Even before the previous assault weapons ban, killings with these types of weapons accounted “about 2% according to most studies and no more than 8%“.
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/204431.pdf

That is what is known as a cited and verifiable fact Leon!

“A .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle and two handguns were recovered at the scene in Newtown, Conn.,

Thirteen of those weapons were recovered in crimes in Chicago within a year of their purchase between 2008 and 2010“.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/crime/17017680-418/assault-rifle-used-in-conn-shooting-seen-on-chicago-streets.html

Those are also cited and verifiable facts Leon.

Now, having said that, I will also admit that just banning a weapon while others are in circulation is futile. Banning one weapon when others can fire just as fast and just as long is also futile. Banning one class of weapons is symbolic and will have a minor if any true consequence.

We need to accept that the price of freedom and gun rights is abuse of that right and mass killings. I don’t like it, but it appears to be reality. How anyone can gleefully defend that remains a mystery.

“Gun deaths to surpass deaths in traffic accidents by 2015: report
Gun deaths are on the rise, and in three years, more Americans will die from gunshot wounds than in car crashes, a report found.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/gun-deaths-outpace-traffic-deaths-2015-report-article-1.1223721

May God have mercy.

The study certainly fits the point of view I espouse – if you possess a gun, you are more likely to be shot with a gun. My view doesn’t include just felonious shootings. I include accidental shootings and suicide, too. I simply don’t view firearm handgun possession as a panacea.

I cannot grasp your logic of these situations. You have compared guns killing innocent people to cars, SUVs, and now marijuana… what next, cheeseburgers? Hot dogs? Hot dogs kill at least 70 children annually. Can we get your comparison on that one?

And what is the difference in lunatics shooting people with an illegal weapons or legal ones? If you make them illegal to own there will be less of them, the price will skyrocket. So really the only people to have them will be Police, Military, and your drug lords. I don’t see drug lords walking into our schools and shooting people anytime soon.

When these kind of incidents happen, why is our response always to take guns from the people who didn’t do it? -Henry

Well if we waited on them to do something, what good is regulations then?

The study that you cited, “Investigating the Link Between Gun Possession and Gun Assault” is a true example of either very shoddy research or a study designed to give a desired result (most likely for political points or to get more government funding from the NIH). If you read the study, which is available online from the American Journal of Public Health, you see that the “study” suffers from many fatal flaws. The design of the study has huge selection bias– the shooting case participants were people who had already been shot to start with. But then, the researchers say ” We assume that the resident population of Philadelphia risked being shot in an assault at any location and at any time of the day or night”. WHAT??? So THEN what did they do? The control cases were “sampled from all of Philadelphia via random digit dialing” They literally picked their “controls” from the phonebook, called them, and asked questions, such as have you been assaulted and do you own a gun!! The general Philadelphia resident is not going to own a gun or admit to it, and will be much less likely to have been shot than the other cases who had ALL already been shot. And if you read further, the shooting case participants “more frequently worked in high risk occupations and had a greater frequency of prior arrest”. Shooting case participants also were “more likely to be located in areas with less income and more illicit drug trafficking”. So these “researchers” compared prior convicts in the low income/drug trafficking part of town that wound up getting shot, with someone from the middle/upper income parts of town sitting at home by their phone, and were amazed that the people who had evil guns were more likely to be shot! This study tells us absolutely nothing about regular law-abiding citizens using guns to defend themselves. Apples and oranges to make a political point sound like its scientific. Comments?

Well, if a group attacks you and they have AR-15′s, what do you want to defend yourself? Banning AR-15′s is like banning marijuana. How is that illegal drug thing working out? If you can’t stop bales of marijuana from coming into the country, how will you stop Ak-47′s? If the drug lords and gangsters are the only people who have assault weapons, how is that going to work out? So we basically end up with a lunatic illegally shooting up a gun-free zone like a school or theater with an illegal weapon instead of a legal weapon.
When these kind of incidents happen, why is our response always to take guns from the people who didn’t do it?

“John Wilburn, I suggested that it might have been effective because that is as valid as all of the other suppositions. Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda is not a solution.”

No, armed teachers has some component of reality, where the cosmetic AWB had no component of reality.
I like the new avatar, BTW.

“Many of the regulations only require the purchaser to show a drivers license and have the information recorded and kept on file by the retailer at the time of purchase, but this information is only helpful after an attack has occurred as there is no required reporting of sales.” http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/materials-fertilizer-bombs-not-regulated

So the governments, whether state or federal, require that information, at the time of fertilizer purchases, be kept by the shop owners. yet, no ammo purchases, whether large or small quantities, are monitored or recorded anywhere…Wow, just wow.

OJ, another way to look at your question is, why did we all make such a big fuss about Timothy McVeigh? I mean, Jeesh, he killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing, and compared to the 21,610 murders in the U.S. that year, that’s not even 8/10ths of 1 percent of the total.

For that matter, we went to war (twice) over the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and yet more than 80 percent of murders in 2001 were unconnected to those. It seems outrageous on its face that we would devote so much time and effort and money responding to a comparatively small portions of the total murders that year.

Unfortunately, we have to face a fact here: Large-scale murders get way more attention. And it’s not just murders. Large scale violent crimes of other natures get more attention too. The robber of a single bank gets little; the robber of 25 banks gets a lot. The same goes for serial rapists, arsonists, etc.

But, that wasn’t what caught my eye. What was is the irrefutable statistic that mass shootings have accounted for a mere 1% of total gun deaths in this country since 2006. 1%. It is possible that some measures added to the lawbooks as a result of Newtown might impact those remaining 99% of gun deaths, but why was there not a broader dialogue going on before now?

Could it be that no one really cares (in the broad sense) if bangers are killing themselves, or a mentally distraught person eats a bullet? But that when 20 first graders get mowed down that’s what triggers our collective outrage? What exactly does that say about society in general?

I don’t think it speaks well of us, honestly. I’m just asking, because it’s something that has gnawed on my brain for a couple days as I’ve seen some utterly ridiculous stuff spouted by both sides of this growing debate.