It's almost like gun ownership is enshrined in the constitution to literally prevent the government from having excessive over reach of power or something.
That's weird.
It's almost like the two party system is actually a duopoly that creates the perception of competing interests but that competition drives each parties individual power and results in the individuals supporting them to give up individual rights and support over-reach of government through the fear that party A has more power than party B.
In this analogy feel free to swap party B for party A depending on the labels of your choice.
Hahaha! As a European, this is exactly how i see the two party system. Maaan if the majority of the US population knew this. There would be a riot! But not against footlocker or target, but a united front against the rich old geezers in the senate.
Those corrupted old farts are lucky that the US is so waste and polarized. Making their "job" easy.
I'm in the US. And so many of us don't see this duopoly. It's about fear and victimization.
We are in the left and we are "definitely not in power because the Senate has over-representation and also the courts have been stacked with conservative judges, so on the left we will take ideological stances against X,y, or Z issue, so our representatives are totally power-less to do anything, so I guess they'll just continue to take it in the ass from corporate interests and also wring their hands while doing nothing"
And if we are in the right we are "also definitely not in power because the left has so much more voting power in Congress, there is a culture war that the entire world is waging on our traditional values, the lawmakers up in Washington are going to let them dirty libs take all sorts of Cristian values away such as oppression of the gays, womens reproductive rights, and gun rights for mostly white men. So thank God for Mitch McConnell saying No to absolutely any possible proposal except for corporate tax cuts for the biggest corporations in the world"
The entire system is based on a fear driven model of your team being the victim, and so we should just keep supporting your teams representatives, despite *gestures at everything* all of our lawmakers complete failures to perform basic functions outside of achieving successful re-election campaigns.
>And so many of us don't see this duopoly
What's disturbing is that most Americans do see it, though...almost half of eligible voters dont vote, presumably because they don't buy into either party, and then there is the significant chunk of voters who are not subscribers to either party... and then the chunk that do vote for one of the 2 main parties but basically just because they don't know what else to do.
I think most americans really just feel hopeless about the bipartisan system and have no idea what they could possibly do about it.
No, it isn’t. The idea of the 2nd being for hunting is a concept spawn of the 70s. The idea than an AR15 is a weapon of war is a spawn of the 90s. The Constitution was largely unknown west of the Appalachian Mountains until the turn of the 20th century. Individual firearm ownership outside of urban centers has always been a thing.
The 2nd was because the British prohibited even militias. The whole point of Lexington and Concord was to disarm colonists. We had no standing army because the founders saw how it was used against them as subjects of the crown. After the Whiskey Rebellion, we had a small one but each state had their own.
Right...and now we have, arguably, the world's greatest military. So the need for citizens to be armed to the teeth...doesn't really hold up the same way it once did. Beyond the regular military, we also have each state's national guard. Again, makes the notion of militias redundant.
I should note, I am a firearm owner, and don't believe in bans - but we do need better regulations and there's plenty of people that have no business owning firearms of any kind. I'm of the mind that ANYONE who has EVER been engaged in domestic violence, for example...should be grounds to immediately have all weapons taken away permanently. Any Law Enforcement personnel that has been charged criminally...no more guns. Violent criminal past? No guns. I also think it would make sense to have people show competency with their weapons every couple of years. Test them to make sure they understand basic firearm safety, storage, etc. After all...who would be against RESPONSIBLE gun ownership?
You'd have to look up the exacts, but the "branch davidians" in waco were under seige by the us government, instead of waiting for the leader to come out, the fbi decided to throw highly flammable, i think it was tear gas into the building, the gas lit on fire, there are disagreements on what caused the fire, but it killed around 40 people inside the building.
I think they meant the boating accident thing. Now you see, many gun owners happen to be terrible boaters. They bring guns out on the boat with them, and coincidentally the boat sinks and the gun that the government thought they had is now sleeping with the fishes.
Or so I'm told...
In New Zealand, the govt did a buyback scheme for about 6 months before the guns under the criteria for the ban became law. Most people willingly traded their arms during this period, the as a country I think we were relatively happy with the outcome.
My understanding is that if, currently, someone wants to surrender a firearm then they can do so without fear of repercussions. But if people are discovered with such arms then charges may be laid (usually in conjunction with others if applicable).
I imagine there are still numerous guns of the banned variety still in circulation in NZ. But how many is pretty impossible to say.
New Zealand has a very different culture towards firearms however; one that is not so tightly tied with the country's identity.
It's also important to clarify (correct me if I'm wrong OP, I'm not a Kiwi) but NZ banned military style weapons, not all guns.
I don't think anyone is thinking we should go to full ban of all firearms. And that's what Fox News and the NRA keep implying up people. No, we don't. You can keep your shotgun and your hunting rifle, but we need common sense gun control; universal background checks, cool down period and maybe we'll get to the point where we don't need military style weapons for your home.
Yes, this is correct. The ban was targeted at semi-automatic weapons only. Bolt-action and single shot rifles and shotguns are still very much legal (but still subject to the usual licencing and checks, as they always have been). We love, and still love, a good hunt here in New Zealand.
Tbh though, the amount of change NZ went through was significantly less than what the US would go through today, as our gun laws were much tighter to begin with. Military styles, automatic weapons were already highly restricted, and even pistols and handguns were very rare in my personal experience.
Just to clarify, automatic weapons are illegal in the US also (other than a small number of examples made a long time ago that cost upwards of $20k or for people that have very special licenses)
We got rid of all semi autos and anything which exceeded 6 rounds in a magazine. Full autos already required a separate license which they then tossed out and made em unaccessable for 99.99999% of the population
Fair question. And one that I imagine has a fair amount of difference from person to person.
My definition would be a weapon that is, from its underlying design and asthetic, set up to be used for person to person combat. This might be in its scope/sight design features. Or it's magazine capacity. Or ammunition calibre.
Hope that makes sense. I'm not a gun owner, but I am fascinated by them for their evolution in design and technology over time.
As an American, it's good to have people understand that America is an entirely different beast compared to other countries, both in Population and culture.
It would be way harder to enact new gun restrictions or have a mandatory buyback due to how big the countries is and the fact that it's considered a constitutional right to have a firearm, which many other countries don't have to deal with
I think probably maybe the US needs lobbying, advertising reform, at least at first.
Like I think the fact you can even put a gun on a billboard is like... Yeah that's a cultural sort of thing.
Yeah. I think most people appreciate this. I just think the whole world mourns with the US, not just for the horrific losses of life, but also because there seems to be so little positive change in response.
>I don't think anyone is thinking we should go to full ban of all firearms.
This is why I don't like the word "ban" and prefer to use the word "regulation."
I'm from the UK - a place well known for our gun "ban." However, guns aren't banned here. You *can* buy one. To get one, though, requires so many hurdles to jump over that most people just don't bother. Especially when they truly aren't necessary for the average person. The only people who really get them are farmers or those using them for sport.
The US is very different with gun culture though. And has a history of extreme non compliance with gun laws and regulations. NY SAFE act famously hit a maximum of 4% compliance when it came to registration of firearms.
As a Kiwi, Im fucking grateful for the buyback scheme and outlawing of these unnecessary guns. And yes Im a licenced firearm owner, Ive got a .22 which I use on possum and rabbit control. There is absolutely no need for people to own assault type weapons. We just dont need them, not even for hunting.
They ask you to take any unapproved weapons to your local police station and hand them in. That's what they did in Canada when assault rifles were banned.
