I read a comment on one forum saying something along the lines "If the crowd had been armed there would have been less deaths" .sigh.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...sh-abbott-band

The lead guitarist of a country music band playing Route 91 Harvest festival, where a gunman murdered 58 people on Sunday night, has said the horrific experience of the attack has changed his views on gun laws in America.

“I’ve been a proponent of the [second] amendment my entire life,” Caleb Keeter posted on Twitter. “Until the events of last night. I cannot express how wrong I was.”


But Keeter went further, describing the deadliest shooting in modern US history as a revelation. He said that members of the band’s crew have concealed handgun licenses, and legal firearms on the bus.

“They were useless,” he said. “We couldn’t touch them for fear police might think that we were part of the massacre and shoot us. A small group (or one man) laid waste to a city with dedicated, fearless police officers desperately trying to help, because of access to an insane amount of firepower. Enough is enough.”

Crazy guy was using 458 socom rifles tripod mounted for increased accuracy, :(

I went to the cinema to see IT the other week, little bit further out in the country. There was a guy there with a Glock in a holster on his hip, open carry. One of my friends here is always armed with a couple of concealed carry's. Another one has an arsenal of assault rifles that would make an avid Call of Duty player happy to use in-game; went for brunch and he was one of the group, had to hide his 'car-guns' so as not to freak out the valet.
Oh yeah and another of my pals was showing me his new shotgun he got he other week for $250 - less than it costs to buy an XBox One!

Still weirds me out.

How very true!

But c'mon, the NRA have agreed that bump stops are bad.....:cuckoo:

The gun control horse bolted long ago in the USA. There is no record kept of guns owned and no real idea of how many there are in public ownership. Very many millions for sure, all unregistered.

Gun controls only control law-abiding citizens, even in the UK. Criminals, terrorists, lunatics etc. tend to ignore all laws, and generally speaking the lack of a gun licence is the least consideration for such people. We can wring our hands and call the perpetrators of massacres all the *******s ever bred, it won't make any difference.

the shooter was law abiding though - right up until the moment he shot someone

Since the mass shooting approx 87 further people have died in gun crime in the US.

Problem: In a playground full of children, one child beats another kid with a big stick.

Solution: Take the big stick off that naughty child obviously.

NRA Solution: Give every child in the playground a big stick!! :facepalm:

Now the way I see it, if everyone at that concert had a gun a people were being shot at and killed but could not clearly see who was doing the shooting, everyone would start shooting each other, ok maybe not everyone but you get the picture.

Not quite right - he was law abiding right up to the moment he began assembling a cache of illegal firearms. Self loading weapons converted to automatic fire are a no-no even in the USA.

Despite the UK's very strict gun controls (by world standards) firearms offences are still committed here often enough (more than 6,000 in the year ending March 2017) to make us aware of one obvious but frequently overlooked fact: terrorists and criminals tend to ignore the law. Of the 6,000 plus offences only a very small number were committed by licence holders, and as the police consider suicide an offence then the true numbers are even smaller.

This data would suggest that gun controls in the UK have little, if any, effect on gun crime but simply affect the law abiding citizen who wishes to shoot.

But the law isn't just about preventing crime its also about public safety. In the States, guns are easily accessible and are allowed to carry them anywhere in public, people don't store guns safely and as a result there have been many accidental shootings, children accidentally killing their sibblings for example.

A lot of sweeping statements there. Open carrying of firearms in public is allowed in most states but concealed carrying requires a licence in most states. This would be very easy to legislate against; don't allow it unless in a gun case or slip much as we allow in the UK, usually in a vehicle.

However, even if there were far stricter legislation there is no way of preventing stupid behaviour such as loaded weapons left laying around (often by off-duty police officers) or guns not secured in a suitable safe. This can happen in the UK too; although guns are supposed to be kept under lock and key there is no way of checking that they actually are kept this way. You might own a gun safe but no one can guarantee that you make use of it.

As I mentioned earlier, the gun control horse bolted long ago in the USA.

as far as I am aware his guns were legal

he categorically did not convert them to "automatic fire"

the trigger had to be pulled for each shot - he simply used a mechanism (a bump stop) that essentially allows the trigger to be pulled very quickly

can you point me to the source that says his weapons were illegal

Of the 6,000 offences what percentage was ‘having a gun’?. I’d imagine a large chunk. That’s a lot of offences that wouldn’t register as an offence in the US. The actual figures for gun violence here would make the average American laugh.

