“The cleanest solution would be to ban semiautomatic guns entirely, but that’s not likely to happen given who controls the White House and Congress. This isn’t about deterring hunting, or self-defense, or sport shooting, or even fighting off tyranny. It’s about taking away the tools of mass murderers.” – LA Times Editorial Board in The gun industry’s drive to circumvent gun laws helped make the Las Vegas massacre worse [via latimes.com]
The cleanest solution is to ban the LA Times editorial board, but that’s not likely to happen given who given who controls the White House and Congress. This is isn’t about deterring free speech or a free press. It’s about taking away the tools of propagandists.
Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner here! Pick any prize from the middle shelf.
I’m still praying for “The Big One” to knock California into the ocean.
You *really* don’t want that.
Major catastrophe in California means *millions* of Leftist ‘refugees’ pouring into adjoining states.
Where they will bring their Leftist voting tendencies with them.
Pandemic is the best bet, but if you let just *one* escape the quarantine…
Well, that didn’t take long.
So banning guns get them out of the hands of mass murderers? Wait, are we talking about the civilians or the Government. By my count, the government has far more blood on their hands and I don’t want to live in a place where they have all the power.
Go ahead, make all gun owners felons overnight, see where that gets you…….
And it won’t stop mass murderers.
Shimonoseki Station massacre.
Osaka school massacre.
Akihabara massacre.
Sagamihara stabbings.
All committed with knives.
Knives? You’re thinking too small. Think Happyland Fire. Think Daegu Subway Arson.
For a while now I’ve been remarking on how we’ve been lucky so many mass killers are complete losers. This latest one showed what a bloody accountant could do with a little intelligence, discipline, and monetary resources. What if the next one is a Green Beret? What if the next one is a microbiologist for the city water department?
Nobody wants to admit how fragile any society is.
That’s why I’m an advocate for local, decentralized communities and groups.
Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t…
If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand — the ultimatum. And what then…
Civil war 2.0.
I must agree. Banning ownership and confiscation will lead to an actual civil war.
It will look different though, possibly small regional conflicts similar to militia vs law enforcement.
Hope I’m wrong.
I’m not sure entirely… before the election I played out different scenarios of how it would go down, with Hillary as president. Never really thought out how it would go down with Trump as president. The silver lining in that I guess would be that Trump, obviously enormously unpopular with the left, would then become just as hated by most of the right, leaving him very little support nationwide.
Cool your jets.
Bump stocks won’t lead us down the path of a Civil War and this event won’t lead to a semi-auto ban…
You want to know what will happen?
Sandy Hook Fallout 2.0.
Media hype for click bait (TTAG is no exception), political posturing, panic buying, FB and Twitter feuds (ban all guns! civil war! and so on…) a few states move backwards, a few move forward, most do nothing, nothing happens Federally, and then 6 months later everyone’s ADD kicks in, and we all go about our lives.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Oh good, we were hoping you wouldn’t feel the same way about a civil war. Or are you just saying that?
What would you say if you were going to do civil war?
1. Who is “we”? Is there someone there with you or are you collectively speaking for everyone other than me? Not the you, me, but the me, me…
2. Can you narrow down your questioning to more than ambiguous somewhat rhetorical sounding questions?
3. What would I say “if I were going to do civil war”… I don’t know. Can we do it doggystyle maybe…
Probably ask war if I can pull its hair and burry it’s face in the pillow, so I don’t have to look it in the eyes while I hate f*ck it… what in the hell are you asking me?
1. Who is “we”? Is there someone there with you or you are collectively speaking for everyone other than me? Not the you, me, but the me, me…
2. Can you narrow down your questioning to more than ambiguous somewhat rhetorical sounding questions?
3. What would I say “if I were going to do civil war”… I don’t know. Can we do it doggystyle maybe…
Probably ask War if I can burry it’s face in the pillow, so I don’t have to look it in the eyes while I hate f*ck it… what in the hell are you asking me?
Crap! When Pelosi says banning bump fire stocks is a first step on a slippery slope, you know where this is going. California is the role model for the incremental banning of all firearms.
Good, after confiscation it’ll be an easier territory to conquer.
