Studies Suggest If All Mental Illness Is Cured In The Country Violence Would Only Go Down About 4% (

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[h1]It's Really Hard to Be a Good Guy With a Gun[/h1]
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[h4]Adam Weinstein[/h4]Profile

Adam Weinstein

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My wife and I got into an argument last night over a dead man. His name was Joseph Robert Wilcox. He was 31 on Sunday, the day he tried to stop cop-killer Jerad Miller in a Las Vegas Walmart and was shot by Miller's wife Amanda. Wilcox was a good guy with a gun. It cost him his life.
 
What I tried to explain to my wife—who thought Wilcox should have been running in the other direction, seeking cover—was that I could not blame him one bit. I could see myself doing exactly the same thing in the same scenario. Armed with a handgun and licensed to carry it concealed on his person, Wilcox read the situation, saw Miller—male, armed, firing a long gun and yelling—and thought he had an opportunity to end the threat.

He did not notice the diminutive woman on the sidelines with shopping cart and the handbag. She evidently had not made a scene. Wilcox approached Miller from behind. From his perspective, he had a chance to end the killing. From a broader perspective, he was already marked for death. Amanda came up behind him and pumped multiple shots into his ribs.

We had our biases in this argument. My wife is the child of a cop who's lost a partner in a shootout and had a lifetime of run-ins with wannabe civilian heroes. My father is one of those wannabe heroes. So am I. Dad and I have had our concealed carry permits for a combined 42 years. We love guns. We believe in self-reliance and self-protection.

But as the years go on and the country gets crazier—stirred up by paranoiacs, political hardliners, lobbyists, and simple gun-fetishists—I come nearer to my wife's side. The universe of scenarios in which carrying a gun seems prudent or useful just keeps shrinking and shrinking, even as the legal freedom to wield personal firepower keeps expanding. The NRA has recalibrated its message for the 21st century: "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." But in many ways, the 21st century has already overtaken us good guys.

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I come from three generations of gunsmiths and armorers and collectors. By thirteen I had shot all manner of weapons, from a plinking .22 single-action Ruger revolver to an 1886 Winchester lever-action rifle with a cartridge the size of my middle finger—the buffalo gun, my father called it. In the military, I was an expert with rifles and pistols. I taught colleagues at Mother Jones, that venerable lefty mag, how to handle and fire an AR-15.

My NRA-member father raised me to believe principally in the right to own guns and the right to carry them responsibly, subject to the limits society and its laws place on us. When Florida started issuing concealed carry permits in 1987, Dad was among the first to sign up.

He runs a little boat-repair business out of a warehouse on the cheap side of Fort Lauderdale. For a time, his neighbors were drug dealers who produced amateur porn in their house. Robberies are common. He works late hours. Carrying a gun made sense—first, a little .22 derringer, then a 9mm Smith and Wesson, and finally a .45 Colt. When I turned 21 and applied for the license—it was fast-tracked when I showed the state my military expert-shooting records—I got the Smith police revolver, a .357.

In many ways I was not yet a grownup—still childish in love and in work, a renter and sometime student with not even a car title in my name. But with the license, and the gun, came a host of new grownup worries. First: Who do you shoot, and when?

Back when the licenses were still a new thing and the required instructional classes weren't a joke, my dad's class was run through a host of scenarios: You're broken down on a dirt road in the middle of the night. A black dude in a Cutty pulls up behind you, gets out, comes out with a tire-iron. What do you do? Half my dad's class said to shoot the black man.

That was not the answer the instructor sought. He put a premium on restraint, on knowledge that the lethal tool in your pocket or waistband was just that, a tool, and one with a limited range of uses. You don't bring a gun to a fistfight. You don't wave it or brandish it in a threatening manner, because guns rarely de-escalate a situation. And you don't shoot someone just because you're scared.

Over the years, even as I lived in a series of bad neighborhoods and sent the cops after a felon who threatened my family, my doubts about the usefulness of a firearm have compounded. What to carry? How to keep it concealed, but accessible? Keep it cocked and locked? Where would I leave it when going to a school campus, or a post office, or a courthouse?

