(06-14-2016, 12:58 AM)Valeera Wrote: Semi-automatic weapons and sidearms serve no purpose beyond the efficient infliction of mass casualties in a combat zone. There is no reason for them to exist in any capacity in the private sphere.
Also, if the government can restrict your freedom to travel because they don't like how your name sounds, they should restrict your freedom to buy murder toys because you openly claim ties to Al Qaeda.
Part of the reason why this man was able to purchase the firearms is that we don't have a transparent process for being placed on or removed from the No-Fly/Terror Watch list. He was allegedly on the list, and had we had a transparent process for being placed on it, and removed from it, we could have restricted his access to firearms. As it stands, you cannot remove a constitutional right without due process, and the No-Fly list has no due process. The FBI has actually been caught placing people on the list in the past to prevent them from being able to travel to a hearing where they were to serve as witnesses for someone else on said list. Until we fix the issues with the No-Fly list, it's not a good way to determine who should and should not have access to firearms.
Good luck getting anything passed through Congress, though. They're too busy pissing at each other for political brownie points to get anything done.
I will tell you this much - I live in a city where pretty much everyone has a gun. We have a huge number of guns here. We had one - just one - gun incident here in the last year, and it was someone not from the area who lost her shit and shot the driver of the car she was in on the interstate (I've never been able to find out if they got a rational explanation for her actions, but she killed both her son (the driver) and a passenger in the front seat). That's it. Yet, everyone has guns.
P.S. V'al, you might want to look up the definition of "Islamism" before talking shit. It specifically refers to terrorists and other radicals who do things in the name of Islam. It does not refer to Islam as a whole - that would be "Islamic." Something can be "Islamism" without being "Islamic." They're worshiping an idea instead of following the actual tenets.
Edit #2: This is also similar to people committing terrorist acts in the name of Christianity, when such acts are explicitly against the tenets of Christianity. We just don't have a name for them in English (yet) beyond, "Y'all ain't Christians."