Originally Posted by
t.nie
You're right. The kid stole the guns from his mom, killed her with one, then slaughtered all those kids at the school. Very efficiently. He had the exact proper tool for the job: a lightweight, rapid firing semi-auto with an extremely fast reload capability (drop one clip and pop another in and be ready to start killing again in less than 2 seconds if you practice) with multiple 30 round high capacity magazines and hundreds of rounds in reserve. Plus a couple other less efficient but still deadly firearms.
I have no problem with guns. I'm a marksman with rifles and pistols. Been around them all my life. But there's no dam way in hell I want to be facing that kid with that gun with no body armor or cover. No way.
So that just begs the question, why in the world do we make weapons that are that high powered and capable of creating that much devastation that quickly available for sale to the public? I don't think it takes 120 rounds in 2 minutes to kill Bambi. I don't think we need to be able to shoot up 24 beer cans on a log in under 45 seconds.
I get sport shooters. And actually, I am fine with those guns being in the right hands in our society. But really, I think you should be free to own and fire those weapons under controlled circumstances, on ranges, in mock combat scenarios if thats your thing. But you don't need that gun in your personal collection at home. It just makes it all too easy for the wrong people to do the worst possible things with them very quickly.
Make them available at ranges. Make people who want to handle those weapons register, get trained and only be allowed to use them under controlled circumstances, and make sure they don't take them home with them. Seems sensible to me. Everybody gets something, but no one gets everything they want. Gun owners and enthusiasts can have access to whatever they want, under controlled circumstances, and the rest of society gets some peace of mind knowing those weapons aren't being left laying around where the mentally ill nephew can steal it and go on a rampage.
And it would also create jobs.
(oh, and Columbine? The armed guards curtailed the killing? Really? The fact that they were lousy bomb makers curtailed the killing. If the bomb that was planted under the bench upstairs above the common area on the first floor had gone off, instead of fizzling out, then the actual plan those two had to kill a bunch of people with the bomb and subsequent building collapse driving the majority out the two doors on the other side, (where both were laying in wait to mow the fleeing students down when they rushed away from the carnage inside) would have resulted in even greater casualties. Armed guards were just something else they had to plan for, and quite frankly, was of no concern to either. That argument never holds water. It's just another element that people who do this stuff take into consideration, it doesn't stop them.)