"There's no other legal tool available to the public capable of mass murders with so little effort."

I disagree. Petrol and cars/trucks. Both are legal and easily used to commit mass murder (and have been). I'll add swords (long knives) into this with a caveat - you need to be a highly trained swordsman to commit such an atrocity.

Cars are so dangerous that they have killed more people in the US in the last 50 years by accident than guns have on purpose. It took 50 years of concerted effort by subsequent US administrations to get the yearly death toll by cars lower than that of firearms (the curve for cars only recently dipped below that of firearms).

Knives can cause as much or more vascular damage than a typical firearm wound. The difference is that knives require the smallest interpersonal confrontation distance (it is hand to hand combat - people don't like this), and to consistently achieve high levels of vascular damage requires a higher degree of training.

The right of non-restricted people to own firearms has little affect on murder rates. E.g. Australia has a higher rate of firearm ownership now than before its lauded firearms laws came into effect in 1997. The majority of studies done on this topic conclude that the restrictions had no effect (or no measurable effect) on the continued reduction in firearm fatalities.

I think the greatest issue in the US is that some people see the use of firearms as a solution to some problems where it is not a good solution. I.e. it is a cultural issue.

Good points.

I'm not a gun nutadvocate, but I have friends who are. I have shot a fairly wide range of guns with them, including an AR-15. For myself, I only ever owned BB guns and a .22 pellet air rifle, for target shooting and varmint control on my family farm. I did go pheasant hunting with borrowed 20 and 12 gauge shotguns a couple times.

My friend that owns the AR-15 is a responsible gun owner. Do I think he needs it? Hell no. But he likes it. Do I need a PC with an i7 processor and nVidia 1060 GPU? Hell no. But I like it.

So I guess it becomes a question of to what extent the things that we like can be used for negative purposes. My nVidia 1060 is unlikely to be used to facilitate a crime (unless games or bitcoin mining get criminalized). However, even though AR-15s might be one of the primary firearms of choice for murderous wackos, the percentage of people that own AR-15's who are murderous wackos is also extremely low.

If banning AR-15s would significantly reduce the rate of mass shootings and/or the average number of deaths per incident, it could be well worth doing even though it would annoy many responsible owners like my friend. ...But, I just don't think that would be the case. Not by itself.

I think we're at a point where we NEED to do something. If the something that we decide to do is to ban AR-15s, well, so be it I guess. But I don't think we'd be pleased with the long-term results of that. It'd be cutting the flower off of the top of the weed. We need to dig deeper, and I think that registration and licensing are sane ways to attempt to do that.

Sorry, automatics, machine guns, are already illegal without a Federal Firearms License, so not available to the general public Pat. I think you know this and are playing dumb to sound reasonable. The recent school shooting was with a semi auto, as are most, nearly all, mass shootings.
That's not just semantics.
Saying bump stocks and other rapid fire devices aren't the same as full auto modifications (which the law does)...that's semantics.

I visited a sports store during my last visit to the states. Their rifle section was about 15-feet from their basketballs. Weapons that can be used to kill a deer, or a child dear to you, are just a few feet away from section that sells jump-rope and sports socks with bunnies.

As long as firearms are normalized by being sold in the same store and non-bullet sports, I don't see things changing.

Of course, this is just my view as an outsider who can't escape American media.

@MilkmanDan

One big problem is that different states are passing different laws. Connecticut, after Sandy Hook, made it illegal to sell guns or ammo clips that can accept more than 10 rounds and required owners of guns that were semi-automatic and could fire more than 10 rounds to register them. Additionally you need a permit to purchase a gun and background checks are required for all private sales.

Contrast that with other states like Missouri where literally anyone who is not a felon can buy a gun, doesn't have to register it, and doesn't even need a background check if the sale is private.

Legislation on gun control needs to be centralized. Until the federal government establishes uniform laws about licensing and registering firearms, which should include mandatory background checks, training classes, and a federal database that tracks all guns sold in the U.S., it's just going to be too easy to head to a state that has lax gun laws and stock up on all the firepower you need to carry out whatever heinous crime a person has in mind.

And I'm thoroughly pessimistic about it ever happening. The NRA and gun "enthusiasts" as well as the gun manufacturing industry are just too strong as a lobbying group. These kids are absolutely doing the right thing by protesting and they'll get their time in the spotlight, but eventually that spotlight will shift to something else and it will be business as usual in D.C. with politicians taking political donations from the NRA to fund their never-ending re-election campaigns.

Thanks for that link -- really good.

