
Originally Posted by
Lynx_Fox

Originally Posted by
Chrisgorlitz
Yeah you could ban guns but how long then until the next massacre happens with a chain saw, then what ban power tools. Heck even in this country I could go down to the police station and get a shot gun license.
I don't think that argument holds a lot of weight. There's a big difference between adapting something to kill, and allowing free, unchecked and unrestricted purchase of something like the Bushmaster rifle used in this incident. That rifle from its basic design to the round it used 0.223/5.56-NATO was designed from the ground up for killing people and use by the military--the only functional difference between it and the most common issued weapons used by NATO are the unavailability of burst or auto.
As for hunting, that bushmaster, isn't really a good hunting rifle--unless you like coyote, prairie dog or people. It's not even legal to hunt deer with it in most states. If however we wanted to throw off a tyrannical government it would be excellent.
So where does this leave us? What measures can we put into place to preserve every citizens right to defend their home when they live 30 minutes from a police response? How about work in large groups...a militia as the last stop gap if the US government decides to toss the US Constitution away? How do we minimize the crazies from getting their hands on these weapons?
Also, last time ago the definition of "assault rifle" was so muddled it was darn near meaningless and had more to do with cosmetics than capability. For starters nearly every dear rifle as well as most home defense rifles are semi-auto. Perhaps the most distinquishable feature we could restrict is round capacity, maximum clip/magazine sizes or perhaps even getting rid of clips and magazines altogether. That would have many good and effective tube fedd hunting and defense weapons with 3-5 rounds in high caliber and up to ten or so in smaller calibers. Of course they are more difficult to load, so would need to be left loaded in any realistic home defense scenario.
Actually attacking schools and children is unfortunately nothing new in the world and different types of guns, bombs, knifes, cleavers, swords, etc., have been used and end up being the preferred weapon of choice for most of these mentally ill people.
In 1996 a man used a handgun to kill 16 children in Scotland. In Norway a man killed 77 people last year (2011) with a bomb and guns. In China, just this past Friday, 1 man walked into an elementary school with a knife and stabbed 22 kids, many of which are in critical condition. In 2010, China, 8 Children were killed by a knife in another attack on a school and 44 others were injured.
The .223 is also a hunting round/rifle. It is the military that adopted that round from hunters and then created the m16 around it. It is a .22 caliber hunting round. Outside of a BB gun, it is hard to get a smaller round than that. As a fully automatic weapon, the AR15/M16 platform is an effective battle machine gun rifle. As a semi auto rifle, it is not effective as a soldiers battle rifle. It would not be used in the military if it was semi auto. Troops would be dead or running for the hills if they had the AR15 semi auto.
Anytime criminals and the mentally ill attack and/or kill people with guns, there is always a group of people who do not care about why or how, they only use the tragedy to attack and restrict law biding citizens.... People have to ask themselves why and for what purpose/means/agenda?
It is, IMO, very disturbing that people use and want to use this as a political tool to push an agenda that has nothing at all to do with the tragedy. Banning anything and everything will not and would not prevent this tragedy and it will not prevent it in the future. Someone who is willing and ready to murder people simply will not and do not care if you make a law telling them it is illegal to posses a piece of metal. It does not even matter if they can get a gun or a .22 caliber rifle or not, they are going to murder men, women and children.