Multiple people have been killed in a mass shooting after a gunman opened fire at a Madden NFL video game tournament in Jacksonville, Florida. Warning, the video is awful, not because of what you see, but more because of what you hear.
Is it now time for firearm laws to be reassessed?
Some lunatic loses $5,000 and goes on a rampage against completely innocent people, as if they forced him to gamble? Good god. And this is just after that CS:GO guy used his car as a means of causing harm to others because killing himself. 
Why? In what world do criminals follow the law? And what laws can we add, short of taking away firearms from legal, law abidding citizens (but not the criminals because you can’t), that will somehow stop criminals from behaving the way that they do?
We already have laws that are designed to prevent these people from possessing firearms. The problem is enforcing them or making sure the laws are being followed correctly (add a law that forces them to follow the law? what makes them follow that law?). And so if we already have laws to stop this and they aren’t being followed or the minority slip through the cracks and cause horrific attacks, how do you think more laws will do what those before it couldn’t? Adding more laws isn’t going to magically change this country or the criminals or mentally ill looking to harm others.
What we need to focus on is enforcing our current regulations via routine federal or state checks and testing. They (the laws) are fine the way they are, overall, so let’s not punish law abidding people for the actions of criminals.
Unless you don’t mean the average suggested “firearm law changes” most people do, but more along the lines of say something like every three or five years after a purchase or to maintain a license one must perform a “mental fitness test” to determine if you are still capable of owning/operating a firearm (on top of the initial background check)? If so, I’m all for minor additions like that, but using words like “reassessed” makes it seem like there is absolutely nothing within this country to stop just about anyone getting a gun as if they’re purchasing nothing more than a carton of milk when there absolutely is.
There’s a discussion to be had, certainly, but it doesn’t lead down the road of rewriting our rights as legal, law abidding citizens because some criminal (possibly mentally unstable man) broke the law.
EDIT
Hopefully I did not come across churlish in this post, that is not my intention. I just take this very seriously, as it means a lot to me for numerous reasons, and would like to actually discuss the issue and see what the opposite thinks (and maybe hopefully get the opposite side to see my/our side too).
You can see the red laser dot on the man’s chest before the footage cuts out. It is disturbing to listen to.
I am saying no more until I know more.
The temptation to speculate is too great when it comes to these things. So, I suggest we hold off on the blame laying and the politics, at least for now.
I am not saying what you are doing @xist, not at all, it involves games and gamers, so I see no reason *NOT to inform the community, I am just preemptively saying this before it turns ugly.
*EDIT: to fix typo
I just want to say lets not get to political here, there are other places to do that on like reddit and youtube. also there haven’t been any new info for awhile now so lets not jump to any conclusions.
Saw (heard) the video earlier, it was awful indeed and you can see the laser on one of the guys right before the cam turns off.
Sure I believe the US should take a good look at their gun laws but I really don’t think the time to do so is 10 minutes after a horrible shooting.
I had a look at twitter and as always it’s absolute trash after an event like this. A tragedy happens and everyone is out to politicize it right away.
The young man in red was truesowavy. 
Another player said the shooter (David Katz, another player (Right)) was targeting other players, so this was all what he thought was “revenge”. I will never understand how someone could harm another person. What kind of human waste are you to be so selfish and cruel?
May you rest in peace Elijah, and all those who lost their lives. You all didn’t deserve this horrific fate.
Not to start a debate, but regulation doesn’t mean prohibition, and US laws are not right, right now is easier for a 14-year-old to buy a gun on his own on a minute than it is for him to get alcohol or porn(not that it should be easy to get these eiter), and everyone has a point where we just lose it. I, for example, consider myself a rather calm person, but I irate easier when told I’ve done things I’ve clearly don’t, but I can still control myself rather well, but not everyone tries their hardest on that.
Anger is very dangerous and in the supposed words of Maslow, “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”, regulation is not meant to keep guns from criminals, is mostly meant to keep guns easily accessible from people who are not ready for them, people that under the right circumstances, will make hastily desitions, they’re not criminals, but when blinded by ire, you clearly don’t see things right.
I do agree with you however, that gun control is not a solution, this is a deeper issue wich roots lie somewhere else in many places, education, family, society, the way a person is made is where they (society) should be looking at.
