Nikolas Cruz 'remorseful' as police report claims he confessed to Florida school shooting massacre

[Crazedwraith]

"Might not work; better not try."

This could replace 'No Way To Prevent this happening, says only Nation where this happens' as the Onion's mass shooting headline.

[TheFeniX]

Broomstick is still correctly pointing out a certain blunt reality; people are getting tired of getting shot. We've been living in the Age of the Sniper and the Age of the Mass Shooter since the '60s in one way or another. We are rapidly approaching the year when 50% or more of living Americans will have been of high school age or younger at the time of the Columbine shooting.

You mean, "white people are tired of being shot" so they actually want to do something about it now. While crime has dropped since the actions taken in the 90s, Urban Minorities are still racking up a body count that makes school shootings a footnote.

If we can't compromise on gun regulation like the milder sorts of gun regulation found in other countries, sooner or later the pressure is going to result in the sort of gun regulation you find in harsher countries. The status quo of relatively minimal regulation is simply not sustainable, when it means that seemingly every year, sometimes more than once in a year, we have to go through this macabre circus in which dozens of innocent people die and most of our prominent political figures just shrug and say "well, whatcha gonna do?"

What "minimal" regulation are you talking about? Guns aren't Wall Street, there's actually a whole shitload of laws on the books.

How about THIS? Cruz. This kid we're talking about right now. His "rapsheet." The multiple failures at multiple levels that lead to the shooting. Find a way to keep just HIM and people with his amount of bullshit from buying a gun. Find SOME WAY to do that. Then we can talk. Because..... shit, I can't come up with an analogy. Ok, so, we got all these rules here. And you get banned for certain things.

Now, imagine I started just making POST after POST with n-word this Homosexual-slur that. Race baiting, hur dur posts, AND NO ONE FUCKING BANNED ME. What fucking good would the rules and moderators be? At that point, what would the average poster do, provided they couldn't leave? They'd deal with the troll in whatever way they could.

1) Flying is NOT a right, it's a privilege.
2) If general aviation had not accepted changes it would have been abolished.

Allow me to reiterate: So, because the FBI, CIA, and Bush administration failed to act on information they had on hand about a group of suspects that were on multiple Law Enforcement radars, you accepted limitations on your privileges even though your group was in no way at fault?

As it turned out, it wasn't that hard. Gee, I am no longer allowed to fly directly over a nuclear power plant. Boo-fucking-hoo.

Is there something inherently dangerous about flying over a nuke plant? And hey, you mean they scrutinized the person behind the stick and not the plane more? Crazy thought.

The results of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban were mixed at best, but rather than dig in their heels the pro-gun crowd, :snip:

The AWB did jack shit, what did more was Clinton spending millions in the right areas to increase law enforcement presence and training. Also, unleaded gas and legal abortions.

But it's nice we'll hold the innocent accountable before we hold law enforcement and the legislature accountable.

I'm all for improving law enforcement and the legislature as well.

You don't have to do both: you can hold those at fault accountable, and not the innocent.

Even the weak-ass 1994 AWB seemed to result in a small reduction of crime using "assault weapons", so apparently it would do something. And it's not like the AWB was really a "ban" - it didn't take away the guns already owned, it grandfathered them in so they were still around. So how do you explain the drop?

I covered this, but the AWB is given way to much credit rather than the other sweeping action taken. Actions that cost a shitton of taxpayer money, but they got results.

And you really, really don't get it - eventually, if nothing is done, the anti-gun crowd isn't going to settle for a "warm fuzzy", they're going to get fed up enough to take your gun away. Won't happen next week, but if the current trends continue it will. If you let it get to that point what happens will be far more draconian than limiting your clips to 10 rounds or whatever.

That's going to happen either way. But there's also the problem that white liberals are the ones going big anti-gun. "Liberal" minorities, especially those in places like Texas, still like guns. They might want more gun control, but they already have issues with law enforcement leaving them on their own and the media not giving a shit about them. So they have to turn to their own ways to defend themselves.

Columbine: Have you SEEN the piece-of-shit weapons they killed a dozen people with?

Nope. And don't really care.

And this is a pretty good case of why you really have no idea what's going on here. You're literally pushing the narrative that "feel good" is the "best good." That we should honestly waste money placating the uninformed at best, morons at worst. You really think if the AR-15 just gets axed tomorrow, or even all mag fed rifles (not even claiming that's what you are pushing, merely that attacking the gun is stupid): they couldn't/wouldn't go back to something more "basic?"

This is the mentality that turned me off the the gun control movement: they think guns create a "need." Take away the gun and the desire for murder fades, the need to mug people for money to eat ends when there's no gun available. It doesn't.

The problem with your second statement is that all those kids have access to the internet and they're starting to ask why the UK doesn't have this happen, why Australia doesn't have this happen, why [insert other country name] doesn't have this happen. What are you going to do when they say "hey, we're voting now, and this set of laws worked in these other countries, why don't we do this?"

Well, if the current crop of politicians is anything to judge by, I'll laugh about it, wait till the fervor dies down, then watch as whatever they passed expires because the kind of people who are scary of "tacticool black" are also the kinds of people easily lead to the new shiny thing next week.

You say you sympathize, but you dismiss the other side as ignorant and hysterical. Know what the problem with that is? They can vote just like you can, and ignorant and hysterical voters make bad decisions. Rather than calling them stupid and hysterical you can try to actually address their concerns and fears instead of stamping your feet and screaming "YOU CAN'T TAKE MUH GUNS!!!" in turn. That requires constant attempts to educate and soothe, and no, it's never going to end. Welcome to life.

I tried, for years. Here, on other forums, other... ugh.. social media. It's boring, they're boring.

But this is another example of "It's your fault your representatives and law enforcement is so shitty, YOU FIX THE PROBLEM."

Yes. Yes it is. Because there's no one else who is going to fix the problem.

Yea, and in the absence of strong action, such as passing sweeping gun control which congress isn't going to do for at least another year, people are probably just going to buy more guns.

Yes. Maybe the fact that the Las Vegas massacre, which was only last October, involved 10 AR-15's. Then the very next month an AR-15 was used in shooting up a church. And then another one was used to shoot up Stoneman Douglas high school.

Yea, as opposed to the 8,000 or so people offed per year by handguns. But those are mostly poor minorities, so who cares? Instead focus on the 1% of deaths because it's been primarily targeting white people. NOTE: this isn't a value judgement against you, I more mocking U.S. society.

I'm going out on a limb and saying, though they are entitled to it and I (and others) will have to deal with the consequences of that right: these people don't fucking deserve an opinion here.

Sorry - everyone is entitled to their opinion. You don't get to dictate how other people think.

Uh, yea, I just fucking said that.

[Civil War Man]

"Might not work; better not try."

This could replace 'No Way To Prevent this happening, says only Nation where this happens' as the Onion's mass shooting headline.

Or, as Jon Stewart put it after one mass shooting (Sandy Hook, I think), a lot of the arguments boil down to "This won't stop 100% of all gun violence, therefore we should do absolutely nothing."

