12 Dead, 50 Injured in Shooting at "Dark Knight Rises" Premire in Colorado

[Magus]

Originally Posted by Aerozord

Just tossing this out there. Guy made homemade explosives and was able to use them for strategic advantage and the greatest difficulty in taking down suspects like this is the full body armor (ie the defensive aspect that no one seems to argue to regulate).

Sure it might have lessened number of dead but it wouldn't stop things like this. Could have easily have used other weapons

Japan has crazy strict weapon regulations. So some nut just drove a car into a crowd then started slashing people with kitchen knives. We are humans. The entire reason we are at the top of the food chain is our ability to make weapons

Yeah but I think you'll find that the murder rate in Japan is much lower. Sure you can find alternate weapons to kill people with but ultimately you will kill less people, presumably. It just seems equally pointless to go "well, they could just stab people, we might as well make it easy to buy assault rifles" or "they could just make homemade bombs, we might as well make it easy to buy assault rifles". I think I'm just looking at it pragmatically, if you make it harder to get guns that fire dozens of rounds you will reduce the amount of people killed by spree killers.

Tackling how this guy got access to high-grade explosives is another issue, but I presume he made them from separate ingredients that he put together himself, whereas the people with the technical expertise to make a home-made gun (or at least one that is like a real gun and not just a zip-gun that fires one or two bullets) would be incredibly rare.

As for regulating body armor I'm pretty sure you can't just buy kevlar body armor, either, but I know little about that.

EDIT: Presumably in most states body armor is regulated along the same lines as guns (you can't have a criminal record).

[rpgdemon]

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

Background checks (including a prospective buyer's mental health history), lengthy waiting periods before acquisition, limits on the amount you can purchase at once, a centralized government computer database that records the amount (and type) of firearms you've purchased and own under your name, regulations inhibiting transfer (ie, inability to inherit), regulations relating to bullets (guns can't fire X bullets before a mandated manual reload)...

Except for the bullet firing regulations (Which aren't regulations on purchase), all of those are in place, as far as I know. It might vary in other states though? As I said, it's an argument that you can't really win by saying, "We need impositions on purchasing of guns," because all the common sense things that you'd impose are already there. You need to take a different angle.

[Aerozord]

Originally Posted by Magus

EDIT: Presumably in most states body armor is regulated along the same lines as guns (you can't have a criminal record).

yea and these people dont. Not 100% on this specific case but its not unusual.

I tend to think our mental health institutes are fairly good. Usually its the ones that no one notices that snap. The old "beware the quiet ones". I dont know maybe first we should worry about removing the cost and social stigma on seeking psychiatric help. I'd much rather work towards getting people to not go on homocidal rampages than just change the weapon they use.

I'm not really for or against gun control. I just feel if thats the route you take you will only change the murder weapon not the number of instances.

[Aerozord]

Originally Posted by rpgdemon

Except for the bullet firing regulations (Which aren't regulations on purchase), all of those are in place, as far as I know. It might vary in other states though? As I said, it's an argument that you can't really win by saying, "We need impositions on purchasing of guns," because all the common sense things that you'd impose are already there. You need to take a different angle.

aren't mods like extended magazines illegal?

[rpgdemon]

Originally Posted by Aerozord

aren't mods like extended magazines illegal?

I don't know about that, but I was referring to Snake's point about regulatory laws.

[Marc v4.0]

Originally Posted by Magus

A pistol is far more dangerous as a whole than a shotgun, though.

Most pistols are incapable of leaving 5 inch entry holes in things. Any shotgun can.

This is, of course, secondary to the fact that they are both just as dangerous because they are firearms designed to kill things.

[TDK]

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

...ideally in the more distant future, also some way that certain more powerful weapons (the shotguns, not the self-defense pistols) would require personalized activation via fingerprint or voice.

In what way is a shotgun more dangerous, its more lethal at close range (depending) but outside of very personal range, they're much less accurate. Its not really even more dangerous to a crowd because the penetration is much less (I would think) and the spread honestly isn't that great that it could hit more than one person lethally anyway

More importantly, most shotguns are used for hunting, which mainly takes place in environments not suited for fancy thumbprint scanners and shit. They would get wet, broken, any number of things. Not to mention running out of batteries or whatever. You think hunters are going to want to have to tote around fancy personalized activation stuff when they go deep into the woods? Also, the shock associated with gunfire would almost certainly not be good for sensitive electronics like that.

The entire south would throw a shit over something like that. And rightfully so!

Originally Posted by Magus

I'm pretty sure you can't just buy kevlar body armor, either, but I know little about that.

You can buy plain old kevlar though! I'm not sure how hard it would be to make it into a vest, but I'm sure you could do it at home.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

Originally Posted by TDK

In what way is a shotgun more dangerous, its more lethal at close range (depending) but outside of very personal range, they're much less accurate. Its not really even more dangerous to a crowd because the penetration is much less (I would think) and the spread honestly isn't that great that it could hit more than one person lethally anyway

I'm pretty sure the whole "Close range only" thing is just for Video games. Looking it up the Remington 870 the guy had would be effective for 25 yards using buck and over 75 for slug. Obviously you wouldn't have the same trained pinpoint accuracy as a handgun, but it would still be far more devastating to get hit in the chest with buck at 10 yards than a glock just because there's more likelyhood of something important getting hit.

That's the critical thing to me. Shotguns are more dangerous because the most important part about lethally hitting someone with a gun is where the bullets go, and shotguns are able to tear much larger holes in people, doing far more damage in the process.

[Nikose Tyris]

I am entertained that people combine the video game idea that shotguns are close range only while acknowledging they are an ideal tool in duck hunting.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

I wasn't going to mention that.