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Yeah, it's a great political tactic at a very small cost to the GOP and NRA.

 Nostromodamus wrote:
Were bump stocks fitted to all of the weapons used?

Will there also be a call to ban trigger cranks and binary triggers?

I think it was reported that a significant amount of the 20+ had the bump-stocks

Edit: 12 guns out of the ones found in the room had bump-stocks

 MDSW wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

In general in the US, the government cannot ban something and then post facto seize it, no matter what it is.[/quot]

I am trying to remember back when I lived in California and they had a state ban on all assault rifles and you were forced to turn it in or face consequences. If it was a rifle and had a pistol grip with a magazine, then it was banned. Maybe they just banned magazines over 10 rounds - maybe someone in CA from back in the late 80's or early 90's can refresh my memory.

 Nostromodamus wrote:
Will there also be a call to ban trigger cranks and binary triggers?

I have to assume any legislation that bans bumpfire stocks will include gat cranks and binary\echo triggers.

 AndrewC wrote:

So a middle aged man drops $75K on guns and equipment with no apparent motive and nobody picked up on it? I understand on a fundamental logical basis that you can't anticipate that. But at the same time surely there should have been alarm bells going off somewhere.

You'd think. I read this article the other day, though:

https://www.gq.com/story/inside-federal-bureau-of-way-too-many-guns/amp

Gun ownership is not tracked in anywhere near a useful way. It is *illegal* for it to be computerised and easily searchable, due to lobbying from groups like the NRA. It's all down to the dude in this article and his staff, manually searching his warehouse and shipping containers containing millions of bloody paper records.

This, America, is your starting point. The car comparison has already been made, let's explore further.

1) To operate a car you must undergo thorough training, and pass both a written and a practical test to qualify for a license

2) Car ownership is tracked, stored in a database and is easily searchable

3) Car insurance is mandatory

I'd suggest at the very least the same should be required for gun ownership.

Crispy78 wrote:

 AndrewC wrote:

So a middle aged man drops $75K on guns and equipment with no apparent motive and nobody picked up on it? I understand on a fundamental logical basis that you can't anticipate that. But at the same time surely there should have been alarm bells going off somewhere.

You'd think. I read this article the other day, though:

https://www.gq.com/story/inside-federal-bureau-of-way-too-many-guns/amp

Gun ownership is not tracked in anywhere near a useful way. It is *illegal* for it to be computerised and easily searchable, due to lobbying from groups like the NRA. It's all down to the dude in this article and his staff, manually searching his warehouse and shipping containers containing millions of bloody paper records.

This, America, is your starting point. The car comparison has already been made, let's explore further.

1) To operate a car you must undergo thorough training, and pass both a written and a practical test to qualify for a license

2) Car ownership is tracked, stored in a database and is easily searchable

3) Car insurance is mandatory

I'd suggest at the very least the same should be required for gun ownership.

All of the above are required for driving a motor vehicle on public roads. Not for owning a motor vehicle.

If you build a kit car for use on private property (e.g. if you live in a rural area and have enough land to do so, or have it transported to a private raceway), or collect cars and simply house them in a garage and never drive them, etc, then you dont need a license, nothing need go through the DMV, you dont need training, and in general you can be as shmammered as you want while operating it, as long as you dont take it onto a public road. It's a public resource management issue.

With firearms, most public resource use issues are already controlled, such as hunting (need training and license, tags for animals and limits on kills, often ammo and mag restrictions or caliber requirements, etc). But, with both cars and guns, simple possession neednt go through anything.

Crispy78 wrote:

 AndrewC wrote:

So a middle aged man drops $75K on guns and equipment with no apparent motive and nobody picked up on it? I understand on a fundamental logical basis that you can't anticipate that. But at the same time surely there should have been alarm bells going off somewhere.

You'd think. I read this article the other day, though:

https://www.gq.com/story/inside-federal-bureau-of-way-too-many-guns/amp

Gun ownership is not tracked in anywhere near a useful way. It is *illegal* for it to be computerised and easily searchable, due to lobbying from groups like the NRA. It's all down to the dude in this article and his staff, manually searching his warehouse and shipping containers containing millions of bloody paper records.