As for people trying to do something, DICK's Sporting Goods came out today with an announcement that they are
1) no longer selling AR-15s and similar weapons ("assault-style rifles, also referred to as modern sporting rifles", as they put it) at any of their Field & Stream stores (they already stopped stocking them at the regular Dick's Sporting Goods stores after Sandy Hook),

2) no longer selling firearms of any kind to anyone under 21, and

3) no longer selling high-capacity magazines.

[aerius]

What "minimal" regulation are you talking about? Guns aren't Wall Street, there's actually a whole shitload of laws on the books.

How about THIS? Cruz. This kid we're talking about right now. His "rapsheet." The multiple failures at multiple levels that lead to the shooting. Find a way to keep just HIM and people with his amount of bullshit from buying a gun. Find SOME WAY to do that. Then we can talk. Because..... shit, I can't come up with an analogy. Ok, so, we got all these rules here. And you get banned for certain things.

Now, imagine I started just making POST after POST with n-word this Homosexual-slur that. Race baiting, hur dur posts, AND NO ONE FUCKING BANNED ME. What fucking good would the rules and moderators be? At that point, what would the average poster do, provided they couldn't leave? They'd deal with the troll in whatever way they could.

It's like drunk driving; you can rack up 50 DUIs and no one will give a fuck about it until you plow your car into a dozen pedestrians and kill half of them.

[TheFeniX]

It's like drunk driving; you can rack up 50 DUIs and no one will give a fuck about it until you plow your car into a dozen pedestrians and kill half of them.

Yea, that needs to change. If we can't keep someone like Cruz from buying a firearm legally with current laws, because (for just one example) after NUMEROUS domestic violence calls, the police never once filed charges, what good are more laws going to do?

My best friend's sister had 4 (FOUR) DUIs before she lost her license. Cute white girl, rich daddy with a lawyer. It wasn't until she hit the parked car of a Judge (while driving down the wrong way) he got personally involved, made some calls, and the next judge revoked her license and put her on probation. She was so mad and I'm just like "you didn't even get JAIL TIME, what are you complaining about?"

That's the problem. We don't take DUIs seriously in this country. We also don't take threats of violence either. In fact, it's so fucking random. One comment in an online game: 15 years. Multiple cases of domestic abuse, social media posts of "Can't wait till I can buy a gun, gonna kill everyone" and we're all "Boys will be boys."

2) no longer selling firearms of any kind to anyone under 21

As I get older, I have to wonder how bad an idea this is because it's looking better and better. IIRC, the Columbine kids had a couple of their weapons purchased by an 18-year-old girlfriend of one of the shooters.

I also had this kind of hilarious conversation with the wife the other night since a few FFLs have talked about regulating themselves due to government inaction. I said they'd make the "that boy/girl just ain't right" list.

"Hey Jim, this Bob. Some kid just come round tryin' to buy a rifle. Boy just didn't look right, don't sell to him." Or at what point are we going to have vigilante HIPAA violators discretely calling FFLs about people who keep getting kicked around the system without being flagged for a gun purchase? Or a Social Media brigade "John Smith has said he wants a gun to shoot up his school" and the FFLs have their own little background check list.

Hey, "Free market," they can sell to whoever they want, right?

[Simon_Jester]

I would expect that in general, the gun regulations that really do something to limit mass shootings aren't so much the bans as they are the controls. Restricting how you can and cannot transfer guns, who you can and cannot sell them to, and how they can and cannot be stored.

Along the lines of what I was getting at earlier, a society that controls guns effectively has much less need to ban them. A society that refuses to control guns effectively is very likely to see the unarmed majority try to rise up and disarm the armed minority, for their own safety.

Question. Considering how completely broken every system is in America, do you really think you guys can come up with an effective gun control system?

Your education, healthcare, judicial, law enforcement, environmental protection, and damn near every large scale system is dysfunctional compared to other countries. I would be shocked if whatever gun controls you come up with is any less broken.

To quote Edna St. Vincent Millay,

"I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned."

Refusing to WANT better laws and systems is tantamount to suicide.

Broomstick is still correctly pointing out a certain blunt reality; people are getting tired of getting shot. We've been living in the Age of the Sniper and the Age of the Mass Shooter since the '60s in one way or another. We are rapidly approaching the year when 50% or more of living Americans will have been of high school age or younger at the time of the Columbine shooting.

You mean, "white people are tired of being shot" so they actually want to do something about it now. While crime has dropped since the actions taken in the 90s, Urban Minorities are still racking up a body count that makes school shootings a footnote.

No, I mean people. All of them, albeit to varying degrees.

When a certain group of people are already tired of being shot, and grow MORE tired of being shot, I would still describe them as "getting tired." Some people are more tired of being shot at than others, but that has been true since the days when the first caveman threw a rock at his neighbor.

Urban and racial minority efforts alone have not been enough to get a critical mass behind gun control over the opposition of whites who are strong believers in gun rights. But the balance is shifting, as more whites join the "very tired of being shot at" group instead of the 'mildly tired" or "not shot at" groups.

The aspirational goal here is for no people to be shot at, and I for one am fully approving of efforts by urban residents to restrict the waves of guns pouring into their communities. It is in fact the main reason I have ANY sympathy for efforts to control guns at the federal level- because places that urgently need gun control cannot do it at the local level, precisely because that simply leads to gun-running from one locale to another.

If we can't compromise on gun regulation like the milder sorts of gun regulation found in other countries, sooner or later the pressure is going to result in the sort of gun regulation you find in harsher countries. The status quo of relatively minimal regulation is simply not sustainable, when it means that seemingly every year, sometimes more than once in a year, we have to go through this macabre circus in which dozens of innocent people die and most of our prominent political figures just shrug and say "well, whatcha gonna do?"

What "minimal" regulation are you talking about? Guns aren't Wall Street, there's actually a whole shitload of laws on the books.

Strictly speaking, US gun regulation is just about the minimum in the world unless you count places like Somalia.

My fundamental point here is that there is a choice between compromising and getting buried under the glacier. If you want to draw your line in the sand and dare the glacier to cross it, you may think you are winning for a time, but in the end you will be disappointed.

How about THIS? Cruz. This kid we're talking about right now. His "rapsheet." The multiple failures at multiple levels that lead to the shooting. Find a way to keep just HIM and people with his amount of bullshit from buying a gun. Find SOME WAY to do that. Then we can talk. Because..... shit, I can't come up with an analogy. Ok, so, we got all these rules here. And you get banned for certain things.

Now, imagine I started just making POST after POST with n-word this Homosexual-slur that. Race baiting, hur dur posts, AND NO ONE FUCKING BANNED ME. What fucking good would the rules and moderators be? At that point, what would the average poster do, provided they couldn't leave? They'd deal with the troll in whatever way they could.

I am well content with any of a wide range of ways to prevent Cruz from buying a gun, though I'm unclear on the general thrust of your point besides the first five sentences.

