School Shooting in South Florida

[dirtylemons]

Hiku said:

dirtylemons said:

I think it's only natural to have a different response when you actually experience something versus seeing or reading/hear about it over and over again. And each person is likely to have their own response, based on their previous individual experiences.

I hope I didn't give the impression that I think the only solutions are outright banning firearms or leaving things as they are. I'm not even against stricter regulations, I just want to know exactly what regulations would have affected past homicides as well as incidents of self-defense. If I can be convinced that a new law is only likely to reduce violence overall, I don't see why I would be against it.

I don't know about kids being able to buy guns. I seriously doubt it's legal where I live. I'd need to see how many underage people are legal firearm owners in the U.S. and compare it to the number of minors who commit crimes with legally obtained firearms before I made a judgment.

If I'm mistaken in calling Australia's stance on guns a 'ban', then I apologize. I was merely using the colloquial way gun control proponents refer to it.

I don't disagree with lessening the feeling of needing to be armed. But right now there is just a flood of guns coming into the U.S. illegally, and until that is controlled, I don't know that stricter regulations on legal gun-owners is going to result in a reduction of violence.

I certainly wouldn't blame any other country for U.S. problems, but I of course think neighbouring countries will have an effect. And I also think it important to highlight the statistics. You brought up accidental deaths. Yes, it is incredibly unfortunate that so many people die from accidental shootings in the U.S. But I also think it important to point out that the rate is over twice as high in Mexico. I don't hear people complaining about a gun culture in Mexico, yet they're worse in every regard.

While you may not be against implementing stricter gun reform that you believe would help decrease violence, there are people that just wouldn't make that trade off because they either believe that the government will come for them, or they're just don't care as long as they can keep their hobby. I've spoken to people I consider fairly reasonable (usually at least), who think the military will attack them if they lose access to their firearms.

As for the kid who bought the gun, what made it legal had to do with the type of gun he bought, and that it was from a private seller. I recall reading it was federal law applying to every state, but since I can't remember the source to that I'll just edit that part out.

I don't think calling Australia's gun reform a 'ban' is wrong. I just wanted to point out exactly what happened in case people didn't know. Here's the gist of it:

A lot of people think there aren’t any guns in Australia any more, but there are. By some estimates there is one gun for every seven people. My local suburban pistol club has 300 members. My sons have been shooting since they were 12 and both have rifle and pistol licenses.

It’s actually not that hard to own a gun. But you do have to have a genuine reason. You have to be a member of a target shooting club or a hunter and you have to prove it. For hunting, you can get written permission from a landowner who says you are hunting on his land. Or you can join a hunting club. Pistols [handguns], on the other hand, are heavily restricted. All applicants undergo a background check by the police and there is a mandatory 30 day cooling off period for all license applications, both long arms and pistols. Firearms safety training courses are mandatory as well.

One of the biggest changes is that the government established different types of firearms for different categories of guns and ruled that each would need different licenses. Here’s roughly how it works:

Category A is .22s, shotguns and air rifles. That’s the easiest license to obtain. No semiautomatics are allowed.

An H license is for handguns. If you want to buy a pistol in Australia you’ve got to be a member of a target pistol club. You’ve got to do a minimum of eight competition shoots per year to keep your license. If you don’t, you lose it.

Another part of the law that changed is that the police can come to your house and inspect your storage.
The police are required to inspect your gun room. Since 1996, the police have inspected mine three or four times. While they can come randomly, they normally put a call through and we arrange an agreeable time to come in and inspect it. I’m happy for them to do it. I want them to see that it’s safe.

When then Prime Minister John Howard proposed the gun law I marched like everybody else did in opposition to it. But I now fully endorse what he did. I didn’t like handing over my rifles, but at the end of the day, it’s a small price to pay not to have the nut-jobs walking through shopping centers and massacring innocent people.

Australia is a great country. You can go hunting, you can go shooting. And as long as you hurt nobody and abide the law you can continue to do it. That to me is freedom. The idea of having people own guns with no concept of gun safety and no reason to have a gun? That is not my idea of freedom.

