According to WAPO today, Holmes had three weapons. By far the biggest held the 100 round magazine, and it jammed; otherwise the toll would have been far worse.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/explosives-removed-from-james-holmess-apartment-and-destroyed-officials-say/2012/07/22/gJQAL9XN2W_print.html

Right, genius, society can’t prevent sick demented individuals from obtaining any type of weapon, so let’s make it as easy as possible for them and encourage as many sick and demented people bordering on psychopaths as possible to give in to their impulses and commit mass murder. Sick and demented people, that’s YOU, pal. The ones making the laws and preventing them from being amended to save peoples lives.

” This is about sick people doing things you simply can’t prevent. It’s really an issue of freedom”.

I could not prevent you from getting elected two years ago. You sir have the freedom to show America what a Foolish tool you are. Congratulations you are redefining the word cheese head.

I should also like to mention that you should be in the running for the Sen.Joe McCarthy, Freedom. Liberty, Free Enterprise and God is on my side Award.

Way to go Senator Sunspots!You make Oshkosh proud.

Born in the countryside of the Midwest I was given my first gun at age 7 or 8 for pheasant hunting, rabbits, etc. It was a 410 shotgun. Since then I’ve owned a dozen or more guns for hunting. But none since 1988. Those weapons all would have adequately protected me from prowlers, etc. Some who be hard to conceal but I didn’t carry them into the cinema or other public gathering place . They were used for target practice or hunting, period. And then secured, unloaded. The rest of this argument is about machismo, fantasy lore from the frontier days, paranoia and a corrupt police state with, unfortunately, very corrupt and brutal police everywhere within it. Until we solve the latter issue, however, we will make no progress on solving the former; assault weapons. I strongly support the 2nd Amendment and the right to carry until the time comes when the word ” swat ” is again associated with flies and not human beings. No matter their skin color or religion or gender. No matter their politics or beliefs. We all know what happens when individuals, groups, tribes, etc unilaterally disarm under gov’t mandate/law or force. And, it isn’t pretty.

Of more concern…make that FAR more concern…than what Ron Johnson (or any other republican) says about what happened in Aurora, is that, as far as I can tell, Barack Obama, in his speaking about it, has yet to use the word:

“gun”.

If you didn’t know the particulars of it, you might think that Holmes had killed and wounded all those people with some really deft work with a kitchen knife.

Brave, brave, Obama…

They should at least be willing to put the same ID check that they are requesting for a person to vote. Voting is also in the Constitution. Florida is using e-verify to check IDs to vote, but that type of verification is not allowed for gun sales at Gun shows. NRA money has this issue sown up. If they could not get extended magazine control after the assassination attempt on Gabby Giffords, you have no one fighting for the public’s protection. Here in Ohio, the Repubs and the NRA got the right for people to carry concealed in Bars and Restaurants. Your not supposed to drink if you are carrying. I guess it is the new designated shooter to go along with the designated driver.

Obama’s mouthpiece, Jay Carney, DID use the word a couple of times, but he seems to prefer the generic word:

“weapons”….

http://news.yahoo.com/white-house-suggests-president-obama-not-push-more-002905920–abc-news-politics.html

He’s being very careful not to aggravate the National Rifle Association in this election year, lest they withdraw some of the unstinting support which they’ve been bestowing on Preznint Obama.

By the way, for anyone thinking than putting sensible curbs on gun ownership means ending the ability of Americans to hunt and fish and whatnot: As I pointed out here, the UK has both considerable restrictions on what guns can be owned by private citizens AND a thriving hunting scene.

It’ll be interesting to hear the news report out of his next pee-party meeting about the pee-Party member that brings one in, full, and decides to empty it into the crowd…….. Johnson included.

This is the asshole sitting in Russ Feingold’s seat. He’s in there because the NRA conned white Wisconsin working-class voters into thinking that Feingold was plotting to take away their ability to hunt as freely as they have for decades. Little did they know that Scott Walker’s Deer Czar is actually planning to do what they got conned into thinking Feingold was doing.

Dumb. F*ck. Fortunately, I don’t think most Americans are as f*cking dumb as he is. Polls usually show people get the difference between assault weapons and deer rifles. And the Times tonight is reporting the killer amassed an enormous amount of ammunition freely and legally over the internets.

T Bogg is right, though–if only some other armed person had been there to protect everyone in a wild firefight against a guy with tear gas and three assault weapons, everything would have worked out just fine.

Which one of these is the “assault rifle” and which one is the “deer rifle?”

Rifle #1

Rifle #2

i live in colo, we all realized, well really our grandads did, that we boys should leave our guns to home, when we take our guns to town, people tend to get shot…cities that had no federal marshall or circuit judge were living hell holes…..this is a mental illness to return to this kind of thing…..whe one acts to cut off his own dick, he is mentally ill, that is what this wi dude is….mentally ill, and we should face it…oh but i rant

Amazing.