My point is that either we find ways to specifically prevent mass shootings, or terror of mass shootings will eventually lead to far more restrictive and comprehensive gun-limiting regulation than is now in place. Because mass shootings create this terror, because you cannot avoid them. You can in theory scrape together money to move out of Highcrimeville. You can avoid going out after dark or getting drunk in Bob's Violent Tavern. You can refrain from shooting yourself or your family with your own gun. MOST of the hazards associated with gun violence can be mitigated.

But nothing you can do will prevent a lunatic from shooting up the school your children go to. Nothing you can do will prevent your movie theater being the next one that gets shot up. Thus, you cannot avoid mass shootings by normal degrees of caution, and they are thus uniquely terrifying.

1) Flying is NOT a right, it's a privilege.
2) If general aviation had not accepted changes it would have been abolished.

Allow me to reiterate: So, because the FBI, CIA, and Bush administration failed to act on information they had on hand about a group of suspects that were on multiple Law Enforcement radars, you accepted limitations on your privileges even though your group was in no way at fault?

The general public wanted assurances better than "next time, law enforcement won't fuck up in exactly the same way as before." This required some changes in aviation regulations.

Likewise, the general public is wanting assurances about mass shootings other than, and better than "we hope it doesn't happen again like the last fifty times."

The point is, there is a demand for a solution. The demand will ultimately be fulfilled with a supply. Somehow, somewhere, at some time, someone will come up with some set of laws that are intended to end the mass shootings. And at that time, in that place, those laws will pass by acclamation.

If you want a say in what form those laws take, you need to be prepared to discuss and compromise. Otherwise, you will be standing in front of a glacier behind a line drawn in the sand, telling it that it can take your guns from your cold dead hands. The outcome of refusing to move in that case is predictable, and something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[TheFeniX]

No, I mean people. All of them, albeit to varying degrees.

When a certain group of people are already tired of being shot, and grow MORE tired of being shot, I would still describe them as "getting tired." Some people are more tired of being shot at than others, but that has been true since the days when the first caveman threw a rock at his neighbor.

Urban and racial minority efforts alone have not been enough to get a critical mass behind gun control over the opposition of whites who are strong believers in gun rights. But the balance is shifting, as more whites join the "very tired of being shot at" group instead of the 'mildly tired" or "not shot at" groups.

That's fair, but how do you continue to action minority groups by emphasizing control of rifles over handguns. By actioning the "white problem" over the "everyone else problem"? You can have both, but that's not what I'm seeing. It's a near complete switch to "well, handguns are out, but white people are mad enough about rifles, let's give that a go rather than do our fucking job."

Strictly speaking, US gun regulation is just about the minimum in the world unless you count places like Somalia.

And when those laws, when enforced, would have stopped Columbine, Sandy Hook, and this latest shooting... they are somehow not enough?

My fundamental point here is that there is a choice between compromising and getting buried under the glacier. If you want to draw your line in the sand and dare the glacier to cross it, you may think you are winning for a time, but in the end you will be disappointed.

This is when it starts to break down because a whole lot of Americans are actually in favor of gun control. You can only find the most ardent moron who would say "Cruz should have been allowed to buy a gun."

I am well content with any of a wide range of ways to prevent Cruz from buying a gun, though I'm unclear on the general thrust of your point besides the first five sentences.

Because this is continually treated as a gun problem when it actually is not. There is nothing to stop a guy like Cruz from using whatever is on hand to accomplish his goal. YOUR goal should be to identify people like him and what makes them "tick." Because even if he was denied a gun purchase, which anyone should agree on, that doesn't remove his desire to murder the shit out of a bunch of people. He'll merely look for another way to accomplish it. Lower/Higher body count doesn't matter here, you need to STOP it from getting to that point. You do that through effective investigation and law enforcement with intelligent laws to back them up.

U.S. criminals prefer guns because they are available and effective. If you remove the gun, they still have the need to commit crimes for whatever reasons. They'll mere change their tactics.

And you find this kind of reasoning with Liberals in the War on Drugs or Terror. But "guns" mean "guns bad, no guns, no bad."

My point is that either we find ways to specifically prevent mass shootings, or terror of mass shootings will eventually lead to far more restrictive and comprehensive gun-limiting regulation than is now in place. Because mass shootings create this terror, because you cannot avoid them. You can in theory scrape together money to move out of Highcrimeville. You can avoid going out after dark or getting drunk in Bob's Violent Tavern. You can refrain from shooting yourself or your family with your own gun. MOST of the hazards associated with gun violence can be mitigated.

There are ways. Multiple I can think of. They don't involve targeting guns, only who can purchase them. They also require spending oodles of money to combat a complex social issue, so there's no point because "restrict X" gives people a warm fuzzy and costs little to anything. And the problem keeps happening, but hey you gave it your all, right?

But nothing you can do will prevent a lunatic from shooting up the school your children go to. Nothing you can do will prevent your movie theater being the next one that gets shot up. Thus, you cannot avoid mass shootings by normal degrees of caution, and they are thus uniquely terrifying.

Law enforcement could do it's fucking job.

The general public wanted assurances better than "next time, law enforcement won't fuck up in exactly the same way as before." This required some changes in aviation regulations.

If you aren't willing to spend the time, effort, and money to understand and combat the people who perform these acts, merely focus on what tool they are using at this particular point in time, then the only thing that changes is some kid will grab a Mossberg pump next time, or a Mini-14 with a woodstock, or a bolt-action rifle. The body-count might be lower or higher, it doesn't really matter because you're arguing a defeatist stance of "we can't fight the problem, we'll just mitigate it as much as possible when it inevitably happens again."

If you want a say in what form those laws take, you need to be prepared to discuss and compromise. Otherwise, you will be standing in front of a glacier behind a line drawn in the sand, telling it that it can take your guns from your cold dead hands. The outcome of refusing to move in that case is predictable, and something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Compromise comes when the other side stops acting like idiots....and the other side as well. There will BE no compromise here, these people will slug it out until one side just has the power to steamroll the other.

If you think I'm arguing this from a personal stand-point, you're wrong. I got no fears here. Literally, no one is coming for my guns. They might after I'm dead and they can block the transfer to my son. But that's about it. If I thought giving up X gun would help combat the problem, I'd do it in a heart-beat, but that's all wishful thinking. I AM mad that, once again, because my elected official and law enforcement are so UNBELIEVABLY bad at their job, the onus is dumped off on the private citizen to try and fix things.

But I'm not about to accept the argument of wasting time on attacking the supply-side. Because as much as I fear another shooting, I can also fear someone running down a bunch of kids in the parking lot, stabbing kids in the neck, or doing all manner of horrifying things that are possible when you are emotionally fucked up enough to consider mass-murder as a viable idea.

[MKSheppard]

As I get older, I have to wonder how bad an idea this is because it's looking better and better. IIRC, the Columbine kids had a couple of their weapons purchased by an 18-year-old girlfriend of one of the shooters.

