Mass Murder Is a Choice. The Gun Industry Made It

Countries like Switzerland don't have mass shootings like the USA, yet they have tons of guns. The lack of mental health support and the orphan crushing machine are a HUGE part of the mass murders here in America.

I just read the entire article, and as a left leaning voter, the article was poorly written with factual issues and misinformation.

It now makes me want to buy the Ruger SFAR to protect myself from the violent right wing MAGA morons.

When there are 24 million guns of that type sold and only a handful used illegally each year, is that really a problem on the manufacturer though?

Seems like the vast, vast, majority of them are used legally or simply not used at all.

With all the guns around in US I am genuenly surprised that most of these shooters just go on random killing sprees instead of political assasinations. In japan a DYI gun was enough to kill former prime minister Shinzo Abe so would think country so divided as United states would have far more of these cases.

Guess the people on top truly are untouchable at least for most of the time.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The industry’s alpha-male sales pitches promise buyers the power to “control your destiny.” According to law-enforcement records, Card had been haunted by phantom voices — including taunts that he had a “small dick.” The Ruger SFAR, with its thick barrel, is marketed without subtlety as “Bigger and Stronger Where It Needs to Be.”

Wilson Combat sells the “Urban Super Sniper.” Franklin Armory markets assault rifles in its “Militia Series.” An ad from Patriot Ordnance Factory-USA features a hooded man with an AR-15 standing in the ruins of a city, with the tagline “When corrupt politics fail, our guns won’t.”

But it doesn’t take many people to execute a military mission, to shatter families and communities, and create national panic and anxiety.” In the case of Card, Koskoff adds, “He’s one person, one weapon — and the entire state of Maine was frozen.”

(The AR prefix stands for “Armalite Rifle.”) The Pentagon sought an infantry weapon that was light, lethal, and versatile — that could match the “killing power” of the bulky, World War II-era M1 in close combat, but still be capable of “penetrating a steel helmet or standard body armor at 500 yards.”

But in a quest to make the rifle lighter and more maneuverable, it developed the AR-15, with smaller rounds — fired at extraordinary velocity to create “maximum wound effect.” Though marketed today with a cachet of manhood, the military prized the AR platform because its feather weight and minimal recoil were well-suited for the “small stature of the Vietnamese” allies whose “average soldier,” one document stated, “stands five feet tall and weighs 90 pounds.”

The department then sent regional law-enforcement agencies a warning that Card “made threats to shoot up the National Guard armory in Saco” and was “committed over the summer … due to his altered mental health state.” It advised that he should be approached with “extreme caution.”

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Making Americans suffer the consequences of their sowing FUD for profit is good business.

It’s simple, gun companies in America want to be as rich as they can be. If they have to do things like take time to evaluate who should be allowed to buy weapons or how long it should take before an individual receives them, they make less money than they would have. So instead, they make sure the time from wanting a gun and getting a gun is as little as possible.

The claim is further that going through someone’s mental history, or being disclosed details of treatment would be violative of HIPPA laws. I say, when you’re about to give someone a weapon that is basically designed for nothing else but killing humans, maybe you look into past treatment if someone saw a doctor because he was having dreams of killing every school child. Ask the question of the health professional first, and if it meets the criteria when you get more details.

Arms manufacturers pushed more than 24 million assault weapons onto the American streets, one for every 10 adults, each designed with a single purpose — to kill lots of people as fast as possible

And there's the very first problem, right there. The point of all arms is efficiency. Stone spear points were developed because they were more effective than flame-hardened wood. Atlatls were invented to throw spears farther than an arm. Swords were more effective than clubs. The first guns were more effective than bows. From the first matchlock rifles, we get wheel locks, then flint locks, and then percussion caps. By the time of the US Civil War, cartridges were being developed, and you had revolvers so that you could shoot more people without reloading. Winchester Repeating Arms Co. made the lever action rifle wildly popular because you could 'load it in the morning and shoot all day', and they were widely used by cavalry. When The Great War rolled around, we wanted even more effective arms, and switched to bolt action rifles with five and ten round magazines loaded far more powerful bullets than existed in the era of black-powder lever action rifles. When WWII rolled around, we started using autoloading rifles with stripper clips--the venerable M1 Garand--because bolt actions were just too slow to load and fire. By Vietnam, we'd switched to the detachable box magazine fed M14, only to discover that a full-power battle rifle cartridge in a wooden-stocked machine gun in the jungle was not a winning combination, and adopted a military version of the AR-15 with it's plastic stock and lightweight 5.56mm cartridge. Since the 1960s, the AR-15 has changed very, very little; the rifle of the 60's is still nearly identical 80 years later.

All weapons in human history have been designed to kill as many things as quickly as possible. All tools are refined to get better at their job over time. The car that I drive now is far, far more efficient than straw sandals, a horse, or even the first cars. It is less efficient than the mass transit systems that are used in many large cities.

As soon as I see the term "assault weapon" all credibility goes right out the window.

Interesting take on the subject. I can't wait for the book to be released.

Professor Buzzkill History Podcast: Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America

Episode webpage: https://www.spreaker.com/user/16373114/gun-country-audio

Media file: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/57535678/gun_country_audio.mp3

For god's sake, the SFAR and the AR platform ARE NOT ASSAULT RIFLES. It's so hard to take any writer seriously when they can't even get the fucking basics straight.

I wholeheartedly reject the Maine mass shooting is a product of gun manufacturers. Maine literally already has yellow flag laws where this guy should have been separated from his firearms when he was admitted to the psych hospital. The Maine mass shooting was a failure of the state and people do not want to accept that. The Sheriff that should have stepped in did not do so and THAT is unacceptable. I'm so over people using tragedies to prove their unrelated points. If gun manufacturers were really the problem we'd see millions of domestic murders based on the fact that there's like 100 million more guns in circulation than there are citizens of the US.

So by this logic, do we start blaming the cutlery industry for people making the choice to not put down the fork? This article is written entirely by someone who has no idea how living in a low income area feels. Fucking reeks of privilege.

Drunk driving is a choice, the alcohol industry made it. Ban all alcohol, it kills 100xs the amount of people than scary black rifles.

That American liberals focus on rifles in regards to gun violence more than 1/20 as much as they do handguns or 1.75x as much as the president's recommended shotgun, nevermind the fervor for AWBs, betray the lack of concern and understanding of the issues truly driving America's culture of violence beyond "big ones are scarier".

All compounded by their laws' universal exemptions for police current and former, on-and-off-the-clock demonstrating no fear of arming the most violent among us as long as they swear fealty to minority oppression and dissident suppression in the name of maintaining capital's status quo, sleeping sound assuming those barrels won't turn inwards towards them. Hell, that the fight against gun violence now includes banning armor to protect oneself from it shows how important it is that we be obliged to let them indulge.

Yall seem to have forgot that the right to bear arms as originally written, was also the responsibility to bear arms. They didn't have cops. The real root of all these mass shootings is nobody shoots back, all you fuckers are supposed to be armed.

I don't offer pole-lease a lot of operating room emotionally in the US.

But I do think that pole-leasing in the US must feel different to lots of other places.

Just so many freaking guns with all types of people. And it makes even a traffic stop just as dangerous as going to a domestic dispute or an armed robbery. Fucking guns.

It's a social issue not a gun issue. Shitty parents, shitty economics, shitty education and a shitty social structure are what makes America a higher crime nation in general and a higher gun crime nation specifically.

The sub-headline of the article claims there is no purpose for "assault weapons" other than killing people.

each designed with a single purpose — to kill lots of people as fast as possible

Is this article trying to tell me I'm using mine wrong? Because I use mine only for things that don't involve killing people.