"Multiple people down" in active shooter situation in Aurora, Illinois - Sensationalist Headlines

Get your shit together America.

It’s weird having this so close to home, me and my brother used to pass that building every day to drop off parts to a black oxide vendor down the road. It’s a smallish world in manufacturing so I’ll probably see the ripple effects of this down the road in something.

But how about instead with; National Emergency: BABY WANT WALL

https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/aurora-beacon-news/news/ct-met-cb-aurora-illinois-shooting-updates-20190216-story.html Of the five officers involved that were injured, only one continues to be in the hospital. All injuries to the officers are considered non-life threatening. Victims names are Clayton Parks, Trevor Wehner, Russell Beyer, Vicente Juarez, and Josh Pinkard. Trevor Wehner was an intern at the business, with his first full day being the day of the shooting. The school he was attending, Northern Illinois University, also released a statement. One final note, the shooter was arrested seven prior times. The shooter was issued a FOID card in 2014 and attempted to apply for a conceal-carry license, but during the process he was rejected due to prior convictions. The FOID card was then revoked, but the shooter kept the handgun.

Yeah lets pretend like state-level laws are relevant when you're surrounded by other states without them.

By federal law, it is illegal to do private purcases without tranfering through an FFL if one or more of the parties is from another state. On top of that, all the other dealers in the surrounding states will refuse to sell to an Illinois resident without an FOID card. Any person in Wisconsin, Indiana, Arkansas, ect. would not deal with an Illinois resident because it is not worth the hassle unless it is mailed to or sent through an FFL first. Which means background checks will be done. Only exception that is usually allowed is over guns that are either given as gifts by family, or inherited. Even then, if you have a criminal record, chances are the guns will end up for sale at an auction or at a dealer. As far as him owning a handgun, either he got before the FOID was revoked, or he found someone who don't give a fuck about the laws to sell him one. Or family got it for him. Blaming the surrounding states is just lazy.

Martin had six prior arrests in Aurora, most involving traffic stops and domestic violence. He also had a felony conviction for aggravated assault in Mississippi in 1995, authorities said. Martin was issued an Illinois firearm owner’s identification card in January 2014. Two months later, he purchased a Smith & Wesson .40-caliber handgun from an Aurora dealer. He applied for a concealed carry permit shortly after purchasing the gun, according to police. During the fingerprinting and background process, Martin’s conviction in Mississippi was discovered and his concealed carry application was denied. He had also had his firearm license revoked by the Illinois State Police, Ziman said. Given his FOID card had been revoked, police are now investigating how Martin still had a gun in his possession. That illegal gun was the one used in Friday’s shooting Cool. So what, this is at least the third shooting in the last year that could have been prevented by someone doing their job.

Honestly? This is pretty much the case. The IL state police deal with all issuances of FOID cards and conceal carry licenses. If they revoked the FOID and did not follow up on it, they dropped the ball there. In fact, he should not have gotten a FOID in the first place given his criminal record.

I also failed to mention that a good number of areas within and surrounding Chicago have their own ordinances about mag capacity and assault weapon bans.

I thought that too until the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting last year in Pittsburgh, unfortunately it can happen anywhere

https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1096833598831951872 Heads need to fucking roll.

they won't. Police have almost no transparency and de facto no accountability.

This really does not surprise me in the slightest. The claim sound odd from the start.

God I WISH people would take a different approach to the problem like you’re suggesting, but nope here comes “assault weapons ban proposal #8347. As far as general shootings and mass shootings go, the problem I most commonly see is the availability of guns to unqualified people. Our background checks system is full of holes due to people not doing their jobs correctly, the ATF and DOJ are absolute garbage at prosecuting straw purchasers but will shoot your dog if you own two different sized weapons with interchangeable parts, private sales still don’t require a background check, and people don’t bother securing their firearms from their children or disturbed teenage edge lords. But according to everyone ever, none of those things are a problem. Clearly the scary looking rifles used in the absolute minority of gun crimes and magazines which hold more than (insert arbitrary number chosen by your local politician) number of rounds are the biggest contributor to gun violence; not the fact that anyone with 2 brain cells can grab a firearm due to multiple systematic failures by law enforcement to follow correct procedures. Oh for fucks sakes not again. Explain Massachusetts having low gun violence despite sharing state lines with Vermont and New Hampshire.

Gun violence not depending on a single specific variable.

