It makes no sense that weapon Holmes used in this shooting was legal for him to purchase...
I don't see why it wouldn't make sense. Could you elaborate?
...and it makes no sense that we have no system that can trigger red flags when a person suddenly spends thousands of dollars on firearms and ammunition.
That doesn't make sense, but not for the reason you gave. That's a civilian version of the M4, the weapon most of my company carried in theater today. I heard the assailant brought about 6000 rounds with him. That doesn't make sense for this rifle because the barrel will literally melt at around 1,000 rounds fired. Also, 100 round drums suck. Some of the soldiers in my unit carry the SureFire 60/100rnd mags for that rifle, brand new, and they still have to take the mag apart and put a second new spring inside for the exact same reason. High capacity mags jam because the spring has a lot of trouble feeding the ammunition correctly.
I'm not saying that gun control would have prevented this tragedy, but I do think that we need to have a system in place to ensure that gun sales are tightly regulated and anybody who chooses to own multiple guns goes through proper training and is using and storing their weapons safely.
Proper training? So that when the rifle jams, and it
did jam during the assault, the criminal knows to use S.P.O.R.T.S.?
(Slap, Pull, Observe, Release, Tap, Squeeze is how to perform 'immediate action' on this rifle). This guy shoots up a theater and your complaint is that he should have received more training first so he could have shot beeter:lol:
I've seen a lot of responses from people against gun control because they use "semi-automatic" weapons for competitive shooting events and "hunting varmint." Fine, keep your guns, shoot squirrels and make your squirrel pie. But to have those kind of weapons, you should be properly vetted in order to prevent psychotic murderers from being able to obtain the weapons for a mass killing without breaking a single law.
This guy was clean, he could have still bought this rifle even under your police state.
And it's not a very powerful rifle anyway. I would never take that piece of **** M4 hunting. I know you folks like to toss around buzz-words like "
military style" rifle, but in actuality this rifle is a piece of ****. When you say things like "
military style" or "
military grade" you sound like a midnight infomercial tossing around terms like "
space-aged technology" or "
information super-highway" or "
surgical grade steel"
(surgical steel is not good for a knifes at all because it's high chromium content makes for a duller edge and doesn't keep sharp for long. High chromium steel is preferred for medical uses due to the greater ease of keeping it clean, whereas high carbon steel is more prone to collecting dirt, rust, bacteria and is harder to make sterile).
So what if the assailant had 6,000 rounds, there's no possible way that rifle would have survived firing nearly that many. The barrol would have literally melted off long before he fired that much, and unlike my issued M249 his rifle isn't made so the barrel can be replaced quickly.
I apologize for having worded my post with an air of hostility, I got worked up a bit because you folks want to sound like you know what your talking about but you don't actually know a damn thing and should just STFU.
When you buy sudafed you have to show your ID and there are red flags when it looks like a person could be manufacturing methamphetamine. That's fine, but it's not ok to track people who have in their possession weapons that can kill hundreds of people? From what I've heard, Holmes had never owned a gun before and over a few months, he had thousands of rounds of ammunition and a semi-automatic rifle. I don't care how much you love squirrel pie, you should not be able to legally do that without any oversight whatsoever.
See that's another thing, you would not use this rifle for small-game hunting either. This tells me you don't know anything about hunting. This rifle fires a 5.56mm, which would rip a little squirrel to bits. Small-game requires either a .22cal or a shotgun. An AR15 is way to much even if you could hit the squirrel with that short barrel and even if the rifle didn't jam which carbines are known to do.
****
The best solution to this situation would have been a theater full of concealed weapons firing in the assistance's general direction.