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People can use any weapons they want in mass attacks. Cho (the VA Tech shooter) used two handguns, no long guns at all, and that attack was more lethal. [1] T

People can use any weapons they want in mass attacks. Cho (the VA Tech shooter) used two handguns, no long guns at all, and that attack was more lethal. [1] The Monash University shooting (7 people hit) doesn't count as an Austrialian mass shooting? It took place in 2002, after the new Australian law. [2] Finally, I'm sorry to say this and I know it gets old, but the U.S. constitution identifies a right to keep and bear arms. Even if the arguments in favor of banning guns were convincing, you can't maintain respect for the constitution or the rule of law while enacting laws that violate the constitution. The proximal reason for this event was the killer's mother, who it seems drove him insane with her paranoid end-of-the-world mentality. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seung-Hui_Cho#Weapons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seung-Hui_Cho#Weapons [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monash_University_shooting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monash_University_shooting

brianchu 14y ago
This is actually an effective argument for comprehensive gun control. An assault weapons ban would not prevent those two mass killings you cite. But, however, having a comprehensive system where, for example, mental health records are tied to gun purchase background checks would have prevented Seung-Hui Cho from purchasing handguns. Gun control is not just one policy. It's a broad policy with many possible facets: an assault weapons ban, federal standards for background checks, cracking down on sales at gun shows, eliminating loopholes, tying mental health records to background checks, the list goes on. EDITS (reply to below, additional things constantly added): I'm not naive enough to say that comprehensive gun control is going to eliminate all gun violence. I'm saying that it's a step forwards towards reducing gun violence. >We arguably have comprehensive drug control. How well does that work? This is a non sequitur. Just because the drug war has failed and the phrase "comprehensive drug control" shares two words with the phrase "comprehensive gun control" is not enough to logically lead to the conclusion that gun control is/will be a failure. The comparison needs to be elaborated. Let me elaborate on a few differences: people don't get addicted to guns like they do with drugs, someone using a drug can not directly physically injure someone else, drugs are much smaller and easier to hide (EDIT: for smuggling on an individual basis, not for a cartel), guns are hard to mass produce without people noticing. Drunk driving is not really relevant unless there is a large trend of accidents caused by cocaine/heroin/marijuana (rather than just alcohol). Guns are much less profitable for cartels than drugs are (for reasons of addiction). I think nitpicking over the specifics of an assault weapons ban does not really counter my point. I meant semi-automatic weapons with magazines/cartridges (and automatic weapons). Even if my definition misses something, I'd be willing to just concede that and expand my definition. Yes, it's obvious that a ban implemented today would not stop Adam Lanza, because the guns are already bought. It might reduce the number of deaths of an Adam Lanza 5 years from now (I'm acknowledging of course that he also had two handguns with him). To be clear, I don't propose that we should have a blanket handgun ban. It's simply not a realistic goal (politically and in terms of all the guns already out there). There are ways to improve gun control without banning all handguns. I also think that the mental health system in America is broken and needs fixing. The two things are not mutually exclusive.
- csense 14y ago
  How would you deal with the stockpiles built up by career criminals and people who actually believe in the Constitution? (Of course, comprehensive gun control would legislatively unify these two categories.) We arguably have comprehensive drug control. How well does that work?
  - jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
    > Who actually believe in the Constitution? Time goes on; people with guns die, bullets are used and the police arrives where that happens, guns and bullets get oxidized and everyday become harder to get. The career criminals usually want to kill the competence (other carer criminals) or the police; two sides that would remain armed. >We arguably have comprehensive drug control. How well does that work? Straw man; when killing another person with cocaine becomes a trend we can start discussing this.
  - lbarrow 14y ago
    I don't understand why you think that criminal record checks, mental health checks, etc. would make people who own guns into "career criminals". As brianchu pointed out, the Virginia tech shooter was involuntarily detained because of mental illness about 15 months before he bought his guns. He then killed 32 people with them. Would prohibiting a law prohibiting people like Seung-Hui Cho from buying guns for a few years really be a step along the road to tyranny?
    - harshreality 14y ago
      More to the point, how is it that 15 months after being involuntarily committed Cho was worse than he started? That sounds a lot more like a failure of the mental health system than a lack of proper gun control. The anti-gun myth implicitly assumes that if you have someone who, given access to guns, would shoot a bunch of people, but you take those guns away, that person suddenly becomes harmless. I don't want anyone like that walking around free in society; I don't want them buying guns, and I don't want them driving cars or buying anything at hardware stores or pool supply stores. They're a clear danger to themselves and to others. However, I'm not going to support gun control measures just because the mental health system isn't perfect. Adding regulations that restrict what free people can do or buy based on their past history doesn't tend to be very effective. Ex-cons who are disqualified from owning guns, and who cannot buy them legally, have no trouble acquiring firearms through other means.
jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
What is with you Americans and the Constitution? If back then female circumcision would have been considered a good idea and somehow got wrote in the constitution then you will be defending it now days because it is in the constitution? If the constitution is wrong, it needs to be changed, is just that simple.
- angersock 14y ago
  I don't believe anybody here would disagree with you--now, please explain to what degree you believe the 2nd amendment to be wrong, right, or outdated.
  - mpweiher 14y ago
    Well... (a) the US seems to working its way to tyranny just fine with the 2nd amendment intact. (b) many other countries seem to do a pretty passable imitation of freedom without a 2nd amendment. Update: (c) on closer examination, it almost seems like an "opiate for the people" kind of thing: people being lulled into thinking they are free because they can kill innocent children with their high-powered weapons when the fact is that actual armed insurrection against the government is as ludicrously impossible with those weapons as it is without. At the same time, real freedoms have been largely eliminated, habeas corpus is gone, 4th amendment largely gone, freedom of speech going away, freedom of assembly AWOL, elections manipulated and legislators bought, the president can have anyone incarcerated indefinitely without charges and without a trial, or summarily executed by simply labeling them a "terrorist" (and those labels fly looser every day). Focusing on these issues will have a much larger impact on actual liberty than trying to prevent meaningful gun control. Yet, yay, we are "free" because we have our Glocks. Yeah, right.
    - angersock 14y ago
      Surely you see the irony in complaining about the erosion of these liberties while at the same time pushing for further subjugation of the populace?
rmc 14y ago
the U.S. constitution identifies a right to keep and bear arms. Even if the arguments in favor of banning guns were convincing, you can't maintain respect for the constitution or the rule of law while enacting laws that violate the constitution. Then change the constitution.
bunderbunder 14y ago
> Finally, I'm sorry to say this and I know it gets old, but the U.S. constitution identifies a right to keep and bear arms. Even if the arguments in favor of banning guns were convincing, you can't maintain respect for the constitution or the rule of law while enacting laws that violate the constitution. Well, there are two things to unpack there. First, the 2nd Amendment is one of the most vaguely-worded sections of the entire document. If we're relying on the Constitution alone, there's really nothing about it that's cut and dry. It's even so ambiguously worded that the Supreme Court has had to make a decision about what its syntactic structure should be considered to be. Worse, I've a relative who's actually known as an expert on whether one bit of ink is a comma or an ink blot. Meaning two things: One, even that's something that's ambiguous enough that learned people are capable of disagreeing about it, and two, the question is relevant enough to how the sentence should be interpreted that there's a demand for people to develop expertise on the question. That's how ambiguous and poorly-worded this particular piece of legislation is. With all that in mind, there's a strong argument to be made that one's interpretation of the 2nd Amendment's meaning has more to do with one's pre-existing opinions than it does to do with what the sentence actually says. Second, there is a well-known process for creating laws that are specifically designed to go against what the current version of the Constitution says. Such laws even have a name. . . and that name happens to be the second word in its name. In light of that, to suggest that the 2nd Amendment means that it's impossible to enact legislation that alters the law to be other than what the 2nd Amendment says - or whether doing so would violate rule of law - is patently silly. Did the 21st Amendment violate rule of law?

