Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

This might very well be a junk statistic and I have no idea where I even heard it so I'm just gonna repeat it in the form of a question:

Did most of the recent mass shootings involve items (weapons, magazines, etc) that used to fall under the assault weapon ban?

blaktoof wrote:
My last home was in Pennsylvania, our water and gas meter were inside the basement of our home. So there are parts of the US where older buildings have utilities on the inside. We had bi yearly inspections, not a big deal.

Interesting that. I doubt they could send you to jail though, just shut off your service.

 d-usa wrote:
This might very well be a junk statistic and I have no idea where I even heard it so I'm just gonna repeat it in the form of a question:

Did most of the recent mass shootings involve items (weapons, magazines, etc) that used to fall under the assault weapon ban?

I don't believe so. I saw a picture of an AR-15 and that has always been legal, iirc. The rest were pistols.

 d-usa wrote:
This might very well be a junk statistic and I have no idea where I even heard it so I'm just gonna repeat it in the form of a question:

Did most of the recent mass shootings involve items (weapons, magazines, etc) that used to fall under the assault weapon ban?

An assault rifle is a select fire rifle, only available to the government and Mexican cartels. With certain expensive licenses involving intensive checks one could get one that was made prior to a certain date (I think 1980 but I'm just guessing). Since the 1930s and the BAR (gangs occasionally would use one including the Barrow gang) , I am unaware of any assault rifle ever used in a crime.

As to the ban on scary looking guns, I think the only instance was Aurora.

 d-usa wrote:
This might very well be a junk statistic and I have no idea where I even heard it so I'm just gonna repeat it in the form of a question:

Did most of the recent mass shootings involve items (weapons, magazines, etc) that used to fall under the assault weapon ban?

Hassan at Ft Hood: Pistols
Recent shooting in Oregon: Pistol
VA Tech shooting: Pistols
SC Church shooting: Pistol
Sandy Hook: AR 15 (would it have been banned? Depends, the ban stopped new weapons from being bought had zero effect on existing weapons/pre-ban weapons)
Colorado movie theater: Pistol, shotgun and AR15
Most of the 'mass shootings' (defined as 4 or more folks including shooter): Pistols

One statistic I heard (and admittedly cannot verify) is that in all the recent big mass shootings (not the 4 person definition), the shooter came from a fatherless household (via divorce or single mother).

So no "high-capacity" magazines and restricted semi-automatic weapons purchased after the expiration of the ban?

One statistic I heard (and admittedly cannot verify) is that in all the recent big mass shootings (not the 4 person definition), the shooter came from a fatherless household (via divorce or single mother).

I never caught that before. Thats a scary thought.

 d-usa wrote:
So no "high-capacity" magazines and restricted semi-automatic weapons purchased after the expiration of the ban?

Basically. And even the big scary AR only makes rare appearances.

 d-usa wrote:
So no "high-capacity" magazines and restricted semi-automatic weapons purchased after the expiration of the ban?

The ban did not ban any magazines, so they would not be relevant.

As for rifles, I have no idea when they were made. Even during the ban you could legally buy and sell pre-ban manufactured weapons. I'll assume the rifles mentioned were all new and post-ban manufacture. Makes no difference in my mind as enough pistols were used that there is no indication some gak bag intent on killing a feth load of people would not have used them if a rifle was not available. Or that the gak bag would not have gotten a pre-ban rifle if the ban still existed.

Especially in the Sandy Hook killings, that crazy fether was willing to cap his mother in order to gun up. Instead of leaving the shotgun in the car he would have brought it with him. Or used pistols. At the ranges he was shooting he didn't need a rifle.

 CptJake wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So no "high-capacity" magazines and restricted semi-automatic weapons purchased after the expiration of the ban?

The ban did not ban any magazines, so they would not be relevant.