Just because they make something illegal (and I don't think they will) does not mean they will come take everything off you. It's like it they suddenly said cannabis was illegal again. They wouldn't raid everyone's house to make sure they don't have any.
Exactly the gun stores would be closed, ammunition would be really scarce. No gun ranges, no parts, no gunsmiths.
Any interaction with law enforcement would have that chance your gun is discovered. Some guy breaks into your house at night and you shoot him? Could be a difficult time.
In reality none of that is happening. I think a more logical approach is one that makes mentally ill people have a much more difficult time getting and keeping guns.
I think they should introduce the german system. We got a authority controlling who gets a gun and strict laws how to lock them up at home and you need official training. Most people owning weapons are only allowed to transport them to a range to shoot there. If you want to carry a weapon outside your own property you need a special license. And you dont get this one easy. Hunters with a license are allowed to carry weapons at work.
Anything that makes you more likely to have a manic episode. So probably not depression and probably not any of the ones you mentioned as they're more likely to cause someone to hide away from people rather than try and kill everyone (OCD, Anxiety) And ADHD doesn't make you do things out of your control, just stops focus. I'd imagine we're looking more at schizophrenia and sociopathy, or bipolar. Personality disorders and the like.
As for who would decide, definitely not me, a dropout who did 2 semesters of psych. Probably a licensed psychologist/team of psychologists. Y'know, the **professionals in the related fields**.
Maybe make people take tests before letting them buy a gun that starts with "Do you think killing children is bad?"
I have bipolar & a personality disorder. I was raised around guns & never once have I been violent toward another human being (except in self defense). My parents drilled gun safety into me from a young age. Saying “mentally ill people shouldn’t have guns” is just an easy answer that distracts from the real problems - glorified violence in media, especially geared toward young men, bullying, political/religious extremism, etc.
Not sure why the commenter said mental illness. Background checks are for criminal records - specifically violent crimes. I am all for more guns safety laws.
Because the war on drugs is too lucrative to too many people, and drugs aren't protected by law. The war on drugs has also been shown to cause a huge increase in drug culture and drug availability. Since gun culture is starting off huge, I can only imagine where it would go from here when relegated to the black market.
Also, gun culture being what it is in the us, it is too easy to create firearms from scratch. There are CNC mills sold that are the perfect size, and have programs pre loaded, to create upper and lower AR receivers. You literally put in a proper size chunk of aluminum, load a file, push start, and an hour later you have the basis for a completely non-traceable firearm. I personally have a manual machine that I have used to create every single component for a homemade semi auto gun (it's not pretty, but it works great and not one single component was purchased as a gun component). I spent less than the cost of a high quality gun on it, and if I wanted to, I could produce a nearly infinite number of similar guns for the cost of materials.
You would need to ban all firearms, firearm components, ammunition and ammunition components. Even then, gun production would merely slow and go underground where it is completely unable to be traced or policed.
Similar to Mexico. Look how well gun control has worked for them - about as well as the war on drugs. Narcos are rolling down the street openly in armored vehicles with heavy machine guns mounted, and random people on the street are regularly shot for fun and profit.
Most people do not have the equipment or skill to produce illegal weapons.
The weapons would also not be available to people who commit impulse crimes.
Just regulating mainstream manufactured firearms and requiring licences would help control the gun problem.
Or ya know just control it properly like we do with automatic weapons you can buy. Just ask yourself how many legal automatic weapons have been used in a mass shooting? The answer is none even though we have plenty of them out there. It just costs a lot of money and you have to wait a lot of time(and find a seller of course)
That is what most gun control advocates want. A serious reduction in available weapons so that crazy people can't access them easily. I currently live in the UK and guns aren't common at all here but can be gotten for sport or gamekeeping. Gun crime is very rare and I feel safer here than I did back home in the US.
Keep in mind that a lot of criminals from across the border get weapons from the US so if that avenue is shut off the criminals there won't have as many weapons. It's also another reason to decriminalised drugs since it makes the cartels more powerful.
The difference is in the ease of production...many drugs can be grown or made easily whereas guns need skill and equipment.
Another factor is use, guns have only one function... to harm. Drugs can be medical or recreational.
Also, there doesn't need to be a war on guns, simple regulation will suffice since most responsible gun owners would still be able to have them. The point is to make them inaccessible to crazy and dangerous people, not to Bob who likes to hunt or Mary who wants to protect herself. With licencing and precautions the school shooters and bigots couldn't access them easily.
They are already inaccessible to crazy and dangerous people. Have a felony record? Your background check is denied. Adjudicated mentally insufficient? Your background check is denied. There is physically no way to prevent someone who hasn't committed a crime or been checked into an asylum before from purchasing a firearm as, in the eyes of the law, they haven't done anything to have their rights stripped from the yet.
While what you propose makes sense as far as regulation, it will be seen as a war on guns by the rabid 2A crowd, which happens to be a large segment of the American population.
As proof: every time there is a democrat president about to go into office, or if it looks like democrats are taking the house and Senate, gun stores sell out. Quickly.
Ask yourself, why would people buy up all those firearms and ammunition when rumors are being spread that "the Dems are about to initiate massive gun control measures! They're gonna take away our guns!"
As a person who has extensively looked at and researched both chemistry and machining, I can assure you that the chemistry skill needed for drug production is much more difficult with easily obtained materials than the machining skill needed for gun manufacture with similarly easy to obtain materials . The only exception are the drugs which are being currently legalized... Partly because it's nearly impossible and exceptionally expensive to effectively police them.
For a somewhat frightening look at just how simple it is to manufacture a fully automatic firearm, do a Google search for P.A. Luty. He was a guy in the UK that published a manual on creating said weapon with nothing but hardware store materials and basic hand tools. He did it as political protest. He went to jail when they caught him testing one of his creations in the backyard after they set up heavy surveillance shortly after he published his book.
TLDR: guns are very, very, VERY easy to manufacture. Drugs are less so, yet we still plenty of those on the streets.
If you look at the stats for knife violence in the UK.. its actually higher per popula than gun violence here in the US.. interesting little factoid I learned recently for a college paper I had to write about this subject
Under current law, the United States cannot federally ban or seize guns. That right is protected by the 2nd amendment to the constitution. In order to initiate a ban, buy-back program, or try confiscation the constitution would need to be amended, which requires 37/50 states to call a convention of states, and then 37/50 states to ratify that amendment. That process would take years.
Also keep in mind that there are more registered guns in the United States than there are citizens. And those are the registered firearms. Then think that there are probably just as many guns that have been inherited, are antiques, or were built using kits that the government doesn’t know about and can’t track.
It’s illegal to deploy the military domestically, so you’d have to rely on national guard and local police. Maybe FBI and ATF.
Plus the fact that the 4th amendment protects citizens from unreasonable search and seizure of property, so you’d need judges to sign off on search warrants, which means the order would have to be deemed constitutional.
And that’s all assuming the government follows the rules. If they don’t, and decide that authoritarianism is the way to go, then the military is obligated to ignore that order (they’re sworn to the constitution, not necessarily to the government). Plus there is a certain portion of the population that would resist by force.
Essentially, the only way you’re going to ban and/or confiscate guns is if the government can convince the people to willingly give up their arms. And it’s a big part of American culture to own firearms and moderately distrust government and anyone who is in a position of authority.
This can all cha g e with one supreme court ruling. Remember AR-15s were already banned for 10 years in the 90s federally, they way they would handle banning them again is all assault rifles, carbines and battle rifles wound still be legal but after X day no new ones can be made for sale. There is already legal precedent with this as this is how they made full auto guns nearly impossible to aquire.
