fairly illegal, if I recall correctly
bsagdiyev 9y ago
So if this gun were obtained illegally this wouldn't be a tragedy?
snarkyturtle 9y ago
Luckily it was just a handgun. If it were an AR-15 it might've been a different story, as this radiologist who treated Parkland students noticed: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/what-i-saw-treating-the-victims-from-parkland-should-change-the-debate-on-guns/553937/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/what-i-...
- Alupis 9y ago
  I think you meant to say, if it had been a rifle. AR-15's don't posses special properties... anything shooting a .223 or 5.56 round will have similar properties. The damage truly depends on the type of ammunition used (as well as caliber). FMJ (Full Metal Jacket) ammunition, what seems to be described in the article you referenced, is a non-expanding type of ammunition, typically causing less destruction than expanding types such as HP (Hallow Point), which flatten and expand on impact. Muzzle velocities from a rifle are significantly higher than handguns, which does translate into more kinetic energy. The additional energies in a rifle cartridge will cause more shock damage to organs, as described in the article, however. HP ammunition (not commonly used in rifles) is designed to be devastatingly lethal - specifically designed to leave very large wounds in the target, which have little hope of closing/repairing the wound.
  - rbritton 9y ago
    To add one other note, HP ammo has the additional (generally beneficial) property of penetrating significantly less than something like FMJ. Through its design it imparts the bulk of its kinetic energy on the first obstacle it hits, which greatly reduces the chances of it doing damage to something unintended.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
wyoh 9y ago
99.9% of people obtaining a weapon legally don't use it to commit atrocities, but for entertainment. Why should the majority suffer the consequences from the tiny minority of unstable individuals?
- ctdonath 9y ago
  Not just for entertainment, but a great many for legitimate self-defense. Why should those rationally feeling need to prepare protection be denied by laws which ultimately do not stop the unstable deliberately acting to harm?
  - etjossem 9y ago
    I recommend looking at the data on this before leaping to the conclusion that guns are effective at protecting their owners from lethal injury. In a Philadelphia-based study, "individuals in possession of a gun were 4.46 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession" and that grew to 5.45 times more likely if the assault victim had a chance to resist. [1] Successful defensive gun use happens, but it's the exception to the rule: guns escalate conflict, especially when both parties have them. [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759797/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759797/
    - sheepmullet 9y ago
      > Successful defensive gun use happens, but it's the exception to the rule Reliable studies show defensive gun use in 100k-1 million incidents per year in the US. https://fee.org/articles/defensive-gun-use-is-more-than-shooting-bad-guys/ https://fee.org/articles/defensive-gun-use-is-more-than-shoo... That's not "exception to the rule".
      - etjossem 9y ago
        “This data is from the 1990s and is based on people’s subjective views of what would have happened if they did not use a gun.” These are not hard stats, they’re self reports from people who had occasions where they felt safer carrying. Peak confirmation bias. Of course we can find 100k people whose guns made them feel safer once. But that’s not the question we are trying to answer. We want to know if you are actually protected by owning a firearm. The evidence suggests it has quite the opposite effect.
ctdonath 9y ago
There was nothing to indicate she should be denied such. Self-defense is a valid and widely-exercised human right. Just because Policy X has problems doesn't mean Policy Y doesn't (and may unleash the Pandora's Box which Policy X was imperfectly controlling). Even were guns nationally banned, that she decided to proceed with mass murder - showing enough signs of danger far enough in advance that she was reported to & interviewed by police - there were a multitude of ways of carrying out the attack, including by buying contraband weapons. Other products are completely illegal in this country, with enormous suppression activity, yet are widely available; no reason to believe a ban would somehow render guns unobtainable via a few hundred dollars discretely exchanged in the wrong side of town. What's pity is the victims were[0] specifically denied a right to armed self-defense, under threat of harm. She was the rare one who snapped, and in doing so violated a plethora of "reasonable restrictions" to cause grave harm; nobody seems to notice the enormous numbers likewise armed yet never harm anyone - a few happening to stop such attacks early. [0] - summarizing, details beyond a mere comment.
mediaman 9y ago
Yes, but she was able to inflict much less damage with this weapon, a handgun. And with the slower discharge rate and muzzle velocity of handguns, the victims in this case appear to have all survived (other than the perpetrator's suicide). In the spectrum from full rights to all weapons, to absolute gun control, allowing access to these handguns (where most wounds are survivable, there is less range, and lower magazine capacity) but restricting assault rifles (high muzzle velocities create injuries that are nearly impossible to survive, high magazine count, sometimes higher discharge rate) seems like a reasonable point to draw the line, and also complies with existing case law around the second amendment. This would have been much, much worse with an AR15 type weapon, with likely far more deaths.

Yet another licensed and legal weapon.

mieseratte 9y ago

Yet another mentally ill individual who did not get the treatment they so clearly needed.

