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2 hours ago, HoosierFaithful said:

Couldn't we do both?  It doesn't have to be either/or (guns/something else).  Look at this as a comprehensive problem.. guns, mental health, the way life has changed..

Seems most agree this is a complex problem.  It likely requires a complex, comprehensive solution as well.

Complex is what I am talking about.  The anti-gun lobby jumps all over these kind of situations.  The media thrives on them.  

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Trying to avoid this going political, but there's just no reason, in my opinion, to feel that anyone has a right to carry an assault rifle. It's a killing machine, not a hunting gun. The whole right to bear arms comes out of the need for an urban militia in the early redcoat days. We don't need urban militias now. We don't need to have easy access to assault rifles. There's nothing wrong -- in my opinion -- with feeling strongly that gun ownership rights should be protected, whether for hunting or self defense. But that doesn't require assault rifles, etc. At the end of the day, something has to change. How many school shooting, kid deaths, does it take?

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16 minutes ago, Hoosierhoopster said:

Trying to avoid this going political, but there's just no reason, in my opinion, to feel that anyone has a right to carry an assault rifle. It's a killing machine, not a hunting gun. The whole right to bear arms comes out of the need for an urban militia in the early redcoat days. We don't need urban militias now. We don't need to have easy access to assault rifles. There's nothing wrong -- in my opinion -- with feeling strongly that gun ownership rights should be protected, whether for hunting or self defense. But that doesn't require assault rifles, etc. At the end of the day, something has to change. How many school shooting, kid deaths, does it take?

It is a hunting gun........I got one as does my 77 year-old Dad.  And fwiw, by military terms it aint an assault rifle.  

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3 minutes ago, rico said:

Groundhogs....serious answer.

Thanks for the answer.  I just was curious.  Followup question.  Can groundhogs be killed by other means ?   I remember as a kid growing up in Gary, when we had groundhogs.... my dad would hook a hose to the tailpipe of our car, and put that hose into their holes, in order to get rid of them. 

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5 minutes ago, milehiiu said:

Thanks for the answer.  Followup question.  Can groundhogs be killed by other means ?   I remember as a kid growing up in Gary, when we had groundhogs.... my dad would hook a hose to the tailpipe of our car, and put that hose into their holes, in order to get rid of them. 

Anything can be killed by other means.  We had bombs that we would throw in their holes that would gas them.  But a semi-automatic is what we use now.

Keeping in mind, we live out in the country.

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3 hours ago, rico said:

It is a hunting gun........I got one as does my 77 year-old Dad.  And fwiw, by military terms it aint an assault rifle.  

It's not a hunting gun.  It's a modification of an M4 (or now M16) which was designed for the military to kill humans.  Saying it's a hunting gun is like saying a Formula One car is a daily driver. 

Many states already have outlawed the AR15 for hunting purposes, though it can still be purchased.  

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20 minutes ago, KoB2011 said:

It's not a hunting gun.  It's a modification of an M4 (or now M16) which was designed for the military to kill humans.  Saying it's a hunting gun is like saying a Formula One car is a daily driver. 

Many states already have outlawed the AR15 for hunting purposes, though it can still be purchased.  

Right, and wholeheartedly  agree. 

Except that if I could, I would daily drive that Formula One!

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6 minutes ago, Hoosierhoopster said:

Right, and wholeheartedly  agree. 

Except that if I could, I would daily drive that Formula One!

And you would very likely be responsible with the F1 car.  But we don't allow it for a daily driver because there's enough risk to ruin it for everyone.  

I'm sure you don't think an F1 car should be legal just so you can drive it, even though the legality may end the lives of others? 

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18 hours ago, PoHoosier said:

I am not sure how to express my opinions or beliefs without getting this thread locked.  So I will simply say that things must change starting with doing something with assault rifle legislation.

What is an assault rifle?  If you are referring to an AR 15 (a semi-automatic, same as a Browning hunting rifle),I can't tell you how many nights I lie awake at night clutching my .357, wondering if this is the night my AR turns on my family.  In all seriousness, I wondered about raising the age to purchase an AR to 21, but is it fair to give an 18 year old kid a real assault rifle and tell him to fight the Taliban, but tell him he can't buy a semi auto at home.

