Phx-Suns.Net

Why are AR-15 automatic weapons allowed to be bought casually by anybody who wants them, again?

Mateen had been employed by the global security firm G4S since September 2007.
Florida state records list an Omar Mateen as a licensed security officer who also has a statewide firearms license.

So, the question might be: How come this global security firm did not do its do diligence in screening this nut?

What due diligence did they not do?

I'm with POTUS. If we can put this fucker on a no fly list but can't restrict his access to certain firearms then the system is fucking broken.

Maybe he was perfectly sane and reasonable when he got his license and things went south for the guy over time and he lost it. Maybe he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. Somebody said the guys father posted a lengthy tirade against gays on Facebook right before that and then he goes out and wastes a bunch. Hard to predict people. People show up for work and do their jobs well and get along with others and then are axe murderers at night.

An employee at my wife's gym made the news not long ago because he sexually assaulted a minor from the gym. They did a complete background check on the guy before he was hired and he passed. What more can you do?

The ex wife said the killer was abusive and slightly off his rocker. Lots of people are abusive and slightly off their rocker. Do we call the police and report that they are abusive and off their rocker? What can they do? You can't put somebody away based on that. You have to commit a crime or at least plan a crime before anybody can do anything. If you listen to any political comment section on any news site you will find all kinds of people that sound like they are capable of doing bad things.

I ask myself all the time how do we fix this? I don't think you can "fix" it. I think all you can do is just try to contain it. And what is "it" anyway? There is gun violence and there is terrorism. They are two different related things. We have talked in length about gun control and we aren't going anywhere with that.

As far as terrorism goes I think we should be trying to find ways to lower the heat instead of raising the heat. The media and especially the right media has tried to fan the flames IMO. Trump has fanned the flames. I think our meddling in the Mid East has infuriated a lot of Muslims. Hundreds of thousands killed in Iraq alone. It's not that hard to sell the US as the evil empire to recruits since we have kind of been the evil empire. IMO. We talk about banning all Muslims as if we assume all Muslims are terrorists. We talk about who can be tougher on terrorism. Tougher on terrorism means who can kill the most terrorists.

Since we started this war on terrorism have the number of terrorists gone down or risen? I say the number has multiplied 100Xs at least. We kill more, they kill more. Escalating just leads to more escalation. We will never get Christians and Muslims to be best friends but we can try to lower the heat. I think Obama has tried very hard to do just that and that has infuriated the Republican Party. I don't think there is any easy way out of this and I fear a major escalation if a Republican lands in the WH. I think that will just multiply the number of terrorists again, waste trillions and sacrifice even more Americans with zero gain n the end.

What to do about ISIS? The people in those areas have to stand up against ISIS with our help but, it can't be just the evil empire US mowing down Muslims while everybody else watches. That has been happening and ISIS has definitely been severely wounded in the past couple of years.

The night club killer wasn't ISIS IMO, he had no communication with them in any way. He was just sympathetic to their cause and decided to pledge his support for them before his rampage.

It's a very complicated issue, and I don't want to talk about the whole thing here (because I don't have anything useful to say), but I do want to respond to a couple of specifics from your post.

Nodack wrote:Lots of people are abusive and slightly off their rocker. Do we call the police and report that they are abusive and off their rocker? What can they do? You can't put somebody away based on that.

Yes, you can call the police. This is something I want everybody to understand. If a person is in a mental state where they are a danger to themselves or others, they can be taken to a mental hospital against their will. I personally know someone who was taken away like that, and it was the best thing to ever happen to him. If someone is physically sick to the point of being unable to get heath care, you call them an ambulance. The same goes for mentally sick people. You can get them help.

And, even if that person doesn't qualify for the mental hospital, domestic abuse is a crime. That can be called in on it's own.

Again, yes. If someone is abusive and slightly off their rocker, call the police.

Nodack wrote:I fear a major escalation if a Republican lands in the WH.

Me too.

Marty [Mori Chu] wrote:http://gawker.com/is-donald-trump-s-hai ... 1777581357

That's hilarious. Such attention to detail. The Pulitzer Prize can't be too far away.

For what it's worth, here is an article by a gun supporter arguing in favor of the AR-15 and why he thinks it should still be legal.

YOU WOULD BE SURPRISED: Graph of Mother Jones mass shooter database by ethnicity



http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2012/ ... -full-data

You really should check your data before posting. You are probably one of those guys that shares everything on facebook thinking it is true when it clearly isn't.

Well if you just look at the first few rows of the table, Muslims are really overrepresented.

Exactly. If you only look at certain data, it tells different stories.

I am curious as to the completeness of the data, because I know I have read that there have been ~170 mass shootings in the US this year already. This only has 3.

Steve Kerr does an interview recently where he argues that we are "insane" not to pass more gun control laws about things like background checks and limiting assault weapons.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nb ... /86360010/