Shooting at the Empire State Building

This is ridiculous. Equating purchase of ammunition with criminality is exactly the sort of numb minded solution that prevents a dialogue. We tried a gun ban in 1994. It did not do squat. But we need a gun ban because it makes people *FEEL* safer.

By that token, all the arguments against capital punishment should go out the window. Capital punishment doesn't do shit. BUT IT MAKES ME FEEL GOOD MAN.

 

Uh, have you been in any of those threads on TFP?

Nobody here wants capital punishment, Mr. JD.

 

I'm on my phone so...

I own an old Lee Loadmaster. If I wanted to crank out 500 rounds in an afternoon it would not be a problem, it's not great as far as quality control but if one or two rounds are a little light or heavy it not that big a deal if you're popping out a few hundred an hour.

To my knowledge in Oregon any weapon seized by law enforcement is destroyed. Could just be the county I worked in, not sure

People with felony records can not legally own weapons, fire arms anyway, in Oregon, again to my knowledge.

To me the the thing about gun control laws is they really don't stop or even slow down the nut jobs. They make life a little more complicated for guys like me who enjoy going out to the range and shooting up a bunch of clay or paper targets. Now if someone came out with some logically way to slowdown and or stop the whack jobs I'd be more then content to be a little put out. For example- I think waiting periods are a damn fine idea and have no issue waiting a week or even a month to try out my new purchase. I believe that law stops hot heads from running out and buying a hand gun and shooting whoever they're pissed off at that day. Now if they're still pissed off at that person a few weeks later and are willing to plan out whacking them, well then they might be just as willing to stab them, poison them or run them over with their car. In my mind there's not a lot any law is going to do to stop this type of lunatic.

 

Plan9

i was more "interested" in the logic of your posts. what you want to bypass in this sort of discussion, such as they are, is the question of whether the rates of gun-related violence in the states is acceptable or not. if yes, make the argument. at least snakeater will come out and say it...collateral damage caused by a very well-funded lobby centered on an rigid interpretation of the 2nd is cool with him. i think that's a sociopathic claim, personally, if it gets translated into policy. as a debating point in a conversation, it's simply a statement that actually addresses the question that divides people over the question of whether gun regulations that are tighter than they are at present makes sense or not. obviously, in the real world there'd be a balancing act to be performed because the actual discussion would happen in a legal framework. and, like it or not, interpretations of things like the 2nd are variable. that's why those who oppose gun regulation in general or who oppose any further gun regulations typically have to slide off the main question. because it's not an argument that you can win. it's an argument in which there are reasonable positions on both sides that have to factor in the fact of lots of people dying from gun-related violence. you know actual lives ending and all that shit you seem to have a way of sounding cavalier about---so long as it's not someone you love, of course. but that's always the way. it's not particular to you. all that varies across violations of the boundary that separates a number that refers to an abstraction out there in the world and something that is meaningful is that the abstraction stops being one. if that happens in a debate over guns, the argument that the present levels of gun-related violence are ok become more difficult to maintain. better to move things into a more controllable space, then, yes?

you jumped to the question of what kind of regulation rather than stay on the matter of whether the consequences of the present web of regulations are acceptable or not. i don't see that they are. the question of what kind of regulation would follow from you conceding the point that the present level of gun-related violence is not acceptable. it follows from trying to fashion a reasonable response to that. this doesn't seem to be that hard to figure out.

the other network of "arguments" that goes "gun controls don't stop all gun-related violence so therefore there's no reason to have gun controls" seems to me entirely absurd. but that's just my position.

i wonder what would happen if the feds decided that the present levels of gun-related violence were not acceptable and moved to choke gun manufacturers by, say, stopping weapons transfers both to the military and flows within and out of the country unless they "voluntarily" changed their positions, much in the way that the feds threatened to choke off highway funding to states unless they "voluntarily" decided to raise the drinking age to 21. o i'm quite sure the gun people would flip for a little while until the gun manufacturers prevailed upon their main lobbying arm in the nra to inform those same people that it wasn't so bad to accept some increases in gun regulation after all. because people like to freely think what they're told they freely think. it's funny to consider how many free-thinking people think freely exactly the nra line, which of course they freely think up in ways that exactly resemble that organizational line. so its a coincidence i am sure. because americans are *so* intellectually independent in the main.

but i am sure that will never happen. profits uber alles, dontcha know? what's a few thousand deaths in the face of that?