nielsbot 9y ago
Why not both?
- frockington 9y ago
  With everyone hyper-polarizing anything with guns and/or mental health its hard to remember this is an option
- mieseratte 9y ago
  I never implied the two were mutually exclusive.
s73v3r_ 9y ago
Not every shooter is mentally ill. In fact, most mentally ill people are more likely to be victims of violence than the perpetrators. Most shooters are just shitheads, not mentally ill, and to constantly conflate the two is to add additional stigma to mental illness. In addition, if this truly was a mental health problem, Congress could increase funding for mental health treatment by the end of the week, Trump could sign it by the middle of next week, and we could see an increase in people getting treatment by the end of next month. The fact that we're not seeing that leads me to believe that most know this isn't as much of a mental health problem as people think.
- ctdonath 9y ago
  A very common factor in such mass murders is the use of antidepressants. Having seen up close what happens when someone on such medication misses a few doses (extreme & systematic rage), I'm stunned that there has not been intense investigation into the correlation.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - DanBC 9y ago
    People always mention mental illness, but other things are more common: being male; having a conviction for domestic assault; having a drug or alcohol addiction; having a TBI. Other countries prescribe anti-depressant medication in similar quantities to the US, and those countries don't have the same problems of violence that the US does.
    - mieseratte 9y ago
      > having a conviction for domestic assault; > having a drug or alcohol addiction; > having a TBI I know the YouTube incident, specifically, was not a mass-shooting incident (4+ casualties, not including the shooter) but the comment you replied to specifically mentioned mass-shooting. That males are overrepresented seems fairly self-evident, but is there a noted link between DV, TBI, and addiction(s) with mass-shootings? I've never heard that angle.
ricochet310 9y ago
Mental Illness and Social Media do not seem to mix well.

f4rker 9y ago

On the same day there was a drive by shooting in the UK Doubt that weapon was legal Gun laws dont stop criminals Murder is already fairly illegal, if I recall correctly

bsagdiyev 9y ago

So if this gun were obtained illegally this wouldn't be a tragedy?

snarkyturtle 9y ago

Luckily it was just a handgun. If it were an AR-15 it might've been a different story, as this radiologist who treated Parkland students noticed: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/what-i-saw-treating-the-victims-from-parkland-should-change-the-debate-on-guns/553937/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/what-i-...

Alupis 9y ago
I think you meant to say, if it had been a rifle. AR-15's don't posses special properties... anything shooting a .223 or 5.56 round will have similar properties. The damage truly depends on the type of ammunition used (as well as caliber). FMJ (Full Metal Jacket) ammunition, what seems to be described in the article you referenced, is a non-expanding type of ammunition, typically causing less destruction than expanding types such as HP (Hallow Point), which flatten and expand on impact. Muzzle velocities from a rifle are significantly higher than handguns, which does translate into more kinetic energy. The additional energies in a rifle cartridge will cause more shock damage to organs, as described in the article, however. HP ammunition (not commonly used in rifles) is designed to be devastatingly lethal - specifically designed to leave very large wounds in the target, which have little hope of closing/repairing the wound.
- rbritton 9y ago
  To add one other note, HP ammo has the additional (generally beneficial) property of penetrating significantly less than something like FMJ. Through its design it imparts the bulk of its kinetic energy on the first obstacle it hits, which greatly reduces the chances of it doing damage to something unintended.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

wyoh 9y ago

99.9% of people obtaining a weapon legally don't use it to commit atrocities, but for entertainment. Why should the majority suffer the consequences from the tiny minority of unstable individuals?

ctdonath 9y ago
Not just for entertainment, but a great many for legitimate self-defense. Why should those rationally feeling need to prepare protection be denied by laws which ultimately do not stop the unstable deliberately acting to harm?
- etjossem 9y ago
  I recommend looking at the data on this before leaping to the conclusion that guns are effective at protecting their owners from lethal injury. In a Philadelphia-based study, "individuals in possession of a gun were 4.46 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession" and that grew to 5.45 times more likely if the assault victim had a chance to resist. [1] Successful defensive gun use happens, but it's the exception to the rule: guns escalate conflict, especially when both parties have them. [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759797/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759797/
  - sheepmullet 9y ago
    > Successful defensive gun use happens, but it's the exception to the rule Reliable studies show defensive gun use in 100k-1 million incidents per year in the US. https://fee.org/articles/defensive-gun-use-is-more-than-shooting-bad-guys/ https://fee.org/articles/defensive-gun-use-is-more-than-shoo... That's not "exception to the rule".
    - etjossem 9y ago
      “This data is from the 1990s and is based on people’s subjective views of what would have happened if they did not use a gun.” These are not hard stats, they’re self reports from people who had occasions where they felt safer carrying. Peak confirmation bias. Of course we can find 100k people whose guns made them feel safer once. But that’s not the question we are trying to answer. We want to know if you are actually protected by owning a firearm. The evidence suggests it has quite the opposite effect.

ctdonath 9y ago

There was nothing to indicate she should be denied such. Self-defense is a valid and widely-exercised human right. Just because Policy X has problems doesn't mean Policy Y doesn't (and may unleash the Pandora's Box which Policy X was imperfectly controlling). Even were guns nationally banned, that she decided to proceed with mass murder - showing enough signs of danger far enough in advance that she was reported to & interviewed by police - there were a multitude of ways of carrying out the attack, including by buying contraband weapons. Other products are completely illegal in this country, with enormous suppression activity, yet are widely available; no reason to believe a ban would somehow render guns unobtainable via a few hundred dollars discretely exchanged in the wrong side of town. What's pity is the victims were[0] specifically denied a right to armed self-defense, under threat of harm. She was the rare one who snapped, and in doing so violated a plethora of "reasonable restrictions" to cause grave harm; nobody seems to notice the enormous numbers likewise armed yet never harm anyone - a few happening to stop such attacks early. [0] - summarizing, details beyond a mere comment.

mediaman 9y ago

Yes, but she was able to inflict much less damage with this weapon, a handgun. And with the slower discharge rate and muzzle velocity of handguns, the victims in this case appear to have all survived (other than the perpetrator's suicide). In the spectrum from full rights to all weapons, to absolute gun control, allowing access to these handguns (where most wounds are survivable, there is less range, and lower magazine capacity) but restricting assault rifles (high muzzle velocities create injuries that are nearly impossible to survive, high magazine count, sometimes higher discharge rate) seems like a reasonable point to draw the line, and also complies with existing case law around the second amendment. This would have been much, much worse with an AR15 type weapon, with likely far more deaths.