Charleston Shooting

[Ephiral]

If by replica do you mean how toy guns sometimes get painted and used in robberies or like a plastic/ wooden copy of a real gun? Or those ones that are designed to fire only blanks?

Technically speaking, the language in our laws... has actually been updated since I last checked. The "replica" language appears to have been removed entirely, and "firearm" was redefined to eliminate the muzzle-velocity bullshit (it is now, basically, anything with a barrel that can fire a projectile capable of killing or causing serious bodily harm). So... yeah. The remaining restrictions... would negotiate the finer points, but the broad strokes look good to me. (On an amusing note, while looking for the "replica" language, I noticed that we're actually easier on people with a criminal record than the US is - up here, it's only a five-year ban for violent criminals, unless there's an established history of violent behaviour.)

No. The US Constitution lists the rights that the government canNOT take away from the population. These are rights that are supposed to be untouchable by government.

So felons can't be denied voting rights or guns, then? And there's no procedure for amending the Constitution? Or are you making bold, sweeping, unsupportable claims?

So? If there are no guns, other ways would be used. Just because a very TINY number of people use guns to murder others (or themselves) is no reason to restrict or remove gun ownership from -everyone-.

The statement I bolded kinda contradicts the experience of, say, Australia. When facts and statements collide, guess which loses?

Many hunters, especially the older ones are good, aka sniper materiel here, so they would be good/decent at ambushes. It would not take much for a few patrols to be taken out and better military hardware acquired. You seem to be thinking that the entire, or most of the US military would be going along with oppressing the US citizens. Why? What makes you think that the majority of US military personnel would go along with such orders? In all likelihood, there would be a hell of a lot of soldiers who would refuse to do that. The military would likely split and the government trying to oppress the people would find itself under fire from its own military.

You're asserting that a civilian hunter with a civilian hunting rifle is going to be superior to a military sniper with a military weapon?

Again, you're missing the point: If the military defects, untrained bands of armed civilians are not necessary. If the military does not defect, civilians have literally zero ways of dealing with large swathes of military capability. In neither scenario do armed civilians change the outcome appreciably.
 

Mostly through illegal ways. I highly doubt they are bought legally. Modern military ordinance on the black market is definitely illegal.

Actually, they are bought legally. And then stolen from legal owners.

Hardly. It's less circular than your argument of; 'a small number of people use guns to murder others, so we should restrict/remove guns from everyone'. Why blame everyone for the actions of a tiny minority of people?

Actually, my argument is "Going from relatively open to rather strict policy on guns has, in the past, reduced the number of dead people as a direct result. Dead people are more important than any benefit anybody has so far proposed of current US gun policy. Ergo, guns should be more tightly regulated." I'm not concerned with who or how many the problem actors are. I'm concerned with how many victims there are, and how that pile of dead bodies weighs up against the benefits of ridiculously open gun policies.

[Lux12]

I've skimmed the thread so I may have missed something so pardon me if I repeat anything that was already said. I don't know if this man was mentally ill. Leaving psych issues unchecked can have tragic results, but mental illness by itself rarely ever makes someone violent, let alone shoot nine innocent people. I don't there is one mental illness that makes someone go on killing sprees. That is a conscious choice. Nor does any kind of mental disorder make someone racist. There is no mental disorder that makes people inclined to engage in racially motivated murders. So it doesn't matter if this individual was mentally ill. This grown man, not a boy chose to do these things. Also equating mental instability with violence and bigotry can can be problematic. A person with a mental illness can be a bigot, but having a mental illness does not make one a bigot. So bottom line, this was a grown man who made the decision to kill nine innocent people in the name of a white supremacist ideology so lets not pretend that is about something else.

[Cassandra LeMay]

Plus you never hear about a person who stops a rape or saves themselves by using a gun. Cause that doesn't sell newspapers.

