It’s common, in the aftermath of an event like today’s for the features and capabilities of the firearms used to be wrong or exaggerated. In the hopes of keeping some semblance of factual reporting alive in these FUD-tastic times, I wanted to go over the truth about the weapons used in today’s school shooting . . .
Right now, the only thing we know for sure is that a Glock handgun, a SIG Sauer handgun and a 5.56 caliber Bushmaster rifle (which can only be an AR-15 of some flavor) were used in the shooting. According to latest reports, the AR-15 was the primary weapon used.
The AR-15 platform is currently, as far as anyone can tell, the single most popular model of rifle available in the United States. Easy to use, easy to clean and with low recoil, the rifle is the firearm of choice for everything from competition shooting to varmint and hog hunting. The popularity of the rifle comes not because of its rate of fire or detachable magazines, but instead because the rifle is modular — it is able to be re-configured to meet the end user’s needs without any help from a gunsmith or special tools. This was the first firearm design to be commercially successful that allowed an unskilled end user to reconfigure their firearm without a gunsmith, and the popularity of that design has translated into massive sales every year.
Bushmaster is unofficially the top-selling manufacturer of AR-15 rifles in the United States. The company produces a number of different configurations of AR-15 rifles, dubbed “XM-15” in their product line, most retailing for between $1,000 and $1,500 and placing them in the middle of the market in terms of pricing. Bushmaster is owned by Freedom Group, which is a large firearms holding group that also owns Remington, Advanced Armament Corp, Barnes, TAPCO and others. A Bushmaster-manufactured rifle was used in the D.C. Beltway Sniper shootings in 2002, and the ensuing court action led them to settle and pay millions of dollars to the families of the victims.
Rifles can be purchased in Connecticut without a permit, given that you wait 14 days between paying and taking the gun home. This requirement can be removed if you’ve taken hunter education or other firearms training classes.
Connecticut has an assault weapons ban. I go into more detail about AWBs and assault weapons in my piece “The Truth About Assault Weapons and Assault Weapons Bans” but the basic idea is that assault weapons bans do not actually reduce the availability of the firearms that they are trying to stop, instead and only inconvenience legal gun owners.
Handguns in Connecticut are more tightly controlled than in almost any other state. In order to purchase one not only do you have to go through the federally mandated background check before buying the gun, but Connecticut also requires their citizens to have a permit to purchase the handgun and take a firearms safety course.
According to latest reports, the guns used in the crime were legally owned and registered to the shooter’s mother — who was found dead earlier today. The shooter, at 20 years old, was not old enough to purchase handguns legally as the minimum age is 21.
Glock handguns are massively popular around the world for military, law enforcement officers and civilian shooters. Available for around $500 each, the firearms are not only robust and reliable but accurate and easy to use. For that reason they’ve been adopted by more police departments and military units than almost any other firearm. They’re also the favorite of competition shooters and those looking to defend their homes and lives.
SIG Sauer is another major handgun manufacturer, with their U.S. offices in Exeter, NH. Their handguns are highly regarded for the precision machining involved in their manufacture and their reliability. However, unlike the Glock line of handguns the SIG Sauer line typically sell for hundreds of dollars more. They have introduced a handgun called the SP2022 that is cheaper than most Glock handguns and sold in many sporting goods stores.
Both of these manufacturers are foreign companies that import their handguns into the United States. Glock handguns are made in Austria, and Sig Sauer are typically made in Germany.
According to the local laws, possession of a firearm is illegal on primary and secondary school premises:
It is unlawful to possess a firearm on public or private elementary or secondary school property.
I’ll keep this post updated as more information becomes available.
A couple stories I’ve seen have indicated that the assault weapon was a Bushmaster, and that it was not used in the attack, but instead was found in the shooter’s vehicle.
Regardless of the non-use of the Bushmaster, I expect that will not stop the cry for another AWB.
True. Not only that, but they say that the Glock…..CAN….hold up to thirty round extended mags (not what magazines WERE ACTUALLY USED by the little creep). Were they regular 17 or 19 rounders, 30 rounders, or……….10 rounders (all I heard emphasized were the 30 rounders). Aint the liberal media clever.