Thing is, if you want to be logically consistent, you have to unify all the age of majority things under one rubric to be consistent, Voting, Firearms, Drinking, Driving, Sexual Consent, etc; because you get what gave us the 26th Amendment in the first place, 1970s agitation over the draft, war in Vietnam, people old enough to be drafted but can't vote etc.

[Zaune]

Well, if they averaged all the above out to 18 then that isn't the worst possible outcome imaginable.

[The Romulan Republic]

Yeah, I'm entirely okay with setting 18 as legal adulthood for everything.

[MKSheppard]

It's like drunk driving; you can rack up 50 DUIs and no one will give a fuck about it until you plow your car into a dozen pedestrians and kill half of them.

Speaking of THAT. I've been keeping track of my assault(ee) ever since he and his friend did it at age 14 and 15.

Even at 15, he was already a "frequent flier" in the Juvenile justice system; they didn't tell me much about his prior run-ins with the law, due to juvenile shield laws, but they did give me a brief sketch -- already been through the system four times, and the prosecutor basically told me that they were out of things to escalate punishment to, they'd already sent him to "behavioral modification" facilities, and the worst they could do was send him to yet another one, only this time out of state -- IOW, away from his known support network.

Once he turned of "age", it didn't take him long to start racking up a count in the "real" judicial system.

Case started January 2017 (aged 19.5) for a violation on 13 November 2016:

• PERSON DRIVING MOTOR VEHICLE ON HIGHWAY OR PUBLIC USE PROPERTY ON REVOKED LICENSE AND PRIVILEGE.
• OPERATING UNREGISTERED MOTOR VEHICLE ON HIGHWAY
• DISPLAYING REG. PLATE ISSUED FOR OTHER VEHICLE
• KNOWINGLY USING FALSIFIED VEH. REG. PLATE
• KNOWINGLY DRIVING UNINSURED VEHICLE
• DRIVING VEHICLE ON HIGHWAY WITHOUT CURRENT REGISTRATION PLATES AND VALIDATION TABS
• ATTEMPT BY DRIVER TO ELUDE UNIFORMED POLICE BY MEANS OTHER THAN
• FAIL TO STOP AND FLEEING ON FOOT
• DRIVING VEH. ON SIDEWALK AND SIDEWALK AREA WHERE PROHIBITED

They basically bonded him out for $3,000 for that and set a trial date.

March 2017:
Failure to Appear [at trial]; bench warrant issued for arrest

19 April 2017:
Warrant served (for something else; see below)

July 2017:
Trial, ALL of his charges are Nolle Prosequi'd (wiped out in a quirk of Maryland Judicial law), and he gets Probation before Judgement, 6 months unsupervised probation; $157.50 fine for (PERSON DRIVING MOTOR VEHICLE ON HIGHWAY OR PUBLIC USE PROPERTY ON REVOKED LICENSE AND PRIVILEGE)

August 2017:
Suspension of Probation: Failure to pay.

That was his TRAFFIC CASE.

His CRIMINAL case started on 19 April 2017 (see above).

On 19 April 2017, he was arrested and booked for:

• ROBBERY
• Conspire -Robbery
• THEFT: $1,000 TO UNDER $10,000
• Conspire - Theft: $1,000 To Under $10,000
• ASSAULT-FIRST DEGREE
• Conspiracy/Assault-First Degree
• FRAUD-PER.IDENT.AVOID PROS

At that time, they also booked him for the "failure to appear" warrant for his traffic court case.

This time, ordered held without bond.

Trial was set for 26 September 2017, but it was cancelled when he did a plea deal:

ROBBERY: Not Guilty
Conspire -Robbery: Not Guilty
THEFT: $1,000 TO UNDER $10,000: Not Guilty
Conspire - Theft: $1,000 To Under $10,000: Not Guilty
ASSAULT-FIRST DEGREE: Guilty
Conspiracy/Assault-First Degree: Not Guilty
FRAUD-PER.IDENT.AVOID PROS: Not Guilty

I took a day off for his sentencing hearing on 2 November 2017.

They Nolle Prossed:
Robbery
Conspiracy-Robbery
Conspiracy/Assault 1st Deg
Theft
Conspiracy/Theft
Fraudaulent Personal Identity to Avoid Prosecution

And they only sentenced him for Assault, 1st Degree.

He was sentenced to 25 years...BUT all but 10 years was suspended. Additionally, he was sentenced to five years of supervised probation upon release.

The plea deal and the suspended sentence was in spite of them having on CCTV his four time assault on a woman at a gas station, and playing it back on TV in the court room.

Essentially, he did to that woman what he did to me, but twice as much.

In my case, he assaulted me, broke the bone in my back, and then came back for a second time to rough me up some more while I was immobilized from the first assault. The cops arrived 41 minutes after the second assault.

In this woman's case, he assaulted her, not once, not twice, but FOUR TIMES.

Punched the hell out of her, left.
Came back.
Punched the hell out of her, left.
Came back.
Punched the hell out of her, left.
Came back.
Punched the hell out of her, left.

And all of it on CCTV, which was played back on a BIG BOARD in the courtroom for the Judge to see.

And checking his status in MD Inmate locator today, I see that he's been placed into:

Maryland Correctional Training Center

Which is a medium/minimum security prison, which also handles pre-release things.

:-\

Basically, he will be released in about oh, three to four years; when he's served almost half of his ten year sentence; which is a given seeing where he's currently located.

He's gonna get out.

He's gonna fuck someone up in the future.

Only if he fucks up that person sufficiently enough, is he going to be given an appropriate sentence.

Sure sucks to be that future victim of his. :-\

EDIT: Oh, I forgot one of the best bits. When he assaulted me in 2013, he was already out on probation for flight #4 through the Juvenile system, and wearing a GPS tracker ankle bracelet -- it's how they were able to track him down for my assault so quickly.

[Zaune]

Meanwhile in the Twilight Zone...

Worshippers clutching AR-15 rifles and some wearing bullet crowns, participated in a commitment ceremony today at World Peace and Unification Sanctuary, in Newfoundland, Pa. The event led a nearby school to cancel classes for the day.

Fuck this shit, I'm rejoining the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.

[Broomstick]

Broomstick is still correctly pointing out a certain blunt reality; people are getting tired of getting shot. We've been living in the Age of the Sniper and the Age of the Mass Shooter since the '60s in one way or another. We are rapidly approaching the year when 50% or more of living Americans will have been of high school age or younger at the time of the Columbine shooting.

You mean, "white people are tired of being shot" so they actually want to do something about it now. While crime has dropped since the actions taken in the 90s, Urban Minorities are still racking up a body count that makes school shootings a footnote.

It wasn't for lack of trying - angry black people tired of being shot at were a driving force behind the Chicago regulations, and still are. The fact they didn't work as intended is not the fault of the people in Chicago - guns were easily available across the city line. The problem for black people nationwide is that they are still a definite minority, only 12% (and now they're slightly exceeded by Hispanics at 13%). There aren't enough black people in the US to pass gun bans even if they all voted exactly alike. The only way to get gun controls passed and/or money appropriated to enforce those laws is to get sufficient buy-in by the white majority.