Or maybe that's because it happens so rarely: In 2012 there were 34 gun homicides for each "justifiable" gun homicide, i.e. killings of a fellon by a private citizen while comitting a crime. The use of guns for self-defence is pretty rare, compared to the amount of gun crimes. Source: Washington Post

[consortium11]

Or maybe that's because it happens so rarely: In 2012 there were 34 gun homicides for each "justifiable" gun homicide, i.e. killings of a fellon by a private citizen while comitting a crime. The use of guns for self-defence is pretty rare, compared to the amount of gun crimes. Source: Washington Post

Those statistics strike me as being too limited to add a huge amount to the overall statistical discussion.

Unless I've completely missed it then there's no "justifiable aggravated assault" statistics there; cases equivalent to the justifiable homicides but without a death. So there's no information about the number of times a gun was used against someone committing a crime but no-one died. Likewise there's no statistics on when the presence of a gun prevented a crime from occurring (in a more specific "I pulled out a gun and the robbers ran off" as opposed to a more nebulous "because they thought guns might be there they didn't commit the crime to begin with" sense). Without those looking at the justifiable homicide stats alone strikes me as covering only a small part of the overall picture.

That's not to say that your overall point isn't correct; that the use of guns to prevent crime is a relatively rare event. But I'd want better evidence before getting behind that fully.

[Drake Valentine]

I wouldn't consider his actions terrorism. Terrorism serves as a means to achieve a political goal. I would see his actions as more of a general hate crime. In fact, not sure if anyone brought it up, but I did some web prodding around and found this: http://www.ijreview.com/2015/06/349064-dylann-storm-roofs-manifesto-reveals-the-real-motives-behind-the-mass-shooting-in-charleston/

I didn't read it all, there are some hateful and racist things going on that was written.

[kylie]

      I think it comes down to a question of whether a significant 'enough' component of the crime is believed to be intimidation or pressuring people. 

      It's arguable that Roof intended to motivate others to target the Black community with violence.  He ends the website document on something to the tone of 'Someone has to be brave and do this,' after criticizing others of somewhat like politics for not going beyond online chatter.  Some have said he hoped to spark some sort of civil war, though I'm not at all sure if this has been supported exactly.  I wonder if they might also dig up more about what he expected to happen in the aftermath; did he expect riots and heightened tensions as have occurred in several cities over the past few months?

      He definitely presented a message that Black people were unwelcome in his point of view.  And saying that while raising this sort of danger to that specific community is considered an effective way of delivering it (beyond simply, an effective way of maiming and killing), and a way that is likely to actually displace or disrupt the community somehow that the courts decide is "enough," then it could be terrorism on those grounds too.       

[Ironwolf85]

the best thing we can do is tell him to fuck off and instead of getting racial come together in the wake of such a senseless act.
Acting in love for one another...

Also lock the little fucker in a roomconcrete room with a window so he can see the big ol inter-racial inter-community gathering of care and heartwarmingness... just to rub salt in the wounds
  ;D


On the terms of gun control, I don't think they should be taken away. But seriously a federal register and federal licence standards for weapons wouldn't be that hard nor would it infringe on any right.
The NRA and their gun manufacturing backers would shit bricks though  ::) I'd love to see it.

[Deamonbane]

Gun control has nothing to do with this. Brazil has one of the strictest holds on their no-gun policy, and yet just about every criminal is armed with military hardware (Helped by the fact that the largest gun black market is literally a hop and a skip away in Paraguay). I'm talking Sub-Machine Guns, Assault rifles, RPGs, and even .50 cal Anti-air guns.

I'm all for heavy regulation, though. Although that would be relevant for just about anything, including, to use a previous example, cars. More people die in automobile accidents than by guns, and that's by a significant margin. I've always been of the opinion that it's not about the weapon (or tool), it's about the human using it.

[kylie]

Gun control has nothing to do with this. Brazil has one of the strictest holds on their no-gun policy, and yet just about every criminal is armed with military hardware (Helped by the fact that the largest gun black market is literally a hop and a skip away in Paraguay). I'm talking Sub-Machine Guns, Assault rifles, RPGs, and even .50 cal Anti-air guns.

