It's time we start legislating based on empirical evidence instead of lofty ideals. Yes, if everyone was responsible perhaps it would be OK for all of us to own firearms. But so many people are utterly irresponsible, and guns make that irresponsibility lethal.
People should safely store their fire-arms, but they don't and guns get stolen and sold illegally, or used by their teenage child.
People shouldn't point a gun at someone unless their life is in danger and they're prepared to take a life, but they do and people get shot by accident, or road rage turns deadly.
Not to mention the suicides. If you own a gun ideation can turn into action in less than 30 seconds and it can seem like a painless, easy way to go.
And when everyone is armed everyone wants to be armed. Cops pull their guns quickly out of fear of armed criminals. Regular people want to own a gun because they feel like everyone else does, and they're now less safe unless they also get one.
Growing up outside the US I never saw any guns. I don't know of anyone who had a gun. I don't know of anyone who knew anyone who had a gun. I remember seeing military members in parades carrying guns because it was one of the few times I'd actually seen one. Cops didn't walk around armed. There are other ways to kill people but guns are an especially effective, intuitive, and easy way to do so.
The problem with a lot of anti-gun measures is that the proponents readily admit that they would not have stopped any particular shooter. For instance, people talk about background checks, but this shooter and many others did not have a history and were not known to police. They would have passes a background check.
Often times the person acquiring the gun already broke a number of gun laws. Either straw purchase, borrowed someones gun, carrying across state lines, etc. So throwing more laws at it won't necessarily help. Enforcement of existing laws could help but is obviously difficult. Not to mention that gun violence is much higher in cities/counties/states with the most gun control measures. You can say that they just get the guns from elsewhere and national restrictions need to be imposed, but we should see SOME effect. Wyoming should have a higher murder rate than Michigan.
So the conversation from anti-gun people basically amounts to less guns everywhere, but that genie might be out of the bottle already. There are already hundreds of millions of guns in the US and it would be impractical to seize even a tiny percent of them.
But note that there were always guns in America. In fact, guns were often brought to high schools. In 1969, most public high schools in NYC had a shooting club. And yet there were no school shootings.
I was talking to my wife about this the other night and we came to the same conclusions as the points you made. What we posit at this point is: what didn’t exist in 1969? Social media. The internet.
Legislation won’t change anything. <the war on drugs has entered the chat> Proponents of stricter gun control are being idealistic.
Having kids in school right now, we are both quite concerned about the current state of affairs when it comes to school shootings. Making guns illegal won’t stop anyone touched enough to shoot up a school/gay bar/concert/grocery store. They’re going to find a way to do it. To think otherwise is ignorance.
Most other countries have social media. Few other countries have a mass shooting problems. Restricting access to guns absolutely will lower school shootings. A disturbed 18 year old isn't going to have black market gang connections to get a gun.
I fully believe it will help minimize most school shootings, but I don’t think it would deter the more meticulous disturbed shooters like Columbine or perhaps even this most recent Texas shooter. If you are planning it out in detail, figuring out how to print a gun or buy one on the black market probably isn’t much of a deterrent.
I would “only” expect gun control regulation to deter impulsive killings (including a lot of suicide). But it won’t deter criminals who are savvy to the black market, and it’s plausible that they might be more emboldened to victimize more people from the “civilian” population (as opposed to police or rival criminals) if they have more assurance that they’re unarmed. That effect is probably exacerbated in an era of de-policing (if criminals can rely on a hamstrung police force and a disarmed civilian population, they’re probably going to be even bolder).
> A disturbed 18 year old isn't going to have black market gang connections to get a gun.
Apparently you've never been to Baltimore and/or forget what it was like to be 18. Show me a law prohibiting or vastly restricting something and I'll show you a very healthy black market for said thing.
Yeah an 18 year old including even Salvador could have easily 3d printed an FGC-9 without any connections and that would have done everything he sought out to do at the close quarters he was operating in.
This guy clearly had spent months saving up for a fucking Daniel Defense (gucci) AR on fast food wages, he absolutely had the time and dedication to have found another equally lethal method. If ARs didn't exist he'd have undoubtable used something else equally lethal.
That's not consistent with the reality of the rest of the world. Australia banned guns in 1996 and has had one mass shooting since, compared to 66 in the US in April of this year.
I never found this argument convincing. There are many differences between Australia and the US. It's like saying "American does X and is wealthy and relatively not corrupt, Mexico should just do X". This is the whole "bring democracy to the Middle East" argument repackaged.
US is 59th in murder rate. A lot of these countries have all those things + restrictive gun laws. You can't have a theory and just arbitrarily section off over 50% of countries and test your theory on that subset
The other 58 are either extremely poor or in an actual war/insurgency. I don't deny that poverty and war cause violence but the US does not have those variables
Both those countries require everyone to experience military service, where such a gun is used as a tool to kill. There's much less of a "gun culture" in those countries because guns aren't cool, everyone has used one, everyone is familiar, everyone understands what they are for, namely protection of the country as a whole.
If the alternative to making guns much harder to access is to conscript everyone in the country for a few years to try and beat the gun culture out of them, good freakin luck
I have no doubt that Australia has fewer mass shootings than the US by pretty much any reasonable metric, but we should be careful in our comparisons. First of all, definitions vary widely on what constitutes a “mass shooting”, so we should always give our definition and make sure we’re applying the same definition to both operands (notably, by most common definitions, Australia has had several mass shootings and quite a few more mass murders since 1996).
We should also adjust for known dependent variables, like population, population density, crime rates, number of guns in circulation (i.e., we would intuitively expect fewer mass shootings from a small, sparse, low-abiding country with few guns in circulation irrespective of gun laws)—Australia has only 8% of the US population and only 10% of the density—not sure about crime rates. I also suspect there were fewer guns in circulation prior to 1996, so even if officials could get the same share removed from the US market, it would likely leave more guns in circulation than in America (even adjusting for population, etc)—I also doubt Americans would be as willing to give up their guns as Australians were in ‘96, so the odds that America could get the same share of guns off the market as Australia did seems unlikely.
That said, I’ve read that Australia’s gun count has crept back up to pre-96 levels (not sure if that is per capita or not), which is interesting—potentially it suggests there’s something else going on: either it matters what type of guns are banned (e.g., semi-automatic handguns), or perhaps there’s an altogether different reason or hidden factor behind the decline in Australian mass shootings.
In any case, mass shootings is probably the wrong metric, but rather we probably want to look at number of mass murder deaths overall (presumably some people switch to stabbings or arson, but both of these are probably result in fewer fatalities). It’s also not clear to me why we fixate on mass murders/shootings rather than homicides overall—is it really worse when 10 people are killed all at once rather than 10000 people killed individually?
It was the first fatal mass shooting in the UK since the Cumbria shootings of 2010. In response, the Home Office announced that it would issue updated guidelines for firearms licence applications.
Mass shootings are rare in the UK, with the most recent previous being a spree shooting in Cumbria in 2010, and the one before a school shooting in Dunblane in 1996.
Along with the 1987 Hungerford massacre and the 1996 Dunblane school massacre, it is one of the worst criminal acts involving firearms in British history.
First off, you didn't say "school" originally, you just said mass shooting and there have been several in the UK since the gun ban; also it doesn't matter if innocent people are killed at a school or elsewhere, what matters is that they were killed. Secondly, the "zero deaths" shooting had 12 wounded; the lack of deaths wasn't for a lack of trying and I'm sure those people would have preferred not to have been shot. Thirdly, most of those American mass shootings in the Wikipedia article aren't mass shootings in that they aren't some crazy killing random strangers, they are gang violence; you may as well include all of the UK's gang homicides then. Many of the school "mass shootings" also had no deaths. For example, Wikipedia counts this as a school shooting: "An individual who was not a student accidentally shot himself in the leg in the parking lot of Glades Central High School". No reasonable person can say that is the same as what happened in Texas, and dozens of the "school shootings" in the list are similar to the parking lot accident.
The deadliest mass shooting of all time happened in France in 2015 and the second deadliest happened in Norway in 2011 (yes, deadlier than any American mass shooting). Europe has had a large number of mass killings. Here's a PARTIAL list (since there are no activist groups compiling lists of "mass" "shootings" in Europe like there are in the US, it's difficult to find them without scanning old news articles) of SCHOOL shootings in Europe over the last twenty years (and yes it is fair to compare the US to all of Europe due to population and size; European countries are equivalent to American states (which have varying degrees of gun control)): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31515008. Additionally, there have been a lot of European mass killings that weren't targeted at schools like the Manchester Arena Bombing, Charlie Hebdo, the aforementioned Bataclan and Oslo massacres, the Nice truck attack, the various vehicle ramming attacks in London and elsewhere in Europe, and more. Your gun bans haven't prevented crazies from killing massive amounts of innocents, neither with guns nor with other methods.
Not a single one of those was a mass shooting by the common definition. They were all just random murders/attempted murders, which your continent has quite a lot of as well. The only difference is you don't have lobbyists who compile lists on Wikipedia.
Social media as we know it today didn't exist in 1999 when the Columbine high school shooting happened. That's the first mass school shooting in my memory, though Wikipedia lists several before that, as far back as the late 80s.
The first of that kind of shooting that I know of was in the 60s in the University of Texas. Before that there was a school massacre in the 20s but they used a bomb.
> I was talking to my wife about this the other night and we came to the same conclusions as the points you made. What we posit at this point is: what didn’t exist in 1969? Social media. The internet.
Also cable TV news. The need to drive viewers to consume a surfeit of airtime probably lead to a lot of socially damaging choices. I'd say it's a qualitatively different thing than the nightly news.
Another important question is what things did exist in 1969 that don't exist now (or are far, far weaker).
Yes they will find a way .. it is always like that .. and so should we. It is not a perfect solution to ban AR-15s and like guns but it is an incremental solution. Opinions may vary to its effectiveness but it is 1000 percent worth a try. I don't care about someone's right to own guns like that. F** it.
>> Making guns illegal won’t stop anyone touched enough to shoot up a school/gay bar/concert/grocery store. They’re going to find a way to do it.
Somehow in my country (Poland) and in most of Europe they do not find a way to get the guns. Most of incidents of this class is done with knife or with some kind of vehicle (car or truck). I think that throughout history we had like literally one or two shootings in schools and I don't think in any one instance there was automatic weapon involved.
To think that this kind of prohibition of gun possession does not work You have to be really ignorant of what really is happening in other countries.
That's an interesting point though. In Poland, you can own certain guns, right? A Polish friend of mine told me he owned various guns, including semi auto pistols.I know you can own these in other central European countries too, like the Czech Republic, Switzerland and probably others. These guns can generally fire at least 15 rounds as fast as you can pull the trigger, and you can reload in seconds. The Virginia Tech killer used 2 of these to kill 32 people.
Now I'm sure my friend had to go through more extensive vetting than they have in the US. But here's the strange part: many US mass shooters would pass these checks anyway. Not all, certainly. But many would. So when you say "they do not find a way to get the guns", you're suggesting that the potential mass murderers are out there, looking for a way, but failing to get the guns. But clearly they should be succeeding occasionally, the legal way. And yet we don't see it. Why not?
We need to know what else is different about the US. But why complicate things by comparing the US to vastly different countries? Why not compare it to a mostly similar country: itself from the recent past. The US has had essentially the same gun laws forever. There have been 2 major overhauls to US gun ownership: one in the 30s and one in the 60s. Other than that, basically no changes. But these mass killings are fairly new, having started in earnest in the late 90s. Why? It's not surprising that the body count has increased, since AR-15s are more deadly than the kind of guns Americans used to commonly own 30 years ago. They have become incredibly popular in recent years and are very cheap and accessible now. But as I pointed out earlier, there's nothing stopping anyone from racking up a huge number of victims using the kind of semi automatic pistol that has been around for over 100 years, and we do see this in the US.
This question weighs on my mind all the time. What is different about the US? I feel as though I know the answer, but it's ephemeral, hard to put words on it. Everything is more extreme here. Success, failure, happiness, misery, love, hate. So in a sense it's not that surprising that the crimes are more extreme too. But I know that's not a very useful observation. I just know that it's 100% possible for people to be able to own guns, and for this stuff to not happen. Hopefully it's possible in America too.
