Right... so there's a mass shooter in the school, Trump is unarmed and he'd go in? Sure... though that enforces less of his habitual lying liar that lies mental instability than his idiotic dumbassery. I'd help out by kicking him in!

People like him would rather use those kids as human shields to protect himself than doing anything remotely brave & selfless like the teachers did.

“So what happens is, this guy falls off right on his face, hits his head, and I thought he died. And you know what I did? I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ and I turned away,” said Trump. “I couldn’t, you know, he was right in front of me and I turned away. I didn’t want to touch him… he’s bleeding all over the place, I felt terrible. You know, beautiful marble floor, didn’t look like it. It changed color. Became very red. And you have this poor guy, 80 years old, laying on the floor unconscious, and all the rich people are turning away. ‘Oh my God! This is terrible! This is disgusting!’ and you know, they’re turning away. Nobody wants to help the guy. His wife is screaming—she’s sitting right next to him, and she’s screaming.”

Thank God for the Marines. “What happens is, these 10 Marines from the back of the room… they come running forward, they grab him, they put the blood all over the place—it’s all over their uniforms—they’re taking it, they’re swiping [it], they ran him out, they created a stretcher. They call it a human stretcher, where they put their arms out with, like, five guys on each side,” shared Trump.

“I was saying, ‘Get that blood cleaned up! It’s disgusting!’ The next day, I forgot to call [the man] to say he’s OK,” said Trump, adding of the blood, “It’s just not my thing.” - Donald Trump

That's the guy who says he'd run into a building with an active shooter?

So... having an armed guard didn't deter this shooter... and this shooter, unlike many others, did not have a death wish, he went peacefully once found.

It's impossible to know how many shootings ARE deterred by armed guards.

But, we can know how many school shootings were stopped by armed guards... My quick search shows one shooting was stopped by an armed guard just days after, but nobody seems to have any statistics on how many armed guards stop shootings... If you're going to make the assertion that "guards are effective at engaging threats", you need to show numbers. Certainly, with as many politicians who want this to be the solution, and with the monumental rise in school shootings over the last decade, there should be someone, somewhere, capturing metrics on this sort of thing.

My position: Schools have a hard time paying teachers a reasonable salary... I doubt they're going to be getting top-of-the-line security guards... They'll be hiring retired, ex-military cooks who've had weapon training but never been shot at.

So, the 'plan' Trump and the NRA want to support is having armed guards/teachers in place to stop shooters by shooting them.

This ignores the fact that there was an armed guard at Parkland that didn't try to stop the shooter.

It also ignores the number of teachers and guards convicted of attacking students, often over misunderstandings. How often would a teacher be pulling their guns over books dropping? Probably daily if it was a nation wide program.

Daily show had the only plan that's 100% certain to stop school shootings....close all schools and home school everyone. ;-)

One way to resolve the issue might be to redirect some of the immense intelligence focus from Islamic terrorism to domestic terrorism.

That is what this is, domestic terrorism. It may not always have a manifesto behind it, but that is not relevant. There were numerous people who said this person was probably a school shooter in the making. He was doing things with white power groups and militias. Why didn't our mass spying that we do catch that? Because it wasn't an Islamic group.

We can ban assault rifles or put limits on them, we can make mandatory psych evals required for gun purchases, or we could do any number of things. While we look into what we can legislate, we should also be looking into how we can use resources we have in place to STOP JUST THIS SORT OF THING.

As anyone who knows me knows, I am a hardcore supporter of the right to bear arms. I am not an NRA member, because they aren't really concerned about the right to bear arms, just that they keep getting money from gun manufacturers. I still think we can keep AR type rifles, but we should have a national mandate on clip size, number of clips allowed, and we should have a mandatory psych eval required if you plan on purchasing anything other than a hunting rifle. Yes, that includes handguns.

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.

Your video, Florida School Shooter was Member of White Nationalist Group, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Drudge Report has a link saying that the local sheriff's office has done some investigation and has found "no known ties between the ROF, Jordan Jereb or the Broward shooter."

That doesn't necessarily mean that the connection is false, but terrorist groups etc. have falsely claimed that someone was acting on their behalf or was a member of their group before.

I find Drudge to be a pretty good site to keep in my shortlist for news. Gotta keep the definite tilt to the right in mind, but then again being wary against bias is a good practice in general.

At the risk of sounding like an ass: every 3-gun match I've seen looked extremely narrowed down in terms of the required skill set. The shooters are ridiculously fast and accurate, but at the end of the day, it's tagging paper and steel with an AR-15 at 20m or less. Lots of skill required to be good at it, but oh so very narrow. Like high-power, if you will.