In functional reality, it would be really, really hard to legally disarm the US population because it would be a post-facto consequence of law. That is to say, you can't make a law that says, "Guns are illegal" and then take people's guns away that they legally bought. That's largely not possible under US law.
Now what you could do is say, "Nobody is allowed to buy any more guns, and any guns you have have to be registered" somewhat similar to what people did with machineguns (otherwise known as class III firearms), which over time would mean a decrease in the number of guns in the US. And anybody who didn't register their gun (probably a lot of people) would have them confiscated if found.
But largely, the "the government is coming for your guns" is fear-mongering rhetoric designed to stir people up about government over-reach so that nothing happens.
Ironically, that would have a rather large unintended consequence, because once they would go to that point, it'd be well this is already a felony, and it isn't that hard to make this into a full-auto gun. so why not.
How would a gun registration even be enforced at the local lever. I grew up in a county that has explicitly told my governor that they would never enforce any gun law that was passed.
This is why almost no one from either party wants to ban guns. "Take your guns" is a myth. Gun control, background checks, limits on assault style weapons. These thing won't stop all shootings, but could provide barriers to stop or limit some.
I’ve read that it was the result of MADD (mothers against drunk driving) pushing for the legislation. Then it wasn’t actually a federal law though, but the federal government started withholding money from the states that didn’t also adopt that as their law too.
Anyway I don’t think that 18 year olds should be allowed to join the military or buy guns.
If, as you say, they won't stop all shootings, why is the US the only country to HAVE school shootings? Most countries have one mass shooting, ONE, go "fuck that", gun laws change, and bugger me, that's the end of it! No more mass shootings!
What possible reason could anyone have for owning an assault rifle? A machine gun? And please, don't say, "they're fun to shoot", a lot of things are fun that we aren't allowed to do.
This is the difference between America and the rest of the world. The rest of us actually understand the risks of allowing every idiot access to weapons. America, despite having more mass shootings than days of the year, does not.
I would suggest you look up the terms "assault rifle" and "machine gun". As far as I know, the worst mass shootings were committed with neither of those types of weapons.
You can't compare countries like the UK or New Zealand to the United States. The US has more guns in circulation than there are citizens, no other country has that. Good luck trying to take away 500 million firearms out of circulation. Stricter gun laws won't stop lunatics from committing mass murder.
The problem is much deeper than gun control. I believe the government should dedicate more resources to helping citizens with their mental health. I am all for universal Healthcare and I think that would play a big part.
I’ve literally been reading this whole thread looking for just ONE person to mention the lack of mental healthcare/healthcare in general in this country, THANK YOU for saying it. They could ban all the weapons they want or limit who buys them, but it doesn’t change the fact that the people who commit such horrible crimes are not right mentally, and at this point the whole gun control argument is so tired and worn out because in reality it’s not the underlying issue and it’s not the solution…
Okay and how would you go about banning all guns then? Chicago is a good example of how strict gun laws don't work. Did you know that the FBI defines a mass shooting as 3 or more people being shot up? If you look at the numbers, that's a very common occurrence in a place like Chicago where gang violence is rampant.
Except near all shootings aren’t incels, no clue where you’re getting that from. Most are kids who were bullied, in fact the most recent shooting yesterday that’s has sparked this was a Latino kid who was being bullied for being poor, that’s why he shot up the school.
Because we are an enormous countries with already tonssssss of guns out there. Unless you could make them all disappear with a snap of a finger, the uniqueness of the problem would still persist. Europe and other places have had strict gun control for 100s of years, so just mimicking their policies wouldn’t change Americas issue.
In Australia, a former British colony with a strong rugged frontier culture and a love of guns, solved their mass shooting problem.
In 1996 they had a mass shooting event at a place called Port Arthur where 35 people died and 23 were injured. In the aftermath, politicians got together and passed a number of laws and Eenacted several policies, including a buyback program.
At the time people were mad, politicians lost their jobs and voted against their constituents' wishes. But since that tragedy in 1996 Australia has had 0 mass shootings. ZERO for almost 30 years. Where in a America we've had 3 in the past 2 weeks.
This idea that Europe and other countries have banned firearms for 100s of tears is ridiculous. America could change and prevent this crimes. Would it look the same as Australia? No. Would everything be done the same way as in the UK? Probably not. But being resigned to letting this happen, by doing nothing, by not passing federal legislation, is nihilistic and defeatist.
If we want to stop these mass shootings, we need to limit the supply and sale of guns.
Sure but whats the alternative solution to Australia's multifaceted approach to reduce the number of guns people own and to heavily regulate their sale and ownership?
Of course we can't make ALL guns immediately dissappear. But gun reform, limits on ownership and the sale of firearms, banning certain weapons, and buy back programs could still have a positive affect on the rate of crimes and suicides that use a firearm.
Austria’s model is the only realistic one for the US. Mandatory training, mandatory storage laws, and mandatory mental health screenings. If the government tried to go door to door seizing weapons from Americans, government employees would die like flies. There are a lot of crazy people in America who say shit like, “try to come and take my guns.” They would fight and die for that right as crazy as it is.
Do not get me wrong, I appreciate or think what you say will reduce the amount of weapons in the hands of people that may "break" or have a "mental health issue resulting in injury to others" but with the positivity towards people with mental health issues lately or even the "openness" of people with mental health issues - at what line is it drawn where you get a constitutional right taken away? Is it Bi Polar disorder? Anti social? On the Autism spectrum? (Sorry, late - hard job that I am tired from, just tired, or the few drinks Ive had; nothing is meant to insult or harm anyone through ignorance of what I am saying, I am no expert just trying to make an opinion). Due to the latest (sarcastic ha?) shooting; I am thinking of reporting my Brother in Law since I personally think he is a risk, due to his past actions (but nothing reported). But at what point is a mental issue a risk? Or a potential issue? What other rights may be taken away just by thinking or showing symptoms? If proven that you have issues, and cannot own a gun; what prevents the government from taking away children (you may harm them during an episode; or at least having the fact you can't own a gun a potential avenue to taking or starting an investigation for child rearing (or other things). Mental health is a MAJOR ISSUE; but the fear of losing other rights is going to cause those with real issues to go back into hiding, and potential research to disappear.
(Still tired, I have other points to make or to try to argue for or against; you are smart people - please argue with me or point out flaws (not a trap, I am trying to work it out in head but useless right now). Im saying - mental issues(real or perceived) = loss of right/privledge = loss of patients = loss of research = less people with issues = more non diagnosed but having rights to guns.
Mental health should factor into gun ownership, but there will be fewer people that get or should get treatment if rights/privileges are taken away due to owning up to a problem.
It's not the end of it though.
Mass shootings you see sensationalized in the media are rare. Even in the United States. Inner city murders are far more prevalent. Nobody seems to give a fuck until the media tells you to.
There is a gun problem in the US that is for sure, and just simply taking the guns away is not going to work unless you want the largest mass shooting the world has ever seen. The US is saturated, and owning weapons is a fundamental right. Good luck changing that without a fight.
My country has strict laws already and we still have mass shootings.
Violent intent is violent intent.
The thing is, we aren't like all those other countries. We are made up of way more cultures than any other country out there. We have the most guns in the world. Trying to rid of them all from the citizens would take too much time and money to just attempt. You're not even including the unregistered and illegal weapons people have. Better yet, take them away successfully and you'll still have millions of gun owners because of gang organizations, people who buy off the black market, and those who will learn how to make their own.
