Aurora Colorado Violence

I don't have a solution for you and never claimed to. I never suggested "stronger gun laws". I HAVE suggested that the 2nd amendment is being interpreted in a broader way than I personally think it was meant. But that is my personal opinion. We are, after all, in the Coffee House.I actually don't think stronger laws would help much at this point, unless they were accompanied by some robust and practicable method of reducing the number of firearms available. But I don't see that happening either.Either way, I will sadly predict that there will be another mass shooting in America before there's one in Britain, it's just simple maths really.

Granted. Do you think he could have put out over 100 rds within a few minutes and killed 12 and wounded over 70 people with a manual handgun alone? REALLY!?! Your off your rocker.Yes, I know he had a hand gun, but it was the semi-automatic rifle that he did nearly all the damage with. If he only had a handgun or even a shotgun, it would be that much easier for him to be subdued. Slightly lower only compared to other automatic guns. High enough for him to wound and kill 71 people withing a couple of minutes. Agreed. It should be base on appearance but on lethality. Again military weapons are meant to kill lots of people. Why do we need to legalize that.And you are wrong, the AR-15 was created and designed specifically by ArmaLite for sale to the Army. ArmaLite sold the AR-15 design to Colt who then marketed it to the Army as the M-16. The AR-15 IS the M-16 with some modifications to make it only a semi-automatic weapon rifle. There are a few internal differences between the two, to satisfy BATF requirements. Login

quote:

---

Fine. I guess I was just supposed to understand that you were calling for the proliferation of firearms in the United States to be reversed by magic, or something.
  —crashfrog

---

Similarly, as my above comment points out, I never called for proliferation to be reversed. Rather I cited it as a reason why things are so far along as to possibly be irreversible.I would ask you this though... If there WERE some "magic" way to reduce proliferation, would you approve? I suspect not.It's the wild west in the 21st century Drop the cell phone and pull out the six shooter, it's time to party.

I would call for stronger gun laws and am not ashamed to say it.

I don't see how you can still believe that, though, unless you're determined to keep holding your opinions in spite of evidence that they're wrong.There's nothing else in the Constitution that we interpret only in the context of what existed at the time that it was written. There were no high-rise apartments in 1796 but the Fourth Amendment applies as well to my high-rise apartment as it does to your single-family dwelling (or whatever.) The protection of "papers" in that amendment has been interpreted to apply to a wide variety of electronic records, each completely inconceivable to any of the founders. The First Amendment right to a free press has come to be applied to bloggers, as well, yet no Framer could possibly have even understood the meaning of the word.In nearly every aspect of the Constitution we discern, and trust, that the Framers had the foresight to at least attempt to craft principles that would stand in the face of future developments and technologies they could not possibly have forseen. Why do people like you assume that the Second Amendment is the single exception to that rule? And how do you interpret an amendment about the availability of a militia and the defense and security of the state as meaning that the citizens of the US should be able to own only the minimum that they could possibly need to hunt and shoot skeet? Look at what's in the text, and read it. Unless there's one at the Olympics, I predict that there will be at least six. I just don't see what any new law could do about it, unless it's a law against big magazines.

quote:

---

I would call for stronger gun laws and am not ashamed to say it.
  —DevilsAdvocate

---

Me too... but I don't feel it's my place now that I'm no longer a resident. Additionally, I was fully aware that I in fact never made such a statement.But having said all that, I'm pleased there are people over there like you DA who do strive for a more peaceful society.

quote:

---

...unless you're determined to keep holding your opinions in spite of evidence that they're wrong.
  —Crashfrog

---

Do you see what's wrong with the above statement? Please say you do. (hint: definition of opinion)G'night folks Thanks for the chat... sorry for my misuse of quote boxes and such lol, long absence.Edited by Briterican, : No reason given.

No, but again - it's the number of rounds in the weapon that matter in this case, not the rate of fire. If there were such a thing as a 100-round revolver, I'm certain that he could have hurt or killed just as many people. And I support legislation that would legally limit the number of rounds any weapon could hold at a time. I can't see how it matters whether you can fire off your seven legally-allowed shots in 30 seconds or 3. Did you already forget about Jared Loughner and his 33-round Glock handgun? And it's simply a matter of fact that handguns are more lethal than rifles. How do you legally define "meant to kill lots of people"? Obviously not, since they don't sell the AR-15 to the Army. They sell the M-16 to the Army, which is the militarized version of the AR-15. The AR-15 predates the M-16.

Certainly, I could even with an old S&W 19.

The AR-15 is essentially what the soldiers (as well as the rest of the military) carry with some minor internal changes. Statistics alone don't prove the point. That is like saying knifes are more dangerous than guns because they cause more injuries and deaths (whether that is true or not does not make a difference). I am talking about lethality by a mass shooter.

But "stronger" doesn't mean anything. What precisely would you change?Would you support a ban on magazine sizes over seven rounds?

That's like saying a dog is "essentially" a cat with some "minor" internal changes. The AR-15 and the M-16 are two different guns:The differences aren't just "minor" or "internal." They're two completely different guns built around two completely different and incompatible receivers. Um, whether or not that's true does make a difference, because if more people were killed with knives than with guns that would mean that knives were more dangerous than guns. You can't just say that what is true or not makes no difference. Truth matters. And the truth is that handguns are far more dangerous than rifles, "assault rifle" or not. And that's determined entirely by magazine size.

Agreed. If the AR-15 had a limited internal capacity that would be one thing, but that is not possible to my knowledge. Even if you limited the magazine size, it is a lot easier to illegally purchace an oversized magazine (or modify one) than to modify the gun chamber/trigger. Depending on the circumstances of course. I am not saying it is easy to subdue someone like this at all. I just think the odds are stacked in the favor of subduing someone with a manual handgun with a limited magazine over time than with someone with a rifle with a large magazine. But I get your point and agree with it. That is statistically based on more people using more handguns for crime than "assault" rifles. Solely because there are more manual weapons out there than semi-automatic weapons. Nothing else. Military weapons are meant to take out as many of the enemy as possible as well as being able to endure the stress of combat (high rates of fire, rugged conditions, etc). That is what I mean. Ok. I will acquiesce but my point is that the AR-15 was desiged specifically to be for military use.

Knives may be statistically deadlier than guns in killing people (you want to talk about statisitics through history, knives or some form of them have killed more people). And if you want to get really stupid about this, cars are more dangerous than guns.But to get back to my point is that these semi-automatic rifles are more dangerous than manual weapons when they are used to rapidly maim or kill as many people as possible at one time. My point is that it is ridiculous to solely look at statistics of how many people were killed in the course of one year by manual handguns or by semi-automatic weapons as there are more handguns than semi-automtics. We are comparing the amount of people shot in a single incident not over the course of a year.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

Can you give me a specific incident of this happening?