I'm going to make a post later about my overall take on Dallas, just b/c I need to get it off my chest and I'm very curious if the group thinks it's the right track or I'm being crazier than usual, but I didn't want to mix that up with Obama's AGAIN responding to a shooting with gun control.
here's his statement after he condemned the attack:
“We also know that when people are armed with powerful weapons, unfortunately it makes attacks like these more deadly and more tragic, and in the days ahead we’re going to have to consider those realities as well,” Obama said.
For those who don't know guns (everyone who does already knows this): A sniper style attack is the LEAST gun control relevant of any shooting event. Period.
Why? For those who don't know guns, here's why:
By "powerful weapons" we can presume he's talking about "assault rifles". They have two aspects of power, one of which is the focus of gun control. First they have high capacities and rates of fire, second they are of course rifle rounds and thus are powerful.
The thing is, in an attack like this one the rate of fire isn't that important, and more to the point about any magazine fed rifle of the last century is more than sufficient to have worked in this situation. It could have been any of thousands of types of hunting rifle including bolt action rifles.
what many cite as the "original" mass shooting, the U Texas tower shooting Whitman used a standard bolt action hunting rifle, a M1 carbine, a Sears shotgun, and a couple of handguns, and a pump action rifle. He mostly used the shotgun and the Remington 700 hunting rifle to kill 16 and shoot 49 people overall.
So in this case, sniper attacks, there's no currently proposed gun law that would make a difference. The guy could have been just as effective with a rife from WWI for that matter. He would have passed any background check, avoided any waiting time, you name it.
To prevent access to the type of gun necessary to successfully carry out a WELL PLANNED attack from higher ground we'd have to basically ban hunting rifles and round up the 50 million or so of them in circulation. esp. the well planned, part, with good position he could easily kill a lot of people with a 5 round rifle mag capacity.
it's just nonsense to apply gun control to this situation. GUn bans yes, but not gun control. there's no "common sense" or even wackadoodle proposal out there that would have applied at all. I don't know what he used, but I know what he could have used to do the same damage.
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