The killers brother has done a brief interview video which shows him quite perplexed as too why his elder brother with a decent home & life-style killed 58 people. He stated he had no affiliation with any religion or group to speak of. But he did mention "as far as I know". And obviously apologized unreservedly to the many families effected. As bonkers as usual 'gawd' has been drawn upon to help recover the situation by 'barking-idiot-trump'. However I don't mind people spiritually praying for the survivors & injured. But invoking religion always gives me the chills that one nation thinks another deity or religion must therefore be wrong & evil as it disagrees with the scripture of the other. In peoples hearts & minds is absolutely fine & proper.
The NRA will no doubt state various prehistoric/archaic laws which do go back to when gallery guns/ pistols were the best that could be had for defence purposes but cyclic rates have clearly increased with the obvious potential of more deaths. You might think , why is this still an argument going forward for this type of weapon system, and I would agree.
And many who are good, like atheists, are believed to be bad. No one wins...except the arms companies
Crazy is crazy and anything can become a weapon when you are mentally unstable...from actual weapons to cars, gasoline (a few days ago a local guy just doused his girlfriend and started her on fire, she's dead), or getting pushed off a cliff. US citizens that appreciate rights to gun ownership don't take it lightly. Kids in school can't even point a finger at someone and say "bang" without getting suspended. Students on my high school trap & skeet team are drilled every week on proper handling of their guns and being respectful overall. No second chances if you are careless as their is no room for mistakes. My husband and I are constantly reminded from friends in other countries how lucky we are and to hang on fiercely to what we have. Statistics can be spun however you want to spin them. I don't trust the media, if I did I would probably never travel to Europe-too dangerous!
Given some of th recent judgements, not sure I'd trust a magistrates 'judgement' of what was reasonable, or not.
And that's exactly it mate - at the end of the day it's all subjective what the CPS or courts decide regardless of what any trumpet blowers on here tell you. All these pussys don't even know what day it is FFS. Yeah I was in a pub the other day, geezer a few spots down from me gets stabbed by a fuckin huge knife during some disagreement. Unreasonable force? You bet, he had ten tons of whatever kicked out of him and QUITE RIGHTLY SO! These friggin fairies are ruining western society, send them all to the middle-east or Pakistan or somewhere like that for a while, not that they'd last more than a few hours outside of a guarded air conditioned hotel with all that poncey thinking. Bunch of jokers.
I am in the process of renewing my shotgun certificate..........as protracted as it seems to be, it is still quite lax IMO................but in comparison with the USA, it is still a damn sight more that what they do. Unfortunately nobody can legislate for a 'sudden epsiode' of headcase. Remove all firearms from society? Well, that worked in the UK, didn't? They just use knives and crossbows / bows now. Don't even get me going on eastern european culture where they will cut your throat instead of just mugging you.
You can't remove all guns from American society because they're not registered in the tight way they are in the UK and never have been so there are millions of them that are completely untraceable. You could ban all civilian guns tomorrow and millions would still be out there with tons of ammunition and no possible way to keep track of them and as I said earlier, the quantity of guns in US society rose sharply and continuously throughout Obama's incumbency because people stock-piled them against future controls. The horses have long since bolted and gone feral. You'll never round them up now. It ought to be said also that the vast majority of the very small number of gun crimes we have in the UK (small compared to the US at any rate) are committed with illegal black-market firearms which are also unregistered and even more invisible and untraceable than those held legally in America. And they're not firearms stolen from lawful owners. Those are a tiny proportion. They're reactivated collector's pieces or modified replicas which are unlicensed and unrecorded or they're smuggled in from overseas, particularly overland from eastern Europe and the Balkans. You could introduce any amount of legislation here that would eliminate all firearms that are currently legally held in the UK and it wouldn't touch a single black market weapon in the hands of criminals. That's the problem they have in the US but multiplied by a thousandfold.
Why does any civilian need that many guns never mind high power automatic weapons ? it's ridiculous and unessecary if not illegal.
When I visit friends/the ex in South Dakota, it's rare to see a gun even though it is an open carry state. To listen to the news you would imagine they are laying on the floor for anyone to pick up and they are not. The last time I fired a gun out there was to zero in a new scope for range shooting. A buddy only uses them for 3 things, range shooting, legal season controlled hunting by the state and self defence/vermin/snake control as he lives on an isolated homestead/ranch. I lived there many years and apart from those mentioned with a friend, the only time I saw a gun was in a cops holster or in a sports/hunting store My buddy has a very well stocked man cave with multiple ar types, hunting rifles, range guns, handguns etc I asked him, you only have one pair of hands why do you need so many guns? He said many had been collected over 40 years from his first gun through to guns he used with his dad when hunting, collectors guns, range guns, upgrades, shotguns etc and that many had not seen use in over 20 years but he didn't want to let them go and his point was, it's legal to have them, he only has them legally for self defence but mostly legal use hunting and sports use so if he is a legal owner, using them legally and not harming anyone, why shouldn't he have as little or as many as he wants? As to this gunman, the type of guns may have allowed him to kill more but gun crime in general is on the decline in the states but is often used to hide the real question. Why are some becoming so deranged and why are mental health issues on the rise particularly amongst our young, contributing to many of these events?
Precisely. Commentators question America's gun laws but they never question a culture that glamorises violence, armed violence in particular, and treats its depiction as good ol' family entertainment. And they wonder why they're raising twisted people.
He could have done more damage with a single weapon if he knew what he was doing and used different tactics. He didn't even need a fully automatic weapon; a semi-auto would have been just as effective and attracted less attention. I'm not going to spell out what I think he did "wrong", tactically, for obvious reasons but suffice it to say that a cool-headed terrorist who had been trained could have operated from the same room with fewer weapons for a longer period before being located and killed at least double the number of people. The question arises in both cases, what kind of twisted logic, mental derangement or perverse upbringing drives a person to do such things? Opening fire on defenceless people is no more an inevitable consequence of permitting private citizens to own firearms than mowing pedestrians down with a vehicle is an inevitable result of issuing driving licenses. The ownership of firearms needs to be monitored and strictly controlled, obviously, just as the right to drive a vehicle on public roads is subject to strict conditions and controls but there is a deeper disease at work here and treating the symptoms will not address it.
If you look at the figures on gun deaths in the states you won't be surprised but if you do not then you might be surprised to know that just under two thirds of gun deaths are suicide. I saw an interview with an ex cop who was an ex nra member but had left both. In regards to the nra he said, when I started as a young man with guns the nra was an organisation to promote gun safety/legal advice/discounts and the community of gun owners, now it seems to be little more than king makers for politicians. I have no doubt that at some point the relationship between the nra and washington needs a damn good looking at. Personally I'd like a sales ban for 14 days nationwide after these events on guns, ammo and accessories. I remember a few years ago when they tried to legislate the size of the mags, the sales of the larger mags went through the roof because some owners thought they would be banned. I have no doubt from today some gun owners will be stocking up on long guns through fear of them being legislated against. In a perverse way, events like this see a sales boom for the arms manufacturers and they do little to stop it or act in a responsible way.
The gun laws in the states are now irrelevant. It has all gone too far and control can never be taken back. Whatever most people ( think they ) need has already been stock piled, and this nut job in LV has proven how easy it is to use that stock to devastating effect.