>> That's an interesting point though. In Poland, you can own certain guns, right? A Polish friend of mine told me he owned various guns, including semi auto pistols.I know you can own these in other central European countries too, like the Czech Republic, Switzerland and probably others.
You are heavily underestimating how comparatively hard is to get any kind of gun here. Literally no one in my family and not one of my close friends and event my neighbors in my apartment block have access to ANY kind of gun.
Sure there is possibility if You have lots of time and money and if you are relatively stable person to get a gun (I used to know a guy who was a member of shooting club and thus was able to buy himself a gun), but this process has so many hoops that it is actively discouraging from obtaining one just because you fancy one (as an impulse buy). And thus I believe that it makes it a lot harder for unstable people to get hands on them when they got the impuls to do some damage (I believe that planning and persistence required to get gun here is antithesis to what makes those people go on killing spree).
>> So when you say "they do not find a way to get the guns", you're suggesting that the potential mass murderers are out there, looking for a way, but failing to get the guns. But clearly they should be succeeding occasionally, the legal way. And yet we don't see it. Why not?]
I think that's because they are a lot persistent that You believe them to be. Emotions and planning do not go together well. And there is also social element here - You have to be in a sport club and be vouched by others to get to the guns. This two things put together seems to eliminate almost all individuals that would otherwise blow out tunneling their anger through guns.
Thanks for the response. I'm from a European country that is even more restrictive than Poland and I used to shoot there before I moved to the US, so I have some idea of what it's probably like. I might be conflating a broad range of US mass shootings - for instance I'm thinking of the Las Vegas shooter, who planned meticulously for a very long time. Now, granted he could not have amassed a dozen AR-15s in any other country in any amount of time, but I believe he could have done something. Could a guy like that get a gun in Poland? I don't think it's out of the question. I know the Columbine shooters probably could not have. But then, they made home made bombs too, which they could probably have done anywhere. We just don't see evidence of this kind of motivation showing up in other countries.
>You are heavily underestimating how comparatively hard is to get any kind of gun here
>Sure there is possibility if You have lots of time and money
You seem to be unaware of Polish gun laws. Black powder traditional firearms are virtually unregulated in Poland. A replica black powder revolver is a fully competent self defense revolver. Watch paul harrell or a number of videos about these weapons and you'll understand a Polish person can get a damn good lethal revolver with basically no barriers. It's my understanding you may even be able to conceal carry them completely legally as well, without any license whatsoever.
As far as I know this kind of weapon is not freely available in shops and even if they have it for sale You need to have speciall european gun card.
And this kind of guns requires skills to use - I do not believe that mass shooting is even possible with it.
As I said the main barrier is that there is no possibility to impulse buy. There is also culture apect (here in Poland guns are not popular and almost no one knows how to use them).
>As far as I know this kind of weapon is not freely available in shops and even if they have it for sale You need to have speciall european gun card.
You do not need the european gun card to buy these in Poland. You can have shipped (like from https://saguaro-arms.com/) or just from a private transaction. You do not need the gun card to buy the powder in a private (or "gifted") transaction either.
>And this kind of guns requires skills to use
A percussion black powder revolver takes a little more skill than a cartridge one, but not much. It's also quite deadly.
>I do not believe that mass shooting is even possible with it
Yes if you ignore the entire 18th and most of the 19th century, during which masses of people were killed with these weapons.
>As I said the main barrier is that there is no possibility to impulse buy.
Private sale is unregulated [0]. Conceal carry appears to be legal without permit [0]. Just as here in US I can get a pistol legally in 5 minutes with no checks or registration or permit, same can be done for a black powder revolver in Poland.
Watch Paul Harrell explain these firearms, they're no joke and I recommend every Polish resident consider one for self defense.
I do not think you understand the difference between being able to buy the gun in Walmart (or rather Biedronka in hypothetical nightmare land) and the ability to procure one by looking for dealer on the internet or accessing foreign internet shop. The former one allows impuls buys and the later one has a barrier of entry. And proper layered barrier of entry (no guns around to take or buy, peer pressure to not have gun, illegality of possession of most types without licence) is in my opinion a key to understand why I'm not afraid to send children to school here.
>> they're no joke and I recommend every Polish resident consider one for self defense
Defense from what? Poland is rather safe country at this point and most of what's going on here is simple robberies which when combined with easy access to guns would quite easily change to manslaughter galore.
And I like our gun statistics and would love them stay this way (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...)
To buy a gun in a walmart requires a background check and more thorough vetting than to buy this revolver in Poland.
Also the Texas shooter bought his gun online, which is more of a hassle than buying a black powder revolver online in Poland. Buying that shooter's rifle requires shipping to a dealer and then a background check. Buying the blackpowder weapons requires neither.
> my opinion a key to understand why I'm not afraid to send children to school here.
The homicide rate of elementary school students in the US is 0.7 per ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND per year. The rate of unintentional injury resulting in death is roughly at least double for all age groups. If you are terrified of a one in a hundred thousand chance, but not a double or better chance of unintentional injury resulting in death then you are simply an irrational actor. If you feel safe with a ~2 per 100,000 unintentional injury then you should feel only slightly less safe adding in homicides (which Poland isn't free of either). If the thought of school shooting death would terrify you from sending your kid to school then you should be cowering in fear at the chance your child will sustain some unintentional injury on the play ground or in transit to school.
And this is all ignoring the fact that if you're a Pole moving to America and you don't get involved in drugs or gangs then your odds of suffering from violent crime absolutely plummets.
>Defense from what? Poland is rather safe country
Poland is not free from violence and cities near your border are being bombed by a murderous dictator. If you want to be defenseless that's your prerogative.
>easy access to guns
Which Poland already has. I could fly to Poland tomorrow as a tourist and have a revolver the next day and a reliable semi-auto pistol or carbine a couple weeks later (3d printed, durable for 1000+ rounds). All from buying unregulated components within EU and without any sort of permit card.
>> To buy a gun in a walmart requires a background check and more thorough vetting than to buy this revolver in Poland.
Oh wow I did not know that they require this now - this is somehow amazing because You are actually providing arguments for my side of debate (according to this https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2018/02/28/walmart-st... walmart self regulated itself despite moderate law).
In all You have few good arguments for You thing (which is I assume gun in every household?). I just do not get why anyone would want that. The idea that You can somehow defend yourself without any additional risk is pure fantasy (as they say if you take out gun better be ready to use it) - I believe that one of the greatest inventions of human kind is state/government monopoly on violence. This of course can and actually was abused many times but no implementation of idea is perfect but this does not mean that the idea itself is invalid.
And just to finish I think I must comment on this:
>> Poland is not free from violence and cities near your border are being bombed by a murderous dictator. If you want to be defenseless that's your prerogative
What kind of fantasy land are You living that You think that You can actually defend from bombardment, or tanks, or organized military units with gun? You might have seen too many action movies.
If by accident You are part of any kind of paramilitary organization that by all means - sure you can try to stop some military man coming Your way but You do not need to posses private guns for that - one armory per district is more than enough to hand out whatever You may need (as it actually was done in Ukraine - the guns were handed out after the war started).
>What kind of fantasy land are You living that You think that You can actually defend from bombardment, or tanks, or organized military units with gun?
Perhaps in the same 'fantasy' land where the Chechens actually did that exact thing against the same army I'm referring to, and in fact established an independent nation that was at one point even recognized by Russia?
Also I'm referring to defense against common criminals, which even Poland has, who might want violence. Of course the common criminal can easily get a gun, it's only the law abiding innocent who may have reservation about getting a gun in Poland.
> I believe that one of the greatest inventions of human kind is state/government monopoly on violence.
The state has the monopoly on 'legitimate' violence according to these theories, but the state never has a monopoly on all violence. I'd like to note the many Jews in Poland who were genocided after being disarmed. And to note during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, smuggled and captured arms were used by common citizens to at least kill off a few Nazis so there would be one less Nazi to oppress the citizens.
You ask really good questions in your comment. Some of them I've pondered myself, and it is hard to put into words. Everything being more extreme here in the US is actually a decent way to put it.
You can simply take a quick drive just about anywhere and notice it. There is some kind of sickness that has taken hold. I couldn't even begin to list all the reasons why I think this has happened, but American society to me seems so far past the point of no return. One example I have is that I commuted a good bit before the pandemic - anecdotally I noticed an uptick in road rage in that politically charged circa 2015/16' + year range. I'm not sure if the data would back it up, but things seemed to be spilling over into real life to me.
Going off on a tangent here, but I am prior military and also a gun owner with permit to carry concealed. I do armed security once a month and some extra days for special events here and there. I was raised around weapons and I vividly remember going out by myself at 12 years old with a rifle and plinking, hunting and whatnot. At this point I own mostly sporting rifles and do some occasional reloading. Everything is locked away and if something happens to me they will have to grind the safe open. It is safe to say that I respect guns and their capabilities a lot, but I don't feel that's true with a large amount of the gun population. I personally know several.
If there was some kind of miracle opportunity presented to me that all this violence would magically stop if Americans got rid of their firearms, I would take that offer no questions asked. I have small children myself and have had tears in my eyes several times this week thinking about the horrific act in Texas.
I've racked my brain several times over the years about this and have no clue what the solution could be on a grand scale. I don't think our politicians are capable of realistic debate to any kind of solution either - everything is so politically charged anymore and that tribal stuff defeats the whole purpose. I agree with certain points from both sides of the spectrum, but either way seems hopeless. I don't want to see anymore senseless killings, but I also need to have the ability to protect myself and my family in this increasingly sick country.
I'm not sure why you think I'm "poo-pooing" on anyone etc, or what that comment is supposed to add to the discussion, but in any case you haven't written anything that contradicts anything that I said.
I still insist that this seems like lack of political will rather than means. I'm sure that there are a lot of ways that this can be done.
It's like with this old saying about how You eat an elephant (a piece at a time).
Same here - this can be done slowly and gradually. It does not have to be done out right.
They could start with limiting current sale of guns (by bringing some control over to who can buy what and when). Introduce some sort licences (but maybe for guns bought after the law was introduced). And than taxing the shit out of bullets (for personal use). Prohibit trade of guns between people (only b2c, this could be quite hard and unpopular but could address the problem of existing guns). And then start to buy guns of people with sufficient premium on price.
This could be costly but I believe that over the time would eliminate this strange culture of mass gun possession.
> "I still insist that this seems like lack of political will rather than means."
Lack of political will = the voting public doesn't want it, literally. If the public wanted it, federal and state legislatures would be in session right now to pass such laws.
Why doesn't the public want it? All the things you suggest hassle legitimate firearms owners, which is a significant voting bloc, driving them right into the arms of the extremist 2nd A. groups and spiking firearms sales drastically every time new harsh legislation is proposed, making the problem even worse.
So why insist on following the same losing strategy that has been followed by gun control advocates in the past? It is culture and public perception that needs to change and addressing that is not something that can be fixed by legislation.
>> Lack of political will = the voting public doesn't want it, literally
Since when this stopped the politician from serving their own intrests (and intrests of the money behind them)?
But You are right it would be better to change the culture but the problem is that there is not a lot of money in taking away guns and at the same time there is a lack of ideological front that could influence people (for example churches somehow do not have problem with guns)
There is evidence that some antidepressants cause "violent suicidal preoccupation". But it's unclear whether that is a significant factor behind the increase in mass shootings.
What if it just stops one in ten. What if only 20 kids are saved and 100 families are not changed forever.
Pro-tip: you're wrong, it would take time, but it would help. I think handguns should be highly regulated, along with magazines over 10 rounds. If you are licensed to own them, you need to have them in a secure location with some way to ascertain they have been tampered with and you are responsible if they are mis-used.
There is plenty of low hanging fruit, but we go after stuff like silencers or "assault style" weapons instead of good common sense rules like limiting ammunition that can be purchased without being consumed at a range.
> So the conversation from anti-gun people basically amounts to less guns everywhere, but that genie might be out of the bottle already. There are already hundreds of millions of guns in the US and it would be impractical to seize even a tiny percent of them.
And even if we could wrangle the hundreds of millions in circulation, 3D printing democratizes gun manufacture and seems prohibitively hard to regulate.
> Wyoming should have a higher murder rate than Michigan. … In fact, guns were often brought to high schools. In 1969, most public high schools in NYC had a shooting club. And yet there were no school shootings.
