We have 58 dead and over 400 wounded. We do not know the why’s of the shooting. The bodies weren’t even at the morgue before the gun grabbers were pulling their normal schtick. You have insane people calling for automatic weapons to be banned (which they already are). And you can see more insanity covered at Twitchy, Hot Air, Daily Caller, and so forth, or just head to the crazy sources, like the Democratic Underground, view nutters on Twitter like Kamala Harris and Alyssa Milano, the Washington Post, and, hey, here’s Excitable Nicholas Kristoff
Preventing Mass Shootings Like the Vegas Strip Attack
After the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas, the impulse of politicians will be to lower flags, offer moments of silence, and lead a national mourning. Yet what we need most of all isn’t mourning, but action to lower the toll of guns in America.
We don’t need to simply acquiesce to this kind of slaughter. When Australia suffered a mass shooting in 1996, the country united behind tougher laws on firearms. As a result, the gun homicide rate was almost halved, and the gun suicide rate dropped by half, according to the Journal of Public Health Policy.
Funny how they keep telling us they do not want to confiscate guns then cite a situation where they confiscated most guns.
So while there’s no magic wand available, here are some steps we could take that would, collectively, make a difference:
1. Impose universal background checks for anyone buying a gun. Four out of five Americans support this measure, to prevent criminals or terrorists from obtaining guns. (we pretty much have this, and criminals don’t generally purchase guns from a gun store)
2. Impose a minimum age limit of 21 on gun purchases. This is already the law for handgun purchases in many states, and it mirrors the law on buying alcohol. (which could violate the Constitution)
3. Enforce a ban on possession of guns by anyone subject to a domestic violence protection order. This is a moment when people are upset and prone to violence against their ex-es. (In principle I agree, however, this is removing a Citizen’s Constitutional Right prior to judgement)
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4. Limit gun purchases by any one person to no more than, say, two a month, and tighten rules on straw purchasers who buy for criminals. Make serial numbers harder to remove. (how will this solve anything for the first? Nick doesn’t say. Most only need one gun. It’s illegal to make a straw purchase. A felony)
5. Adopt microstamping of cartridges so that they can be traced to the gun that fired them, useful for solving gun crimes. (there are a lot of cases for and against.)
6. Invest in “smart gun†purchases by police departments or the U.S. military, to promote their use. Such guns require a PIN or can only be fired when near a particular bracelet or other device, so that children cannot misuse them and they are less vulnerable to theft. The gun industry made a childproof gun in the 1800’s but now resists smart guns. (they are available now. Cops and military won’t use them, too unreliable and too low caliber).
7. Require safe storage, to reduce theft, suicide and accidents by children. (notice how this is all being aimed at legal gun owners, for the most part, putting the burden on us, rather than on the criminals?)
8. Invest in research to see what interventions will be more effective in reducing gun deaths. We know, for example, that alcohol and guns don’t mix, but we don’t know precisely what laws would be most effective in reducing the resulting toll. Similar investments in reducing other kinds of accidental deaths have been very effective.
As to the last, how about cracking down on criminals, which Democrats are totally against?
The problem with #3 is requires gun registration. A lot of divorce cases have had false accusations of domestic violence, so the next step will be to claim the abuser (real or alleged) has more and specific types of guns, necessitating a search warrant. SWATTING is a thing.
The problem with gun control seems to be in removing the wrong end of the equation. Aside from an invigorating scene in ‘True Lies’ when a Mac 10 (?) bounced down a stairway and killed (!!!!) at least a dozen ragheaded terrorists, guns never kill people. However people using an amazing variety of weaponry among which firearms are on the low end of lethality, kill people, and about everything else you can imagine. Case in point, Las Vegas, kill ratio, 1 in 10-Vietnam 100 to 1, or 6 mil vietnamese now. But agent orange and leftover land mines got the other 90 out of a hundred that firearms, artillery and Thuds missed.
Medical instruments, 66 million dead infants in US alone, more people than voted for Hillary, liberals fail to factor that in. If you kill your children, you lose.
Autos since 1899, a bit less than five million, hardly worth looking at. I won’t hit the real killers like cigarettes, cancer or heart disease, too slow and tedious as well as self inflicted. Imagine trying to smoke someone to death, absurdity of California State Political Stupidity aside.(In itself a lethal cocktail rivaling firearms) At one time railroad employment but they layed everyone off now and moved the casualties into the private sector.
You could make a good case currently for lethality of firearms in the hands of liberals, but WHAT. According to our laws retarded individuals are not accountable for their actions, and that is that. JR
Where is Jeffery and what did you do with him?
That actually sounds sane…
An occasional mass murder is the price we pay for our freedoms. We have widespread availability of firearms; we have the freedom to congregate; we have the freedom to go about our business without constant interrogation by police. It’s a price we pay for our freedoms.
Where is Jeffery and what did you do with him?
That actually sounds sane…
(hit reply to the wrong comment above. ooops)
Casey,
I’ve said the same thing since the Newtown massacre of all those first graders.
Freedom isn’t free; it takes sacrifice. A couple of times a year we should expect a lunatic to kill 59 country music fans or a couple dozen little kids.
The alternative is to restrict an American’s Constitution right to have military grade auto or semi-auto weapons.
The Las Vegas massacre needs to be laid at the feet of liberal gun grabbers who’ve made it difficult and expensive to own an RPG-7 that a patriot could’ve used to take out the sniper.