2-gun, run & gun, even cowboy action seem to require a more diverse skill set. Events like Red October, even though it had a lot of paper at point blank this year.

Eh, I dunno. Neat overall, and since it's the opening sequence it can probably be forgiven to an extent, but there was too much self-indulgent tech wanking going on IMO. I also worry that there is a little too much first person shooter going on in my space shooter. While it was very cool in the previous Wing Commander games that you could go to different areas of the ship and talk to the crew between missions, all you had to do to get around was click on doors and people. Actually having to walk your character around a big ship to activate the cut scenes is going to get old unless they find creative ways to keep it fresh. We will see. I just worry there is a lack of focus on core gameplay in favor of putting features in there just because they can. A lack of a focused vision and direction seems like it's the achilles heal of the whole Star Citizen project.

Just about any competition shooter can keep up 0.3 splits for 10 minutes. Go to a three-gun competition near you and ask someone to show you.

Aiming is relative to what you want to achieve. From "spray and pray" to taking many minutes per shot in Palma and F-class. You might take 10-12 shots per minute with a semi-auto at this distance. Others will aim and shoot at 5 to 10 times that rate.

"Shooting with your finger at maximum speed is always far less accurate and slower than full auto with the same gun. You have to prove it to me that I'm wrong, because that's simple logic."

No. That's not how it works. I don't have to prove anything to you (as much as you have to prove anything to me). How about this though - first go read "On Killing" by Dave Grossman, which covers this topic, then go search on Youtube for the many videos (I checked just now and there are plenty) showing how full auto hits much less, (and the shots where you do hit are mainly sub-optimal) compared to aimed fast shots in semi-auto, then go join a gun club and try some competitive shooting. I'd be surprised if at the end of that you still imagine full-auto is what you think it is.

Also fun to watch are videos of guys like Jerry Miculek who can fire in semi-auto at insane rates of fire.

Now, lets be clear, I'm not saying full-auto doesn't have its uses, because it does. I'm taking umbrage with your claim that you have more control in full-auto (you do not) and that you get more hits on target with full auto across a series of targets (you do not).

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.

Only what they mentioned in the news.
20 ish guns.
2 ar15s, 1 with a bump stock.
1 ak pattern rifle (47 claimed, but the news is clueless. Could be a 74, could be an odd variant), possibly with a bump stock.
Then a bunch of other guns, not described.

Yes, full auto varies. I erred on the higher rate side.
A more realistic rate would be 12hz auto, 6hz bump, and 3hz semi.

Only other non-NFA non-bump rapid fire mechanism that I know of is a binary trigger (fires on pull, and on release). Effectively doubles your semi fire rate.

In any case, he only needed 1 gun and spare magazines.
I assume he brought everything not because it was necessary, but because he was planning to die and he had the stuff, so why not use it one last time (not like he'll get another chance).

To be fair, so far, mass shooters have stuck around for the long haul. Escape hasn't been an issue. But sure, in the future it could be.

True, you don't have to be 100% squeaky clean, but the vegas guy so far does look like he was.

As an aside, our felony code is incredibly expansive. People get disqualified from gun ownership over things that most normal people wouldn't even think would be illegal.

There's a stat that some lawyer published : a person typically commits 3 [obscure] felonies per day just going about normal daily activities. You can basically put anyone in jail if you choose to monitor them.

IMO, felonies should be divided into major and minor, with anything non violent being minor, and not disqualifying of gun ownership or right to vote.

Eg. I don't care if someone is running a pot farm. It isn't bothering anyone, it shouldn't even be a crime. But if it's gonna be a felony, at least it should be some lesser felony than it is now.

-scheherazade

He didn't have full auto, he used a bump fire stock.
Full auto fires around 20hz. Well practiced bump firing is around 10hz. Well practiced semi auto pull is around 6hz.

Bump firing also sprays so bad it's not aimable beyond a few feet distance. The gun community is even more surprised than other people, most considered the bump stock as a joke doo dad for making noise and wasting money.





All vendors, even at a gun show, must do background checks.

All private sellers, regardless of where (at home, gun show, on the street, wherever), are not required to do checks - but are in practice held liable for subsequent gun crimes if they can't prove they had no idea the buyer was shady.

There is absolutely nothing special about gun shows. The gun show loophole is an entirely imaginary issue (I explained this earlier).




A traceable gun is just as capable of shooting a person as an untraceable gun.



Yes, anyone can put together that arsenal.
Especially anyone with a squeaky clean record who qualifies to be a gun owner no matter what the restriction - like the Vegas shooter.

Hence why *nothing proposed* would have had *any impact* on the Vegas events, short of confiscation raids nation wide and capital punishment for possession.





The reply was to : "You are more likely to be killed by a criminal if you have a gun than if you don't."