I spent most of my youth at a local gun club target shooting .22 and hunted at weekends with my mate who went on to be a sniper in the marines. Even so I’d say no private citizen needs the majority of firepower available in the US. Banning guns won’t cut down on the amount of nutters in the world, but it limits their options and their path of destruction.

Need doesn't come into it. There's no limit on the number of shotguns that may be owned by a shotgun certficate owner in the UK but we have the lowest level of homicides in the world.

Kwik, Something we pretty much agree on.

The fact that when I did my fire marshal stuff at my office, the second part of it was Active Shooter emergency response training seemed crazy, as a Brit (basically the training was to GTFO ASAP)

The thing is I love guns and I'm pretty pro gun but I cannot abide the lack of discipline that is rife, here.

The psychology of a lot of people and the abundance and ease with which you can buy a gun is amazing - the two just don't mix.

It is really easy to get a concealed carry license or an open carry license in Texas. I am unsure of other states laws.

Paben is right to a degree though, I fear that it pay be an unsolvable issue. There are so many guns in circulation. If I was to be super positive about it I could say it is indeed possible to make a big change but it would require a complete change in the average persons psychology here and also it would take 10's of years for a difference to be made, imho.

There are ways to prevent stupid behaviors such as loaded guns lying around but again it would mean a marked change in the way of life, or adding massive costs to gun ownership - only allowing guns to be stored at gun clubs, changing the design of all domestic firearms so that they cannot be fired in certain circumstances (there are devices and guns out there designed for this but they are easily hack-able at present). I just cannot see this happening any time soon.

If you are seen to impinge upon peoples ability to 'defend' themselves, you're asking for trouble.

The fact is that a lot of people at the Las Vegas event were armed but 1) they couldn't just start randomly shooting in the direction they thought the firing was coming from 2) even if they knew where it was coming from they could not hope to hit the aggressor 3) It's likely that if they did start trying to defend themselves with their own firearms they would have been mistaken for the shooter and the police would have taken them out like swatting a fly.

It's such a minefield and a socio-political nightmare, I'm unsure how or if things will change without there being a societal meltdown in the process.

At the moment it's getting to a point where a mass shooting happens, we are sad and post about it for a few weeks; then we forget about it until the next mass shooting.

Oh and for those with interest in this bump stop thing - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/b...innovator.html

I can't, you are right. Perhaps I could get away with claiming his law abiding category went out of the window once he started collecting his weapons together with evil intent. Of course an assault rifle can be fired as quickly as the trigger can be pulled, the system employed speeds fire rate up almost to full auto status and it can have only one purpose.

Having spent much time in the USA, around firearms, it's amazing there is not far more firearms crime than there actually is. I attended a firearms Fest in Texas where everything was available to shoot, including heavy machine guns, rocket launchers and artillery. Great fun and nobody died.

but that's the point

the argument that gun "Gun controls only control law-abiding citizens, even in the UK."

falls away when you accept that he held those guns legally - and I suspect most mass shooters do hold their weapons legally too

I would never argue that the US reverts to gun laws anywhere approaching the UK's and TBH I suspect that most people in the UK simply can't comprehend the "gun culture" of the US

and I don't mean "gun culture" in a snidey European way

the US has a hunting/outdoor culture - that is simply an anathema to us - fair doos it is an enormous country with genuine areas of wilderness

but their fixation with Call of Duty style weaponry just seems bizarre and wrong

tbh I am fascinated by guns, and have been since I was a boy reading "Battle" comics

I love watching youtube videos of guys comparing a WW2 MG42 and a .30 LMG

but I don't have any desire to own one tbh

Who is the 'us' that you are quoting? Your family or the UK in general? If the latter then you are well out in your reckoning. Around 2m shotguns and firearms are owned by licence holders in the UK. While many are used by target shooters the majority are used for various forms of 'live' shooting.

If you have no desire to own a gun then I assume you've had little or no contact with them? First exposure can have a strange effect on the most unlikely people, perhaps you would be one of them.

I meant to say JT BBC are running a fantastic documentary on Vietnam atm

On Iplayer

Cheers, Hodgy. Would've missed it!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...ja-vu-18581961