This, America, is your starting point. The car comparison has already been made, let's explore further.

1) To operate a car you must undergo thorough training, and pass both a written and a practical test to qualify for a license

2) Car ownership is tracked, stored in a database and is easily searchable

3) Car insurance is mandatory

I'd suggest at the very least the same should be required for gun ownership.

I disagree with your analogy, but I understand why you're coming from this angle.

Gun registration is DOA in America.

 whembly wrote:
It's the ATF a few years ago who determined that it's kosher. Because there's no moving parts...

The call is for the ATF to re-review that ruling.

They can reclassify it as an NFA item, which would make it really hard/more scrutiny to acquire.

Making bump sticks NFA items won't stop people from buying them. There are literally millions of NFA items purchased every year, mostly suppressors and short barreled rifles. A good percentage of the gun owners I know have either a SBR or a suppressor or both. Granted I don't think bump fore stocks are particularly popular and being an NFA item won't make them more in demand but you could thousands of them get sold next year as NFA items.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:

Crispy78 wrote:

 AndrewC wrote:

So a middle aged man drops $75K on guns and equipment with no apparent motive and nobody picked up on it? I understand on a fundamental logical basis that you can't anticipate that. But at the same time surely there should have been alarm bells going off somewhere.

You'd think. I read this article the other day, though:

https://www.gq.com/story/inside-federal-bureau-of-way-too-many-guns/amp

Gun ownership is not tracked in anywhere near a useful way. It is *illegal* for it to be computerised and easily searchable, due to lobbying from groups like the NRA. It's all down to the dude in this article and his staff, manually searching his warehouse and shipping containers containing millions of bloody paper records.

This, America, is your starting point. The car comparison has already been made, let's explore further.

1) To operate a car you must undergo thorough training, and pass both a written and a practical test to qualify for a license

2) Car ownership is tracked, stored in a database and is easily searchable

3) Car insurance is mandatory

I'd suggest at the very least the same should be required for gun ownership.

I disagree with your analogy, but I understand why you're coming from this angle.

Gun registration is DOA in America.

The states with the most guns are unlikely to ever create registries and there's no federal jurisdiction to impose a federal registry. Plus the 300+ million unregistered guns in circulation and no way to enforce registration of them even if every state required it. See Connecticut as an example of this.

 Vaktathi wrote:

PS Though I know its my opinion, I could see the bump stocks being banned completely, with no grandfathering rights. They are an addition, a supplement if you like and not the actual gun itself. Kind of like banning a particular make of tyre. The tyre goes not the car.

In general in the US, the government cannot ban something and then post facto seize it, no matter what it is.

Crispy78 wrote:

 AndrewC wrote:

So a middle aged man drops $75K on guns and equipment with no apparent motive and nobody picked up on it? I understand on a fundamental logical basis that you can't anticipate that. But at the same time surely there should have been alarm bells going off somewhere.

You'd think. I read this article the other day, though:

https://www.gq.com/story/inside-federal-bureau-of-way-too-many-guns/amp

Gun ownership is not tracked in anywhere near a useful way. It is *illegal* for it to be computerised and easily searchable, due to lobbying from groups like the NRA. It's all down to the dude in this article and his staff, manually searching his warehouse and shipping containers containing millions of bloody paper records.

This, America, is your starting point. The car comparison has already been made, let's explore further.

1) To operate a car you must undergo thorough training, and pass both a written and a practical test to qualify for a license

2) Car ownership is tracked, stored in a database and is easily searchable

3) Car insurance is mandatory

I'd suggest at the very least the same should be required for gun ownership.

Private car ownership and drivers licenses are only tracked on a state level, not a federal/national level and the main purpose of licensing is to help the state pay for roads, you can be a pretty terrible and irresponsible driver and still own a car and get a license which is part of why we have so many auto deaths every year. I'd honestly prefer if they did something about people using cell phones while driving as I'm many times more likely to be hurt & killed by a distracted driver on a cell phone than facing the risk of being shot by somebody.