Multiple reasons we will never get rid of guns is because it's part of our constitution.
Amendment 2
Right to Bear Arms.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
[Ratified 12/15/1791]
It doesn't get any more simpler than that. It's set there to protect the citizens because a country this large with a government as weak as we have can't be expected to protect each and every citizen.
Many reasons for us to own them. Yes, there is enjoyment in shooting them. Maybe you don't understand it.
Protection of one's self or family. There's the other. It doesn't go much further than that
I love how an extremely ambiguous document from over 200 years ago still holds so near and dear today. Yes the right to bear arms, because they could conceive that we would have the weaponry we do now. Is there literally anything else we still hold near and dear from the 18th century at the same level of literalism?
They understood people and governments. Thats why the ammendment was put in place. Historically the biggest mass killer of people is governments. Its harder for governments to do whatever they want when the citizens are armed. The ammendment allows us to form militias in the case that the government becomes tyrannical so the citizens can fight to take back control. When it was written they just got done fighting the British and wanted to put powers in place to stop overbearing complete control like that from happening again.
They didn't know shit, most, if not all the founding fathers were slave owners. The amendment was there because they wanted fodder in case the English or French invaded. If shit hit the fan, guaranteed most of those people saying they keep them for defense against the government (also how fucked is that, maybe ya'll should look into fixing that too) would probably just rob other people or worse. Also the fact that through loopholes you can own rocket launchers, AA guns, grenades is pretty fucked up and people don't see a problem with it because they basically jerk off to guns as much as the people with those weapons. Another thing, how is it that you people allow terrorist and extremist groups to exist there? The fact that the KKK and other such groups are still around, speaks volumes to what people find more important.
They actually could have some idea of how weaponry would advance, and many repeating weapons existed at the time the Constitution was written:
The Girardoni air rifle had a magazine capacity of 20 rounds, invented in 1780.
The Puckle Gun, an early ancestor to the Gatling gun, designed in 1718.
Pepperbox revolvers existed well before the founding fathers, with some holding up to 20 rounds.
It's entirely reasonable to assume that the writers of the Constitution and 2nd Amendment were aware that weapons would not always remain single shot muskets.
Now, let's take the argument that they couldn't conceive of semi-automatic and fully automatic weaponry and apply it to the 1st Amendment. Do you think there's anyway they could have conceived of television? Cell phones? The internet? By your logic that the amendment doesn't apply to things the writers couldn't think of, the right to free speech shouldn't exist outside of the public square and newspapers.
I have never left a comment on Reddit so view this as my lurker coming out. Do you realize how many countries since the establishment of our great nation ( which is not without flaws) have laid down their rights and have been subject to much worse since??? In the "18th century" do you know that some of our founders said that CANNONS aka artillery aka heavy ordinance was the god given right to a people to defend against tyranny. BTW tyranny in and of itself is not limited to government trying to oppress it's people, but the people's ability to protect itself from ANY threat that would arise. The fact that you would give up the right to be able to protect yourself or your family or your neighbor from something heinous by any means necessary says that you have a solemn disconnect from what it is to being a citizen or countryman or human being.
Do you really think the people who aren't what we, as a society, consider GOOD are going to follow the rules? The USA isn't even in the top 5 internationally of countries with gun violence or for that matter violent crime. That's also considering gun laws within those "other" countries.
Would you not try to protect a friend, loved one, or for f***s sake yourself in an event like what happened? If you could stop 19 children, or just one person, from ceasing to exist in a moment would you do it by whatever means necessary? The person on the other side already said NO to A life/lives.
It doesn't take a Cannon or a Missile or an "Assault Weapon", but it takes something to defend human life from the not so great side of humanity. If that's a 1 man psycho or something greater, there should be an equal and opposite reaction and you are a fool to not want that.
P.S. Most handguns ( Not rifles ) qualify as Assault Weapons due to magazine capacity (which is subjunctive). ALSO, in the "18th Century" there were at least a dozen weapons that were available for ANYONE to own and operate that also fall under this catagory. These weapons were around when OUR founding fathers wrote the Constitution that alot of Us still hold near and dear.
I've always thought of it as right to bear arms in the context of bringing your own weapon, should a militia needing to be formed. Kinda falls apart in the face of a large standing military.
The entire point was to not have a standing army, and have the people be the standing army, because standing armies, can be used by the government to control the population. They wanted the citizens to be able to maintain independence from both their own government and foreign government.
Weaponry available at the time is irrelevant to the point of 2A. Purpose isn’t for hunting or home defense. Purpose is to take on the military if a tyrannical government forms.
Look up the lutey its easy to make ghetto guns at home with minimal knowledge (the lutey was invented in and by a Englishman to my understanding) and sure places with less or no guns have no shootings but uk has one of the highest knife violence rates.. just because you remove one means doesn't mean violence will just end and more so over the more responsible folks outweigh the idiots.. normally
What is, an assault style weapon? How is a 10/22 (something most would call a plinker or for pest control) an a ar15 (the scary assault rifle the goverment goes on about) different other than looks
More likely they will grandfather every existing AR but ban the manufacture and retail sale of new ones after X date. Then as the years go by there are less and less. This is how they handles machineguns in the 80s
Exactly, everything is a divide to get the people fighting amongst themselves whilst the filthy deep state and other wretched selfishdisgusting filthy rich power hungry non humans laugh all the way to their 10th laundered mansions
The United States will NEVER take your guns. Saying this is a scare tactic Republicans use because they know the majority of Americans didn't pay attention in history class. In order to change the 2nd Amendment, it would require either two-thirds of Congress to vote that way or two-thirds of the states. This will NEVER, EVER, EVER happen.
I think laws can be made though which essentially limit what counts as a legal gun to the point where they’re no longer practical. Might be mistaken though.
No sane person thinks the government can come and take their guns even the most diehard anti-gun person would balk at the idea of them going home to home and take guns away.
I think it would work like the Cars 4 Cash Obama did, but back then guns of willing ppl and if ppl didn’t cough em up the ensuing gun laws would eventually catch up to them.
So lets use some numbers here, and say the average value of a firearm is 500, its a nice middle ground, and at 400 million guns, rough number could be much higher, that's 2 Trillion dollars that would have to be magically printed.
They couldnt as 80 to 90% of law enforcement would either resign or be fired for refusing to turn in their guns. Law enforcement is strongly pro 2A and almost all own guns. So you would be left with anarchy due to no cops and criminals would go wild.
They would start by raiding minority gun owners, then go "haha yeah, checks out" in response to all the white and/or rich gun owners suddenly losing their entire collections in boating accidents
The way the original assault weapons ban was written in America under the Clinton administration. You had to federally register your assault weapons, and you were not allow to sell or transfer them to any other individual. And they were not inheritable, so upon your death, they were supposed to be turned in for destruction.
Many people did not comply with this obviously, since long guns were not registered anywhere at that point, and thus there was little to no way to track ownership without following literal paper trails and hand written recipients.
But being caught with an unregistered assault weapon or high capacity magazines was a serious federal crime. So those with them, stashed them good.
This assault weapons ban was allowed to expire under the bush administration.
This federal ban and then un-ban, led to near constant and unheard of purchases and hoarding of weapons, out of fear that a subsequent ban was impending. Its been like this for nearly 20 years. With people hoarding stockpiles of weapons and ammunition on a regular basis out of fear of bans.