In fact, the perfected America will be when EVERY citizen ALWAYS carries an AR-15 type weapon and sufficient ammunition to dissuade all mad men. The pussies that refuse to carry are like the anti-vaxxers putting society at risk.
An interesting POV. There are solutions to reducing the number of gun deaths, we just have to find them without restricting the Rights of law abiding citizens.
Australia did not “unite behind gun-control”. It was forced on the country despite vigorous protests by the cowardly would-be tyrant little John Howard, aided by the usual left-wing fifth column of main stream media.
“You have insane people calling for automatic weapons to be banned (which they already are).”
No, actually, they aren’t. Heavily regulated, yes. Banned, no. I really wish people would stop repeating this.
The are not banned but they might as well be. The NFA registry has been closed for civilian ownable (transferable) weapons since May 1986. The result is that only a fairly wealthy person could ever afford them – a $500 Sendra with a $200 tax stamp from ’86 is now a $20,000 weapon with a $200 stamp.
It has been illegal since 1986 to sell newly-manufactured automatic rifles to civilians. The only legal recipients are law enforcement and the armed forces.
Close enough to “banned” for me. Do you have any idea how hard (and expensive) it is to obtain one of those grandfathered weapons? It’s almost impossible. “A difference which makes no difference is no difference.” -Korzybski.
…After which I’ll ask you: how many crimes were committed using these grandfathered guns? Answer: zero. Outlawing these rare and (very) difficult to obtain weapons would have precisely no effect on gun crime. It must really irk the gun-grabbers when people point out the 1986 ban…
So, yes, when private citizens are legally & explicitly prohibited from buying any automatic weapon made after 1986, I call that a “ban.”
Our guess is that the cowardly murderer was a gun grabber bringing the pain of mass murder to conservatives. Other than a NASCAR event or a neo-Nazi/KKK march where would one find more conservatives concentrated than at a C & W jamboree? The cowardly murderer’s objective may have been to get conservatives to favor some manner of gun control. It won’t work as we need our weapons to resist government tyranny.
Our esteemed host added this as a comment to a proposal:
Well, of course it is, because even the Democrats recognize that passing laws means nothing to people whose business it is to break the law. There were 762 murders in Chicago last year, and 519 so far this year, but the left won’t ever mention the real problem: rampant illegitimacy among the black population, leading to children growing up without fathers, and young black males killing other young black males. 75% of the victims are black, and 71% of the killers are black. The oh-so-politically-incorrect other statistic is that the vast majority of the other victims and killers are Hispanic; only 3.5% of the victims are white.
And that’s why the left and the media can be silent on a city which produces 13 Las Vegases every year: it’s those ‘other people’ who are the victims, and we can’t possibly mention that their culture is the problem, ’cause that would be raaaaacist.
So, instead of attacking the culture which produces both the victims and the killers — and the majority of the victims have criminal records — the only legislation the left can offer is restricting the rights of people who aren’t killers or victims.
dana,
The anti-gunnites need to STFU. There is nothing related to reducing the availability of guns to be done to reduce gun violence in America. Nothing. If tomorrow we confiscated each and every one of the over 300 million firearms the homicide WOULD drop precipitously, but it will not happen. Recall that after a sick fvck walked into a school and slaughtered 20 first graders, we as a nation did NOTHING. We will continue to do nothing.
That said, the homicide rate has been halved since the early 90s, from 10 per 100,000 to less than 5 per 100,000, the lowest rate since the late 50s. We’re doing something right. So-called “scientists” suspect the drop is due to the aging of the violence prone baby-boomers, raised on lead paint, drugs and alcohol, and being replaced by the more coddled Gen Xers. Many Americans suspect there has been no drop in violent crime at all and that it’s a gov’t hoax.
America has been so isolated from the world that they wax apoplectic whenever they are attacked. Their little corner of utopia is supposed to be just that. Whenever Obama went on his national apology tour all of this was supposed to stop and yet during his 8 years there were:
Little Rock, ark.
Ft. Hood, Tx.
Boston Marathon.
Moore, Ok.
Queens.
Garland, Tx.
Chattanooga, Tn.
San Bernadino, Ca.
Orlando, Fl.
St. Cloud, MN.
The point here is that while this is happening in the USA it is also happening in The EU. Instead of weapons they are using trucks and cars as well as explosives which are easier to get in the EU then they are the USA.
No Were sorry tour is gonna fix this. The left in America wants everyone to get along. As long as the left gets to make all the rules. Not gonna happen. Where two people gather you will have two different opinions on how to do something.
The world is full of very diverse and different people from different cultures with completely different ideas of the world and how to fix the problems.
Obama could not do it, Trump wont do it and if the world lasts another 100 years whoever is in charge then wont be able to do it then either. The sooner the left gets on board with that idea then solutions might exist.
But open borders, no weapons and ammunition will be a juicy target for Russia, China, NOKO, Iran, Most muslim countries to massacre Americans and Europeans who do not share the same values as those would be assassins.
Its not about the weapons of choice. Its about the motivations of those willing to sacrifice themselves to kill many people. Giving a speech at the UN about how sad the USA is over fighting for freedoms around the world is not going to fix what is broken.
What is broken in mankind. Always has been. We have been killing each other since Tribe A found Tribe B hunting on their territory.