Mass shooting kills 4, wounds 17 in nightlife district in Birmingham, Alabama.
Mass shooting kills 4, wounds 17 in nightlife district in Birmingham, Alabama.
Birmingham Police Chief Scott Thurmond said authorities believe the shooting targeted one of the people who was killed, possibly in a murder-for-hire
You're viewing a single thread.
I read Birmingham and for a second thought this might not be in the US, oh how foolish I am.
I used to think that gun laws/ownership in the US was workable, I know lots of responsible gun owners, and have shot a couple guns myself. But I'm just tired of all these mass shootings, at this point maybe we should just get rid of them.
Ya I was mass shootings in England wtf.
Letting people carry around guns all day have always seemed so stupid for me, but I'm european so different culture and all that.
A culture that recognizes common sense.
I'm all but certain these guns were already owned illegally. I'm not really sure how we can get rid of them by making them even more illegal.
The science is pretty clear; gun control works. Every time you repeal gun control laws, loosen restrictions, open gun stores, gun-related deaths escalate, often dramatically. States with higher gun ownership rates have higher rates of homicides caused by guns. Even a 1% reduction in gun related deaths would be the equivalent of 2,500 people per year. Kids die more often from gun-related deaths than car-related deaths.
Mass shootings also barely make up 1% of gun-related deaths, so the science behind them isn’t as well studied, but things like reducing magazine sizes shows a correlated relation in reduction of mass shootings.
(Some of the sauce)
Kids die more often from gun-related deaths than car-related deaths.
Note that this is mostly suicide. You know how else you can reduce youth gun deaths? Improve mental health access.
Ah but the problem is defining an illegally owned gun.
I could go buy a gun from some dude on the street, or at a gun show and that's... perfectly legal. The (federal) law right now is basically 'you can sell a gun to someone in your state, as long as you don't have good evidence they're going to go shoot someone'.
Which, you know, you simply do not ask them.
So as to the guns being owned illegally... maybe, maybe not: it's not hard to own a gun legally even though the rest of the planet is now recoiling in horror about what that term actually means.
The Glock switches are for sure federally illegal, but getting the ATF to do anything other than smuggle guns into Mexico is probably impossible given how fucked up they are. And I mean, they're 3d-printed, so how do you even reasonably enforce that?
You should probably read/know the actual law, rather than just getting it close. You're probably referring to 18 USC 922 (d) (10), which includes any felony-- not just shooting. That's one of 11 listed requirements in that section, which assumes that the first requirement (a) (1) is met: not an interstate nor foreign transaction. There's a lot more to it than just "as long as you don't have good evidence they're going to go shoot someone"
Even after the sale, ownership is still illegal under section (g)-- it just isn't the seller's fault anymore.
This is basic information that should be known to any gun safety advocate. "Responsible" gun owners must know those laws, plus others backward and forward. One small slip-up is a felony, jail, and permanent loss of gun ownership/use. Are they really supposed to listen to those who can't even talk about current law correctly?
The law can be better, but you won't do yourself any favors by misrepresenting it.
You're probably right, but guns like the ones they used can be obtained legally making them much easier to be obtained illegally. I'm not an expert on gun policy, so I can't tell you how we should restrict access to guns.
Yeah no one on the planet has figured out that pickle
Ignoring the baseless speculation on whether these are legal guns or illegal guns, since there is a pretty good spread on that spectrum:
The importance is having fewer guns overall. If the availability of legal guns is drastically reduced then it will be a lot harder for an ar-15 to fall off the back of a truck or go missing in someone's home. It won't happen overnight but it will happen pretty quickly. We have seen this happen in other "Western" nations.
Personally? I don't want to infringe on the rights of responsible gun owners. If anything, I want to make them even more responsible. What that means is that I want:
- Much stricter background checks on buying firearms. By all means, factor therapy and rehabilitation into that (just because someone had a nervous breakdown in high school shouldn't impact their ability to own a people killer so long as an accredited mental health professional signed off on it. But no "gun show loopholes" and more "cooling off periods" to ensure that NOBODY can buy a gun same day.
- Ammunition is a controlled substance. You want to buy a box of 9mm rounds? Cool, you are going to fill out a form to make sure that is tracked and you are going to be limited to a certain number of rounds per year unless you fill out the proper forms to get more (comparable to how suppressors and SBRs are handled). And, again, cooling off period. You fill out the form and a week later you can buy your bullets.
- Liability on firearms. If your gun is used in a crime then you are charged for it, regardless of whether you pulled the trigger or not. You can bet that people will be disposing of their twenty kitchen cabinet guns almost immediately once they realize they are liable for Little Timmy shooting up his school. And if a gun goes missing? You can bet they will report that within minutes of finding out (and will be checking those gun safes semi-regularly as a result).
- Liability on sellers. If a gun is used in a crime then ALL the above paperwork will be triple checked and any improper procedures will result in the seller losing their license or even being charged with negligence.
All these giant piles of "illegal guns" will dry up pretty quick (comparable to a civilized nation where they are fairly rare for criminals to use) and all the guns that kids take to school will similarly actually be locked up in a way that Little Timmy doesn't have unsupervised access to.
But all those Responsible Gun Owners(TM)? They won't be affected because clearly they are already securing their firearms when not actively in use and always know where their collection is and are making sure that only people who are also Responsible Gun Owners(TM) have access to it.
Hell, as a treat, let's let people who own public shooting ranges jump through some more hoops to relax some of that. You need 500 rounds of .223 a day to practice shooting? Buy it by the mag at Herman's Military Antiques and use it at his range. You can't take it home with you but you never needed to take it home to practice shooting, right?
Your ammunition logic sounds like the pills that actually work for colds behind pharmacies with sudafed in them and it is hilarious to think that in the land of the free we may not be able to get enough pills for our sick larger sized families but we could buy thousands of bullets with no restrixtion to shoot at everything with the fam.