The truth is that none of the talk about the firearms is anything but a red-herring, a distraction away from the real point of this incident. The only point of significance is that a lunatic was not intercepted before he could commit murder and that lunatic control is the type of public-safety control we should be discussing in this country.
Allowing this to become yet another conversation about firearms, which doesn’t address the real issue, is just more insanity.
Indeed. It’s like having multiple articles and discussions about what kind of car a drunk was driving when he hit another car. Funny how it’s always about alcohol, the root cause, rather than the device used.
SUVs are assault vehicles.
I have even read reports that the shooter was recognized and “buzzed in” on this basis. Call me crazy, but that sounds like a huge and litigious breech of a security protocol. Also, without and armed guard and detectors its pretty much just security theater.
I take my kids to school every day. Sometimes my son forgets his glasses and have to go back to take them to him. The people at the front desk know me… so they just buzz me in when they see it’s me.
This guy is the son of one of the teachers. It’s easy to see how they’d see him as one of their own.
Dude, it doesn’t matter if he used a bolt action .22. They be comin’ for em all.
So a AWB would have not stopped the attack and murder. A handgun was used reports say.
I don’t know why people around here are bothering to make the argument that an AWB wouldn’t have stopped this, and trying to use that as talking point. It’s bad that an AWB wouldn’t have stopped this. Why? Because now the politicians can say that an AWB isn’t “common sense” enough and that even further restrictions are needed to be put in place now.
Nick:
I appreciate your quest for the facts but that is not the issue here. We really should be talking about why American society is producing so many sociopaths who are now willing to move from the world of fantasy to real world actions. I fear we have reached the moral tipping point where we no longer can exist as a free society.
Agreed.
Do we as a country have the stomach to really look at why our culture produces people that are so sick mentally/emotionally that they selfishly feel that their suicide must not only include their own death, but the murder of helpless, innocent children?
Not to sound too harsh (because life is precious), but it makes you wish that these crazy nutjobs would just quietly take their own lives at home rather than violating what should be one of our unbreakable social taboos – killing kids.
Except that statement totally flies int he face of the actual numbers on violence and crime, both here in the US and the world at large.
While overall crime is indeed down there seems to be an increase in these shootings by sociopathd. We did not see these kinds of shootings 40 years ago when there little or no control over who had access to guns. You could argue that we have just had a draw from the tail of the distribution but I am starting to believe that this is a trend.
That’s because 40 years ago, we didn’t have the media to make you an icon known by millions if you did something like this.
40 years ago we didn’t have an internet full of experts and 20 channels of talking heads on a 24-hour news cycle.
If you shot 30 people at one time in any era you would become an instant celebrity. It would just take a few days longer for the story to get out in the pre-radio days. Once radio came along it was nearly instantaneous. See the Lindberg kidnapping.
Go read about Charles Whitman and the Texas Tower Shooting.
It happened, the perpetrators just weren’t subsequently worshipped on television for the next 3 weeks.
Actually Whitman was and the fact that you know who he is and what he did shows it.
40 years ago teachers and administrators weren’t banned from having a gun at school. In 1990 congress passed the Gun free school zone bill and school shootings have done nothing but increase since then. Prior to that America survived 214 years with guns being allowed on school property and very few incidents of school shootings. Perhaps because teachers and administrators could and did fight back and actually had the means to protect our kids? Blame the shooter and the laws that create gun free victims zones, not the tool these sociopaths use.
Perhaps the following, Footnote #13 from a paper “Multiple Victim Public Shootings” will clarify the difference between the“effect” and “intent” of “gun free school zones“.
“. . . the recent rash of public school shootings . . . raise[s] questions about the unintentional consequences of laws. ALL the[se] public school shootings took place AFTER a 1995 federal law banned guns (including permitted concealed handguns) within a thousand feet of a school. . . . It is interesting to note that during the 1977 to 1995 period, [prior to the federal law, a total of ] 15 shootings took place in schools in states WITHOUT right-to-carry laws and ONLY ONE took place in a state WITH this type of law. There were 19 deaths and 97 injuries in states WITHOUT the law, while there was one death and two injuries in states WITH the law.” (EMPHASIS ADDED)
NOT producing more psychotics, just televising them more. I know that none of you know about the grisly multiple-murder/suicide in my home town when I was a teen….because that sort of thing was not national news back then. Heck even the local news was reluctant to touch it. I’m sure there were many other incidents in other places that -I- never heard about for the same reasons.
