| I think the hardest part about this, is like Jason here a lot of people think it's ok for people to own guns, but not get crazy about it. Unfortunately there isn't great qualifications for defining what an assault rifle is. You can do specific models, which then require lots of updated and political maneuvering to keep updated. Length, speed, etc all end up catch too many other guns. We could do federally what california has done, and prevent magazines over 10 rounds, or do like Illinois and require a permit to buy ammunition, unfortunately incidents still happen, and legitimate owners get upset over what they perceive as draconian rule. Ultimately I think banning something like semi-automatic weapons would be the best in theory. But with 300+ million guns out there, with many of those being semi-automatic, it might be kind of an issue. If you grandfather them in, then you just drive the price up for these weapons. If you make it illegal 'overnight' you may make felons out a lot of people unknowingly. One of things that has been going around, mostly because of Ebert bringing it up. Is the idea that gun rights advocates say that these incidents can be prevented by concealed carry, but Ebert points out none of the people in the cinema shot back. Unfortunately the argument, and for the situation, that specific theater specifically does not allow concealed weapons. Unfairly, and I believe incorrectly gun rights advocates say that it happened there because he knew everyone would be unarmed. It's a very tricky situation. I think ultimately we need a better algorithm to detect and flag situations like this. Which would also require massive databases and registrations which people seem very against. If these guns were illegal to obtain, it would also mean that he would have had to actively be doing something illegal, unfortunately as it stands, if he would have been stopped on the way to the theater, he would have been found suspicious, but ultimately legal (assuming his guns were cased and such). |