 

It's not an all or nothing situation right now. People keep trying to claim it is but it most certainly is not. It's not a free for all. US citizens can not buy whatever weapon they want with no restrictions. Sure there are those who would like nothing better *cough* NRA, gun manufactures* cough, cough*. But I'm not one of those people. I don't think the average citizen should be able to buy a full auto anything. I don't think people should be able to buy weapons so large they can move a house off it's foundation. Grenades, yeah, bad idea. Being able to buy a hand gun with no wait period is a bad idea in my opinion too. In short I think the NRA is full of a bunch of nut jobs and I'd never be a member. They killed the recent UN treaty that would have prevented the sale of weapons internationally by scaring the crap out of gun owners and claiming it would, or rather Obama would, use it to over ride the 2nd. Amendment here. It wouldn't have and was a very goon treaty in my book. The NRA and the GOP have been using scare tactics to keep gun owners voting for them and paying dues for years. In my book they're full of shit but don't tell any of my hunting buddies that.

 

Of course it's not acceptable.

Neither is the state of the health care in the US, inflation in Japan or all that government-sponsored gay bashing in Uganda.

We are the world.

Wait, so now own a firearm is reasonable? Interesting. For what reasons is it reasonable? Targets? Hunting?

How do you feel about self-defense? Is that reasonable?

Trolling. Feelings: hurt.

Funny, you seem to be the only person who has run with that patently absurd statement in this or any other gun thread. I'm big on hyperbole, but not even I can type that with a straight face. I'm cool with our current laws and favor the government funding the enforcement of them instead of just having them down in the books and spending money rebuilding grand shitholes like Iraq with those $99 toilet seats and $500/day PMC mall cops.

Just another statistic, unfortunately. Sorry for the realism; I'm blue collar.

...

During WW2, the Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto basically said that you could no foreign country could put troops on the ground in the modern US because there would be "a rifle behind every blade of grass." The sheer amount of firearms in the United States--from grandpa's single shot .22 H&R to .50 Barrett M107s--is the single biggest obstacle to any type of control legislation. You can't control what you don't have and that for which you cannot account. There is no time machine, Sir. You cannot stop Samuel Colt or John Moses Browning or dismantle the fledgling NRA. As you well know, it isn't some simple matter of keeping track of who buys new guns or what type of guns or ammunition or scary but superfluous accessories, no, most of the guns used in crimes are already out there, in play, have been for years. They're simple implements like .38 Special revolvers, palm-sized .22 automatics and chopped shotguns. The media likes to sensationalize "assault weapons" whenever possible but they account for a tiny percentage of street crime. How many shots are fired in a typical shooting? How close? Is the other guy armed? Interesting stuff, statistics.

Shifting our focus from the M.C. Escher Nebula of Gun Laws, if our situation is the sad fact that there is a gun available for every criminal and psychotic should they choose to put enough effort into obtaining one, it would make more sense to work with our existing laws (perhaps even funding their enforcement sufficiently) but also harden our mindset and realize that we, as individual citizens, may be called upon to take action by tackling some psycho or putting a pressure dressing on a wounded neighbor. Even when guns aren't in the equation, these things are still very important.

I've got a tiny brain... so I operate with what I'm given in life instead of fluffy daydreams. There are guns out there--a lot of them--and I can't stop it.

I value my life and my neighbors' lives enough to prepare for these bad situations. I must be responsible for myself if I am to call myself a citizen.

How's that for a meandering diatribe?

 

Is there some great need to own one? Where in the Constitution is the right to make your own ammo protected?

First off, I think we'd be talking about federal restrictions here, States with liberal gun laws make it very difficult for the states without them to fully realize the benefits of their restrictions. Porous boundaries and all.
For purposes of the discussion, can we contain it around the idea that we'd be looking to prevent greater loss of life rather than merely lowering the crime rate?

Repeat - Ban semi-automatic weapons

Sounds like such a worthy endeavor when you put that way.
Alternative - Properly fund police departments.

There are plenty of differences. Trouble is, we have nothing in place to identify who the nutjobs are until they reveal themselves as such. Until we do, the least we can do is make it more difficult for them to mow down dozens of people in a matter of seconds. If that means you're inconvenienced because law enforcement is questioning your recent online bulk ammo purchase or you're not able to obtain a high capacity magazine for your new Glock well, tough titties I say. Public safety is always an inconvenience for someone.

Probably none of them. I have no doubt they passed the only litmus test out there and purchased their weapons and ammunition legally. Tells me it's time to drill down a little deeper.

You have my congratulations.