Well then, in that case isn't it a striking difference that not every criminal gang in the US gets to have all of those things in regular operation?  Perhaps what few regulations we do have are actually good for something.  And if so, perhaps having a few more would make a difference.

       Though I'm not sure if it would make a difference to exports from the US...  Such as, well, American arms exports that easily get to those Brazilian criminals you mentioned as an example of why domestic regulations in the US market supposedly shouldn't matter in the US. Bitter irony anywhere?   ::)

...  The fact that most of the high powered arms confiscated in São Paulo originate in the United States fits a pattern seen around the region, with the country a common source of assault weapons for criminals around the region, especially in Mexico and in Colombia

Though such a trend should be cause for greater debate on gun control in the United States, with reforms blocked even after US agents were gunned down by Mexican criminals using US-made and trafficked weapons, it is unlikely this report will have much effect. 

----------

I'm all for heavy regulation, though.

Didn't you just say regulations wouldn't matter?  I'm really confused.  (Speculating: Could you mean they wouldn't easily prevent certain things such as were used in this particular case -- I dunno guessing pistols maybe -- getting through somewhere? Maybe??)

Although that would be relevant for just about anything, including, to use a previous example, cars. More people die in automobile accidents than by guns, and that's by a significant margin. I've always been of the opinion that it's not about the weapon (or tool), it's about the human using it.

While I think this is interesting and I do agree cars can get very dangerous too, it would raise a lot of questions in the US where so many jobs are concentrated in suburbs and sometimes city centers, quite a few of which have very lacking public transit.  Also, if they somehow "regulated" highway spending to upgrade a few of the roads to handle the present load, first or simultaneously...

[Iniquitous]

I am pro-gun. I do not think taking away guns will stop anything. The problem is not the gun. It is the person holding the gun. You can kill someone with just about anything... it is not the weapon that does the killing, it is the person wielding the weapon.

[Deamonbane]

     Didn't you just say regulations wouldn't matter?  I'm really confused.  (Speculating: Could you mean they wouldn't easily prevent certain things such as were used in this particular case -- I dunno guessing pistols maybe -- getting through somewhere? Maybe??)

What I meant was that an outright ban is not the answer, as it will not keep idiots from getting their hands on guns. Regulation wouldn't either, but it would make it more difficult for them to acquire and use the weapons without consequences, which is usually the best deterrent. A person owning an illegal gun would know that they can't leave their house with the weapon or they would get caught carrying an illegal firearm, or a person that owns a legal firearm would pause before they use it because they know that the chances of them getting away with it are practically nil.

I speak from my own point of view, of course, and am far from an expert on the subject.

Samuel L. Jackson, awesome as always.

[Zakharra]

So felons can't be denied voting rights or guns, then? And there's no procedure for amending the Constitution? Or are you making bold, sweeping, unsupportable claims?
The statement I bolded kinda contradicts the experience of, say, Australia. When facts and statements collide, guess which loses?
You're asserting that a civilian hunter with a civilian hunting rifle is going to be superior to a military sniper with a military weapon?

Again, you're missing the point: If the military defects, untrained bands of armed civilians are not necessary. If the military does not defect, civilians have literally zero ways of dealing with large swathes of military capability. In neither scenario do armed civilians change the outcome appreciably.
  Actually, they are bought legally. And then stolen from legal owners.
Actually, my argument is "Going from relatively open to rather strict policy on guns has, in the past, reduced the number of dead people as a direct result. Dead people are more important than any benefit anybody has so far proposed of current US gun policy. Ergo, guns should be more tightly regulated." I'm not concerned with who or how many the problem actors are. I'm concerned with how many victims there are, and how that pile of dead bodies weighs up against the benefits of ridiculously open gun policies.

1;  I wish felons weren't denied the  right to vote after their sentence was up. The removing of their gun rights is a lot sticker, some people ARE more of a danger with access to them, but for most non-violent ex-criminals, I would not restrict access to weapons.

2; I counter with Brazil. A disarmed populace is one that is more easily controlled. And if the citizens don't have guns, the criminals do.