I haven’t heard these observations before; I would be really interested to hear potential explanations debated.
> I would be really interested to hear potential explanations debated.
You'll never hear it though. It goes into differences in regional culture and socialization. Anyone that isn't laughably wrong on the topic knows damn well to keep their mouth shut.
Oh, that's what dogleash was saying: only the people who are laughably wrong are willing to talk about it. The people who do understand are the ones who are staying quiet.
The anti-gun rebuttal is that having that many guns around makes breaking the existing laws. I don't care how you do it (buybacks + making it much more cumbersome to get one seem like a good start), the end result that I'm after is that the US goes from 120 guns per capita to 30.
The school shooting club thing is an example of how regulation works.
Just as you don’t see soldiers on military bases walking around with guns on their hips for fun, there were strict rules around high school shooting ranges - kids didn’t take guns home and had strict protocols around handling, etc.
The big difference now is you have a fetishization of guns combined with a low intensity insurgency. If you ask a more prolific gun person about why they are collecting weapons, the answer in 1965 was likely to be about antique or other technical factors. In 1995 they were worried about Clinton taking the guns away, so buy before it’s too late. In 2015, many are talking about fighting the government.
Marginal personalities are attracted to the power of weapons and attention.
A few decades ago it was actually somewhat common for students at rural high schools to bring guns from home so that they could go hunting after school. That didn't seem to cause any problems.
Most recent mass shooters have acted for personal reasons. They were not insurgents fighting the government.
I grew up in the midwest, where pheasant hunting was (and still is) popular. Many people had gun racks in their cars, and often parked with the guns in plain sight.
We had little crime and very few incidents of gun violence.
Quite a quick read and sounds somewhat better than knee-jerk reactions people might have
The 3 policy changes in the paper :
```
Evidence suggests that three priority policies
would have the greatest impact in reducing overall firearm homicide rates:
• Universal background checks;
• Prohibition of gun possession by people
with a history of any violent misdemeanor,
threatened violence, or serious alcohol-related crime or subject to a domestic violence restraining order. This must be accompanied by:
(1) a requirement that firearms already in their possession be surrendered;
(2) a procedure for confiscating guns if they are not relinquished voluntarily;
and
(3) procedures for confiscating guns in situations where a person becomes
prohibited from owning firearms after having passed an earlier background
check;
• Extreme risk protection order laws that allow removal of firearms from an individual who, after due process, is deemed to represent a threat to
themselves or others
Universal for everyone, or just those who want to buy a gun? If I buy a gun because I pass the background check, and then snap and shoot up my place of employ 4 years later, what good was the background check? Who pays for the background check? Who does the background check? What do they check? HIPPA laws would eliminate anything health/medical related. Do they comb all the discoverable social media accounts? Are we just checking criminal history? Should a background check be re-done every 2, 3, 5, n years?
I like the idea, but I've been chewing on this problem for the past few days and I don't think background checks would be as simple or effective as we would all like them to be. This is not an argument against background checks in that I think they're a bad idea. I don't think they would do much.
This is a solved problem, other countries do good background checks by requiring a reason for gun ownership. Collecting (maybe you can't buy as much ammo), range club (they need to vouch for you and you buy ammo at the range), hunting (you have a subset of hunting rifles allowed), self-defense (again, how much ammo do you need for self defense).
I'd like to see the Feds designate all schools crime as federal crimes since they interfere with the civil rights of students. Then make school shootings automatic death penalty, unauthorized guns would have a hefty sentence like they did with drug dealers.
15x more people are killed each year in Baltimore than Uvalde. What happened was tragic there is no question, but the fact that the rest of the country is numb to the murder rates of Baltimore, Chicago, etc, makes me quite sad.
Understand that you don't think they'll do much, but states that have that, along with the two other items, have witnessed roughly 30% fewer gun homicides.
If we test this out in more places, we can have better evidence than, say, what you or myself think are a good or bad idea. :)
As someone who supports the elimination of virtually all firearms restrictions, this is a gun control position that I think deserves to be taken seriously by gun rights advocates.
> It's time we start legislating based on empirical evidence instead of lofty ideals.
I would take anti-gun people more seriously if they actually paid attention to what this entails. For one, anti-gun enthusiast would stop going on about "assault rifles", because only around 200 people a year in the US are killed by rifle homicides. It's totally negligible. Less frequent than blunt instrument homicides. Yet, that's exactly what anti-gun people focus on.
Sometimes you have to eat an elephant one bite at a time. If guns weren't such a charged issue then more of us would advocate to directly outlaw private gun ownership. Guns add little value to people's lives and are likely to amplify poor decisions into death and serious injury.
This is a facially absurd claim to make based on the extremely motivated behavior of tens of millions of Americans.
> are likely to amplify poor decisions into death and serious injury
For a very questionable definition of "likely". As someone who actually performs explicit risk calculations, I am vastly more worried about hundreds of other risk sources to which I have daily exposure.
People should pursue risk mitigation strategies which are efficient at the margins, if at all.
I would capture marginal utility by making life more risky and less fearful, so I'm certainly not going to accept the piss-poor risk reduction returns of going after assault rifles.
Do some research on who is actually dying, who is killing, and with what weapons. I think no honest and well-adjusted person who does that can agree with popular gun control initiatives.
Spoken like someone who lives in a city where you can't use a gun. There is a reason why guns laws are unpopular in rural areas: guns are very useful in rural areas. There is no way to safely shoot a gun in a urban area (except a few gun ranges), so any possible use is dwarfed by the danger.
For a more concrete example. My father in law lives in Michigan. His house is seated next to 40 acres of forest. There are often coyotes and other wild animals that will approach his house when they're hungry. If you're unaware, coyotes will hunt, stalk, and kill cats, dogs, and small children.
To protect my children (3-5 years old) and his dogs, he shoots them.
In my beautiful 3rd world country (yeah we remained non-aligned during the cold war), Tigers and Leopards have a tendency to come near human settlements and attack domesticated animals.
Over here, killing animals (apart from chicken, fish, duck etc, which people regularly eat) is illegal. That means your can't kill snakes, deers, wild pigs, crocodiles and you certainly cannot kill Tiger, Leopards etc (because they're kind of endangered...).
If you do and they find out, you're going to jail. It doesn't matter whether the aforementioned wild animals killed your animals or humans.
So what do you do if presence of wild animals have been detected? You tell the authorities; they'll set traps, capture the animal, and release it to the forests.
By the way, recently, there was an appeal to the government to declare wild boar as pests, so that it can be killed because wild boars destroy crops and stuff. Government declined, because if the boars are killed, the big cats would starve.
This might all seem strange, but over here tiger/lion/leopard population was dwindling in the last century. But their population is now at a healthy level.
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About the gun situation here: nobody really has guns. Except very few maybe. There's plenty of crimes, but those don't involve a gun. Guns definitely would not be a solution to minimize the crime situation here.
Over here coyotes are not endangered, and deer have an overpopulation problems such that without hunters they will eat all their food by the middle of winter and then starve to death.
Snakes protected though, as are wolves. There is a problem with people killing them anyway. They are not the major animals rural people target - because they are endangered there are not many.
> You tell the authorities; they'll set traps, capture the animal, and release it to the forests.
This is something that they used to do over here. Then we discovered that when you release wild animals far from home they don't know their way around, and so they have trouble finding enough to eat, where to drink, a place to live. They are thus not in great physical shape when they encounter whatever lived there already and so are easy kill. Predators are either lone or pack animals - either way a stranger is something to kill. As such releasing a trapped animal is cruel. Unless you find a place where there is nothing else of the type, but even then we have to ask about if they have the correct genes, turns out animals of the same species get natural selection for DNA that helps in their location.
Professional hunters can cull over populated animals, and for deer that meat can be sold or donated to shelters. Still not a compelling reason to keep saturating the country with guns, IMO.
Quite a narrow case, and it still requires careful attention in order to shoot the animals. Perhaps there are more practical alternatives with fewer externalities like fences, traps, scents, motion detecting lights, noise deterants, etc.
None of your suggestions work, animals are smart enough to figure them out in time. They work for a month at best.
Traps are the best bet of your list and are a lot harder to use. And then you still need to kill the animal, release is cruel to the animal and harmful to whatever is naturally where you release it
Tiered gun ownership. You can own revolvers, non-semi automatic rifles at the base tier. You also need to file a reason for gun ownership and accept liability for misuse of your firearms. Your teenage kid kills himself with your revolver, you're on the hook for manslaughter.
Uvalde police confronted the shooter outside but feared being outgunned by the AR-15 : they eventually let him in and took an hour before entering the classroom just for that reason.
So yes, it did make a difference (and also shows that "let's arm teachers" is a ridiculous solution)
I am not convinced actually. The shooter was in the classroom for an hour with ammunition. If assault weapons weren't available, he'd have bought multiple revolvers. Hell, I'd argue that the gun related deaths in 1920's were much higher with revolvers than today with assault weapons.
Assault rifles account for only 3% [1] of total gun related deaths. But it is what anti-gun folks focus on as a scape goat. Foolish, emotional, knee-jerk thinking because it is a "Big scary looking weapon". We all lose because the focus is on something mostly ineffective. Perhaps, we can focus our energy on other aspects than "Big scary" weapons.
Have you taken a look at CA AR-15/long-gun laws? It is the most useless regulations one can conceive (finger guard, 10 round magazine, breaking-gun to reload). All it takes is 2 mins to reverse the CA-compliant changes. The lawmakers are fooling us with ineffective policies that don't do anything to prevent these shootings.
Perhaps we can argue about number of children killed in this incident, but the sample size is 1 and standard deviation is infinite.
The shooter would not have been barricaded in the room for so long if he wasn't able to spray high-velocity rounds at the police. You know those penetrate body armor without ceramic plates and police do not wear ceramic plates.
Revolver rounds would not penetrate, and a carbine would allow him to be flanked much more easily.
EDIT: laws keep honest people in line, but they also give us the ability to punish the dishonest.
Maybe we have a common ground: Police going “Jee man, dude’s got a big scary weapon” and affecting the hopes of conjuring any bit of courage left in them to bust in and eliminate the threat.
> For one, anti-gun enthusiast would stop going on about "assault rifles", because only around 200 people a year in the US are killed by rifle homicides. It's totally negligible. Less frequent than blunt instrument homicides. Yet, that's exactly what anti-gun people focus on.
Yeah, for some reason people keep going on about the ability for any 18 yo nutcase to go into a shop and buy a military-grade weapon designed to shred organs beyond all repair*, enabling them to efficiently slaughter as many school children as possible before terrorized and outgunned LEOs finally have the guts to take them out.
These pesky humans and their dislike of living in fear of violent death for their children... Can't they just think about this in spreadsheet terms and look at the totally negligible numbers, like the rest of us psychos ? C'mon...
What's "reasonable" from an informed perspective vs. an uniformed perspective are vastly different. There are already limits on ammunition and they don't work.
Well, first I should clarify that I mean some states have various limits on ammunition and magazine capacity, and that does not help those states with regard to homicide statistics.
Secondly, do you think that is unreasonable amount of ammunition? What kinds of legal limitations would you propose?
For reference, that's about enough ammo for one person for less than an hour of time at a gun range. Any responsible gun owner is going to be at the range with some regularity, and would go through at least that much in one day.
1. People don't just practice at formal ranges. Some have personal property where they practice. There are also competitions and events of all sorts in which copious ammo is needed.
2. You can actually make your own ammo (usually by using used casings from previous ammo)
3. In times of civil unrest (like the riots of 2020) 50 may be nowhere near enough. In high pressure situations it may take a full clip/magazine to take down a single opponent.
4. I am not a hunter, but I somewhat doubt 50 rounds of ammo would be enough for hunting.
5. The vast majority of people with copious ammunition are law abiding citizens, and so this would involve a confiscation and restriction on the behavior of citizens who have not and will never commit such crimes.
6. Considering how poorly we've done and restricting access to weed and other drugs, I see no reason that any such legislation would actually be effective.
1. Register to buy more ammo, or buy it over the year. I said monthly.
2. Good, I'm totally aware of this and aware of the limitations.
3. Show me where people were forced to defend their property by filling someone with bullets in the 2020 (riots, your word). No standard magazine holds 50, so your argument is not in good faith.
