Why shouldn't people that establish connections with known terrorist groups, particularly one we are legally at war with, be restricted access to weaponry they can cause terror with?

@KC ... everyone in the White House knows that that's not going to happen. Bernie Sanders is the one of the furthest left-leaning major candidates we have had since FDR and he knows that's not going to happen (and he's against that anyway). That's not even plausible.

I know that. But people on this thread seem to not realize it. And those are the people that the NRA is going to count on to help spin their reactionary tale. They don't need Obama to want to ban guns. They just need enough people to hear that *somebody* does. And those people are *probably* Democrats. Which means they *definitely* voted for Obama. Which means Obama is basically the antichrist and is going to take your guns.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/18/us/politics/pennsylvania-voter-id-law-struck-down.html?_r=0

Pennsylvania's voter ID law was struck down because the state made it difficult to acquire IDs other than driver's licenses. It's not as if the state doesn't know who you are. All they have to do is give you an ID, no questions asked, and all of a sudden these voter ID laws aren't a hindrance and yet they still accomplish what they set out to accomplish.

I'd have no problem with free IDs and requiring them to vote.

I've always been skeptical of the voter fraud arguments. People say it happens a ton or not at all. But how do they know? Isn't that kind of the point of the fraud?

If they were better at committing fraud and silencing investigators, you wouldn't know. For a massively over-the-top example, see North Korea.

I have no problems with free IDs and requiring them to vote either, but Pennsylvania's ID law got struck down because they didn't exactly do a good job of requiring those IDs. I don't really get how voter ID laws are innately fraudulent in themselves but there are plenty of historical examples of voter ID laws being used as a smokescreen to commit fraud.

This guy *was* checked. He passed the check, in that investigators didn't find sufficient evidence to go after him. He was licensed to own firearms like the ones he used, as part of his job with a private security firm. I'm not sure how tighter gun control would have prevented this from happening.

The psych eval would have done it according to basically anyone that knew him.

All it takes is one doctor to have an ulterior motive and declare someone unfit to own a gun. Just a thought.

Two FBI interviews, and a Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory test done by his private security firm, say otherwise, at least according to CNN. But then, isolated reports are mediocre intelligence until corroborated.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/12/news/companies/orlando-shooter-employer/

Yes, Chaqa, people can fail to do their jobs. That doesn't mean we discredit their entire field.

@Leth ... the people around him describe him as hateful and temperamental. Easy to say after he commits the most atrocious mass shooting in our country's long history mass shootings I guess, but someone has to be wrong, either the employer that gave the exam or the people who knew him.

(And of course the private security firm could just be bullshitting the evaluation. Sounds like its employees' record isn't exactly clean.)

I can't imagine a psychological evaluation given to the man who just killed 49 people that doesn't at least provide some red flags. That kind of psychotic break doesn't just happen.

Bo, a psych eval that turns out to be wrong is still a psych eval. Since you're claiming psych eval legislation would suffice for cases like this, you have to account for the fact that psych evals do fail. You can't say the psych eval was wrong, so all we have to do is get a psych eval to get it right, because you don't know a priori what the right result is.

I am well aware that psych evals can fail. Just as I said to Chaqa, a single failure doesn't discredit an entire field. I don't know how someone could possibly argue that a psych eval isn't a useful tool in evaluating whether or not someone is or isn't fit to own and carry a weapon, particularly those of high-grade military standard like the AR-15. ARs aren't a joke.

If you want to know how this mass shooting could have been prevented, I don't know whether or not any particular remedy would have worked.

Well, yes, the initial question I posed was how tighter gun control would have prevented this from happening. My current opinion, based on what I know about the shooting, is that while gun control politics will inevitably be caught up in the emotional response (not saying that's right or wrong, it just is), gun control policy has little to learn here. Gun control measures were in place, this guy followed them, and he still committed this horrible act.

Which is always going to be possible until guns don't exist, which won't be any time in my lifetime.

"Of course requiring membership of a militia/gun club might be one form of regulation"

Yet militias are universally despised by the left.

And why is that?

Just because something has a chance of failure doesn't mean we have justification not to use it. For example with all the speed limits, governors on car speed, and seat belts people still die in car crashes every year. But it would be ignorant of reality to argue that if we didn't have these laws and technologies the number of deaths would be unchanged. If we pass these laws which will add more security measures to gun ownership than we should reasonably expect less gun violence not immediate and complete lapse in gun violence.

"that roller coaster flew off the tracks because a safety measure broke. Well those aren't effective so lets remove all safety measures from all roller coasters."

"Power went out in the hospital and the generator malfunctioned. Well then lets remove generators from hospitals."

"Hey hear about that doctor that forged prescriptions. Let's take away the responsibility of doctors to prescribe medication and instead let people self medicate."

these are reasonable right?

That guy was inspected by the FBI and they didn't flag him. So thus allowing the FBI to flag people could never work and we should not allow it.

That guy passed a mental eval for his security firm and it didn't show anything. Well then we shouldn't legislate this as a safety net in case it does stop even 1 mass murder.

Hey hear about that doctor who cleared a patient to have firearms when he shouldn't. Well I propose we allow people to self-determine if they are fit to own a semi-automatic AR-15.

I think you mistake my position for disagreement with yours, CB.

Leth I wasn't just responding to you. Several others have championed it as evidence why we shouldn't impose gun control laws

why not to do a pilot study, say, in Chicago, then you analyze results scientif... err wait, you're americans

Well Chicago did actually restrict and seize guns from its citizens.

Chicago has the most gun violence in the country.

The two are not related, actually, because the guns were seized mostly from those who aren't involved in gang violence, and the crime is from the gangs.

so you seriously think that was a scientific pilot study?
and you base all your conclusions on that single experience?

sorry to see your experience conflicts with other ones (like the australian one cited above). what about experiment replication, variable control, method refinement...

err wait, you'r americans

In capitalism, freedom is defined as the right of the capitalist, business, corporation or investor to do whatever the damned Hell he wants to without interference from the state. Anything less that, the Heritage Foundation insists, is somehow “not free.”

See that factory dumping all that polluted water in that river? That’s called freedom in capitalism. See that government passing a law to force the corporation to spend lots of money so it pollutes the river a lot less? That’s called “unfree.” Hence, in capitalist ideology and the media, “free” countries and the joke called the “Free” World are any countries that let the capitalists do whatever the Hell they want. “Unfree” countries, dictatorships or autocracies are defined as countries that try to regulate business by placing limits on the profits of the capitalists.