I do think that "the left" is perhaps a bit too focused on specific weapon or accessory types. AR-15's, bump stocks, magazine sizes, etc. It's not completely ridiculous to say that if we banned AR-15's with 20-30 shot magazines, most of these shooters would just move on to the next best thing; maybe a Ruger Mini 14 or something with a 15 shot magazine.

Would that mitigate some of the deadly potential? Sure. Slightly. But it wouldn't prevent things at all, just (slightly) mitigate them. That might be worth doing, but it isn't beneficial enough to be what we should be focusing on.


I think two things could help contribute to prevention. Registration, and Licensing.

Step 1) Anyone who owns or purchases a firearm would be legally required to get it/them registered. Serial numbers (if they exist), etc. Anyway, descriptions of the weapon(s) on file and linked to a registered owner. If a firearm is used in a crime, the registered owner could be partially liable for that crime. Crime resulting in death? Owner subject to charges of negligent manslaughter. Violent crime, but no deaths? Owner subject to charges of conspiracy to commit X. Registered owner finds one or more of their firearms stolen or missing? Report them as such, and your liability could be removed or mitigated. Failure to register a firearm would also carry criminal penalties.

Step 2) Anyone who wants to use a firearm would be legally required to get a license. Licensing requires taking a proficiency and safety test. The initial license would require practical examination (safety and proficiency) at a range. Initial licensing and renewals (every 4 years?) would require passing a written test of knowledge about ownership laws, safety, etc. Just like a driver's license. And just like a driver's license, there could be things that might reasonably preclude your ability to get a license. Felony record? No license for you. Mental health issues? No license for you.


The NRA loves to tout themselves as responsible gun owners. Well, responsible people take responsibility. Remember that one kid in your class back in third grade that talked back to the teacher, so she made you all stay in and read during recess? Yeah, he ruined it for the rest of you. Guess what -- that's happening again. These nutjobs that shoot up schools or into a crowd of civilians are ruining things for the rest of you. We've tried unfettered access and an extremely lax interpretation of the second amendment. It didn't work out well. For evidence, compare the US to any other developed country on Earth.

Guns are a part of American culture, to an extent that taking them away completely would be ... problematic. But there are many, many things between the nothing that we're doing now and that.

Possible, but I don't really think so. I think that the Medical minds of the time thought that physical shock, pressure waves from bombing etc. as you described, were a (or perhaps THE) primary cause of the psychological problems of returning soldiers. So the name "shell shock" came from there, but the symptoms that it was describing were psychological and, I think precisely equal to modern PTSD. Basically, "shell shock" became a polite euphemism for "soldier that got mentally messed up in the war and is having difficulty returning to civilian life".

My grandfather was an Army Air Corps armorer during WWII. He went through basic training, but his primary job was loading ammunition, bombs, external gas tanks, etc. onto P-47 airplanes. He was never in a direct combat situation, as I would describe it. He was never shot at, never in the shockwave radius of explosions, etc. But after the war he was described as having mild "shell shock", manifested by being withdrawn, not wanting to talk about the war, and occasionally prone to angry outbursts over seemingly trivial things. Eventually, he started talking about the war in his mid 80's, and here's a few relevant (perhaps) stories of his:

He joined the European theater a couple days after D-Day. Came to shore on a Normandy beach in the same sort of landing craft seen in Saving Private Ryan, etc. Even though it was days later, there were still LOTS of bodies on the beach, and thick smell of death. Welcome to the war!

His fighter group took over a French farm house adjacent to a dirt landing strip / runway. They put up a barbed wire perimeter with a gate on the road. In one of the only times I heard of him having a firearm and being expected to potentially use it, he pulled guard duty at that gate one evening. His commanding officer gave him orders to shoot anyone that couldn't provide identification on sight. While he was standing guard, a woman in her 20's rolled up on a bicycle, somewhat distraught. She spoke no English, only French. She clearly wanted to get in, and even tried to push past my grandfather. By the letter of his orders, he was "supposed" to shoot her. Instead, he knocked her off her bike when she tried to ride past after getting nowhere verbally and physically restrained her. At gunpoint! When someone that spoke French got there, it turned out that she was the daughter of the family that lived in the farm house. They had no food, and she was coming back to get some potatoes they had left in the larder.

Riding trains was a common way to get air corps support staff up to near the front, and also to get everybody back to transport ships at the end of the war. On one of those journeys later in the war, my grandfather was riding in an open train car with a bunch of his buddies. They were all given meals at the start of the trip. A short while later, the track went through a French town. A bunch of civilians were waiting around the tracks begging for food. I'll never forgot my grandfather describing that scene. It was tough for him to get out, and then all he managed was "they was starvin'!" He later explained that he and his buddies all gave up the food that they had to those people in the first town -- only to have none left to give as they rolled past similar scenes in each town on down the line.

