[quote=@Xandrya] This one happened maybe 30 minutes from where I live. I guess it's the price these poor kids have to pay since guns are handed out like candy. [/quote] Where the fuck are they handing guns out like Candy? I would dress up like Woody from Toy Story to trick-or-treat in that neighborhood. Have you ever tried to buy a firearm? Who the fuck are you? Jimmy Kimmel? "We need real laws to keep guns out of the hands of people like this!" LIKE FUCKING WHAT!? Be fucking specific, what do you think congress should do, what law should be passed that would PREVENT this!? I'm not saying that laws are a bad thing, I'm just saying that we already have laws in place, they just need to actually be enforced. [quote=@Penny] Now for the NRA to blame the thing entirely on mental illness and yet refuse to translate that into funding for mental health services [/quote] I really wish the NRA wasn't the primary mouthpiece of gun owners in America :( I think the National Association for Gun Rights, Gun Owners of America, and the Second Amendment Foundation serve as much better representatives of the people rather than large gun corporations. TL/DR: Guns have a place in a civilized society, and it isn't all that difficult to come up with a streamlined way to prevent selling to someone that isn't legally able to own one. [hider=Gun Rant from an educated gun owner, soldier, and gun salesperson] What we have here is a society that has stopped disciplining children, been told that the word "No" is harmful, and has given children as old as 8 a device with a touchscreen, a large video display, and wireless internet access- on an internet that is growing increasingly desensitized and more controversial. Children regularly tell their parents that they will accuse them of child abuse if they spank them, and go so far as to scream, threaten, and even strike teachers, parents, and even school administrators when they are told to do something they don't want to do, or aren't allowed to do something they want to. Everyone wants a quick fix. A band-aid. A piece of legislation they can point at and say, "See, this fixes it." But it's not going to happen. What we need is... 1) An overhaul of the way in which the mental health system operates and the stigma revolving around mental health. If you start giving mental health professionals the ability to take away a person's right to own a firearm, people are going to stop seeing mental health professionals. If you start making it illegal to own a gun if you've been involuntarily committed to a mental health institution, people are going to be much more likely to voluntarily seek out help to prevent that. B. A simple and easy way to check to see if a person is legally allowed to own a firearm or not. Kind of like a concealed carry permit, with a phone number that can be called and an identification number that can run to see if it's valid or not. And if the person holding it commits any felony or crime of domestic violence, comes under indictment for a felony or crime of domestic violence, gets involuntarily committed to a mental institution, or is deemed mentally defective, an administrator at the mental institution, an official at the police station, or a social worker simply calls a phone number or goes on a website, pushes in the individual's information, like their social security card or driver's license number or some form of identifying number that would be associated with their firearms permit number if they don't have the number itself, and makes a selection that flags them as illegal to own a firearm. If and when this changes, such as the indictment is lifted, they are found not-guilty, or they are deemed to mentally have recovered their competency (I imagine THAT would be a long road), then their rights can be re-instated. Simple. Easy. I don't understand why it's so hard. And just so everyone knows- it is already illegal to purchase a firearm while you are under indictment, if you have been adjudicated as mentally defective (this means that there is an official, legal ruling that you have enough mental disability that you would be found incompetent to stand trial for a crime), if you have committed a felony, if you have committed even a misdemeanor offense of domestic abuse, if you are under a restraining order, or if you are under the age of 18 (21 for handguns). If you purchase a firearm under the guise that it is for yourself when it is actually for someone else (ie, the background check and paperwork filled out is for you and not the person the gun is actually going to), it is a felony punishable up to 10 years in prison (except some cunt of a judge in GA gave a woman who bought a gun for a gang-banger that shot and killed a cop just 1 year of house arrest, which makes me question why the fuck people want more gun laws when we don't even enforce the ones we have). This all boils down to parental/social responsibility and the culture in which our society is progressing. It is not realistic to say, "Get rid of guns." And it is not an effective solution to mandate that guns cannot have features X, Y, and Z, or that you can't have a magazine that holds more than 5 bullets or 10 bullets or whatever. That isn't going to stop anyone from getting them. It's not like it isn't already illegal to kill people, so making something illegal with the idea that it will prevent criminals from doing it is fucking asinine. And banning "assault rifles" or, a more accurate term- semi-automatic, magazine-fed, center-fire rifles isn't the answer either. Neither is banning anything with a pistol grip, or an adjustable stock, or a flash-hider, or a muzzle brake, or a binary trigger. This does nothing but make it more difficult for a law-abiding citizen to own the firearm that works best for him or her. Modern sporting rifles, assault-style rifles, or- my personal favorite term- tactical rifles are actually the kinds of weapons that the second amendment was written for. Not tactical rifles specifically, but rather ordnance that is the equivalent of the most modern ballistic technology available. The reason for the second amendment was not hunting of self-defense, it was to allow the citizenry the ability to fight back against a tyrannical government. And before you moronic liberal hipsters say "That's fucking stupid. The military has drones and nuclear arms and airstrikes to take you out if they want to. How are a bunch of rednecks with rifles going to fight the United States military?" I ask you to look at Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam. The most difficult conflicts the U.S. military has ever engaged in were against civilian resistances armed with little more than small arms. It would be the same if the American government started being dickheads at home. I also think it's super funny that most people that are screaming for a gun ban are the same people claiming that Trump "is literally Hitler," a comparison I won't argue all that hard against. Why on Earth do you want to give up your ability to fight against a corrupt government that might one day decide to conduct neighborhood raids and throw every Middle Eastern-looking person in an internment camp? or what if we go to war with Korea and Trump gets all sociopathic and wants to put every Korean American in jail too- for their own safety- just like FDR in WWII? No, fuck that. I'm a straight white dude, with a wife and kids, so I don't feel like I personally have anything to fear, but I do have friends that I would fear for, and I would be the first one to give them refuge and protect them against something as disgustingly illegal and unjust as that, and I know I wouldn't be the only one. /rant. [/hider]