I ended up writing this long reply to this post by @dailyopinion so I thought I would post it as a separate post.

We seem to be facing quite a problem with gun violence in the US.

But things are not always as they seem, the MSM claims 18 school shootings this year, because they include a cops gun going off with no injuries as a school shooting, along with random people killing themselves while parked in the parking lot each one a school shooting.

" Mass shootings are becoming more an more common, and it seems that the only solution is for law makers to revisit gun laws in the US.
Mass shootings are WAY more prevalent in the US than any other developed country. Why is this?

Because you are believing anti gun propaganda, what is more important, the number of so called "mass shootings" (a phrase whose definition is ever changing) or the number of casualties?

Anyone saying the number of events is more important that the number of casualties is being misleading aren't they?

The reason it seems like gun laws have something to do with mass shootings is because the media always suggests that they do, but they don't have any empirical evidence to back that up. More people were killed in a single year of mass shootings in France than the entire Obama administration in America.

" I think it's because it's way too easy to obtain automatic weapons in the US. It's easy to purchase an assault rifle in the US. Automatic weapons are technically illegal for civilians, but most assault rifle's can be easily modified to be automatic. This is what's happening. "

Nope, until recently the record for an American mass shooter was held by a young man with pistols with 10 round capacity. I am not aware of any high profile shootings, besides perhaps san Bernardino, where the guns used were modified to be fully automatic. And of course no American mass shooter has topped the guy in Norway, who was not stopped by gun laws and used a semi auto rifle.

The AR-15, AK47, Fn-Fal, etc can all be modified as fully automatic weapons.

But seldom are, in fact all rifles put together are used in fewer murders than hands or feet, so called "assault rifles" are used in less than 1% of gun homicides. The rifles you mentioned are the least likely to be used in a homicide.

These weapons are allowed to be sold in the US because without fully automatic capability they are seen as the same as hunting rifles - similar or the same caliber, and single shots.
wtf, guys?
The truth is, these are not hunting rifles - they are assault rifles that are designed to have automatic capability and can be easily modified as such. I think some serious attention needs to go into this topic and gun laws need to be revised to make it much more difficult to obtain/build a fully automatic weapon.

LOL, anyone can make an AR-15 or AK47 at home from scratch with a few simple tools, or just print their own with a desktop milling machine. The truth is that semi automatic rifles and shotguns are what I prefer for hunting and of course they are much more fun for target practice.

So, you say, we'd still have shootings even if automatic weapons were difficult to obtain? Yes, probably so - however, we probably wouldn't see headlines about mass shootings killing and injuring 30+ people from a single shooter. Especially in schools. Thinking about it logistically, if the shooter did not have an automatic weapon, he might have been able to kill or injure a few people before the school's resource office (every school in the US has one, afaik) would have been able to take down the shooter or call for backup to help take care of the evolving situation.
I'm all for people having access to whatever they need, but, sometimes we need to protect people from themselves. I think having stricter gun laws is a fair trade off to protect our children from mass shootings.

So you imagine that someone who goes into a school to slaughter schoolchildren would care what is legal to own or not?

Those laws don't disarm criminals, they just disarm the law abiding, criminals won't restrict themselves to single shot shotguns or whatever neutered arms you want people who actually follow the law to be restricted to. All of this to not save any lives. The 100 or fewer people a year who are killed in the us with so called "assault rifles" would not be alive if those rifles were banned, they would most likely be shot by pistols like the other 10,000 people who are victims of gun homicide annually.

Banning any high end rifle to prevent shootings would be like banning Porsches to prevent automobile deaths.

Gun homicides in the US have trended to record lows in the last 20 years at the same time as gun rights have expanded nationwide.

source

What color is this map turning?

source

So what do you all think?

Here are my 6 favorite charts for the gun debate

Some of my favorite things progressives would want to ban if they knew they existed and are legal.