I don't share this photo often because it was during a weird time in my life where I was ugly but here's a photo of me shooting an AK47 along with a large number of other guns. Notice I only shoot with proper instruction and supervision? Yeah that's because I'm not someone with good judgement and shouldn't be left alone with guns. Wow I have impaired judgement and I'm STILL better with judgement than 90% of NRA supporters

@Francoise Cavitation... just read about that in the ME's report of the school shooting. I'd never heard that word in reference to anything other than a submarine... well until now.

@Francoise Absolutely agree. I was horrified.

My sister's boss was recently shot by a random guy in CA. I don't know if he'll ever recover because the damage from this ammo is just - awful.

@Francoise The bullet doesn't tumble it explodes. High velocity rounds go so fast they explode on contact. That plus cavitation is what makes the massive amount of damage. If you get shot in the liver it destroys the whole organ.

@MikeFlora Also Hollow Points. Entrance wound is the size of the round - exit wound - way bigger.

Rounds that deliberately fragment. Etc...

@RavenCT That's what I was talking about. I was wrong there is another round for those guns that has less powder behind it and it does tumble when it hits the body

@MikeFlora I understood.

I read way too much "Anita Blake" to not be well educated about weapons... ok and vampires. lol

But L. Hamilton does great research on weapons. And ammo. It's a great education.

Not that the guy who taught my gun licensing class was bad either.

Most interesting ammo I've read about it one designed to not pass through a wall if you miss.

@RavenCT I can show you my nasty exit wound. The only reason it wasn't any larger was because I was wearing a stout, leather belt. It split in two, with frayed ends, but it saved a lot of my skin! The entry point was slightly higher up on the left hand side of my belly. Fortunately, I wrested the Browning from my would be killer just after that, then drove myself to the hospital.

@Petter Okay that sounds just awful. Good for you.

And do ambulances take that long to get to where you live? Cause driving while shot is dangerous. (Though I actually know someone else who did this?).

@RavenCT We're talking Africa. Ambulances, though scarce, were there, but how could you phone for one in the middle of the night, in the 1980s? Luckily, the hospital was only a couple of miles away, but even so, by the time I got there the gear lever was pretty slippery from my blood and I had minimal tunnel vision. I sort of parked outside the emergency area, got out, stumbled a few steps and fainted. I'm told that before I had hit the ground the medics had slipped a stretcher under me and rushed me in for emergency treatment.

It is unfortunate that many gun owners, including those with children at home, are not as responsible as you are about keeping guns under lock and key.

@TerriCity
That was 50 years ago, when I was 5 years old, I had respect for weapons then and I have respect for the the damage that weapons can do today.

With these proposed policies, I'd vote you in as my spokesperson in this issue any day.

@Francoise 2.9 million more people voted for Hillary Clinton than voted for Donald Trump. You see who's in the Whitehouse don't you. It worked for 250yrs, but now the person with the most votes is not guaranteed to win the election.

Well said. Most of the liberals on this website seem to be obcessed with seizing the guns of law abiding citizens.

@MikeFlora I meant no offense. I was just presenting a grammatical argument to the debate.

Ask I understand your concerns about the number of victims. But honestly, there are plenty of easy ways to increase the number of victims in incidents such as these. 1 would be to cut the mains power lines to an apartment building at 2:00 am and using multiple molotive cocktails along with a few diesel cans to spread a raging inferno in an apartment complex like in London.

Killing large numbers of people can be achieved by other means. Also fire is a great psychological weapon as well, much better than a gun.

@Trajan61 You also need to be careful, this is my group and debate is open to everybody, sarcastic insults are not. I see that word liberal one more time and I'll block both of you. You still don't understand. How many people do you think that lunatic in Las Vegas would have killed lobbing Molotov Cocktails out of his hotel room.
You say all we want to do is take law abiding citizens guns away again and you're both history. I've told all you assholes a thousand times I don't give a rat's ass how many guns you have, and other than assault weapons, I don't give a fuck how many kinds of guns you have. Stop spreading lies about what we want to do!!! Truth is I'm dropping the part about high capacity magazines. All I want is military style weapons. I'm not kidding, debate is welcome, telling lies and sarcastic insults are not. We don't do this shit to you other than the dude that calls you guys ammosexuals , and I'm not going to say anything to him because I think it's funny as hell. You want to continue debating you side of the argument, be civil and stop spreading lies about what we want to do. I know people are going to kill people nothing I can do about that, but I can do something about collateral damage.

@MikeFlora

Please just relax. I don't care if you block me, do as your conscience dictates.
All someone needs in order to kill multiple people is intent. I could easily kill dozens of people if I put my mind towards that sort of thing but the reason I don't is because I value all life equally. Everybody has the same right to live as I do.

This was never about banning or not banning guns. I have no opinion on the gun debate in America because I don't live there. All I can say is that after Australia banned guns, violent crime, home invasions, gang drive by shootings, rapes, homicides with knives all increased. The number of guns on the street increased for the criminals and now in order to be "initiated" into a gang, young boys are bashing old people on the street in broad daylight.

Australia may be the perfect model for America's gun laws, I disagree but that's just because I grew up in Australia where if someone said "Our gun laws are great" I just tell them the story of when my friend was robbed at gunpoint, cause that's what gun control does, it disarms law abiding citizens.

The crucial point on gun control in the US is background checks which are done, however in the case of the Florida School shooting it was obvious that the sherif, FBI, etc. wanted this to happen. They blatantly ignored over 20 warnings that this kid was going to kill people, at the end of the day if the police and government can't protect you, who's responsibility is it?

