Mass shooting New Zealand Mosque - MOD NOTE POST #1

listermint wrote: »

There was plenty of mass killings in the era of Tommy guns.

Actually I'm sorry L there were not. There were shootings of course, but the vast majority were criminal on criminal, not lone nutters and teenaged boys opening up in schools and university campuses. The most famous, nay infamous incident of the period was the St Valentine's Day massacre in the late 20's carried out by organised crime against competitors at the height of Prohibition, Al Capone and all that. Seven murdered. Seven. That was reported worldwide it was considered so heinous.

This is the type of inane NRA new age facts that they use to distort the past.

The 1930s no different to now in the sense that there is no domestic use of a semi or full automatic weapon.

There simply isn't

Whatever about fully auto firearms and I would agree there, semiautomatic is a wide definition. Many sporting guns are semiautomatic, others are lever or pump action, which with practice can lay down pretty heavy fire. Hell, a nutcase well practiced with a double barrelled shotgun could cause serious mayhem and murder and the double barrelled shotgun is just above air rifles in most jurisdictions as far as access is concerned. Ireland has one of the tightest gun control legislation in the world and shotguns are about the easiest firearms to own.

And pretending the past was some paradise is equally as dillusional.

Nobody said it wasn't. I certainly didn't and I'm no NRA nutter. However knee jerk simplistic responses while comforting in the moment are not much use if they don't actually work.

The facts are increasing gun control in the US(which is and was sorely needed) did not reduce the incidences of mass murder. Again the facts are when traced against a graph of increased legislation the incidence of mass murder has gone up.

Wiki article OK? The salient bit being: Studies indicate that the rate at which public mass shootings occur has tripled since 2011. Between 1982 and 2011, a mass shooting occurred roughly once every 200 days. However, between 2011 and 2014 that rate has accelerated greatly with at least one mass shooting occurring every 64 days in the United States.[21]

In recent years, the number of public mass shootings has increased substantially, although there has been an approximately 50% decrease in firearm homicides in the nation overall since 1993. [Emphasis mine]

More gun control could well be a factor in the drop in overall homicides, but it certainly doesn't seem to have had much effect on mass murders. The stats make this pretty clear. There are other factors at work. Complex factors. Consider that Switzerland is awash with military grade automatic weapons as part of their culture and legislation, yet no mass murder sprees. There are complex factors there too.

Also. I'm surprised at you. We don't legislate for the past we legislate for today and the future.

We also, or should legislate by learning from the past to see what works and is working and what doesn't.