Successful home burglaries and vehicle break ins is what it sounds like. Thieves stole weapons and sold them for drug money though an anonymous “buy back” program.

Thank god government doesn’t sponsor catalytic converter “buy backs”.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Nobody ever killed 30 people in 6 minutes with a knife or a baseball bat. I support the 2nd amendment, but I'm open to discussing how we could keep semi-automatic weapons out of the hands of mentally ill people. I understand many of you are not open to that discussion. One point we all agree on is there is zero chance we are giving up our own weapons.

If laws worked, we wouldn't have a drug problem.

If laws worked, we wouldn't need a police force.

If laws worked (internationally), we wouldn't need a military.

A gun owned by a law abiding citizen is not evil. It does not act on its own and cannot commit an act of violence with a will of its own.

If a criminal wants to commit a crime, they will use whatever means necessary to commit that crime. They are criminals by definition and do not abide by civilizations laws or morals.

Punish the guilty, swiftly and publicly, and this will stop. Publicly can be an announcement or visually but do it fast and stop this nonsense.

Discuss away sport.

Yet to hear a proposal that keeps semi-automatic weapons out of the hands of mentally ill people that didn't also prevent me from buying them.

The homeboy shooting up the mall was dealt with pretty swiftly and publicly. Somehow I don't think that will function as a deterrent, though.

This.... Anytime these gun buybacks take place, it's a bunch of grand pappy's old hunting rifles and rusted out Remington 870's getting "bought back." These buy backs aren't yielding the actual goodies that are fun to shoot.

We re-open all those facilities where we used to keep the mentally ill people confined. And guess which side/political party caused those facilities to be closed.

I'd personally be willing to jump through more hoops if it were shown to have an actual impact. I think there are some ideas out there that would help, but I am not aware of any that would have changed this recent mall shooting. This guy appears to be a regular thug and I agree he was going to do what he was going to do no matter the hoops involved.

Maybe we can all agree on this, America has a mass shooting problem much worse than any other country. 199 mass shootings (4 or more people shot) in 2023 alone, several times more than any other country. Why is that?

I can’t find the source, but I recently read an opinion online that made a lot of sense and some of you will be surprised to hear me say this but it was NOT primarily about banning guns. It identified two major uniquely American cultural issues that logically seem to explain the surge and could potentially lead to dialogue or maybe even solutions (it would probably take generations).

First, one of our country’s greatest strengths is our eternal optimism. The good guy is the hero who always wins in the end and gets the girl. We are 2-0 in World Wars, made it to the moon, won the Cold War we absolutely have a lot to be proud of on the upside.

However, our youth are inundated with images of how their life will be amazing simply because they are American… wealth, parties, bikini-clad models and given participation trophies our exceptionalism is ingrained in us from a very early age but as we know for most of us it doesn’t turn out that way.

Either we don’t have what it takes to achieve those riches or our culture has overpromised and under delivered when that happens rage builds and builds. Things are getting worse because to a large degree it is accelerated by the social media rocket fuel that feeds the images of how much better everyone else’s life is and connects those with others who are similarly frustrated and prone to violence then things combust.

Some decide that they are going to take themselves out but take as many people as possible with them.

In other countries (not saying this is better it just is) the culture is not so optimistic, they often expect the worst and are pleasantly surprised when things do work out for the best. Their perceptions are a lot more in line with reality, things are less combustible.

So, maybe we are a victims of our own optimism, that’s a huge (probably the biggest) component but it definitely stands to reason that if a person is prone to rage and in a matter of minutes they can buy a weapon of war, well we have what we have today.

In sum, if this opinion is true, the two issues that need to be addressed are finding ways to deal with the mental health issues created by our culture of exceptionalism, and having ways to make it harder for those who are more likely to be susceptible to the culture of exceptionalism to own weapons of war.

Yes, much easier said than done.

I agree something like this needs to happen.

Guess which side/political party cut over $200 million from mental health services in the state of Texas last year?

Imagine how far that $34B that was ain't to Ukraine would go towards mental health in the US?

Guns may not taken but simply made illegal to own. May 31 will interesting to see how the ATF's ambiguous pistol rule plays out as it could be a test of what the government plans to roll over us soon.

$200 million for counseling while they run free doesn't solve anything. Now 200 million for a escape proof facility would be an investment. And he probably had to cut that to take care of all the illegals your side let into the state.