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1 hour ago, Muddy River said:

What is an assault rifle?  If you are referring to an AR 15 (a semi-automatic, same as a Browning hunting rifle),I can't tell you how many nights I lie awake at night clutching my .357, wondering if this is the night my AR turns on my family.  In all seriousness, I wondered about raising the age to purchase an AR to 21, but is it fair to give an 18 year old kid a real assault rifle and tell him to fight the Taliban, but tell him he can't buy a semi auto at home.

Yeah, good points.  As we all seem to agree, its a complex issue and we cannot do nothing.  Legislation doesn't have to mean a ban.  Whatever the answer is, I would like to see something not over the top to keep people and children safe and soon.

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4 hours ago, KoB2011 said:

And you would very likely be responsible with the F1 car.  But we don't allow it for a daily driver because there's enough risk to ruin it for everyone.  

I'm sure you don't think an F1 car should be legal just so you can drive it, even though the legality may end the lives of others? 

Ha, I was just being silly. I drive fast, would love to drive an F1, but no I wasn’t being serious

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So, I am new here but this is a topic that is of interest to me. One thing I have not seen considered is, if AR 15's were restricted or banned( which there are about 15 million in circulation so good luck) would mass killersn not revert to previous methods?  Such as pistols or shotguns which most perpetrators have used in mass shootings. 

I think one could find a correlation with the amount and frequency of mass shooting events and the popularity social media,internet, and the change in news reporting. Also, the "Clinton ban" contributed to the proliferation of these weapons. And the Obama electios increased the sales exponentially.

This is a societal issue, not a gun issue.

So, society has changed. I don't think the rules should change. I think the old rules should be applied to today. They worked then so why no today. 

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Also, what makes the debate more difficult is the lack of knowledge on the anti gun side. Until 1934 one could purchase a full auto at the hardware store. Ar15's have been for sale to civilians since about 1963. But have only been used in mass shootings since about 2010. So that tells me it has less to do with the tool and more to do with the individuals. 

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10 hours ago, Hoosierhoopster said:

Ha, I was just being silly. I drive fast, would love to drive an F1, but no I wasn’t being serious

Oh I know you weren't actually serious, j was just trying to make a point. Of course you don't think F1 cars should be street legal just because you could probably drive one just fine. 

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On 2/17/2018 at 10:07 PM, 5fouls said:

Mass shootings have happened elsewhere on occasion, but are, for the most part, almost exclusively American.  What does America do (or not do) that creates an atmosphere where this continues to happen?  One thing stands out to me,  

   A little off the topic, but may be related. Read the current issue of National Geographic and the article on using technology to track people . Specifically, the use of cameras to document activity. Really Orwellian topic and something that is prevalent in many foreign countries, especially those that have been subject to terrorist attacks. 

Do we want to become a nation like England that has installed thousands of security cameras and can track your movements without you knowing? That may be part of the solution, but at what level do we want to give up our personal freedoms?

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8 hours ago, mrflynn03 said:

Also, what makes the debate more difficult is the lack of knowledge on the anti gun side. Until 1934 one could purchase a full auto at the hardware store. Ar15's have been for sale to civilians since about 1963. But have only been used in mass shootings since about 2010. So that tells me it has less to do with the tool and more to do with the individuals. 

Actually this is an inaccurate statement of gun laws. Among other things you have ignored the 1994 fed assault weapons ban, that Congress allowed expire, and the fact that gun laws focused on handguns because it didn't use to be the case that assault weapons were easily obtainable and used. Here's a writeup that provides more explanation:

The AR-15–style rifle that authorities say Nikolas Cruz used in his shooting rampage at a Florida high school on Wednesday was easier for the 19-year-old to legally purchase than a handgun, thanks to an absurd discrepancy in America’s gun laws.

While federal law requires gun buyers to be 21 to purchase a handgun, in many states anyone 18 or older can buy rifles. This includes the AR-15, a semi-automatic version of the military’s M16 that was also used in recent mass shootings in Newtown, Connecticut; Aurora, Colorado; and San Bernardino, California.

Federal gun laws have traditionally treated handguns differently from rifles, shotguns, and other long guns. When the Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed, legislators raised the legal age to purchase handguns to 21. Congress likely focused on handguns because they were, and still are, used in the majority of firearm-related crimes.

Yet, 18-year-olds were still allowed to buy rifles, often used for hunting, under the act. At the time, assault rifles like the AR-15 were not popular or widely available to the American public. “Handguns were far, far more common and assault rifles had not reached the market saturation that they have today,” Avery Gardiner, co-president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, told Slate.