3; You underestimate (badly I think) how much a population armed with hunting weapons can tie up a military. Especially in the US which has a very large percentage of the non urban population that knows how to use firearms.  Yes a well trained military could overrun them. In time, but an active insurgency would tie up tens of thousands, or more troops just to keep an area under some form of control.  You're basically saying that civilian owned arms (an astounding amount which is ex-military) would be worthless against a modern military. Not it wouldn't. They can help tie up tens to hundreds of thousands of troops and hundreds of millions of $ of equipment.  Over time, if the government managed to keep it up, it could win, but the cost would be immense. And you keep forgetting that in the US, access and ownership0 (whether you use it or not) is a RIGHT! As far as I know, know where else in the world is that a right.

4; Which means they are illegally attained. Also ever heard of arms smugglers?If firearms were removed from the US population, you'd see a massive increase in arms smuggling because criminals would pay to get guns.

5; Brazil.  Sometimes your view works, other times it doesn't, and you keep ignoring that the culture here in the US is much different in regards to firearms. We are NOT Europe. We are NOT Asian. We are NOT South American. We are citizens of the United States of America. A unique culture with a tradition of rights and a Constitution that guarantees them to all US citizens. Rights the government is not supposed to restrict.


The Samuel Jackson image I fully agree with.

[Drake Valentine]

I am pro-gun. I do not think taking away guns will stop anything. The problem is not the gun. It is the person holding the gun. You can kill someone with just about anything... it is not the weapon that does the killing, it is the person wielding the weapon.

^This.

People will always find things to use to kill others with. Take away guns, that is fine. There are other deadly weapons that individuals will carry or make or use. Blades, molotovs, vehicles. A crazed arsonist or driver can still do some damage that a gun wielding lunatic can. Just with firearms, they have the fatal precision of handling targets if one is properly trained in such.  Even so, it is impossible to control and confiscate every weapon in the United States and even if in somehow miraculously managing so, do you know how many unmarked or illegal guns are floating about that criminals are in possession of? Feel free, give them an edge over citizens who will not be able to protect themselves with a firearm of their own and whose to say the craftier criminals won't catch up on such and just hide away their weapons. If they obtained things unlicensed, than it is harder to track.

If someone is out on some sort of vendetta or spree, they will use whatever. Removing guns from equation isn't really solving problems; it just starts others.

[kylie]

      The Brazil example is still weird.  It's taking a situation where it appears that the US arms industry has legally flooded the market, surrounding countries have little to no regulation or effective central control (or is it care?) about the industry, and then, as a result criminals can get big weapons.  And people are leaping from that to suggest that if a huge legal industry weren't around and even IF there was more regulation, smugglers would still get guns to criminals and there would be the same problems.  I'm skeptical. 

      ...  I also don't see Mexico selling the US population a lot of antiaircraft weapons and weapons of the sort that take out a dozen people in a minute with their fast bursts (I don't see a need to have wrangles about how people go berserk trying to deny the idea of "assault"  -- some stuff just does kill more people, faster).  Maybe the nearer to automatic ("assault" yes) arms part is because we're so poorly regulated already that who needs Mexico, anyone can go to some gun show and buy them domestically.  But when it comes to anti-aircraft and anti-vehicle weapons, the US is not in any situation comparable to Brazil.  Until maybe Canada has a little civil war.

[Oniya]

Knowing the Canadians that I do, that will be the only time in history that 'civil war' is not a contradiction in terms.

[Ephiral]

1;  I wish felons weren't denied the  right to vote after their sentence was up. The removing of their gun rights is a lot sticker, some people ARE more of a danger with access to them, but for most non-violent ex-criminals, I would not restrict access to weapons.

So when you said "Government CANNOT restrict these rights", you meant "I don't want government to restrict these rights, but it would be absolutely within established precedent to do so.

2; I counter with Brazil. A disarmed populace is one that is more easily controlled. And if the citizens don't have guns, the criminals do.

Two objections. One: Australia is a much closer fit to the US situation than Brazil, in both history with guns (and original view of them as a right) and the factors that actually prevent government tyranny - concept of "rule of law" and desire to be legitimate in the eyes of its people and its potential allies and trading partners.

