"It's always too soon to talk about gun control"

[Black Aeronaut]

Sorry it's taken me so long.  Just been so busy and when I've not been busy I've been utterly exhausted.

@Blackaeronaut (because the quote system doesn't work properly)

Look at Japan's suicide rates and tell me people over there aren't stressed.

Also, if someone over there is REALLY of a mind to cause harm and mayhem, they typically use rented box vans and box cutter knives.

Of course they are stressed.

Their murder and mass murder spree rates are also substantially lower than the US' rates.

Uh, yeah, you took that entirely in the wrong direction there.  The reason why their murder spree rates are so much lower is because suicide has this weird cultural acceptance over there.  Combined with the conformity and uniformity that is the cultural norm for Japan, people are far more likely to just commit suicide than go on a killing spree.

And the few that do?  Rental trucks and box cutters pretty much all around.  Though there have been a few real outliers where an actual sword was used.

Please do something about Mental Health Care. Please do something about class inequality. Please for the love of god do something about the issue of racism in our country.

Then vote and be loud.

What makes you think I haven't been!?  I'm only one person, but in order to make real change happen, we have to get the politicians to actually be on our side, and for the right reasons!

Also, the class inequality thing? That impacts the racism and mental health care issue in a major manner. Rich crazy people are either covered up or shoved into an asylum to keep them from causing trouble (and often enough both) while poor crazy people are left on their own with little to no support. The racism has been the cause of lowered opportunities for non-white people for centuries causing class inequality but it's fed right back into by the class inequality because it's difficult for non-whites to get the needed means to fight the racism without getting a pat on the head and told to shut up and get lost.

This will be a lot easier to address once economic inequality is addressed.  The two are intrinsically linked together, and it will be a lot easier to prod corporations into paying fair wages than to tell people to stop hating each other.  Once the stressors of having a large portion of the American public being in the poor house is no longer as bad, then we can work on the other parts.

But that's a whole different debate.

And BTW: All signs are currently pointing at this guy being utterly stark raving bonkers. Looking at his methodologies, even if you had removed the option of guns, he would have probably have gone with something worse like pressure cooker bombs or pipe bombs. Or maybe even just driving a truck full of anfo right into the middle of the whole thing and pulling the trigger. Because he was already planning on killing himself.

Would those pressure cooker bombs or pipe bombs have had the same ability to kill 59 people and injure nearly 10 times that number? And if you think unusual ammonium nitrate purchases aren't tracked, especially when the same person or region also has an unusual diesel purchase you must believe the FBI very incompetent indeed. And that he was suicidal or stark raving mad doesn't mean you can just discard what he did, how he did and what tools he used to do it.

Please do not make this about guns.

Why not? It's the tool he used. Why should one not question how he got them, and if there's something that can be done structurally to limit access to guns for loons?

Wow.  You really don't get it.

First off, I'm not even going to address the gross negligence in your implication that bombs are nowhere nearly as deadly.  Besides, Morganite (God bless you!) has already addressed this.

Secondly, don't act as if there are no workarounds for getting past the FBI's nets.  This man was methodical enough and was planning this long enough that he could have just as easily gone around driving a diesel vehicle and just siphoned a bit of fuel out after every fill up, and periodically pick up a bag of fertilizer from Walmart - ostensibly for his lawn and garden.

When you're taking time to plan things like this man did, the purchases do not have to be unusual.  They can be everyday average things.

And at what point do I discard what he did?  What he did was horrific and terrible, but what could have been done to stop him!?  Look at how well prepared he was!  He achieved exactly what he set out to do and that takes long, well thought out, and methodical planning.

A man that makes a plan like this would not let some so little as a firearms ban stop him.  He would have thought of a different method.  STOP ACTING LIKE GUN BANS ARE SOME MAGICAL CURE-ALL!!!  Because for what you want?  Gun bans most emphatically will not work.

Please do something about Mental Health Care.  Please do something about class inequality.  Please for the love of god do something about the issue of racism in our country.