I think it was the Gabby Giffords’ shooting where the shooter was stopped because he took a few seconds to reload. When you’re only separated from the shooter by a few yards and he has to stop to reload, those few seconds can save many, many lives.
I can’t imagine that any hunter needs more than a half-dozen or dozen rounds. I don’t own a firearm myself, but 30 rounds seems excessive for any legitimate purpose to me.
And in response to a thread somewhere else, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq saw ordinary families with at least one AK-47, with people often shooting them off at weddings. So no, I’m not at all impressed with the need to fight a tyrannical government as an anti-gun control argument.

Sen. Johnson can’t make a coherent argument about this topic because to do so would undermine his other political positions.

However, the simple question he should have asked is, “Why would a ‘War on Guns’ be any more effective or non-violent than the ‘War on Drugs’?”

Guns are easy to manufacture, they’re easy to dismantle and conceal, they’re made from relatively nondescript industrial materials. Very, very much like drugs are. It’s extremely unclear to me why various forms of prohibition on one is likely to be any more successful than various forms of prohibition on the other.

Alcohol sales, driving, and the combination of the two are highly regulated, yet it hasn’t stopped drunk driving deaths from occurring. This fact made worse still in that these deaths vastly outnumber deaths from spree shootings.

To that end I don’t oppose arbitrary material bans based on some sort of ethereal “Constitution” justification. I oppose them, because by and large they don’t appear to solve the problem, in many cases the ‘medicine’ proves to be worse than the disease, and they generally seem to be a pretty egregious misallocation of resources.

He was stopped because his high-capacity magazine jammed his firearm, because the springs in those things (especially the cheap-o ones) don’t do a very good job of delivering the next cartridge to the loading mechanism.

They don’t push the next round up far enough fast enough for it to be cleanly loaded into the chamber, causing the gun to jam until it’s cleared out.

Clearing a jammed firearm takes assessing what’s causing the jam and often takes several attempts to clear it, if it can be cleared at all without some disassembly. Reloading takes a few seconds for a complete novice, and 2-3 seconds for someone who has spent an afternoon practicing.

Also, I have “amassed” enormous amounts of ammunition purely for cost reasons. It’s prohibitively expensive (especially now) to buy 9mm rounds box by box (usually 50 rounds per box).

So instead I buy them in bulk to save money and store them in a dry-box to take to the range or out in the woods. Most every single match shooter or regular enthusiast I know also does this, and in quantities far in excess of what I purchase. They’ll commonly go through 1,000+ rounds per month when practicing. It’s purely economies of scale. The same reason people buy toilet paper at Costco.

I can’t imagine that any hunter needs more than a half-dozen or dozen rounds. I don’t own a firearm myself, but 30 rounds seems excessive for any legitimate purpose to me.

So then I should buy 30 rounds, drive 40 miles, plink at some setup targets, use them up in less than 5 minutes, drive back 40 miles, buy 30 rounds, and so on… why exactly?

Though it is an interesting opinion for someone who admittedly has no experience on the matter.

I’ve never gone to medical school, but anything more than 2 Advil seems excessive for any legitimate purpose.

In so many instances we have seen people shot in their homes, shot in ” the commons ” by police officers. Sometimes numerous officers fire their weapons on unarmed citizens. At the wrong house address, no less. Shooting them in the back, too. The conclusion to be drawn from these observations is the state is allowed to murder without legal reprisal. The British do not shoot their citizens with the ” EZease ” the police in the U.S seem to thrive on. To fish and hunt in this country is a voluntary recreational activity. To be murdered is certainly not. But since nothing is done to those practicing state sanctioned murder by badge the least smart thing to do, to me, is to give them more leverage to instill fear and weakness and produce more sheeple. Again, history is full of stories about surrendering rights you never recover. Do you really think that’s the direction citizens should be looking toward?

\\\\\\\\\

Sen. Johnson can’t make a coherent argument about this topic because to do so would undermine his other political positions.

More to the point, because he can’t make a coherent argument about a goddamned thing, ever. The guy is an embarrassment. A complete disgrace. I can’t believe that the fucking idiots that live in this state elected him. God, I need to get out of this shit-hole of a state.

Quite frankly it’s sad how poorly trained police officers are with firearms. With few exceptions they’re regularly embarrassed by civilian shooters in amateur and professional matches.

It’s a matter of practice and discipline. The former being something that police officers aren’t required to do nearly enough of, and the latter they seem to be in increasingly short supply of.

Here in Pennsylvania, it is illegal to use any semi-automatic rifle or handgun to hunt. Semi-auto shotguns, with strict limits on rounds they hold, are legal for hunting small game (rabbits, fox, etc) and waterfowl (ducks and geese).

My feeling is if Wisconsinites need an AR-15 or AK-47 to kill a deer, they must be pretty terrible hunters.