It actually did:

Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994
TITLE XI--FIREARMS
Subtitle A--Assault Weapons
SEC. 110103. BAN OF LARGE CAPACITY AMMUNITION FEEDING DEVICES.
(a) PROHIBITION- Section 922 of title 18, United States Code, as amended by section 110102(a), is amended by adding at the end the following new subsection:
`(w)(1) Except as provided in paragraph (2), it shall be unlawful for a person to transfer or possess a large capacity ammunition feeding device.
`(2) Paragraph (1) shall not apply to the possession or transfer of any large capacity ammunition feeding device otherwise lawfully possessed on or before the date of the enactment of this subsection.

(b) DEFINITION OF LARGE CAPACITY AMMUNITION FEEDING DEVICE- Section 921(a) of title 18, United States Code, as amended by section 110102(b), is amended by adding at the end the following new paragraph:
`(31) The term `large capacity ammunition feeding device'--
`(A) means a magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or similar device manufactured after the date of enactment of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 that has a capacity of, or that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than 10 rounds of ammunition

 CptJake wrote:

As for rifles, I have no idea when they were made. Even during the ban you could legally buy and sell pre-ban manufactured weapons. I'll assume the rifles mentioned were all new and post-ban manufacture. Makes no difference in my mind as enough pistols were used that there is no indication some gak bag intent on killing a feth load of people would not have used them if a rifle was not available. Or that the gak bag would not have gotten a pre-ban rifle if the ban still existed.

Especially in the Sandy Hook killings, that crazy fether was willing to cap his mother in order to gun up. Instead of leaving the shotgun in the car he would have brought it with him. Or used pistols. At the ranges he was shooting he didn't need a rifle.

And plenty of kids without fathers don't grow up to shoot up schools either.

I never said it would have made a difference, but I was wondering if stuff that used to be banned was used.

 d-usa wrote:

 CptJake wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So no "high-capacity" magazines and restricted semi-automatic weapons purchased after the expiration of the ban?

The ban did not ban any magazines, so they would not be relevant.

It actually did:

Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994
TITLE XI--FIREARMS
Subtitle A--Assault Weapons
SEC. 110103. BAN OF LARGE CAPACITY AMMUNITION FEEDING DEVICES.
(a) PROHIBITION- Section 922 of title 18, United States Code, as amended by section 110102(a), is amended by adding at the end the following new subsection:
`(w)(1) Except as provided in paragraph (2), it shall be unlawful for a person to transfer or possess a large capacity ammunition feeding device.
`(2) Paragraph (1) shall not apply to the possession or transfer of any large capacity ammunition feeding device otherwise lawfully possessed on or before the date of the enactment of this subsection.

(b) DEFINITION OF LARGE CAPACITY AMMUNITION FEEDING DEVICE- Section 921(a) of title 18, United States Code, as amended by section 110102(b), is amended by adding at the end the following new paragraph:
`(31) The term `large capacity ammunition feeding device'--
`(A) means a magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or similar device manufactured after the date of enactment of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 that has a capacity of, or that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than 10 rounds of ammunition

I was actually about to edit/correct that. The problem is there were millions and millions of magazines already in existence and they were never hard to get (hence my not remembering correctly). AR-15 magazines did not even go up in price much though it was harder to find some for my HK.

I also didn't mention, you could buy almost ALL 'assault rifles' new, as manufacturers produced models with 'sportsman stocks', removed muzzle flash hiders and bayonet lugs, and shipped them with a 5 round magazine. Ugly damned guns, but you could buy a regular stock (not illegal until you put it on the rifle) and as mentioned, 'high capacity' (actually NORMAL capacity) magazines were still plentiful.

No doubt. I think every type of "assault weapon ban" succeeds in producing a new-uglier version of whatever was getting banned.

 d-usa wrote:


And plenty of kids without fathers don't grow up to shoot up schools either.

And just like you didn't say a new assault rifle ban would have made a difference, I was not stating fatherless kids are all gonna be murderers.

 Frazzled wrote:

blaktoof wrote:
My last home was in Pennsylvania, our water and gas meter were inside the basement of our home. So there are parts of the US where older buildings have utilities on the inside. We had bi yearly inspections, not a big deal.

Interesting that. I doubt they could send you to jail though, just shut off your service.