 

Sure, buying commercial ammo is often ridiculously expensive. A progressive bench setup can save you a ton of money if you invest in the startup and are willing to put in the time. And I dunno... probably goes along with the idea that the arms that we're allowed to keep and bear should probably be functional (read: loaded). A gun, at the bare minimum, necessitates ammunition. If we're going to still allow guns other than they the dreaded semi-autos, it would make sense to allow hunters and target shooters to reload their ammo, since said crowd is responsible for almost all of the reloading activity for their hobby such as creating custom rounds for dropping Bambi and squeezing the most accuracy out of their match loads.

 

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/crime-stats/crime-statistics/period-ending-march-2012/stb-crime-stats-end-march-2012.html#tab-Offences-involving-firearms

This is the quarterly average for the UK, including where I live Wales.
I cannot imagine what it must be like knowing everyone around you has a gun, I have never seen a gun, and I don't know anyone who owns a gun.
Knife crime is more prevalent in the UK, I know several people who have been stabbed, thankfully not fatally.
It is my biggest fear when my eighteen year old goes out to Town clubbing, that he will get into a drunken fight and get stabbed, not shot.
I have a baseball bat next to my bed incase of a burglar, the chance that my burglar has a gun is practically nil.
Does everyone own guns because everyone else owns guns in the USA, and it has gone past the point where you can bring it back to everyone not having guns?

It is a different culture that I can't understand as I haven't lived it, but it sounds really scary.

 

I can't speak for others, but I own guns because I like shooting those evil tan paper targets at matches.

Discussion of anything else is pretty pointless on TFP. Hunting is barbaric. Self-defense is barbaric.

Only the military and police should have firearms... even though we've seen what the cops can do.

 

I don't agree that the "ridiculous" expense of buying ammunition for voluntary sport and hobby ventures should trump whatever benefit might be gained by law enforcement's ability to flag suspicious purchases of both firearms and bulk ammo. (See "John Holmes"). To effectively do that would require all ammunition be traceable back to licensed dealers.

Do I see this happening? No, unfortunately.

 

Suspicious? Please define this confusing term for us.

Oh, I got it: Those creepy fucks over at USPSA!

 

Scary? Nah, it's great fun and the more guns, the more fun. The media has the most fun of all. Every week a new profile of a mass shooter armed with an exciting array of the best "Soldier of Fortune" magazine has to offer, not to mention how delighted the pro gun/anti gun pundits are to have the same rousing debate week after week.

I often think about parents who've lost children to gun violence and wonder, if they wonder, how it might have turned out if it was a knife instead of gun. How much more difficult it would have been for that punk driving by in the car to throw a knife with enough force and accuracy to kill their child standing 100 ft away. I know I would think about that.
--- merged: Aug 26, 2012 at 3:16 AM ---

Over a period of six weeks John Holmes went into three different gun shops, legally purchased some high-powered weapons – the Smith & Wesson version of an AR-15 a semiautomatic assault rifle, two 40-caliber Glock pistols, semi-automatics, and then a 12-gauge shotgun for good measure and then over the Internet bought six thousand rounds of ammunition from a company called BulkAmmo.com.

I don't know but this seems a tad suspicious to me. In a reasonable universe, someone would at least be asking this guy a few questions.

 

Holmes bought how many rounds of bulk ammo? How many shots did he get off? So restricting bulk ammo sales would be effective how?

If the ammo he purchased were traceable back to the manufacture how would that have changed the events that horrible day?

I'm not opposed to making ammo traceable, just fail to see how it would stop these spree killers. Most of them seem to be on a suicide mission and I rather doubt they care if LEO can trace back where they bought their ammo.

As far as expense goes when I buy it costs me at 3-4 times the amount it costs me to reload or load my own. If I sign up for a tournament and want to practice then compete loading my own might cost me $100 buying it might cost up to $400. Now if I seriously thought restricting peoples ability to load their own rounds or restricting bulk sales would help then I'd be willing to pony up the extra cost without whining. But someone needs to explain to me how that stops these idiots. Holmes bought the bulk of his ammo 4 months prior to the shooting. He obviously had a plan.

Lastly- John Holmes is a porn star who died of AIDS and James Holmes is the person I think you're referring to in your post.

 

It's neither abnormal nor a bad thing and I never said it was. I was responding to Plan9's very fair point about whether it would make sense for law enforcement to start tracking ammunition sales through retailers in an environment where someone can still make unlimited amounts of their own. I don't think it would make sense.