Boy not now, national 24/7 news is a grim beast that demands to be fed no matter what.
Still I agree completely that we need to find ways to manage the psychotics we have.
@Nick Leghorn
“Connecticut also requires their citizens to have a permit to purchase the handgun, only issued after taking a firearms safety course. Once the paperwork is completed, there is a 14 day waiting period between the actual purchase and when the handgun can be taken home.”
Absolutely wrong.
Without a permit, you cannot purchase a handgun period. Without a permit you can purchase a long gun which does have a 14-day waiting period.
All guns require a safety course (either NRA or Hunters for rifles)
WITH a permit, you can purchase whatever you want without a waiting period.
CT does have strict gun laws and gun free zones and no-gun signs carry the penalty of law.
See the CT state statues
http://www.jud.ct.gov/lawlib/law/firearms.htm
Or, for a better summary, visit here
http://ctcarry.com/News/Releases
Much appreciated, fixed and updated.
Also note that the handgun permit requires you take an NRA Safety Course ($100) and submit various applications and be fingerprinted by the local pd (aggregate approx $140). Proceesing time for the initial “temporary” permit is measured in months. Once you get it, you have to take the “temporary” permit to the state police for final paperwork, photographing and issuance of the permanent permit.
Not exactly a process for someone operting under a time constraint or acting on a whim. As Pascal notes, once you have the permit, you can buy any hand or long guns that are legal in the state with no waiting period and just the usual background check.
I understand his parents lived in Connecticut but isn’t the shooter from New Jersey where its even harder to buy a gun? I wonder where he obtained the guns.
Lets blame the mother of the shooter for not reporting his violent threats and erratic behavior to the police. Shooters like this always leave a trail of behavioral red flags that were actively ignored by people who couldn’t be bothered to intervene.
Yeah, here we go, the childish “ban all weapons” because look what they did. I hope to read someday of someone with a 460 S&W etc taking out one of these prize a$$holes because the die seems to be cast here, wear a vest when you make your last stand, Randy
We all would, but you won’t find anyone that meets that qualification in a gun-free zone – that’s the real problem,
Lets blame the mother of the shooter for not reporting his violent threats and erratic behavior to the police. Shooters like this always leave a trail of behavioral red flags that were actively ignored by people who couldn’t be bothered to intervene.
Chris, unfortuantely the shooter shot his Kindergarden teacher mom as he worked his way through the class.I believe 20 year old Adam Lanza also killed his dad before heading to the school.
I posted this earlier on the withdrawn thread. So I report it here.
I purposely have not read any comments on this latest tragedy. I don’t care to debate the pros and cons of guns and gun control. Evil is the cause of this and other similar events. Evil exists in the world despite the best efforts of collectivist “progressives” and libertarians to extirpate the concept from our collective unconscious. Good and evil are concepts that only flow from a higher power (God) and a society that abandons God will see more and more of these events. When Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God it didn’t quite make him a happy camper. It drove him to despair because he understood that without God there is no moral law and all things become permissible. It is no accident that all forms of socialism end up in mass murder of some sort.
For those who can drag themselves away from their busy schedules I recommend Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Possessed” (also translated as “The Devils or “The Demons”) There is a character, really Dostoyevsky’s most important character, Nicolai Stavrogin who is the literary prototype for sociopathic spree shooters among us.
I am beginning to think that the Second Amendment is only fit for a society grounded in the unambiguous acceptance that good and evil exist and they are not equal in value. I don’t see any of founding fathers disagreeing with this statement. So contemplate this my fellow gunnies and Mr. Bonomo: What price do you want to pay to live in a morally dead secular society.