And then there were the supposedly clear-cut scenarios, the ones every gun-lover thinks himself into: An armed perpetrator threatening your life. Do you shoot to stop, or shoot to kill? As I was taught, it was always the latter. Which meant my aim should be true. I was a typical gun person, in that I believed myself better trained than my peers, as good as a cop or a combat handgunner. But what proof did I have? And what risk was I willing to take?

There are too many scenarios. Say someone tries to mug me, and I'm armed, but they're already drawn down on me and I don't feel I have a safe shot. I'd be inclined to let them take what they want. But if they see my gun, I become the mortal threat, and perhaps they kill me preemptively. Should I preempt their preemption?

Say I shoot someone, and I'm fully within my rights to do it. How do I even present myself and my weapon to the cops in a way that doesn't alarm them and endanger me? How do I know the difference between an active shooter and a plainclothes police officer?

When my son was born, all of my questions suddenly had a very basic answer. I would love for him to grow up as I did, enjoying shooting but understanding that every gun is loaded and you never touch one without an adult and you don't point it at anything you don't intend to shoot. But more than that, I'd love to believe that he'll have no mischievous accidents, no suicidal depressions or homicidal rages, no moments of weakness or fits of pique or questions that can be answered by the pull of a trigger. As with all the other scenarios in which I'm the good guy with the gun, I can never be sure. I carry my permit, as I always have. But now all my guns live with my father.

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At a time when the nature of our mass-shooting problem urges more circumspection, more responsibility on the part of gun owners, the law has barreled in the other direction: Concealed carry is easier than ever, in more places than ever; open carry is supplanting it in many states. My worries about carrying in courthouses and arenas seems quaint as states expand carry laws to cover virtually every space, even schools. (As a university instructor, I could only imagine the reaction from my students were I to strain to erase a note on a whiteboard and let a glimpse of my .357 pop up beneath my shirt.)

Florida's required concealed-carry course can now be taken in minutes at a gun show, revolving-door style. I doubt they even bother with that black-man-with-the-tire-iron scenario nowadays, since stand your ground has effectively taken away a gun owner's duty to retreat, to seek any way out of a nasty situation before turning it into a shootout. A recent expansion of the law even makes it legal to brandish your gun or pinch off a warning shot, which would have been unthinkable in the now-halcyon days of concealed carry's infancy.

The cultural effect of all these laws is to encourage a kind of hypervigilance that's simultaneously paranoid and arrogant. It encourages armed citizens to seek confrontations and escalate them, confident that they can end them definitively. That hypervigilance looks at my questions and scenarios and doubts and says, like a drill instructor in a true army of one: "Then don't carry a gun, you equivocating *****. Leave the defending to us real men."

Fine. I leave it to you, the hypervigilant. Even though the statistics show mass shootings are on the rise, and not one has been stopped by armed good guys—armed civilian good guys. In fact, they've been shot more often than they've shot the baddies. Which is natural, since assault weapons are on the rise, and it's hard to conceal a weapon that can outshoot someone with a Bushmaster. I leave it to you, because I still puzzle in my mind over all the tactical difficulties posed by someone in civilian clothes carrying a gun during a shooting. (How do you telegraph your goodness to the cops and bystanders?)

I'd like to support you in your supreme confidence. I'd like to stand up for your right and trust that you take care in the responsibilities that come with it. But I can't be certain of that, any more than I can be certain that my aim is true, or that in the heat of the moment, another Amanda Miller isn't waiting for you or me.
Cliffnotes:

- Man tried to stop the Las Vegas Walmart shooting last week with a gun he was legally permitted to carry. He ended up being shot dead.

- Not one mass shooting yet has been stopped by an armed civilian, or good guy.