Insurance isn't mandatory in every state and farming vehicles or ones driven exclusively on private land don't need it at all, same with licenses and vehicle registration. You only need those if you are using public roadways. Certain types of vehicles are exempt from standard safety features etc. Only commercial vehicles like freight trucks are regulated by both federal and state laws. There also isn't a requirement to have a license in order to own a car, you can own as many cars as you want regardless of if you have a valid license or not. It's not uncommon for people who have lost their license for drunk driving or multiple accidents to still have cars sitting around in their yard. Legally they can't drive them, but if the cops aren't around chances are they get driven. Similar occurs with all the cars being driven by illegal "undocumented" immigrants, they have no licenses or paperwork but own cars or the cars are all registered "to their cousin" aka meaning they have no title yet have valid plates from the state. It's common practice to go buy a junker car for cash somewhere and provide false information on the title, you also provide a false copy of your insurance form when registering the plates or get insurance for that month then cancel it immediately after the plates are renewed. It's a giant shell game and the state turns a blind eye and rubber stamps stuff as long as they get their money in the process.

For a long time even criminal records were not shared between states and in many cases it's still very difficult to deal with and catch a criminal dealing in multiple states unless the FBI gets involved since state level authorities don't have legal power outside of their home state. While you are allowed to drive your car into other states (canada & mexico) drivers licenses aren't valid except in their home state so they can't be used for bond in the event you get a ticket, so that means you either hand over cash or get arrested. Where if you are in your homestate you can post the license as bond until your court date.

Americans view state level legal powers vs federal level to be a pretty vast difference in scope and reach which is why states have varying guns regulations but a federal standard would be met with a lot of resistance. While we are a single country states all have a lot of variety in their regional and geographic needs and a somewhat different cultural identity. We're all Americans but the average person from Texas is going to have some very different opinions and outlook than somebody from New York or LA. There's a lot of states where guns are a vital part of every day life as rural areas depend on them for hunting and fishing, where urban centers like downtown LA or NY don't. This is further compounded by the huge geographic expanse between out states, many of our states are larger than entire countries in other areas of the world so getting a common agreement about how federal law should be applied is not an easy task. Americans highly prefer having their home state make decisions that they would not want to see applied at a federal level.

 Desubot wrote:

they tried with alcohol didnt they? (honestly dont remember)

No. Prohibition under the 18th amendment only banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol. (EDIT: import and export too I apparently) Consuming it through your mouth was still completely legal, and there was no law calling for all alcohol to be turned over. Everyone who wrote the amendment and supported it just figured that if you couldn't make, sell, or move it that eventually it would all get drunk and there wouldn't be anymore or what remained would sit unable to reach anyone who wanted it, which I suppose makes sense in the wild fantasy reality of Prohibitionists.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

they tried with alcohol didnt they? (honestly dont remember)

No. Prohibition under the 18th amendment only banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol. (EDIT: import and export too I apparently) Consuming it through your mouth was still completely legal, and there was no law calling for all alcohol to be turned over. Everyone who wrote the amendment and supported it just figured that if you couldn't make, sell, or move it that eventually it would all get drunk and there wouldn't be anymore or what remained would sit unable to reach anyone who wanted it, which I suppose makes sense in the wild fantasy reality of Prohibitionists.

Neet thanks.

 Desubot wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

PS Though I know its my opinion, I could see the bump stocks being banned completely, with no grandfathering rights. They are an addition, a supplement if you like and not the actual gun itself. Kind of like banning a particular make of tyre. The tyre goes not the car.

In general in the US, the government cannot ban something and then post facto seize it, no matter what it is.

they tried with alcohol didnt they? (honestly dont remember)

 WrentheFaceless wrote:

 Nostromodamus wrote:
Were bump stocks fitted to all of the weapons used?

Will there also be a call to ban trigger cranks and binary triggers?

I think it was reported that a significant amount of the 20+ had the bump-stocks

Edit: 12 guns out of the ones found in the room had bump-stocks

And several had jammed.


