US Mass Shootings Megathread - read OP

You view it as differences in detail, that's how I and the rest of the world view it too. If the details are not the same then they are different. Absolutely completly different.

Your attempt to say the rules in Czechia and the USA are basically the same is wrong. Your attempt to portray Czechia as a country with more relaxed laws than the USA is also wrong.

I have no idea why you are trying to sidetrack the discussion with strawman arguments, but if it makes you feel good do whatever floats your boat.

I fear that too many Americans have already decided in their own minds that partaking in a collective fantasy around the obscure fear of a tyrannical government is worth paying the price of living under the very real, tangible and regularly-fulfilled fear of lunatics shooting their children in schools, colleges and parties.

The fear of tyrannical government, whatever that means in each of their minds, seems to outweigh the fear of any number of nutcases within 100 miles of your home having relatively easy access to equipment that is built and manufactured specifically for the purpose of killing people.

At least that's what they seem to say. I suspect sometimes it's less about high fantasies about revolutionary action and more of "I think guns are super cool and I feel cool having them".

Was chatting with a US relative and all they could home in on was that there must be some revenge angle, they must have pissed him off.

From the outside looking in it seems the usual problem, easy access to guns for someone hearing voices in their head telling them to just murder.

I don't think it's the cool angle. I think it pure narcissism. There is a culture of self righteousness, that I should have the right to kill because I am inherently "good" and there are bogeymen out there who are "bad". The nuance that all men are both good and bad including me is incomprehensible. You will hear them say things like the good guys need to be armed to stop the bad guys. It's the dumbest **** I've ever heard but they genuinely believe it. It's the intellect of a 14 year old boy having watched his favourite action movie star win an against the odds battle for good. If only life was that simple.

I would have agreed with that sentiment a few years ago, but the rise of Trumpism has changed my mind. A tyrannical government appears to be a very real threat in the US now. Ironically, the people who fear it most think the threat is coming from the Left when actually in fact it's the Right and the Republican Party which is now fully in thrall to a would-be dictator, which presesnts the biggest threat to "muh freedom bruh!"

The thing Europeans often forget about America, and especially those of us in a relatively safe and prosperous and largely homogenous society like Ireland, is that there is very little concensus on anything in the US. Everything is a matter of hard earned "wins" that come in the teeth of massive opposition from groups who will gladly trample on other's rights if it keeps them in the manner they are accustomed to. It has always been a very dog eat dog society and it's only gotten way worse in the last 10 years.

I'd certainly agree that a large proportion of it is gun fetishism whereby the gun lobby has ingeniously connected their product with nationalism, patriotism and "freedom" in minds of millions of citizens.

Plus the US is the most urban sprawly society where people can simply rot.

Australia is extremely sprawly too but the combination of mandatory voting so no one can be disenfranchised, access to good basic healthcare and education and restrictions on gun ownership after port Arthur just reduces the chaos.

It has its problems accepting legacy impacts on the native Australian, but it's probably the best template for the US to emulate if it reduces the mass gun death events.

One would think that at least while they make multi-year efforts to resolve these deep-rooted social isues, they might also tackle the issue of access to guns at the same time.

As I've said before, if somebody is suicidal and has a history of cutting themselves, as well as making every effort to get to the root of their desire to do that, you hide the knives in the house.

5% seems like far too many there. Never mind how many have it as a secondary reason as well. With a decent enough lobby you can get a small portion of people to outweigh the majority in lawmaking. Plus can get plenty to neutrality by shifting the focus onto windows or doors or security guards.

And while deep rooted issues should obviously be fixed, every country has those to some extent but while other countries have guns, none of them seem to have the same love of guns as the US does.

I believe you will find that in the cases of the vast majority of spree shootings, the firearm in question was purchased after having passed a background check

Most mass shootings in the US have a pre-existing criminal background

Huh?

I love guns, own a few and 100% agree with you, anyone that says any different is living in a bubble or trolling.

