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Please tell us your solution for stopping two people exchanging a firearm in a garage? This is no "loophole". It's two people that likely know each other swapping firearms. You can't legislate that out of existence.
I helped a friend sell his guns before going into a nursing home, I posted them in an online classified ad, a guy called about them, came to look and we reached an agreement, he paid cash and was out the door. No paperwork, no BG checks, nothing!
There are 100s of 1000s of sales and trades just like this, going on every day, in every state in the country, there would no way to regulate or even enforce laws against this type of sale. They would have to monitor every online classified as well as print.
There is also 'ghost guns', those that are totally untraceable, or made by an individual that has access to the right fabrication equipment. A fully automatic weapon is not that difficult to make if you have access to right equipment.
But there are many who suffer from anxiety, depression, bi polar, schizophrenia and other mental disorders who don't go out and kill people. So why should they all be prevented from purchasing a gun. Of course some should be prevented but it's just a very fine line here because no one knows who's going to snap and go on a killing spree. So who do you prevent from buying. Cruz was obviously seeing a psychiatrist since he was on medication. But I guess the doc didn't think he was a threat and neither did the family he lived with. The signs were there which were ignored. There is something very wrong with these kind of people and it goes beyond mental illness. It's an evilness. But there should always be background checks
I have not come across anything factual that confirms he was under psychiatric care or medications at the time of the shooting.
At some point in 2016, upon becoming aware that Cruz posted a video on line in which he cut both arms, shared his intention to buy a gun and his book bag had a Nazi emblem and racist hate speech , his school notified the state Dept Child/ Family.
His adoptive mother said he had been diagnosed on the Autism spectrum, was depressed and AHAD. He was seeing mental health professionals and he was compliant with his medications. She also said he did not own a gun, beyond an air gun. She said she took that away because he had been using it to shoot targets in the back yard. The case was closed.
His adoptive mother died in November, 2017.
According to the family who gave him shelter for the past three months, he was open to therapy so long as he was not medicated.
Toxology results are being processed to determine if he was under the influence at the time of the shooting.
It's a great question. Maybe our government should loosen up those purse strings so that policy makers can better pinpoint the root causes.
It seems plausible to me that our society is effectively rewarding these kinds of behaviors by reinforcing the notion that only people who are well known or rich or famous are valuable to society or worthy of love and respect. A lot of people cope with the realization they will never achieve a certain level of affluence, fame, or adulation simply by getting by and enjoying the things they do have. For others, that realization can be much more traumatizing, especially when confronted by non-stop messages from CNN, Fox News, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat telling them they are too weak, too soft, not successful enough, not sexy, etc etc. I believe there is an endless supply of misanthropes and psychologically unhappy folks that will continue to carry out these massacres as long as it is perceived to win them notoriety. Perhaps the solution lies in training people not to believe the media, or at least to take it less seriously.
It's a great question. Maybe our government should loosen up those purse strings so that policy makers can better pinpoint the root causes.
It seems plausible to me that our society is effectively rewarding these kinds of behaviors by reinforcing the notion that only people who are well known or rich or famous are valuable to society or worthy of love and respect. A lot of people cope with the realization they will never achieve a certain level of affluence, fame, or adulation simply by getting by and enjoying the things they do have. For others, that realization can be much more traumatizing, especially when confronted by non-stop messages from CNN, Fox News, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat telling them they are too weak, too soft, not successful enough, not sexy, etc etc. I believe there is an endless supply of misanthropes and psychologically unhappy folks that will continue to carry out these massacres as long as it is perceived to win them notoriety. Perhaps the solution lies in training people not to believe the media, or at least to take it less seriously.
And there you go. There was an attempt to fund research to be conducted by the CDC on what drives mass murderers. The NRA effectively lobbied it down. Their fear was that is could be biased against guns. It is called the Dickey amendment named after a GOP Rep named Dickey who now wishes he never got it enacted.
America has a small minority that commits a large percentage of homicides. Take them out of the stats and Americas has violent crime rates consistent with the rest of the western world.
Just compare the highlighted numbers below.
In America, we don't discriminate. We don't punish everyone in a group (gun owners) for the poor behavior of a small minority (criminal gun owners). Just like we don't punish all Muslims for the acts of some radical Muslim terrorists.
