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Official police statement, posted by NBC News on Twitter

There's been so much tragedy happening these past few months, but this senseless act of violence breaks my heart a lot.

Let's not jump into conclusions…

…ok. This time it was a bit different.

I was about to lock the dupe thread, but did you mean for this to spur debate (i.e., thread is in Serious Debate)?

Oh why was this supposed to be in the General section? I put it in Serious Debate given that this is a serious incident…then again, i was in class the time I posted this.

Is this thread supposed to create a debate?
Because I don't see that in your initial post.

It can be a serious matter and be in General. We still don't allow derails there, but it's not quite as focused as a prompt for a debate.

I'll move it there.

Some of these late night comedians need to do some research and shut up. Gun control wouldn't have helped at all. The gun he used (full auto m16) is illegal. You can't have one. So why would telling all the other good gun owners they can't have one stop criminals? Sure didn't stop this guy.

From what I heard with the guns this guy had, they all were converted to fire full-auto. He apparently bought them in their semi-automatic state and made conversions (using bumpstocks which are very inaccurate from what I heard). That said, with how this incident went, the cries of gun control and gun ownership may as well have me wanting to take a hard shot of alcohol for every mention of the words "liberals" and "gun-nuts" coming up.

All I care about with this shit storm is just wanting to know why this guy would even do this.

I'll say here what I said in the comments, I just want the people pushing for gun control to do the research and propose specific gun control ideas and then explain how they would curb the gun violence numbers instead of just screaming "MORE GUN CONTROL" into the void. Actually figure out what the issue with current gun law is and propose a realistic solution with something to back up how it's supposed to work.

Repealing the Second Amendment and confiscating all guns is not going to happen, period, and if you think it's possible, I have a bridge to sell you. Asking for tighter background checks is pointless unless you have a criteria to specifically add to the checks that would catch these people (spoiler: A lot of these shooters would still pass even the most strict checks you can add) Asking for anything before the full details are out is pointless.

This man, from what info I have at the moment, modified a legally purchased semi-auto rifle and then modified it to be automatic. What specific gun control law ideas do you have to stop that specific scenario from happening? How would it have prevented this shooting? Would it help in regards to other shootings or is your idea just reactionary to this specific incident? For any change to happen, for any of your screams for gun control to do anything, these questions must be answered.

I stand by my statement of the reason the gun control debate has gone nowhere is because it is 90% broad statements and demands yelled over the aisle at your opposition and labeling, with misleading graphs and strawman memes thrown in, that only really happens after a shooting and no actual debate or compromise even being attempted, thus no one is changing their stance or figuring out what needs to be done that will die down in a week or two after people lose interest. Rinse and repeat.

I still find it hard to believe that people think that somehow more gun control will stop these senseless massacres from happening.

Owning automatic weapons is illegal and has been for over half a century. Converting weapons to automatic is also illegal (there was a case where someone used a shoe-string to make a gun automatic so they tried to classify a gun with a shoestring as an automatic weapon).

Also, I'm fairly certain it's illegal to bring a stockpile of guns into a hotel.

I'm sick and tired of people thinking that banning guns is some kind of catch-all solution. The problem runs much deeper than that.

@yummines The problem does run deeper than that, but there is really no reason any private citizen should own anything other than a handgun or a hunting rifle/shotgun. Semi-Auto rifles can be converted to fully-auto and banning someone from doing that is pointless because it's unenforceable. Banning these guns alone is not the solution, you still need a program to get these guns out of private hands and find a way to curb the black market sales of them. That will take years and millions of dollars of investments to do, most likely by executive order.

This will by no means stop mass shootings, but it will slow them down overtime. You can't stop mass shootings totally the same way you can't stop murders, but you can reduce them and reduce the death toll caused by them. There are other gun control ideas that can also help, such as gun licenses being harder to obtain, limits on the amount of guns you can own, etc, but saying "Gun control can't stop shootings, might as well not even try" is a Perfect Solutions Fallacy.

I feel like the gun control debate will probably over take this thread eventually, so I'm just going to make another thread for it so we can have the inevitable discussion over there.

Hey everyone, I just got the news from my family, my cousin was in the crowd when the shooting happened. She's alive, she fled pretty quickly but just keep it in the back of your mind that sometimes tragedies can hit pretty close to home. Please keep it civil. This has been a really trying time for my family.

Apparently, Paddock was looking at hotels near Fenway Park in Boston which could have threatened the upcoming playoff series between the Astros and Red Sox.