That wasn’t the case for long. “With the rise of assault weapons in the 80s and 90s, the [1968] law was made obsolete,” says Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. As assault weapons became more popular over the next few decades among both manufacturers and gun owners, the minimum age requirement of 18 for purchasing long guns still applied to these more powerful rifles.

Subsequent gun laws struggled to keep up with this trend and largely failed to address the gap. Finally, in 1994, Congress passed a federal assault weapons ban that was set to last for 10 years. The law effectively made it illegal to manufacture a wide variety of assault weapons for civilians. Though one could still own and resell existing guns, people weren’t supposed to be able to buy most new AR-15s—it didn’t matter if you were 18, 21, or 45.

A decade later, however, the Republican-controlled Congress let the ban expire. Thus, the Gun Control Act of 1968 is still a major pillar in our current federal firearms laws, especially when it comes to age restrictions. Even though AR-15–style rifles are becoming more and more sought-after—the NRA claimed in 2013 that “Americans own about five million AR-15s”—we’ve in many ways reverted back to laws that were crafted when these weapons were barely available. As Gardiner said, “It’s shocking that a 19-year-old can’t buy a beer, and can’t buy a handgun, but can buy an AR-15 under federal law.” 

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/a-brief-history-of-the-laws-that-make-it-easier-for-teens-to-buy-ar-15s-than-handguns.html

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58 minutes ago, Jerry Lundergaard said:

   A little off the topic, but may be related. Read the current issue of National Geographic and the article on using technology to track people . Specifically, the use of cameras to document activity. Really Orwellian topic and something that is prevalent in many foreign countries, especially those that have been subject to terrorist attacks. 

Do we want to become a nation like England that has installed thousands of security cameras and can track your movements without you knowing? That may be part of the solution, but at what level do we want to give up our personal freedoms?

As a general side note, under current Constitutional law, you do not have a right to privacy in public. It's really that simple. There's some grey when it comes to questions like how much drones can do in gathering information, filming you, etc., but current law does not restrict installing security cameras everywhere (and btw, that's how the Boston Marathon shooters were initially identified) and filming you, taking photos of you, etc. 

It's hard to balance this discussion without people getting into politics. This is an off topic forum, but it's still a bball site, not a political forum, and we do not want to encourage (and will not permit) partisan political discussion. (Frankly, it's nice to have an escape from all of that.) The discussion though is one worth having, if we can avoid getting into politics (again, it's a difficult line to try to draw). 

So to your point, I'll go back to my college days, when I spent a summer in the then Soviet Union, under Gorbachev. My IU and Duke group would spend nights roaming Moscow and Leningrad (with an internal KGB tail that we had fun losing whenever we could). Even to a college kid, what was really interesting was how "free" we were to run the streets without any real worry of crime, getting held up, etc., but completely without "liberty." Whereas in the US we'd have tons of liberty, but with personal safety etc. at risk. Where you draw the line between those two ends of the spectrum, and how you work laws to try to get there, is an ongoing question without easy answers.

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12 minutes ago, Hoosierhoopster said:

As a general side note, under current Constitutional law, you do not have a right to privacy in public. It's really that simple. There's some grey when it comes to questions like how much drones can do in gathering information, filming you, etc., but current law does not restrict installing security cameras everywhere (and btw, that's how the Boston Marathon shooters were initially identified) and filming you, taking photos of you, etc. 

It's hard to balance this discussion without people getting into politics. This is an off topic forum, but it's still a bball site, not a political forum, and we do not want to encourage (and will not permit) partisan political discussion. (Frankly, it's nice to have an escape from all of that.) The discussion though is one worth having, if we can avoid getting into politics (again, it's a difficult line to try to draw). 

So to your point, I'll go back to my college days, when I spent a summer in the then Soviet Union, under Gorbachev. My IU and Duke group would spend nights roaming Moscow and Leningrad (with an internal KGB tail that we had fun losing whenever we could). Even to a college kid, what was really interesting was how "free" we were to run the streets without any real worry of crime, getting held up, etc., but completely without "liberty." Whereas in the US we'd have tons of liberty, but with personal safety etc. at risk. Where you draw the line between those two ends of the spectrum, and how you work laws to try to get there, is an ongoing question without easy answers.

Agree with your take, and agree and am thankful that technology was used to track down those responsible for Boston.

I understand that our right to privacy is limited in this country. My concern is how the information that is collected is used. If for public safety or national security, that is one thing. Other instances become too "big brotherish" to me and border on the edge of infringement. 

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