Gun crazy..

[Diasi]

I do not understand why the ability to buy military weapons and take them to a school and murder 21 people , mainly children, should be a protected constitutional right.

It isn't a constitutional right to be able to be able to take military grade weapons into a school & murder 21 people.

Why not ban cars because people use them to deliberately mow down pedestrians.

[Diasi]

The problem now is that the place is awash with guns. Passing laws will see the responsible folk hand theirs in. But....

In this country most gun crime is with illegal guns although there have been at least two random mass shootings involving a licenced owner that resulted in tighter controls. Hungerford and Dunblane.

And the result of the tighter contols is that shootings haven't been prevented.

[klondike]

The right to bear arms wasn't for protection from Billy the Kid it was for protection from a corrupt government.

https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretation/amendment-ii/interps/99

Many in the Founding generation believed that governments are prone to use soldiers to oppress the people. English history suggested that this risk could be controlled by permitting the government to raise armies (consisting of full-time paid troops) only when needed to fight foreign adversaries. For other purposes, such as responding to sudden invasions or other emergencies, the government could rely on a militia that consisted of ordinary civilians who supplied their own weapons and received some part-time, unpaid military training.

[Michael Rolls]

The USA Constitution protects teh right to bear arm - not to use them to murder - that's a crime there just like anywhere else.
In the UK a shooting outrage leads to cries for every stricter control of guns, more or less bearing out a favourite American saying 'If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns'.
Mike

[klondike]

Certainly the only civilians with handguns in the UK are criminals.

[1955vintage]

AR 15 sales should be banned. The NRA 'the only cure to too many guns is more guns ' are making huge profits from selling machine guns to nutters, then blame the nutters.


The tighter controls in UK have seen nothing like this since Dunblane....and that pi55es off the Americans.

[klondike]

Single shot versions of the AR15 are legal in the UK. There is no reason the same restriction could not be made in the US.

I think they are only allowed semi auto in the US but semi auto is no huge restriction - they fire as fast as you can pull the trigger. So-called bump stocks which jolt the weapon to give the effect of full auto were banned a few dozen mass shootings back when one was used.

[Michael Rolls]

A terrifying statistic, identifying a mass shooting as four fatalities or more, and excluding gang killings, domestic killings or terrorism,  quoted by the Washington Post quotes 163 such instances between 1967 and June 2021 - that's an average of three a year. One very clear picture every time such an outrage occurs, more people buy guns for self-protection - and who can blame them?
Mike

[Cassandra]

A terrifying statistic, identifying a mass shooting as four fatalities or more, and excluding gang killings, domestic killings or terrorism,  quoted by the Washington Post quotes 163 such instances between 1967 and June 2021 - that's an average of three a year. One very clear picture every time such an outrage occurs, more people buy guns for self-protection - and who can blame them?
Mike

A terrifying statistic, identifying a mass shooting as four fatalities or more, and excluding gang killings, domestic killings or terrorism,  quoted by the Washington Post quotes 163 such instances between 1967 and June 2021 - that's an average of three a year. One very clear picture every time such an outrage occurs, more people buy guns for self-protection - and who can blame them?
Mike

Over here under the 'Second Amendment' citizens have the right to 'bear arms'. However as always, States individually apply these laws in their own way. Generally you can't own a fully automatic machine gun if it was manufactured post 1986. So a 1950 50mm Browning is perfectly OK, as are AK47's, Ouzi's and of course the Thompson sub machine gun, of which 1.75 million were made. A strange one is that there's no legislation relating to a Napalm Flame thrower, so anyone can buy and own one.

The Gun Lobby is very powerful here and the NRA (National Rifleman's Association) have great influence over the House of Representatives. Presently they stymie 'Sleepy Joe o'Bidens' ploy to change the law and will continue so to do, ad infinitum.

[Michael Rolls]

It's a different take on the world. As a one tine gun owner -target rifle and pistol - who lived in an area noted for large mental illness/handicap hospitals at the time, I could understand the , again American bon mote of 'better to be tried by 12 than carried by 6'
Mike

[Michael Rolls]

Listened to a YouTube clip - chap talking about the arming of American police in the 19th century, and something he said struck a chord. He said that in the latter half of the century the American cities were much more violent that their counterparts in Europe and that the reason was largely down to immigration. Large numbers of economic immigrants were flooding the cities – especially New York. They were mostly young men on their own without families nor friends and they gravitated towards ethnic groups in an overcrowded city with an existing population who objected to their life style being changed by these incomers.
Sound familiar?
Mike

[Sheila]

Yes Mike, that's a worry.

[Scrumpy]

Didn't the Irish and Italians control  New York.. ?

[Michael Rolls]

and the Poles, although to a lesser extent. Then there was Chinatown and the Triads.
Mike