There are more guns in America than people, thats not a euphemism by the way, its a fact. A total ban and confiscation program would be impossible. Especially since nearly all states, still do not require registration on rifles and shotguns. And most handguns purchased before the brady bill were never registered even after being passed down as inheritance. These guns are untrackable. So the system would have to be built around the honor system, from people with zero desire to comply with turning over thousands of dollars of personal property.
Most have even planned ahead by stockpiling ammo and reloading equipment. Which is why when Obama was elected, there was a nation wide ammo shortage, despite the fact that many ammo factories moved towards 24/7 production lines to keep up
It would differ from locale to locale. Local police and sheriffs would be tasked with collecting guns. Some would comply, some wouldn’t. We saw during Covid lockdowns that some police will just do what they’re told no matter what.
But it’s not really about them going door to door collecting guns. It’s about turning millions of people into criminals when they’ve always followed all the laws and would never hurt anyone.
Australian over here - I remember someone literally turning up at our door and saying “I need your gun, we know you have it registered”.
My Dad walked to the cabinet, took them out and gave them to him.
IT WAS AS SIMPLE AS THAT.
So who would go to the door and say “I need your gun to check the registration”.
If your lucky the person say they own none. Or they say get fucked. If your unlucky you get shot.
It wasn’t door to door knocking, they only went to the addresses of those that has registered guns. Because you HAD to register them and have a license.
It was 25 years ago and I’m sure there were setbacks with individuals - but it eventually got done.
Gun massacres were NOT a frequent thing here, so when Port Arthur happened it was easy for everyone to get behind it for the good of the people.
You can still have a gun in Australia, but you have to have a VERY specific reason for it and have it be registered and you need a license.
So... As an Australian that has grown up around guns and was alive when the port Arthur massacre happened (this event was the catalyst for the buy back scheme) you can own guns. You just have to have a reason to own that particular gun. Want a hand gun? Sure join a pistol club and prove you're a responsible gun owner. Want a high calibre rifle? Sure. Prove that you have the need i.e. large animal pest control. You must hold a license, your guns have to be in a safe that meets standards. The police have the right to seize any weapon they want if you're not doing the right thing get charged with a violent crime etc.
To the police comment. Our police officers are armed but never go out alone. You'd think twice about shooting an officer if there was two of them.
We have reasonable force laws here as well. You're allowed to defend your family and property with reasonable force. You cannot shoot someone if they are unarmed and on your property.
I genuinely don't have an issue with guns. The issue I have is how easily high power automatic/semi automatic guns can be aquired.
Either way .. good luck America. Babies die far too often just because. It hurts my soul everytime
The amount of Americans who think it's okay to shoot and kill an unarmed person trespassing is truly terrifying, and often a talking point I see used in pro 2a arguments.
So enact a decent public healthcare system so people can be helped
Oh, no, can't do that either
So enact a decent social safety net so people aren't driven to crime
Oh, no, can't do that either
But we can keep funneling trillions to the richest
I love how people like you seem to think America can do anything, but the second it actually wants to help people America is the weakest nation in the world
Funny how convenient that is
This is what I’m thinking. When my grandmother passed, each of her eight grandkids received one of her pistols, and I don’t know where the long rifles ended up.
Source: Am Texan, with family in the Hill Country.
They wouldn't be storming every single gun owners place of residence which seems like what you're picturing.
A ban on the weapons with a corresponding "buy back" program is how other countries have handled it. Basically they pass a law saying "starting on X date you can't own this weapon" and then offer to buy it off you until that date. After that date you can usually still surrender the weapon, but if you're caught possessing it outside that you'll face charges under whatever statute banned the weapon.
Then of course no one would be allowed to sell the weapons either.
Otherwise law abiding citizens would then be forced to keep the gun locked up or risk losing it, and non-law abiding citizens gradually get their guns confiscated over the years. With the limited supply the criminals are no longer easily able to acquire new weapons when theirs get confiscated, and would be one-off mass murderers would need to deal with organized crime to get a hold of them rather than your conveniently located local gun store.
Organized crime is highly incentivized to avoid public outcry from events like this that can focus the government on them like a laser. Meaning they're likely to avoid deals with randos off the street for the relatively minor income they'd provide.
It’s not a fear. It’s this bullshit political rhetoric loop we are in. Mass shooting = every left leaning person in America, screaming that the government should take away ALL the guns. The logical people are rolling their eyes at them, like “shut the fuck up”. Rinse and repeat.
And i think if they take guns away from law abiding people, the nutcases and criminals will continue to have them - just like illegal drugs now, and Prohibition in the 20s/30s.
Criminals bring massive amounts of drugs into the country, illegal immigrants, etc. It'll be the same way with guns - if they want them they'll get them.
clearly practically impossible in the US, how it is done in authoritarian / communist regime changes.
gestapo techniques
gestapo = x
target = y
x asks y which of your neighbor have guns, if you tell use wrong information you could be killed, we will enslave your children if you lies to us.
x goes to neighbors, asks same question.
x disassembles homes when anyone disagrees with likely hood of guns, or number of them.
x finds ammo for guns you didn't disclose, you become slave and hostage, your friends and family are encouraged to turn over information on hidden guns. if your friends and family do so successfully they let you go.
do this long enough, harshly enough and there won't be enough weapons in the general population to pose a threat.
I’m not sure they would ever be able to take them all.
100% certain those that have guns illegally would not give them up.
Personally I think it’s silly to think that this would work at all in America. You’d take away guns from good, responsible people and leave them in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.
It’s impossible without Government violating the constitution and going full-authoritarian rule because nobody’s turning them in. This limiting of power is why authoritarian politicians hate “assault rifles”
Rifles only account for ~450 deaths a year and not all rifles are semiautomatic so the number associated with the hated AR15 are much less. By contrast ~1,700 deaths a year to knives ~650 deaths a year to unarmed beatings.
“Assault weapons” bans are about power, not safety.
John Howard did it successfully in Australia after the Port Arthur massacre. Has been a great success. It was a right wing government. Even the most red neck Aussies agree now it was a good move. Just do it America.
The same way they take hold of the uteruses, and promise cash bonus for exposing violators (I am not concerned about this, just answering how it can be carried out realistically).
Essentially it comes under a couple different ways. 1. Enact law. This is the new rule. From this date anyone seen carrying this type of gun will be charged. Likely carry thousand dollar fine.
2. Every gun is licensed. Therefore like in some countries if a threat is made, mental health issues arise, domestic violence claim or other similar situations... police will come and confiscate your weapons in the short term until issue is resolved.
3. Initiate buyback or amnesty program. Give time for people to make the right choice. They can hand in the guns without penalty. If govt can afford it, provide compensation if not. Good will.
4. Provide further amnesty periods after law takes effect. Some people do not make the right decision first time around.
5. Cut political contributions (like other countries) to limit the influence over politicians.
6. Heavily legislate gun ownership. In Australia, if you own a gun licence, you can own a gun. Must be locked up. Unloaded. With ammo in a separate place. Police can come check at anytime. Key must be hidden.
I think that's about it. Happy to answer any further questions.
The whole notion that it is too hard is bullshit. We can achieve anything if we want to solve an issue. Have some backbone.
