Buzzcook said:
17 dead at Parkland 11 killed in previous ten shootings. So school shootings happen with various types of firearms. School shootings using semi-auto rifles with high capacity magazines tend to have a high rate of fatality.
The fatality rate also varies by the intent of the shooter.
There were 34 killed in the Virginia Tech Massacre and that used two hand guns. Also don't use the term "high-capacity magazine," because it is a lie. The idea that anything over ten rounds constitutes high-capacity is something that was arbitrarily made up by the gun control proponents. What they are really talking about are standard capacity magazines and wanting to limit people to reduced-capacity magazines.
Semiautomatic guns that take detachable magazines period allow a person to kill more people in a mass shooting. The thing is, to outlaw all semiautomatic guns that take detachable magazines would:
1) Limit people to 19th century firearm technology for the most part
2) Constitute a blatant infringement on the right to keep and bear arms, both in the sense of individual self-defense and also resistance to tyranny
3) Not do much of anything for decades as tens or hundreds of millions of such guns remain in circulation and unless there was some kind of large-scale confiscation, it would take probably a generation to make a difference, and by then, the problem of mass shootings would probably have been solved by other means altogether, making the whole effort pointless
The important facts IMO are:
1) The tearing down of the mental health system to protect people's rights has come with the cost of lots of legitimately mentally ill people wandering around who really need to be receiving treatment. Not sure how to solve this but it likely has contributed to some of these mass shootings involving the truly mentally ill
2) Terrorism has been responsible for at least three of the mass shootings. If Muslim terrorism wasn't an issue, then Fort Hood, San Bernardino, and the Orlando Nightclub shooting would never have happened
3) These types of guns have been available for many decades and yet only very recently have they become a problem.
That is why, until Newtown, most people in the media knew nothing about the AR-15. Remember when Newtown happened and journalists were exclaiming, "Automatic fire weapons should be outlawed!" "No one needs an AR-47/AK-15!" etc...now they are all pretty familiar with the AR because it has been used in these shootings, but before then, it was pretty unknown. That is how little it has been used in crime and mass shootings until recently. So the guns are not the issue.
