So sad and so disturbing. What do people get out of acts like this? It's so senseless 
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Let's just be clear we have terrorists among us. The shooter created a bloodbath. This shooting is absolutely terrifying- him perched high with his victims completely vulnerable below. I really hope investigators and uncover his motive and we can perhaps learn something useful.
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we need real gun control - this will continue to happen until we are serious about gun control. It's so maddening.
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Its so heartbreaking, I'm been reading the news and twitter feeds all afternoon.
I hate hate, mainly from the shooter, but also the hate that is all over social media from this already, bashing Jason Aldean for running? Bashing Sarah Sanders for crying? Bashing anyone who does - or doesn't - mention gun control. Saying 'we' only care because it's a country concert and not a hip hop concert? It's disgusting and even more heartbreaking to see a country so divided.
I appreciate the stories of people helping people, donating blood, bringing water, bringing trucks to get people to the hospitals. I'd love to see something like this bring us together as a country vs. causing another political battle, but I know that's dreaming. -
Gun control really is not a partisan issue. I wish more people would realize that.
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@maddyz: Agree.
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It's so sad and heartbreaking.
Unfortunately gun control would not have prevented this. I wish there was more focus on helping the victims and their families and less on gun control and politics.
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Why do these issues continue to happen in the US? For me these domestic terrorist acts/school schootings are just as much about mental health as gun control.
I love Las Vegas and just saw Aldean in August, this one really got me, all of them do, but being part of the country music community is one of things I identify with the most. What a loss. I'm feeling anxious about being away from DD this week.
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@MRSKANSAS can you explain how gun control would not have prevented this?
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@merriment: maniacs on a mission to kill people will obtain guns illegally if they have to. Just like a heroin addict will still be able to buy heroin even though it's illegal.
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@youboots: I agree mental health is an issue. My husband and I were just talking about stuff like this last night and today we wake up to this.
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@mrskansas: I'm curious about this as well because I live in the country where everyone has guns for hunting and protection and we keep guns to put down livestock but I still can't see why people need machine guns
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@mrskansas: but the government has still made heroin illegal because it is detrimental to the public health , so not sure that argument works.
I'm just so...I don't know, sad, afraid for my kids future and completely fatigued by politics, tragedy and inaction. If nothing changed after Sandy Hook, I have zero faith that anything constructive will come out of this.
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@kimchi @youboots yes about mental health, which is why it was so horrifying that the president repealed an Obama-era bill that made it harder for people with severe mental illness to purchase guns. In addition, the (thankfully failed) ACA repeals would have dramatically reduced access to mental healthcare.
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@mrskansas: people break laws all the time, I don't think that means we should eliminate all laws. I get the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" thing, but the sheer amount of destruction that guns cause seems sufficient to limit access to them. Why is it that the US is the only country with this problem? These (repeated) mass killings do not happen the same way in other places. There is clearly something wrong with the way things are in the US.
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in the UK, guns are much harder to come by and they have knife attacks and acid attacks are on the rise. Semi-automatic weapons can do a ton of carnage at one time. The scale of the violence is uniquely American (whether mass shootings or everyday gun fights and murders) because so many of our citizens are armed.
@youboots: that’s the worse part about ALL of these shootings and acts of violence. At some point we all can relate to the activity that happened just before the tragedy.
I took LO to the park yesterday and I thought about Sandy Hook. People said “wrong place, wrong time.” Children at school was the right place, right time. So if a shooting could happen there why not the toddler playground? Scary.
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I am appalled that we choose not to protect the lives of average people so that we can defend the second amendment, created when all anyone had was a musket. These weapons are only good for mass murder.
Before congress defended research on gun violence in the 90's, they found that households with a gun were 300% more likely to experience gun violence and 5x more likely to experience gun-related suicide. (Read on NyTimes today.)
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@mrskansas: By your logic there should be no laws at all because someone will break them.
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@josina: exactly. I feel encouraged by some of the stories of people helping people, but just wow to some of the comments I've seen.
