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[Telgin]

Smart guns and federally enforced licenses and education would help, probably, but "Muh freedoms" means it'll never happen.  Not to mention it would probably be fairly easy to break any kind of smart gun lockout, but that's another matter.

I've also heard people say without irony that it would be used to build a database of gun owners so that they could be targeted by the UN death troops that Obama is still keeping in reserve to start his coup and the New World Order.

Okay, maybe those people aren't numerous enough to matter, but I'm pretty sure the NRA has lobbied for a long time to make sure that gun ownership can't be reliably tracked.  I don't know the rationale, but I know I've seen it mentioned.

In any case, I completely agree that owning a gun should be at least as hard as owning a car.  That means tracking ownership and licenses.  If you sell a gun to someone, it should be tracked at least as well as selling a car.

[Dunamisdeos]

I think both of those things are logically true. Him not having a gun would have prevented the issue from taking place, but a good guy with a gun did stop him (tentatively).

The question to me is that if this guy was ex-military, he may have had that gun legally. What if he didn't have prior indicators of mental instability? How would you stop a person who legally has a gun and has no prior indication of instability from deciding to go on a rampage? What about a person who got it illegally, which is always, always going to be possible?

We cannot prevent that scenario at present. You would need a literal big-brother constant level of totalitarian surveillance to accomplish meaningful protection from that.

[Frumple]

Guy was apparently kicked out the military for domestic abuse (that included cracking a stepkid's skull, or something like that).* Haven't seen a solid yea or any on the specifics meaning he was later barred from firearm ownership, but it is possible to get kicked out the military hard enough a lifetime ownership ban is nailed to your ass when they boot it, and he seems to have been in the general region of behavior what earns it.

Anyway. So far as prior indications of violence go, least if what's turned up so far is accurate those were definitely there.

* The particulars are a little more fiddly than that, but it's an accurate enough gist.

[Zangi]

Technically, anyone with the keys could drive a car.

If we knew how to evaluate a person’s likelihood of eventually committing mass murder before the event, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

No, we do have many methods of finding at least the most blatant red flags; it's just that conservatives repeatedly blocked them from being implemented.

Then we will go 3 steps over and get into thought crime, cause we will overzealously fuck it up.
Cause someone is gonna start shouting "I'll be hard on premeditated crime!"  People will eat it right up after a tragedy that may not even have been preventable by it in the first place.

[smjjames]

Don't a lot of the European countries have gun databases? You don't see them using it to go around and going all Orwellian on gun owners.

As for smart guns, they do exist but they haven't caught on for whatever reason (reliability may be a factor) and the government isn't going to force gunmakers to do that. About the only thing that would force them to would be a demand to exist for them.

And yes, someone is eventually going to figure out a way to bypass it, even if just for the challenge of it. This is always going to be true for any kind of technology, so, it's not an useful argument because you might as well say that for every single thing that exists.

I think both of those things are logically true. Him not having a gun would have prevented the issue from taking place, but a good guy with a gun did stop him (tentatively).

The question to me is that if this guy was ex-military, he may have had that gun legally. What if he didn't have prior indicators of mental instability? How would you stop a person who legally has a gun and has no prior indication of instability from deciding to go on a rampage? What about a person who got it illegally, which is always, always going to be possible?

We cannot prevent that scenario at present. You would need a literal big-brother constant level of totalitarian surveillance to accomplish meaningful protection from that.

He committed an assault on his ex-wife and a child (not sure if it was his kid or the ex-wife's from another marriage, but it makes no difference)' so, clearly there is a violence problem. You have a point with no prior indications of instability or past violence, which seems to be the case with the shooter in Las Vegas barely a month ago.

Guy was apparently kicked out the military for domestic abuse (that included cracking a stepkid's skull, or something like that).* Haven't seen a solid yea or any on the specifics meaning he was later barred from firearm ownership, but it is possible to get kicked out the military hard enough a lifetime ownership ban is nailed to your ass when they boot it, and he seems to have been in the general region of behavior what earns it.

Anyway. So far as prior indications of violence go, least if what's turned up so far is accurate those were definitely there.

* The particulars are a little more fiddly than that, but it's an accurate enough gist.

Yeesh, might depend on the state laws, but the domestic violence should have been enough to keep him from legally getting guns.

Also, CNN mentioned an animal cruelty charge, which wouldn't block him, but it's pretty clear this guy had violent tendencies.

[Egan_BW]

Normal guns don't have computers in them, and work perfectly well. If you add a computer to a gun that keeps it from being fired, all you have to do to turn it back into a gun anyone can fire is rip out the computer. No finding vulnerabilities, no sticking in a whole new computer system, no reworking the internal mechanics. All it takes is removing the thinking part and replacing it with a wire.

[smjjames]

Unless of course, you make it in such a way that it can't work without the computer, but computer-less guns are going to stick around.

