@Triumvir, what if your kid broke into a locked gun vault/safe to get it?

You aren't talking about any old fun violence, you are talking about school shootings widely publicized mass shootings etc.

Call me crazy, but I don't value the lives of those massacred in mass shootings more than those that are lost in individual incidents, targeted or otherwise, suicides or homicides.

Yet you only talk about this shit when there is one. So honestly I think you do.

As I said, if you want to decrease the gross number of gun deaths you need to give inner city young men a way to make a living outside of organized crime. School shootings are awful, but the real problem is there and a solution, while crazy difficult, is actually there.

That's misconstrued, Santa. The *media* DOES value the lives of those massacred more than others. I don't hear about these without media.

Invictus, if you have a pragmatic solution to gang violence, be my guest. I'll back you up on that all the way.

@bo - Only 11,000 of those deaths were homicides and there were more total deaths by automobile than by gun. You gonna bam the car too? We have licensing requirements for guns. You want to male them stricter. Then make automotive licensing stricter too.

Like I said earlier in this thread.......

You can't get a license for a car if you have bad vision or hearing. You shouldn't get a license for a gun if you have a mental disability or have previously proven mentally unstable.

Maybe I'm misreading you, but it seems to me like you say that expecting me to disagree. I'm not a proponent of banning things, Draug. I'm a proponent of fixing them.

That's not a particularly valid argument. Cars are designed to transport, and occasionally they kill. Guns are designed to kill, and occasionally they kill.

Also if you compare # of deaths per hours used, you'd find that automobile-related deaths are much lower than gun-related deaths (I would suspect).

"I'm not a proponent of banning things, Draug. I'm a proponent of fixing them."

But what you say would fix nothing. No laws would have stopped the Nevada shooting, apart from outright repeal of the Second Amendment making guns unavailable. If people can have guns, sometimes they'll be stolen from responsible owners and used to kill. That's just how things will be on a macro scale.

Bo - There are already laws in place forbidding the mentally disturbed (those who have been institutionalized) and felons from owning guns legally. What do you want?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't most/all firearm databases state-level? Having a federal database could help a lot.

Idk, background checks in every state might help.

"So, on the other hand, PE, you're of the opinion that if a parent, who legally owns a gun, leaves it loaded and lying around, and their child takes it and shoots someone, that doesn't represent any kind of negligence on the parent's part?"

there's literally zero evidence that this happened

until such evidence arises this is a bogus counterpoint

Also, I feel in the gun-owning community there is more of a focus on "my right to own a automatic rifle" versus the ability to handle the weapon in a safe manner.

shoot, a ton of post-lag here. my posts were to answer Draug

Thank you, Abge.

@Draug ... that's obviously not tight enough.

So I just read this thread. And there's something I really want to know, bo_sox. What *kind* of test are you imagining might have stopped *this* shooting? Please be specific. Don't just say, "don't let idiots who would let their kids get their gun have a gun." I want to know just what this would look like.

Ask him if hell ever shoot anyone in cold blood. If he says no than he passes the test!

@semck

I think a multiple choice test would suffice:

"Where is an inappropriate place to store your firearm?

a) Lockbox
b) Firing Range
c) Kitchen Counter
d) All of the above"

ban all guns so murder will never happen again

murder was invented in 1241 when guns were introduced to the West for the first time

"that's obviously not tight enough."

The laws could be as tight as possible and perfectly enforced. That still would not stop, say, the person who committed the Newtown shootings (I've decided to stop saying these animals' names). He murdered his mother, who had no mental illnesses, and stole her guns. Gun control can only stop people from getting guns legally, they can't stop them from getting them illegally. If anti-gun people were smart and honest about their goals they'd campaign to repeal the Second Amendment. Thirty years of that and it just might happen. Harping on "background checks" and other buzzwords is simply useless.

Oh, and to your question:

"PEOPLE ARE GETTING SHOT AND KILLED.

Please tell me how your perceived rights on a 240-year-old piece of paper supersede that. "

First of all, it's only 226 years old -- c'mon, a little precision please, 230 if you're going to round. (Plus the second amendment is even younger).

But to answer the question: people are getting shot and killed, and they always have been -- certainly it happened when the second amendment was written. And people always will be killed (many of them shot). Those numbers might change with different laws, but they won't go away. The worst school killing of all time in the US didn't use a gun at all. Killing is a constant of human behavior.

What is not a constant of human behavior is living in a free country, with meaningful rights vis-a-vis the government, and institutions that do a passable job of approximating a rule of law and justice. That's pretty rare, and it has a staggering positive impact on the lives of almost every person living in this country. It's not something to be tossed aside in a moment of frustration because human nature is ugly.

Invictus has very correctly pointed out the one murder-related fact that IS an abhorrence, and should not be tolerated in a country with any self-respect, and that is the murder rate in the inner city. That is an appalling travesty, and is probably preventable (though very difficult to fight), and it is a shame on us all that it continues.

@Draug - I think they would literally have to crack the safe. If they found the key or knew the combination, you'd likely be prosecuted and lose.

More people killed in US by firearms in the last few decades than all US wars combined since the so-called 'revolutionary' war.

Gun rights advocates have never been affected by gun violence, they're willing to pay for their hobby with your blood though.

It's not a hobby, it's a constitutional right. But we all know how you feel about those pesky things.

@Putin - Could we see a source for that number please?

Hmm, let's check this out shall we, Putin? First of all, we'll just count homicides (obviously it would be absurd to count suicides). Here is the relevant chart.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ushomicidesbyweapon.svg

I'm lazy, so rather than add up different numbers, and worry about both handguns and other guns, I'm just going to take the highest handgun number, 14k/year, and use it across the board. 37*14k = 518k. That's quite a few. But it's fewer than we lost in just WWI and WWII, let alone all the other wars (including the Civil war, our bloodiest).

Why do you just make crap up like this?