4. It's plenty, Hunters worry about noise from shooting, cost (if they are hunting for food), and the environment. They don't fill the forest with lead.
5. Nobody said confiscation, build your stockpiles. This is about selling/reselling.
6. Sure, people feel the same about those; they have a similar risk. (sarcasm)
random mass shootings are so horrific that we should do something to make them less lethal. Even if focusing on hand guns instead would statistically save more lives.
>People should safely store their fire-arms, but they don't and guns get stolen and sold illegally, or used by their teenage child.
This is extraordinarily rare.
>People shouldn't point a gun at someone unless their life is in danger and they're prepared to take a life, but they do and people get shot by accident, or road rage turns deadly.
Brandishing weapons is illegal in every state and not pointing the muzzle of a gun at anything you don't intend to destroy is basic gun safety.
>Not to mention the suicides. If you own a gun ideation can turn into action in less than 30 seconds and it can seem like a painless, easy way to go.
There's no evidence to suggest that gun ownership causes higher levels of suicide. Additionally, suicide isn't a crime.
> men who owned handguns were eight times more likely to die of self-inflicted gunshot wounds, and women who owned handguns were more than 35 times more likely to kill themselves with a gun
Emphasis mine. This says nothing about suicide rates, just suicide by gun rates.
Yes, people who own guns are more likely to kill themselves with a gun. This is obvious.
People who own stairs are more likely to fall down the stairs. People who have a dog are more likely to be bitten by a dog. Etc, etc.
You can't compare suicide rates between countries. Too many confounding factors.
But you can compare suicide rates between people in the same state who are gun owners and not. They did and it turned out that gun owners have 4 times higher risk of suicide (by any method) than others.
> You can't compare suicide rates between countries. Too many confounding factors.
You can just as easily compare suicide rates as you can compare murder rates (which gun control advocates are inclined to do). Of course, you are right about confounding factors, which is why we should be careful about the conclusions we draw. However, I think we can safely conclude that the presence or absence of guns may not be the only factor in determining the suicide rate.
> But you can compare suicide rates between people in the same state who are gun owners and not. They did and it turned out that gun owners have 4 times higher risk of suicide (by any method) than others.
Not really much better than comparing across countries. There is more in common between these two groups, but it still isn't some randomized control trial.
CCW holders have a much lower crime rate than those without. Does that mean that if we take away their permits (and their guns) those same individuals will commit more crime? Probably not.
Likewise, while taking away guns probably will have some influence on the suicide rate, I doubt very much (or not as much as people think).
Not a scientific study, but having known gun owners who were either suicidal or successfully committed suicide, they tend to be the kind of people (men, typically) who carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. The suicidal tendencies come on strong when they feel either like they have failed the people who depend upon them, or that people don't need them anymore. Taking away their guns might keep them from committing suicide long enough for them to get help (or for the feeling to pass) but that is by no means a guarantee. We also cannot ignore the consequences of taking the guns: a psychological loss of agency, and potentially physical loss of security, etc. It's not a simple problem to solve.
> You can just as easily compare suicide rates as you can compare murder rates (which gun control advocates are inclined to do).
You can just as easily compare mass of the moon to temperature of the Sun or any two numbers really. By "can't" I meant that there's barely any reason to do it especially when pondering the influence of a single factor.
> However, I think we can safely conclude that the presence or absence of guns may not be the only factor in determining the suicide rate.
Yes. I hope nobody thinks it's the only factor determining suicide rates difference between the countries. Because I don't think there's a single observation that could indicate that it's the only factor.
> Not really much better than comparing across countries. There is more in common between these two groups, but it still isn't some randomized control trial.
Vastly better than comparing across countries. Especially if one of those countries is USA that is very different from other countries.
And it's randomized in a sense that there was no additional criterion other than gun ownership to separate two groups. The only other factors worth looking at would be the ones that correlate with gun ownership. Like being conservative for example. It might be that being conservative makes you more prone to suicide even if you don't own a gun. Further research is needed.
> Likewise, while taking away guns probably will have some influence on the suicide rate, I doubt very much (or not as much as people think).
If there's a 4 fold increase of the probability of suicide for people owning a gun then if you take the guns away, number of suicides in this group will drop by some significant amount (depending on how much of this increase comes from guns, and how much comes from factors that correlate with gun ownership). To keep the suicide rates roughly the same overall people who currently don't own a gun would have to start suicinding more because now there's nobody owning a gun and I can't imagine any possible mechanism that might cause it.
> We also cannot ignore the consequences of taking the guns: a psychological loss of agency, and potentially physical loss of security, etc. It's not a simple problem to solve.
I agree it's a thing that needs to be considered. However part of this sense of agency is agency to take their own lives in quick and simple fashion.
I think that in some cases stripping someone of sense of agency might be beneficial.
For the suicide to be attempted you don't only need to be depressed but also you need to feel enough agency to take your life.
Part of the problem with some of antidepressants is that they don't change your outlook on life but they give you energy. So the world still looks horrible but now you feel empowered to finally do something about it and you kill yourself.
But the argument about guns is not really about, let's ban guns to lower suicide rates. It's way more about, let's ban guns to prevent people who broke down from slaugtering dozen other people each.
> But the argument about guns is not really about, let's ban guns to lower suicide rates. It's way more about, let's ban guns to prevent people who broke down from slaugtering dozen other people each.
True enough. So while I could carry on with the debate about suicide, I think it would be more productive to respond to this argument.
By virtually every measure banning guns to prevent mass shootings is a terrible idea.
There are (conservatively) 80 million gun owners, and hundreds of millions of guns in the US. It would be completely impossible to take all of those guns, or to ban the sale of new ones, and even if you could that would still be depriving tens of millions of citizens a right guaranteed to them by the constitution for no fault of their own.
You might argue it is worth depriving citizens of this right if it improves public safety. The evidence is not in favor of this position. This right is not simply some mere hypothetical right to overthrow tyrants, but the right to self defense (including the effective means of that defense). Reasonable estimates (produced by the CDC) put the number of defensive gun uses per year in the hundreds of thousands. If you look at the rates of homicide by state, and compare that with the rates of gun ownership in that state, you find that the correlations are (weakly) negative. The places in this country that have the worst homicide rates also have the strictest gun laws.
Mass shootings, while horrific, are a tiny fraction of the total number of homicides in this country. We definitely must address mass shootings, but our plans must be both realistic and not compromise the safety of many thousands more.
There are no doubt many factors that contribute to the occurrence of mass shootings. However, one of the biggest factors that contributes to the deadliness of mass shootings is the presence of gun free zones. The vast majority of mass shootings happen in gun free zones, and the evidence suggests that the average number of deaths in mass shootings is arguably much lower if there is an armed citizen putting up a defense.
If you want an evidence-based piece of legislation that would curb mass shootings, the elimination of gun free zones should be at the top of your list. It would certainly reduce the average body count of these events. It also stands to reason that if you don't have as many people dying from such events, the appeal of committing a mass shooting (to someone who is seeking fame and a sense of control by killing lots of people) is going to go down considerably.
> By virtually every measure banning guns to prevent mass shootings is a terrible idea.
Except the single most important one. That it worked in every country that did this in response to mass shootings.
> depriving tens of millions of citizens a right guaranteed to them by the constitution for no fault of their own
If you actually cared about the constitution itself not the fairly modern interpretation reinforced by lobbying group paid with money from gun manufacturing industry, you'd be strongly advocating for the state governents to have right to equip and maintain armed forces independent of federal goverment. Bacause that was the letter and the intention of the second amendment while it was written.
It was not about citizens owning guns. It was about states owning sufficient army to counter federal governemnt if it descended into tyranny.
> Mass shootings, while horrific, are a tiny fraction of the total number of homicides in this country. We definitely must address mass shootings, but our plans must be both realistic and not compromise the safety of many thousands more.
However mass shooting are a thing that very large percentage of people is not willing to accept as the cost of increased security. Especially since any security benefits of having country drowning in guns and ammo are very hard to prove conclusively.
> The places in this country that have the worst homicide rates also have the strictest gun laws.
It doesn't really matter if a person can cross state border with a gun that is easily and cheaply available with zero hassle on the other side of the border.
> Except the single most important one. That it worked in every country that did this in response to mass shootings.
Specify what you mean by "worked". There is little evidence that these regulations had any appreciable impact on homicides or other crimes.[1]
> If you actually cared about the constitution itself not the fairly modern interpretation reinforced by lobbying group paid with money from gun manufacturing industry, you'd be strongly advocating for the state governents to have right to equip and maintain armed forces independent of federal goverment. Bacause that was the letter and the intention of the second amendment while it was written.
The large majority of funding for gun rights activism comes from grass roots donors[2]
Your interpretation of the constitution has no basis. Let's go over the top 3 reasons why:
1. The text specifically says "the right of the people" (emphasis mine). The Bill of Rights is pretty explicit about specifying rights which apply to the people and those which specifically deal with the rights of states.
2. Militia has historically included every able-bodied male of fighting age, not just state militias, and this definition is even encoded in the federal law in United States Code Title 10 section 246
3. There is no evidence to suggest that disarming the American population was even conceivable in the early republic, and the kinds of arms that were privately owned at the time of the revolution included warships with canons.
I really must ask: what (in your opinion) would have to change about the text of the 2nd amendment for it to mean what I think it means?
> However mass shooting are a thing that very large percentage of people is not willing to accept as the cost of increased security. Especially since any security benefits of having country drowning in guns and ammo are very hard to prove conclusively.
I didn't say we had to accept mass shootings, just that our response should not be a knee-jerk reaction to media firestorms that fail to achieve their objective or even result in more overall deaths (not to mention a more authoritarian state). We've already accepted a stupid amount of security theater due to media-driven panics - let's not continue the trend.
> It doesn't really matter if a person can cross state border with a gun that is easily and cheaply available with zero hassle on the other side of the border.
Why aren't there more murders in the state the gun was purchased?
Did you hear that NRA convention was a gun-free zone?
Apparently they were banned because vice president was there and that was the requirement of his security entourage.
So representative of the federal government forbade law abiding citizens from carrying a gun within the premises. Somehow there was no opposition to that.
Even if this convention was a "gun-free" zone in the normal sense (i.e. a lightly guarded school or shopping mall) gun owners are fairly orderly and law-abiding folk. They generally don't rebel against authority and carry guns into gun-free zones, even it objectively puts them at greater physical risk.
But this does not sound like normal circumstances. The whole problem with gun-free zones is that there is often no one close enough to provide an armed response to a mass shooter. As the saying goes "when seconds count, the cops are minutes away". An event with actual security (presumably Secret Service) there is an entirely different tradeoff.
I don't know the security details for that event, but presumably there are security plans that would assure most gun owners of their safety. Is your plan to provide that level of security to all gun-free zones?
As is mass shootings, when considering the population…what’s different is that all murder/suicides are now perfectly announced to everyone, almost instantly.
This problem needs several factors to resolve, and perfectly doing all of them (hardening soft targets, mental health response, reduction in the availability of guns, intervention in situations of parental abuse and neglect) will still not, 100%, make the problem go away. It’s a factor of a large population, people with a moral/ethical gap - possibly due to external factors, with ready access to very effective tools, broadcast to a passive population instantly - which brings revenue to the media.
Interesting that you would call it freedom of assisted movement -- don't you think that the arms the founding fathers had in mind weren't mass-produced in the state they are in now?
Maybe that’s a problem? Sure, it’d be easy for the conversation to devolve into ‘you can say what the government trains you to say’, but everyone knows you can’t yell ‘fire’ in a theatre.
Are you required to know basic knife safety to buy a knife? Fire safety to buy a lighter?
The age gate means that society at one point thought that basic gun safety would be learned before a certain age or maturity would set in or something like that. Society is what has changed.
Great news from Canada. Freeze put in place for handguns and mandatory buy back of assault rifles.
(Also as a side note to Moderators - some people in this thread are unnecessarily flagging comments that supports gun control. Lot of people speak about free speech , hope that is practiced here.)
Guns are built with a purpose. The purpose is to kill someone.
So it is not difficult to comprehend why Government needs to make it difficult to buy a gun more than it is difficult to buy medicine.
But there are people who propose to remove all restrictions instead to acquire guns. To take it to its logical conclusion that is how wild Wild West used to be. No police no governance no authority.