It can be taken by force right now if we wanted. All the libs here are willfully disarmed and high as kites…. hell, we could do it without firing a single shot. Although, we would lose the “war of ideas” and popular support, which means we would need to liquidate the opposition…. on second thought, this sounds like an awful idea. Lets stick to winning hearts and minds one conversation at a time. When 90% of Californians and New Yorkers refuse to register their stuff, you know we’re on the right track.
I like the “liquidating” commies option better. I’ll go grab the vats of phosphoric acid.
You gun nuts need to listen to this guy. I know you don’t want to hear this but super strict gun laws have made LA one of the safest places to live in the country. They’ve practically eliminated gun violence there.
Right?
LA is not one of the safest cities to live in. Northern Virginia (1.8 million people) is the safest urbanized area in North America. Lots of guns there.
Right!!! Same thing for Chicago! Same thing for DC!! Gun nuts wake up; guns = bad.
Aaron, small arms is how we get larger weapons. And, there will be many current and former military who will be right up front. Also armed civilians can walk around armed and carry out hits on local political figures. Not that I’m calling for civil war, but if I can figure this out so can 50 million others.
“Also armed civilians can walk around armed and carry out hits on local political figures. Not that I’m calling for civil war, but if I can figure this out so can 50 million others.”
A ‘tipping point’ will be reached when local police can no longer handle the investigation load of the homicides.
Meaning, there will no incentive to *not* act with impunity…
Follow up. LA has a murder rate of 6.3 per 100k. That is 20% higher than the National average. Fail.
DisplacedMic: Appears the sarcasm was too subtle for some readers.
What is this sarcasm thing you mention? Is it another dangerous firearm accessory?
Second update.
Oakland has a murder ratw of 22 per 100k. Same gun laws as LA
Even with a big hint you get that that was sarcasm.
*Snicker*
I love how guns are evil killing machines/weapons of war after a tragedy, but if you ever suggest that they can keep a tyrannical government at bay, they’re just useless toys Bubba collects in his basement while listening to Alex Jones.
Really? There are several afghanis and Iraqis that would disagree. Small arms aren’t worthless.
Add to that the entire Russian nation. Back when they were the USSR, they invaded Afghanistan, and spent years trying to subdue a primitive nation. Our own experience in Vietnam mirrors it. Additionally, casualties on both sides would be Americans.
There would be no stomach, no support for that kind of war among the general populace, and the Democrats know It! Remember, every time they start to push gun control it costs them politically, Clinton’s AWB cost them the Senate, and the House which they had controlled since 1954. The only surprise is that they aren’t even more gun shy than they are, after all they know Hillary would be president if she had shut up about guns.
For the past 16 years, every tool available to the U.S. military machine has been employed in Iraq and Afghanistan, against an enemy equipped with nothing but small arms and homemade bombs. Those efforts are ongoing, with no end in sight.
In the U.S., the number of small arms in civilian hands far outnumbers the military inventory. If the U.S. government ever went full tyrant and turned on its own people, those civilian small arms would be a menace to that tyrannical government, just as they are across the pond.
Add to that the 50-75% of military personnel who walk off base with their equipment or support a popular insurection against open tyranny….. If tyranny is going to happen in this country, it will happen slowly, pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes from birth and handed down generation after generation, so as to be indivisible until its too late and everybody is happy in their comfortable prison….. an armed populace and a sense of self reliance is what keeps that at bay.
The 16 years with no real accomplishments in Afghanistan is a lot more complicated than a simple statement on the effectiveness of small arms and IEDs. The US hasn’t yet figured out what the goal in Afghanistan is, nor displayed the willingness to do whatever it takes to actually accomplish it.
Small arms and IEDs won’t do squat against an opponent who is willing to carpet bomb you into the stone age from aircraft with little to no concern about civilian casualties (IE: WWII rules). If you’re fighting an insurgency and view civilian casualties as unacceptable, small arms and IEDs are quite effective for the insurgents.
The stone age would be an upgrade in Afghanistan. Trust me.
Exactly. But I will also add we were not at war in Afghanistan for 16 years, we were waging war for one year, 16 different times.
Oh, yeah, doing away with guns will definitely do away with mass murder. Just look at Europe. No guns, no murders…..sure. Just bombs, even trucks. How about the Boston Marathon?
Actually, plenty of guns, depending on what country you look at. Germany, Austria, Switzerland. Legal semi-autos. Czech Republic is working on a Second Amendment variant. Austria vastly increased the number of carry permits.