Two: I have consistently said "tightly regulated", not "disarmed". I live in a nation where there are 30 weapons per 100 people, closer to the US end of the scale than Brazil. I have zero issues with this.

3; You underestimate (badly I think) how much a population armed with hunting weapons can tie up a military. Especially in the US which has a very large percentage of the non urban population that knows how to use firearms.  Yes a well trained military could overrun them. In time, but an active insurgency would tie up tens of thousands, or more troops just to keep an area under some form of control.  You're basically saying that civilian owned arms (an astounding amount which is ex-military) would be worthless against a modern military. Not it wouldn't. They can help tie up tens to hundreds of thousands of troops and hundreds of millions of $ of equipment.  Over time, if the government managed to keep it up, it could win, but the cost would be immense. And you keep forgetting that in the US, access and ownership0 (whether you use it or not) is a RIGHT! As far as I know, know where else in the world is that a right.

I am saying that hunting rifles, no matter how good, will never be able to significantly threaten two entire branches of the military. There's no realistic scenario in which you take down a jet or a destroyer with a hunting rifle. Either the military defects, in which case civilian ordnance is superfluous, or it doesn't, in which case civilian ordnance is nowhere near what's needed to establish control. And you seem to forget that rights are human cosntructions, as valid for renegotiation and reconstruction as any other. This particular right has been altered in US society already.  You've witnessed a sea change on the question of whether marriage is a human right.

4; Which means they are illegally attained. Also ever heard of arms smugglers?If firearms were removed from the US population, you'd see a massive increase in arms smuggling because criminals would pay to get guns.

So follow the chain of logic: Illegal guns being primarily and heavily sourced from thefts of legal weapons in private citizens' hands means that the less weapons tehre are in private citizens' hands, the smaller the pool of illegal guns. The tighter the regulations on how your guns must be secured and where you can bring them, the smaller the percentage of legally owned guns enters the black market, the smaller the pool of illegal weapons.

5; Brazil.  Sometimes your view works, other times it doesn't, and you keep ignoring that the culture here in the US is much different in regards to firearms. We are NOT Europe. We are NOT Asian. We are NOT South American. We are citizens of the United States of America. A unique culture with a tradition of rights and a Constitution that guarantees them to all US citizens. Rights the government is not supposed to restrict.

My view is not "deny citizens weapons under any and all circumstances, then arm the police heavily and give them minimal oversight and a culture of violence and bribery", so you're a bit off there. And... are you saying there's a significant difference in how guns are viewed in modern America and how they were viewed in early-90s Australia, before they decided that dead kids were more important than some Red Dawn fantasy? America isn't the only nation with rights and a Constitution that enshrines them; I'm familiar with the concept because I live it. However, you're absolutely and completely wrong on saying the government can not change what rights you have. There is actually a step-by-step procedure for exactly how it should do so. In fact, the only reason this right exists is that the government followed the procedure for changing your rights and added it.

If someone is out on some sort of vendetta or spree, they will use whatever. Removing guns from equation isn't really solving problems; it just starts others.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but the real-world examples we have of essentially open democratic regimes like the US tightly restricting guns show that it does in fact help to solve the problem of people getting murdered.

[Cassandra LeMay]

(I'm not going to quote individual posts here, as a few people made similar points and I don't want to create the impression that I have some beef with a certain individual by picking arbitrarily which posts to quote.)

That said, I believe the whole gun-control debate is often painted too much in black and white terms and scenarios, when we are not even discussing concrete legislation. From what I read even a majority of NRA members is in favor of mandatory background checks when one buys a gun so there should certainly be room for a calm, rational debate how guns can be made safer and how mass shootings by deranged individuals can be prevented. That strikes me as a debate certainly worth having, even if no law can guarantee absolute safety. Some improvement is still better than none.