- In fact in recent years 2 armed civilians trying to stop mass shooters have been killed

- Concealed carry permits and a firearm can be had in a matter of minutes following a short test taken at a gun show
 
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[h1]Do Armed Civilians Stop Mass Shooters? Actually, No.[/h1]

[h3]Five cases commonly cited as a rationale for arming Americans don't stand up to scrutiny.[/h3]
—By Mark Follman

| Wed Dec. 19, 2012 7:01 AM EST

In the wake of the unthinkable massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, pro-gun ideologues are once again calling for ordinary citizens to arm themselves as a solution to mass shootings. If only the principal at Sandy Hook Elementary School had possessed a M-4 assault rifle she could've stopped the killer, they say. This latest twist on a long-running argument isn't just absurd on its face; there is no evidence to support it. As I reported recently in our in-depth investigation, not one of 62 mass shootings in the United States over the last 30 years has been stopped this way. More broadly, attempts by armed civilians to intervene in shooting rampages are rare—and are successful even more rarely. (Two people who tried it in recent years were gravely wounded or killed.) And law enforcement overwhelmingly hates the idea of armed citizens getting involved.

Those pesky facts haven't stopped the "arm America more!" crowd from pressing the argument with alleged examples of successful armed interventions. The problem is, the few examples they keep using—in which they depict plain old folks acting heroically and with definitive results—fall apart under scrutiny. Here are five cases commonly cited and why they don't work:

Appalachian School of Law shooting in Grundy, Virginia

Gun rights die-hards frequently credit the end of a rampage at the law school in 2002 to armed "students" who intervened. They conveniently ignore that those students also happened to be current and former law enforcement officers, and that the killer, according to police investigators, was out of ammunition by the time they got to him.

Middle school dance shooting in Edinboro, Pennsylvania

An ambiguous case from 1998, in which the shooter may well have already been done shooting: After killing a teacher and wounding three others, the 14-year-old perpetrator left the dance venue. The owner of the venue followed him outside with a shotgun, confronting and subduing him in a nearby field until police arrived. The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, who himself recently argued for more guns as an answer to gun violence, told me this week that one police source he talked to about this case said that it was "not clear at all" whether the kid had intended to do any further shooting after he'd left the building.

High school shooting in Pearl, Mississippi

Another case, from 1997, in which the shooting was apparently already over: After killing two and wounding seven inside Pearl High School, the 16-year-old perpetrator left the building and went outside near the parking lot. The assistant principal—who was also a member of the Army Reserve—ran out to his own vehicle, grabbed a handgun he kept there, and then approached the shooter, subduing him at gunpoint until authorities arrived.

New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colorado

In 2007 a gunman killed two people and wounded three others before being shot himself; the pro-gun crowd likes to refer to the woman who took him out in the parking lot as a "church member." Never mind that she was a security officer for the church and a former cop, and that the church had put its security team on high alert earlier that day due to another church shooting nearby.

Bar shooting in Winnemucca, Nevada

In 2008, a gunman who killed two and wounded two others was taken out by another patron in the bar, who was carrying with a valid permit. But this was no regular Joe with a concealed handgun: The man who intervened, who was not charged after authorities determined he'd committed a justifiable homicide, was a US Marine.

And what about cases in which citizens try to use their guns and things go terribly wrong? There are at least two examples of ill-fated attempts that you won't see mentioned by those arguing for your kid's teacher to start stashing a loaded Glock in her classroom:

Shopping mall shooting in Tacoma, Washington

As a rampage unfolded in 2005, a civilian with a concealed-carry permit named Brendan McKown confronted the assailant with his handgun. The shooter pumped several bullets into McKown, wounding six people before eventually surrendering to police after a hostage standoff. A comatose McKown eventually recovered after weeks in the hospital.

Courthouse shooting in Tyler, Texas

In 2005, a civilian named Mark Wilson, who was a firearms instructor, fired his licensed handgun at a man on a rampage at the county courthouse. Wilson was shot dead by the body-armored assailant, who wielded an AK-47.