Yep they just shut off service if you don't let them inspect, they give you a huge window of time to pick however, iirc we could pick pretty much any day two weeks out to 3 months out.

Getting your gas shut off when most houses run off radiators for heat in the winter in PA is no joke however.

 d-usa wrote:
So no "high-capacity" magazines and restricted semi-automatic weapons purchased after the expiration of the ban?

There was that bank robbery and shootout with the criminals using assault rifles, "cop killer" rounds, body army, and such.

But they just wanted to steal cash and not kill people for religious, crazy, or terrorist reasons.

Capitalists, really.

 kronk wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So no "high-capacity" magazines and restricted semi-automatic weapons purchased after the expiration of the ban?

There was that bank robbery and shootout with the criminals using assault rifles, "cop killer" rounds, body army, and such.

But they just wanted to steal cash and not kill people for religious, crazy, or terrorist reasons.

Capitalists, really.

Not a 'mass shooting', only two deaths (seems 4 is the Magic Number), both perps (one suicide, one capped by cops and bled out). And the perps were using fully automatic weapons (illegally modified).

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

You are eroding people's rights for no other purpose than cultural realignment,

Not exactly. Here in Oz, we never had a 'right' to own guns in the first place, just laws that allowed it.

However, compromising the individual's rights for the good of the community as a whole is pretty much exactly how it's supposed to work. Individual rights should only apply so far as they don't cause issues for the rest of the community.

 insaniak wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

You are eroding people's rights for no other purpose than cultural realignment,

Not exactly. Here in Oz, we never had a 'right' to own guns in the first place, just laws that allowed it.

However, compromising the individual's rights for the good of the community as a whole is pretty much exactly how it's supposed to work. Individual rights should only apply so far as they don't cause issues for the rest of the community.

The issue is that we don't actually have a mass shooting problem in the US, regardless of what the media and politicians claim. Per 100k, your odds of being killed in a mass shooting are lower than in other European countries with much stricter gun laws. In fact, your odds of being killed in a mass shooting are only slightly higher than the odds of being struck by lightning.

It's a non-problem, given the millions of gun owners in the US who do nothing wrong.

Yeah, I found it interesting that a lot of the super-low crime European nations actually have higher mass shooting rates than the US.

 insaniak wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

You are eroding people's rights for no other purpose than cultural realignment,

Not exactly. Here in Oz, we never had a 'right' to own guns in the first place, just laws that allowed it.

and therein is the difference between Australia, which was granted independence, and the US which won its independence centuries earlier.

 DarkLink wrote:
Yeah, I found it interesting that a lot of the super-low crime European nations actually have higher mass shooting rates than the US.

Examples?

 insaniak wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

You are eroding people's rights for no other purpose than cultural realignment,

Not exactly. Here in Oz, we never had a 'right' to own guns in the first place, just laws that allowed it.

However, compromising the individual's rights for the good of the community as a whole is pretty much exactly how it's supposed to work. Individual rights should only apply so far as they don't cause issues for the rest of the community.

That's a very European attitude. The US is pretty firmly founded on the idea that the exact opposite is true, that government exists precisely to protect individual rights from being taken away by the community.

The examples are a few pages back, whembley was talking about it from his side's point of view. Now, if we're just rehashing concepts we've already covered...

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
The issue is that we don't actually have a mass shooting problem in the US, regardless of what the media and politicians claim. Per 100k, your odds of being killed in a mass shooting are lower than in other European countries with much stricter gun laws. In fact, your odds of being killed in a mass shooting are only slightly higher than the odds of being struck by lightning.

It's a non-problem, given the millions of gun owners in the US who do nothing wrong.

'Well, sure, your child was shot in the head. But it's ok, the odds of mass shootings happening here are about the same as being struck by lightning!'

I'm sure that's a massive comfort to victims' families.

 insaniak wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
The issue is that we don't actually have a mass shooting problem in the US, regardless of what the media and politicians claim. Per 100k, your odds of being killed in a mass shooting are lower than in other European countries with much stricter gun laws. In fact, your odds of being killed in a mass shooting are only slightly higher than the odds of being struck by lightning.