When my mother was growing up, she and her brothers learned that they'd better not leave any food on their plates to go to waste. She has said that the angriest she ever saw her dad was when her brothers got into a food fight one time, and my grandfather went ballistic. They couldn't really figure out what the big deal was, until years later when my grandfather started telling his war stories and suddenly things made more sense.


A lot of guys had a much rougher war than my grandfather. Way more direct combat. Saw stuff much worse -- and had to DO things that were hard to live with. I think the psychological fallout of stuff like that explains the vast majority of "shell shock", without the addition of CTE-like physical head trauma. I'd wager that when the docs said Stewart's father's shell shock was a reaction to aerial bombardment, that was really just a face-saving measure to try to explain away the perceived "weakness" of his condition.

Want to cut down the number of deaths by firearms? Stop tolerating shit like this:

"Shane Patrick Boyle, a founder of Zine Fest Houston, died on March 18 after his GoFundMe campaign to pay for insulin came up $50 short. Alec Raeshawn Smith, age 26, was found dead in his apartment on June 27. He was rationing his insulin after he aged out of his parent’s insurance coverage."

After everything is said and done, desperation/poverty is what should be looked at the hardest. Nothing makes people go apeshit as much as intolerable living conditions.

Universal background checks, bans on high cap mags, etc -- that's just doctoring around the edges. Get the Works Progress Administration going again. And while you're at it, revive the CCC and the PWA as well.

Aside from atrocious working hours and societal pressures, life in Japan is a lot less desperate than in most other countries. The low unemployment alone does wonders.

I don't know where you live, but you can hire or steal a truck pretty easily here in Australia (one of the most heavily regulated countries in the world). And our regulations haven't stopped recent idiots mowing down people with cars on purpose (Melbourne!!!). They're thinking of putting bollards in place in strategic locations - because you can't regulate away what we don't want happening.

Yes, some things kill at lower rates than the examples but I had to end somewhere.

Vehicle ownership is not essential. You can have public transport service everyone just fine (e.g. Singapore). Of course, some people argue that what is good for Singapore may not be suitable for themselves (i.e. it is essential in my scenario because I say it is). And you can extend that same argument to firearms (that they are essential in someone else's scenario). Firearms have a measured economic benefit, protection benefit, health benefit (active outdoor sports), military benefit, etc.

Modern civilisation works fine (I'd argue it works better) without private vehicles. Try having a civilisation without firearms - you'll have to have awfully large mobs of bobbies armed with nothing but sticks. Good luck with that

"You said almost 3 times that speed, continuously for over 10 minutes....and not with a lightweight speed shorting pistol."

You are not making any sense. I see what I wrote but it is unclear what you are referring to. You are welcome to quote the part you are referring to.

As I wrote above, you can choose the length of time you are aiming your firearm for. I even gave a comparative set of aiming scenarios.

I love how you take the top end of my approximation as your "laughable" scenario and don't mention the rest of the range (i.e. 50 rounds per minute with mag changes). Could you shoot at one round per second aimed? I think with a little training you could.

Doing 0.2 second splits (i.e. you shoot twice at each target) and taking about a second on every target, using 30 round mags, you can do 90 round per minute without much trouble. Going a little slower, say 0.3 second splits, and taking 1.5 seconds per target you can do about 60 round per minute. I could go on. The point is, these are aimed shots with a higher chance to hit the target, and with just as much chance to accidentally hit another target on a miss. This has the result of more hits on target.

"you get more hits on target in full auto".

No, you don't. On target means a hit near the point you intended on a target. He was getting random hits - as is evidenced by the low fatality rate versus high injury rate. The only way you would be correct was if you argued that he intended non-fatal injuries as much as he intended fatalities (and you're welcome to make that argument - it has some merits depending on what this lunatic was trying to achieve).

"If it's as common as you say, that should be easy to provide with a comparison video instead of a suggestion to buy and read a certain book. The videos I found are all short range small target, not at all the same as what we're debating. Show me a comparison of a field layered deep with 10000 balloons getting shot at from distance, that would be informative, short course accuracy target shooting isn't."

The book is good because it shows military statistics with full-auto versus other fire modes. Books are often better than videos. It also outlines military teaching methodology, include marksmanship and how it evolved over time. Full auto is still used in military engagements but you'll find it is used very sparsely (here is a good thread of military and ex-mil talking about it's uses: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-militaries-use-assault-rifles-when-the-full-auto-feature-is-rarely-ever-used )

Short range targets are easier to hit. Are you trying to prove my point? Long range targets are harder to hit. Your rate of randomly hitting targets does not get better at longer ranges. But aiming does increase your chance of hitting a target at any range.