I'm all for reasonable gun control which I believe that America has, they just need to enforce the current regulations and also do their job and arrest criminals and investigate potential criminals that they have been warned about repeatedly.

You saw the news on Florida, Law enforcement officers waited behind their cars as more and more children died. Aren't they supposed to protect the children and citizens?

Boot me off this group if you want, but please think about this by considering the other sides perspective. Otherwise we will never get to the source of the problem.

@Trajan61

@Francoise
Nice picture.
Also just saying. The entire premise of this comment was that i was just making fun of the majority of anti gun people.

So fair play that you make fun of the other side of the argument. I'm all for making the world a safer place. Which is why I openly condemn netball. It is the biggest cause of long term knee, ankle, foot and back problems and it must be banned. (Not joking. Just talk to a doctor who has been in a hospital in Australia during a Saturday afternoon).

Anyway I'm for reasonable gun control. But I'm also an advocate of "police and FBI should do their jobs right" which in the case of Florida, they didn't.

@Francoise
We can't just blame the NRA for everything.

Also I am aware that there were no specific laws that could have been used to arrest this kid, except maybe charge him with something related to animal cruelty, do a psychological investigation and give those to the FBI. The guardians are also responsible since they noticed that he was fighting with their real son.

This could have been avoided if the parents had made preventative measures but there's no law that says "Teach your child that killing is bad" or "Children with psychopathic tendencies or scociopathic tendencies should be assessed my a doctor.

There were many things that could have been done to prevent this that aren't related to the law.

Also the fact that Sheriff's just waited outside the school as kids were dying, that's pretty dodgy. If people are saying to give up guns because the police and sheriff's will save them. Then they should reserve their own grave sites pretty soon. Because ultimately it is the individual's responsibility to be able to defend them-self.

@Francoise

This just seems like the old argument of "Society must walk as fast as it's slowest person" which is the reason we have so many laws. Because people are not responsible for themselves anymore.

I'm all in favor of reasonable gun control measures. But banning all guns won't solve anything. Just look at Australia, overall crime increased dramatically after 1996 even after we banned guns. We also continued to have mass shootings but instead of publicizing them, we change the number of dead people from 2 to 4 for a mass shooting classification.

What you are asking for will only result in thousands of deaths of law abiding citizens. Rather than disarm the people and make them into ideal victims for criminals. Maybe try to understand the root of the problem. Mental illness mixed with the exclusionary culture at schools is what creates mass shooters. At school I was shunned, bullied and pushed away just for being Asian. But I managed to hang on because I had 1 friend, that's all it takes.

@Francoise
Fair enough. I'm just presenting the Australian perspective on the gun debate. Where it costs around $90 per year to keep your gun after a $300 payment for your license. So firstly it's a tax revenue thing just like speed cameras.
Also we have had increasing numbers of drive by shootings in Melbourne and Sydney. Guns in criminal gangs are also becoming more prevalent.
Also citizens can't even carry a knife, bat or tazer to defend themselves against an attacker.

Granted I can somewhat agree with you on the AR-15 matter (increasing the age to 21 to buy one) but I would prefer if we look into the causative factors, what caused the people to become so mentally insane that they would commit atrocities like these. Granted that that'll cost a lot of money in investigations, but if we want to prevent the problem we need to understand the problem.

Switzerland has more guns per person in the civilian population than America, yet they are so much safer with regards to gun crime. The problem is mental, not physical. If a crazy person wants to kill a lot of people. There's not much anyone can do unless the police do their jobs and investigate. There are also talks on a new type of gun restraining order where people can report a person's erratic or scociopathic behavior, police investigate them and if they are deemed mentally unfit, the police can input that into the federal database and when a background check is run, they won't be able to buy a gun.

I know I can't have an opinion on the US gun control debate since I'm an outsider. But I just don't want the US to go the way of Australia.

Mental illness is becoming more common because of the way our society has changed. We beget our individual responsibilities and force them onto the government, police and other organisations because people don't want the extra work of raising their kids right, protecting themselves, earning their own money, etc.

We need to change society to prevent these atrocities. Yes, the US could change some laws or suggest new ones. But at the end of the day, what do laws mean to criminals? Law's won't protect people from criminals, good men and women who are armed, trained and willing to defend the weak are what stop criminals. We have made society progressively weaker to the point where being a victim is considered the norm. We need to stop that, we need to teach the children to be men and women, not boys and girls.

@Francoise Sure. Giving a coward a gun always does nothing.
That's why some teachers like the ones in a Texas school where they allow teachers to carry guns if they choose to arm themselves. Because they understand the most basic human right there is, the right to self defense and they want to protect the lives of their students from people who would do them harm.

People can say the pen is mightier than the sword, but at the end of the day a pen won't save lives, a weapon will.

You saw as much as anyone what happened in Florida. There was a political agenda to increase the body count by stopping law enforcement officers and the resource officer from entering the school during the shooting. Either that or worse, cowardice. Also there have been several instances where a good citizen stopped mass murder with a gun, but those don't count as statistics because the crime was stopped before it occurred. Every day there are hundreds of crimes committed, however there are also hundreds of crimes stopped. That's what you don't realize. Guns can protect law abiding citizens from threats.

This is and never was a gun problem, this was a cultural and societal problem. America needs to get a reality check and start doing the right thing. Mainly the government since they knew well in advance that this attack was going to happen. The FBI could have stopped it, the Sheriff could have stopped it. This is no accident because it implies that there is no none to blame. The FBI always had the blood of innocents on their hands, it just so happens that now they have a bit more American blood on their hands.