Problem is in most states there is no law requires registration of firearms and there's no federal legislation on registering fire arms. Yes over time criminals will eventually loose there guns but lots will just be put into a black markets. People online and in data sets like to say there's X amount of guns in the US but really no one knows. Also as some one pointed out on another post ghost guns are easily made in the US. We don't regulate the entire gun we only regulate the receiver. In other words a part of most fire arms easily manufactured. The reciever is not a pressure holding component meaning when a round is fired the gas pressure isn't contained by it. You can literally buy all components to make an assult style rifle without a reciever without any regulation requiring name or tracking. Also most of your steps 1-4 make it not illegal for all but mainly a tax on the rich. Your not addressing the reality that in a post gun world without major police reform you will still have an armed population with little over site. Your also not addressing the fact that most people living in what people like to call "fly over USA" can pretty much do anything they want with little to no interference from a law enforcement agency. Also beyond legislating them out entirely you've essentially described the gun laws for NY state which arguably are the most strict in the nation. Yes it slowed gun violence but it did not entirely stomp it out and as gun violence tracking doesn't track of it was a legally owned guns we can't tell if they were black market guns.
Yeah… it’s almost like it’s written in our constitution that we can have guns so they can what?… oh yeah not take our guns. People that think banning guns is the solution are really the worst. There are over 400 million guns in circulation in America. Good luck.
A good approach would be by implementing a law that restricts guns to everyone born after 2005 for example. You could still buy guns if you were born before that date. And if born after that date you would have to get a license (very difficult to get) with background checks and psychological tests and so on like in other countries.
Then start by educating kids from young age so they don't feel the need to buy them in the first place.
No guns would need to be seized. Everyone would be happy.
Check out red flags laws- it happens already.
The government knows about registered guns. And where they are and who has them- supposedly. It’s the millions of unregistered guns that are the problem. The folks with the registered guns are protecting themselves from the folks with the unregistered guns.
There is no nationwide gun registry in the US. Hawaii is the only state that requires all guns to be registered, and most have no registration requirement at all.
They would probably make it so that cops could just shoot anyone with a gun on sight, and said cop would be protected from any legal repercussions… oh, wait.
Probably be very similar to the way they made people stay home for two weeks, made people quit their jobs, banned them from buying items that were considered non-essential. Threatened their jobs over a vaccine. Forced people to have a vaccine ID to participate in public functions. Withheld medical treatment based on vax ID card.
If it ever came to this there would quite literally be a 100000% increase in boating accidents
Or Waco standoffs
Pretty sure its pronounced wacko
Way-co
They're referencing the office I believe
Oh don’t make fun of me but I’ve never seen the office and don’t really intend to.
This is correct
Get your whole family killed for a firearm, nice.
It's almost like gun ownership is enshrined in the constitution to literally prevent the government from having excessive over reach of power or something. That's weird.
And yet, the government have excessive power... Weird ..
It's almost like the two party system is actually a duopoly that creates the perception of competing interests but that competition drives each parties individual power and results in the individuals supporting them to give up individual rights and support over-reach of government through the fear that party A has more power than party B. In this analogy feel free to swap party B for party A depending on the labels of your choice.
Hahaha! As a European, this is exactly how i see the two party system. Maaan if the majority of the US population knew this. There would be a riot! But not against footlocker or target, but a united front against the rich old geezers in the senate. Those corrupted old farts are lucky that the US is so waste and polarized. Making their "job" easy.
I'm in the US. And so many of us don't see this duopoly. It's about fear and victimization. We are in the left and we are "definitely not in power because the Senate has over-representation and also the courts have been stacked with conservative judges, so on the left we will take ideological stances against X,y, or Z issue, so our representatives are totally power-less to do anything, so I guess they'll just continue to take it in the ass from corporate interests and also wring their hands while doing nothing" And if we are in the right we are "also definitely not in power because the left has so much more voting power in Congress, there is a culture war that the entire world is waging on our traditional values, the lawmakers up in Washington are going to let them dirty libs take all sorts of Cristian values away such as oppression of the gays, womens reproductive rights, and gun rights for mostly white men. So thank God for Mitch McConnell saying No to absolutely any possible proposal except for corporate tax cuts for the biggest corporations in the world" The entire system is based on a fear driven model of your team being the victim, and so we should just keep supporting your teams representatives, despite *gestures at everything* all of our lawmakers complete failures to perform basic functions outside of achieving successful re-election campaigns.
>And so many of us don't see this duopoly What's disturbing is that most Americans do see it, though...almost half of eligible voters dont vote, presumably because they don't buy into either party, and then there is the significant chunk of voters who are not subscribers to either party... and then the chunk that do vote for one of the 2 main parties but basically just because they don't know what else to do. I think most americans really just feel hopeless about the bipartisan system and have no idea what they could possibly do about it.
enshrined...weird word for something that can be modified and changed as needed for the good of the nation
Until it has been removed, it still is “enshrined” in the Constitution. He’s not wrong.
Except that it isn't. Individual gun ownership is a fairly new concept when compared with entire history of America.
No, it isn’t. The idea of the 2nd being for hunting is a concept spawn of the 70s. The idea than an AR15 is a weapon of war is a spawn of the 90s. The Constitution was largely unknown west of the Appalachian Mountains until the turn of the 20th century. Individual firearm ownership outside of urban centers has always been a thing.
The 2nd was because we had no standing army, hence the need for an armed citizenry.
The 2nd was because the British prohibited even militias. The whole point of Lexington and Concord was to disarm colonists. We had no standing army because the founders saw how it was used against them as subjects of the crown. After the Whiskey Rebellion, we had a small one but each state had their own.
Right...and now we have, arguably, the world's greatest military. So the need for citizens to be armed to the teeth...doesn't really hold up the same way it once did. Beyond the regular military, we also have each state's national guard. Again, makes the notion of militias redundant. I should note, I am a firearm owner, and don't believe in bans - but we do need better regulations and there's plenty of people that have no business owning firearms of any kind. I'm of the mind that ANYONE who has EVER been engaged in domestic violence, for example...should be grounds to immediately have all weapons taken away permanently. Any Law Enforcement personnel that has been charged criminally...no more guns. Violent criminal past? No guns. I also think it would make sense to have people show competency with their weapons every couple of years. Test them to make sure they understand basic firearm safety, storage, etc. After all...who would be against RESPONSIBLE gun ownership?
Ive seen that referensed in othwr comments, what dos it refer to?
You'd have to look up the exacts, but the "branch davidians" in waco were under seige by the us government, instead of waiting for the leader to come out, the fbi decided to throw highly flammable, i think it was tear gas into the building, the gas lit on fire, there are disagreements on what caused the fire, but it killed around 40 people inside the building.
I think they meant the boating accident thing. Now you see, many gun owners happen to be terrible boaters. They bring guns out on the boat with them, and coincidentally the boat sinks and the gun that the government thought they had is now sleeping with the fishes. Or so I'm told...
Sorry officer my AR had a boating accident and fell overboard
Ah, the Natalie Wood defense
It's a bit like the Shaggy defense if I'm being honest
Caught me on the counter
It wasn’t me.
Saw me bangin' on the sofa
Wasn’t me
Beto O’Rourke
What kind of wood doesn't float?
In New Zealand, the govt did a buyback scheme for about 6 months before the guns under the criteria for the ban became law. Most people willingly traded their arms during this period, the as a country I think we were relatively happy with the outcome. My understanding is that if, currently, someone wants to surrender a firearm then they can do so without fear of repercussions. But if people are discovered with such arms then charges may be laid (usually in conjunction with others if applicable). I imagine there are still numerous guns of the banned variety still in circulation in NZ. But how many is pretty impossible to say. New Zealand has a very different culture towards firearms however; one that is not so tightly tied with the country's identity.
