We've all had enough of it. We just disagree on the solution.

The Second Amendment states (in modern, plain English) that:

"Because it is necessary for ordinary people to form a well trained fighting force in order to protect their freedom, no law can be made which infringes on the people's right to keep and use guns."

The short answer is: "Yes."

Technically, the only way to restrict American gun ownership is to make another amendment to the Constitution. (And that is very difficult.) It could even be argued that some laws which already exist are unconstitutional. The 2nd Amendment simply says "the right of the people to keep and bear arms". It doesn't say what kind or how many or what magazine capacity or any of that. It simply says that the people have a right to keep and use guns ... full stop.

Now, having said that ... I think the overwhelming majority of Americans would object to there being no restrictions whatsoever on gun ownership. I know many people who own and shoot guns, and not one of them minds the background checks. I carry a gun all the time and am very pro-gun ... but even I think that guns should be kept out of the hands of mentally unstable people and criminals. I mean, you'd have to be crazy not to think that.

But, there is a very fine line between protecting the public and taking away individual rights. And it's very difficult to find a way to implement such measures while keeping everyone happy and respecting the foundation of this country: personal liberty. However, we obviously need to do something. I have my own ideas, but that's another subject.

Indeed!

So what will become of the individual responsible for these murders?

My understanding is that Florida still has the death penalty but it is under review.

https://deathpenalty.procon.org/view...ourceID=001172

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43081361

This should move the process on a little more quickly I presume.

Another interesting article, this one on "see something, say something"


https://www.washingtontimes.com/news...say-something/

There is precedence for this. There are limits to the types of firearms that people can own. Machine guns and most types of artillery are all regulated by the government. So what you wrote is possible and if done properly might get past the SCotUS.

But

Who decides what is an acceptable caliber .22LR can be quite deadly. Is a .22lr more or less dangerous than a .32acp? I would opine that the .22lr is more dangerous. So I don't think that limiting the caliber would do anything.

I am not sure that restricting ownership to one firearm would accomplish much. If a bad guy wants to kill people, only having one firearm won't be that much of a hindrance.

The problem with some of these shooters is the same problem we have with terrorists. Our law enforcement structure is designed around the presumption that a criminal wants to get away with his or her crime. This places a lot of restrictions on the criminal and allows us to implement protective schema.

But, like a terrorist, what do we do to protect ourselves from a shooter who either does not care if they survive or deliberately wants not to survive the crime?

The answer may be that we really can't protect ourselves against someone who wants to kill us and who does not want to survive the encounter.

Which gets back to my premise of trying to understand why someone would choose to kill strangers before killing themselves. We have to understand this abhorrent mindset if we are going to defend it.

We, as a nation and a culture, have to come to a compromise between privacy and safety. Currently, our medical history is protected and kept private. There may be indicators in people's medical history that would tip off the authorities that a person may be at risk.

Concerning mental health records, how can we balance privacy with safety? This is not an easy question nor one that should be solved by an extreme measure. The risk of abuse is considerable.

One thing we can't have is an attitude of "everything necessary to protect the public" as that can easily lead to a police state.

After the fact, it is always easy to see the "red flags" to the point where some complain, "why didn't someone do something, it was clear!". Well absent the advantage of hindsight, finding these red flags is not always easy.

The problem is that in the US, we have about 50,000,000 gun owners who every single day of the year do not commit firearms related crimes. But we do have a hundred or so gun owners who do end up committing firearm related crimes.

How do we find the latter without infringing on the freedoms of the former?

The problem with "red flags" is that they are only diagnostic after the fact.

What we need are diagnostic indicators that we can use before the fact. Much easier written then done

It is easy when the criminal cooperates by posting "Next year I am going to kill everyone at my school". That's considerate of the criminal. But what about criminals that are not so considerate?

What indicators can we have that can serve as a tip that this one person out of 50,000,000 needs to be looked at?