Some of the posts on here might convince some undecided people otherwise, but only if the undecided didn't have access to the internet.

Six in ten adults in the USA say gun violence is a very big problem in the USA.

It's starting to become a big problem here too, some lad cut loose up in Donegal recently with a legally held high powered rifle and it was only by the grace of God there wasn't multiple fatalities. There are more serious cases due before the courts.

On Crime Watch the other night a few lads broke into a house and took the whole gun safe which contained numerous rifles, a shotgun and a pistol. They were in and out in minutes, just opened the ground floor window and pushed it out, put it into a car and off with them. The Gardai seemed more concerned about one of the shotguns that was 100 years old and worth a few bob, they also mentioned the two golf medals that were stolen. No word about what types of rifles were stolen.There have been thousands upon thousands of legally held firearms stolen in this country in the last couple of decades alone.

And then we have this Gun Lobby crowd (https://firearmsunited.ie/) looking for members or people to give 2 euro a month to help their fight. What fight? Fill out the application from An Gardai, apply for a licence, pass the criteria and buy your rifle or handgun, it's as simple as that in Ireland. There is no need to encourage confrontational attitudes towards the Gardai or those elected to run the country.

Have one look at the video they have on the site, Jesus wept.

They claim to represent 50 million gunowners in Europe, so at the minimum fee of 2 euro a month to be a supporter (rather than a fully fledged member) that's 100 million euro a month they are taking in.

That's a lot of coin.

They don't seem to be registered as a business or a charity. Perhaps someone who knows about these things could clarify.

I wonder where one could see their accounts and what is all the money used for?

Have a word with yourself for the love God.

Indeed, but the same false equivalences apply to any of those too. In fact, the fear of tyrannical government is the only narrative that, at the very least, would complement the acquiescence to a situation where one can effectively stockpile weaponry and ammunition. It's obviously still mad, but at least you can say that you would need a cache of weapons if you wanted to take on the might of the military or whatever other force has seized power.

The personal protection, target practice and hunting narratives are arguably even more infuriating because they don't even align proportionately to the actual situation of gun ownership in the US (ie, the variety of weaponry that is proliferated quite easily, the power of such weapons, the demonstrable ease with which such weapons can and constantly are used for what are effectively a constant stream of terror attacks).

The paradigm of gun violence in the US goes way, way beyond the perimeters of self-defence etc, which doesn't require things to be the way they are. But we will end up going in circles again when we are told "ah, but most of the guns are small personal protection weapons", which — like all the other narratives — is aggregated into an overarching argument that all that can be done is to collectively shrug shoulders, concede that gun culture and ownership is too ingrained and intractable to be fixed ... and point to instead "fixing" mental health which is an even more ingrained, far more intractable issue.

So you don't need an assault rifle to hunt, the very notion of it is preposterous.

It would also appear the self protection angle doesn't hold water either.

People living with handgun owners died by homicide at twice the rate of their neighbors in gun-free homes. That difference was driven largely by homicides at home, which were three times more common among people living with handgun owners.

We detected much larger differences for particular types of homicide. Most notably, people living with handgun owners were seven times more likely to be shot by their spouse or intimate partner. In many of these cases, instead of being protective, the household gun probably operated as the instrument of death.

An especially troubling finding was that the vast majority of victims in these intimate partner shootings—84% in all—were female. It stands to reason that women bear the brunt of any second-hand risks that flow from firearm ownership. That’s because most people who live with gun owners and don’t themselves own guns are women

Imagine ringing a door bell and getting shot in the head? Wild West.

He was christened well but there's a small spelling error in his name.

A can use to kill hogs in the morning, and then have little person B target shoot in the afternoon.

You don't need an assault rifle to do either.

If by some quirk in reality they all disappeared, people would still be able to kill pigs and shoot at targets.

It projects exactly the opposite of what they should be going for. It's like they wanted to look dodgy. Hiring a film student or something so there was someone in the room to tell them how lighting affects the whole mood of a scene would have been a start.

Another one