Attempts to "flag up" would be nutjobs like John Holmes through their ammunition buying habits (as well as firearm purchases) would require a fairly strict accounting of all ammunition supplies in this country. Sort of like the control and reporting requirements imposed on class III drugs. Of course, this would certainly be one in an arsenal of monitoring methods.

The point was/is, if this method could be seen as effective in flagging up nutjobs before they go on their spree, whereby preventing a few of these events, would it be an overbearing infringement on the rights of gun owners to ban the homemade manufacture of ammunition, based, as it seems to be, on little more than convenience and low cost?

More simply put, if such tracking and control of ammunition could save a few lives, should convenience and low cost considerations for gun-owners be allowed to trump potential benefits to the public's safety?
--- merged: Aug 26, 2012 at 9:50 AM ---

Sorry, James Holmes and I'm not talking about restricting ammo sales or tracing back purchases after the fact. I'm imagining a scenario where it's the purchase itself, in conjunction with recorded firearm purchases, which is tracked. Prevention is what I'm more concerned about.

There's a database out there that knows how many boxes of Special K cereal I bought in the past three years and what my lipstick preferences are. That info can be cross referenced to another database with an astounding amount of other personal information on me - my credit history, education, employment history, address, phone, what I do in my spare time via debit card transactions to cinemas, restaurants, etc.

No transactions exist showing that I've ever been to a shooting range or purchased hunting gear or equipment. No indication at all that I've got a hobby involving firearms. Yet, within a six week period I've been on a firearm buying spree I've topped off with a good deal of ammunition.

If anyone was paying attention, this sort of activity might at least warrant some follow up. My purchases could be innocent, sure, but why not check me out a little further? Pay me a visit, ask me a few questions about my intent for these weapons. talk to my family and co-workers. If I raise any red flags, confiscate my guns and ammo pending a full psychological investigation. (I can already hear the boos from the back at the very mention of confiscation)

It isn't as if a firearms registration database doesn't already exist. A good deal of information is already available. I guess I'm saying that it does not appear as if anyone's even curious about the buying patterns of those on their database to the extent that even suspicious activity goes unnoticed until a crime is committed.

I hate Big Brother as much as the next guy and would not advocate for something like this were it simply a mindless data gathering adventure, but where guns are concerned, I think the time has come to find preventive ways of addressing the problem of mass shootings specifically and gun violence in general, perpetrated by individuals with legal access to obtaining whatever they want.

Anyone who's tried to get through an airport knows that the many are inconvenienced for the actions of the few. It's not fair but a fact of life nonetheless. Why is the possession of deadly weapons treated differently?

 

I don't think there is any, one initiative that will solve the problem of people shooting one another. However, it does seem to me that there are some things that might help somewhat.

None of these will be helpful in all circumstances. There is a big difference between, for example, the Aurora-type incident and the drive-by shootings in Chicago/wherever. There is also very little that can be done to prevent an angry guy shooting his former boss, though there may be opportunities to mitigate the risk.

First, I think that the availability of mental health services could be looked at. Not just for this reason, of course, but it may have been possible to intervene before someone finally goes off the deep end and shoots up a movie theatre/school/college. There are a lot of people with untreated mental health problems in the world and mental health is often funded less well than other, more high profile, specialties. I won't go into all the stats, but they are out there (unlike easy access to mental healthcare).

Second, it seems to me that we have become pretty good at finding patterns in buying habits to identify fraud and money laundering. Would it be beyond us to also monitor buying habits for guns/ammo and so on? Yes, we may have false positives, but someone who suddenly starts buying a lot of guns, ammunition, flak jackets and gas masks just might raise an eyebrow and be worth checking out. It wouldn't catch everyone, but it may identify some people who - just maybe - shouldn't really be in possession of a small arsenal. I'm thinking Holmes here.

I think this could include ammunition (and the "makings"). I can see why people may want to make their own. I used to make my own arrows. Some did it for reasons of economy, but many of us did it because, in serious competition, we wanted absolute control over the consistency of our arrows and we wanted to be able to tune them to our performance. I imagine some of the same reasons apply for people who hunt or shoot competitively. I would expect to see some natural profiles - the hunter, the competitive pistol shooter, the guy who practices once a month to make sure he can use his weapon if he needs to, etc. Maybe there is also the gun club itself or a registered dealer in ammunition. I assume these people have to be licensed. Why not, when someone gets a licence, shouldn't they be required to say what they want a weapon for? Can we not then spot unusual buying habits or sudden changes in buying habits and question them before the amunition is supplied? It doesn't sound too hard to me.