It can't be a single indicator but would have to be a combination of indicators. Otherwise we will be wasting our time investigating people who won't commit firearm crimes and not get to those few that will.

The solution may be using AI, to continually sift through the various data sources and prioritize. This may be a cure much worse than the disease. I don't think there will be too many people eager to have such a schema. Especially at the federal level.

I wish I knew what the solution is. I also wish that people would stop saying that we are doing nothing. We are doing stuff. An argument may be made that we are not doing enough or what we are doing is wrong. Any of those may be true. But, at the state level, things are changing. At the federal level, the change is much slower... as it should be.

There is no single reason why people choose to kill other people. There is no single solution to this problem. Problems are always easy to solve if the solution is to get rid of people's rights and limit their freedom. I hope we never get to that mindset in the US.

In my opinion, we are focusing on the wrong issues. I wish I knew what the solutions (plural) would be. If I had the answer, I would not be wasting my time posting on a video game website, that's for sure :D

It would be difficult to plead insanity in this case.

The shooters attorney (assigned to him by the State of Florida) said in court that the shooter was fully aware of what he had done.

The act itself was premeditated ... as soon as he was caught, after leaving the campus and visiting a nearby Walmart and Subway,
the shooter admitted to the police that he indeed had been the shooter.

The shooter even wore a gas mask and set off the fire alarm to get more people out of their classrooms to shoot them.

He will get the death penalty and it will take forever to serve justice and of course this act will breed even more shooters to imitate this one. :yep:

Thank you Nathaniel B. and Platapus for taking your time to answer my question about the 2nd Amendment.

The 2nd Amendment and the other Amendment is a given right to the American people in good and bad.

I hope you one day will find a solution to this problem and thereby increase or have removed the cause for these masskillings.

Markus

I agree. Not to mention that an AR-15's .223 round being a lot smaller than most rifle rounds could automatically ban nearly all rifles.

There is another thing to consider. An AR-15 just may not the most deadly weapon a killer could use in these situations. It's designed for engaging enemy soldiers at ranges that far exceed what's necessary to shoot up a school. Larger caliber weapons, shotguns, multiple handguns, all could (and have see the VT massacre) produce far more death and carnage.

If somehow the gun phobics manage to ban the millions of AR-15s already in civilian hands and by some miracle it actually works to make mass killers choose another weapon it could easily have the effect of increasing rather than decreasing the number of victims in these already terrible events.

Remember the largest school massacre in American history was not even committed with a gun.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histo...cre-180963355/

Reminds me of a time sitting around waiting for the next exercise. All us young fellas were arguing what the best weapon in the world was. Arguments were made over caliber, rifling, powder, ballistics, scopes you name it. It was loud and going absolutely no where until the ol' gunny piped up. He said simply the best weapon in the world is the one you can use most effectively to kill your enemy. Whether it be a rifle, baseball bat, knife or thumb.

We can argue 'til the cows come about what firearms to ban. IMO you can ban them all and it still wont solve the problem. It starts at home, in neighborhoods, education, to be able to tell someone they are wrong for thinking certain ways, to be able to drive a foot up their arse if need be and not be worried about offending them or a lawsuit.

The only thing that will happen is the talking heads will talk about we should do this or we should do that, the politicians will do the same, the lobbyist will lobby for what they think is best and in the end either nothing will get done or something will be done and considered right when it would be the worst thing to do because that's what governments do.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43094840

Some one is going to pay for this blunder.

Let's hope so. 30 police reports about violent outbursts over the past few years, public threats to shoot up schools, people concerned enough to contact the FBI. How this nut slipped under the radar I don't understand.

Same here, and that what makes it even worst this scumbag was bought to their attention and FBI just ignored it! :nope:

And they spent how many millions of dollars and man hours tracking down 13 Russian internet trolls? There is something really backasswards about that.

Maybe if the FBI leadership spent less time trying to overturn elections and more time doing their job we would have less of these terrible incidents.