“This is about sick people doing things you simply can’t prevent. It’s really an issue of freedom.”

An issue of freedom. Really? If you consider what the US has brought to Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya as freedom, then the senator is correct.

Scott Walker, Ron Johnson … Is Wisconsin in some kind of a contest with South Carolina?

Its not just Wisconsin. Minnesota is also full of mouth breathing, knuckle draggers. After all, Michelle Bachmann is from the Twin Cities northern suburbs although she does have an interest in a farm in Wisconsin from which she gets taxpayer subsidies.

There was nothing remotely resembling a 100 round clip automatic weapon when the 2nd Amendment was drafted. It was about protection from the frigging Red Coats.

You’re hiding from both of my points. Which stand.

True, PW, but the operative problem in US is 2nd Amd’t, SCOTUS, and NRA, none of which the UK has.
Worse yet are SCOTUS decisions which are relatively recent and so harder to deem outmoded simply by their age and a changed society.

Even a new justice or two may not be enough for a sufficient change. Maybe all they could do is nibble around the edges, such as with those 100 round magazines, etc. There will still be a residue of guns left over going well beyond hunting interests.

What about going after the manufacturers?

By the time I hit my teens, I had been taught how to use a rifle. My mother’s family went hunting every fall (backwoods North Carolina back in the 50s and 60s — no hunt, no meat for the winter), and not one of them needed an assault rifle to bag a deer.

I guess the difference is, they actually knew how to use a gun, and they weren’t doing it for fun.

And Ron Johnson, bought and paid for by the NRA, is a basic idiot. And a dangerous one.

But the what ifs should also include the shooter’s 100 round magazine NOT jamming, such as it did.

Then consider that worst possible outcome. The good guy in the back row with a 22 wouldn’t have a chance.

Problem is, he has too many cheesehead friends who vote.

This is the man to whom Russ Feingold, the only vote in the senate against the Patriot Act, lost his seat after 18 years. Unbelievable.

He was clearly talking rounds per magazine. Not the total one owns

No, I’m guessing that you personally can’t identify an “assault rifle” with any coherence, and thus asked you to do so.

The funny thing is the second amendment grants the right to “keep and bear arms”. It does not grant a right to fire, discharge, or use the arms in anyway. And since the teabaggers insist on following the constitution to the letter…..

I think you’re right.

Still ironic that it was the common failure mode of high-capacity magazines that ended the shooting spree he was talking about, not a requirement to reload, which is vastly easier and quicker than clearing a misfed cartridge.

Why, then, does every other nation of what used to be called the “first world” (as opposed to the “second world” of the Leninist-Maoist countries or the “third world” of the non-aligned developing nations) have a) far stricter gun laws and b) far fewer gun deaths?

If gun control equaled drug prohibition, then the Chunnel between the UK and France (whose gun laws, though tighter than ours, are somewhat looser than those of the UK) would be the scene of deadly border battles between gun runners and the port towns of both the UK and France would be bloody messes on the order of the border areas of Mexico and the US. Unless there’s been some huge conspiracy to hide the truth, that’s not been happening.

I don’t profess to great knowledge of firearms, but do understand that some rifles can be outfitted to make them more lethal. That does not obscure my point that there IS a difference between, say, an AK-47 and a hunting rifle (which I have personally in the past used). I stand by the point that people can understand the difference between these.

Of course you can attempt to throw sand in people’s eyes with such a visual comparison. Not great argumentation, though.

I don’t know. Why can’t Americans drink responsibly or have socialized medicine? Why aren’t the Mexican Drug Wars extending to Europe?

Which one is the assault rifle? Just pick one. Because I can tell you which one used to be banned, but I can also tell you that there was exactly zero good reason for it and why.

Here’s a hint… they’re identical firearms except for the black plastic vs. the wood. Neither one is an assault rifle, but that didn’t stop ridiculous fear-mongers from classifying the black one as such.

Yeah, they need them 100 round magazines to go hunting cause Bambi is such a badass!

Seriously, weapons that appear to be based on military versions are NOT hunting fire arms! 100 round mags are not for hunting, in fact most magazine fed hunting arms are restricted to either 3 or 5 rounds as it is deemed UNSPORTSMAN LIKE to have a large capacity magazine. Real sportsmen actually use a single shot gun knowing that if you can’t take it with that first shot, the fourth and fifth aint gonna hit it neither.

But, what do I know? I’m an ignorant redneck from south Alabama who owns 4 guns, has been a member of the NRA and was in the military for the longest time. Military style arms are for military purposes, which is killing humans not Bambi. Most military arms use ammo that is too powerfull for small game, not powerful enough for major game.

Also I think if a gun permit in Texas can be used to vote in lieu of a divers license, maybe we need a photo ID similar to a drivers license to go with them guns.