Now question is this. Which option seems more sane to you? You decide.
The point of a gun is that it's a simple machine that works when you need it. Geofenced microcontroller safeties somewhat compete with this and would not be a popular idea.
I’ve seen plenty of sci-fi that leads me to believe that the future of this is some sort of finger print reader on the trigger that only allows the designated shooter to shoot.
That’s already the reality. By definition the ruling class rules, this of course includes armed forces. All the privately owned weapons in the united states are a joke compared to the weaponry possessed by state.
If private weapons were a threat to the state, they would not be allowed.
This is exactly what happened during the civil war. Union army was reluctant and refused to engage in combat, letting Confederate forces withdraw instead. Some yahoo ambushed a well known Union Officer and killed him to support the confederacy and the gloves came off.
Imagine how quickly knowledge of this sort of incident would spread in todays world vs 1861.
No, you should just dig a large hole in the ground and toss your guns in there and burry them. That's what other countries did and it worked for every single one.
Don't be scared about tyrrany. You already have it in the form of two party system ruled by the homogeneous clique of oligarchs.
Sure, create an environment for black market cartridges. Turn every hunter into a criminal. Forget standards on these black market cartridges so they are blowing up in people's guns.
All those things you listed are very bad and it's actually super scary how they are all together still less bad than whole country drowning in abundant, cheap and safe ammunition.
Is it? What empirical evidence do we have that mandatory veganism or outright banning of cars would be a net positive, let alone feasible? To me those two ideas sound like perfect examples of the non-empirical lofty ideals that the previous comment was rejecting in the very first sentence.
Not empirical because there's no money to fund such studies, but: Mandatory veganism would almost certainly significantly reduce the healthcare (and food) costs for a society by a large fraction. Banning cars would make the air cleaner, remove a bunch of health problems, and facilitate more social forms of travel which would help form a more cohesive society and probably would reduce a lot of problems which arise from modern urban isolation.
I'd personally like to live in a society where people were mostly vegan, there were no cars, and there were no firearms.
Whether or not we should force that is another question, but it sure sounds nice.
Yes, as I pointed out in an answer to a sibling comment, the effects of global veganism and car-lessness could indeed be positive—that's why they are lofty ideals. My answer was challenging the suggestion that “the same argument” from the original commenter could be used to argue for mandatory veganism or the banning of cars. In other words, the forced bit.
Not advocating for it but _eventual_ transition to veganism would definitely be a net positive (lower carbon emissions, land and water use, horrors of factory farming, mental health of the factory workers, exploitation of immigrant labor, etc.). Most of the arguments I've seen from the Veganism movement seem to have sufficient scientific backing.
Yes, that is surely the case. Likewise, a great reduction in the need for cars and their usage would also be a net positive for society and the environment. However, what I was challenging was the assertion that mandatory veganism or banning cars were comparable to effective gun regulation as policies based on empirical evidence instead of lofty ideals.
Veganism to reduce carbon emissions and animal suffering, a car-less society to improve communities and public health, and the right to bear arms for the security of a free state are all lofty ideals. However, we have no examples or reasons to believe that enforcing the first two by decree is even feasible, nor can we imagine the unpredictable side effects. On the other hand, there are many examples of states where gun ownership is heavily regulated, restricted, or virtually banned which however remain secure and free and with no obvious downside.
Before fire arms being invented people took other's lives with knives, swords or clubs. Or poison. Or bare hands. What makes you think that not owning a gun will make people less murderous?
The problem is that USA is already full of unlicensed guns and very specific gun ownership culture. In countries with relatively easy access to guns and low number of similar (Czech Republic comes to mind), gun ownership and it's culture were build on diffrent foundation, so you can't just copy this solutions to USA.
In Czech Republic you need an exception to buy something like AR-15, however the exception is quite easy to get. Long weapons magazines are limited to 10 rounds.
But most importantly, in order to buy a gun you need to get a license. This means medical check, passing a theory test, passing a psychological test and passing a practical test at the shooting range. It's not trivial at all.
The culture is completely different to US. Everyone is keeping their weapons in a safe. No bedside tables, car glove boxes or other nonsense. I've never heard of a child taking their parents' gun.
Granted, but culture changes, and in fact even if you were to focus exclusively on the mental health angle, you would have to leverage changing culture to make an impact grand enough.
Qua guns, teenagers in other countries don't have easy access to concealable firearms. Dad doesn't have one, and you can't waltz into a store around the block to get one.
Their argument is gonna be that people will find other ways to kill. Maybe invest in a system that makes people less likely to murder an innocent croud? Wonder what could do that... Better education? Better mental health facilities? Lesser access to the easy people kill machine?
Cars are not intended to kill people, it's an unintended side effect of an otherwise useful machine without which it's pretty hard to imagine modern life.
Guns are exclusively designed to take lives. Would be useless without their ability to effectively kill things, and most humans outside of America don't think it's important for civilians to be armed.
And guns aren't intended to kill children in the halls of an elementary school, but here we are. Intended use isn't a relevant part of the conversation, it's cost/benefit. We pay a cost, we get a benefit. Cars cost lives. Legal guns cost lives. Vending machines cost lives. If 10,000 people a year died from vending machines, we'd be having the same conversation as we are with guns, even if their intended use is handing out snacks
We as a society need to decide where our line is with all of these things. Just because someone has a different line than you doesn't mean they are devaluing the cost, they may just place greater value on the benefit.
> most humans outside of America don't think it's important for civilians to be armed
Most people outside of America think strict religious laws are a good idea. So what?
They may not be meant to kill, but they are clearly designed to kill.
They have the same essential design as most low-caliber rifles that are explicitly designed for hunting - i.e., designed for killing.
That design came from centuries of seeking more efficient, efficacious ways to kill with guns.
Sure, they're tweaked to be optimal for very formalized, competitive shooting, not military combat, but they'd still serve very well for executions, sniping, and the like.
-60 percent or more US states have no gun registration, I know as I live in Indiana which changed to a no gun registration state despite objections from their own citizens and cops.
-Among religious right guns are seen as a male status symbols
-Can we cure this economically by requiring liability insurance in addition to gun registration? It work by, if you have a past history of danger signs then you would be accessed via insurance companies the largest liability insurance price of owning a gun. Similar to vehicle registration and liability insurance
Liability insurance just means rich people have guns. the people who would most benefit from guns for self defense, low income people in high crime areas, would be excluded from gun ownership due to excessive costs. The police also aren't the answer as they have no duty to actually protect you, and have shown repeatedly that they will simply wait for overwhelming force while a shooter is killing people.
Gun registrations just tell the government, or anyone who can access the registration where to get guns. Registrations don't stop anything and only serve to create more criminals from otherwise innocent people if they don't file paperwork on time. Also, in the U.S. any form of government list of people is heavily suspect regardless of guns, a vast majority of people simply don't want anything that can let the government easily track them. Social Security is barely tolerated for keeping massive amounts of seniors from starving to death, even then the creation of the SSN was hugely controversial.
I am deeply supportive of the second amendment but liability insurance for guns seems like a fantastic idea to me. Love in rural Montana and own a long rifle for hunting? You insurance is quite cheap. Live in Brooklyn, are 17 years old, and own a handgun? Quite expensive.
Unfortunately like automobiles all this would due is punish the honest people. The people who most should have this insurance just wouldn't buy it.
I know plenty of people driving around in CA without insurance.
People may have issues with the NRA, but their basic stance - enforcing existing gun laws - seems like a reasonable start. We haven’t even met that threshold yet.
Never, he means "constitutional carry" which is also a (tm) term from the NRA that really means, no permit needed to carry guns around. The police love this by the way (not).
> It's clear that this is the way Americans wish to live
That’s not clear at all. The US has more anti-gun-violence activists than anywhere else in the world.
There is some amount of friction, different in each country but not zero anywhere, between “what people want” and “what is the law”. Do you think North Koreans prefer living under a corrupt dictatorship? Why don’t they just make the dictatorship illegal?
That’s an extreme example of course: the US political system is closer to European-style proportional parliamentary systems than it is to North Korea, but it’s still very different from them, and in many meaningful ways is not actually a democracy.
The US has more anti-gun-violence activists than anywhere else in the world.
Because other people don't have this problem. And when you get right down to it, they have megaphones and placards, while their opponents have guns. Amazingly, the gun owners have more political power.
My views on gun ownership are complex and don't fit neatly into existing pigeonholes - I'm very much in favor of the right to own weapons, but also in additional social responsibilities that ought to accompany that. I have a lot of sympathy with the gun control crowd even though I disagree with many of their arguments, but the fact is their tactics are simply not working. Unfortunately they don't want to change their approach because they're so locked into the moral dimension of their argument that they're unwilling to consider any other approach. Likewise the 2nd amendment absolutists are so intransigent that they keep retreating to a hardline position of 'shall not be infringed! shall not be infringed!' and then complaining about how unreasonable their opponents are.
The US anti-gun movement seems to be more a part of the culture war than something founded in reality or that could ever lead to a healthy culture around guns, unfortunately. They seem to particularly like pointing to the country where I live (the UK) as proof that their measures work whilst misleading people about what the UK's strict gun laws actually restrict and then pushing for almost the exact opposite. They insist that pooor rural conservatives are deluded if they think guns help with self-defense, but that the powerful, wealthy Hollywood celebrities with the correct political views using their power and wealth to push for gun controls should absolutely get to keep their armed security using utterly nonsensical arguments that are treated as obviously right by the media. (This doubly wouldn't fly in the UK - it's not a legal reason to own or carry a gun and the kinds of guns they use are basically completely outlawed for private individuals.) They're proud of their ignorance of even the most basic aspects of what they want to regulate, and the media supports them in that worldview and spins caring about the actual facts as a sneaky pro-gun trick.
It basically boils down to everything, but for example the post-Dunblaine total gun ban that US gun control advocates point to was actually a total ban on handgun ownership - when they've been pushing heavily on the idea that rifles are obviously more dangerous than handguns and that it's nuts for them to be less heavily restricted. It's basically only the pro-gun side who seems to argue handguns are more of a problem, even though they do seem to be overall in the US too. (It'd also mean no more private armed security for left-wing Hollywood celebrities, an idea prominent gun control supporters dislike.) They get close sometimes for a moment, for instance the UK does have stricter gun licensing than the US - but we also let 14 year olds get gun licenses to create a culture where guns are seen as tools which can be used by those who show they can be trusted with them, something which would be unthinkable to US gun control supporters. (Until quite recently I don't think there even was a lower age limit.) They also like to point to scary-looking black small-calibre bolt action rifles as examples of guns too dangerous even to be sold to 18 year olds; as far as I can tell that's typically what a 14 year old would use as their first gun both here and in the US. It's outside my and most UK resident's area of personal experience of course, which is one big difference from the US.
Honestly, a lot of the UK stuff seems to almost have more in common with US gun owner culture than their anti-gun campaigners, though obviously organisations like the NRA would not be happy at all with UK levels of gun ownership restrictions. The fact that self-defence is not a valid reason to have a gun or any other weapon here would also be unacceptable to pretty much everyone in the US from what I can tell, not to mention unconstitutional. (This includes stuff like pepper spray.)
Interesting, thank you! I'm confused about the lisence for 14 year olds though. If it's a total gun ban how do they obtain rifles? Are they just licensed to shoot at a range that owns the guns? Also, when you say small caliber, do you mean .22s? I think the most lambasted rifle here is far and away the AR-15 which is (correct me if I'm wrong) .762 or .556.
> I think the most lambasted rifle here is far and away the AR-15 which is (correct me if I'm wrong) .762 or .556.
You're pretty close. Those rounds are measured in millimeters instead of caliber, so they should be 7.62mm (really 7.62x39mm or 7.62x51mm) and 5.56mm. The equivalent in calibers is .30 and .223. Notably, .223 is also an actual round and some rifles can fire either .223 or 5.56 (iirc, the cartridges are the same dimensions, but the pressure ratings are different).
AR-15's are typically chambered in 5.56mm. An AR style rifle chambered in 7.62x51mm would be an AR-10. Although you can get AR platform rifles chambered in pretty much whatever you want, going all the way up to .50 BMG. It's pretty uncommon to see anything like that, though.