How about THIS? Cruz. This kid we're talking about right now. His "rapsheet." The multiple failures at multiple levels that lead to the shooting. Find a way to keep just HIM and people with his amount of bullshit from buying a gun. Find SOME WAY to do that. Then we can talk. Because..... shit, I can't come up with an analogy. Ok, so, we got all these rules here. And you get banned for certain things.

So why doesn't the NRA use its money and influence to get the current rules enforced? Seems to me it would be in their self-interest. But the truth is the NRA wants NO rules, and wants no enforcement of current rules.

So why don't YOU, as a responsible gun enthusiast, lobby for more effective enforcement of the current rules, and more money with which to do it? Have or have you not attempted to do that?

1) Flying is NOT a right, it's a privilege.
2) If general aviation had not accepted changes it would have been abolished.

Allow me to reiterate: So, because the FBI, CIA, and Bush administration failed to act on information they had on hand about a group of suspects that were on multiple Law Enforcement radars, you accepted limitations on your privileges even though your group was in no way at fault?

Yes. Because the alternative was to lose everything.

And it wasn't so much "accepting" as "being resigned to".

Why does this shock you? It was a pragmatic decision on the part of aviation lobbyists and organizations.

It's not well known, but post-9/11 EVERY person listed as a pilot in the FAA databases and records was background-checked. Every. Single. One. And some people were stripped of their licenses and few arrested/deported as a result.

Also, the group of people who did the hijacking on 9/11 did not break any US laws until the very morning they hijacked those planes. I don't know where you get the idea the guys were criminals. A few people had tipped the authorities to odd behavior, but there really wasn't anything that, at the time, would have had them pulled. One guy, apparently, got nailed on an immigration violation. That's it. In hindsight, sure, but hindsight only works after the Bad Thing happens. There had been years and years of warning on vulnerabilities, but as usual saving money and inertia prevented anything being done until 16 acres in Manhattan were leveled, the Pentagon was on fire, and there was a crater in a Pennsylvania farm field.

As it turned out, it wasn't that hard. Gee, I am no longer allowed to fly directly over a nuclear power plant. Boo-fucking-hoo.

Is there something inherently dangerous about flying over a nuke plant? And hey, you mean they scrutinized the person behind the stick and not the plane more? Crazy thought.

With what I fly? Ha! A single-engine Cessna crashing into a nuke plant would be like smashing an aluminum can against a cinder block wall. The wall isn't going to notice.

The problem was that it scared the tourists. But promising to fly either around them, or sufficiently high above them, calmed down the nervous nellies and prevented worse restrictions. It was, basically, cosmetic. So instead of getting tiny Cessnas banned entirely we just had to promise not to fly over nuclear plants. There aren't that many nuclear plants, after all. The no-fly zone around Washington, DC was more of an issue.

The point being that pilots yielded on some minor crap and ended with almost the same freedom as before. The pro-gun camp, though, doesn't want to yield on anything, no matter how small. If painting AR-15 stocks day-glo yellow would get people to back the fuck off they still wouldn't do it because WAH! IT''S JUST COSMETICS WAH WAH WAH! So fucking what? If yielding on cosmetic shit gets the opponents off your back WTF is the problem? Say, OK, we'll do this cosmetic shit IF AND ONLY IF the fucking rules actually get enforced but no, they aren't willing to even that little compromising to actually get something more effective done.

Another one was the licensing and ID requirements - there were proposals for intricate licensing involving biometrics and shit to be paid for by the pilot that probably would have cost hundreds of dollars. Instead, we argued it into a more durable permanent license and said that pilots would have to carry valid government-issued ID at all times when "exercising their privileges" which, combined with the Real ID stuff, satisfied the anti crowd in that situation. Since practically everyone was carrying their driver's license anyway to drive to the airport it essentially changed nothing, and for those few who weren't driving to the airport slipping a plastic card into their flight bag was no big deal.

Again, the point is that instead of digging in their heels and saying NO NO NO! the pilots actually got involved in the process. Oh, the general public is afraid of X? Here's how we can reassure them. The general public is worried about who is flying and wants elaborate stuff? Here's how we explain how what we already have could work better and, even better, we won't have to spend a crapton of money on it. Don't want us to fly over nuke plants? No, it's not rational but rather than dying on that small hill we'll devote our resources to a battle that really matters.

You don't have to do both: you can hold those at fault accountable, and not the innocent.

In an ideal world, yes, but when certain types of shit happen the innocent get caught in the net. It's not right and it's not fair but it IS reality. Post-9/11 every pilot was regarded as guilty until proven innocent. Post-Parkland every AR-15 owner is guilty until proven innocent. I will agree with you that it's not fair, but for many that is how they see the situation. Stamping your foot is not going to make them go away.

But there's also the problem that white liberals are the ones going big anti-gun. "Liberal" minorities, especially those in places like Texas, still like guns. They might want more gun control, but they already have issues with law enforcement leaving them on their own and the media not giving a shit about them. So they have to turn to their own ways to defend themselves.

I understand that. Do you understand that white anti-gun liberals may well outnumber pro-gun minorities? I don't know if they actually do or not, but it's a possibility.

That we should honestly waste money placating the uninformed at best, morons at worst. You really think if the AR-15 just gets axed tomorrow, or even all mag fed rifles (not even claiming that's what you are pushing, merely that attacking the gun is stupid): they couldn't/wouldn't go back to something more "basic?"

I'm not the one you need to convince. I know damn well that if AR-15's or other semi-automatic rifles are unavailable other guns can also be used to create mayhem and death. The problem is the anti-gun crowd either doesn't know or doesn't believe that.

This is the mentality that turned me off the the gun control movement: they think guns create a "need." Take away the gun and the desire for murder fades, the need to mug people for money to eat ends when there's no gun available. It doesn't.

I think you mischaracterize the anti-gun stance. I don't think it's a notion that crime will end, I think they believe that crime will become less deadly. You don't get sleeping children dying in their beds from "stray knives" that originated from a fight outside, you don't get a lot of injuries from "knife ricochets".

The UK, as an example, still has plenty of violent crime. What they don't have is nearly as many deaths from guns.

You say you sympathize, but you dismiss the other side as ignorant and hysterical. Know what the problem with that is? They can vote just like you can, and ignorant and hysterical voters make bad decisions. Rather than calling them stupid and hysterical you can try to actually address their concerns and fears instead of stamping your feet and screaming "YOU CAN'T TAKE MUH GUNS!!!" in turn. That requires constant attempts to educate and soothe, and no, it's never going to end. Welcome to life.

I tried, for years. Here, on other forums, other... ugh.. social media. It's boring, they're boring.

Oh, I'm sorry - did mommy tell you life was going to be all interesting? There's a lot of boring, repetitious scutwork involved in being a grown up, maybe you've noticed? Societal change does not come quickly or easily. It can take decades. One of the forums I spend time on has the motto "Fighting ignorance since 1973. (It's taking longer than we thought)".