Now, one argument I've seen here is "People will find a way to kill each other anyway". How is that an argument against stricter gun controls? If person A wants to kill person B, person A might well find a way to do it, but why should the law make it any easier than it has to be? Traffic accidents will also happen, but no one would argue that as a good reason to no longer require people to get a driver's license.

And while I am neither a criminologist nor a psychologist I would venture that guns don't make killing more easy in a technical, mechanical way, but also in a psychological way and assume that there is still a difference between killing someone from a distance by pulling a trigger and walking up to them and bashing their head in with a club. It may not deter some determined individuals, but it might at least stop some individuals if they don't have a gun at hand.

I find the point that "criminals will get guns anyway" just as problematic, as the whole topic started with a mass shooting perpetrated by a single deranged individual, not a hardened criminal. The gun control debate flares up always in the aftermath of mass shootings, but the felons in those cases are not hardened criminals with black market connections who might find it easy to obtain a gun in a market with tighter controls.


All in all, I would say that some tightening of gun laws would be a good idea, but laws about background checks and limits on obtaining a gun don't exist in a vacuum. There are other laws that pertain to the use of guns and those laws should also be examined, because what the law does or does not allow can shape attitudes. If a state allows people to buy guns without mandatory background checks, allows them to carry them around concealed, and has 'stand your ground' laws that make it okay to shoot someone not when you are objectively threatened, but when you subjectively feel you might perhaps be threatened, that will lead to certain attitudes about guns and gun use. If the law says something is okay, why shouldn't people adopt the same attitude, after all? If that leads to people pulling a gun and shooting someone just because he looks at them sideways there is a problem. Changing the law will not eliminate all those problems over night, but it might help drive the point home that some use of guns is not okay.

[Drake Valentine]

Just gonna leave this here

http://www.infowars.com/charleston-shooter-was-on-drug-linked-to-violent-outbursts/

and this http://www.naturalnews.com/039752_mass_shootings_psychiatric_drugs_antidepressants.html

[Cassandra LeMay]

Just gonna leave this here

http://www.infowars.com/charleston-shooter-was-on-drug-linked-to-violent-outbursts/

and this http://www.naturalnews.com/039752_mass_shootings_psychiatric_drugs_antidepressants.html

Here's an article that adresses the "Roof was on drugs" narrative: http://www.salon.com/2015/06/24/this_drug_wasnt_responsible_for_the_charleston_massacre/

The main points:
1. We don't know if he was on drugs at the time of the shooting. He was found with Suboxone back in February.
2. Even if he was taking Suboxone at the time, there is no medical evidence that it would lead to agressive behaviour. The best the infowars.com article can offer is a handful of anecdotal "evidene", half of it not even from those who have taken the drug.
3. Even if Roof was on Suboxone, and even if it would lead to agressive behaviour, drugs don't turn someone into a racist. No one becomes a racist from popping some pills.

[Oniya]

Natural News is a laughable source.  These are people that still believe in chemtrails.

[Ephiral]

Natural News is a laughable source.  These are people that still believe in chemtrails.

And Infowars is Alex Jones's conspiracy-theory clearinghouse. Hardly remotely credible at all.

[Lustful Bride]

And Infowars is Alex Jones's conspiracy-theory clearinghouse. Hardly remotely credible at all.

Understatement of the century.  ::)

[consortium11]

Understatement of the century.  ::)

Are you telling me you don't think that Robert Rodriguez' cheesy, "Mexploitation", action movie Machete was part of the long running campaign to start a race war and had a 90% chance of causing race riots and civil unrest?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsbIL352Nh0

On a serious note one should never dismiss something just because of who says it... old adages about broken clocks and blind squirrels come to mind... however unreliable that person is. But you can dismiss something when the sources and evidence are a series of anonymous anecdotes as is the case with the linked infowars piece.

[DiscoveringEzra]

I am pro-gun. I do not think taking away guns will stop anything. The problem is not the gun. It is the person holding the gun. You can kill someone with just about anything... it is not the weapon that does the killing, it is the person wielding the weapon.

That's  not always the case ,however. There have been a good bit of cases where children ,toddlers even, have accidentally shot and killed someone or themselves playing with a gun. Plus Some accidental discharges where the gun has been dropped.

