The love of guns and violent shooting video games is apparent in this video
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David Frum on The Daily Beast made the point that auto makers took the necessary steps to reduce fatalities in the auto industry, and asked why gun manufacturers won’t do the same.
Gun-rights advocates insist that the U.S. faces a choice between the status quo and the repeal of the Second Amendment and mass confiscation of firearms. That is false. Improved gun safety no more requires a gun ban than improved auto safety demanded the outlawing of cars. Gun design could be regulated to enhance safety. Those who wish to own guns could be required to take safety courses and pass a test. Individuals who are found to store their weapons unsafely could forfeit for a time their ownership rights. Persons convicted of drug offenses or drunk driving could be deprived of gun rights in their sentence, as felons now are deprived of the right to vote in many states. The classes of weapons associated with mass casualty shooting could be more strictly controlled.
It’s not all-or-nothing, not all-one-way or all-the-other way: moderate steps could achieve substantial results. The goal is not to reduce the level of gun violence to zero, any more than it is to stop all auto fatalities. The goal is to enhance safety while upholding legitimate rights. It’s been done before. It can be done again.
The shooting happened yesterday but already, Harry Reid is shutting down Senate action on gun control.
“We don’t have the votes. I hope to get them, but we don’t have them now,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on Tuesday when asked if the Senate would revisit a bill to tighten background checks after Monday’s shootings. The Senate rejected a similar measure in April.
That measure failed by five votes — Reid switched his “yes” vote to “no” in a procedural move that permits him to bring the proposal up again. On Tuesday, Reid said that he might consider revisiting a separate, limited bill that would exclusively address mental health issues.
“Anything we can do to focus attention on the senseless killings that take place,” Reid said. “That’s something we will look at.”
On Monday, the tone of frustration with Congress’ inaction on gun legislation came from the very top, as President Barack Obama deplored that “we are confronting yet another mass shooting.”
“We’re going to be investigating thoroughly what happened, as we do so many of these shootings, sadly, that have happened, and do everything that we can to try to prevent them,” he added.
Obama made no mention of another push in Congress — and White House press secretary Jay Carney added to the impression of congressional stalemate at his briefing not long afterward.
“We will continue to work to take action to reduce gun violence in this country through executive action, and hopefully Congress will take action to reduce gun violence as well,” Carney told reporters.
Gunman Aaron Alexis was shot dead by responding officers after he opened fire inside a Navy facility around 8am on Monday morning.
Since he was identified as the shooter, reports have come out revealing that it was not the first time that he was involved in a shooting.
In 2004, he was arrested in Seattle for shooting the tires of someone’s car during an anger-fueled ‘blackout’.
‘He said that he didn’t remember pulling the trigger of his firearm until about one hour later,’ according to the Seattle police report.
Later he said that he felt the intended victim ‘disrespected him’.
The report states that his father said his anger issues stemmed back to his time in New York where he helped the rescue efforts following the September 11 terrorist attacks.
The shooter’s father told police ‘that his son had experienced anger management problems that the family believed associated [sic] with PTSD.’
He was arrested in relation to this instance but never charged, and the same outcome occurred in Fort Worth, Texas where Alexis was living in 2010.