[Lucus Casius]

Would just putting an excessive tax on bullets be a solution?  Wouldn't prevent all of these things, but might be a decent deterrent if would-be mass shooters simply couldn't afford the ammunition?

[Madman198237]

There's too many bullets already floating around, for one thing.

And second, said 'excessive tax' would have to, in order to be excessive enough to stop a determined person from stockpiling ammo, several THOUSAND percent.

Not to mention it would stop regular old hunters/sport shooters/etc. Not that they're more important than stopping homicides/mass shootings, but it wouldn't work well AND it would step on all of their toes pretty badly.

[Egan_BW]

I assume that all the people who wish to own guns also would like to be able to fire them.

[Zangi]

Would just putting an excessive tax on bullets be a solution?  Wouldn't prevent all of these things, but might be a decent deterrent if would-be mass shooters simply couldn't afford the ammunition?

It would be... but... you'd still get the same amount of pushback, regardless of how sensible it may be at accounting for places like shooting ranges / recreational shooting. 
Cause any regulation is a step for even more regulation.

[EnigmaticHat]

I think the left needs to approach this in terms of specific battles.  The first one that needs to be won is shutting down or severely limiting gun shows.  The second would be federal level laws requiring background checks and basic gun safety and gun storage training.  I'd say the third is taking all the cool toys/dress your guns up like dolls stuff, and restricting them to firing ranges with a system of audits and penalties if the gun range can't present any restricted item and hasn't reported it lost.  I think democrats need to approach this like we approached gay rights.  We need to pick a very specific battle ("gun shows let people break the law"), and present a unified front pushing for that and just that.  Then spend ten years constantly pointing out how unreasonable gun shows are and how removing them would do nothing to hurt legal gun ownership.  Then re-enter the debate with a more supportive public and seek to win our very limited goal.  That's how we get back into the debate on the federal level instead of just the local one.

[Reelya]

Fix up the drug wars and the demand for illegal guns will drop. e.g. the core logic in the drug war is that policing reduces supply, thus people take less because of supply and demand. However, it doesn't work like that because instead of "take less drugs" addicts increasingly turn to crime to solve the "not enough money" problem, and that pushes up demand for illegal guns, thus increasing the market size / amount of guns in circulation.

So, cleaning up the drug wars and having sensible harm-minimization policies would help here. Reduce the size of the illegal gun market, and all other problems related to it will reduce. e.g. if the price of illegal guns is high, then it's more profitable to steal them out of people's houses, thus more guns get stolen and more need to be replaced.

A "war on illegal guns" however wouldn't have the same issues as the war on drugs. e.g. if you combat illegal guns, then the price of guns goes up. So following the "war on drugs" logic from above, criminals will need to turn to crime to be able to afford the guns they need to commit the crimes. Which is completely circular logic. Ain't going to happen. The higher gun price will in fact make your chances with armed robbery less lucrative. The difference here is the reason for the price increase: a supply reduction in illegal guns will push prices up, pricing more criminal buyers out of the gun market, while in the drug war scenario, the reason for gun prices rising was a demand increase, which is an expansionary pressure on a market.

[Lucus Casius]

There's too many bullets already floating around, for one thing.

And second, said 'excessive tax' would have to, in order to be excessive enough to stop a determined person from stockpiling ammo, several THOUSAND percent.

Not to mention it would stop regular old hunters/sport shooters/etc. Not that they're more important than stopping homicides/mass shootings, but it wouldn't work well AND it would step on all of their toes pretty badly.

I assume that all the people who wish to own guns also would like to be able to fire them.

Well, I mean, no one's stopping them.  They'd just have to pay a hell of a lot more, which I, at least, am fine with.  Buy a pair of dancing shoes and tango all over their toes, or something along those lines.  So several thousand percent tax sounds terrific.  Even if we can't manage that high, it'll at least be an extra source of revenue for the state from something that, untaxed, doesn't provide much of value to the state.  Might as well get us something out of this nonsense.

Though the amount of ammunition already in circulation is a problem, I agree.

Would just putting an excessive tax on bullets be a solution?  Wouldn't prevent all of these things, but might be a decent deterrent if would-be mass shooters simply couldn't afford the ammunition?

It would be... but... you'd still get the same amount of pushback, regardless of how sensible it may be at accounting for places like shooting ranges / recreational shooting. 
Cause any regulation is a step for even more regulation.

Granted, more or less this.   I don't really expect anything to be pushed through, effective or not, sensible or not.  Best we can realistically manage is to find a particularly cynical bookie and gamble on when the next one's gonna be.

[smjjames]

Conservatives are still gonna cry slippery slope, though yeah, would probably be better if liberals and progressives tried more incrementally than making conservatives think that liberals/progressives are really aiming for a complete ban or something like that.

Except that neither side wants to give an inch to the other and they've already staked out their positions.

On the taxing bullets thing, that really doesn't sound reasonable, given how cheap they likely are already.