Of course these things wouldn't prevent every incidence, but they may help. Who knows, we may even learn something about the supply chain for ammunition to gang members and be able to (at least) hinder it. A gun without ammunition is no more than a poorly designed hammer.

I'm sure there are better ideas than these but, given that it isn't realistic to think that we can confiscate all the guns (or even know how many are out there) and given that many Americans want to own one/some, there remains an issue - and I don't believe that nothing can be done about it.

 

I make regular bulk ammo purchases all the time. I do this for a couple of reasons and none of them involve going on a shooting spree.

First, as illustrated by Sam's Club, it's cheaper to buy in bulk.

Second, I shoot, a lot, and if I dedicate a whole day to working pistol/carbine I can go through a thousand rounds easily.

Third, accuracy: When I buy match ammunition I want to get a whole bunch of it from the same lot. That isn't possible if I buy it a few rounds at a time before each trip to the range... Even high quality match ammunition varies slightly from lot to lot, particularly with muzzle-velocity. A slight variance in muzzle velocity between lots can change my point of impact by more than a minute of angle at distance.

I suspect that people such as James Holmes would have simply purchased their ammunition a box-at a time from multiple stores if we had laws in place tracking bulk ammunition purchases.

Also, I think it is important to maintain perspective: James Holmes displayed behavior that was unusual for him, and unusual for most of the members of this board, but, specifically regarding his ammunition/firearms purchases is not unusual among the wider shooting community. I also think he is a distraction from the wider problem where garbage people are running around shooting other people who also have long criminal records... That is the unglamorous but primary issue, IMHO.

 

the question of regulating ammunition specifically is one that follows from what plan 9 noted above..if there are already so many guns floating about thanks to whatever combination of factors (most to my mind unfortunate) that it would make regulation of new sales problematic, then it would follow that clamping down on ammunition would be an alternative, assuming that the objective of reducing levels of gun-related violence is seen as desirable. i have no particular expertise on what that would entail, however. this sort of thing would entail an interesting possibility, were in some alternate universe in which there was no nra carrying shit for neo-fascist identity politics with the idea of shoring up support for the republican party (directly or indirectly who can say?) of co-operation between people who are committed to guns on whatever grounds and others who may be less so in fashioning a coherent response to the policy question of how to use gun regulation as a way to achieve the politically desirable end of reducing levels of gun violence.

for what it's worth, i have spent most of my adult life living in cities. there is nothing---at all---about more people walking around strapped that would make any sense to me in terms of public safety. now i live in a peculiar little town and i can see that particular viewpoint is very much conditioned by living where i used to live. people got shot altogether too often in the neighborhoods i lived in in philadelphia and chicago for example. in neither of those places does the idea of hunting in or immediately around the place one lives make any sense. so in such places, i would support pretty draconian controls. but they could look quite otherwise in a place like where i am writing from now, simply because the spatial arrangements are different. stray bullets in a city space go somewhere that's likely inhabited by other people. wandering around in the woods the matter is otherwise (hunting accidents aside, but they happen...). the problem is the unreasonable inflexibility of the gun set on this matter, i think. controls anywhere equals somehow controls everywhere. instead, there's an attempt to focus on individual gun rights as an absolute---the problem with that is the same as taking free speech as absolute and objecting to shouting "fire" in a crowded theater. what that probably means is that gun regulation should be devolved down to a local level. on the other hand, that creates the problems of transport that one sees now. i expect those problems would militate for making guns harder to access. but it wouldn't do much for already floating-about guns. the situation is poisoned already by excessively lax controls.

however i would not see it as implausible that there be the sort of co-operation i mentioned above in the fashioning of regulations that would advance the overall objective of reducing gun-related violence in the united states. what's amazing to me is that it's possible to see these levels as hunky dory and still imagine oneself capable of ethical argument at all. but i digress.

 

Not sure I understand what difference that would make. Let's assume you have to provide your gun licence details to buy ammunition and some means of id (or credit card details). It doesn't matter whether it's a box at a time or mass purchase. I'd be looking to track ALL ammunition purchase (and parts to make ammunition), not just bulk orders. As I said, we can spot potential fraudulent activity on credit card purchases - would identifying unusual buying patterns and questioning them be much harder?

The main offenders you note are definitely an issue. I just think that having a clearer picture of where the ammunition is going would be useful. If the military can account for ammunition, surely civilians can?