As an outsider looking in....

[KenfromCanada]

This continued gun violence is beyond sad. Such a great country and senseless gun violence causes such grief and sadness. Regardless of your opinions on gays and their lifestyle, none of them or their families deserved this. I understand the constitution and the 2nd Amendment (?), but I don't think that this was what it was meant for.

[Riccardo]

Good lord

Another clueless clown that makes no mention of Islamic terrorism. Funny how no one talked about gun control in France after the Paris attacks

[KenfromCanada]

Do you know it's Islamic terrorism? Media is reporting he was angry after seeing to gay males kiss in Miami a few weeks earlier. FBI dropped him off their watch list as he wasn't doing anything terrorism related. BTW France doesn't have a gun violence issue and that was directly attributed to Islamic extremism.

[murph12]

Considering he called the PD just prior to the shooting claiming loyalty to ISIS, yes, I feel pretty safe saying this is another case of Islamic terror.

[TerpEagle]

Another clueless clown that makes no mention of Islamic terrorism. Funny how no one talked about gun control in France after the Paris attacks

It never has to do with access to guns. It's always something else.

How preposterous to address the problem that fucking nut jobs have such easy access to guns.

[Eagle Road]

It never has to do with access to guns. It's always something else.

How preposterous to address the problem that fucking nut jobs have such easy access to guns.

Terp, IS that the problem? Guns have always been plentiful in this country, and easy to obtain, that hasn't changed, but in the last decade so much more of this than before, so what has changed.

Don't focus on the end result, look at what is different.

[murph12]

We have some of the strictest drug laws in the world. That has worked well, since it's now so difficult to obtain illegal drugs in our society. Gun control debate aside, people better start realizing that there is a large group of people, most of which are Muslim, that hate every single thing about us. They want us dead, and will do anything they need to do to make sure that happens. They will continue to attack us, and unless met with force it will never end. We arent going to "pray" or "love" our way out of this problem. We have a president that pretty much refuses to acknowledge these people even exist, and that's a problem.

[T.D-Bag]

Funny that the NRA used to be an organization concerned with gun violence, safety, and limited gun control, until they became a shill and marketing arm for increased gun sales. Right wing politicians scare their constituents with boogeyman stories to get campaign donations and now run scared from that same organization, even though 70% + of their own members want some sort of stricter control.

[TerpEagle]

Terp, IS that the problem? Guns have always been plentiful in this country, and easy to obtain, that hasn't changed, but in the last decade so much more of this than before, so what has changed.

Don't focus on the end result, look at what is different.

What is different? Weapons are easily available and more efficient at killing. People wanting to hurt each other isn't new. Religious nut jobs, psychos, power hungry assholes, etc. have been around for centuries. The thing that has changes is access to more efficient means of killing one another. Jesus, it's only 70 years since centuries of Europe constantly at war.

The Orlando shooter, Roof, San Bernadino, Columbine, Sandy Hook, VT, Paris, etc.

The common thread is easy access to weapons by crazy people.

I don't even advocate taking everyone's guns. But it is far, far too easy to get one and the gun lobby in this country doesn't want to do anything about that. Incidents like this probably help their sales because they know that they're insulated from blame and scared people are going to buy more of their product under the false presumption that they're making themselves safer.

Was this orlando shooter a religious bigot? Yes. But a religious bigot is far less dangerous without an efficient killing tool.

[nor'easter]

This guy isn't Muslim

As I posted in the other thread, how do you want to pigeonhole this guy who had a much better arsenal than the Orlando guy.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/l...nap-story.html

The Orlando shooter claims he was doing this on behalf of ISIS, so they are quick to jump on that propaganda bandwagon. We also hear from his ex he was a domestic abuser, was bi-polar, took 'roids, he apparently hates gays and since it appears that many of the victims were Hispanic, maybe he thought they were Mexicans and he was helping Trump. He's got every reason to turn into a mass killer I can think of.
The bottom line is, let LE sift through all this shit, let the talking heads play the blame game, and how about you go out and do something positive and donate a pint of blood at the local Red Cross. Heaven knows there's enough other events that require blood donations.
End of rant.

[Ellsworth]

I typically stay out of these conversations because discussing guns, politics, and religion is like beating your head against the wall. Nobody ever changes their opinion and it just creates a bigger gap.

but "guns" like these should not be available to the general public. Period.

So tired of this bullshit. Not sure what's worse: fact it keeps happening or the fact I expect tragedies like this on a daily basis.

[McCarthy12]

I wouldn't lose any sleep if every AR-15 on the planet magically disappeared overnight. However, the unfortunate reality is that, even if that happened, none of these shootings would have been prevented. As someone else mentioned, a skilled shooter with just about any semi-automatic weapon could wreak this havoc in a crowded space.

I'm down with any reasonable gun regulations, but I think we are losing the forest for the trees here. The issue is ISIS. They want to kill us and they are doing it. We need to stop them. That should be the focus, IMO, not the ancillary issues related to them.

[T.D-Bag]

and the ISIS hierarchy are primarily the disaffected Sunni factions that made up Saddam Hussein's Army who were left jobless through the De-baathification in 2003 under the CPA and Paul Bremer. They became the targets of the Shiite govt installed under Malaki. I guess we reap what we sow.

[Eagle Road]

I wouldn't lose any sleep if every AR-15 on the planet magically disappeared overnight. However, the unfortunate reality is that, even if that happened, none of these shootings would have been prevented. As someone else mentioned, a skilled shooter with just about any semi-automatic weapon could wreak this havoc in a crowded space.

I'm down with any reasonable gun regulations, but I think we are losing the forest for the trees here. The issue is ISIS. They want to kill us and they are doing it. We need to stop them. That should be the focus, IMO, not the ancillary issues related to them.

THIS ^^^

is what I was alluding to when I asked Terp what was different, this IMHO is what is different, at the turn of last century this country had as many immigrants coming here as anywhere in history, I don't care what gun difference technology was then vs now, the difference is those people coming here WANTED to be here, they wanted to be in America and all that was possible with that.

Now you have a lot of people in this country, whether they were born here or not that simply don't want to be Americans, they want to fly their countries (or ancestors country) flag, burn ours, make their own laws, have their own courts.

Basically what you are starting to have is instead of a melting pot of cultures, you have pockets of cultures that really don't want to be Americans.

To me, that is what has changed.

[Melchior]

I wouldn't lose any sleep if every AR-15 on the planet magically disappeared overnight. However, the unfortunate reality is that, even if that happened, none of these shootings would have been prevented. As someone else mentioned, a skilled shooter with just about any semi-automatic weapon could wreak this havoc in a crowded space.

I'm down with any reasonable gun regulations, but I think we are losing the forest for the trees here. The issue is ISIS. They want to kill us and they are doing it. We need to stop them. That should be the focus, IMO, not the ancillary issues related to them.

Well, when they hijacked planes with boxcutters, they started checking your assholes and beefed up security on airplanes.

The issue is not ISIS. Organizations like this will always exist. The issue is that it's far too easy for fucking lunatics to arm themselves in this country. You're conveniently letting the white guys off the hook here.

I'm honestly shocked that Law Enforcement agencies and unions aren't pushing for a ban on all semi-automatic weapons, body armor, etc.