Yeah, I get it - it's boring and it sometimes sucks. It can feel as useless as, say, writing your elected representatives. But if you DON'T do it, it is guaranteed nothing will change. If you stick with it maybe it might work maybe it won't, but at least there's a chance of the result you want.

But this is another example of "It's your fault your representatives and law enforcement is so shitty, YOU FIX THE PROBLEM."

Yes. Yes it is. Because there's no one else who is going to fix the problem.

Yea, and in the absence of strong action, such as passing sweeping gun control which congress isn't going to do for at least another year, people are probably just going to buy more guns.

Yes, that is a likely outcome. So fucking what? If you want to change you have to keep working for change. For years. Yes, it's a discouraging slog. Sorry, that's life. Once in awhile you get the change you want, after a shit-ton of hard, boring, tedious work and bullshit.

Yes. Maybe the fact that the Las Vegas massacre, which was only last October, involved 10 AR-15's. Then the very next month an AR-15 was used in shooting up a church. And then another one was used to shoot up Stoneman Douglas high school.

Yea, as opposed to the 8,000 or so people offed per year by handguns. But those are mostly poor minorities, so who cares? Instead focus on the 1% of deaths because it's been primarily targeting white people. NOTE: this isn't a value judgement against you, I more mocking U.S. society.

Simon Jester covered why mass shooting are both different and more frightening.

No doubt if the enforcement you argue for (which I agree with you in regards to importance) was enacted people would scream racism or classism, but if the enforcement that keeps guns out of the hands of potential mass shooters also keep them out of the hands of some other categories that cause death and mayhem, which they might, I'd count that as a win. I think you might, too. So might some of the people more heavily impacted by the not-mass-shooting gun violence.

[Simon_Jester]

Fenix, I'm honestly not sure if you're even debating anything I'm saying anymore. I think I've made my point fairly clear and succinct.

Would you mind explaining to me whether you disagree with me, or whether you're simply upset that a host of people who don't understand guns are increasingly inclined to start making laws you think are pointless?

Because it's basically my point that this exact outcome is the consequence of decades spent digging in against any new laws and creating political back-pressure that is likely to exert a chilling effect on attempts to enforce the existing ones.

[Civil War Man]

Regarding AR-15s and handguns, there is an article in The Atlantic written by a radiologist who treated some of the people shot in Parkland, with some detailed descriptions on how the AR-15 inflicts a different type of wound than a pistol. It really sheds a lot of light into why the AR-15 is often the weapon of choice for these types of massacres. It's basically designed to be really good at racking up a large body count in a short amount of time.

What I Saw Treating the Victims From Parkland

As I opened the CT scan last week to read the next case, I was baffled. The history simply read “gunshot wound.” I have been a radiologist in one of the busiest trauma centers in the United States for 13 years, and have diagnosed thousands of handgun injuries to the brain, lung, liver, spleen, bowel, and other vital organs. I thought that I knew all that I needed to know about gunshot wounds, but the specific pattern of injury on my computer screen was one that I had seen only once before.

In a typical handgun injury, which I diagnose almost daily, a bullet leaves a laceration through an organ such as the liver. To a radiologist, it appears as a linear, thin, gray bullet track through the organ. There may be bleeding and some bullet fragments.

I was looking at a CT scan of one of the mass-shooting victims from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who had been brought to the trauma center during my call shift. The organ looked like an overripe melon smashed by a sledgehammer, and was bleeding extensively. How could a gunshot wound have caused this much damage?

The reaction in the emergency room was the same. One of the trauma surgeons opened a young victim in the operating room, and found only shreds of the organ that had been hit by a bullet from an AR-15, a semiautomatic rifle that delivers a devastatingly lethal, high-velocity bullet to the victim. Nothing was left to repair—and utterly, devastatingly, nothing could be done to fix the problem. The injury was fatal.

A year ago, when a gunman opened fire at the Fort Lauderdale airport with a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun, hitting 11 people in 90 seconds, I was also on call. It was not until I had diagnosed the third of the six victims who were transported to the trauma center that I realized something out of the ordinary must have happened. The gunshot wounds were the same low-velocity handgun injuries that I diagnose every day; only their rapid succession set them apart. And all six of the victims who arrived at the hospital that day survived.

Routine handgun injuries leave entry and exit wounds and linear tracks through the victim’s body that are roughly the size of the bullet. If the bullet does not directly hit something crucial like the heart or the aorta, and the victim does not bleed to death before being transported to our care at the trauma center, chances are that we can save him. The bullets fired by an AR-15 are different: They travel at a higher velocity and are far more lethal than routine bullets fired from a handgun. The damage they cause is a function of the energy they impart as they pass through the body. A typical AR-15 bullet leaves the barrel traveling almost three times faster than—and imparting more than three times the energy of—a typical 9mm bullet from a handgun. An AR-15 rifle outfitted with a magazine with 50 rounds allows many more lethal bullets to be delivered quickly without reloading.

I have seen a handful of AR-15 injuries in my career. Years ago I saw one from a man shot in the back by a SWAT team. The injury along the path of the bullet from an AR-15 is vastly different from a low-velocity handgun injury. The bullet from an AR-15 passes through the body like a cigarette boat traveling at maximum speed through a tiny canal. The tissue next to the bullet is elastic—moving away from the bullet like waves of water displaced by the boat—and then returns and settles back. This process is called cavitation; it leaves the displaced tissue damaged or killed. The high-velocity bullet causes a swath of tissue damage that extends several inches from its path. It does not have to actually hit an artery to damage it and cause catastrophic bleeding. Exit wounds can be the size of an orange.

With an AR-15, the shooter does not have to be particularly accurate. The victim does not have to be unlucky. If a victim takes a direct hit to the liver from an AR-15, the damage is far graver than that of a simple handgun-shot injury. Handgun injuries to the liver are generally survivable unless the bullet hits the main blood supply to the liver. An AR-15 bullet wound to the middle of the liver would cause so much bleeding that the patient would likely never make it to the trauma center to receive our care.

One of my ER colleagues was waiting nervously for his own children outside the school. While the shooting was still in progress, the first responders were gathering up victims whenever they could and carrying them outside the building. Even as a physician trained in trauma situations, there was nothing he could do at the scene to help save the victims who had been shot with the AR-15. Most of them died on the spot; they had no fighting chance at life.

As a doctor, I feel I have a duty to inform the public of what I have learned as I have observed these wounds and cared for these patients. It’s clear to me that AR-15 and other high-velocity weapons, especially when outfitted with a high-capacity magazine, have no place in a civilian’s gun cabinet. I have friends who own AR-15 rifles; they enjoy shooting them at target practice for sport and fervently defend their right to own them. But I cannot accept that their right to enjoy their hobby supersedes my right to send my own children to school, a movie theater, or a concert and to know that they are safe. Can the answer really be to subject our school children to active-shooter drills—to learn to hide under desks, turn off the lights, lock the door, and be silent—instead of addressing the root cause of the problem and passing legislation to take AR-15-style weapons out of the hands of civilians?