brianchu 14y ago

This is actually an effective argument for comprehensive gun control. An assault weapons ban would not prevent those two mass killings you cite. But, however, having a comprehensive system where, for example, mental health records are tied to gun purchase background checks would have prevented Seung-Hui Cho from purchasing handguns. Gun control is not just one policy. It's a broad policy with many possible facets: an assault weapons ban, federal standards for background checks, cracking down on sales at gun shows, eliminating loopholes, tying mental health records to background checks, the list goes on. EDITS (reply to below, additional things constantly added): I'm not naive enough to say that comprehensive gun control is going to eliminate all gun violence. I'm saying that it's a step forwards towards reducing gun violence. >We arguably have comprehensive drug control. How well does that work? This is a non sequitur. Just because the drug war has failed and the phrase "comprehensive drug control" shares two words with the phrase "comprehensive gun control" is not enough to logically lead to the conclusion that gun control is/will be a failure. The comparison needs to be elaborated. Let me elaborate on a few differences: people don't get addicted to guns like they do with drugs, someone using a drug can not directly physically injure someone else, drugs are much smaller and easier to hide (EDIT: for smuggling on an individual basis, not for a cartel), guns are hard to mass produce without people noticing. Drunk driving is not really relevant unless there is a large trend of accidents caused by cocaine/heroin/marijuana (rather than just alcohol). Guns are much less profitable for cartels than drugs are (for reasons of addiction). I think nitpicking over the specifics of an assault weapons ban does not really counter my point. I meant semi-automatic weapons with magazines/cartridges (and automatic weapons). Even if my definition misses something, I'd be willing to just concede that and expand my definition. Yes, it's obvious that a ban implemented today would not stop Adam Lanza, because the guns are already bought. It might reduce the number of deaths of an Adam Lanza 5 years from now (I'm acknowledging of course that he also had two handguns with him). To be clear, I don't propose that we should have a blanket handgun ban. It's simply not a realistic goal (politically and in terms of all the guns already out there). There are ways to improve gun control without banning all handguns. I also think that the mental health system in America is broken and needs fixing. The two things are not mutually exclusive.

