At Least 8 Shot In Downtown Orlando High-Rise

[DoomsdayRooster]

ORLANDO, Fla. -- A suspect is in custody Friday afternoon after at least five people were injured and one person was killed in a mass shooting inside a downtown Orlando high-rise, according to Orlando police.

http://www.wesh.com/news/21541263/detail.html

I think the media will have a tougher time than usual in its predictable calls for stricter gun laws considering what just happened with that Jordanian fellow in the military.

[AndrewB]

I'm confused. How does this make things tougher for those that advocate stricter gun laws?

[Nomad]

Jesus Hernando Christ, another shooting? What the fuck?

Also, restricting guns isn't going to stop these events. People are just going to use alternate means to flip out and kill other people. Like that dude in China or Japan a couple years ago that ran a bunch of people down in an outdoor mall and then jumped out and started stabbing more people in the face.

[SuperSlammer2]

This is getting out of control. I'm in New York, and I constantly fear that close friends or even myself might be next. It's unpleasant, and it will never go away if this keeps happening.

[geekmarine]

AndrewB said:

I'm confused. How does this make things tougher for those that advocate stricter gun laws?

The more stories about trigger-happy wackos out on the streets, the more people will want to have firearms themselves in order to protect themselves from these nuts. I personally don't like guns at all, and I really can't see myself ever owning one, but I can't deny the thought has occurred to me that it'd certainly be nice if, should I ever be so unfortunate as to be in one of these situations, I had the ability to pump one of these maniacs full of lead.

[Ralphis]

SuperSlammer2 said:

This is getting out of control. I'm in New York, and I constantly fear that close friends or even myself might be next. It's unpleasant, and it will never go away if this keeps happening.

Well, hey, NYC is the most populated country in the states. The odds of this happening to you are astronomically lower than people in less populated cities!!

[Nomad]

Frankly, if there was some dude firing off a gun in public, my first thought wouldn't be to shoot back whether I had a gun or not.

Guns are bullet magnets.

[DoomsdayRooster]

AndrewB said:

I'm confused. How does this make things tougher for those that advocate stricter gun laws?

I was thinking that claims of access to guns being the root of the problem would seem a little silly considering the recent shooting of military personnel by one (or more?) of their own.

geekmarine said:

The more stories about trigger-happy wackos out on the streets, the more people will want to have firearms themselves in order to protect themselves from these nuts. I personally don't like guns at all, and I really can't see myself ever owning one, but I can't deny the thought has occurred to me that it'd certainly be nice if, should I ever be so unfortunate as to be in one of these situations, I had the ability to pump one of these maniacs full of lead.

This happens much more often than you'd think, but stories of gunmen (and criminals in general) being stopped don't exactly get the ratings.

[Csonicgo]

Orlando, Fla.

That's all I needed to know.

[GreyGhost]

DoomsdayRooster said:

I was thinking that claims of access to guns being the root of the problem would seem a little silly considering the recent shooting of military personnel by one (or more?) of their own.

It appears the weapons used in that shooting were not standard issue.

According to Fox News - Soldiers at Fort Hood don't carry weapons unless they are doing training exercises.

(Lt. Gen.) Cone said the shooter used two guns, including a semi-automatic weapon. He added there was no indication they were military weapons.

[Sharessa]

Nomad said:

Frankly, if there was some dude firing off a gun in public, my first thought wouldn't be to shoot back whether I had a gun or not.

Guns are bullet magnets.

Very true. They're thinking that not all of the casualties at Fort Hood were shot by Hasan. There were at least two other people firing weapons and quite possibly hit the wrong people.

[Visplane Overflow]

Funny thing actually, according to the FBI stats for the year 2006, of the homicides where additional data was able to be collected, only a scant 255~ murders were justifiable homicide by a gun-owning citizen. So, owning a gun doesn't necessarily protect you very well, contrary to the NRA's position.

Note : I don't believe in banning firearms myself, but I do support tighter regulation (ie, who is allowed to have them. The current system here in Canada is a joke - they basically ask if you're crazy, if you say no, you're free to purchase whatever's currently legal).

[GreyGhost]

Visplane Overflow said:
only a scant 255~ murders were justifiable homicide by a gun-owning citizen.

That's 255 too many for my liking.

[Bloodshedder]

Visplane Overflow said:

Funny thing actually, according to the FBI stats for the year 2006, of the homicides where additional data was able to be collected, only a scant 255~ murders were justifiable homicide by a gun-owning citizen. So, owning a gun doesn't necessarily protect you very well, contrary to the NRA's position.

You are falsely assuming that every justifiable defensive use of a firearm results (or should result) in the death of the perpetrator. I find this to be a notion that is both misguided, considering that in an incredible majority of defensive cases no shots are ever fired, and kind of ironic, considering that those calling for stricter controls do so under the guise of reducing deaths, yet say that, because so few people are actually killed via justifiable homicide, the benefits of allowing firearms for defensive use are not high enough.

http://www.guncite.com/gcdgklec.html

This is also too serious a matter to base conclusions on silly statistics comparing the number of lives taken with guns with the number of criminals killed by victims. Killing a criminal is not a benefit to the victim, but rather a nightmare to be suffered for years afterward. Saving a life through DGU [defensive gun use] would be a benefit, but this almost never involves killing the criminal; probably fewer than 3,000 criminals are lawfully killed by gun-wielding victims each year, representing only about 1/1000 of the number of DGUs, and less than 1% of the number of purportedly life-saving DGUs. Therefore, the number of justifiable homicides cannot serve as even a rough index of life-saving gun uses. Since this comparison does not involve any measured benefit, it can shed no light on the benefits and costs of keeping guns in the home for protection.