It's not actually a total gun ban even though American campaigners like to call it that - rifles are still legal to own and keep at home, with restrictions, and although under-18s can't buy them it's perfectly legal for them to be gifted or lent one so long as they have the appropriate license. (Unlike in the US I think you generally have to be licensed just to own or use a gun, which is why giving licenses to 14 year olds is necessary. Currently, gun-owing adults in the US don't need to get gun licenses for their 14 year olds to take this approach to teaching their kids to respect guns because it's purchasing that's restricted, but if the US introduced UK-style licensing with the existing age limit of 18 or even 21 they wouldn't be able to - and I just don't think there's the political will to give gun licenses to under-18s.) The UK does have a really strict handgun ban though, with even shooting ranges not allowed to own them for use within the range anymore. Also, I really do mean that US gun control campaigners have been fearmongering about bolt-action .22 LR rifles because some of them are black and scary-looking, and as far as I can tell thinking that this is stupid is outside the range of acceptable pro-gun-control viewpoints.
> It'd also mean no more private armed security for left-wing Hollywood celebrities
Where does this strawman come from? Can you imagine the negative publicity if celebrity's bodyguard shot and killed someone? How often do you think celebrities are assaulted by attackers armed with guns?
Celebrities who choose to be in the public eye should not be allowed to be protected by people with firearms that the same celebrities campaign against.
As another outsider, I can remember seeing reports of mass shootings in the US every year or two for the last 30 years or so. Each time I thought "this time they have to do something" and yet the pattern continues. So to me it also seems "clear" that there isn't _enough_ will in the US to act on this.
Yes. There is even precedent in other western countries. Australia radically restricted its gun ownership laws after a single high profile massacre. This was done by a conservative government no less! The same one that followed the USA into Afghanistan and Iraq.
If you look at rates of violence over time, the gun laws you're talking about had no effect. Violence continued to decrease at the same rate it did before.
It is extremely challenging to look at gun violence/firearm homicides in Australia, because the numbers are already so low that drawing statistical correlations is difficult if you're being responsible.
That being said. America, 300M people. 19,000 firearm homicides last year. Australia, 20M people, 27.
> This was done by a conservative government no less!
It is entirely consistent. Law and order is something conservatives claim to support, so it is logical to want to remove instruments of crime and disorder. The fact that we can find it surprising now tells more about the intellectual trajectory of conservatives over the years. To the point that modern mainstream “conservatives” would have been seen as quasi-fascist rabid nationalists just 20 years ago.
They have and they do. If you recall, there were marches and protests across the US after the Parkland school shooting.
However, there are 50+ Senators, disproportionally representing low population, rural states, that are beholden to the NRA and its illegal funding and mis/dis-information campaigns.
There are Senators today suggesting that schools be turned into prison-like places (Cruz with his "one door in and out" nonsense), that others are suggesting arming teachers, while ignoring the fact that the school protection officer and local law enforcement engaged the murderer in this school shooting but failed to apprehend or stop him and the SWAT team took 40 minutes to engage the murderer and eliminate the threat.
People have been marching and protesting and demonstrating continuously and yet there is a specific party, the Republicans, and specific lobby groups, that have stopped any change.
> However, there are 50+ Senators, disproportionally representing low population, rural states, that are beholden to the NRA and its illegal funding and mis/dis-information campaigns.
Well, there's the political interpretation (NRA lobbying) and the factual interpretation as well: "low population rural states" i.e. where guns are used for hunting & self-defence (low population but also huge, so low density, so the nearest police/neighbours are so far away you can't always rely on their help)
> If enough people actually cared about this, then you’d have people marching on the capitol, like after a certain president was not re-elected.
THANK YOU! Say what you will about those supporters but the fact they went that far to support something they believed in (albeit dumb honestly) is admirable.
Meanwhile the people with actual good values are just sharing senators' edgy tweets thinking that makes a difference.
There's nothing admirable about the January 6th attackers. Do you also admire the 9/11 hijackers? How about the gunman in this most recent school shooting? These are all "true believers".
Most people exist in the expansive middle ground between regurgitating Tweets and insurrection.
> If enough people actually cared about this, then you’d have people marching on the capitol, like after a certain president was not re-elected.
People do care, and they do protest and march, and like most protests anywhere it does not change anything. Sorry but you seem to have a very naive view of the effectiveness of protests.
By the way, the pro-Trump protests didn’t achieve anything either (other than furthering the US’s slide into bitter ultra-partisan division and total erosion of trust in institutions). Notably, they did not successfully enable Trump to remain president. So what is your point?
That amendment was written back when a gun was more powerful than words or information, and when gun ownership was more prevalent and necessary.
In our modern day information, speech, and and privacy are the guns that ensure rights are not stomped on. It’s no longer the wild wild west.
To think that rules written hundreds of years ago never need to be changed is spitting in the face of our founders who realized that the process of amendments are necessary because things change. The irony is that people are defending the second amendment by claiming it cannot be amended.
By the time the KGB come knocking at your door it’s already over.
What we need is an amendment guaranteeing our right to encryption and privacy, so that the KGB won’t even know which door to knock on.
Back then your arms were pretty well matched against the government. Today, not so much. Civilians and their small arms are no match for the KGB or modern US military. If we really wanted a way to check the physical power of the US military we’d need a bit more than some semi automatic rifles. They are literally in their current form just play things for the wealthy who don’t want to give up their gun hobby, and liabilities for the rest of civilian society due to the criminally insane.
January 6th is somewhere in the neighbourhood of the kind of scenario your referencing.
Ubiquitous guns change the equation for all kinds of theoretical events. They may be a boon in the "armed populous saves country from corrupt gov't" case, and a curse in another case.
Were a more extreme version of Jan 6th to occur in the future, adding civilian firearms into the mix may not be a good thing.
The only person shot was an unarmed terrorist that, after repeated warnings not to proceed, while attempting to break through a barrier that was keeping a mob away from elected representatives, broke through that barrier.
I think it shows remarkable restraint by the security and protection officers that more people weren't shot on January 6th.
And it is untrue that "civilians" "chose" not to bring guns. There were numerous people that had preparations to be armed and were actively working to that end.
Untrue, there was no warning. Crowd was let in (there is security footage of this), funneled to a location, and a killzone was setup without their knowledge. The antifa person filming the death was the only person hurling threats in that specific interaction. Both hands of the civilian shot were visible when climbing through the window. Officer could have arrested when she made it through. I guess we're for shooting on sight now.
> I think it shows remarkable restraint by the security and protection officers that more people weren't shot on January 6th.
Yes let's praise cops for not killing more unarmed civilians than they did, very high bar!
> there were numerous people that had preparations to be armed and were actively working to that end.
What a long way to say they didn't bring guns to the event. Any CCW holder has preparations to be armed.
> sedition
Point to a case, noone is being tried for sedition, only trespassing.
The parent post pointed out that an armed population could prevent a dictator from taking power.
I'm saying it's also possible that a portion of an armed population could be manipulated by a dictator to seize power.
And there are lots of other ways this ubiquity of guns change things. Some positive, some negative. If we're talking about a theoretical rebellion then we should also talk about different types of rebellions.
The point I'm trying to get across is that there are many different theoretical scenarios for revolutions and rebellions, beyond the one scenario the parent comment theorized, or events similar in spirit to the American Revolution.
For example, the degraded ability for society to agree on what is true may be an avenue for a hostile state to cause civil unrest. That scenario may play out better for the targeted society if the population is not widely armed.
Nothing that said dictator would need support from the military (which has demonstrated it is not necessarily keen to go that route), how well will your "well armed" people fare against well trained soldiers with, um, "tanks" (using tanks here as a catchall for all their weapons.)?
Ah yes, the "the gov. is too powerful so what's the point of fighting tyranny" talking point.
The tank premise is almost as stupid as Biden's nukes / jets threat against the American people.
A country is not going to carpet bomb, send tanks in, or nuke its own people / land.
It takes a lot of brainwashing to get your soldiers to do that to their own people and direct force like that will lead to instant revolts.
What is much more likely is a KGB like secret police that goes around black bagging people, etc. You're much less likely to be able to do that when you know the civilian population has more guns than your secret police.
We only have more anti-gun-violence activists because we have more gun violence. I forget where we are on the murders per capita scene, but I think we rank somewhere around Uruguay and Cameroon.
Great company while pretending to be "the leader of the free world."
I never claimed we are the leader of anything, and in fact I explicitly said that the US is not a democracy by many meaningful definitions of that word.
I am the furthest thing from a US ultra-patriot who thinks we’re the greatest country in the world, so please don’t ascribe other people’s opinions to me.
Tangent: other than their moderately elevated murder rate, what’s wrong with Uruguay? Is that supposed to be an example of some kind of uniquely shitty country by global standards? (It’s a bad one, if so — Uruguay is a wealthy and highly developed liberal democracy.)
What specifically makes you assume that the US should be doing substantially better than Uruguay or be held to a higher standard?
I never specifically mentioned you, and I was referencing the rhetoric from our hyper-partisan anti-American "patriots" who fervently believe that the US is #1 in virtually everything.
> That’s not clear at all. The US has more anti-gun-violence activists than anywhere else in the world.
Well, you don’t really need activists if you don’t really have a problem. So it is not really surprising that countries with saner gun control policies have fewer activists.
Also, the number of activists does not correlate with the opinion of the people overall. Even though the US is not perfectly democratic, the situation does seem to reflect how a majority of states and a large fraction of the people want to live. This is utterly terrifying to us watching from the other side of the pond, but that’s the way it is.
I don't want gun violence, but I 100% want the 1986 National Firearm Act repealed.
I believe fully automatic assault weapons and machine guns should be available for purchase, new, just like any other weapon. (Fully automatic weapons are legal to buy and own right now in the US, if you pay a $200 stamp tax and wait 9 months for the ATF to process the paperwork, but you can only buy "NFA" regulated machine guns that were registered in 1986 or before ... which means they're all collectors items now, and the cheapest machine guns are $15-20k and up).
Most people I know would like to see the existing laws enforced, and don't want anything new passed or put in place.
I know you’re being facetious, but
It’s fun to point out that you can purchase an Apache if you can find a government to tell you one.
The missiles are separately regulated, and likely not legal for private ownership. Missiles and high explosives are licensed and legislated for separately.
Any weapon that’s part of a standard infantry soldiers load out should be available, new from the manufacturer. I don’t have a problem with the background checks that are required for a class 3 weapon, like an m16 or a Thompson sub machine gun (https://dealernfa.com/product-category/machine-guns/all-tran...), but as it stands only wealthy people can still afford to purchase them.
> The missiles are separately regulated, and likely not legal for private ownership. Missiles and high explosives are licensed and legislated for separately.
So we -can- put limits on the ownership of weaponry, then?
I would also like to see my children grown up. I’m aware that insane/evil people will do awful things, but that you don’t suppress the rights of everyone to stop one or two bad apples.
In my local community groups I see people demanding metal detectors be installed in our schools.
This is in response to: An attempted murderer being chased by police, going into a school he doesn’t belong in, barricading himself inside and murdering children.
It’s feel good security theater. If you’re in the middle of a killing spree you’re not going to stop because of a metal detector. If you’re dealing with kids bringing weapons to school, that’s different — but the responses to this event from people local to me are about 90% make-believe security.
To use a real world example: Columbine was a failed school bombing because their detonators didn’t work because the product they used for the detonator’s changed between their testing and when they purchased the final “real” devices.
The guns were intended to keep everyone terrified and in place until the bombs could kill everyone.
A fluke manufacturing change to the product (I think a clock) between their detonator tests and their actual attack is the only thing that stopped nearly everyone in the school from being killed that day. They even set a bomb outside of the school to kill the first responders when they arrived — again, it was a horrible tragedy, but what happened was so much less than what was intended.
As a foreigner, I have an impression that americans can buy a gun at 18, but cun buy a cigarette at 21. Maybe I’m wrong, but still... Call me an “old-timer” but I do think you could use better psychological tests before letting them buy a gun.
I've noticed your eight comments in this thread to date are fairly declarative but aren't well founded or sourced, simply assertions and often appear to be incorrect as responding comments have shown.
Clearly, you and I both support the second amendment. However, we should recognize when our support of certain associate claims aren't well founded. Bearing arms and being part of a well-regulated militia are American civil rights granted by the Bill of Rights. Purchasing those arms isn't a civil right.[0]
A ban on the purchasing of arms would definitely infringe on people's individual right to keep and bear them. Yes, an individual right, which is how 18th-19th century courts and political commentators viewed the 2nd before the 20th century "militia only" narrative.
