these kinds of incidents shouldn't be possible.
Yes.
> Why belabor that point?
Why appear to not understand it?
If you're not allowed (or it's made legally risky enough) to shoot lethal projectiles around, near instantly, and to targets who are merely within a line of sight or just close by then your ability to harm and kill multiple people are heavily bounded by your ability to physically chase and catch individuals. It takes time to exert violence so even if you manage to attack one person the others will use the time for fleeing away. You really have to be busy if you try to implement even a fraction of a mass shooting with a knife.
Similarly, knives, fists, batons, and axes keep the damage very local. Even if the astrophysicist's neighbour had stabbed some poor soul thirty times in an adjacent apartment the tragedy would have been mostly contained in the crime scene. Bullets fly far and they fly through, expanding the potential crime scene like what just happened there.
Guns turn any situation into a whole another level of danger which is the reason most sane countries have regulated gun accessibility, penalised gun usage, and implemented emergency and judicial response to the point where most criminals don't want to use or carry guns because doing so turns minor risks into show-stopping ones. It could be argued that criminals might often be stupid but even criminals aren't that stupid.
I’m quite certain that you’re not allowed to do this, so you’re setting up a straw man here.
> Guns turn any situation into a whole another level of danger which is the reason most sane countries have regulated gun accessibility, penalised gun usage, and implemented emergency and judicial response to the point where most criminals don't want to use or carry guns because doing so turns minor risks into show-stopping ones. It could be argued that criminals might often be stupid but even criminals aren't that stupid.
It’s possible that the guns in this case were illegal, and I’m quite sure there are steep penalties for being caught with such weapons. Many criminals are that stupid (case in point: firing guns randomly).
The reason this is reductive is because the argument you are making seems to be “more gun control would have solved this”. I’m not at all opposed to gun control, I just think this is probably more complicated and I’d like to understand exactly why it helps. E.g. why is the problem 10x what it is in Canada, but gun ownership is nowhere near 10x?
Because it’s disingenuous to say “guns don’t kill people” if they increase death rate by a factor of 100x. Your rock throwing example killed two people over a span of months. Guns sadly kill dozens in minutes pretty regularly.
Interestingly very few of the people claiming “guns don’t kill people” think we should allow private ownership of atomic weapons, even though the same logic applies.
“Hey, I’m not saying anything about guns killing people, but let me argue against it for a minute.”
> …I just don’t think reinforcing or debating that point is helpful in diagnosing the root causes of gun violence or the right policies, just as debating “cars kill people” would provide any meaningful advancement in traffic safety.
Discussions about cars killing people have absolutely shaped traffic policy. All manner of safety features are now mandatory to reduce the number of people cars kill. Drinking and driving laws have rolled out worldwide to reduce deaths from cars. We require licenses to drive because incompetent drivers kill people with their cars.
If you want to draw a line between the danger from cars and the danger from guns, the obvious conclusion is a lot more regulation around gun ownership.
The guy hit ~470 people with actual gunfire. On his own.
Truck driving has a minimum age, a licensing requirement, registration of the vehicle, often annual inspections of it, etc., in part because we recognize their potential for danger in the wrong hands. Very much not the case for gun use.
I am not saying it really feasible to change the approach in the United States, but it's not really honest to claim that widespread firearms ownership does not have costs. The simple way to think about it is that it decreases the marginal cost, and increases the impact, of many things like suicides, and senseless rampages.