Such actions in chaotic situations don't just put the well-intentioned citizen at risk, of course. According to Robert McMenomy, an assistant special agent in charge in the San Francisco division of the FBI, they increase the danger for innocent bystanders. (Exhibit A: the gun-wielding guy who came really close to shooting an innocent person as the Tucson massacre unfolded.) They also make it more difficult for law enforcement officers to do their jobs. "In a scenario like that," McMenomy told me recently, "they wouldn't know who was good or who was bad, and it would divert them from the real threat."
 
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[h1]  [/h1]
[h1]More Guns, More Mass Shootings—Coincidence?[/h1]

[h3]America now has 300 million firearms, a barrage of NRA-backed gun laws—and record casualties from mass killers.[/h3]
—By Mark Follman

| Updated: Sat Dec. 15, 2012 10:35 PM PST

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In the fierce debate that always follows the latest mass shooting, it's an argument you hear frequently from gun rights promoters: If only more people were armed, there would be a better chance of stopping these terrible events. This has plausibility problems—what are the odds that, say, a moviegoer with a pack of Twizzlers in one pocket and a Glock in the other would be mentally prepared, properly positioned, and skilled enough to take out a body-armored assailant in a smoke- and panic-filled theater? But whether you believe that would happen is ultimately a matter of theory and speculation. Instead, let's look at some facts gathered in a five-month investigation by Mother Jones.

In the wake of the massacres this year at a Colorado movie theater, a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, we set out to track mass shootings in the United States over the last 30 years. We identified and analyzed 62 of them, and one striking pattern in the data is this: In not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun. And in other recent (but less lethal) rampages in which armed civilians attempted to intervene, those civilians not only failed to stop the shooter but also were gravely wounded or killed. Moreover, we found that the rate of mass shootings has increased in recent years—at a time when America has been flooded with millions of additional firearms and a barrage of new laws has made it easier than ever to carry them in public places, including bars, parks, and schools.

America has long been heavily armed relative to other societies, and our arsenal keeps growing. A precise count isn't possible because most guns in the United States aren't registered and the government has scant ability to track them, thanks to a legislative landscape shaped by powerful pro-gun groups such as the National Rifle Association. But through a combination of national surveys and manufacturing and sales data, we know that the increase in firearms has far outpaced population growth. In 1995 there were an estimated 200 million guns in private hands. Today, there are around 300 million—about a 50 percent jump. The US population, now over 314 million, grew by about 20 percent in that period. At this rate, there will be a gun for every man, woman, and child before the decade ends.

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There is no evidence indicating that arming Americans further will help prevent mass shootings or reduce the carnage, says Dr. Stephen Hargarten, a leading expert on emergency medicine and gun violence at the Medical College of Wisconsin. To the contrary, there appears to be a relationship between the proliferation of firearms and a rise in mass shootings: By our count, there have been two per year on average since 1982. Yet, 25 of the 62 cases we examined have occurred since 2006. In 2012 alone there have been seven mass shootings, and a record number of casualties, with more than 140 people injured and killed.

Armed civilians attempting to intervene are actually more likely to increase the bloodshed, says Hargarten, "given that civilian shooters are less likely to hit their targets than police in these circumstances." A chaotic scene in August at the Empire State Building put this starkly into perspective when New York City police officers trained in counterterrorism confronted a gunman and wounded nine innocent bystanders in the process.

Surveys suggest America's guns may be concentrated in fewer hands today: Approximately 40 percent of households had them in the past decade, versus about 50 percent in the 1980s. But far more relevant is a recent barrage of laws that have rolled back gun restrictions throughout the country. In the past four years, across 37 states, the NRA and its political allies have pushed through 99 laws making guns easier to own, carry, and conceal from the government.

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The NRA surge: 99 recent laws rolling back gun regulations in 37 states.

Among the more striking measures: Eight states now allow firearms in bars. Law-abiding Missourians can carry a gun while intoxicated and even fire it if "acting in self-defense." In Kansas, permit holders can carry concealed weapons inside K-12 schools, and Louisiana allows them in houses of worship. Virginia not only repealed a law requiring handgun vendors to submit sales records, but the state also ordered the destruction of all such previous records. More than two-thirds of these laws were passed by Republican-controlled statehouses, though often with bipartisan support.