This is the problem. When it comes to abortion, there's a notable portion of the populace (including Supreme Court Justices) that say "well it doesn't literally and explicitly call that out in the Consitution so no, it's not a guaranteed right".
... then when it comes to guns... "Well, of course it includes _purchasing_ those arms, even if it doesn't explicitly and literally say so, because it'd be hard to bear them otherwise, so it somehow _must_ guarantee that, too!"
As far as I can tell the author is just making the tired militia argument while pretending to support an individual right. "Americans have a right to defend their homes". Defend their homes with what exactly? He immediately moves on to hunting weapons and the right to hunt. So according to the author, we have the right to own fudd guns, and the right to self defense (but not with guns, and not outside our home). Yawn!
>Bearing arms and being part of a well-regulated militia are American civil rights granted by the Bill of Rights. Purchasing those arms isn't a civil right.
"Voting in elections is a civil right granted by the Bill of Rights. Access to a polling station isn't a civil right."
That's effectively what you're saying. Rights enshrine access. Things like poll taxes, voter ID, etc. have all been declared unconstitutional because they infringe upon your right. Banning purchasing arms falls in the exact same category.
Words change in meaning over time. The second amendment has been hit hard by that. In the time period: "Regulated" means up to a particular standard of strength. This is why British regulars were called "regulars," because they had a particular set of equipment. "Militia" referred to the pool of people who could be called to defend the country. In 1776, that meant men of fighting age (14-60). This is different than the voting population, who were specifically landed men, or the population of citizens. In other words, the second amendment called for a fighting-age male population that was as well-armed as the military.
This is why DC vs Heller was decided in the way it was. The "well-regulated militia" before the comma meant something totally different than its current meaning.
As an aside, I think that most modern military weapons should be banned, but that is actually not what the 2nd amendment calls for. The right solution to the problem is to amend the constitution, not try to pass gun control laws and see what a court will approve.
This has been discussed at great length many many times and courts nor anyone serious about this topic agrees with you. The right is not predicated on being part of a militia in any way. Anyone who says this is pretty much immediately ignored by gun owners because they are clearly not serious at all about the topic.
The Bill of Rights didn't "grant" any rights. It merely recognized some of the natural rights held by all free people, and prevented the government from infringing on those rights.
Got dozens of countries already light years ahead on this and they are operating perfectly fine without loads of gun violence despite similar rates of mental health issues.
Those other countries do not have similar rates of mental health issues, or similar social situations at all.
If you ignore guns entirely, the US still stands out from other countries with an extraordinarily high rate of non-gun violence. It's more accurate to say that the US has a violence problem in general.
If you're truly interested in solving the violence problem, perhaps examine why the US is such a statistical outlier. And also, perhaps, why other countries like Switzerland have such different outcomes while still having extremely high rates of private gun ownership.
Switzerland rules for firearms ownership are a lot more restrictive than the US (background check for everyone, no automatic weapons, etc), and although the percentage of guns per 100 people is higher than other countries, still is about 1/4 of the US where there are roughly 5 firearms every 4 people.
What limits, if any, does the 2nd amendment or the rest of the constitution place on the type of arms?
Eg should you be allowed to use
- pistols?
- rifles?
- machine guns?
- explosive / armour piercing bullets?
- grenades?
- nuclear bombs?
- chemical weapons?
- biological weapons?
Basically I’m asking where is the line drawn.
Because I don’t think the constitution sets such limits, no distinction for weapons of mass destruction, etc yet the country has found ways to limit people holding chemical weapons and more serious ordinance.
My thoughts on this... Considering the purpose and context of the 2nd, it essentially protects a contemporary citizen-soldier's "kit". The stuff he/she needs to join up in common defense with their community, which includes survival gear, protective gear, and of course, a weapon.
Today's citizen-soldier would carry an AR-15 or variant. If there's one modern gun protected by the 2nd, that's the one.
Still very fuzzy. Javelin missiles? Claymores? C4? Anti-personnel mines? Armored infantry transport vehicles with mounted machine gun? Armored infantry transport vehicles with small diameter turreted cannon? Counter-measures for their personal aircraft?
I mean, I feel like you're being purposefully obtuse in trying to make some kind of "see! There's limits to all rights" point. I gave you what I believe is a reasonable and straightforward philosophical approach to the 2nd amendment.
What does a typical modern day infantryman carry as part of a standard kit?
Not Javelins and anti-personnel mines, those are application- and mission-specific. A soldier doesn't just show up at the armory and load up with whatever high explosives they want; they have a standard issued set of gear, and then mission specific gear divided up among the squad.
Armored infantry transport with mounted machine gun and or cannon turret? Anti-air counter measures? I have no idea how that fits in an individual soldier's kit. At a minimum, they're not bearable arms.
It doesn't mean all those other specific items aren't protected, but if you want an answer on an item-by-item basis, I don't know what to tell you.
Yeah, there's some gray area there and grenades are probably the best example.
Separated from philosophical side of things, they are legal to own Federally at least, at $200 a tax stamp. I don't know anything about the jurisprudence wrt to destructive devices.
edit: Another example might be DU ammunition, but I don't know if that's something carried by your typical soldier. I think it's more often in large caliber crew-served and vehicle mounted weapons, but have no actual basis for that.
For what it’s worth I was really just trying to explore the concept and knead it in my mind a bit.
My actual opinion on the matter is that we need a national conversation and some sort of constitutional convention to decide more definitively what the purpose(s) of gun rights should be.
Note that I said “what purpose” rather than “what rights”. I think a lot of people (not everyone, but most) skip this part and go straight to “I want to own select-fire rifles” or “large capacity magazines should be banned” before answering what the allowable purposes of private gun ownership should be.
I think if we enshrine in the constitution the right to own/bear arms for enumerated purposes, that the details will naturally just fall out from that choice.
Some examples of what we could choose from (mix and match to your liking):
1) There is no purpose for private gun ownership of any kind.
2) People should be allowed to own guns for private museums/galleries; historical/scientific/artistic collections.
3) People should be able to own guns for sport target shooting (Olympic shooting, IDPA, etc)
4) People should be able to own guns for hunting.
5) people should be able to own guns to defend their homes.
6) People should be able to own guns to defend themselves when they are out and about.
7) People should be able to own guns to bolster national armory against foreign invasion.
8) People should be able to own guns to attempt to overthrow their own government if they deem it necessary.
For example, if someone picked only something akin to #2, then likely guns would have to have firing pins and/or parts of the trigger mechanism removed.
If the people chose to allow guns for sport, perhaps the government would store your privately owned guns for you at sporting facilities.
If the purpose of private gun ownership is to empower citizens to overthrow a tyrannical government, then no registration process should be warranted for destructive devices like javelins or SAM batteries.
It sounds like your limitations match most closely with #7. In which case it seems like if that was the ONLY purpose for private gun ownership it would be reasonable for the government to store your guns in their own local armories and allow you to pick them up in they declare a national defense event.
If purpose of private gun ownership is to allow me to defend myself when I’m out and about, perhaps I should be allowed to carry a pistol when I’m at the bar. While I’ve never personally been in a situation where I’ve said “You know what would have made that go better? If I had a gun.” … I’ve only gotten in situations close to that when I’ve been out drinking late at night. Not allowing me to defend myself at my workplace, school, or bar kind of defeats most of any personal protection objectives.
If the goal is to only allow home defense, perhaps we only need to allow long guns (rifles, shotguns) and can still ban handguns. Perhaps every casing could be serialized and every transaction recorded and annual inspections done for storage conditions and safety adherence.
> If the purpose of private gun ownership is to empower citizens to overthrow a tyrannical government, then no registration process should be warranted for destructive devices like javelins or SAM batteries.
This is non-sequitur to me. You're describing having the ability to immediately and effectively go to war with the US military and the entirety of the federal government. That's an absolute extreme. In reality, there would be A LOT of steps before that.
I'm in the #8 camp, but rephrased more generally to something I'm sure you've heard- People should be able to own guns to fight back against tyranny. At the absolute extreme, yeah, I'll admit that that includes potentially overthrowing the government, but in reality the scale is much much smaller.
Meaning, people should be able to own guns to bolster their community's defense from both foreign AND domestic threats. The few times that the 2nd Amendment has successfully been put in practice (wrt to fighting the govt), it was against corrupt local governments completely disconnected from any kind of heavy military hardware or active personnel.
I think stepping back and thinking about what "community defense" looks like, structurally, is a good exercise. You'll find that spread out in towns throughout the country, we have caches of equipment and weapons in local armories. In a "defense" emergency, that becomes the local "military gear co-op". A person provides what they can in the form of equipment, supplies, and weapons, and fills in the gaps with the armory. Other community members who are uh... overstocked... on guns and ammo give to the armory for others to use. Again, not at all limited to weapons and ammo, but that's what I'm focusing on here for the sake of simplicity.
--
Back to the extreme end- what does overthrowing a tyrannical federal government look like in reality? It doesn't just start out of nowhere with large scale conflict with the US military. It starts with balkanization, communities isolating, picking sides, pooling resources.... over time increasing violent attacks turning into gun fights, spread throughout the country. By the time a direct open conflict starts with a state or federal government, there is no single State or US military, there is no rule of law, and heavy military hardware is spread out among factions.
So while the 2nd Amendment might not be interpreted to mean "Your right to a SAM battery is constitutionally protected", if the extreme purpose of it becomes reality... you'll get your private SAM battery.
One last edit:
A non-exhaustive list of Things I think the 2nd Amendment (or the philosophy behind it) specifically protects:
- An infantryman's personal weapon (infantryperson? community defense is everyone's responsibility) and all equipment/accessories needed to maintain and operate it.
- Typical survival gear: backpacks, boots, mess kit, knives (bayonets! not just for stabbing; they're often multi-function tools), tents, etc
Taken from my nowhere-near-complete understanding of contemporary gear. In 200 years, replace "rifle" with "phased pulse blaster" and "body armor" with "personal energy shield" if we're still stupid enough to be going to war with each other then.
> What limits, if any, does the 2nd amendment or the rest of the constitution place on the type of arms?
“The constitution”, as a written document, doesn’t put any limits on anything, because it’s irrelevant in practice, and constitutional law is pure kayfabe.
The real constitution, in practice, is the rulings of the Supreme Court, which has absolutely unlimited latitude for “interpreting” the written document however it wants.
> Nothing in the constitution grants the supreme court this power.
Doesn’t matter. They have this power, in actually existing reality.
> Theoretically, congress could act to limit the purview of the supreme court at any time.
Sure, they could try. And the Supreme Court would strike down the law they pass. Then we’re in full-blown Venezuela-level constitutional crisis territory where nobody agrees who legitimately holds power, and it’s impossible to predict what would happen.
The idea seems mainly that the average person could be armed to the same degree as a standard infantryman. I think that setting that as an upper-bound could be reasonable. However, during the period of the American revolution, private citizens also owned warships with canons, so it's hard to say where the actual constitutional limit actually is.
Given the current makeup of the Supreme Court, and how they have been deciding cases recently, no one is exactly sure how to answer this question anymore. It will likely depend on how John Roberts and Amy Barrett are feeling when they hear upcoming 2a cases.
Prior to 2008, case law was pretty clear that all of these could be heavily restricted or regulated at the discretion of the state or the federal government, if they ever chose to. Prior decisions effectively gave states enough power to ban all guns if they chose to; DC's near-total gun ban was in effect from 1976-2008.
Yeah, this is the point of insanity; so long as people continue to believe this, there will be a school shooting in the US every few weeks. That's what people mean by "the US has chosen this".
The 2nd amendment does not actually say anything about purchasing. It could be 100 % satisfied with all sorts of kooky schemes that meet the letter of the law.
A 16 year old can be licenced to drive a car which is a potentially deadly killing machine.
A 17 year old can join the US Military today, use firearms, fight and die for their country and if needed; kill their own countrymen if politicians deem some citizens are a threat.
An 18 year old can vote and determine who should run the country then they go back to watching TickTok 24/7.
A 17 year old cannot have a beer.
