He sent me a message asking if I had him on ignore and why I did not answer his question to me. Vould not as I was at work, answered when I got home. Posted below. Must have had a couple of hides I guess.

I believe we are going to be discovering Skinner's New and Improved 'Flagged for review' is like The Roach Motel: Roaches check in, but they don't check out!

Grew my ignore list. See only two out of 8 posts here so far! Yeeha!

It matters not about me, I only want the next shooter caught before he shoots others.

You have any ideas on how to get that done?

I am proud I have nobody on my ignore list.

It matters not about me, I only want the next shooter caught before he shoots others.

You have any ideas on how to get that done?

Where'd you go? Are you ignoring me and my simple question?

It matters not about me, I only want the next shooter caught before he shoots others.

You have any ideas on how to get that done?

What was that movie again, minority report?

Like I said before, Walmart has more sketchy folks per capita than any other large store. I see a lot of Camo, 'Don't tread on me' gear, knives, guns, lighters, camping supplies... If one needed a large bag to hold the guns and ammo one buys at Walmart, one can find 'camo' bags and clothing to help one 'blend' in with average gun owners. Very easy to buy supplies for one to go 'off the grid' there. I say they shoukd just profile Walmart shoppers. Sketchy place. I see camo wearing potential gun nuts everytime I shop there. Hell, I start acting sketchy as soon as I step inside.

About the black person with a pellet gun so he can be shot by the responding officers.

Why would undercover agents need to call the popo? They are the popo. Besides, black folks are not super into camo, so I don't think we are going to do all that. Guns+camo+walmart= maybe bad guy. Just leave it at that and the op will be fine as wine.

400 a year in one city.

We really need to profile more groups. Some people are getting left out and left behind on the profiling tip. Not fair to them at all. Why should certain groups get more attention? We need to spread the love (fear) around.

non-criminal shooters using the range?

Honestly I can't imagine a more worthless use of police resources. There are about 4,000 ranges in the US. Even with an undercover officer covering multiple ranges you are talking about hundreds of undercover agents doing nothing but going on one giant fishing expedition to learn that yes lots of people use ranges and while there they tend to shoot guns at targets.

The place to find shooters is on shooting ranges.

Smoke 'em out!

Hell, we do worse to the people in the Middle East and spend trillions to do so.

Ok 'Bob' uses the range he shoots target with his gun. Is bob the next mass shooter?

No problem.

I have a 400 yard 10 point range in my back yard. Your most welcome to attend any of the three charity shoots I hold there each year.
If you wish to participate then a firearm for you to use can be arranged. Perhaps a M52 Winchester target rifle?

Many potential terrorists just go there to shoot

I could out my back yard but I still am in the city. Thousands of open acres back there.

What is a red flag? How are you going to check him out?

Let the shooters know we are looking for them.

Noooo, you need to get them before they get the ammunition.

What is your computer going to do.

Also, are you going to hack into every stores computer in the country. You have a search warrant?

We can place a trio of precogs in a pool, then the machine doohickey can spit out little balls to tell us when there will be a crime. Then we can find the culprit and charge them with the murders they were going to commit.

was a career army officer, and in retirement loved to go to the shooting range and do target practice. At home he kept his ammunition well separated from the guns. While I am a nut case about being opposed to guns, he was not, even by my low and not very discerning standards, a gun nut. At least not as I picture a gun nut.

I wonder if he'd have been assumed to be a potential mass shooter.

People place an awful lot of faith in things like Put undercover agents in all the gun ranges and military style training camps in the US.
or that psychologists and psychiatrists will magically be able to spot the next mass shooter.

However, the real common denominator is the guns. People who own guns. Toddlers who find guns. Those who sell guns. Without the guns (I know, this is barely believable) the shootings couldn't happen. But of course, we can't possibly take away the guns, can we?

Not to mention, the Dallas shooter had apparently learned his first skills in the Army. So, shall we do some sort of mind wipe on all solders when they leave the service so they won't recall how to use guns and hopefully won't sign up for the kinds of courses that man did?

This would be somewhat like shutting down all pilot training schools because of how the 9/11 hijackers learned their skills.

There are clues people exhibit that the profilers use to profile criminals. Just plain police work.

You are advocating that the police profile people? Interesting.

Who else? What do you think about putting undercover police in every mosque in the US and arresting anyone who incites violence?