Lesson: Bump stocks and hot barrels don't go well together. He would have been better off firing semi auto and using the fancy Eotech and other sights he had.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I do find it humorous that a novelty gun mod used ONCE in a crime will now be the subject of a Federal ban (or at least heavy Federal regulation). How ludicrous can you get?


Hey , those let you shoot REALLY fast and inaccurately until you jam! Better make 'em hard to get!

Going back to the topic after this long and interesting digression on gun control:

Anyone wonder yet who was getting the feed from all these cameras he set up? I've been looking around and no one has said anything about them beyond none of them were recording anything locally, and some of the cameras had no logical use in this circumstance, unless you wanted to be sure he was really there and shooting.

also, he failed to make use of the tannerite car bomb he had outside. Which seems like a huge waste of effort to have not been used.


From youtube, this is a car containing the same amount of tannerite he had in his:

 BaronIveagh wrote:
Going back to the topic after this long and interesting digression on gun control:

Anyone wonder yet who was getting the feed from all these cameras he set up? I've been looking around and no one has said anything about them beyond none of them were recording anything locally, and some of the cameras had no logical use in this circumstance, unless you wanted to be sure he was really there and shooting.

The conspiracy nut in my wonders if this was all one big distraction while the "real" crime was taking place elsewhere in Vegas. Did any bank/casino vaults suddenly lose millions/billions in bearer bonds?

Vegas. Casino robbery?

Dear god. Where's Clooney?!

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

The conspiracy nut in my wonders if this was all one big distraction while the "real" crime was taking place elsewhere in Vegas. Did any bank/casino vaults suddenly lose millions/billions in bearer bonds?

Most casinos only keep a few million in cash on hand for that very reason.

It is so amazing that pro-gun activists will claim gun control laws will only stop law abiding citizens getting guns, that criminals will still get them just as easily. Then moments later those exact same people will claim guns are needed because if the government turns bad and you need to fight it, there'll be no way to get any guns if you don't already have them.

I mean come on guys, either gun control stops black market guns, or it doesn't.

 cuda1179 wrote:
I'd like to point out that the 1939 Heller case was a set-up by anti-gun politicians, prosecutors, and an activist judge. With an under-the-table handshake deal the judge in that case (very anti-gun) made a pro-gun verdict that was intentionally unconstitutional with the sole intent to have it appealed to the Supreme Court, some of its members openly anti-gun. They did this because they knew the Defendant was going into witness protection and couldn't appear himself, nor could he afford to send his lawyer. The Government got to have their side, and ONLY their side heard. Even then the decision was a mixed bag that was viewed as a victory by both sides.

You mean Miller, not Heller. Miller was the 1939 case, Heller was 2008.

Anyhow, what's interesting in your answer is this "have it appealed to the Supreme Court, some of its members openly anti-gun". Take away the loaded language of 'openly anti-gun', and replace with the neutral 'Supreme Court Justices who believed the 2nd applied only to the regulation of a militia' and you have to accept the point I was making in the first place - that the 2nd amendment right to guns is subjective, has been understood by people and the courts very differently over the history of your country, and that there is no reason it might not be understood differently in the future.

As such, this idea that the right is what it is and the only way around it is with a constitutional amendment is false. When the 2nd was more narrowly defined, the pro-gun side didn't get stuck thinking about the impossibility of a constitutional amendment that gave guns to everyone. They just did the work of changing how the 2nd is interpreted.

The same ability now sits with gun control advocates. There's nothing saying they'll be successful, and so far they're doing a hopeless job of it, but forever is a long time.

 sebster wrote:
It is so amazing that pro-gun activists will claim gun control laws will only stop law abiding citizens getting guns, that criminals will still get them just as easily. Then moments later those exact same people will claim guns are needed because if the government turns bad and you need to fight it, there'll be no way to get any guns if you don't already have them.

I mean come on guys, either gun control stops black market guns, or it doesn't.

...it doesn't.

Additionally, as shown by this LV shooter, no amount of laws would've stopped him for acquiring any weapons.