IMHO, the gun right groups should talk about mental health and push Obamacare to expand its reach to give people mental health coverage — that should change the conversation to healthcare and even the anti-gun crowd will not be able to fight that argument unless they want to say there is not mental health issues
We need to reach out to these people and have a way for them to reach out to us before anyone gets hurt. This guy won’t be the last one for sure. We need to nip this in the bud.
+100
Go to CNN and click on a tearful president to see the story. But most important scroll down to the comments for a real chill down your spine. These people are myopic about GUNS KILLED THOSE KIDS. Not 12 hours have passed in it’s already grist for the political mill. If not a false flag this was allowed to happen. I guess the 2 poor souls in Oregon weren’t enough.
I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy nut but that is exactly what I was thinking when this happened. Only a few dead in a mall at Christmas time just didn’t pull the national media attention enough so 3 days later 18 kindergarteners are killed. Look at the media attention now. It’s a gun control advovcates wet dream. Seems a bit too convenient.
Nick,
You say “Right now, the only thing we know for sure is that a Glock handgun, a Sig Sauer handgun and a 5.56 caliber rifle was used in the shooting.”
Be carefull, we don’t know anything for sure. Also be wary of the where these stories come from.
I am suprised that there we not a lot more wounded. Almost makes me think that he lined the kids up and shot them in the head. To use two hand guns and have so many kill shots is unusal to me at least.
Just heard their Mother was found dead. The guns were bought by her.
So it appears they killed her, and stole her guns.
Let’s wait a day or so, the true story will come out.
Guy22
Guy22: From what I’ve read, it appears that the shooter (whichever son he turns out to be), may have gone to the school with the intention of killing his mom. His dad was reportedly found dead at their home. He apparently went more or less directly to her classroom, and shot her and the ~18 children in her room. The majority, if not all the other adults who were killed seem to have been those who responded to the sounds of the initial shots.
Of course, I could turn out to be totally wrong, but that is a scenario I’ve seen reported/theorized in multiple places. It could be correct, or, like the initial reports of the shooter’s name, it could be the media machine feeding off itself and promulgating incorrect info. Time will tell.
6:25 p.m.: Nancy Lanza, mother of gunman Adam Lanza, was found dead in her Connecticut home. The 20-year-old man, shot her in the face, authorities told ABC News. Following the murder of his mother, Lanza, carrying at least two semi-automatic pistols and an automatic rifle, drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where his mother worked. There he killed 20 children and six adults.
I also read that she owned the guns.
Let’s wait a while!!!
Guy22
CBS confirms that the weapon in the crime where two handguns a Glock and SiG. The AR or Bushmaster was NOT used in the crime.
First/easisest target now – a CT ban on normal (a/k/a “high”) cap mags.
Because the six year-olds could have rushed him during a reload break, right? And nobody who brought two pistols to a mass murder would even consider bringing three.
Morons.
First of all, I’m against any kind of AWB or other restriction, but I am a realist and can see which way the wind is currently blowing.
That said, let me play Devil’s Advocate here for a minute. Here’s the problem with the comment that AWBs don’t work. The reason they don’t work currently is that they are not universal. Just because CT has a ban, there is nothing to stop someone from getting a gun from their friend (or stealing one) from someone living in a state without an AWB. As a point of comparison, let’s take a look at the restrictions around fully automatic weapons. Today, the only way to legally acquire one is to find someone who owns one and is willing to sell it to you. Because there are only a finite number of legally transferable guns on the market, prices are high – starting around $3K for an MAC-10 or -11 style submachine pistol and going to north of $20K for an MP5. Add to this the onerous transfer procedure and 6 month wait time and you have almost no legally transferable guns used in crimes.
Now, if an AWB were to be enacted similarly to the existing machine gun registry – all existing guns would need to be registered and tracked, no guns made after a specific date legal for civilian ownership, prices on these legal weapons would go up and within a decade or so, people would not be using these sorts of things too much to commit crimes. What’s insidious about this sort of plan as opposed to an all-out Di-Fi style roundup of guns is that lots of people who might otherwise be opposed to such a law and who own such guns themselves would see it as the potential investment opportunity it is and would be less likely to oppose it en masse.
