Three people reportedly shot in Six Flags Great America parking lot

Per the article linked above:

Seventy mass shootings have occurred in the U.S. since 1982, leaving 543 dead.

Per the Gun Violence Archive, about 417 in 2022 alone:

Merely pointing out a slight discrepancy in operational definitions. I could not find how the author of the article linked above defined a mass shooting.

Per Gun Violence Archive:

Mass shootings are defined as events where at least four people are shot, either injured or killed, not including the shooter, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

Also not sure who gets to define such an event.

On a completely related note:

TR: SF Great America 08/15/22 (The day after the shooting)

https://coasterbuzz.com/Forums/Topic/tr-sf-great-america-081522

The essay was also published in 2013. Nothing has changed in the US in the last 9 years.

Side note: My wife had her first day with students today and their first barricade in place situation. A custodian found a pried open metal box, that police said could have potentially been used as a gun safe, in the athletic fields of the school. After investigating the police concluded that the box was found by some laborers at a book drop, pried open the box, found a book of an "adult nature", and decided to dump the box in the baseball fields. Welcome to school kids!

More guns means more gun deaths. It's really that simple. Our country is so crazy about guns that I wouldn't be surprised if it were announced that a law passed that every baby born from now on was to have a gun surgically attached to each hand.

There are no easy solutions though. We can't un-invent guns.

I gotta think that disparity is coming from the difference in how you define a mass shooting. Sam is usually pretty good about citing sources in his blog posts, but I couldn’t find where he pulled that particular piece of data.

There’s no way we’ve had 6X as many “mass shootings” in the first half of 2022 as we had in the ~30 years from 1982 to 2013.

Sam is a little selective in how he presents statistics. Sure, more rural people have guns with less gun violence compared to cities, but that's a silly thing to point out without considering population density. The strawman about incorrect handwashing killing people (without attribution) is particularly absurd, more so when you consider almost everyone receives healthcare at least once a year. Context matters.

Something to remember: Back in the 80s I believe there were about two children nationwide who were killed by Jarts (lawn darts). They were banned. I just find that a little funny...and sad...when we discuss guns.

That said, I don't believe guns should be banned but I certainly believe certain weapons (and high capacity magazines) should be banned...or at least made extremely difficult to acquire. To that end, I agree with others who have called on the release of photos of the damage done by those weapons at Marjory Stoneman and other places. It's one thing to be shot. It's entirely another to be literally ripped to shreds so that a doctor would have nothing left to try and fix. I agree that those photos, gruesome as they are, may change some minds.

Wow. Apparently, according to the latest weapons ban proposal, Congress has now defined my little Ruger LC9 9mm pistol as a "semiautomatic assault weapon." I wonder why gun proponents talk about the slippery slope that supposedly doesn't exist whenever politicians start discussing weapons bans...

So you're saying size matters? 😂

Hilarious. But no, they are.

Are they measuring the frequency with which you can dispense bullets as their criteria? If so, and they're comparable, the length of the barrel wouldn't matter. I don't know, just asking.

Ok, I actually misread the bill. It bans pistols with the "capacity to accept a detachable ammunition feeding device at some location outside of the pistol grip", which I took to mean protruding from the grip. But now I see that means elsewhere on the gun.

It's still silly. The criteria consists of attachments that either increase capacity, help with accuracy, or look like fully automatic guns. The first two of which I think are good things to have. The third is just aesthetics. Granted, there are very few full auto pistols around, and their semi-auto versions would likely be outlawed anyway based on their standard magazine capacity of more than 15 rounds.

You may be right, because there's a desire to do something because this is still the only place that it happens. So if not this, what? What do you tell those folks? I mean that largely rhetorically, because I don't imagine any of us here have the answer.

Ooh ooh. Is this where I jump in and blame lobbies? (mostly just kidding)

Vater:

Granted, there are very few full auto pistols around, and their semi-auto versions would likely be outlawed anyway based on their standard magazine capacity of more than 15 rounds.

I'm a Glock guy - they sell 2 versions of their guns. Regular, and California-Compliant.

My Glock 19 holds 15, whereas the California counterpart comes with a 10-round magazine. Apparently, there are pins in the mag well that prevent putting in a standard sized magazine without modifying, but I didn't really give it any thought.

I just know those extra 5 rounds across a few magazines make range day a whole lot easier on my thumbs because I am spending less time putting in rounds. In all honesty, range time is where I like having the ability to hold more. If I was in a carry situation and needed 15 rounds, I'm in a whole lot deeper than I'd ever want to be.

