laklak wrote:Apparently the gun was his father's, and was legally registered. Maryland has among the strictest gun laws in the country - "assault weapon" ban, 10 round mag restriction, shall issue carry permits, permits for handguns.

Charge the father as an accessory before the fact, his kid should never have gotten his hands on that gun.

The_Metatron wrote:
Make the gun owner responsible for everything that gun does, forever. Especially if it got stolen. This problem would end tonight.

The_Metatron wrote:
No, I’m not going to be that generous. No free pass. No matter the circumstances of a theft, that gun wouldn’t have fucking been there to be stolen if gun owner hasn’t bought it.

Responsibility.

If that’s too tall an order, leave the guns alone.

HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED WHEN AUSTRALIA BANNED SEMI-AUTOMATIC AND AUTOMATIC WEAPONS
A lesson for American lawmakers
America has a gun problem. We have the highest gun ownership per capita than any other country in the world. Even the brother of the Las Vegas man who killed at least 58 people and left hundreds of others injured last minute was perplexed as to why and how his relative had so many automatic weapons. The shooter, Stephan Paddock, had ten guns with him, a few of which were fully automatic.

Australia made the decision in 1996 to ban semi-automatic and automatic weapons, and in the following years the homicide and suicide rates for the country declined sharply.

The reason for the ban was a mass shooting, a tragedy that we’re all too familiar with here in America.

In the spring of 1996, Martin Bryant went on a rampage in Port Arthur on the Australian island of Tasmania, killing 35 people and injuring 28 others. John Howard, the newly elected Prime Minister at the time, knew something had to be done and what he realized is something that lawmakers here in the Untied States are still unable to grasp: guns kill people, and fully automatic weapons kill even more people.

The National Firearms Agreement was passed just one month after the shooting. This put into place a ban on all semi-automatic weapons, automatic weapons and shotguns. It also put into place an incredibly tight regulations as to who and how people purchased guns and required a registration system for all legal guns.

“I knew that I had to use the authority of my office to curb the possession and use of the type of weapons that killed 35 innocent people,” Howard wrote in the New York Times. “I also knew it wouldn’t be easy,” he also said.

It turns out though, it was pretty easy.

The country had to figure out what to do with all the newly banned guns, so it offered their citizens a mandatory buyback program and also granted amnesty to people who had illegally obtained guns if they turned them in.

In the span of less than a year, they were able to seize an astonishing 650,000 guns, all of which were destroyed. In the seven years after the ban, suicides by gun dropped an astonishing 57 percent and homicides by guns dropped 47 percent.

Will America learn from Australia? Likely not. But if history is any indicator as to what could happen when tighter gun regulations are put into place, hopefully politicians here will start to take note.

The_Metatron wrote:It’s cool that is the cover.

However, it isn’t nearly enough. I am certain that the requisite number of kids have not been gunned down to effect change here.

Macdoc wrote:Might be the correct time



https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2018 ... dents.html


Midterms coming up, corporate support for changes and Repuglies in disarray. .....

willhud9 wrote:Well of course suicide by gun decreased. The more relevant statistic is did suicide in general decrease or did the means of which attempts of suicide just get shifted around? Obviously guns are more fatal than other attempts, but not by much. Guns just happen to be impersonal. Having contemplated the several ways to quickly and painlessly kill myself a gun would be better off, but the three times I’ve seriously contemplated ending my life I had no access to a gun, but that made my thoughts detour to hanging (no good fixture to connect a rope to), asphyxiation (which I tried via plastic bag), and walking into traffic (which was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done as I put others at jeopardy). Suicide sucks. Battling those thoughts suck. There are days I would love nothing more than to have those feelings just end. Suicidal people will find ways to attempt suicide. I don’t quite get the focus on suicide via gun aside from the finality of it. But it’s a cold statistic which ignores the plight of suicide itself.

I hate when people use it as a device.