What has the US done to tackle gun shootings?

rootX

As a non-local, I have no clue what is been done in the US to prevent shootings from reoccurring. What keeps on happening in the US, most people up here call it insanity. The shooting news catch international attention yet prevention measures and actions from the governments don't come in the international news.

We had two shootings here recently. Politicians acted reasonably to tackle the violence issue.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toront...un-summit.html
Has US also pledged any money to reduce the gun violence or created organizations to prevent random shootings?

(P.S. This is not anti/pro guns discussion thread. It's nearly impossible to have the anti-pro discussion. But, I only wanted to know about if something is being done and how successful the government has been in tackling the gun-violence issue)

DragonPetter

I don't really see how throwing money at a problem means they are doing something about it, or that they are "acting reasonably". It is much less simple than that, and who is to know how effective that money will be? How could a special police squad prevent some of the shootings? I think they might be able to put resources into tracking purchase of ammunition and catch some (which I am guessing is already done to some extent), but that is certainly not going to stop every determined psycho. Also, people in the US call it insanity too, among other things as well.

Google found this pretty easily:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_vio...#Public_policy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_vio...ntion_programs

rootX

I checked your wiki pages. These things have been there for few years or decades now.

It's always comfortable to see that they are at least doing something about it than nothing at all. It's impossible catch every psycho out there but that doesn't mean you accept these shootings as a new norm and don't do anything about them.

russ_watters

Yes, we also have such an organization. It is also called 'the police'.

Pkruse

Any attempt to regulate guns in the US immediately runs into very strong and well funded political opposition. It would appear that many find the gun violence an acceptable cost of maintaining free and almost unrestricted access to them. Many do not feel that way, but those who do are better organized and better funded than the other side. Until that changes, I fear that nothing will change.

rootX

Yes, we also have that but we don't run into these high profile shootings every year. We did have two this year and politicians treated it very seriously. As I said in the OP, I have yet to see any news on government doing something about this. It might be because I don't get to see many local-US news. As an outsider without seeing any strong response, it appears that the US government doesn't treats this as a serious issue.

rootX

I don't mind that but what bugs me is that mentally unhealthy people also appear to have unrestricted access. I am not sure if they tried to restrict the access to mentally unhealthy people after Virginia/Batman massacres.

lisab

Some places have stricter rules - it really varies, state to state. In the state I live (Washington), there is a waiting period before you can buy a gun from a gun store (three days, I think).

Recently there was a story where this rule may have saved lives. A guy was going through a nasty divorce, and had a restraining order against him from contacting his family. Well, he showed up at the family home very drunk with a box of bullets, apparently making threats.

He had tried to buy a gun earlier but because of the waiting period, he was not successful. Lucky for the family!

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/0...ccused-of.html

The waiting period doesn't apply to buying guns from individuals, though .

DragonPetter

There are laws in place to prohibit sale to mentally unhealthy people. The application of the law is where there are issues. There are also grey areas and instances where someone may appear healthy or may even trick a mental health professional. How do you prevent someone who is healthy and then suddenly flips?

The problems and solutions may be more fundamental in culture, society, and human nature than superficial laws and policing (although they are important too). The question I think everyone asks is why do they do it, and calling them crazy is obvious but still does not answer why. There are a lot of crazy people who don't harm others.

Skrew

A holmes sized shooting could happen every week and it would still be insignificant overall. The US has over 300 million people.

Freedom which includes gun ownership has a price, sometimes people will die(although ironically holmes and similar would have killed more with bombs as has been demonstrated by attacks that have the highest deaths). The number of gun deaths that are actually homicides is surprisingly small, around 15k.


Things like "mental health" are completely subjective and restrictions on it will never be supported outside of someone actually having a violent mental breakdown beforehand.

You could base it on anyone who sees a counselor but I suspect that would result in many people not seeing counselors.

SixNein

Agreed....

I always looked at the issue as public safety vs self defense. But others look at it differently.

Dembadon

What, exactly, are you expecting to see that would qualify as a "strong response," and that you feel would be effective?

"Mentally unhealthy" people don't always appear to be mentally unhealthy until a tragic event. Many of them are capable of acting "normally" when they feel like it. The implication being, not everyone who claims to be mentally unhealthy is, in fact, mentally unhealthy. Many of them choose it as a defense since it's something that can often be feigned fairly effectively.

rootX

Mental diseases are just like any other disease and there are trained psychologists to recognize them. In both Virgin Tech and Batman cases, it was known that they are not healthy. As news are emerging, even the Wisconsin guy shouldn't have had guns seeing his anti-social behavior or links to skinhead organizations. Even if guns are to be used for self-defense, how can a person self defend if he cannot distinguish between right and wrong?
You cannot price innocent people lives who just are enjoying their day at their school, watching a movie and having a peaceful religious gathering. Lives of people who never did anything wrong to others are priceless and these lives shouldn't be compromised just to give some psycho or neo-nazi freedom to do whatever he pleases. But, of-course this is a personal opinion.

rootX

I seen some condolences from politicians after both US shootings this year but nothing more. And, I thought the state representative statement was bit non-serious. It appears as if they are seeing this just like another normal day in the US:
This is bit different from what was in the news after we had shooting in the Canada IMO.

Pkruse

I have serious doubts that any change in laws could have any real impact on the availability of guns and ammo. With the number of guns three times the population, it is pretty easy to buy a used gun completely outside of the legal system, with no paperwork to track it back to you. Even if you fill out the federal form at a legal gun shop, that stays in the shop. They only have to have it available if the feds ask for it, and in the majority of cases that never happens.

Mech_Engineer

Where do you get the "three times the population" value? Last I read, the estimated number of privately owned guns in the United States is around 200 million (population of the United States being around 320 million). Are you claiming there are closer to 1 billion guns in the US, a factor of 5 higher than the FBI's estimates?

Are you referring to criminal background checks, which are electronically submitted to the FBI through the NICBCS system? People are subject to criminal background checks before purchasing a firearm in a store, although private-party sales are another matter.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nic...ion/fact-sheet

AlephZero

I don't think it makes much difference to the argument whether there are 200m or 1bn. Scaling estimates of UK gun ownership to the size of the US population would give a figure of about 10m, but there isn't much evidence that it's hard for people who want to own a gun illegally to get hold of one, even at that "low" level.