I don't know whether gun laws would have prevented this- this guy was pretty extreme and his family said they didn't know, or at least his brother didn't know, that he had all those guns? Plus they were modified. Idk if ever there were a case of "he would get his hands on a gun no matter what,"!it seems like this guy falls into that category from what I've seen. But it was sickening to see. I hope something useful in terms of prevention comes out of this.
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In my opinion I think mental health has a lot to do with it. These people need help and aren't getting it. People will access guns whether or not they are legal.
I feel for all these families. A family friend was there last night and now leaves 4 children motherless. People should be able to go on vacation and to a concert and not have to worry.
Between this and a terror attack in the city I live in this weekenend I just want to keep my family home and safe from the world.
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@ALV91711: Mental health may have a lot to do with it - I haven't seen anything to indicate that this shooter had diagnosed or undiagnosed mental health issues. It's horrible but sometimes people really do decide to do these things and it isn't because they are suffering from mental health issues. That being said, somebody who had mental health issues and doesn't have easy access to guns is going to cause a lot less damage. I'm Canadian and in the past year I have had two knife attacks at my workplace, one in the recruiting centre and one in my actual office. In the first instance two people had injuries, in the second one person was treated at the scene. How would those situations have played out if the person had had easy access to semi-automatic weapons?
SOME people will access guns whether or not they're legal. But a lot of people will be deterred. This is proven, I believe, by the fact that this does not happen anywhere else. I don't think our mental health system is any better than yours. I do think our gun laws are.
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It's heartbreaking. I'm from SoCal and we'd go there often. I even took baby girl there for a weekend stopover to ease the jet-lag after a long international flight. We were out in the middle of the night because of a 9-hr time difference. That could have been us
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@mrskansas: Ridiculous- it prevents it everywhere else in the world. And the guns were bought legally just like most of these mass shootings.
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Here's some stats for you guys!
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/2/16399418/us-gun-violence-statistics-maps-charts
#6 is important: countries with more guns have more deaths by guns. And USA has 44% of the WORLD'S civilian-owned guns. That's true at the state level too.
This kind of violence maybe can't be prevented completely, but we can at least make it HARDER for it to happen. Pass common-sense gun control laws!
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labeling this murderer as having mental health issues is a cop out. His behavior is inexcusable just like the terrorists ( we are comfortable calling out) and just like the everyday person that decides to use a gun to solve their problems. When Dylan Roof espoused hate and made it clear why he killed the churchgoers people wanted to relabel him mentally ill. Stop. People think horrible thoughts and carry out horrible actions. Our culture and laws enable the worst among us.
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@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: It's so frustrating because when it's an angry white dude it's labeled a mental health issue. It's BS the way crimes are treated differently in this country based on their perpetrator (not to mention when young black youth are killed for literally doing nothing and still blamed for their deaths). However, I think that even for a person who is labeled a terrorist, it's probably still a mental health issue but we don't call it that because it's easier to demonize the person. Anyway, I am not disagreeing with you really at all I agree that our culture is sick, the gun worship plus lack of mental healthcare, and polarization all create a pressure cooker situation.
I do not know if this guy bought all the guns used in this massacre legally or not, but clearly he had a fascination with guns that escalated. If there wasn't such easy access to guns and the ability to stockpile weapons and ammunition, maybe it would not have escalated to the point where he could kill almost 60 people in a few minutes and injure hundreds of others.
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@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: I agree he's a garbage person but I just don't see or maybe want to accept how a sane person could do this? And I do think that applies to terrorists etc but I def see your point. And I wish we knew more about his motive
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@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: Totally agree. This was domestic terrorism, period. Call it what it is! Domestic TERRORISM. And treat is like you do all other sorts of terrorism! If we can ban people from coming to our country and build walls, we can do SOMETHING to make domestic terrorism harder to occur.
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Regarding @mrskansas: 's comment on gun control not preventing this: fully automatic rifles are illegal, he found a way to buy them / make them anyways.