When it comes to the US I’ll be the first to admit is a country that has given us a lot of things directly or indirectly, perhaps is not the first country to enact anty slavery laws, or gender equality rights, freedom of speech and who knows what else, but the US is the place where they often get the loudest, so others listen more to it, but is also a country where day by day people are getting more and more inebriated by their freedom, that they fail to realise certain responsibilities, like their children’s proper education as an example, have to be taken way more seriously than they did even before.
Whether we like it or not, the US has become the country we look up to and is getting to its head.
My deepest condolences to the victims and their families.
Hey everyone, just want to say that its fine to share you opinion on the matters being discussed here but I am going to put a precautionary please keep it civil and respectful out here. Not saying anyone hasdone anything wrong thus far but this is just a reminder as these subjects can be touchy.
You are right. Regulation doesn’t mean prohibition, but we do have laws designed to do exactly what people want new laws to do, but it isn’t doing anything at the moment because the problem isn’t that we don’t have enough laws in place (though I would be in favor of tightening a few things) or the right laws in place, it is as you said below.
Which I couldn’t agree with any more than I do now. One of the things I chiefly name as responsible is not caring for and also looking for our mentally unfit citizens. You can chalk this to health care issues in some ways even.
As for the age, there’s only one state (Minnesota, where arguably a safely educated child outside the city should probably have a rifle for emergency situations) that a child under 18 can purchase a firearm (and that’s a long arm), and it must be with a firearms safety certificate. Most states are required by law to follow the state minimal age and that is by largely usually 18. If a child is purchasing a weapon he is not legally be allowed to purchase and without the certificate, the seller (and the child) will be breaking the law. I’m not sure how else we can as a country make it harder for these people to purchase weapons without out right taking them away so that they can’t break the law in the first place, but I would earnestly wish to know what people could suggest to do so without impeding on those rights.
But again, it is as you pointed out. It is not with gun control where the issues will be fixed, it lies somewhere else entirely, and it has been festering for a while in a country where we have always had gun rights and gun access.
EDIT Information Update
The shooter, David Katz, was apparently a very rude, violent, loner that made many people feel uncomfortable. Prior to the shooting, witnesses said there was a loud argument and then Katz left. He also on several occasions would belittle other players and say stuff like, “I’m the better of players”, so losing to what he perceived as “lesser people” definitely did little to improve his mental state.
(check out his reddit account using the username below, some of his older comments are twisted, insulting, violent etc)
The shooter, David Katz, was a 24-year-old professional gamer from Baltimore, Maryland, who had been attending the Jacksonville tournament as a participant.[11] His pseudonyms included “RavensChamp”, “Bread”, “mrslicedbread”, and “ravens2012champ”.[11][12] He had previously won $10,000 in a 2017 Madden Tournament. Prior to the shooting, Katz was described as a loner, with one announcer saying: “David Katz keeps to himself. He’s a man of business. He’s not here to make friends.”[13]
Information links:
https://www.star-telegram.com/news/nation-world/national/article217369810.html
The problem is that most people outside of the US don’t understand the relationship that the people of America have with firearms, and the unfortunate reality is that the genie is already out of the bottle…those millions of guns in circulation won’t magically get turned in if firearm laws were changed.
Objectively, research has shown that where firearms regulations are much harsher, deaths due to them decrease. This even has a knock-on effect to surrounding areas. Furthermore, times have changed since the second amendment was drafted, over 200 years in fact, and it’s beyond argument that the reasons for it’s initial inclusion probably don’t apply. It makes no sense the level of death we see in the US due to gun crime (of all varieties), when we don’t see the same elsewhere around the world were firearms are prevalent. Take Switzerland - 8.3 million people, 2 million guns. Whilst that proportion is not as high as in the US, the gun crime is minimal in comparison. And whilst that’s not all down to harsher gun laws, it’s difficult to argue that they don’t have something to do with it.
