Well, this will not be popular, but in this country you cannot stop a lone nut with a gun!

[Logical]

First off, Trump is part of the issue here. He will LOVE this shooting. And that should help us. But.....

Ill say it, does anyone think you can stop a lone nut with a gun?

Most these mass shooters bought the guns legally!

No one, even the democrats, will support banning the sale of firearms or ammo. Or registering them, which would do nothing.

Are you going to have a psychologist interview everyone who wants a gun?

Are you going to prevent someone from borrowing their parents or friends guns? Nope!

Hell, 50,000 hand guns are stolen a year, only about 9,000 murders are committed by hand guns a year, so stolen guns more than cover the need.

The huge issue is why this damn country is so violent? Why so many people want to kill someone?

[uponit7771]

1. It should be harder to get a device MEANT to kill people than to get a car... eom

[Thinkingabout]

12. Agree, we should not facilitate the access to weapons developed to kill people, they should be

Reserved for military and law enforcement.

[still_one]

29. especially automatic assualt rifles with large clips. Gun shows sell that garbage all the time

[malaise]

2. Ban the fugging assault rifles and the magazines

for starters

[Logical]

6. How do you collect the millions out there already? nt

[JCMach1]

3. no semi-automatics allowed would help...

Have as many guns as you want, just let them be single shot, no clips.

Having said that, this guy would have probably been exempt even there! He was a fugging Security Guard!

[Logical]

5. Not sure you can take the ones out there legally. And this country does not have enough guts to.....

do it.

[JCMach1]

8. absolutely, our politicians are gutless... just pointing out it isn't AR-15 per se

but semi-auto weapons in general... they are made for mass mayhem.

[Lizzie Poppet]

34. Or enough cops.

c. 800,000 LEOs with arrest powers nationwide. c. 80 million gun owners. And the majority of rank-and-file officers support civilian gun ownership and would likely refuse such an order...

[Logical]

4. But most mass shooters got it legally. nt

[Generic Brad]

7. We can't control the number of weapons already in circulation

But we can set limits on the availability of ammunition going forward. What good is a gun if you can't shoot it? I really think we need to stop talking about gun control and switch our focus to weapon registration and ammunition control.

[Logical]

9. Well, in the months it takes to implement that, if you really can, millions of rounds will be....

sold and then you can deal with the black market.

Not practical.

[Generic Brad]

10. Understood

But doing nothing keeps unfettered access in place and guarantees repeat mass shootings for the unforeseeable future.

[Logical]

11. The real issue is that no repuk or dem would even support it. nt

[Lizzie Poppet]

35. Probably not, actually.

There is an extant legal argument that ammunition is an intrinsic component of the weapon. However, no law would prevent running a background check when it's purchased.

[baldguy]

13. Every other country on this planet seems to be able to.

[Logical]

14. Rifles are legal in canada and 10 round magazines are allowed. I think the issue is that people.....

there don't tend to kill people like we do.

[baldguy]

15. So Americans are uniquely pathological & murderous?

Then by all means let's keep firearms freely available!

[Logical]

17. Give me the name of one democratic senator who would ban guns or ammo. nt

[laundry_queen]

24. Exactly.

I posted in response to that - it IS the gun laws in Canada that make the difference. It's not some large difference in culture or genetic make up. JFC. We watch the same television shows, the same news, the same movies, eat the same food, wear the same clothes, and go to the same internet sites. There's not some magical Canadian culture fairy that makes us less violent (hello, the joke is that we went to a fight and a hockey game broke out. Yep, non violent culture )

[grossproffit]

21. We have nearly 10x's the population here in the States.

[laundry_queen]

23. No. It's the gun laws. They are much more strict. nt

[hunter]

16. We can go after guns like we go after smoking. It's a public health crisis.

Smoking isn't cool.

Guns are not cool.

[Logical]

18. But people love them. Nt

[sarisataka]

19. Folks want a simple answer

to a simple question- even if it is not the right question.

The huge issue is why this damn country is so violent? Why so many people want to kill someone?

Is a complex question needing a complex answer. Since our violence rate is higher than most of Europe, even after subtracting guns, it is the right question.