Fact is that the Constitution is no help with an AWB. That was proved back in 1994 when the first AWB was imposed. There were no successful court challenges to it – only the fact that there was a fair amount of political opposition to it is what prevented it from becoming permanent. With shit going down like what happened today, pretty soon people are going to start screaming for their congresscritters to “do something” and frankly, there are simply not enough gun owners yet when compared to the number of gun haters and people otherwise ambivalent. When the electorate starts to demand changes, even the most pro-NRA congressmen are going to start to waver in their commitment.
As was previously commented, pro 2A folks are indeed in for a world of hurt. 20 dead children is simply unacceptable. It crosses a line. Dead adults at a Batman movie are one thing. Parents burying their young children is entirely something different. All the rational statistics about how so many more people are killed in car accidents, etc. won’t matter one hill of beans once the ball starts rolling.
Irrespective of our belief in the meaning of 2A, the fact is that something intolerable just happened with all of the existing laws and protections in place. People will say these protections are obviously ineffective and will demand more from their elected officials.
Your all too positive fact is NO Assault Weapon was used in this crime. Fact two is unlike in 1994 Congress is divided and a GOP house I doubt would pass a AWB.
What was used or not used is going to be irrelevant to johnny and josie sixpack. People are going to “want something done” and the anti-2a folks will be only to happy to offer up something like an AWB.
Also don’t bet on having the protection of a divided congress. A tragedy like this gets folks thinking peculiar thoughts and scary shit happens. Enough people scream and congressmen start fearing for their jobs.
As I said before, this many dead children so young is going to change the nature of the discussion.
Jim:
Good points, but even the AWBs like the one in CT don’t really do anything besides annoy people – it just means that all the major makers of M4geries just make a version with no bayonet lug, the stock pinned and the flash supprossor welded on (or with a bull barrel).
Assuming of course a new AWB followed the model of an old one. A new one could be far more ranging making it harder for manufacturers to circumvent. The best thing is no AWB at all.
its true. people will turn to anyone or “anything” that they feel offers them a solution to their problems…no matter how illogical, idiotic, and asinine it may be (the patriot act being a example).
only one thing to say jim about your devils advocate comment in regards to lack of universal assault weapons effectiveness: jamaica. Also, firearms crimes were unaffected by assault weapons bans. 1/6th of 1% of crimes were committed with “assault weapons”. This incident is not one of them.
i was fairly optimistic about another AWB not being passed. Now I would strongly recommend you buy that AR if you havent already. Im not even kidding. keep the plastic wrap, cosmoline, and shovel handy 😉
Samuel Colt patented his revolver designs in 1836. Pretty soon after that, they became common in the United States…but school shootings didn’t follow in their wake. You could walk into a schoolhouse with a couple six-shooters and do some serious damage, just about as much as a lunatic with a Glock, yet people didn’t do such things.
Back then.
Now, they do. The problem isn’t the evolution of firepower, but the decay of character. America today is made up largely of evil sociopaths and timid hive dwellers. Guns are actually only the tools that evil people use on hive dwellers, and until the hive dwellers get it through their collective consciousness that the real problem is evil, and not feature sets, incidents like this will continue to happen.
The problem is that the hive dwellers have been conditioned to accept both antisocial and sociopathic behavior as normal, even cool. Daniel Patrick Moynihan called it defining deviancy down. I blame both the collectivists and their fraternal twin, the libertarians, for banishing the concepts of universal good and evil from our collective unconscious.
libertarians, the paternal twin of collectivists???
give me a fucking break. you really dont know much about libertarianism.
i somewhat agreed with you until i read that big whopper.
concepts of universal good and evil??? there have always been psychopaths. there have always been murderers. people have always been oppressing and murdering for power. nothing has changed since we crawled out of the swamp some many moons ago. here’s the catch too: many of these psychopaths and murders were religious figures and/or had strong religious faith based on concepts of “universal good and evil”.
but its easier to perceive things as getting worse from a society’s point of view. This is the cycle that republics go through and have since Athens and Rome.
“About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:
‘A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.’
‘A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.’