More here: http://time.com/4172274/what-its-like-to-own-guns-in-a-country-with-strict-gun-control/

I highlighted some of the important parts. It's basically a more pain in the ass process. You have to renew your license every year for some of them, and go through gun safety training. Universal background checks, etc.

What this does is it rewards people who are actually serious about this, and it gives them proper training. And it helps to keep guns out of incompetent or improper hands.
It brings my mind back to the Miami club shooter who was on a no-fly list due to two counts of suspected affiliation with terrorist groups. But he was not on a no-gun list... And the law Trump passed last year that helps mentally ill people get guns by removing their mental illness from the national gun registry.

There's no doubt that USA has so many guns in circulation on the black market that it would probably be problematic if you start off by banning guns from law abiding citizens. Getting rid of the majority of those guns would be a long process.
Whether they decide to do that or not, I at the very least want them to do impose stricter gun regulations on many levels.

In just the 10 years leading up to the Port Arthur shooting in 1996 in Australia, they had 10 massacres. And in the 21 years that followed the gun reform, they didn't have a single one.
And if we count incidents where where three or more people were killed (that wasn't familicide or arson) by a perpetrator, they've had two. One was a Hell's Angels feud in 1999. And the second was a vehicle attack in 2017.

Aside from a 60% drop in firearm related homicides, without an increase in non-firearm related homicides, drop in suicides, and most probably a massive drop in accidental deaths (although I don't recall the number), there's no doubt that this helped Australia a lot.
I'd like to see something similar tried in the US. Worst case scenario? We send our thoughts and prayers to some people and go back to the status quo.

As for Mexico, it's my impression that Mexico is generally seen as a dangerous place with a lot of crime, guns, unclean water, etc. It's a developing country, albeit probably the richest one. It's more likely that people are expecting those kind of numbers from Mexico, but are holding USA to a higher standard because it's the richest developed nation on the planet. 

Perhaps this is naive of me, but I honestly think that if a sincere and intelligent argument can be made in favor of a law likely to reduce violence, the majority would support it. You're never going to get everybody, but all you need is the majority in order to change the law.

A quick Google search indicates that the federal law in question seems to apply to thirty states, though I'm unsure if this is accurate.

I'm certainly not against the idea of people needing to regularly pass some sort of test to maintain a gun license, as with a driver's license. Personally not a fan of having to join any club, and I'm a little wary about random police inspections. But again, I'm not against the concept in general.

My problem with the no-fly list being used as a measure for being able to legally purchase a gun or not is that there doesn't appear to be any clear way you get your name on the list or can prevent getting on it. Secret government lists as a means for restricting one's rights is where my paranoia really begins to kick in.
And I'm going to push back on the claim that a law was passed which helps mentally ill people get guns. Technically correct, but the specifics of the bill pertain to people who cannot manage their finances due to some mental disability. This is a very specific form of mental illness and I don't see why such people should be prevented from owning firearms, when their disability has nothing to do with their grasp on reality. Rather their ability to process numbers and the like. Admittedly, this affects such a small portion of individuals that it seems to be more of a political football, but I'm not against the law as it stands now.

Maybe the current legislation as related to firearms works for Australia. If so, Godspeed. I'm no expert and only have the publicly available statistics at my disposal. I'm simply hesitant to assume that what works for one country would automatically work for another. Japan has a higher suicide rate than the U.S., but I wouldn't conclude from this that Japan needs to be more like the U.S. in order to reduce said rate.
Again, I'm going to push back on one of these claims. The suicide rate in Australia saw a spike right after the new gun laws, then a drop, but has been consistently on the rise for the past decade or so. I don't know what correlation between the two there are, if any, but I wanted to point that out.
As I say, I'm not against trying new gun laws, provided they have a reasonably likelihood of reducing violence behind them. But with the continuing decline of gun crime in the U.S., I admit I'm more wary to stray from the current path, potentially risking an unnecessary spike in violence where one need not occur.