Mass shooting kills 4, wounds 17 in nightlife district in Birmingham, Alabama.

This depressing page also exists exists: List of mass shootings in the United States in 2024

As of August 31, a total of 527 people have been killed and 1,755 people have been wounded in 432 shootings.

Totally a gang shooting.

And yet, the top comments are already reposting the same garbage.

I love how people always make it sound like we're one law away from solving all gun violence. We have 393 million guns in the hands of civilians in the US. That's more guns than people.

Guns make much of our violence worse here, sure, but pandora's box can't be closed. New laws limiting guns are often a very good idea, but distilling our problems with violence down to "guns bad, Americans so stupid" is asinine and endlessly tiresome.

Everybody is better off when a person having a bad day doesn't have a catastrophe button.

It seems obvious that there is no cure for idiots. The rest of the world has shown by example that less guns is the solution to endless gun violence.

It's a moronic hobby.

Yeah my lack of support for people having easy access to guns is the problem. Such a weird comment by you.

A culture that recognizes common sense.

The science is pretty clear; gun control works. Every time you repeal gun control laws, loosen restrictions, open gun stores, gun-related deaths escalate, often dramatically. States with higher gun ownership rates have higher rates of homicides caused by guns. Even a 1% reduction in gun related deaths would be the equivalent of 2,500 people per year. Kids die more often from gun-related deaths than car-related deaths.

Mass shootings also barely make up 1% of gun-related deaths, so the science behind them isn’t as well studied, but things like reducing magazine sizes shows a correlated relation in reduction of mass shootings.

(Some of the sauce)

Ah but the problem is defining an illegally owned gun.

I could go buy a gun from some dude on the street, or at a gun show and that's... perfectly legal. The (federal) law right now is basically 'you can sell a gun to someone in your state, as long as you don't have good evidence they're going to go shoot someone'.

Which, you know, you simply do not ask them.

So as to the guns being owned illegally... maybe, maybe not: it's not hard to own a gun legally even though the rest of the planet is now recoiling in horror about what that term actually means.

The Glock switches are for sure federally illegal, but getting the ATF to do anything other than smuggle guns into Mexico is probably impossible given how fucked up they are. And I mean, they're 3d-printed, so how do you even reasonably enforce that?

You're probably right, but guns like the ones they used can be obtained legally making them much easier to be obtained illegally. I'm not an expert on gun policy, so I can't tell you how we should restrict access to guns.

Facts over feelings:

https://www.axios.com/2023/03/28/mass-shooting-nashville-guns-legally

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/02/23/mass-shootings-guns-obtained-legally/

https://www.ncja.org/crimeandjusticenews/most-mass-shooters-buy-their-guns-legally-nashville-shooter-had-7

Yeah no one on the planet has figured out that pickle

Ignoring the baseless speculation on whether these are legal guns or illegal guns, since there is a pretty good spread on that spectrum:

The importance is having fewer guns overall. If the availability of legal guns is drastically reduced then it will be a lot harder for an ar-15 to fall off the back of a truck or go missing in someone's home. It won't happen overnight but it will happen pretty quickly. We have seen this happen in other "Western" nations.

Personally? I don't want to infringe on the rights of responsible gun owners. If anything, I want to make them even more responsible. What that means is that I want:

1. Much stricter background checks on buying firearms. By all means, factor therapy and rehabilitation into that (just because someone had a nervous breakdown in high school shouldn't impact their ability to own a people killer so long as an accredited mental health professional signed off on it. But no "gun show loopholes" and more "cooling off periods" to ensure that NOBODY can buy a gun same day.
2. Ammunition is a controlled substance. You want to buy a box of 9mm rounds? Cool, you are going to fill out a form to make sure that is tracked and you are going to be limited to a certain number of rounds per year unless you fill out the proper forms to get more (comparable to how suppressors and SBRs are handled). And, again, cooling off period. You fill out the form and a week later you can buy your bullets.
3. Liability on firearms. If your gun is used in a crime then you are charged for it, regardless of whether you pulled the trigger or not. You can bet that people will be disposing of their twenty kitchen cabinet guns almost immediately once they realize they are liable for Little Timmy shooting up his school. And if a gun goes missing? You can bet they will report that within minutes of finding out (and will be checking those gun safes semi-regularly as a result).
4. Liability on sellers. If a gun is used in a crime then ALL the above paperwork will be triple checked and any improper procedures will result in the seller losing their license or even being charged with negligence.

All these giant piles of "illegal guns" will dry up pretty quick (comparable to a civilized nation where they are fairly rare for criminals to use) and all the guns that kids take to school will similarly actually be locked up in a way that Little Timmy doesn't have unsupervised access to.

But all those Responsible Gun Owners(TM)? They won't be affected because clearly they are already securing their firearms when not actively in use and always know where their collection is and are making sure that only people who are also Responsible Gun Owners(TM) have access to it.

Hell, as a treat, let's let people who own public shooting ranges jump through some more hoops to relax some of that. You need 500 rounds of .223 a day to practice shooting? Buy it by the mag at Herman's Military Antiques and use it at his range. You can't take it home with you but you never needed to take it home to practice shooting, right?