Jeff:

So if not this, what?

I don't know, but I have a strong distaste for regulating things. I don't see GUNS as the problem like most everyone else seems to. Same way that I don't see alcohol or cars as the problem when someone is killed by a drunk driver. I see the people who inflict harm on other people as the problem. Doing something is not the right answer when the something doesn't really amount to...anything (except maybe higher taxes). We tried the assault weapons ban in '94 and most data from that decade shows inconclusive evidence of it helping reduce mass shootings. And as that guy Sam mentioned so-called "assault weapons" account for a tiny fraction of all gun crimes. That's factual; handguns have always accounted for the overwhelming majority of gun crimes.

There are a bajillion theories for what leads a person to kill another. Murder is already illegal no matter what tool is used. Again, I don't have the answers, but justice reform might be a good starting place. And education. Parenting. Discipline. Empathy. Mental health. I don't know. A lot of this stuff isn't necessarily anything government needs to to involve itself in. But keeping people from being able to reasonably defend themselves, which is typically what stricter gun control achieves, is not ideal.

Disclaimer: I'm also not a "gun nut", despite my overparticipation in this thread. Maybe for a season in my life it was a passion of mine, but as a Christian I do ultimately believe in turning the other cheek. I also believe in defending the ones I love from harm, yet I like to think I have faith that I won't encounter any situation where I would need a firearm, which, as I alluded to earlier, is one of the factors that led to me not bother renewing my concealed carry permit (although I do have the legal right to conceal carry without a permit in my state, which went into effect after I moved here). I've so far avoided such a scenario for nearly 50 years.

Alcohol and cars sole purpose is not to kill people, so it's hard for me to see how they're like guns. You can suggest that doing something has no effect, but again, why not if it works elsewhere?

Vater:

And as that guy Sam mentioned so-called "assault weapons" account for a tiny fraction of all gun crimes. That's factual; handguns have always accounted for the overwhelming majority of gun crimes.

I'm also generally not in favor of government regulation, but I feel like this data point is decent justification for regulating ArmaLite-type guns and/or high capacity magazines that are often used in some of the deadliest mass shooting events. In theory regulating those would reduce the Uvalde level events while having minimal impact on the vast majority of gun owners.

And as Josh alludes to, a high capacity mag is not something that's necessary for 99.99999% of self defense situations anyone would find themselves in, and certainly isn't necessary for hunting, etc.

Fine, lets ban that stuff then and see what happens. Again.

From Wikipedia, here are the 30 deadliest mass shootings in the US:

I greyed out all the shootings that involved a semi-automatic rifle (the "assault weapons" that everyone thinks should be banned). A few things worth noting:

The blue row was Columbine, which did involve an "assault weapon", but during the period the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban was in effect. Of note, in addition to an "assault weapon", the perps had a double barreled sawed-off shotgun (felony), 99 explosives, and 4 knives (and other guns). Similarly, the pink row was in California where high-capacity magazines were banned. The shooter had 7 of those on hand.

No "assault weapons" were used in almost half (14) of the 30 deadliest mass shootings in the US.

One could certainly point to the more recent and deadlier shootings as a problem (only 2 of the top 10 deadliest involved no "assault weapons"), and I would agree. But I don't look at it as a problem of access to so-called "assault weapons". The ban was in place from 1994-2004; three of those incidents occurred before the ban (1966, 1984, 1991), and the next shooting that used such a weapon wasn't until 2012, 6 years after the ban was lifted. That's not to ignore the other incidents in the list that occurred since 2004, but again, is it really reasonable to assume access to semi-automatic rifles are the primary reason we've seen a sharp rise in mass shootings the last two decades? Or that banning them (again) will make any significant difference? Why is it absurd to talk about stuff like having armed security in certain places, or responsible firearms tactical and safety training for civilians (in addition to the active shooter drills that suggest running, hiding, and fighting back with pens and furniture are your only ways to survive)? If we can talk about banning attachments and number of bullets, why can't we also talk about those things without being treated like the village idiot for even suggesting it?

I don't think anyone here is calling you the village idiot, but more guns to address guns is a strange thing to suggest when, factually, you can look at any Western (or Asian) democracy and see that stronger restrictions coincide with less gun violence per capita. In fact, when you suggest that proposed limitations won't do anything, many would tend to agree and say they should go further.

And I don't know about you, but if we need to have armed people standing on every corner, we're failing as a species. We're basically still animals.

The previous ban was at best a mixed bag (solid fact check here), but there were a lot of things we could learn from its implementation.