 Peregrine wrote:
Let's be realistic here, the right to own any gun you want is hardly "everything the nation has stood for", and opposition to the idea of the government taking your property hasn't stopped us from banning stuff in the past. Confiscating illegal guns is not any different from confiscating illegal drugs.

There is literally right now laws being drafted in congress to make it easier for the Federal government to take land that it wants to use for the border wall.

 sebster wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Let's be realistic here, the right to own any gun you want is hardly "everything the nation has stood for", and opposition to the idea of the government taking your property hasn't stopped us from banning stuff in the past. Confiscating illegal guns is not any different from confiscating illegal drugs.

There is literally right now laws being drafted in congress to make it easier for the Federal government to take land that it wants to use for the border wall.

...you mean... eminent domain? In which the government would be forced to pay you just compensation for the land? How on earth does that have anything to do with the conversation on hand??

....unless the "point" passed me a long time ago...

 d-usa wrote:
I think “just because we can” and “just fun to shoot stuff” are also reasons.

'Because they're cool and when you shoot them they make a loud noise and fire a piece of metal downrange at crazy speed and it's an amazing adrenaline rush' is also a really good reason.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
...you mean... eminent domain? In which the government would be forced to pay you just compensation for the land? How on earth does that have anything to do with the conversation on hand??

....unless the "point" passed me a long time ago...

Eminent domain as it stands isn't a very efficient tool for government to take land for its border wall. There are still cases grinding their way through the courts from Bush's border wall expansion. So there's new laws being drafted that will greatly reduce the grounds under which any land grabs can be contested.

And the point is to show the weird discrepancy in which people talk very strongly about some vague, hypothetical government action to take something... but when governments go about taking stuff, shock and surprise there's no armed rebellion. When it does happen, like the Bundy clan, almost everyone recognises them as a bunch of crazies making a terrible choice, even if they're sympathetic to their original dispute.

It will, hopefully, make people realise that all the talk about how they'll totally be badass resistance fighters if they come for our guns is just a bit of fantasy roleplay.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
That's horsepuckey... hence why Alexander Hamilton argued ferverntly for it.

If you believe that the letter written by Alexander Hamilton to be so universally wise, I expect you must be spending a lot of your time lobbying the federal government to disband the military;
"If standing armies are dangerous to liberty, an efficacious power over the militia, in the body to whose care the protection of the State is committed, ought, as far as possible, to take away the inducement and the pretext to such unfriendly institutions."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
Can you blame them??? That's smart politics...

Bonus points if they're able to get that suppressor legislation to pass along with that.

My guess is the GOP will take a single bill to the floor, that legalises silencers while it bans bump stocks. This costs the gun control crowd an argument, that the GOP will never pass a gun control measure, but it costs them no support among their own pro-gun base because they're losing something minor and getting something they really want.

It's a similar ploy to what they just did with CHIP, funding the program again but doing it by taking the funding out of Medicare. The difference this time, though, is that banning bump stocks while you legalise silencers is a pretty good change.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
...it doesn't.

No. The actual answer is that it isn't a binary state where either it is just as easy to get a gun whether they're illegal or not, or if guns are illegal then you cannot get one no matter what. Instead when guns are illegal they become harder to get, exactly how much harder would depend on your criminal connections and how much money you've got. So organised criminal gangs, especially ones already working in smuggling, then yeah it won't be hard for them. But most people have no such connections, and so there will be a hurdle placed in front of them.

To get back to the point about accessing guns for a rebellion, any moderately successful rebellion is going to have org structures similar to the organised criminals, they will be well placed to get their hands on plenty of guns.

Additionally, as shown by this LV shooter, no amount of laws would've stopped him for acquiring any weapons.

But everything he had was legal. If that kit was illegal then any attempt to acquire it, no matter how much money he had to burn, meant a risk of being detected by law enforcement. Not saying he would have been stopped, but it's just plain wrong to deny that it could not have happened at all.

 sebster wrote:
It will, hopefully, make people realise that all the talk about how they'll totally be badass resistance fighters if they come for our guns is just a bit of fantasy roleplay.

Well, you just have to prepare correctly to keep the fantasy alive.



