Big Mick said:
"And we have a ton of laws on the books to control who owns full auto weapons."

But we have no easy way of controlling who breaks those laws with, as noted, "an $8 manual and a trip to the hardware.

As long as it is easy to end up with a fully automatic weapon, whether by theft, buying one illegally or conversion, there will be those who do so.

Big Mick also said:
"We should be enforcing those laws to the max."
Of course we should. And I don't know any police/court system that would NOT prosecute known violations of those laws. Now if we could just get lawbreakers to register their intentions overtly, we might make some progress.


Then he said:
"We also have all the law we need to prosecute anyone who uses a weapon in the commission of a crime."
Yes, we do.....which is of little comfort to victims of crimes whether or not we apprehend the criminals: and we do NOT get a lot of them. Many of those who WISH to engage in criminal use of weapons have learned ways to avoid capture & prosecution.


Yes, I see the counter arguments to my points, Mick...we have gone over this before. The fact still remains: As long as certain types of weapons are easily available, whether legally or not, those weapons WILL be obtained & used by those who can't trusted! All the laws, good intentions, arguments about 'rights' and well-meaning minor adjustments to an already weak system will not keep more crimes from being committed and accidental deaths like the kid at the shooting range from happening.

It is simple really....as long as we do not seriously restrict availability...of both certain types of weapons and ammunition... terrible headlines will continue to be common. When those headlines are reduced to one or two a YEAR, I may agree that we are getting somewhere.