According to the US Department of Justice, African Americans accounted for 52.5% of all homicide offenders from 1980 to 2008, with whites 45.3% and "Other" 2.2%. The offending rate for African Americans was almost 8 times higher than whites, and the victim rate 6 times higher. Most homicides were intraracial, with 84% of white victims killed by whites, and 93% of African Americans victims were killed by African Americans.[43][44][45]
In 2013, number and percentage of murder arrests by race were:
Black or African Americans 4,379 = 52.2%
White Americans (including Hispanic Americans) 3,799 = 45.3%
American Indians or Alaska Natives 98 = 1.06%
Asian Americans 101 = 1.2%[46][47]
Inversely, the percentage of individuals in each racial demographic arrested for murder in 2013 was:
0.01% of Black or African American population (4,379/38,929,319) 0.0017% of White American and Hispanic American population (3,799/223,553,265)
0.0033% of American Indian or Alaska Native population (98/2,932,248)
0.0007% of Asian American population (101/14,674,252)
0.001% of Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander population (6/540,013).[46][48]
Mass shootings are statistically rare in the US. You're more likely to win the super lottery, or get struck by lightening than be a victim of a mass shooting. Go just south of the US border and you encounter some of the highest murder rates in the world.
Actually, your claim is false.
It is estimated that there are less than one thousand million dollar lottery winners. I assume the "super lottery" that you speak of is people who won much more, like over $100m, but I could not find stats for that, so I found stats that are more favorable to your claim, yet still don't bare it out. https://talkingaboutnumbers.wordpres...ere-in-a-year/
If you are going to spout off statistics, you may want to check them first.... This is why nobody with critical reasoning skills takes posts like the one I just quoted seriously. (Mods, please note I am addressing the content of the post, not the poster themselves.)
No, this is just wrong. We had plenty of freedom when I was growing up and no one was going on these mass shooting sprees at such regularity (none at all as far as I remember). This started happening because the news media and internet has turned these things into attention fests. The way they immediately talked about the Columbine High School bullies as if those guys were fighting back. I’m sure they didn’t intend for some people to look at it that way, but they did. Now they talk about the record amount killed so someone tries to up the ante. The news has got to stop.
**Actually, I forgot about the drive-by shootings that started in the ‘80s, and the media seemed to egg those on too.
There is an easy correlation between the 24/7 news cycle, Internet and social media and school shootings.
What once might have barely curried a national media mention is now covered by all media and is all over the Internet. Root cause is debated, guns, mental illness, medications, entitled children, bad parenting and more.
If I recall, both Columbine shooters maintained journals and online blogs, the latter of which reflected intentions for revenge on those who mistreated ( bullied) them. There were incidents of bullying and it was a two- way street. That seems to have prompted some media to focus on school bullying.
There are several mental health professionals who have spent their careers studying mass shooters in schools. They tend to dismiss bullying and instead focus on the disturbed personalities of the shooters, anti- social, narcisstic and sadistic traits. Symptoms of emerging schitzophrenia are common. Yet, most who demonstrate similar traits / symptoms do not become mass shooters.
Most were obsessed with guns, bombs and worshipped the military. They were obsessed with prior shooters and domestic terrorists. The Columbine shooters professed an intent to rival the Oklahoma City bombing.
Their day begins as nobodies and concludes with international notoriety.
I helped a friend sell his guns before going into a nursing home, I posted them in an online classified ad, a guy called about them, came to look and we reached an agreement, he paid cash and was out the door. No paperwork, no BG checks, nothing!
There are 100s of 1000s of sales and trades just like this, going on every day, in every state in the country, there would no way to regulate or even enforce laws against this type of sale. They would have to monitor every online classified as well as print.
There is also 'ghost guns', those that are totally untraceable, or made by an individual that has access to the right fabrication equipment. A fully automatic weapon is not that difficult to make if you have access to right equipment.
And depending on the state you are in , you could be a felon. Had you done that in Michigan, and there were any handguns you would be.
Also, modifying a firearm to be fully automatic will get you a nice jail sentence in a Federal prison. I'm sure you know that though.
I helped a friend sell his guns before going into a nursing home, I posted them in an online classified ad, a guy called about them, came to look and we reached an agreement, he paid cash and was out the door. No paperwork, no BG checks, nothing!
There are 100s of 1000s of sales and trades just like this, going on every day, in every state in the country, there would no way to regulate or even enforce laws against this type of sale. They would have to monitor every online classified as well as print.
There is also 'ghost guns', those that are totally untraceable, or made by an individual that has access to the right fabrication equipment. A fully automatic weapon is not that difficult to make if you have access to right equipment.
Yep, that is the problem. You may have sold those guns to someone who is presently in waiting to shoot up a crowd of people somewhere.
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