[Recursion]

20. True. Lone nuts with guns also aren't the problem.

We're talking about 100 deaths or so in a bad year. Non-lone-wolf shootings (husband kills wife, angry bar patron shoots guy next to him, road rage, whatever) are 12,000. Those are the deaths we can realistically use policy to do something about.

[Dem2]

22. We all know of people who we suspect might snap someday

Mostly we try not to piss these people off. Some are religious people with bipolar disease or schizophrenia who will not take medicine because it's 'against their religion', others retain anger and do not properly express it until it's too late. Many are too proud to ask for help. There are myriad other reasons for bad behavior that would take all day to get into. Most of us don't want to give up any freedom in order to somehow force people who do have issues into treatment. So, honestly, this leaves making it much more difficult for the average person to obtain a device designed to kill other human beings (mostly when they're just having a bad day.)

[lancer78]

25. And compared to the EU

Our mass shooting rate and deaths is not that high.

http://crimeresearch.org/2015/06/comparing-death-rates-from-mass-public-shootings-in-the-us-and-europe/

[Juicy_Bellows]

26. The only plausible solution I can see is a social stigma.

We pulled it off against smoking to some degree. That same kind of stigma needs to ooze over to guns. It should be easier with all the horror but it's going to be a slow burn. New laws can help but don't really address the root issue.

[Straw Man]

27. Social stigma?

The only plausible solution I can see is a social stigma.

We pulled it off against smoking to some degree. That same kind of stigma needs to ooze over to guns.

People who are susceptible to social stigma are ipso facto not the kind of people who are causing the problems. Murder is already pretty heavily stigmatized.

[Juicy_Bellows]

30. However, gun ownership is not.

That was my point. I admit it's a helluva climb but until society's attitude changes I'm afraid we won't make much headway.

[Straw Man]

31. Your point?

However, gun ownership is not.

That was my point. I admit it's a helluva climb but until society's attitude changes I'm afraid we won't make much headway.

Perhaps you missed mine. Stigmatize gun ownership and all you'll be doing is getting them out of the hands of people who weren't going to do any harm with them anyway. The people you have to worry about are the people who don't give a shit about social stigma.

[Locrian]

32. I think you have a valid point

It's a complex issue. And social stigma of course will not work well with people on the fringe etc.

But it does have an effect on the general population. We're seeing it now as more and more people get fed up - which will equal more chance to affect some degree of control.

There is no one solution. I see a bunch of groups:

1) "good guys" with guns who think the make you safer
2) general population condition by 24/7 advertising (movies, tv, etc) to think guns are just great
3) mentally disturbed people
4) fanatics
5) criminals

*And of course a bunch of people sick of the carnage but don't know what to do or understand the full scope of the problem.

Social stigma may work on 1,2,* not on the rest. For those we need more creative laws and systems to deal with root cause. But there needs to be some sort of general will to do it. Bring on the social stigma.

[Lance Bass esquire]

28. Crazy is as crazy does.

Guns, bombs, cars, box cutters, shoes,coke cans,pressure cookers.

All for gun reform personally...but crazy peeps are just that. Needle in a haystack intelligence wise.

JMHO

[justiceischeap]

33. So we do nothing instead?

Mateen purchased his AR-15 within a week of the shooting. Had the bill the GOP blocked 6 months ago been passed, he would have had to find one illegally. Would he have been able to? If he had found a black market weapons dealer, could he have afforded the purchase? We won't know the answers to these questions because he was able to go to his local gun shop, even though he had been investigated twice for ties to ISIL, and legally purchased a weapon that has no other use than to kill human beings.

Yes, the US is violent too. I think some of that can be laid at the feet of political rhetoric. We can also lay that at the feet of the Hannity's, Beck's, Coulter's and Limbaughs of the media. We can lay blame on the GOP for introducing 200+ anti-LGBT bills in the past 6 months. We can also blame the GOP for the dismissive attitutudes toward women.

There are lots of reasons for violence but those are some immediate ones that come to mind. Also, I love our freedom of speech but we need a way to classify and criminalize hate speech because that doesn't help either.