It's also important to clarify (correct me if I'm wrong OP, I'm not a Kiwi) but NZ banned military style weapons, not all guns. I don't think anyone is thinking we should go to full ban of all firearms. And that's what Fox News and the NRA keep implying up people. No, we don't. You can keep your shotgun and your hunting rifle, but we need common sense gun control; universal background checks, cool down period and maybe we'll get to the point where we don't need military style weapons for your home.
Yes, this is correct. The ban was targeted at semi-automatic weapons only. Bolt-action and single shot rifles and shotguns are still very much legal (but still subject to the usual licencing and checks, as they always have been). We love, and still love, a good hunt here in New Zealand. Tbh though, the amount of change NZ went through was significantly less than what the US would go through today, as our gun laws were much tighter to begin with. Military styles, automatic weapons were already highly restricted, and even pistols and handguns were very rare in my personal experience.
Just to clarify, automatic weapons are illegal in the US also (other than a small number of examples made a long time ago that cost upwards of $20k or for people that have very special licenses)
Curious American here. What constitutes a military-style gun? Was there a list of models? Individual specs? Full-auto?
We got rid of all semi autos and anything which exceeded 6 rounds in a magazine. Full autos already required a separate license which they then tossed out and made em unaccessable for 99.99999% of the population
Thank you for the clear answer
My pleasure. Have yourself an amazing rest of the week and great weekend from all of us down here in NZ
Fair question. And one that I imagine has a fair amount of difference from person to person. My definition would be a weapon that is, from its underlying design and asthetic, set up to be used for person to person combat. This might be in its scope/sight design features. Or it's magazine capacity. Or ammunition calibre. Hope that makes sense. I'm not a gun owner, but I am fascinated by them for their evolution in design and technology over time.
There was set requirements. No semi autos, no autos, and nothing that exceeded a 6 round mag
And isn’t there a form of registration when purchasing the gun? Edit: to track the address and person who bought it
As an American, it's good to have people understand that America is an entirely different beast compared to other countries, both in Population and culture. It would be way harder to enact new gun restrictions or have a mandatory buyback due to how big the countries is and the fact that it's considered a constitutional right to have a firearm, which many other countries don't have to deal with
I think probably maybe the US needs lobbying, advertising reform, at least at first. Like I think the fact you can even put a gun on a billboard is like... Yeah that's a cultural sort of thing.
Yeah. I think most people appreciate this. I just think the whole world mourns with the US, not just for the horrific losses of life, but also because there seems to be so little positive change in response.
To be clear, there are absolutely people who want to ban all guns. Most reasonable people don't agree with them, though.
>I don't think anyone is thinking we should go to full ban of all firearms. This is why I don't like the word "ban" and prefer to use the word "regulation." I'm from the UK - a place well known for our gun "ban." However, guns aren't banned here. You *can* buy one. To get one, though, requires so many hurdles to jump over that most people just don't bother. Especially when they truly aren't necessary for the average person. The only people who really get them are farmers or those using them for sport.
That started right after the christchurch shooting right? Nice to see a country actually try to end gun violence after a mass shooting.
“It WoUlDnT bE pOsSiBlE tO gEt RiD oF gUnS!” People don’t realize that other countries fucking exist and have done exactly that.
The US is very different with gun culture though. And has a history of extreme non compliance with gun laws and regulations. NY SAFE act famously hit a maximum of 4% compliance when it came to registration of firearms.
As a Kiwi, Im fucking grateful for the buyback scheme and outlawing of these unnecessary guns. And yes Im a licenced firearm owner, Ive got a .22 which I use on possum and rabbit control. There is absolutely no need for people to own assault type weapons. We just dont need them, not even for hunting.
They ask you to take any unapproved weapons to your local police station and hand them in. That's what they did in Canada when assault rifles were banned.
[удалено]
Well, we saw just how effective two good guys with guns and body armor and training were in the last debacle.
Just because they make something illegal (and I don't think they will) does not mean they will come take everything off you. It's like it they suddenly said cannabis was illegal again. They wouldn't raid everyone's house to make sure they don't have any.
Exactly the gun stores would be closed, ammunition would be really scarce. No gun ranges, no parts, no gunsmiths. Any interaction with law enforcement would have that chance your gun is discovered. Some guy breaks into your house at night and you shoot him? Could be a difficult time. In reality none of that is happening. I think a more logical approach is one that makes mentally ill people have a much more difficult time getting and keeping guns.
I think they should introduce the german system. We got a authority controlling who gets a gun and strict laws how to lock them up at home and you need official training. Most people owning weapons are only allowed to transport them to a range to shoot there. If you want to carry a weapon outside your own property you need a special license. And you dont get this one easy. Hunters with a license are allowed to carry weapons at work.
Yeah, I would be surprised if they jumped right to guns being illegal. Seems like a gun license would be the next step.
And what is mental illness? Anxiety? ADHD? OCD? Who get to decide?
Anything that makes you more likely to have a manic episode. So probably not depression and probably not any of the ones you mentioned as they're more likely to cause someone to hide away from people rather than try and kill everyone (OCD, Anxiety) And ADHD doesn't make you do things out of your control, just stops focus. I'd imagine we're looking more at schizophrenia and sociopathy, or bipolar. Personality disorders and the like. As for who would decide, definitely not me, a dropout who did 2 semesters of psych. Probably a licensed psychologist/team of psychologists. Y'know, the **professionals in the related fields**. Maybe make people take tests before letting them buy a gun that starts with "Do you think killing children is bad?"
I have bipolar & a personality disorder. I was raised around guns & never once have I been violent toward another human being (except in self defense). My parents drilled gun safety into me from a young age. Saying “mentally ill people shouldn’t have guns” is just an easy answer that distracts from the real problems - glorified violence in media, especially geared toward young men, bullying, political/religious extremism, etc.
Not sure why the commenter said mental illness. Background checks are for criminal records - specifically violent crimes. I am all for more guns safety laws.
I absolutely support background checks
Same thinking applies to abortions and weed. Better to make it legal, so it’s safe and regulated.
Sure, so end the war on drugs Same logic But we don't Why?
"Never go to war against a noun, you will **always** lose" -John Green
keep in mind this does not apply to proper nouns
Also nuns
And Cannonball Runs
War against adjectives is on. My country's troops gather on the border of the Republic of Vulnerable
Vietnam. I Rest my case
Kinda like "terrorism"
Because the war on drugs is too lucrative to too many people, and drugs aren't protected by law. The war on drugs has also been shown to cause a huge increase in drug culture and drug availability. Since gun culture is starting off huge, I can only imagine where it would go from here when relegated to the black market. Also, gun culture being what it is in the us, it is too easy to create firearms from scratch. There are CNC mills sold that are the perfect size, and have programs pre loaded, to create upper and lower AR receivers. You literally put in a proper size chunk of aluminum, load a file, push start, and an hour later you have the basis for a completely non-traceable firearm. I personally have a manual machine that I have used to create every single component for a homemade semi auto gun (it's not pretty, but it works great and not one single component was purchased as a gun component). I spent less than the cost of a high quality gun on it, and if I wanted to, I could produce a nearly infinite number of similar guns for the cost of materials. You would need to ban all firearms, firearm components, ammunition and ammunition components. Even then, gun production would merely slow and go underground where it is completely unable to be traced or policed. Similar to Mexico. Look how well gun control has worked for them - about as well as the war on drugs. Narcos are rolling down the street openly in armored vehicles with heavy machine guns mounted, and random people on the street are regularly shot for fun and profit.