In the aftermath of this shooting, in the face of specific questioning, our government leaders did not want to discuss gun control even when asked directly about the issue. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida warned not to “jump to conclusions that there’s some law we could have passed that could have prevented it.” A reporter asked House Speaker Paul Ryan about gun control, and he replied, “As you know, mental health is often a big problem underlying these tragedies.” And on Tuesday, Florida’s state legislature voted against considering a ban on AR-15-type rifles, 71 to 36.

If politicians want to back comprehensive mental-health reform, I am all for it. As a medical doctor, I’ve witnessed firsthand the toll that mental-health issues take on families and on individuals themselves who have no access to satisfactory long-term mental-health care. But the president and Congress should not use this issue as an excuse to deliberately overlook the fact that the use of AR-15 rifles is the common denominator in many mass shootings.

A medical professor taught me about the dangers of drawing incorrect conclusions from data, using the example of gum chewing, smokers, and lung cancer. He said smokers may be more likely to chew gum to cover bad breath, but one cannot look at the data and decide that gum chewing causes lung cancer. It is the same type of erroneous logic that focuses on mental health after mass shootings, when banning the sale of semiautomatic rifles would be a far more effective means of preventing them.

Banning the AR-15 should not be a partisan issue. No consensus may exist on many questions of gun control, but there seems to be broad support for removing high-velocity, lethal weaponry and high-capacity magazines from the market, which would drastically reduce the incidence of mass murders. Every constitutionally guaranteed right that we are blessed to enjoy comes with responsibilities. Even our right to free speech is not limitless. Second Amendment gun rights must respect the same boundaries.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is the appropriate agency to review the potential impact of banning AR-15-style rifles and high-capacity magazines on the incidence of mass shootings. The agency was effectively barred from studying gun violence as a public-health issue in 1996, by a statutory provision known as the Dickey Amendment. This provision needs to be repealed so that the CDC can study this issue and make sensible gun-policy recommendations to Congress.

The Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) of 1994 included language that prohibited semiautomatic rifles such the AR-15, and also large-capacity magazines with the ability to hold more than 10 rounds. The ban was allowed to expire on September 13, 2004, after 10 years. The mass murders that have followed the ban’s lapse make clear that it must be reinstated.

On Wednesday night, Rubio said at a town-hall event hosted by CNN that it is impossible to create effective gun regulations because there are too many “loopholes,” and that a “plastic grip” can make the difference between a gun that is legal and one that is illegal. But if we can see the different impacts of high- and low-velocity rounds clinically, then the government can also draw such distinctions.

As a radiologist, I have now seen high-velocity AR-15 gunshot wounds firsthand, an experience that most radiologists in our country will never have. I pray that these are the last such wounds I have to see, and that AR-15-style weapons and high-capacity magazines are banned for use by civilians in the United States, once and for all.

[MKSheppard]

Regarding AR-15s and handguns, there is an article in The Atlantic written by a radiologist who treated some of the people shot in Parkland, with some detailed descriptions on how the AR-15 inflicts a different type of wound than a pistol.

You've just described the obvious -- rifle wounds are different than pistol wounds due to velocity of rifle rounds causing secondary and tertiary effects, other than the obvious "push human body out of the way" that bullets for both pistols and rifles do.

The effect would be the same with any modern spitzer-boat-tailled bullet of sufficient velocity (which is to say any modern round invented for a rifle after 1900.)

[TheFeniX]

So why doesn't the NRA use its money and influence to get the current rules enforced? Seems to me it would be in their self-interest. But the truth is the NRA wants NO rules, and wants no enforcement of current rules.

Man, fuck the NRA.

Also, the group of people who did the hijacking on 9/11 did not break any US laws until the very morning they hijacked those planes.

That's not how the whole thing played out, but all my sources are gone and I don't want to drag this topic way off, so I'm conceding the point.

In an ideal world, yes, but when certain types of shit happen the innocent get caught in the net. It's not right and it's not fair but it IS reality. Post-9/11 every pilot was regarded as guilty until proven innocent.

So were Muslims, would you make the same argument that every one of them should have proven their loyalty to Queen and Country?

I'm pulling the rest because it boils down to "if it will placate people, no matter how dumb, do it." I don't do that. For multiple reasons. Whatever the failings on either side, that does not excuse gut reaction mentality of coming up with solutions that don't even attempt to solve the problem. This same kind of justification is used to promote some extremely shitty ideas. Such as Civil Forfeiture, where "oh man, we know you're guilty and there's a lot of crime around here, so we're taking your shit because otherwise we'd have to work for a living." Or, "let's lock up all the Japanese because we're at war with Japan. It'll make people feel better."

I'm not equating here, so stow that argument. I'm talking about the logical justification. You see it everywhere. Fuck people who think like that. If I have to lose the war to maintain my principals, well shit sucks. But I'm not folding on my principals just to get a warm fuzzy, especially when I will LACK that warm fuzzy as I know better.

Would you mind explaining to me whether you disagree with me, or whether you're simply upset that a host of people who don't understand guns are increasingly inclined to start making laws you think are pointless?

How is anything I'm saying hard to understand? In the wake of piss-poor action/inaction on the part of our representatives and law enforcement, people are demanding something be done. Ok, cool. You and Broom are basically saying "Well, the NRA sucks. No one can come up with good laws/enforcement, so they're trying to pass terrible ones. You should be ok with that."

I'm not ok with that because it's dumb.

For some reason, in this thread, we're honestly talking about things like if the color of a gun being "not black" would placate soccer moms...... due to the inaction of our officials, this would be a good thing. I'm not arguing this isn't a possibility it could happen because the uninformed outnumber guys like me 100 fold. I can sit here and discuss something besides the reality of the situation though, which is what I'm doing.

Because it's basically my point that this exact outcome is the consequence of decades spent digging in against any new laws and creating political back-pressure that is likely to exert a chilling effect on attempts to enforce the existing ones.

I'm not arguing against that. I'm saying it's just not a good thing. You want to talk:

1. as that one FFL is doing, raising the age to 21 to buy a firearm.
2. Police cannot refuse to arrest in the case of domestic abuse. Put a 3 strikes your out rule here, even if found not guilty.
3. Treatment for violent tendancies for any reason, no gun.
4. A Social Media post in the vein of: "I'm going to kill people," no gun.

All 4 have issues, Constitutional ones being the biggest, but we can TALK about them because they actively fight against this type of crime. "Ban AR-15s." "Paint guns something besides black." "Wood stock only." We can't talk because those actually does nothing but give that "warm fuzzies." So, those ideas should be mocked and then disregarded.

[Broomstick]

In an ideal world, yes, but when certain types of shit happen the innocent get caught in the net. It's not right and it's not fair but it IS reality. Post-9/11 every pilot was regarded as guilty until proven innocent.

So were Muslims, would you make the same argument that every one of them should have proven their loyalty to Queen and Country?

