Listening to the news today on the mass killing in Maine I heard a number of discussions that came from people who felt that we needed better ways to identify dangerous persons with a mental health problem to stop these types of killing. While better "red flag laws" might be a good thing they will never be good enough in accurately targeting potential mass killers unless we confine hundreds of people with mental health problems to find that one person who might have been a mass killer.
When you look at the number of mass killings in other countries that contain just as many dangerous people with mental health problems the only difference is the unavailability of assault weapons. We have some evidence here in the United States from 1994 to 2004 when we had a federal ban on assault weapons. Here is one report that examined the impact of that law on mass shootings. The only thing that stops the law from being reinstated federally is that Republican members of Congress are beholding to the NRA. The NRA and those members of Congress today have blood on their hands again. I only wonder if those members of Congress would change their minds if one of their relatives was blown apart in a mass killing with an assault weapon? Wounds from an assault weapon like an AR-15 can be so devastating that DNA is required to identify the body. Shots to the head usually lead to complete decapitation as it did to some of the children at Sandy Hook. Here is an article from the Washington Post on the impact of a bullet fired from an assault weapon.
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