I have two interpretations of that chart

1) (my initial thought)
Assault understood as the legal meaning (brandishing, threatening, not necessarily killing).
Discharge understood as firing.
This is what the original math was based on.
But yes, it seems senseless because how can you die to brandishing?

You are correct regarding the "per year".
The original math does include the mistake of thinking it was cause of death, not per year chance of death.
That alters the result from 350'000 lifetimes for a 50/50 chance, down to 350'000 years for a 50/50 chance. AKA 4600 lifetimes worth of years for a 50/50 chance in the next year.

2) (your [likely correct] thought)
Assault understood as being fired upon.
Discharge understood as accidental (what else could it mean?)
This variant is computed below.
However, this challenges conventional assertion, because the common assertion is that accidents kill more than intentional. Maybe that assertion is crap.

1/24974 as caused by assault
That's a 99.995995835669095859694081845119% chance of dying by a cause OTHER than firearms.
Which requires around 17'000 trials for the chance of the next death to be 50% by firearm.
I.E. 99.995995835669095859694081845119% ^ 17'000 = 50.625%, or about 50/50.
AKA 226 lifetimes worth of years to have a 50/50 chance of death by firearm in the next year.

Referring to the study I linked earlier :
http://service.prerender.io/http://polstats.com/?_escaped_fragment_=/life#!/life
#2 version has a similar death chance to the polstats link, so the #2 variant is likely the appropriate understanding (not my initial understanding).

-schehearzade

In open warfare of govt vs people, drones don't matter, just like jets don't matter. I already covered this above.



Nowhere is an oppressive dictatorship - until it is.
[redacted]
I feel like people are too distracted with instagram and other B.S. to bother learning about how the world works.
History is long. The current peace is an anomaly. When things go bad, there is little warning. If you're lucky, a year or so of build up. If you're not lucky, weeks or days. Shit likes to spiral.
In bad times, you have only what you have on hand.


Most western countries with [regardless of gun ownership] don't have a population that's F'd in the head.
Nothing stops a German gun owner from taking his AR15 and shooting up a concert.
Storing his guns in a safe that he can open doesn't mean anything.
Paying for a new license card for every few guns doesn't alter the guns.

Gun laws, as proposed, are fluff. Nothing that makes people safer, nothing that prevents ownership, but plenty to crap on collectors.
* 10 round limit = 2 second pause to reload
* Gun show loophole is a misnomer.
* (re. above) Only private sales (gun show or not) don't require checks - but you still end up in court if the buyer does something bad.
* Assault weapons ban only bans pistol grips and threaded barrels. Cosmetics. Just google "California compliant AR15" (they already have a de-facto AWB).
* There's already laws against straw purchase.
* There's already laws against crazy people buying (already part of the background check)
* Registration is pointless as gun control. Doesn't alter the guns or who has them (background check already tells gov who, when, and where bought a gun).

(I'd sooner vote for mandatory roll cage and 6 point harness in every car. Could eliminate 90+% of car fatalities in one rule - if people cared enough.)


By the way, gun owners hate people like the Vegas shooter even more than anti-gunners hate people like him.
Precisely because assholes like that shooter make anti-gunners turn on their frustration on innocent gun owners.

The call to "do something" is the phrase that perfectly describes the sentiments that led to actions, that in turn became described by either "famous last words" or "the road to hell is paved with good intentions".





We had shit health insurance before Obama. We had shit insurance during Obama (only you're required by law to buy it, even if it's not a good value), we continue to have shit health insurance during Trump, and no matter what trump does, it will still be shit.
Problem is that the insurance company lobbyists draft the language of the law (no matter the party in charge), and it's not for our benefit.





Re. Minorities, most are living normal lives. The white eutopia that the few vocal people complain about, doesn't exist. At least I have yet to see it. Don't let a few thousand people in a nation of millions guide your thoughts about overall social norms.

I'm happy to see them protest. Frankly, I wish white people had the same solidarity that black people have. When a black gets shot by a cop, they come together. When a white is shot by a cop, other whites say "he probably deserved it". I wish the black community good luck and success.





Yes, I wish we weren't jailing more people than anywhere else on the planet, over things that harm nobody.
I wish we had the drug laws of Portugal (decriminalization)
I wish we had the legal system of Sweden (no jail before conviction).

Know how I said that most countries don't have as many people that are F'd in the head? Same applies for people in government.
None of this shit will get fixes.
Republicans are bible thumping retards that funnel money to defense contractors and campaign donors.
Democrats are buck-passing censors that funnel money to insurance companies and campaign donors.
And people just pick a team and bark at the other team, while each gets fleeced by their very own side.

-scheherazade