It's a non-problem, given the millions of gun owners in the US who do nothing wrong.

'Well, sure, your child was shot in the head. But it's ok, the odds of mass shootings happening here are about the same as being struck by lightning!'

I'm sure that's a massive comfort to victims' families.

I"m sure it isn't. But that doesn't mean we should enact legislation for the feelz.

'Well, sure, your child was shot in the head. But it's ok, the odds of mass shootings happening here are about the same as being struck by lightning!'

I'm sure that's a massive comfort to victims' families.

Well if the local dingos could carry off children like your Australian version, we wouldn't need to. So far we've only developed chupacabra, and when we found out it liked chickens and not children, that plan just fizzled out.

 motyak wrote:
The examples are a few pages back, whembley was talking about it from his side's point of view. Now, if we're just rehashing concepts we've already covered...

Unfortunately whembley's examples are presented in a very misleading way; perhaps you've got other better ones?

What's misleading about them?

 cincydooley wrote:
What's misleading about them?

It's possible that we are talking about different posts. I was referring to the following post that's actually from a different thread and perhaps it's the example motyak meant.

Looking at that example you can see the number of incidents is mostly one or two for all the other countries in the chosen time frame. That can make a comparison of the rates quite problematic, since similar data for any other five year interval will change the ranking dramatically. It gets better if you combine the data for all the displayed european countries or accumulate the data for much longer periods.

 Ouze wrote:
It only works within 6 inches, though.

It never occurred to me how sexual synapse was until now.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Frazzled wrote:
Interesting that. I doubt they could send you to jail though, just shut off your service.

There's loads of things that you could potentially be sent for jail for, if you decide to be an obstructive ass for long enough. Hell, you can get sent to jail for refusing to issue marriage licenses, if you really set yourself to be difficult enough, long enough.

That actually ends up being another pretty good reason that mandatory safes and inspections won't work. It would almost certainly be seen as a direct threat by loads of people, and they'd probably attempt all kinds of passive and active means to resist. To which government would have to respond, and so on. At the very least you'd end up with a whole lot of people dragged before courts, and maybe even some serving time for contempt. A whole lot of court resources, and a lot of otherwise productive, law abiding citizens with records, over a law that really doesn't do very much.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Frazzled wrote:
An assault rifle is a select fire rifle, only available to the government and Mexican cartels. With certain expensive licenses involving intensive checks one could get one that was made prior to a certain date (I think 1980 but I'm just guessing). Since the 1930s and the BAR (gangs occasionally would use one including the Barrow gang) , I am unaware of any assault rifle ever used in a crime.

As to the ban on scary looking guns, I think the only instance was Aurora.

I think they were used by quite a lot of the depression era gangs. And I believe most of the BARs weren't purchased (even through secondary sources), but stolen from Federal armouries, or smuggled out of them. Clyde Barrow made a habit of regularly raiding armouries, which even though I know it's true just sounds so ridiculous. What sort of a government can't keep it's own guns secure from one minimally successful bankrobber?

Anyhow, it leads me to wonder why they fell out of use, if it wasn't because of their restriction on the civilian market? Better armed police maybe (the FBI and lots of local police units ordered Brownings and Thompsons of their own)? My thinking is that a Browning is great as it allows you to dominate an area no matter what police arrive. Especially if you combine that with the old trick of just needing to reach state lines to be safe. But if police are going to arrive with big guns of their own, and are now capable of continuing pursuit over state lines, the best method for a heist is to get in and out long before there's any police on the scene.

The Bank of America shootout shows how badly getting all geared up works for the bank robbers, these days.

Dunno. It's an interesting question.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CptJake wrote:
One statistic I heard (and admittedly cannot verify) is that in all the recent big mass shootings (not the 4 person definition), the shooter came from a fatherless household (via divorce or single mother).

Well I guess it isn't as stupid as blaming it on video games.

Anyhow, all of the rest of us in the developed world have single parent households as well.