Don't forget though that they are also the states with the most gun restrictions, we might be doing more harm than good in those more populated states, notice that crime has gone up over the years as guns have been outlawed in those states, even as the population barely changes, but there is also more laws to break, more things are illegal in today's society..

Example; the drug cartels were a result of the war on drugs, the war on drugs and prohibition turned more people into hardened criminals than it did doing anything good for them, rather than having family, friends and churches solve these social medical problems. We send more people to jail than any other country..

When you look at the charts, California hit a peak of 4,000 in the early 90's and from there crime went down at a steady pace.. I don't think it makes much of a difference if you outlaw guns or not, people will still commit crimes, strap bombs to themselves, or get them smuggled in.. Tons of people were killed in a Norway bombing, it can happen anywhere..

What is wrong with you people? You just want to let people push you around as long as things aren't escalated? When someone is robbing you At gunpoint or threatening you, things have already been escalated enough. I've been robbed. At some point you stop being such a ****in pussy and you get tired of people pushing you around. At some point you have to stand up for yourself.

One of the things that sort of gave me hope was this.

This is what I was saying earlier in the thread. People can determine whether or not you're insane fairly well. If there was a reference check while buying a gun, that included a family member, I'd bet you find a lot less crimes of this nature occurring.

I think that probably depends on how you frame the statistics I guess, because the state with the highest murder rate in the US is Louisiana, which also happens to be a conservative state with loose law guns. In fact if you look at the top ten with the highest murder rates...

1. Louisiana
2. Maryland
3. Missouri
4. Mississippi
5. New Mexico
6. Arizona
7. South Carolina
8. Nevada
9. Georgia
10. Alabama

...it's mostly conservative states with loose gun laws.

(data from here)


"Not being a pussy" doesn't strike me as a very good argument in favor of owning a gun. I've lived in several high-crime neighborhoods in my life, including the one I live in right now, and have certainly had my share of scary run-ins with people, but I can't think of any of those situations that would have been improved in any way if I were packing heat.

please understand that in no way shape or form am i on either side of this

but a question.....

had Colorado passed a right to carry law...as in one similar to the state i live in...Nevada....where you have to go through extensive background checks, take several knowledge classes, pass live knowledge of firing a gun tests (i'm sure there is a real name for this :) ) and pay a shitload of permit fees (per year)

could this situation have been lessened and or completely avoided?

perhaps this guy would have never taken the risk had he known that there is a good chance that one or more people in that theater are carrying weapons

again i'm not pro or anti gun and or control....but i do have a few friends who are very into guns and have said permits and are all very responsible good people

I'm no expert, but believe Colorado has very loose gun laws already and you can get a permit to carry there—none of which helped lessen this situation. In fact, the ease of buying guns in Colorado might have made it easier for the killer to arm himself the way he did.

But he also made bombs. So what does it matter if he had a gun?

Well, we can debate parallel universes all we want but the fact is none of his bomb-making hurt anyone but his shooting of guns did.

do they?

i was not really sure.....some pretty mixed information on the subject online.....i went off a list that said they were writing a law....

i suppose that maybe Batman dorks at midnight might not come off as the biggest threat in the world

you make a very valid point on the making it easier....he was "sane", not criminal record, and of age

Yeah but you have to look at this in context. All of these states have relatively small populations that artificially inflate their murder rate, with the exception of Georgia, that most big cities in the U.S. surpass in terms of people murdered or injured by gun violence. In this country, places like Chicago, Baltimore, and D.C. have more people killed due to gun violence than most of those states will in total. So far, the city of Chicago has had over twice as many people killed (228) this year alone than the entire state of Alaska had in 2011, yet the murder rate in the latter is nearly 3 times higher. Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, with handgun bans and automatic/semi-automatic bans in place for the better part of the last decade. So then why do we consistently rank among the most violent cities in the country? People will kill each other regardless of whether the laws are strict or lax. There already is a huge illegal gun market, and further restricting the supply only serves to fuel that market. It's kind of like you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.