They missed the part where he has a history of mental health issues and had heard voices telling him to kill people. He should have lost access to his guns.
It's something current federal law does and has done for decades. A person who is involuntarily committed to undergo inpatient treatment at a mental health facility by a court of law is classified as a "prohibited person" and cannot own or have access to firearms.
The catch is that a person cannot be deprived of any right without due process - typically a literal day in court. Therefore an individual with mental health problems that have not caused enough trouble to land them in front of a judge can't be declared a prohibited person.
Due process does not always require a hearing before court action. There are emergency injunctions, ex parte protective orders, temporary restraining orders, certain classes of summary process. When a guy owns assault weapons and is hearing voices, due process can wait a couple weeks.
Nope, get fucked. You don't get to insist that actual people get murdered month after month just because you're capable of imagining legislation being misused.
Even disregarding how deeply fucked in the head it is to be more upset at the idea of a gun owner losing their guns than innocent people losing their lives, you could address that misuse through voting, protest or incremental reforms.
A gun owner losing access to their guns is not a tragedy even remotely comparable to a room full of children mutilated beyond recognition by a legal gun owner and "being able to murder anyone at any time with minimal effort" is not a "basic human right".
People are being murdered because the gun laws are hopelessly inadequate yet you staunchly oppose changes to them on the grounds that hypothetical people could hypothetically use them to take guns away from a hypothetical innocent person that was no danger.
So according to pro-gun talking points, he should have been completely safe to arm. He received the fabled "mental healthcare" that renders people safe to indiscriminately sell guns to.
The lack of laws and lack of enforcement both have their roots in pro-gun groups -- the people arguing that guns are blameless and everything is a mental health problem.
This is how it was for the first one hundred years of American existence. "Purposive open carry." Only lawless shit holes had what conservatives want today, habitual open carry. If it was a place with law, open carry without an obvious purpose was a breach of peace.
Ehhhh maybe it's my American showing, but I've known lots of hobbyist clay shooters that are responsible, great people. Not to mention that hunting is more than a hobby to many; it's a way of life. I don't think we should police hobbies to that degree. Much moreso, we should have initial and updated background checks on gun owners.
Is every hobbyist clay shooter a good person? Is their hobby worth the lives of innocent people? Not to mention how easy it is to snap and turn bad. It sucks for the good hobbyists but idc if it means less dead children, they can shoot clay with bbs.
Background checks simply don't work well enough to catch everyone. Mental health issues are hard to spot, it's not like you can just do a blood test.
Honestly, there are soooo many ways to entertain ourselves in our society, people that center their whole lives around guns need to grow the fuck up imo. Fuck the hobby.
as someone who has unfortunately had to use a firearm to protect the life of myself and my family, all I hear is "it would be better if you where dead"
I get the essence of that quote but I feel it falls apart under any scrutiny. Drunk driving laws are widely agreed to be a good idea but that would fall until the category of sacrificing liberty.
And there is exactly where a libertarian's entire argument falls apart. Rational people obviously know such words are idealistic and hyperbolic, and would ostensibly craft laws to balance personal liberties and public safety. The thing is, there's a cold truth behind it that is important not to forget or ignore. It hints at the slippery slope of regulation into oppression, and that's a very real danger to us today as much as it was back then.
No one talks about the slippery slope in the other direction where lack of regulation leads to weekly mass murders. Of course there's no actual evidence of either of those outcomes happening, right? Right?
How do you figure? As far as I can tell, that conversation happens all the damn time. Not among anyone who SHOULD be having it, but I hear it happen all the time regardless. But you knew that... Same as you knew that there's an abundance of evidence to prove your sarcasm is seriously unfounded because there's PLENTY of evidence of both of those things being a thing. I'm beginning to believe that some people are intentionally creating straw man arguments and being deliberately hyperbolic while presenting their arguments as rational and balanced. Weird.
But we all already sacrifice our liberty for security constantly. I sacrifice my liberty to bite anyone I want, in order to live in a society where I’m unlikely to be bitten.
I gave up my freedom by deciding to follow laws. You don’t have to. There are consequences, but if you decide to disappear into the wilderness and avoid people, you can do whatever you want
Dude you need a to pass a test and have a license for loads of hobbies, people still do them. Even just driving a regular car which is considered a near necessity in some places, we acknowledge that it's dangerous so you need to pass a test and can have your licence taken away if you are a danger to others.
It is already federal law that any gun sale going through a federally licensed firearms dealer (FFL) is required to run a check using the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICs). So initial already yes, updated "if they buy more guns," but still.
Private sales are legal in some states but if you sell to a prohibited possessor you're in deep shit so most people will only do so with a CCW card to show you've been NICs checked and it hasn't been confiscated.
Sounds like you've let the gun lobby tell you what gun control is.
For example in Australia, to buy a gun you first need a firearms license that is granted once you've established that you know how to safely handle a firearm, are not a danger to yourself or others, are not a known criminal and have been a member of a club or range for at least 6 months without creeping people out.
From there, your new guns must be registered and you must be able to produce them on request. Handguns and semi-automatic guns are more heavily restricted, in line with them being far more dangerous to the public.
So do you know what you do if you don't have a license and want to go clay shooting? You book a session at the range and show up.
No license, no background checks, no knowledge of firearms required.
Because do you want to know the dirty little secret the gun lobby has been hiding from you? Gun control advocates don't actually give a shit if people own or use guns if they never kill, maim or traumatise anyone.
Systems like the one above massively reduce the supply of guns to criminals, the number of mass shootings, accidental deaths, suicides, domestic violence homicides.
Meanwhile, in America, the pro-gun crowds ideal gun laws can't even stop a teenager with a history of death threats, rape threats and animal abuse from legally buying two semi automatic weapons, mere days before he used them to kill a room full of children.
That's what gun control is trying to stop and what the pro-gun community inadvertently fights to keep.
I wasn’t aware that hunting was a hobby created after the invention of assault rifles. Pretty sure hunting has been a way of life since forever so I don’t think gun control is going to destroy that hobby.
How can you honestly be arguing hobbies are more important than doing something to protect human lives?