csense 14y ago
How would you deal with the stockpiles built up by career criminals and people who actually believe in the Constitution? (Of course, comprehensive gun control would legislatively unify these two categories.) We arguably have comprehensive drug control. How well does that work?
- jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
  > Who actually believe in the Constitution? Time goes on; people with guns die, bullets are used and the police arrives where that happens, guns and bullets get oxidized and everyday become harder to get. The career criminals usually want to kill the competence (other carer criminals) or the police; two sides that would remain armed. >We arguably have comprehensive drug control. How well does that work? Straw man; when killing another person with cocaine becomes a trend we can start discussing this.
- lbarrow 14y ago
  I don't understand why you think that criminal record checks, mental health checks, etc. would make people who own guns into "career criminals". As brianchu pointed out, the Virginia tech shooter was involuntarily detained because of mental illness about 15 months before he bought his guns. He then killed 32 people with them. Would prohibiting a law prohibiting people like Seung-Hui Cho from buying guns for a few years really be a step along the road to tyranny?
  - harshreality 14y ago
    More to the point, how is it that 15 months after being involuntarily committed Cho was worse than he started? That sounds a lot more like a failure of the mental health system than a lack of proper gun control. The anti-gun myth implicitly assumes that if you have someone who, given access to guns, would shoot a bunch of people, but you take those guns away, that person suddenly becomes harmless. I don't want anyone like that walking around free in society; I don't want them buying guns, and I don't want them driving cars or buying anything at hardware stores or pool supply stores. They're a clear danger to themselves and to others. However, I'm not going to support gun control measures just because the mental health system isn't perfect. Adding regulations that restrict what free people can do or buy based on their past history doesn't tend to be very effective. Ex-cons who are disqualified from owning guns, and who cannot buy them legally, have no trouble acquiring firearms through other means.

jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago

What is with you Americans and the Constitution? If back then female circumcision would have been considered a good idea and somehow got wrote in the constitution then you will be defending it now days because it is in the constitution? If the constitution is wrong, it needs to be changed, is just that simple.

angersock 14y ago
I don't believe anybody here would disagree with you--now, please explain to what degree you believe the 2nd amendment to be wrong, right, or outdated.
- mpweiher 14y ago
  Well... (a) the US seems to working its way to tyranny just fine with the 2nd amendment intact. (b) many other countries seem to do a pretty passable imitation of freedom without a 2nd amendment. Update: (c) on closer examination, it almost seems like an "opiate for the people" kind of thing: people being lulled into thinking they are free because they can kill innocent children with their high-powered weapons when the fact is that actual armed insurrection against the government is as ludicrously impossible with those weapons as it is without. At the same time, real freedoms have been largely eliminated, habeas corpus is gone, 4th amendment largely gone, freedom of speech going away, freedom of assembly AWOL, elections manipulated and legislators bought, the president can have anyone incarcerated indefinitely without charges and without a trial, or summarily executed by simply labeling them a "terrorist" (and those labels fly looser every day). Focusing on these issues will have a much larger impact on actual liberty than trying to prevent meaningful gun control. Yet, yay, we are "free" because we have our Glocks. Yeah, right.
  - angersock 14y ago
    Surely you see the irony in complaining about the erosion of these liberties while at the same time pushing for further subjugation of the populace?

rmc 14y ago

the U.S. constitution identifies a right to keep and bear arms. Even if the arguments in favor of banning guns were convincing, you can't maintain respect for the constitution or the rule of law while enacting laws that violate the constitution. Then change the constitution.

bunderbunder 14y ago

> Finally, I'm sorry to say this and I know it gets old, but the U.S. constitution identifies a right to keep and bear arms. Even if the arguments in favor of banning guns were convincing, you can't maintain respect for the constitution or the rule of law while enacting laws that violate the constitution. Well, there are two things to unpack there. First, the 2nd Amendment is one of the most vaguely-worded sections of the entire document. If we're relying on the Constitution alone, there's really nothing about it that's cut and dry. It's even so ambiguously worded that the Supreme Court has had to make a decision about what its syntactic structure should be considered to be. Worse, I've a relative who's actually known as an expert on whether one bit of ink is a comma or an ink blot. Meaning two things: One, even that's something that's ambiguous enough that learned people are capable of disagreeing about it, and two, the question is relevant enough to how the sentence should be interpreted that there's a demand for people to develop expertise on the question. That's how ambiguous and poorly-worded this particular piece of legislation is. With all that in mind, there's a strong argument to be made that one's interpretation of the 2nd Amendment's meaning has more to do with one's pre-existing opinions than it does to do with what the sentence actually says. Second, there is a well-known process for creating laws that are specifically designed to go against what the current version of the Constitution says. Such laws even have a name. . . and that name happens to be the second word in its name. In light of that, to suggest that the 2nd Amendment means that it's impossible to enact legislation that alters the law to be other than what the 2nd Amendment says - or whether doing so would violate rule of law - is patently silly. Did the 21st Amendment violate rule of law?