Anyway so far as the cameras, I don't want to wander too far into Alex Jones territory here, but the idea the cameras - which were not recording - were streaming elsewhere is a pretty fair one, I think.

 stanman wrote:

Crispy78 wrote:

 AndrewC wrote:

So a middle aged man drops $75K on guns and equipment with no apparent motive and nobody picked up on it? I understand on a fundamental logical basis that you can't anticipate that. But at the same time surely there should have been alarm bells going off somewhere.

You'd think. I read this article the other day, though:

https://www.gq.com/story/inside-federal-bureau-of-way-too-many-guns/amp

Gun ownership is not tracked in anywhere near a useful way. It is *illegal* for it to be computerised and easily searchable, due to lobbying from groups like the NRA. It's all down to the dude in this article and his staff, manually searching his warehouse and shipping containers containing millions of bloody paper records.

This, America, is your starting point. The car comparison has already been made, let's explore further.

1) To operate a car you must undergo thorough training, and pass both a written and a practical test to qualify for a license

2) Car ownership is tracked, stored in a database and is easily searchable

3) Car insurance is mandatory

I'd suggest at the very least the same should be required for gun ownership.

Private car ownership and drivers licenses are only tracked on a state level, not a federal/national level and the main purpose of licensing is to help the state pay for roads, you can be a pretty terrible and irresponsible driver and still own a car and get a license which is part of why we have so many auto deaths every year. I'd honestly prefer if they did something about people using cell phones while driving as I'm many times more likely to be hurt & killed by a distracted driver on a cell phone than facing the risk of being shot by somebody.

why worry about distracted drivers though, they kill less people than people with guns. they're statistically meaningless right?

Yet there's road signs up everywhere saying it's illegal, there's awareness campaigns saying how bad it is, and police out actively looking for drivers using their phones.

Seems like a lot of wasted effort for something so insignificant. If we can pass all those laws, spend all that money for ads, and it don't seem to overwork our police, makes you wonder why it can't be done for guns as well.

It's time for all guns to be treated like cars, registered, licensed and insured.

After all the horror the victims just went through, they're now preparing for the next horrific event, the hospital bill. I really hope they all sue the estate and any company with his name on it for the costs.

PS, I also find the we need guns to protect ourselves from the government, to be utter nonsense. If a cop shows up on your door with a warrant to seize your guns, are you really going to raise your guns to that officer? What about blue lives matters? or the common statement after any police shooting "if you reach for a gun, they're going to kill you"

and lastly about fun with statistics, if you bring a gun into your house it is magnitudes more likely to be used on yourself or your family, than to even prevent a crime, let alone the near non existent home invasion.

 Desubot wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

they tried with alcohol didnt they? (honestly dont remember)

No. Prohibition under the 18th amendment only banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol. (EDIT: import and export too I apparently) Consuming it through your mouth was still completely legal, and there was no law calling for all alcohol to be turned over. Everyone who wrote the amendment and supported it just figured that if you couldn't make, sell, or move it that eventually it would all get drunk and there wouldn't be anymore or what remained would sit unable to reach anyone who wanted it, which I suppose makes sense in the wild fantasy reality of Prohibitionists.

Neet thanks.

And even then, IIRC it was still legal to make alcohol for personal consumption. I think there was also exemptions for religious organizations(communion in Catholic Churches).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 sebster wrote:

But everything he had was legal. If that kit was illegal then any attempt to acquire it, no matter how much money he had to burn, meant a risk of being detected by law enforcement. Not saying he would have been stopped, but it's just plain wrong to deny that it could not have happened at all.

You're incorrectly assuming a total ban on something. When really that's actually very rare to totally ban something.

I personally don't expect the "ban on bump stocks" to actually be a ban. It will just classify Bump Stocks as automatic weapons. Meaning it's still very much possible to legally acquire them via expensive licenses. And existing bump stocks will be grandfathered in.

Money was clearly not in short supply for this guy, so even if this legislation all went through decades ago, he still had every means to acquire the gear he had.

And if push came to shove, thumb and a belt loop would accomplish the same thing as a bump stock.