Not that im anti gun, I just think there should be regulations and restrictions to certain things. A minimum of 35,000 people are shot and each year, with shooting injuries tripling that number.


On another gun note a new study came out onthe statistics of gun defense.  http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/06/18/3671392/study-people-use-guns-self-defense/

And Fox news have been doing a wonderful job of reporting. Its just awful that there is a war on Christianity. I dont understand why this wacked out kid had to target Christians I just dont get it. Nevermind that 70% of the nation is Christian and he stated exactly who he was targeting. 

And kudos to the FBI for stating that this was not a terrorist attack.  Completely ignoring the fact that a tone of our homeland terrorist attacks are from far right wing Christian Extremists .(Neo nazis, white supremacists, sovereign nationalist, est est)  heck earlier this year they arrested a man who planted pipe bombs in Vickery Creek Park trying to frame Muslims last year. Luckly they found it before he could detonate it. Idk why it took so long to arrest him but I digress as usual.

[Drake Valentine]

That's  not always the case ,however. There have been a good bit of cases where children ,toddlers even, have accidentally shot and killed someone or themselves playing with a gun. Plus Some accidental discharges where the gun has been dropped.

But if parentals were smart and kept guns locked away or out of reach, than that would of never happened. I would blame bad parenting over guns in those cases. Also, accidental discharges are bound to happen if a gun is loaded(in the sense a bullet is already cocked in the chamber.) I don't see how a gun is just going to randomly go off with just a magazine in it. I don't even keep a live round in the barrels for that reason.

Not that im anti gun, I just think there should be regulations and restrictions to certain things. A minimum of 35,000 people are shot and each year, with shooting injuries tripling that number.

Regulations and restrictions perhaps, but I am against outright banning of gun ownership to law-abiding citizens. Civilizans without guns may sound appealing, although I am more worried about the government incorporating Martial Law or even the states being invaded by a foreign country. Oh, thanks a lot government, take away our weapons so we can't now protect ourselves from tyranny.

On another gun note a new study came out onthe statistics of gun defense.  http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/06/18/3671392/study-people-use-guns-self-defense/

I read it, not much I can comment there. However the means of an end I will say is that owning a gun within a household still adds that sense of security. Maybe not everyone will use it, but it is there in case one does. Also, a good faction of Americans use firearms for hunting as well. I was given a gun for hunting at a young age(14-16, I forgot, but may of been sixteen birthday) and I never went around shooting up any schools or churches. I have friends who hunt as well that had firearms at similar ages. All of which were taught the values and importance of a weapon that it isn't a 'toy,' that it can harm or kill someone; and the only living creatures I ever pointed it at were deer with the intention for food. I have never hunted for sport and do not believe in such either.

And Fox news have been doing a wonderful job of reporting. Its just awful that there is a war on Christianity. I dont understand why this wacked out kid had to target Christians I just dont get it. Nevermind that 70% of the nation is Christian and he stated exactly who he was targeting. 

Actually, it is a racist war. If you read his manifesto that I posted somewhere here(if it didn't get deleted from the website it was posted again on since the original website to his manifesto was taken down.) Basically he thought blacks were horrible individuals of a majority of crime induced actions. Which after reading a good portion of said manifesto, I will retract a former statement on him and indeed relate his actions as 'terrorism.' Terrorism as it was an attempt to spark a racial war after the motives within the manifesto made his agenda clear.

And kudos to the FBI for stating that this was not a terrorist attack.  Completely ignoring the fact that a tone of our homeland terrorist attacks are from far right wing Christian Extremists .(Neo nazis, white supremacists, sovereign nationalist, est est)  heck earlier this year they arrested a man who planted pipe bombs in Vickery Creek Park trying to frame Muslims last year. Luckly they found it before he could detonate it. Idk why it took so long to arrest him but I digress as usual.

Sorry, I found the latter part of that a bit humorous. But hey, that is government for you, it is good to see how our tax dollars are spent and used.