You are missing my point. I not arguing that it's right or correct, I arguing that is the way it is. No, all Muslims should not be tarred with the actions of a few but they were anyway. All pilots should not be tarred by the actions of a few but they were anyway. All guns owners should not be tarred by the actions of a few but they are anyway. The only people NOT treated in that manner are men of the majority category, who are treated as individuals. For everyone else, the worst of the group is held up as representative of the group.

I'm pulling the rest because it boils down to "if it will placate people, no matter how dumb, do it." I don't do that. For multiple reasons. Whatever the failings on either side, that does not excuse gut reaction mentality of coming up with solutions that don't even attempt to solve the problem. This same kind of justification is used to promote some extremely shitty ideas. Such as Civil Forfeiture, where "oh man, we know you're guilty and there's a lot of crime around here, so we're taking your shit because otherwise we'd have to work for a living." Or, "let's lock up all the Japanese because we're at war with Japan. It'll make people feel better."

No, it's about yielding on shit that doesn't matter, like the color of a gun or whether or not you can fly over a particular uncommon building, and saving your resources for what really matters.

1. as that one FFL is doing, raising the age to 21 to buy a firearm.

And what's wrong with that?

2. Police cannot refuse to arrest in the case of domestic abuse. Put a 3 strikes your out rule here, even if found not guilty.

I have not exhaustively researched domestic abuse laws, not having needed them in my lifetime (thank Og). But I would agree that if you are found innocent it should not count against you.

3. Treatment for violent tendancies for any reason, no gun.

Why would we want to allow people with violent tendencies, for whatever reason, to have guns?

4. A Social Media post in the vein of: "I'm going to kill people," no gun.

Is it one post in isolation you're talking about, or people with repeated statements, or people who indicate they have well-thought out plans?

"Ban AR-15s." "Paint guns something besides black." "Wood stock only." We can't talk because those actually does nothing but give that "warm fuzzies." So, those ideas should be mocked and then disregarded.

Actually, "ban AR-15" is sounding very good to a lot of people. You might want to address that one seriously.

If giving the opposite side a "warm fuzzy" gets you something you want then you might want to rethink your position on "warm fuzzies".

Question for you, because I'm seeing this on other forums - why do you need a semi-auto anything? If banning semi-autos could reduce the carnage how do you justify owning them is basically how the reasoning seems to go. How would you answer such a person? I don't own a semi-auto gun so I don't feel I could give a decent answer to that, but maybe you could?

[Dominus Atheos]

This is all starting to remind me of the time immediately post-9/11 when there were calls to ban civilians flying airplanes. We pilots could have dug in our heels an whined, whined, whined but we didn't. We addressed people's concerns, accepted a few limitations, and went back to flying.

Imagine if after 9/11 one side and the media the media kept showing pictures of Gulfstream IIs, calling them "single engine Cessnas"

The media actually does do shit like that.

And it pisses you off and makes you think that it's impossible to have a reasonable conversation with those people, doesn't it?

and saying that they were invented by the Nazis solely to bomb people, and figure out how willing your side would be to address those people's concerns then.

Except no one is claiming the Nazis invented guns.

The "invented" the assault rifle, similar to the way that they "invented" the jet. So people call it a nazi weapon. If people called jets nazi weapons, you'd be pissed off and think that it's impossible to have a reasonable conversation with those people, wouldn't you?

And we did have to address the concerns of people who were convinced every itty-bitty airplane was death from above and capable of blowing up a nuclear power plant or bringing down a skyscraper.

And eventually they listened to reason and didn't ban "single engine cessnas" as "the most deadly plane", which would only have caused terrorists to use business jets anyway (ps I'm talking about shotguns now), but if they did, it would have pissed you off maked you think that it's impossible to have a reasonable conversation with those people.

[Dominus Atheos]

Question for you, because I'm seeing this on other forums - why do you need a semi-auto anything? If banning semi-autos could reduce the carnage how do you justify owning them is basically how the reasoning seems to go. How would you answer such a person? I don't own a semi-auto gun so I don't feel I could give a decent answer to that, but maybe you could?

The .38 revolver you are thinking of buying is semi-automatic. This is what I'm talking about. You really have no idea what guns you want to ban or why, and it makes people pissed off and think that it's impossible to have a reasonable conversation.

[loomer]

Australia's fairly comprehensive gun control system limits ownership of semi-automatic rifles to pretty much just professional large pest exterminators or professional hunters like pig and kangaroo shooters, with the exception of .22 semi-automatics which are also available to some target shooters and farmers generally. That is the category of person who's eligible, and I think it's a good place to draw the line on a personal level. Hobbyist hunters make do with break action or pump self-loading shotguns or bolt-action rifles.

[loomer]

Question for you, because I'm seeing this on other forums - why do you need a semi-auto anything? If banning semi-autos could reduce the carnage how do you justify owning them is basically how the reasoning seems to go. How would you answer such a person? I don't own a semi-auto gun so I don't feel I could give a decent answer to that, but maybe you could?

The .38 revolver you are thinking of buying is semi-automatic. This is what I'm talking about. You really have no idea what guns you want to ban or why, and it makes people pissed off and think that it's impossible to have a reasonable conversation.

The two are usually considered to be very distinct categories.

[Dominus Atheos]

Question for you, because I'm seeing this on other forums - why do you need a semi-auto anything? If banning semi-autos could reduce the carnage how do you justify owning them is basically how the reasoning seems to go. How would you answer such a person? I don't own a semi-auto gun so I don't feel I could give a decent answer to that, but maybe you could?

The .38 revolver you are thinking of buying is semi-automatic. This is what I'm talking about. You really have no idea what guns you want to ban or why, and it makes people pissed off and think that it's impossible to have a reasonable conversation.

The two are usually considered to be very distinct categories.

Not at all, no. You're an idiot.

[loomer]

The .38 revolver you are thinking of buying is semi-automatic. This is what I'm talking about. You really have no idea what guns you want to ban or why, and it makes people pissed off and think that it's impossible to have a reasonable conversation.

The two are usually considered to be very distinct categories.

Not at all, no. You're an idiot.

Well, that escalated quickly. Am I to then understand that it is your position that there is no commonly held distinction between revolvers, especially single-action revolvers, and semi-automatic magazine-fed handguns, fuckface?

[Dominus Atheos]

The two are usually considered to be very distinct categories.

Not at all, no. You're an idiot.

Well, that escalated quickly. Am I to then understand that it is your position that there is no commonly held distinction between revolvers, especially single-action revolvers, and semi-automatic magazine-fed handguns, fuckface?

Correct, the Colt .45 "Peacemaker" is not semi-automatic. Pretty much every revolver newer than the colt .45 is. I said so earlier in the thread.

It may even say "semi-automatics", since liberals seem to have latched on to that term even though I'm pretty sure that they have no idea what it means. I've heard liberals say that they don't want to ban all guns, just the dangerous ones like "semi-automatics", "sniper rifles" and "pump-action shotguns" (which are at least a real thing). So... single action revolvers would be left I guess?

That was just last Friday. Try to keep up please.