The laws have caused dramatic changes, including in the two states hit with the recent carnage. Colorado passed its concealed-carry measure in 2003, issuing 9,522 permits that year; by the end of last year the state had handed out a total of just under 120,000, according to data we obtained from the

County Sheriffs of Colorado. In March of this year, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that concealed weapons are legal on the state's college campuses. (It is now the fifth state explicitly allowing them.) If former neuroscience student James Holmes were still attending the University of Colorado today, the movie theater killer—who had no criminal history and obtained his weapons legally—could've gotten a permit to tote his pair of .40 caliber Glocks straight into the student union. Wisconsin's concealed-carry law went into effect just nine months before the Sikh temple shooting in suburban Milwaukee this August. During that time, the state issued a whopping 122,506 permits, according to data from Wisconsin's Department of Justice. The new law authorizes guns on college campuses, as well as in bars, state parks, and some government buildings.

And we're on our way to a situation where the most lax state permitting rules—say, Virginia's, where an online course now qualifies for firearms safety training and has drawn a flood of out-of-state applicants—are in effect national law. Eighty percent of states now recognize handgun permits from at least some other states. And gun rights activists are pushing hard for a federal reciprocity bill—passed in the House late last year, with GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan among its most ardent supporters—that would essentially make any state's permits valid nationwide.

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Indeed, the country's vast arsenal of handguns—at least 118 million of them as of 2010—is increasingly mobile, with 69 of the 99 new state laws making them easier to carry. A decade ago, seven states and the District of Columbia still prohibited concealed handguns; today, it's down to just Illinois and DC. (And Illinois recently passed an exception cracking the door open to carrying). In the 62 mass shootings we analyzed, 54 of the killers had handguns—including in all 15 of the mass shootings since the surge of pro-gun laws began in 2009.

In a certain sense the law was on their side: nearly 80 percent of the killers in our investigation obtained their weapons legally.

We used a conservative set of criteria to build a comprehensive rundown of high-profile attacks in public places—at schools, workplaces, government buildings, shopping malls—though they represent only a small fraction of the nation's overall gun violence. The FBI defines a mass murderer as someone who kills four or more people in a single incident, usually in one location. (As opposed to spree or serial killers, who strike multiple times.) We excluded cases involving armed robberies or gang violence; dropping the number of fatalities by just one, or including those motives, would add many, many more cases. (More about our criteria here.)

There was one case in our data set in which an armed civilian played a role. Back in 1982, a man opened fire at a welding shop in Miami, killing eight and wounding three others before fleeing on a bicycle. A civilian who worked nearby pursued the assailant in a car, shooting and killing him a few blocks away (in addition to ramming him with the car). Florida authorities, led by then-state attorney Janet Reno, concluded that the vigilante had used force justifiably, and speculated that he may have prevented additional killings. But even if we were to count that case as a successful armed intervention by a civilian, it would account for just 1.6 percent of the mass shootings in the last 30 years.

More broadly, attempts by armed civilians to stop shooting rampages are rare—and successful ones even rarer. There were two school shootings in the late 1990s, in Mississippi and Pennsylvania, in which bystanders with guns ultimately subdued the teen perpetrators, but in both cases it was after the shooting had subsided. Other cases led to tragic results. In 2005, as a rampage unfolded inside a shopping mall in Tacoma, Washington, a civilian named Brendan McKown confronted the assailant with a licensed handgun he was carrying. The assailant pumped several bullets into McKown and wounded six people before eventually surrendering to police after a hostage standoff. (A comatose McKown eventually recovered after weeks in the hospital.) In Tyler, Texas, that same year, a civilian named Mark Wilson fired his licensed handgun at a man on a rampage at the county courthouse. Wilson—who was a firearms instructor—was shot dead by the body-armored assailant, who wielded an AK-47. (None of these cases were included in our mass shootings data set because fewer than four victims died in each.)