There is something wrong with all of that, today driving a car, voting and entering the military should all be the age that is required to legally buy a beer.
24 is 6 extra years of maturing. That will save a lot of lives (not just mass shootings, but gang violence and suicides). And 24 better reflects reality in terms of adulthood.
Not only that, but it's palatable politically. As long as it goes with voting age and other rights, then gun owners are more likely to go along with it. Make some exceptions that work for young hunters, and people won't feel left out.
If anything, it's likely to see pushback from the left because they want lots of people voting from a young age. But I don't think the overall electoral decisions will be any worse by making people wait 6 more years. The left will just adapt and move on (e.g. more focus on struggling families and less on cultural/identity issues).
I have learned that some Americans consider it crucial to arm themselves in case there is a tyrannical government in the future. This seems nuts to almost everyone else in a first world country, and probably many other Americans. But these people, who are not in fact nuts or cretinous, actually believe this and consider it of paramount importance. In one sense, the point can't be argued.
My view: If the US population really wants to do something school shootings in the near term, then the physical layout of schools should be changed so that someone can't just walk in and shoot children. Does this make school look and feel like a dystopian prison? Yes. But that's the price of freedom, which probably shouldn't be born by dead primary school children. This strikes me as the only politically feasible solution right now.
Gun regulation seems likely to help and is a fairly logical solution, but too many people seem allergic to it, and there are already so many unregistered firearms out there. While we are dreaming, reshaping society so everyone is kinder and less likely to shoot each other is also likely to help.
Schools are already pretty buttoned up. But you would be hard pressed to secure them to the point where a shooter couldn't just blow away the first guard and walk right in. Similar to the grocery store shooting.
Even prisons need huge sally ports and clear zones to prevent stuff like ram raids and car bombs. Securing EVERY school this way would be nearly impossible. Especially since we can barely staff them in the first place.
The terrorist always has the advantage of picking the least fortified target. In addition they have the drop on the defenders. So unless we have teams of armed and armored QRF guards in ready rooms and a single entry gate at EVERY school we're still going to be vulnerable.
Then, even after we secure every school, the terrorist just waits at the first bus stop, walks on the opening doors, and then kills a busload of kids.
If we couldn't stop it in Iraq and Afghanistan with trillions of dollars of military hardware and surveillance, I don't seeing domestic terrorism being much easier. Especially with the prevalence of firearms and explosives in the United States.
You make good points, it would be difficult and expensive. An armed single entry gate was what I had in mind. But it wouldn't be completely useless or even harmful, like arming teachers would be.
It's also true that the shooter could just go the mall or a cinema and get a similar result. Attacking the school does seem to have a particular significance however.
> I have learned that some Americans consider it crucial to arm themselves in case there is a tyrannical government in the future. This seems nuts to almost everyone else in a first world country
Yet they continue to absolutely dominate the world, culturally and economically. Can't rule out the possibility entirely that we are nuts and they are not.
Please note that a lot of that dominance comes from a privileged position of being the only developed country in the world that wasn't devastated by endless strategic bombing during World War II. This led to the dollar becoming the reserve currency for the world, turbocharging its industry, and securing advantageous trade deals. In addition it is surrounded by allies, allowing it to safely engage in wars abroad to project economic power.
The US is struggling to keep this lead and will probably have difficulty maintaining it for another 10-20 years. That is, unless Asia and Europe decide to have another stupid war for some awfully stupid reason. Even then, it is unlikely the US would remain unscathed in such a case.
The culture of the US is often touted as its primary reason for success, but there is a great deal of doubt about this.
> I have learned that some Americans consider it crucial to arm themselves in case there is a tyrannical government in the future.
OK but you realize that some in this case is a small percentage. Most people just want to defend their homes from intruders, defend their property from animals, hunt a few days a year, plink on the weekends, or just don't want to turn in the cherished firearm that was passed down in the family.
I really don't know what most people want, but the armed civilian militia reason is espoused by multiple commenters on HN, so I assume it isn't that much of a fringe opinion. None of the reasons you list require automatic or semi-automatic rifles or eg. the arsenal the Las Vegas hotel shooter was carrying.
I guess it is possible that the reasons people actually want guns, and the reasons people say they must have guns may be different.
Gun registration wouldn’t have done anything to stop this shooting. A legal adult with no criminal record purchased the guns in advance of his rampage. A waiting period wouldn’t have worked, and his registration would have gone through because he hadn’t done anything yet.
A cursory glance at incarceration rates, deficit in access to healthcare, education, etc. enforced by supposedly colorblind legislation, the whole defended by a police that has roots in labor repression and racial policing does not help your position.
If the USofA really are one of the least racist countries on earth, it is more a damning condemnation of the world than a glowing review of this country.
I don't think the opinion of someone with no skin in the game, who only gets their information from the news, and doesn't know much about firearms to be worth all that much.
As an American I care about this. As a human I care about this. I'm surprised I have to say that.
I'm not asking you to care about anything. I don't actually care what you think or care about to be honest. But I would hope that jonp888 or you or anyone aren't told their tragedy doesn't matter or that it happens because they don't care themselves.
America and Americans have demonstrably done absolutely nothing for decades about what an outsider sees as a severe problem that must be fixed at all costs.
If America and Americans are not doing anything to fix the problem, they clearly can't think it's much of a problem.
This is an incredibly ignorant and dismissive comment that is demonstrably false.
My city has passed laws in direct response to local school shootings. The state of Idaho has enacted gun control laws that address specific shootings there. There are anti-gun demonstrations. The surviving Sandy Hook parents have made groundbreaking progress toward holding gunmakers liable for deaths caused by their products.
The examples are not hard to find.
This is a complex issue. We are trying. It is hard. Your dismissive comment isn't fair and it certainly isn't constructive or necessary.
No, but, your response is exactly what I think is wrong with the whole response.
> My city has passed laws in direct response to local school shootings.
School shootings, plural. In your city?
> The state of Idaho has enacted gun control laws that address specific shootings there.
Plural again.
> There are anti-gun demonstrations.
Plural. And apparently demonstrations are necessary to convince some people it’s a good idea.
> The surviving Sandy Hook parents have made groundbreaking progress toward holding gunmakers liable for deaths caused by their products.
You can’t hold gunmakers liable for deaths caused by their product, that’s literally what they’re made for.
I think it took only a single incident like this in any civilized country to have the entire national/federal government to go “you know what, lets ban/severely restrict this shit”. The US is the only country I know of that has literally hundreds of these incidents, and still hasn’t done anything significant.
Hell, maybe it won’t work, I’m open to that possibility, but doing anything is better than doing nothing. By doing nothing you implicitly indicate that this state of affairs is fine.
It’s just incredibly frustrating to see half of the responses to these kinds of threads always being “oh no, muh guns”, instead of “lets fix something”.
> No, but, your response is exactly what I think is wrong with the whole response.
I do not speak for any other commenter and I stand by my own comments in this subthread.
> School shootings, plural. In your city?
In this case I think it was one incident specifically. The tax on ammo and gun sales to fund gun violence research was as I recall a direct response to the Seattle Pacific University shooting. I may be drawing more of a connection there than lawmakers would claim. But the timing was consistent and the event helped push it through.
> Plural again.
Yes, there have been multiple mass shootings in Moscow, Idaho alone. The state board of education passed specific gun control laws to attempt to limit harm within their jurisdiction.
> Plural. And apparently demonstrations are necessary to convince some people it’s a good idea.
Yes, that's typically how democracy works and one of the reasons we have free expression.
> You can’t hold gunmakers liable for deaths caused by their product, that’s literally what they’re made for.
Actually we can hold any manufacturer liable for the harm caused by their products, even if that harm is the stated purpose. Also, that's not the only purpose of these weapons. They do have viable uses for both hunting and recreation. Also, I'm not sure that Remington did claim that their guns are intended to kill people. In any case the manufacturers can be held liable.
> I think it took only a single incident like this in any civilized country to have the entire national/federal government to go “you know what, lets ban/severely restrict this shit”.
This is a very specific definition of civilized that suits your opinion. No true Scotsman, etc.
The US Federal Government does not have absolute authority to enact its will on Americans. This is very deliberate and fundamental to our society. This does not make us powerless. Quite the opposite. California is able to be more progressive in their gun laws than they could be in a system with absolute federal power.
> The US is the only country I know of that has literally hundreds of these incidents, and still hasn’t done anything significant.
As I mentioned previously there are examples of significant action that has been taken, even recently. While our gun laws are not the most strict in the world they do exist and they are strengthening.
> Hell, maybe it won’t work, I’m open to that possibility, but doing anything is better than doing nothing. By doing nothing you implicitly indicate that this state of affairs is fine.
Well as I have now said repeatedly, we are doing something. Many somethings in fact. So your assertion that Americans are fine with this state of affairs is clearly false. This gets to the heart of what I have said here. I would hope nobody is told they don't care about the tragedy they are facing.
> It’s just incredibly frustrating to see half of the responses to these kinds of threads always being “oh no, muh guns”, instead of “lets fix something”.
I don't see how this line is relevant to anything I have said here. Nor how it justifies your replies.
> This is a very specific definition of civilized that suits your opinion.
Well certainly. I have to use what I consider civilized. It’s quite possible that our opinions on what constitutes that differ.
> The US Federal Government does not have absolute authority to enact its will on Americans. This is very deliberate and fundamental to our society.
> As I mentioned previously there are examples of significant action that has been taken, even recently.
> Well as I have now said repeatedly, we are doing something.
I think what it comes down to, for me, is that I just fundamentally cannot consider anything that doesn’t happen on the federal level significant.
Strict regulations on guns in one state/city are pointless if you can just drive over to the next and fill up. It also makes things needlessly complicated for gun owners.
My point is that while americans in a specific location may care, I cannot consider Americans (capital) to be doing something unless the federal government acts.
If you consider the fact that they cannot as ‘deliberate and fundamental’ to your society, and you’d rather have these shootings than infringe on that, then by all means. But I will never be able to understand that.
In my opinion the whole reason for the federal government to exist is that they can act in situations like these.
> Well certainly. I have to use what I consider civilized. It’s quite possible that our opinions on what constitutes that differ.
Is it your assertion then that the United States is not a civilized country?
> I think what it comes down to, for me, is that I just fundamentally cannot consider anything that doesn’t happen on the federal level significant.
Please do not attribute your ignorance to indifference on the part of Americans.
> Strict regulations on guns in one state/city are pointless if you can just drive over to the next and fill up. It also makes things needlessly complicated for gun owners.
Perhaps. It’s still a barrier. This is how the laboratory of democracy makes progress.
> My point is that while americans in a specific location may care, I cannot consider Americans (capital) to be doing something unless the federal government acts.
Semantics, moving the goal posts.
> If you consider the fact that they cannot as ‘deliberate and fundamental’ to your society, and you’d rather have these shootings than infringe on that, then by all means. But I will never be able to understand that.
Please don’t put words in my mouth. This is such a gross mischaracterization of my words that I can only assume it is deliberate.
> In my opinion the whole reason for the federal government to exist is that they can act in situations like these.
The US Federal Government operates on the rule of law. Not on your opinion.
> It's a simple problem that every other developed country has solved and they did it basically overnight decades ago.
If you read the rest of this thread you would know this isn't true.
You are posting disgusting, ignorant comments about a real problem that people (Americans included, we are people too) are working hard every day to solve. And those people are making real progress.
I'm confident and hopeful that in my lifetime I will see the Second Amendment repealed.
People should safely store their fire-arms, but they don't and guns get stolen and sold illegally, or used by their teenage child.
People shouldn't point a gun at someone unless their life is in danger and they're prepared to take a life, but they do and people get shot by accident, or road rage turns deadly.
Not to mention the suicides. If you own a gun ideation can turn into action in less than 30 seconds and it can seem like a painless, easy way to go.
And when everyone is armed everyone wants to be armed. Cops pull their guns quickly out of fear of armed criminals. Regular people want to own a gun because they feel like everyone else does, and they're now less safe unless they also get one.
Growing up outside the US I never saw any guns. I don't know of anyone who had a gun. I don't know of anyone who knew anyone who had a gun. I remember seeing military members in parades carrying guns because it was one of the few times I'd actually seen one. Cops didn't walk around armed. There are other ways to kill people but guns are an especially effective, intuitive, and easy way to do so.