Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

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ChrisTheMagic

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Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

North Hollywood shootout involved illegally modified firearms.

Sello mall shooting in Finland involved a firearm stolen in Norway and illegally imported into Finland.

Two firefighters were shot dead by a man in a sophisticated ambush in New York this week. He was a felon and was not legally allowed to own any firearms.

I'm pretty sure I read that the guy who tried to start a mass-shooting at a showing of the Hobbit in San Antonio (shot by a guard at the theater) did not legally own the gun used, though I don't have a link on-hand.

That's off the top of my head. And, of course, like I said, when we start talking about the more-frequent-but-lower-media-profile gun crime in the USA, illegally-acquired guns are generally the rule and not the exception.
 
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DanaN

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Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

So would you say that having so many legally owned firearms stored in peoples homes, in their cars or on their person makes it easier for criminals to get hold of firearms?
 
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jonas_miley_fan

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Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

I suspect domestic violence and child abuse kills more Americans each year than auto-loading rifles do, and here we are, a bunch of people who hit people and choke people for the fun of it. And look how many people are killed by hitting and choking? Etc etc etc.
 
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CHERYLS3

New member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

No, because there's not a single place in the USA where meth or crack or heroin is legal, but I can buy it at just about any bus station in the nation.
 
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raceylpacey

New member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

This is an old article, 2002. But it states more than 80% of firearms thefts are from cars or homes. This isn't significant in the number of crimes carried out using firearms?

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-12-17-guns-usat_x.htm

Of course another article claims this only accounts for 10% to 15% of gun crime. Criminals actually get their guns from corrupt gun dealers.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/guns/procon/guns.html

The problem of stolen guns in the USA is big enough to warrant services like this. Which is a bit worrying.

http://www.stolenweapon.com/
 
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Neen

Member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

let's stick to the US.

That's very different to being an illegal weapon. He could have bought the gun privately and therefore lawfully, since there are no background checks required for private sales.
 
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Sharoof

New member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Could be. Especially if said owner does not take the extra security measures to lock the guns.

Also, there is the private transfer without regulations (which occurred in Columbine)
 
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bigmonty91010

New member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

You're comparing the US to the UK (basically saying "we have gun prohibition and we don't have gun crimes," and making comments about how disingenuous and/or deluded Americans don't get that the same allegedly would work in the USA). The minute I come up with countries more comparable to the US (significant histories of private firearms ownership; not islands and thus with border smuggling issues), you say "let's stick with the US"? Let's not. If we're going to compare, let's compare. Finland, Norway, and Germany still have significant mass-shooting problems despite far more rigorous gun laws than the US. Island nations with no major history of civilian gun ownership don't.

The US is not an island nation, and it has a significant history of civilian gun ownership. So let's compare to Finland, where prohibition has not stopped mass shootings.



He was a felon in possession of a firearm. That's already illegal. Felons are not allowed to possess firearms whatever the source; they're not simply barred from purchasing them in certain sorts of transactions. It was illegal for him to possess a firearm, it was illegal for him to commit arson, and it was illegal for him to murder the firefighters who responded. Everything he did was already illegal. I don't see that more laws would have deterred him.
 
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Emms27

Member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

I've said repeatedly in this thread and others than prohibition would not work in the US. The delusion many Americans appear to be under is that guns do not form part of the problem themselves.

Are you going to provide evidence for that. How many mass shootings have Germany had over the last decade?

So let's compare. How many mass shootings has Finland had in the last 10 years compared to the number in the US in the last 10 months?

Semantics. The current laws make it entirely possible for him to purchase a firearm through legitimate means with absolutely no risk of being caught. Buying illegal weapons carries greater expense and greater risk of detection. Every time someone has to overtly break the law in the commission of a crime offers an opportunity for discovery and imprisonment. If he purchased those weapons by using the private sales loophole, then the US government may as well have loaded the weapons for him.
 
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wif_a_tude

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Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

And there's just as many who realize that no matter how you slice it... it's a mixed bag - with no ideal solution. Though they'll always be shouted down by the extremes on either end. No big surprise there.
 
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UntamedRose

Member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Not sure why you quoted the period. I had to put that in only because what I posted was in quotes and the forum software doesn't allow just a post of quotes. It wasn't to underscore any particular point about the source of the weapons. I should have changed the color of it so it didn't come off as some sort of underscore.

However... in the US there are plenty of weapons laws on the books both at Federal and State level. Yet often times they either aren't enforced or they're not applied in a way that suits everyone. As to why the girls weren't prosecuted I couldn't say... You'd have to follow the case from A-Z to figure that one out... perhaps some sort of deal was made between the defense and the prosecution? Sounds about right to me.

FWIW - I should have included the source: http://www.vpc.org/studies/wgun990420.htm
 
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Deluca

Member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

haha... yeah that'll do it.



Yeah I didn't follow the case very closely. In my experience how the law actually plays out in the courts is very different than to what 99% of people think it will. There is a lot of stuff that goes on that most people think doesn't or shouldn't happen. Many times it takes place in order to secure a conviction. Not nearly as easy to obtain as many people think. So my guess (keyword guess) would be that it was part of some sort of deal.
 
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burningforyou

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Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Finland is a country of about six million people--one-fiftieth the US. I've been able to find five mass shootings in Finland in the past five years. That's the per capita equivalent of 250 mass-shootings in five years in the USA. Even if you discard the last as a triple-murder based on personal grudge, not a random mass shooting (in which case you shouldn't count US mass shootings in workplaces and other situations that aren't "random" either), that's four in five years for a country 1/50 the size of the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyvink%C3%A4%C3%A4_shooting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sello_mall_shooting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jokela_school_shooting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kauhajoki_school_shooting
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/nov/17/police-3-dead-in-finland-shooting-over-jealousy/?print&page=all

You can do the same with Germany--just start googling mass shootings and there were a number of serious incidents there. Not as high per capita as Finland, but still significant. And Norway had the worst mass-shooting by a single shooter in human history last year.

Different sources claim different numbers for the number of random mass shootings in the USA per year, but it's definitely far lower than 200 in five years.
 
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scottyc18

Member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

No. The weapons of Columbine were purchased via a "strawman sale", which is illegal.

Strawman Sale:
Purchasing a firearm legally and then selling it under illegal terms, well its illegal.

Some firearms get into the hands of criminals this way also
 
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driftking

New member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

A tangent, but a fair one:



Are you a vegetarian? Because if you're not, everything you eat was killed in one way or another. And wild game is the most humanely-raised and humanely-slaughtered meat out there. The animal lives its life in the wild, and then in the blink of an eye, it's all over. Compare that to the cradle-to-grave experience of hogs that become grocery store pork, and yeah, it's perfectly fair for a hunter to take pride in a quick-and-humane death of an elk.

By the way, I never said anything about what retail establishments should or should not sell firearms. Once again you're putting words in my mouth (seriously, how many times have you done that this thread?). I would prefer that all gun sales go through dedicated gun stores because their employees are better trained in applicable laws and background-check procedures.
 
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