We should be doing something about these issues anyway. The main problem lies in that a good chunk of the population:
   
    A) Doesn't care because they believe they are not affected by these issues.
    B) Prefer to leave things as they are, just out of spite.
    C) Embrace ignorance to such a degree that even after disaster strikes, they still believe they are in the right.

They can be solved, but I am afraid that we will have to drag a lot of people kicking and screaming towards their solution.

Yes, agreed.  And it is definitely not going to be quiet and clean.  But I'm fairly certain that after a few years of grumbling, much like with Obamacare people are going to come to accept it for the good it does, by and large.  (Not that I think Obamacare is perfect, mind.  It does need fixing, but that's yet another debate for another thread.  Although I will say that I got a fun bit of schadenfreude from the people that didn't know that the AHCA was the same thing as Obamacare until Trump started gunning for it.)

Why?

No seriously, that's an honest question. Why does removing guns make it all worse? Why will it make people more stressed? Why will it make people more prone to stockpiling and hoarding, and why will it cause more massacres? In a country, I note, that already has 1 mass shooting killing 4 people or more in a single event per day on average.

There are multiple answers to the first question, but a lot of it boils down to "You won't actually be able to remove most of the guns. See also: Prohibition".

Seriously.  God bless you, Morganite.

Honestly, Hazard, I don't understand your mental process here.  To expand on what Morganite is saying here: Do you honestly think that EVERYONE is just gonna hand their guns over with a smile on their face?  You really don't know what it's like out here.  Morganite has the right of it - it will be like the Prohibition all over again... only far, far worse because unlike turning alcohol into a controlled substance, you're going to see a sudden spike in violence across the nation as people VIOLENTLY resist having their guns taken away.  And you can't call out the National Guard for a mere 'police action'.  Besides, I think they'll be too busy to be called up because most of them are gonna be fighting to keep their own guns.

In short, it will be something that will make the LA Riots look like a kiddie fair by comparison.

More stockpiling and hoarding seems like a safe bet, since it keeps happening even without new regulation. I'm not sure I can even call it irrational, given how shit like this keeps happening.

Pfft.  No joke.  This happens at every election cycle.  The NRA goes around fear mongering, saying that if this particular Democrat gets elected that they're gonna take their guns away, and then they sit back and laugh their asses off while their bank account start running up as people empty theirs to buy more guns and ammo before an ostensible ban could be put into place by someone who hasn't even been elected yet.

Yeah, that part about returning posessions and rights... it just doesn't sound like they do that unless you go after them with lawyers. While the need for rapid action is sort of understandable, the part where by default there's nothing like "go before a judge and prove that you have a good reason to take someone's property" is pretty suspicious. (One story I read suggests that they by policy don't even tell the person whose property is being run off with *why* they are doing so, which just adds a fine coating of motor oil to the whole production if true.)

(I've also seen it suggested that SAFE is basically one solid mass of HIPPA violations, but I'm not sure how well that plays out in practice.)

Take it from someone who was active duty in the US Armed Forces - the US Government is very quick to take things, but incredibly slow to give them back if the taking was wrongful.  And yes, sometimes it only happens once lawyers get involved.

If you're serious about reducing gun deaths, you need to look at all gun deaths.

That sounds about as sensible as grouping together car vs. deer accidents and red light runners when looking at traffic safety. They're different kinds of problem that aren't going to respond to the same remedies.

Oh, you need to look at much more than just those two cases if you're going to seriously look at traffic safety. You have to look at everything.

If you only look at part of an issue, you're never going to find the common causes shared by what you might think are unrelated effects.

Oi.  You want a common cause for gun violence?  How about the person holding the damn gun?  Or, more specifically, the mind of the person holding the gun.

Fix the mental health system.  Start encouraging mental health checkups.

Fix the economy so people can actually pay their bills, save a bit of money, not rely on government assistance, and actually live a life where they can pursue hobbies.  This helps with mental health, believe it or not.

Don't even bother with gun regulation.  YOU WOULD ONLY BE TREATING A SYMPTOM.  Fix these other far more important issues and you'll see a lot of gun violence and gun suicides simply go away.