But were they legally purchased by him? That is a trick to get legally purchased guns into the hands of criminals…It’s called a straw purchase, where a 3rd party agrees to buy the gun and sell it to the criminal. Something to consider. I don’t know the details, but it is fairly common. PBS had an article on it.
Having said that, I have several neighbors who are police officers. Having spoken at length to several of them, they are almost to a soul, very much for having legally armed citizens. I was talking to one Fairfax County officer, and he stated that most of their calls (70-80%, IIRC) are for people who were on some kind of psych meds (antidepressants, antipsychotics, whatever), and have, for whatever reason, gone off of them. On their meds, they are nominally well-adjusted persons, however, once off, they have issues, and many get violent.
Amazingly enough, if you ask the Krispy Kreme people what they think they’re in favour of everyone having doughnuts for breakfast.
This isn’t a thing that’s peculiar to police officers, and one should not necessarily consider them to have a more enlightened view of this subject. In the UK, police officers regularly and consistently refuse to be armed themselves despite public opinion attempting to suggest that they should be. Why British police don’t have guns - BBC News has more detail, there. I find it hard to believe that a police force which does not want themselves armed does want everyone else to be so. Now, that’s not to say that this view is any more compelling than @VulcanRidr’s, but “the police say XYZ, therefore XYZ” isn’t necessarily a very useful argument.
On the assumption that Wikipedia is accurate, yes they were:
[quote]
In September 2012, Rodger visited a shooting range in Oxnard, California to train himself in firing handguns.[51] During December of the same year and also the spring of 2013, Rodger began purchasing the three 9mm semiautomatic handguns that were recovered from his car on the day of the killing spree. In mid-December 2012, he purchased his first handgun, a Glock 34 pistol, from Goleta Valley Gun & Supply in Goleta, California, after doing research on handguns and judging the Glock 34 to be “an efficient and highly accurate weapon,” as documented in his manifesto.[66] During spring 2013, Rodger purchased two additional handguns, both SIG Sauer P226s, after stating that they were “of a much higher quality than the Glock” and “a lot more efficient.”[51] The SIG Sauer P226s were both purchased in different cities, Oxnard and Burbank.[67] According to his manifesto, Rodger had saved up $5,000 to purchase all of the weapons and supplies that he needed.[51] Experts have stated that there was nothing in Rodger’s known history prior to the killing spree that could have prevented him from making legal gun purchases.[59][/quote]
(emphasis mine)
Edit: I thought I’d stick an errata in rather than re-edit that last sentence. I’m not saying Elliot Rodger legally purchased most of the weapons used in US shootings, I’m saying most of the weapons used in US shootings were legally purchased. Phew.
Swap out ‘guns’ with ‘hand grenades’ and the argument sort of falls apart. There is a reason why hand grenades are illegal. It is a lethal device that doesn’t really serve the public good to have among the population. In that situation hand grenades still need someone to pull the pin so they aren’t the ‘problem’? In the hands of the average sane person they would probably be safe and people could blow stuff up in a controlled environment for fun in the same way that people gain some sort of enjoyment or utility from going to a gun range to shoot stuff.
It just doesn’t make any sense to have lethal toys unnecessarily in the population as you can’t control who will get their hands on them.
