http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/wife-accused-mass-murderer-david-conley-devil-article-1.2321425 So this guy buys his guns online days in advance and then slaughters a family. It may have happened anyway in some form..... but it shouldn't have been so easy.
Very sad situation, he's clearly a sociopath the cold blooded way he went about executing his victims including his own child. Was his gun legally aquired and all laws followed? I'm not really familiar of course with gun laws. I do know that in cases like the Sandy Hook killings the kid got his guns from his mother, I seem to remember another school shooting where the kids stole their gun from a relative. More than one way to get a gun. Chicago has reportedly tough gun laws and yet still has a high murder rate.
I'd take you far more seriously Dave if you really addressed the issue rather than blaming guns. We have a serious problem in this country, in that we don't give one rat's ass about mental health in a world that demands so much more of people today than it did 40 years ago...and they cared enough about mental health to at least have facilities. If you place a gun in a room full of people, right on top of a bar stool and no one moves... how many people get killed? Now, take the gun away and round everyone up in a circle once more. However, this time we're going to place someone who suffers from Manic Depression/Bipolar and paranoid schizophrenia. He hasn't been on medication regularly since the late 90s and the moronic mental health industry has decided that, despite his long history of aggression towards other humans, that he's better off in a community based out-patient program. Put him in the room and the odds of someone dying go WAAAYYY up. We're building for profit jails in states like mine as fast as we can, but we just closed every single mental health hospital except for one in Tuscaloosa. Some people are really struggling just to get thru the day in a society that just doesn't give a **** about them anymore. There are also people who are either born, or made, broken who need help that can't get it. To me, the far greater issue is our lack of attention to mental health in this country.
The legal issues: Online gun purchases cannot be shipped directly to the purchasing individual. They must be shipped to a Federal Firearms License (FFL) holding individual or company to be picked up in person by the purchaser. The purchaser must fill out, in the presence of the FFL holder, the ATF form 4473. If the person is a firearms permit holder (CHL - Concealed Handgun License in Texas) they have already been through extensive background checks. In that case, the transfer is immediate. If no permit is present, the FFL must call in the form information to the ATF for a background check to be performed before the person receives the firearm. Can crazy people still get guns with this process? Absolutely... If there is no recorded history of mental illness, they can lie on the 4473 and still obtain a gun. The only difference in an online purchase and a over the counter purchase is the gun is being shipped to the FFL holder by a retail seller rather than a manufacturer. It does not bypass any safety measures in the process.
You are preaching to the choir Corey when it comes to mental health issues. My youngest son has had serious issues with depression and my younger sister unfortunately didn't overcome her depression about 14 years ago now. In either case I haven't felt like the care and treatment available and provided was/is as competent and focused as it needed to be. For now my son is making things work.... and we have arrived at a drug therapy level that allows him to function but it's always a struggle. His depression was pretty severe when we discovered it because he was 14 at the time and all three of my sons had those hormonal teenage issues when they were that age so we just didn't pick up on it until it had progressed to a dangerous ( to himself ) stage. It is a lot of work and sometimes a great expense to help him keep a normal functional life going but both his mother and I will do anything necessary to keep him alive and as well as he is able to be. I know this..... if I ever found a gun in his possession or hidden somewhere in his room or in my house he would be Baker Acted immediately. That's how dangerous a gun is to someone like him with the mental health issues he has. To have any loopholes of the most minute kind in this country that allows people with mental health issues to acquire guns is reprehensible in my opinion.
For once we find a point that we both agree on 100%. If more parents were engaged in activities like this, there would be much less gun violence.
Dave I want you to know my heart goes out to your family.......Your explaination brings a perspective of experience and viewpoint into what you live on a daily basis. I can only pray your son stays safe and endures his battle. Ralph
Would any grief stricken father feel differently: "Andy Parker, father of killed reporter Alison Parker, has made an emotional appeal for greater gun control, vowing: “This is not the last you’ve heard from me.” “Mark my words,” Parker told Fox News in an interview. “I’m going to do something.” Whatever it takes to get gun legislation, to shame people, to shame legislators into doing something about closing loopholes in background checks and making sure crazy people don’t get guns. He criticized the media for failing to persist on stories of gun violence: “The problem that you guys have, and I know it’s the news business, and so this is a big story but next week it isn’t going to be a story anymore. And everybody’s going to forget it.” Parker added that on Wednesday he spoke with Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, who had pledged to support a campaign for greater gun control. “He said: ‘You go, I’m right there with you.’ “So this is not the last you’ve heard from me, this is something that is Alison’s legacy that I want to make happen.”
You know what Dave, if that was all that would be asked for... gun owners would be right there with you. We all want the laws to work. The problem is: how do you find the "crazy" and then get the label applied so the background checks work? Until you figure that out, your only other answer is to take them from those of us who do follow the rules... and that damned sure isn't going to happen.
Right now the margin of error falls to those who support gun ownership or just to the right wing conservatives in general. They seem to say "So what if a few crazies slip through and innocent people are slaughtered.... the most important thing is that everyone that should own a gun can own a gun." I would say that "so what if a few legit people get left out of gun ownership.... at least the crazies cannot easily acquire weapons and wantonly murder people." Which way do you think sounds better to Alison's dad?
OK Dave, you have never driven a single mile per hour over the speed limit and have never driven after a few Martinis. However, I have seen the death and devastation caused by the few that do. I am going to take your driver's license away from you because there are crazy people out that that have caused death with their 4000 pound deadly weapons. That sounds good to you doesn't it Dave. My firearm is there to protect me and my family. I will not waste a single round to help anyone that even utters the phrase "gun control". Those that walk around with their heads up their asses thinking that the world without guns in the hands of law abiding citizens would be a better place are the same ones that would have joined Hitler in disarming the citizens of Germany and the Jews. I will be dead before I a disarmed.
Guns are so enmeshed in American history, so much a part of our cultural DNA that there will never be truly meaningful gun control in the U.S. Advocates of gun control don't seem to understand that and don't seem to understand our founding national story. Part of why we rebelled against the British was their attempt to take away our guns. In 1774, the British only had 2,000 troops in heavily-armed and seething Boston, and the British response was to take control of the powder house, which meant that Bostonians wouldn't be able to use their guns. The British also started searching for guns and ammunition without warrants. And to suppress a rebellion against their rule, the British began effectively embargoing exportation of guns and ammunition to the Colonies. The very first battles at Lexington and Concord between Americans and the British took place because British troops were coming to seize an American arms cache. So guns are right there at the founding of our nation--they're there before we had a flag, a Declaration of Independence, a government, a national anthem, before we had anything that truly united us. Guns, and holding on to our guns. If you don't understand that, you don't understand American history--and why repeated efforts at gun control have failed so miserably and will continue to fail no matter how much anguish we suffer. Citing gun control in other countries is pointless, because no other country has our unique history with guns and what they mean to us. Tragedies will keep happening, and so will the calls for change--but our history can't be unmade.
True Ralph, but I'd add that even if we made guns illegal tonight... the wide open Mexican border makes it VERY easy for them to enter the country, and those who wish to break the law (murder is illegal by the way) will continue to do so, and they will do it with guns no matter what laws are enacted. I choose to be able to defend my family and home if needed... and as Tom said... the only way that will change is when I'm gone.