I don't think gun control is a all or nothing issue, and I think it gets so polarized because of that. It'd be nice if the NRA could admit that some changes/stricter laws could be in place and maybe possibly help the NRA? It'd be nice if both sides could sit down and compromise or figure out a way to make it harder for the bad guys to get/make bad guns.
How does a guy purchase so many high powered rifles in a fairly short period of time and not raise red flags somewhere, whether they were legally purchased or not? -
@josina: Thank you. Agreed.
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@josina: Regarding being able to convert his weapon into automatics - that's because the things you need to convert a semi-automatic weapon into a fully automatic weapon are legal to buy.
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@Adira: That makes no sense right? If fully-automatic rifles are illegal, then why would the things you need to make them be legal? To me, I find it hard that anyone on either side could argue against that aspect of gun control.
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@Adira: Yes I agree that the parts needed should be illegal. That makes no sense to me.
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@josina: I totally agree that gun control is not an all or nothing issue. I think the problem is that the vast majority of people who want gun control are not arguing that all guns should be banned. I mean that's just not a realistic proposition in our culture even if someone personally doesn't like guns. However, guns rights activists / the NRA act as if that is what people who are for gun control want. It's a straw man argument (I think I'm using that term correctly!) that immediately shuts down discussion.
It's just crazy to me bc I think the majority of Americans are in favor of "sensible" gun control yet we are being held hostage by the NRA and politicians who are afraid of not getting an A+ rating from them.
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@petitenoisette: Yes. I think there needs to be discussions about what specifically needs to change, not just "gun control".
Unfortunately there's still not going to be a good way to regulate private party sales or the "black market". Oh and technically you can convert a regular rifle to a semi-auto/full auto without buying any additional parts if you have the skill set/knowledge.
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I really like the idea of a GPS tracker on guns: https://www.outdoorhub.com/news/2016/03/10/gps-tracker-guns-enhanced-safety-worrying-implications/
although I'm sure a lot of gun-owners wouldn't. It'd be a great tool for police officers though, if 17 guns show up in a hotel room, red flag. If 2 guns show up at a school or a bank. Even for owners to keep tabs on their own guns, in cases of suicidal teenagers or robbery.
ETA: obviously they'd have to be embedded in the gun and not easily removable.
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@mrskansas: hmmm... that's true. But isn't it easier to convert a semi-auto?
@josina: interesting idea! Only even if the tags are built into a gun, they're not going to be vital to its function and so they can be taken out by anyone with the skills to disassemble and convert the gun.
Would be nice if semi-autos got banned. Nation-wide. They don't seem to have any purpose other than killing many people at once - would anyone hunt deer with one of these? Or use it to head off an average burglar? Honestly, the US has no problem regulating all kinds of things that may threaten the public - the food supply, cars and planes, drugs, electrical systems in appliances, you name it. Only with guns there's this level of brainwashing that if you try to take something highly deadly off the streets, you're "trying to take all guns away." Not to mention an angry lunatic fringe that would actually love to kill lots of people in the event that they get half a chance to do it. I don't know how big that fringe is, but unfortunately it does exist. They're not new, but fear and anger are encouraged in our society these days, so they're not even hiding very hard.
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So terrible. I actually think that focusing on mental health is not the right approach. There are so so many people with mental health problems someone will always fall through the cracks, or refuse/not seek help, and of course most people with mental illness would never do something like this. Of course we should better support people with mental illness but if the goal is to prevent things like this, the answer is we should make it much, much harder to get guns.
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@Mama Bird: Semi-autos automatically load the next round into the chamber after firing, but they still only fire one round per trigger pull. So they are convenient while hunting or for recreational shooting. The time difference between a regular rifle and a semi-auto isn't anything significant (for a seasoned shooter).
I think if they would put a limit on the magazine capacities it would be more effective than banning them altogether. -
@mrskansas: ah. Thanks for clarifying. That does make sense... magazine capacity limits would make a big difference too.
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