The question that really springs to mind is why? Why is harsher, almost punitive regulation so unthinkable to drive down gun crime? The numbers are scary and just looking at the numbers it’s clear that things are not improving (look at the terrifying stats from Chicago…)
Assuming that the US government banned all firearms tomorrow, had a 2 month gun amnesty and then harsh penalties for those found in possession, what is the fear of what would happen? The reality is that this won’t happen due to the money involved (the economics of gun ownership are phenomenal) but for those living in areas of the world where guns are not so freely available, and where gun crime is, as a result, much much lower, it seems to be obvious that gun ownership needs to change.
It’s rly not about the presence of guns actually. If you look at Yemen, for example (not now of course there’s a frikkin war going on there but that’s actually more a proxy war between the Saudis and the Iranians), every home has at least one AK-47 there, and there’s no applied regulation whatsoever. I used to live in Yemen, small kids run around with AK’s there no questions asked. However, the number of murders there (before the war) might even have beeen lower than what it is in Switzerland actually.
so my conclusion would be that no guns or all the guns are the way to go
I just wanted to drop in and say I appreciate everyone keeping it civil. 
This is very true, they do not. You are the first person I have seen to acknowledge this. It would help if they tried to understand why we want our rights to remain and why we have them in the first place. Perhaps if the discussion was had, it might lead somewhere other than the same argument the world seems to have every time something like this happens.
We have several states with very harsh state run gun control with high gun related crime still, and where not, a direct rise in murder using weapons unrelated to firearms quickly happened (seen in other countries too). We have been a gun toting country for a long time and you can go back as far as you want, the worst you will find are bandits shooting things up, not citizens almost every month of the year like we have now for the silliest of most bizarre reasons (such as losing a gaming event). Owning them is not the problem. This spree of shootings and whatnot is a fairly recent development.
What about Russia though? It at one point had the most stringent gun control laws and yet it managed to have murder rates that outran every single developed country in the world from the '60s up to '90s. The killers in question couldn’t get their hands on the guns at one point they had before, so they moved onto other weapons—knives, bats, farm tools etc etc. Which you will undoubtedly see from anyone who is going to harm a person whether or not you make it illegal to use the tool in the manner in which they wish to use it.
On the contrary though, Norway, Finland etc etc all have heavy gun ownership (just various types of guns) and yet they all have very low crimes related to them and the majority of the crime of most of the years in Finland, for example, related to guns were obtained illegally by the perp. However, if you look at other crime, and self defense, you see a rise because of it. You see more murder by knife etc, more women who could not defend themselves because they couldn’t carry at least a hand gun, no weapons at home for safety measures (so more fatalities at home during robberies) etc etc.
In the end though, you also have to ask whether it is right to take something away from people who did no wrong (millions and millions of people) because of the wrongs of a criminal (thousands).
But that is not reason enough for millions of Americans to throw away their security though. You look at countries where they are fighting desperately against hostile forces of numerous origin and they have nothing to defend themselves with other than prayer and desperate pleas of help from the world and the U.N. If they had the ability to lift a weapon other than a farmer’s work tool, perhaps they could defend their homes against these threats. Maybe they could make their governments treat them better. Or maybe even protect loved ones from gangs, terrorists, criminals or the like?
And as a woman, I do not feel safe walking around whatsoever, and it certainly has nothing to do with guns. I feel safer when I can carry a firearm with me so that if I’m out at night I can fend off a would be mugger/attacker or when two men have been following me for several minutes and try to jump me, I have that weapon to “level the playing field” so to speak. And at home I like to know that I have a rifle to protect myself against the six felons (despite not owning a firearm can still kill me) living around me because despite common belief, not all breaks occur with a firearm and most are strong-arm robberies, where they are directly involved with the victims (which is drastically more unsafe for a female).
We weren’t granted our gun rights for one specific reason and that reason only, and it wasn’t made to be exhausted after a certain period of time. It was given to us so that we may always be vigilant, and remind our government and even foreign threats that we will not be taken easily or that we will defend our rights with our last breath because they all mean that much to us. Our history shows exactly why we have our rights, why we should keep them and if that isn’t enough, looking at other countries show why we should keep them.
I would earnestly like to answer this question as an American who disagrees with the suggested control gun methods. Hopefully the insight can help or maybe steer the conversation so we can discuss these things better.