Appeals to heroism on this subject abound. So does misleading information. Gun rights die-hards frequently credit the end of a rampage in 2002 at the Appalachian School of Law in Virginia to armed "students" who intervened—while failing to disclose that those students were also current and former law enforcement officers, and that the killer, according to police investigators, was out of bullets by the time they got to him. It's one of several cases commonly cited as examples of ordinary folks with guns stopping massacres that do not stand up to scrutiny.
 
Don't like guns, move to another country that doesn't have them. The rest of us Americans are perfectly content living in these crazy, dangerous, and lawless times. :rolleyes
 
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An armed guard isn't a civilian with a gun.
I completely agree that armed civilians need to be properly trained. But there are many civilians that are better trained than police and military, but it's up the that person to take the initiative to get training. I believe proper training should be mandatory.

Joseph Robert Wilcox is a hero in my eyes. If not for his intervention. who knows how many others would of been killed
 
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I would rather conceal carry a knife. More uses, probably won't get you shot, and can still be used for self defense if really needed. Plus, it is smaller and easier to carry. Although, the laws can be just as convoluted, especially when carrying a spring assisted knife.
 
Don't like guns, move to another country that doesn't have them. The rest of us Americans are perfectly content living in these crazy, dangerous, and lawless times.
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I've got nothing against guns.

My grandfather legally kept an unloaded old *** rifle under his bed til he was about 70.

I've got a problem with overly lax gun laws that make it easy for sociopaths to decide they're going to do something, acquire a gun and carry out their plan all in the same day.

And gun laws that make it easy for the people manipulating Chicago and other urban inner city streets to be how they are.

Loose gun laws in Virginia equal more guns in Chicago and Brooklyn, regardless of what Illinois and New York lawmakers do.

Make background checks and licensing exams more stringent and mandatory.

No one has the constitutional right to quick and easy access to a gun.
 
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I've got nothing against guns.

My grandfather legally kept an unloaded old *** rifle under his bed til he was about 70.

I've got a problem with overly lax gun laws that make it easy for sociopaths..

Make background checks and licensing exams more stringent and mandatory.

No one has the constitutional right to quick and easy access to a gun.

I agree, and I purchased my first firearm last year, so I'm a current gun owner.

Was surprised how easy it was to swoop actually.

There has to be a more stringent process to obtaining one.
 
i think the overwhelming majority of individuals who carry concealed don't do so in case they happen to be in a public venue when theres a mass shooting. It's to protect themselves from the typical violence that happens thousands of times every day (robbery, assault)

The issue I have with people who rail against "the gun show loophole" is the assumption that if who cannot pass a background check wants a gun, they just won't get one. Instead, they're going to get their girlfriend, or homeboy with a clean record to buy the gun for them. I would love to see statistics, but I would bet a dollar the majority of guns used in crimes were obtained through unlawful means (i.e. straw purchase, theft, purchase from an unlawful owner) that tougher background checks would not have been able to stop.

unfortunately, pandora's box has been opened. Theres well over 200 million firearms in the US (and probably more than that), how are you going to stop the movement of those guns? Imagine the effort, cost, and manpower it would take to even try to "register" those guns.
 
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How stringent of a process does it need to be?

Should it look at your facebook profile to ensure you don't drink to excess or use illegal substances?
 
i think the overwhelming majority of individuals who carry concealed don't do so in case they happen to be in a public venue when theres a mass shooting. It's to protect themselves from the typical violence that happens thousands of times every day (robbery, assault)

The issue I have with people who rail against "the gun show loophole" is the assumption that if who cannot pass a background check wants a gun, they just won't get one. Instead, they're going to get their girlfriend, or homeboy with a clean record to buy the gun for them. I would love to see statistics, but I would bet a dollar the majority of guns used in crimes were obtained through unlawful means (i.e. straw purchase, theft, purchase from an unlawful owner) that tougher background checks would not have been able to stop.

