Shooting at Florida high school

Right. Banning opaque backpacks, this author argues, will do exactly as much towards banning weapons as banning weapons.

Can anyone spot the hole in this logic?

the article brings up a good point about "high capacity" magazines - you can change out magazines in seconds.

Yes, but seconds still gives victims time to seek better cover or escape. Or law enforcement time to engage.

Can you quote the passage that says that because I’m not seeing it.

It's the whole point of the piece, repeated several times, the first time in the headline:

I don’t read it that way at all.

Banning that type of firearm would do about as much good toward protecting kids as banning opaque backpacks: not a helluva a lot.

Yes, I know. What I am saying is: It is ridiculous to pretend that banning weapons has as little to do with controlling the abuse of weapons as controlling backpacks.

Realistically no - when the shit hits the fan victims have found whatever "safe" place they can and they are reluctant to leave. It's like hiding under your blanket as a kid, when you think that scary monster is in your room. By the time they decide to take any further action the bad guy has reloaded. Elapsed time about five seconds. And if law enforcement has arrived with superior numbers/fire power they should engage no matter what the bad guy's reloading pattern is. The key is "superior numbers." A couple of cops isn't going to cut it normally. Word to the wise if you are getting shot at the worst thing you can do is stay in one place too long even if you have a weapon to return fire. Hey I'm off work now - no reason to "talk shop".

Indeed. When I pointed out at PoliticalForum.com just how fast many weapons could be reloaded several of the anti gun people were "yeah but the people can use those seconds to jump the gunman".

I pointed out that a group of people being shot at as a rule don't suddenly jump up and charge a gunman just because they suddenly realize he is reloading.

For one thing when they are being shot at (if unarmed) most people tend to keep their head down and not look at the shooter. Thus they can't time exactly when to make a movement, or where to even move to.

Your statements imply that you have first hand experience with shooters. It would be helpful if you point to witness accounts or studies that support this. There should be lots around.

If I understand the theme of your arguments, it's that banning high capacity magazines, or semi-automatics altogether, won't help potential victims in a mass shooting. Do you agree? If yes, then what purpose do theses features serve?

High capacity magazines and semi automatic weapons are for one much, much easier to use by the shooter. Less a hassle, less cumbersome if you don't have to bother reloading after firing just a handful of shots.

In regards to the AR-15 its lightweight without too much recoil. I know some deer hunters who like them for that very reason. Rather handy if you are trekking on foot through the woods for several miles.

Victims of gun violence find that comforting, I'm sure.

People who have to defend themselves

It's rare, but I've heard of it happening - in the Gabby Giffords shooting, IIRC. Though I think the opportunity to jump him arose because he fumbled the reload, and the pause was long enough for everyone to realize they had time.

He was using one of those after market 30 round magazines. They're known to jam up a lot.

Against what?

Sorry, that was an unfinished thought that got posted by mistake. Please disregard.

Sorry, no can do.

Your thought process is something like, "People who have to defend themselves" against semi-automatics should take comfort in owning semi-automatics. Am I wrong?

In any event, people who have to defend themselves against semi-automatics should take greater comfort in getting the weapons out of the hands of amateurs and nuts even at the risk of inconveniencing someone.

Conservatives have become increasingly triggered by the survivors of the Parkland shooting. So triggered that they have threatened to assault one of the teenagers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/business/sinclair-resign-allman.html

We need an angry rep like Facebook.

Any of these will do, mods.

We already have the sad rep. If we get angry too, can we please get a happy rep for balance?

We could call them sad, mad, and glad.

I'm leaning toward myself.

word to that conservative commentator: if somebody just survived a shooting I really don't think a hot poker will get a rise out of them. BTW who set the time machine to 1830 anyway? A hot poker - really?

1830 is where people who make comments like that live. They're no longer content to long for the 1950s that never existed.

Self defense, huh?

How Often Do People Use Guns In Self-Defense?

The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

It's a common refrain touted by gun rights advocates, who argue that using guns in self-defense can help save lives. But what is the actual number of defensive gun uses?

According to the Pew Research Center, 48 percent of gun owners say they own a gun mainly for protection. But for years, experts have been divided over how often people actually use guns in self-defense. The numbers range from the millions to hundreds of thousands, depending on whom you ask.

The latest data show that people use guns for self-defense only rarely. According to a Harvard University analysis of figures from the National Crime Victimization Survey, people defended themselves with a gun in nearly 0.9 percent of crimes from 2007 to 2011.

David Hemenway, who led the Harvard research, argues that the risks of owning a gun outweigh the benefits of having one in the rare case where you might need to defend yourself.

"The average person ... has basically no chance in their lifetime ever to use a gun in self-defense," he tells Here & Now's Robin Young. "But ... every day, they have a chance to use the gun inappropriately. They have a chance, they get angry. They get scared."

But the research spread by the gun lobby paints a drastically different picture of self-defense gun uses. One of the most commonly cited estimates of defensive gun uses, published in 1995 by criminologists Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, concluded there are between 2.2 and 2.5 million defensive gun uses annually.

Philip Cook wrote in the book Envisioning Criminology.

Kleck says there is no record of these gunshot victims because most instances of self-defense gun use are not reported.

"If you tell the police, I just wielded a gun pointing a deadly weapon at another human being and claimed it was in self-defense, the police are going to investigate that," he tells Young, "and they may well in the short run arrest you and treat you as a criminal until and unless you are cleared."

On the flipside, Kleck says, criminals who were wounded after a gun was used in self-defense also have no incentive to go to the emergency room because medical professionals have an obligation to report it to the police. But Hemenway points out that if people don't go to the hospital to treat the original gunshot wound, they will inevitably end up there "with sepsis or other major problems."

He also notes that part of the reason experts are so divided on the number is the difficulty in obtaining reliable survey data on the issue.

"The researchers who look at [Kleck's study] say this is just bad science," Hemenway says. "It's a well-known problem in epidemiology that if something's a rare event, and you just try to ask how many people have done this, you will get incredible overestimates."

In fact, Cook told The Washington Post that the percentage of people who told Kleck they used a gun in self-defense is similar to the percentage of Americans who said they were abducted by aliens. The Post notes that "a more reasonable estimate" of self-defense gun uses equals about 100,000 annually, according to the NCVS data.

Another problem is that there is no consensus on the definition of defensive gun use. Some incidents could involve illegal carrying or possession, or they could amount to aggravated assault, the Rand Corp. writes:

Perceptions about the incident and an individual's role are important because much of the literature relies on self-reports: The respondent must have perceived there to have been a crime (or, in some surveys, a suspected or averted crime) and must consider himself or herself a victim rather than a mutual combatant. Even such stringent definitions, however, may not be sufficient to determine whether the event was lawful, legitimate, or desirable from a social perspective.

Even if someone wanted to use a gun in self-defense, they probably wouldn't be very successful, says Mike Weisser, firearms instructor and author of the blog "Mike The Gun Guy." He says many people who carry a gun aren't properly trained to use it in this way, and there is no performance validation standard for police officers.

"If we don't even have a minimum standard, not for training, but for performance validation for our law enforcement," he says, "how in God's name is anybody going to say, 'Well, just because you have a gun in your pocket, you know how to use it in self-defense?' You don't."

Conservatives are hella triggered by this kid:

Trump supporter films himself shooting at photo of David Hogg

still I feel it's wrong to take away the right for a law abiding, vetted, responsible individual citizen to carry a gun for self defense. Sad to find out that cops don't even have to be well trained in firearm use. But I'm thinking that it greatly depends on the particular police department's standards though - Elwood would know more about this.

And all who support the second amendment are like that, right?