My answer: The first being that it doesn’t solve anything. You don’t make criminals disappear, you don’t punish them you punish people like me who did nothing wrong, it will not work because the guns have been the streets for too long and the illegal methods of obtaining them are far easier than you imagine (even easier than you think obtaining them through legal channels are).
Taking guns away from them isn’t going to fix the underlining issue in Chicago which leads people to crime. Poverty, education, health care, drugs, street gangs, corrupted police, terrified police (whom can’t and are instructed not to do their job), terrified citizens (who cannot “snitch”) all have an effect on the crime in Chicago. When you have a high concentrated criminal element in one area, whom generally operate with specific weapons (especially for the purpose of an image), of course crime rates will be obscenely high in that target.
It has actually drastically dropped since the 90s though, when it used to have murder rates of 71%. The only way we will get Chicago’s crime to drop is if we send in Federal forces to aide the police (as the civilians have been pleading the gov’t for for a long time), flush out the criminal element on the streets and in the state level (corrupt cops) and stay there until the state can operate as intended. That’s not even considering the enormous task of directing the poverty issue, which pushes the youth to petty crime in order to feed their starving family, or to drugs for various traumas or pressure issues or the educational system.
Disregarding the impossibility of that task and giving in to the idea that the millions of Americans would willingly part with their rights without fighting back, there would still be millions of unregistered guns on the streets being used by the very people it was targeted to stop—the criminals. They don’t operate in the light or by the law. These people, by majority, obtain their firearms through illegal means. Not through gun shops, or Wal-mart or licensed dealers, but by gang members, thieves, smugglers, black markets etc etc.
What could we (the people) fear? An unarmed populace, an armed thriving community of violent thugs, a government that (let’s face it) is very corrupt and still, to this day, actively engages in horrendous things both foreign and domestic, and have to fear the very same things dozens of other nations’ citizens have to fear who are mistreated by their governments or domestic terrorists, whomever they may be.
However, those Americans who believe there ought to be nothing done whatsoever…I disagree entirely with them. Removal of our weapons is not the answer, but no answer is no solution either. It is clear we need to tighten up our laws, not rework them persay, but most of these shootings happen by what are clearly mentally unstable people. Others by people who have had questionable backgrounds and managed to obtain a firearm despite not legally being able to.
I would be in favor of having routine checks on gun owners, every three or five years, for health reasons + initial health check and gun safety checks (training), with a waiting period on all new purchases (such as in Finland, Norway etc), a license requirement (on purchase and on person at all times), and a mandatory yearly check on all authorized dealers to be sure they are following federal and state laws. Any found to be operating without following them will face immediate penalties (missing a person or two is not what I’m talking about, but not checking I.D, doing a background check etc is what I mean).
It would be a disservice not to reply to your honest and informative response, although as I made clear to you, I don’t profess to have any insight or answers to the perceived problems of gun ownership. I am clearly inexperienced and uninformed in the finer details, and coming from a country where private gun ownership is incredibly low, I’d honestly say that I feel safer not owning a firearm. In fact I talked to an armoured security van driver today who said that despite being held up at gunpoint several times over his 15 year career, no shots had ever been fired. The hijackers know that armed response is unlikely from the driver and passenger, and use the threat of the weapon rather than the weapons themselves. By simply not owning a weapon the average citizen isn’t really considered a threat.
As I see it, in my simplistic view, something has to change in the way the US deals with guns. As unpalatable as it may be it would seem that gun owners are going to need to concede some of their current ownership rights to both satiate the desire of the anti-gun lobby and make some move away from the arms race solution to the problem…simply having all the guns isn’t going to make anyone safe! However, it’s clear that the NRA aren’t going to allow that lying down, nor the large companies involved, which leads to a complex problem that is unlikely to change any time soon. Which sadly means that further deaths are inevitable.
It’s very difficult for someone on the outside to understand how the problem has become so very difficult to fix. Certainly poverty plays a large role in that, but equally, we don’t see the level of crime elsewhere in the world (reported crime anyway). South Africa and Brazil could in theory have a similar issue but they don’t seem to suffer in the same way.