 Grey Templar wrote:
And if push came to shove, thumb and a belt loop would accomplish the same thing as a bump stock.

This is not accurate. You can bump fire without a modified stock, but a modified stock significantly improves your ability to aim while doing so.

 Ouze wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
And if push came to shove, thumb and a belt loop would accomplish the same thing as a bump stock.

This is not accurate. You can bump fire without a modified stock, but a modified stock significantly improves your ability to aim while doing so.

In this specific situation, "Aim" is not really a word that applies. He pointed the guns in a general direction and let fly.

sirlynchmob wrote:


why worry about distracted drivers though, they kill less people than people with guns. they're statistically meaningless right?

Yet there's road signs up everywhere saying it's illegal, there's awareness campaigns saying how bad it is, and police out actively looking for drivers using their phones.

Seems like a lot of wasted effort for something so insignificant. If we can pass all those laws, spend all that money for ads, and it don't seem to overwork our police, makes you wonder why it can't be done for guns as well.

It's time for all guns to be treated like cars, registered, licensed and insured.

Statistically accidents involving distracted drivers are far more frequent than shooting and result in hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage and medical bills. (if not ranging into the billions) A quick google search is listing cell phone usage causing an estimated 1.6 million accidents in a year with about 3,400 fatalities. The fatalities are less than shooting victims but there's close to 400k people injured in the cell phone caused accidents where shooting injuries were listed at about 73k, that's 5.4x as many people injured in cell phone driving accidents which also incur a staggering amount of property damage and medical care which is why the insurance aspect for cars is stressed so heavily. Those numbers are specifically from cell phone caused accidents and it doesn't include regular accidents, drunk driving and people just being plain ol' stupid behind the wheel. (which puts their overall fatalities much higher than gunshot related deaths)

While I don't live my life in constant paranoia of being killed by a driver on a cell phone or a drunk driver it's far more likely to happen than being shot. I'm constantly around bad driving and seeing people on their phones and so it's something that does enter my mind as I'm exposed to it. Despite being in Chicago aka murder capitol of the world I have no concerns about being shot as the risks are far less as long as I don't live in the south side and if I'm not a minority, even then it's very marginal but getting hurt or killed by a car is a very distinct and real probability. At least in IL cars are less regulated than guns are. (with the exception of the insurance requirement which is easily skirted)

There's an easy autofix for cell phone driving and that would be for the phone companies to disable texting and calls anytime the system detects a phone moving more than 5mph, but if you dare make that suggestion people will absolutely lose their minds cause 'mah rights to texting can't be infringed! feth anybody else that's on the road with me.

sirlynchmob wrote:
[and lastly about fun with statistics, if you bring a gun into your house it is magnitudes more likely to be used on yourself or your family, than to even prevent a crime, let alone the near non existent home invasion.

Actually, this needs a bit of clarification and context. Overall, yes, that statistic is correct. However, that only counts deaths. Accidental shootings are more likely to be lethal than shooting at (or simply brandishing a weapon without firing) an intruder. A gun doesn't need to be lethal to protect you.

Areas known to have high gun concentrations are also less likely to be the subject of a robbery, so not only is there a deterrence factor, but it also skews the results of comparative studies.

Also a hugely disproportionate number of "accidents" with guns fall into some pretty predictable demographics. Follow some pretty simple rules and you are less likely to kill yourself than an intruder. Don't have a chemical dependency, don't own illegal weapons, don't be involved in criminal activities, and don't have a history of mental illness. That more than evens out the statistics right there. In addition, those that have carry and conceal permits are less likely to have accidents. Not having children also a large variable, as is training, location, and education level. An elderly, college educated, single, white woman living in a bad urban neighborhood, with a CCW permit, training, and no kids is significantly more likely to use it in self defense than on themselves.

As for home invasions not being a thing, according to the Washington post there are 8,000 reported home invasions per day in the US. That's about 3 million per year. There are 116 million households in the US according to the US census. That means that the average household has a 2.5% chance of a home invasion in any particular year. 60% of home invasions have 2 or more intruders, with 60% of all rapes occurring during such crimes.