That’s pretty much the point I was trying to make? This is basically the reason why some places have higher or lower rates of gun violence regardless of how dumb strict the laws of their individual areas are. People keep making the excuse that places with strict firearms laws can still have higher gun violence by boiling it down to just “well other states don’t follow the same laws”, whilst completely ignoring actual factors of gun violence caused by various widespread socioeconomic problems within the state... or in this case, failures by law enforcement TO DO THEIR FUCKING JOB.

... And conversely, gun violence being a multiple variable problem also means that pointing towards a state with low gun violence despite being near a low-regulation state doesn't prove that free movement between states has no influence on the efficiency of state-level regulations. This goes both ways. See, this is the problem with every gun debate we routinely see on this forum. Nobody here is a statistician, or has the skills to actually prove anything about a complex, multiple variable problem such as this one based on available data. So, instead, people resort to flinging examples and counter-examples at each others; "look at this country with high gun ownership rate and no gun crime", "look at this one, which has abysmal mental healthcare and wealth inequality, but strict gun regulation and low gun crime", "look at this graph which doesn't show immediate results after the introduction of stricter regulations", etc... Except counter-examples don't work to tackle multiple variable problems. You can't prove anything with them. That's why, on other similarly complex subjects, we have actual mathematicians working on establishing correlations and causality through statistical studies. None of these discussions ever bring anything to the table, because every argument is based on the flawed principles that anecdotal evidence is sturdy enough to justify general claims with. It isn't.

Then it’s on them to provide actual numbers and facts to the claim that neighboring states play any sort of roll in creating gun violence like their implying, especially when counter examples clearly exist going both ways on the topic. Some states have strict laws and high gun violence, others have low violence and strict gun laws, etc... Also my example isn’t comparing the USA to other countries, 10 years of an assault weapons ban isn’t “immediate” (and wouldn’t get results regardless of how much time passed because assault weapons aren’t used in the majority of gun crimes and fail to address any issues of how guns end up in the wrong hands), and you’re ignoring several arguments made in the past which cited various studies and statistics because they didn’t follow the narrative of guns = bad. I mean, are you seriously telling me that crime statistics for the entirety of New England is just an “anecdote”? Also you’re not entirely correct on people not having the skills to put together information and statistics to solve complex problems like this. Zombeanie has put together a comprehensive collection of various studies and statistics concerning the issue, and I think most people who are well versed and educate themselves on the issue (like Catbarf, Grenadiac, Zombeanie, UncleJimmema, and myself) would agree that a few things need to happen to properly address gun violence. Allocate the DoJ funds specifically for prosecution of straw purchase, the #1 source of illegal firearms, but which they currently lack the resources to pursue. Allocate the ATF funds specifically for prosecution of unscrupulous FFL holders, the #2 source of illegal firearms, but which they currently lack the resources to pursue. Raise liability on stolen firearms, or introduce safe storage laws. Further restrict handguns, the overwhelmingly most common weapons used in crime. Open the NICS to non-FFLs, then mandate background checks on all sales. Fix the broken interaction between state and federal databases (due to HIPAA) which often causes mental issues to not be reported to the federal background check system. Address law enforcement failures to follow correct procedures to update NICS. Address suicide in some meaningful capacity. Address causes of gang violence in some meaningful capacity. These are the social issues that are the most common root causes of gun violence. The point is the assault weapons ban was unsuccessful due various reasons other than the expiration date and other states not reinstating the ban afterwards. It doesn’t address any of the things mentioned above which by far are more pressing issues which enable gun violence, both as a whole and in mass shootings. What we have been suggesting would cover most (if not all) of the things which assault weapons bans fail to address. We’ve gone through the numbers several times over and it’s blatantly obvious what legislative actions should be taken. Another assault weapons ban is not one of them. The feeling I’m getting from your responses is you want to avoid admitting that assault weapons bans are ineffective due to being built upon flawed methodology and misinformation.

That's not true. By federal law it is completely legal to do private purchases. States can regulate them, and most do. Illinois is one that regulated it more so than others. Private Sales in Illinois | Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun V.. Regardless of regulation that doesn't stop black markets however. More than likely he bought the gun with his FOID card, and while his permit and FOID card were voided that doesn't mean you can no longer own firearms. Unless he has a felony on his record, was forcefully institutionalized, or committed a crime of domestic violence to any degree, legally he would be able to possess firearms. Assuming he did fall under one of those categories, then law enforcement dropped the ball for not seizing his firearms. Source: I sell guns for a living.