‘From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.’
‘The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years.’
‘During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:
1. from bondage to spiritual faith
2. from spiritual faith to great courage
3. from courage to liberty
4. from liberty to abundance
5. from abundance to complacency
6. from complacency to apathy
7. from apathy to dependence
8. from dependence back into bondage.”
It is time to do away with “Gun Free Zones”. Let the teacher arm and defend themselves. These “Mass Shootings” only happen in places where people are not allowed to be armed.
There are already 300 million guns in private hands. Tons of ammunition and magazines. Private citizens already own more guns then the US Military. Government will not be able to disarm people without a bloody civil war. We will not allow ourselves to be passively disarmed.
Gun Control is pointless. It only stops the minority of Non-Gun owners from acquiring guns.By not allowing some people to own guns, they would be creating a Two Class Society… One Armed and On Unarmed. Given enough time, history has shown, that armed people will enslave unarmed people. For everyone to be truly equal, everyone must be equally armed.
Thanks Nick, for the good info. I’m praying for these grieving families, as I’m sure we all are.
The Dunblane school shooting was the pretext for banning guns in England and it will be the same here. It took something horrible for the government in England to have enough support to render its citizens defenseless and pliable, which was the real purpose of the two Firearms Acts that effectively stripped private citizens of the right to defend themselves. Not surprisingly, there was no shortage of Judas Goats in England, nor is there a shortage in the US. Or, for that matter, Italy.
I’m afraid this culminates in a perfect storm of incidents that will lead to widespread gun control regulations.
1) recent, multiple, high profile spree shootings in places where we always felt safe. Movie theater, shopping mall, place of worship, and an elementary school.
2) high death toll involving young children. Americans LOVE children more than anything else. Everything we do is ‘for the children’. And we will see an unprecedented tidal wave of people clamoring gun control. I’ve already seen more gun control themed posts in my FB newsfeed today than during all the other spree shootings in the last two yrs combined.
3) citizens will expect the politicians to ‘do SOMETHING’ and with the shooter dead, the only action politicians know is gun control. It won’t make us safer, but it’ll make many FEEL safer and that’s good enough for politicians.
“Reports are saying that a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle was found in the car of the attacker, but not used.”
I’m not doubting you, but it would be helpful to know what reports you’re talking about. There have been other reports saying that the rifle was used and that .223 shell casings were found at the scene.
BeninMA: I don’t think that line was originally in the post (if it was, sorry, Nick), but I made a comment to that effect way up in the very first comment. I had seen it in at least a couple places at that point, including both CNN and CBS. Most all of the news outlets are continuously editing their stories as details emerge. Notable among them is CNN, who isn’t editing their story, but instead posting time stamped updates as they learn new information. On the other hand, they’re clearly not the most accurate, because they’re still listing Ryan Lanza as the shooter, when most everyone else is reporting that it was his brother Adam, and that he may have had Ryan’s ID. None of the news outlets have the full story, clearly, and many have anywhere from a few to most of the details wrong.
Thank you Matt. “We’ve been giving out bad information all day” is becoming almost a headline at this point.
My local CBS radio station is now reporting that the rifle was not used. (Which wasn’t what they were saying before.)
There will be more restrictions at the state level but this will fade away in a couple of weeks when the next big thing grabs the headlines. Our short attention span is merely a sign of our moral decline.
Katie bar the door…they will be coming hard for us now.
Never mind that this crap would stop if every time a shooter started cranking off rounds they were immediately shot dead. What needs to happen is everyone carrying a firearm every where…no gun free anything. But that won’t happen…we are on the precipice, and the policticians are about to push.
Another thing to consider is that we are currently in a lame duck session of congress – a number of them aren’t going to be back in a month, so they can easily vote for things that they would normally oppose.
Ralph & Goldenboy are both right, the shooters (or whoever is behind them) have attacked the cultural weakness of know-nothing Americans – children and places we go frequently.
We can argue the ins and outs of an AWB, but the stupid sheep baying for gun control don’t know a thing about it, all they want is for the big government to protect them. They won’t read or understand the bills that are presented, or ultimately passed.