If you really wanted to do a comparison at that range then the targets would be a lot larger than balloons.

You're arguing against established marksmanship knowledge that is readily available over the internet or in firearms courses.

I think you owe it to yourself to prove yourself right or wrong by doing some rifle marksmanship courses. Approach it as a sport and you'll have a lot fun doing it!!!

I can't chat much longer - thanks for the good discussion!

Which is why, when just registration and licensing proved inadequate, more regulations were put in place to make it harder to get trucks and often impossible to get them into crowds now, without complaint. Just think...if only that could work with other devices to prevent mass killings....oh wait.

Plenty of things that kill or harm at lower rates are regulated far more strictly. The examples you give are all essentials that might occasionally go wrong, guns often kill when they work as designed, rarely by accident.

The difference is, modern civilization doesn't work without personal and commercial transportation or doctors, but does just fine without firearms. Firearms offer no tangible benefit to civilization, cars and medicine do, even with their undeniable faults.

Cars drive and kill. True. And all the regulations he mentioned didn't stop one crazy guy hopping in a truck and saying "fuck you" and mowing down a hundred people. This is an important point because he's talking about firearm regulation in the context of mass shootings, and that firearm regulation will lessen or prevent these mass shootings - which he then compares to mass murder by vehicle, and vehicle regulation - regulation which clearly failed to stop any sort of purposeful mass murder by vehicle. Vehicle regulation is to lessen the impact of accidents and provide the government with a revenue stream through taxes. If vehicle regulation was to stop mass murder by vehicle, and you were to use Australia's firearm laws as a blueprint, you wouldn't be driving to work tomorrow.

The scary thing is, cars have killed more people by accident over the last 50 years in the USA than firearms have on purpose. That's how truly dangerous they are. If people woke up and realised they are a fantastic killing machine, then you'd start to see an increase in the incidence of mass vehicle killings... oh wait.

The reality is, from a public health discourse, there are plenty of things that kill at higher rates than firearms. The difference is that firearms are sometimes used to murder people and as far as we know most medical malpractice, car crashes, etc. are accidental. They are emotively tackled very differently.

PS: I'm not arguing against some firearm regulations being introduced in America. I'd use a modified version of New Zealand legislation (which allows for semi-auto long arms, high capacity magazines, etc.). I'd add self defense as a reason to own, and add concealed carry permits for those willing to do a course (with the catch that they would become a form of quasi-deputy of the state - so there would be hurdles to jump to get this permit).

I shoot regularly (often multiple times per week). My lazy firing rate has splits (time between shots) of approximately 0.2 seconds. I can do that for a long time (many minutes before I slow done). That is a rate of 300 rounds per minute. My fast splits are approximately 0.12 seconds. I can't do that for very long (probably one magazine). That is a rate of 600 rounds per minute.

An AR-15 on full auto fires at approximately 600 rounds per minute - twice what I can do on semi-auto. Using a competitive shooter as an example, and taking into account magazine changes (which with training are done much quicker than any of the operators in AR-15 to failure tests I've seen), and assuming lazy splits of 0.30 seconds, a competitive shooter can probably fire at a faster rate per minute than a novice can on full auto (i.e. well more than the approximately 150 rounds per minute a novice shooter achieves when taking into account magazine changes).

The thing is, it is well known in military and firearm enthusiast circles that the massive reduction in accuracy when shooting on full auto does not give the perceived payoff. You have much less control when firing a fully automatic firearm. You hit your target less often. Semi auto plus aiming = hits on target. At the range he was shooting (300 to 350 meters), the same lunatic deciding to aim his firearm would have resulted in less wounding and more fatalities.

Any ex-military here? Chime in.

An AR-15 on continual full auto fire (using 30 round or greater magazines) fails at approximately 840 rounds. It takes about 6 minutes to get to failure. With magazine changes it is an effective firing rate of approximately 140 rounds per minute.

He could have achieved his psychotic feat with 2 firearms, swapping firearm after each magazine change.

Even the non-firearm homicide rate in the US is 5 times that of Japan. Japanese gun control can't take credit for all that. Personality is more than 50% heritable, and by extension, so is violent behavior. (Case in point: the vegas killer's father was on the FBI most wanted list). Personalitywise, Japanese tend to be relatively meek and inhibited. Even if every one of them owned a gun, their murder rate would probably still be a fraction of the US murder rate.