According to this, he wasn’t supposed to have guns.

Then it was a failure of law enforcement. That's what a lot of this comes to, if the government actually enforced the laws we have already on the books then a fair amount of issues wouldn't happen on the first place.

First line: By federal law, it is illegal to do private purchases without transffering through an FFL if one or more of the parties is from another state. Read

I've got a buddy who lives in New York. His dream gun is a civilian variant of the Dragunov SVD. He found one on an online gun auction website for sale in Pennsylvania. The only problem is that New York considers it an assault weapon, so it's banned. According to clueless people on the Internet, the way this goes is that he Paypals the seller and the seller ships the gun directly to his door and he thus buys a gun over the Internet with no background check and circumventing state laws. The way it actually goes is that because the sale is occurring over state lines, the seller is legally required to ship it to an FFL (a licensed gun dealer) in New York. The seller ships the gun to the FFL, who takes possession. The FFL then tells my buddy that because the rifle is an assault weapon, he cannot release it to a New York resident- his options are to either have the FFL sell the gun out of state, or alter the gun to no longer be an assault weapon. He opts for the latter. The FFL removes the stock, making the rifle no longer considered an assault weapon, and then performs a background check (which he is legally required to do, because he is an FFL). Only then can my buddy take possession of the weapon. Please explain to me exactly how he would circumvent New York's gun laws and take advantage of Pennsylvania's comparatively lax laws, so that I may clear up any misunderstandings you may have about this process.

your buddy drives his car from New York to Pennsylvania, hands the man a wad of cash, puts the gun in his trunk, and then drives home and hopes he doesnt get pulled over its like you assume nobody would ever just break the law lol

No, I just don't think that's at all relevant. If you're willing to break federal law to begin with, there's no need to bother with any inter-state shenanigans. Just hand that wad of cash to someone in New York. Everyone knows that you can still buy a gun illegally in Illinois. The whole point of the 'but neighboring states' argument is that you can, supposedly, easily acquire a gun in another state with lax laws, and acquire a gun more easily than trying to find someone to illegally sell you a gun in your home state. Trying to find someone to illegally sell you a gun in another state is no easier. Still, try it sometime. Go on Gunbroker or Armslist and see if you can entice someone to break federal law. I guarantee you'll get the ATF showing up at your house long before you find someone dumb enough to assume that the random stranger on the Internet isn't an ATF agent or police officer and agree to commit a 10+-years-in-prison felony.

like I dont mean to insult you but you're being incredibly naive, a shitton of people break federal laws all the time without any care, especially if we're talking about guns

I never said nobody breaks federal laws. When it comes to guns used in crime, the top three sources are: Off-the-books sales by FFL holders Straw purchase Being sold or given a gun by friends or family The first two are illegal on a federal level, and the last is illegal in Illinois or federally if the recipient is a prohibited person. Notice how none of those involve driving to another state, because breaking federal law is no easier in a neighboring state than it is at home. The laws of neighboring states don't matter. Either you're violating federal law altogether, or you're subject to the same restrictions as you would be in your home state. That's the long and short of it.

When is the last time you’ve heard about people using Dragunov SVDs in the USA during a commission of a crime? Even if the weapon was something stupidly common as an ar15, the type of weapons used in the majority of gun crimes aren’t the ones which are effected by assault weapons bans. Also unless the guy is straight up bypassing every legal procedure to buy a weapon, the FFL holder still has to check his ID and verify if the weapon is legal in the buyer’s jurisdiction or place of residence. And if the seller is stupid enough to advertise they’re willing to do a “private sale” to out of state people, the ATF should be all over that shit.

It's perfectly relevant. Overall supply is always going to affect availability (and price.) For as long as people can buy stuff legally (or illegally) in a state with less stringent laws and transport them they will.

So you're saying they should provide counter-examples to something that wasn't proven to begin with? Then we're back at the initial problem. Crime statistics aren't anecdotes, but they're crime statistics. Not statistical analyses of the impact of gun legislation on crime. To make conclusions on the latter based on the former is to extrapolate. A collection of statistics on gun crimes isn't the same thing as an analysis on the impact of gun legislation. Zombinie is not a statistician, he hasn't made a meta-analysis that rigorously establishes wider correlations and statistical evidence on the inefficiency of gun control based on those studies on crime, as that would take far more than just putting information together. He made a compilation. That's not the same thing at all, it doesn't yield any additional information on the initial complex problem.