But here's the thing: Universal background checks is not a big measure at all. Contrast it with, say, New York City. You say that other states have even less gun control, but that does not qualify Oregon as stricter then average at all: Those other states are significantly below the average.
The argument here, that gun control laws don't work becuase look Oregon has gun control laws is not an argument. Oregon's gun control laws are minimal. There's no requirement to be part of a shooting club, militia, or profession where these firearms are needed. There's no sanity checks. There's... well, nothing. Getting a driving license is harder, and cars are partly designed to prevent harm whilst the very purpose of a firearm is to cause it. The only thing that we can learn from this is that Oregon's gun laws, as they currently are, are not effective at preventing these tragedies. That does not at all rule out harsher measures (like those taken in NYC).
Which gun control measures would have prevented this tragedy from taking place?
The same with "Gun free school zones". That schools want to take these measures to prevent their students or teachers from taking their agression out via gunpowder abuse is a reasonable thing, but if the rest of the state does not comply they're worthless. Requiring that teachers get guns? That makes it rather easy for a student to aquire a gun without going trough the background checks, by seizing it from a teacher whilst they are performing teaching duties like explaining a math equation to a student in person. But the teacher dies first, it happened in this shooting too. Go into a classroom, shoot the teacher and then shoot the kids, and then perhaps you are yourself shot by another teacher. Okay. But that didn't prevent the tragedy from happening, it only contained it.
First, I said
allow, not
require. Those teachers which feel they cannot properly safeguard a firearm do not need to get one.
In that hypothetical scenario, containment is much better than no containment. But in a real-world scenario, the prospect of defenseless targets is what motivates mass shooters to target schools, malls, and workplaces. If they knew the teachers were armed and prepared to defend themselves and their students, they would not target the school. Thus the tragedy would indeed have been prevented.
Oregon legally requires campuses to allow concealed carrying. In fact, one of the survivors claims he was carrying a gun during the shooting. Goober is, as far as I can tell, totally wrong about the campus being a gun-free zone.
It turns out that the actual legal situation is rather complicated.
Snopes has a good summary. Although school policy prevented students from carrying guns, and the school's president said the campus was a gun-free zone, this did not have legal force.
However, Oregon only authorizes concealed carry permit holders to bring guns on campus. The shooter did not have a concealed carry permit. Thus, for him, the campus was indeed a gun-free zone.
The claim about the Harvard study is also similarly funny. That article cites no such thing.
Did you read that article? Here is the relevant quote, with link to the study:
Another researcher, Harvard sociologist Robert Sampson, has written that “family structure is one of the strongest, if not the strongest, predictor of variations in urban violence across cities in the United States.”
No, I was merely responding to Akalabeth Angel using the same language he used. Perhaps the subtlety escaped you. If he thinks it's fine to cite a journalist who implies that his political opponents are in favor of killing children, then it's perfectly reasonable to turn that argument around on him.
Perhaps the subtlety in the original comment escaped you.
"In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over"
This comment can be read as being equally scathing of both sides. Sandy Hook is a great example of exactly the point when America decided that being proven correct about their ideological viewpoints was more important to most people than actually coming together and trying to figure out any kind of compromise that would actually reduce the death toll. Even the death of children wasn't enough to get people off their soapboxes and actually have a dialogue.
All right, I'll spell it out for you. Although you can choose to read the comment as critical of both sides, the comment's
first reading, its intended reading, is to say that the gun control debate is over and the child-killers won. This is meant to characterize opponents of gun control as child killers. That is a nasty rhetorical trick meant to completely disengage the rational part of the brain and poison the well.
The most effective way to counter that is by flipping the argument around. The journalist, Dan Hodges, is on the record as a strong supporter of abortion, so the irony of his statement was obvious.
I never said guns should be illegal. The idea would be to enact laws that would make it as hard as possible to possible mass murdered to get their hands on firearms, primarily compact weapons. Of course, their are already so many guns among the american population, I'm actually not sure how you would approach the issue of confiscating guns from would be murders whilst ensuring law abiding gun owners are not inconvenienced too much.
I'll ask you what I asked -Joshua-: which laws would have prevented this mass murderer from obtaining firearms? And how would you have identified him as a target for confiscation?