Also consider that politicians “keep score”, today obama let susan rice go, so the repubs “owe” him something. Before the tragedy today I thogught that might be part of a fiscal cliff deal. Now I think he will cash in that chip elsewhere.
Remember the big picture, nothing happens in a vacumn. Everything is interconnected. Gun control effects other things too.
Regardless of what the restrictions someone would have lost their life today due to his mental state. Rather guns exist or not, he would have found a way. I did not even have to look at the details of the event to know this was not done with your average everyday hunting gun. This was done with something that was meant to kill people, and right i was. I don’t believe in AWB either as I enjoy shooting myself but I find that we need stricter laws against Automatic and semi automatic weapons. Ban if necessary. I can live without the need to fire a automatic and semi auto gun. I also see that its not really the restrictions on how you purchase the fire arms. I honestly think that would have made no difference. The guns he used could have easily been his friends, or even his family members who already gone through the process of getting them. Im sure the shooter didnt care who they were registered through he got them and used them. Nothing was going to stop him.
Concern troll is concerned. And trolling. And knows little about guns.
John Kerry?
And if the shooter had had 3 or 4 DAO 8 or 10 shot .22 revolvers, he could have killed just as many just as fast. They’re not considered ‘semi-auto’, but they’re just as quick. Heck, a lever action .22 or SAO revolver would have been just as handy. The fact is that the ability to shoot faster only kills more people in Hollywood. The point of rapid fire isn’t to kill, it’s to scare. On the battlefield, you don’t really see Rambo-style full-auto charges into scores of enemies who just lay down and die. You do see suppressive fire directed at the enemy to keep them in their holes while you get closer or further away, depending on the objective. In reality, whether you’re shooting in a spree killing or on the battlefield, you only kill as fast as you aim, acquire a target, and pull a trigger. So really, arguments that seem logical at first glance about limiting access to weapons capable of sending X number of rounds down range in X amount of time are fundamentally flawed and show an overall unfamiliarity with weapons.
Right now Michael Savage is howling we need more gun control, as if it would have mattered. Savage argues for gun control in many subtle ways, he always couches his statements with the fact HE owns guns, but people should be barred from possessing military style guns, drum magazines, body armor, and he even says people shouldnt have “too many guns.”
Even supposed Conservatives are going to take the “sensible” path to Obamas inevitable push for more gun control, which will result in higher prices for guns and ammo, a de facto “Obama tax” if you will.
You are erroneous in stating that Bushmaster and/or its parent corporation, Freedomworks and Cerebus Capital Management paid millions to settle suits related to the D.C. Sniper shootings. The actual figure was less than $500,000. Where did you find that alleged multimillion dollar settlement figure?
I am one of your neighbours, living in Canada, and observing the debate emerging from the horrific events in Newtown CT with a sense of deja vu, and despair. I suggest you good people face the impossible task of effecting a wholesale cultural change that will not take hold in our lifetimes, if it were to ever take root in the first place. It is not simply a matter of “gun culture” – it is a matter of your entire culture – culture which we here in Canada share to some extent because we are your valued, involved neighbours, and because we too are increasinly self-absorbed. Good luck with your 1st and 2nd amendment debates,especially now that the NRA is blaming video games as their first enlightened response, and calling for creation of a stigmatizing register of those who have been treated for mental illness – those who life challenges have nothing to do with gun ownership.Nothing will change, until the need to change is realized and ACTED upon. Response to 9/11 was to a largely external threat, and changed everything for everyone. The internal threat you have long faced and in truth ignored is now again laid bare, in its horror and complexity. Collectively, you are like Rome at the peak of its power, but too many of you eat from lead plates. Here, I can own all matter of weapons, under strict licence.I am just not allowed to toss them into my glove compartment or trunk, or take them to the mall with me. Because there is no need to. Riddle me that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Read this Second is not about hunting as the gun takers want you to beleive. It doen’t say a musket or bolt action. A weapon for defense. I’ll decide. If you gun takers. Why did the newspaper that posted the gun permit holders hire armed guards to protect them, after their post. It’s sort of a joke of them.
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