Starbuck wrote:If the FBI truly dropped the ball on this wtf. Unfortunately they will probably end up investigating the investigation.
Maybe more unfortunate than you realize, and the President blaming the FBI is going to backfire. The biggest problem for the NRA and for the gun crowd is that their focus is on the short term rather than the long term.
Allow me to share my vision for how this is going to go down. This incident is so hot that the NRA didn't even dare post a statement about it, and neither did many other right-wing blogs that generally post on most hot topics. What, did they think we were done with mass shootings? It's almost as if they failed to put the millions they should have into figuring out what they were going to say the next time this happens and are literally thinking, "oh crap, it just happened again!" This time they said nothing; next time, what are they going to say, and what are they going to say about the time after that? Are they really thinking, "just lay low, this will blow over in a few weeks, and it was just bad luck it was an AR-15, next time it will be something different -- everyone knows a simple shotgun is better for short range."
The AR-15 is getting some heavy attention. I'm seeing a lot of sentiment similar to Dr. Ws and KG's link that this is a military weapon meant to kill efficiently in a combat situation and has no place in civilian hands. A right-wing preacher just spoke up. I just got a linked-in notification about some people who are voluntarily surrendering their AR-15s. Guess what gun is going to be used the next time? An AR-15. And that's because like the pro-gun posters in this thread point out, there are other social factors at work in a shooting. If the AR-15 becomes the symbol for evil, then the shooter who is trying to hurt society as much as possible is going to use the weapon the public fears most, and maximize his notoriety by using that weapon.
Increasingly, owning an AR-15 and other "assault weapons" will be stigmatized by society. The failure to get legislature off the ground to restrict them will fan public outrage, and so every time an AR-15 makes the news, people are going to be outraged. The best bet would be compromise. Give up the AR-15 and opt for some restrictions that might really make a difference, magazine restrictions etc. Remember, not every shooter is a Timothy McVeigh with absolute resolve to carry out a complex plan at any cost. Younger potential shooters without gang affiliations and social problems who can't just walk into a walmart and get what they want or buy online will be deterred by the increased cost of effort. But that's not going to happen.
Well, back to the FBI. The FBI, like any other government agency, acts out of self-preservation more than anything else. Doing real work is very hard, I can't even imagine how hard it would be to figure out how to appraise every report they get about a potential shooter. And so to save face, if the right-wing is now going to blame them instead of compromising, they'll fall back to their tried-and-true method of sting operations and harassment. Sting operations are biased toward framing innocent people or low-risk potential perpetrators because they make the cost of the crime too low and their grip on the evidence is too high. Are there technicalities on the books regarding assault rifles that don't matter? Get ready for the FBI to sucker innocent gun owners into crossing boundaries they can prosecute so they can get convictions and just like with sex offenders say, "See! We're getting dangerous people off the street! We're doing our job!"
It will be even worse if you get that mental health background check. Just having a database that ultimately could be used by say, an employer to see who the gun owners are will result in discrimination against gun owners. Big companies are very scared of looking LGBT unfriendly, and this is going to become that same kind of issue, especially since there is no reason to believe mass killings with "assault weapons" are a passing fad.
Of course, just as it's unlikely anyone on this forum will be the victim of a mass shooting, its very unlikely anyone will face legal or discrimination problems due to their gun ownership, I'm just saying this is the only direction I can see things going if there's no compromise, which there won't be, and given there's no reason to believe mass shootings are in the rear view mirror; looks like more notoriety than ever for it.