Something has to change, but I feel that both sides need to be prepared to make concessions for the future, maybe temporary, maybe permanent. Amendments can be ratified and repealed, so nothing is permanent, but certainly from the outside looking in the US and its gun culture is a worrying thing to behold.
dude, South Africa lists 10th for homicide rate and Brazil 12th worldwide (their murder rate/100,000 people is 5 X HIGHER), while the US lists only 87th… and obviously that’s including all these mass shootings
the real difference is media coverage, US killings get plenty of coverage while those others only get covered locally, if at all, so this is merely a question of perspective dude, the numbers prove it, ppl in the US kill each other 5 x less than in those 2 other countries u mentioned (in fact, the murder rate in Greenland is identical to that of the US…)
You are very true. Something most definitely has to change in this country, but it isn’t with guns and the laws and rights in which grant us those firearms, but one might ask…what sort of changes could even stop this? What hopes do we have at stopping mentally ill people from harming others, or those hell bent on killing from killing? It seems like this question cannot be answered, that we should only hope that by taking away our rights it might work to repel these threats, but why should we put a bandage on the issue rather than focus on trying to fix what is really the issue?
Our past shows us that we can maintain our rights—they haven’t changed since we wrote them after all—without problem, somewhere along the way something happened, so we need to look elsewhere because millions and millions of Americans can living safely and legally with their firearms (and even do good, like stop robberies, attacks, rapes etc that do not get coverage) and do, despite the coverage the attacks get.
How about we ask this; what does the U.S have in common with other countries that have high gun ownership? What do they have that are drastically different? What do the perpetrators have in common? I think we will find the answers surprising, and far more helpful in finding a worthier “solution” than hoping taking things away from the wrong people might stop the people who are actually breaking the law/guilty.
And yes, poverty, education, drugs etc etc, they directly influence crime and a person’s actions. If a man cannot feed his family, he is far more likely to commit crime (especially petty crime) to make money. If a man is not educated to find a job etc, he is far more like to turn to criminal actions to make ends meet. It goes on and on. Youth are far more impressionable to this, and that is why it is dangerous for us to ignore Chicago and think it entirely has to be blamed on guns when it isn’t. You see this everywhere, more so than you do in the U.S. Brazil, as you named it, is a great example of it. They have a higher crime rate than we do, a larger poverty issue than we do and the whole kit and caboodle.
What would you personally suggest we might do though, and how might you see it improving the country? If you do not mind me asking, of course?
(As for the Amendments can be ratified and repealed bit, that is a dangerous suggestion for this country. You do not casually suggest we rewrite them or toss them out. It leads down a road where it becomes a norm to do so with a group of power hungry people who are more than eager to take advantage of their constituency.)
I blame the lefties.
I get that u must be joke-trolling (I hope/guess), but that’s exactly how shit starts
OK…stressing that I’m operating from a point of ignorance and not a holier than thou, guns should all be banished, bah humbug US citizen rights perspective. I don’t know better, I’m unaware of the deeper issues and politics and my view is that of someone who is just horrified by the seemingly constant reports of death and tragedy. Your opinion, as someone living the situation, will always be worth more than mine…I am VERY aware that this is a minefield discussion of offence!
Brighter minds than I haven’t come up with a solution to the problem, but there is one thing that seems sensible…there is far too much political involvement in this area. Presidential campaigning, union support, the power of those bodies and the promises made…the spiderweb is too deep and complex, and it seems impossible to unweave the strands because of the established power hierarchy.
To be honest I don’t understand why the US seems to be endemically more dangerous than other developed countries, and can only ascribe it to be, from my podium of ignorance, due to the prevalence of dangerous weapons. Looking at the fantastic drop in crime that’s occurred in New York, there’s proof that change can come, but whether that’s something that can only happen in isolation, as opposed to nationwide, time will tell.
And again, from an outsiders viewpoint, I don’t think that the Donald is the man to make positive changes to rectify the problems to be faced.
And honestly, I’m going to accede to your viewpoint on most occasions, although you’ll never make me a supporter of firearms.
I suppose I’d argue is that the difference in what the deaths are attributed to. Sure homicides are prevalent, but if you compare, say, school shootings or even video game shootings, the balance seems to shift disproportionately. It’s evident that in areas more impoverished that deaths will increase but the motivations for those incidents need to be compared too.