The UK and France don’t have a lot of legal guns. They also have most violent crime in the EU. Hmmm…
Of course the EU commission is trying to ban guns every now and then. All of them. Including black powder guns. Because the EU commission, this pack of unelected neo-absolutists, doesn’t want an armed citizenry. They want rightless peseants.
*the oligarchy wants exploitable subjects.
Japan, 2016: one man + a bag of knives = 19 dead + 26 injured.
Journalists are morons.
“This isn’t about deterring hunting, or self-defense, or sport shooting, or even fighting off tyranny.”
No. That’s just a bonus.
How about I do my thing and the LA Times editorial board goes and fornicates themselves with numerous cacti of varying diameter wrapped in rusty razor wire and lubed with hot sauce and gasoline?
Now, that is some creativity!
What are you talking about? You’re going to attack the editorial board with cactus wrapped in barbed wire?… don’t ever bring cactus to a gun fight. LA Times has armed security….. they’re hypocrites, not stupid.
OT but GunBroker are taking down all bumpfire stock listings this morning…
Ban semi-automatic firearms?
No, I refuse.
Your move.
Any parsing of gun rights comes with the expectation of tyranny as a next step on our end.
That’s not a new condition, that’s been since our founding.
I find it ridiculously ironic that poor children in Africa can get their hands on fully automatic assault rifles and rpgs.
On an equally bright note, Mexico seems to be “losing” theirs at a rate of a thousand per year… Maybe we should police our borders better to not let those evil guns through…
I wonder if the marketing department at IMI Systems is half-asleep? When TTAG posts headlines such as:
IMI Systems Quote of the Day: Semi-Automatic Guns Are The Tools of Mass Murder
it immediately gives an impression that IMI is being quoted as stating that semi-auto guns are tools of mass murder. Maybe TTAG should reformat the way it posts this column.
100% agree, I *know* it’s not them saying it but my brain always parses it that way at first glance.
Like Charles Whitman ,
Actually , the way they lit up that place , I think I could have had a better kill rate with my Mossberg MVP , topped with a high quality glass and 10 thirty round magazines .
Just sayin .
If you look at this attack numbers wise, it was an abject failure. He had a target pool of 22,000 people, in a small area with no cover and he could only kill 59 and wound/injure 500. Do the math, that is .26% killed and 2.27% wounded. And while I understand that those lives lost were tragic, that is a small number compared to what he could have done.
Timothy McVeigh killed 168 and injured over 680, with an estimated 646 people in the building. Imagine the death toll had another, more effective method been used.
“It’s about taking away the tools of mass murderers.”
Okay, when you find a mass murderer, by all means take his tools away. Please. I’ll even help you.
In the meantime, keep your stinking paws off MY tools, you damn dirty apes.
wasn’t there a mass shooting with a pump action shot gun a few years back? and no security what so ever to protect anyone. and of course the hotel had unarmed security to stop this shooting. seems to me if that guy had even a 38 special revolver he could have stopped it. and a shotgun along with that would have been even better, or hey I know how about a AR15 with a bumpfire stock along with that revolver ( or 9mm p-228 ) and less people would have been shot. but no, no, the unarmed security was the way to go. after the attack on the concert in France who in the hell has an open air concert where anyone can attack buy shooting or launching a home made rpg or use a suicide vest in this day and age or terrorism?
Yeah exactly. An open air packed venue with apparently little to no security with long rifles (I’m assuming anyways). It appears that the venue operators didn’t take security seriously enough, particularly with the perfect storm of fatal funnels.
uh no the ultimate tool of mass murder youre thinking of is actually a pair of scissors
2700+ babies a day…every single day…ever since 1973…
that was the year baby killers somehow found a friend in the constitution and began legally shrouding themselves and taking refuge in the 14th amendment
the 14th amendment is one of the reconstruction amendments
the word abortion isnt even in it
if abortion on demand is in the 14th amendment belt fed machine guns are in the 2nd
Since most cars involved in vehicular deaths are automatic transmissions… let’s ban auto trannies. Makes perfect sense.
When, not if, the next socialist admin takes over, 99% of you will turn over your firearms on demand. The other 1% will be shot on the spot.
Ah, yes, because that was how the War on Drugs®™ was won.
Ah, a War on Guns®™ to go along with our War on Drugs®™.
I wonder how that will work out.