And what exactly are police looking for at gun ranges? I've been to a range where I've seen parents with their kids, law enforcement and people who are pretty clearly rank amateurs shooting. What makes one of these people more likely than the next to commit a mass shooting?

I think you are making these posts to simply get a rise out of people. What you propose is not only unworkable (and perhaps unconstitutional) but would be a massive, massive waste of resources. What exactly are you trying to prevent through this proposal? You aren't stopping the daily shootings and you aren't stopping the mass shootings. Did the San Bernardino shooters go to a range? What about Dylan Roof? Columbine? Fort Hood?

Those evil Muslims?

It matters not about me, I only want the next shooter caught before he shoots others.

You have any ideas on how to get that done?

If a shooter wants to do it, they will find a way. I think opening up the NICS for private sales free of charge and mandating it's use would help a little. However, all of the shooters that I am aware of passed them anyway. We do need to ensure the best and complete information is in the NICS database. You could try and limit magazine size but there are billions in circulation. You could try another AWB, but they are the least used weapons in crime. Check out the new style of NY SAFE act compliant rifles. They are still semi-automatic rifles, just no longer "assault weapons", although functionally the same as before when they were. Short of banning all weapons and confiscating them, including police weapons, shootings will happen. And even then, they would probably still happen, just not as often. Since 2/3 of firearms deaths are suicides, better health care to include mental health coverage would help quite a bit in my opinion. Most crime and suicides are done by handguns not rifles or the even smaller subset that are defined as"assault weapons".

you're saying my brother-in-law would have been profiled as a potential terrorist. If he were here he'd be laughing out loud at you.

Now I want to make it very clear that I'm an anti-gun nut, as extreme in my way as certain gun nuts are in there way. But even in my extremism I can understand that someone like him simply was never a potential terrorist.

And that's precisely what's wrong with both profiling and the current system at airports. I'm a former airline employee. I went to work as a ticket agent at DCA in January, 1969, well before any security. We used to happily let people out on the ramps if the wanted to photograph airplanes. No one thought it was a problem of any kind. And then certain nut cases decided it would be giant fun to hijack airplanes to Cuba. Which is exactly why the first security procedures came into effect in 1971, I think. And they worked very well.

Which is exactly why I know that the current security bullshit is just that: bullshit. It doesn't make us safer. I do NOT feel safe when I see elderly nuns patted down, or two year olds being sent through the metal detector while crying for mommy.

Plus, every so often I think about what I might do were I do want to perpetrate some sort of terrorist attack. Keep in mind, I have zero interest in actually doing so, and my knowledge of guns or explosives is less than minimal, and I haven't a clue how to get ahold of such things. But those considerations aside, various sorts of terrorist attacks would be remarkably easy. I once briefly discussed one such scenario I had in mind with the afore-mentioned brother-in-law, and he agreed it would be fairly easy to pull off, once the appropriate weapons were obtained. Sometimes I'm surprised that such an attack has never happened.

Which, I think, tells us a lot about the potential terrorists and how much of our culture they don't understand.

As an American, with my understanding of our culture, if I wanted to attack this country, I'd do it on a Super Bowl Sunday. If I were patient enough, I'd wait for a year when the Washington Redskins (or whatever name they might have in the future) were in the Super Bowl. Trust me, having lived in DC one year they were in the game, a foreign army could invade, no one would notice until after the game were over, or perhaps not for two or three days were the Redskins to win.

Clearly, our potential enemies really don't understand this country.

shooter purchase on a regular basis (compared to what a "mass shooter" might purchase)?

IOW, a serious gun enthusiast - with nary an evil bone in his body - would probably qualify as a threat according to your criteria.

You say:
"IOW, a serious gun enthusiast would probably qualify as a threat according to your criteria."

So the cops need to check 'em out and see how crazy they are.

As long as undercover cops are going to be up everybody's ass anyway...

I live on the edge of the "High Desert". My fucking WORLD is a gun range.

How many agents does it take to cover the desert southwest?

I am glad to not live there.

Now who can argue with that?

They can't and won't fix it on their own.

10 BILLION bullets made every year.

Checking out all of the ammo purchases for 100+ million gun owners may be a bit tough.


Maybe profiling the ranges (which only number in the 10s of thousands) would be easier. Figure 1 or 2 PDs could cover their own local ranges, looking for..???

Instead of hanging around bars looking for trouble, the cops should be looking at those dangerous gunners.

Question for you, what is the purpose of alcohol for drinking and are the tens of thousands killed by it worth allowing the sale of it?