unfortunately, pandora's box has been opened. Theres well over 200 million firearms in the US (and probably more than that), how are you going to stop the movement of those guns? Imagine the effort, cost, and manpower it would take to even try to "register" those guns.
As far as mass/spree shootings go, there are stats showing most (close to all) of the weapons used in those are legally obtained.
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Indeed, the country's vast arsenal of handguns—at least 118 million of them as of 2010—is increasingly mobile, with 69 of the 99 new state laws making them easier to carry. A decade ago, seven states and the District of Columbia still prohibited concealed handguns; today, it's down to just Illinois and DC. (And Illinois recently passed an exception cracking the door open to carrying). In the 62 mass shootings we analyzed, 54 of the killers had handguns—including in all 15 of the mass shootings since the surge of pro-gun laws began in 2009.

In a certain sense the law was on their side: nearly 80 percent of the killers in our investigation obtained their weapons legally.

We used a conservative set of criteria to build a comprehensive rundown of high-profile attacks in public places—at schools, workplaces, government buildings, shopping malls—though they represent only a small fraction of the nation's overall gun violence. The FBI defines a mass murderer as someone who kills four or more people in a single incident, usually in one location. (As opposed to spree or serial killers, who strike multiple times.) We excluded cases involving armed robberies or gang violence; dropping the number of fatalities by just one, or including those motives, would add many, many more cases. (More about our criteria here.)
In school we read a report, that has to be about 3 years old now that stated unequivocally that over 70% of the seized guns used in crimes in New York City were legally obtained by the original purchaser and handed down. So yes, background checks can be easily defeated by just having someone else buy the gun. But part of the problem is how easy it is to have someone else buy that gun for you and resell or pass it along with little to no consequence. A lot of that has to do with how easy it is for someone to simply drive across state lines to obtain one for then bring it back.
 
Your first link is false. I've heard that story before. The guy didn't stop anything. He detained the shooter AFTER the fact when he was trying to get away.

From Snopes:

A similar item of inquiry concerned a 1997 school shooting in Mississippi:
 

A 1997 high school shooting in Pearl, Miss., was halted by the school's vice principal after he retrieved the Colt .45 he kept in his truck.

In this 1 October 1997 incident, 16-year-old Luke Woodham stabbed his mother to death with a butcher knife in their home, then drove to his high school in Pearl, Mississippi, with a .30-.30 rifle, where he killed two classmates and wounded seven more. Woodham was apprehended in his car by assistant principal Joel Myrick, who confronted him with a .45-caliber pistol he had retrieved from own vehicle.

Joel Myrick didn't actually "halt" the shooting at Pearl High, as Luke Woodham had broken off his attack, exited the school, headed toward the parking lot, and was attempting to leave the school in his car when he was finally stopped by Myrick. The claim that Myrick's actions saved additional lives stems from reports that Woodham was on his way to Pearl Junior High School to continue shooting when Myrick subdued him, but evidence documenting that Woodham had such an intent is not conclusive.

Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/sandyhook.asp#gff88bdmE2iOGEBe.99

I don't have time to click your other links right now but I will in a bit.
 
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Here's a comprehensive FBI study if you want to get all technical of shootings from 2000 - 2012


http://leb.fbi.gov/2014/january/active-shooter-events-from-2000-to-2012

Of the cases that ended before the police arrived, 67 percent (34) ended with attackers stopping themselves via suicide (29 cases) or by leaving the scene (5 cases). In the other 33 percent (17) of the cases that ended before the police arrived, the potential victims at the scene stopped the shooter themselves. Most commonly they physically subdued the attacker (14 cases), but 3 cases involved people at the scene shooting the perpetrator to end the attack.

You can take that study for what it is which is a FACT. 16% is better than 0% so imagine if all civilians are armed. Wouldn't that percentage actually be higher?

PS. if you want to make a legitimate argument... I would suggest not posting articles by Left Wing Extreme Liberal authors such as ADAM WEINSTEIN


http://gawker.com/texas-gun-nuts-are-so-crazy-even-the-nras-gun-nuts-hate-1584922036

http://gawker.com/the-new-nra-president-fantasizes-about-whipping-anti-487554943
 
Here's a comprehensive FBI study if you want to get all technical of shootings from 2000 - 2012
 
http://leb.fbi.gov/2014/january/active-shooter-events-from-2000-to-2012

Of the cases that ended before the police arrived, 67 percent (34) ended with attackers stopping themselves via suicide (29 cases) or by leaving the scene (5 cases). In the other 33 percent (17) of the cases that ended before the police arrived, the potential victims at the scene stopped the shooter themselves. Most commonly they physically subdued the attacker (14 cases), but 3 cases involved people at the scene shooting the perpetrator to end the attack.
You can take that study for what it is which is a FACT. 16% is better than 0% so imagine if all civilians are armed. Wouldn't that percentage actually be higher?

PS. if you want to make a legitimate argument... I would suggest not posting articles by Left Wing Extreme Liberal authors such as ADAM WEINSTEIN


http://gawker.com/texas-gun-nuts-are-so-crazy-even-the-nras-gun-nuts-hate-1584922036

http://gawker.com/the-new-nra-president-fantasizes-about-whipping-anti-487554943
I would rather imagine no one having guns instead of everyone.
 
As far as mass/spree shootings go, there are stats showing most (close to all) of the weapons used in those are legally obtained.


 


In school we read a report, that has to be about 3 years old now that stated unequivocally that over 70% of the seized guns used in crimes in New York City were legally obtained by the original purchaser and handed down. So yes, background checks can be easily defeated by just having someone else buy the gun. But part of the problem is how easy it is to have someone else buy that gun for you and resell or pass it along with little to no consequence. A lot of that has to do with how easy it is for someone to simply drive across state lines to obtain one for then bring it back.

I think the penalty for straw purchase is 5 yrs, federal time. It sounds like what your mentioning is the government not actually enforcing it's laws. And how could they? That gun used in a crime could have passed through 15 peoples hands legally until it got into the wrong persons hands. And generally speaking, it's not that easy for someone to legally go across state lines, buy a handgun, and bring it back. Many, if not most states will not sell handguns to out of state purchasers without going through another FFL.

Again, even if you "toughen up" the background check requirements, most criminals know someone who has a clean background, and is willing to buy for them.
 
An armed guard isn't a civilian with a gun.

It's a good guy with a gun.


Here's a comprehensive FBI study if you want to get all technical of shootings from 2000 - 2012

 
[QUOTE url="[URL]http://leb.fbi.gov/2014/january/active-shooter-events-from-2000-to-2012[/URL]"]
http://leb.fbi.gov/2014/january/active-shooter-events-from-2000-to-2012


Of the cases that ended before the police arrived, 67 percent (34) ended with attackers stopping themselves via suicide (29 cases) or by leaving the scene (5 cases). In the other 33 percent (17) of the cases that ended before the police arrived, the potential victims at the scene stopped the shooter themselves. Most commonly they physically subdued the attacker (14 cases), but 3 cases involved people at the scene shooting the perpetrator to end the attack.


You can take that study for what it is which is a FACT. 16% is better than 0% so imagine if all civilians are armed. Wouldn't that percentage actually be higher?


PS. if you want to make a legitimate argument... I would suggest not posting articles by Left Wing Extreme Liberal authors such as ADAM WEINSTEIN


http://gawker.com/texas-gun-nuts-are-so-crazy-even-the-nras-gun-nuts-hate-1584922036

http://gawker.com/the-new-nra-president-fantasizes-about-whipping-anti-487554943

I would rather imagine no one having guns instead of everyone.
[/quote]

then you should imagine a world without half of the things we've accomplished.
 
Does Texas or Arizona have less of this than other states?

I would like to know how many school shootings happen in those two states.
 
These "good guys" with a gun scare the **** outta me.

Everyone thinks they are a good guy…
 
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