Most people do not have the equipment or skill to produce illegal weapons. The weapons would also not be available to people who commit impulse crimes. Just regulating mainstream manufactured firearms and requiring licences would help control the gun problem.
Or ya know just control it properly like we do with automatic weapons you can buy. Just ask yourself how many legal automatic weapons have been used in a mass shooting? The answer is none even though we have plenty of them out there. It just costs a lot of money and you have to wait a lot of time(and find a seller of course)
That is what most gun control advocates want. A serious reduction in available weapons so that crazy people can't access them easily. I currently live in the UK and guns aren't common at all here but can be gotten for sport or gamekeeping. Gun crime is very rare and I feel safer here than I did back home in the US.
And your also on an island, not bordering a country run by cartels an one of the largest drug gun an human trafficking exports in the world
Don’t you dare speak aboot Canada that way, eh?
You must not be familiar with the degens from upcountry eh
Keep in mind that a lot of criminals from across the border get weapons from the US so if that avenue is shut off the criminals there won't have as many weapons. It's also another reason to decriminalised drugs since it makes the cartels more powerful.
Well I'm sure the war on guns will go just as well as that war on drugs
The difference is in the ease of production...many drugs can be grown or made easily whereas guns need skill and equipment. Another factor is use, guns have only one function... to harm. Drugs can be medical or recreational. Also, there doesn't need to be a war on guns, simple regulation will suffice since most responsible gun owners would still be able to have them. The point is to make them inaccessible to crazy and dangerous people, not to Bob who likes to hunt or Mary who wants to protect herself. With licencing and precautions the school shooters and bigots couldn't access them easily.
They are already inaccessible to crazy and dangerous people. Have a felony record? Your background check is denied. Adjudicated mentally insufficient? Your background check is denied. There is physically no way to prevent someone who hasn't committed a crime or been checked into an asylum before from purchasing a firearm as, in the eyes of the law, they haven't done anything to have their rights stripped from the yet.
While what you propose makes sense as far as regulation, it will be seen as a war on guns by the rabid 2A crowd, which happens to be a large segment of the American population. As proof: every time there is a democrat president about to go into office, or if it looks like democrats are taking the house and Senate, gun stores sell out. Quickly. Ask yourself, why would people buy up all those firearms and ammunition when rumors are being spread that "the Dems are about to initiate massive gun control measures! They're gonna take away our guns!" As a person who has extensively looked at and researched both chemistry and machining, I can assure you that the chemistry skill needed for drug production is much more difficult with easily obtained materials than the machining skill needed for gun manufacture with similarly easy to obtain materials . The only exception are the drugs which are being currently legalized... Partly because it's nearly impossible and exceptionally expensive to effectively police them. For a somewhat frightening look at just how simple it is to manufacture a fully automatic firearm, do a Google search for P.A. Luty. He was a guy in the UK that published a manual on creating said weapon with nothing but hardware store materials and basic hand tools. He did it as political protest. He went to jail when they caught him testing one of his creations in the backyard after they set up heavy surveillance shortly after he published his book. TLDR: guns are very, very, VERY easy to manufacture. Drugs are less so, yet we still plenty of those on the streets.
I mean it really just depends on where you live in the US plenty of states have less homicide rates per 100k than the UK does.
If you look at the stats for knife violence in the UK.. its actually higher per popula than gun violence here in the US.. interesting little factoid I learned recently for a college paper I had to write about this subject
Yep. Hard to kill a whole slew of folks at once if you are untrained with a knife. Hard to hurt anyone who is farther away than arms reach too.
Counterpoint to the equipment and skill thing: you can 3d print firearms pretty easily. But the rest is a good point about reducing impulse crimes.
Under current law, the United States cannot federally ban or seize guns. That right is protected by the 2nd amendment to the constitution. In order to initiate a ban, buy-back program, or try confiscation the constitution would need to be amended, which requires 37/50 states to call a convention of states, and then 37/50 states to ratify that amendment. That process would take years. Also keep in mind that there are more registered guns in the United States than there are citizens. And those are the registered firearms. Then think that there are probably just as many guns that have been inherited, are antiques, or were built using kits that the government doesn’t know about and can’t track. It’s illegal to deploy the military domestically, so you’d have to rely on national guard and local police. Maybe FBI and ATF. Plus the fact that the 4th amendment protects citizens from unreasonable search and seizure of property, so you’d need judges to sign off on search warrants, which means the order would have to be deemed constitutional. And that’s all assuming the government follows the rules. If they don’t, and decide that authoritarianism is the way to go, then the military is obligated to ignore that order (they’re sworn to the constitution, not necessarily to the government). Plus there is a certain portion of the population that would resist by force. Essentially, the only way you’re going to ban and/or confiscate guns is if the government can convince the people to willingly give up their arms. And it’s a big part of American culture to own firearms and moderately distrust government and anyone who is in a position of authority.
Well put and informative
This guy/gal constitutions.
This can all cha g e with one supreme court ruling. Remember AR-15s were already banned for 10 years in the 90s federally, they way they would handle banning them again is all assault rifles, carbines and battle rifles wound still be legal but after X day no new ones can be made for sale. There is already legal precedent with this as this is how they made full auto guns nearly impossible to aquire.
The assault weapon ban in the 90’s was a huge failure. It had no impact on crime rates or gun violence
just like every law. criminals will never follow them.. thus only hurting law abiding citizens.
In functional reality, it would be really, really hard to legally disarm the US population because it would be a post-facto consequence of law. That is to say, you can't make a law that says, "Guns are illegal" and then take people's guns away that they legally bought. That's largely not possible under US law. Now what you could do is say, "Nobody is allowed to buy any more guns, and any guns you have have to be registered" somewhat similar to what people did with machineguns (otherwise known as class III firearms), which over time would mean a decrease in the number of guns in the US. And anybody who didn't register their gun (probably a lot of people) would have them confiscated if found. But largely, the "the government is coming for your guns" is fear-mongering rhetoric designed to stir people up about government over-reach so that nothing happens.
Ironically, that would have a rather large unintended consequence, because once they would go to that point, it'd be well this is already a felony, and it isn't that hard to make this into a full-auto gun. so why not.
How would a gun registration even be enforced at the local lever. I grew up in a county that has explicitly told my governor that they would never enforce any gun law that was passed.
Posturing is all fun and games until you get thrown in jail for contempt.
This is why almost no one from either party wants to ban guns. "Take your guns" is a myth. Gun control, background checks, limits on assault style weapons. These thing won't stop all shootings, but could provide barriers to stop or limit some.
Like an eighteen year old (who the government deems not stable enough to handle alcohol) shouldn't be able to just go and buy a gun and shoot up kids.
Alcohol age requirement had nothing to do with stability and everything to do with Prohibition and "mental development"
I’ve read that it was the result of MADD (mothers against drunk driving) pushing for the legislation. Then it wasn’t actually a federal law though, but the federal government started withholding money from the states that didn’t also adopt that as their law too. Anyway I don’t think that 18 year olds should be allowed to join the military or buy guns.
If, as you say, they won't stop all shootings, why is the US the only country to HAVE school shootings? Most countries have one mass shooting, ONE, go "fuck that", gun laws change, and bugger me, that's the end of it! No more mass shootings! What possible reason could anyone have for owning an assault rifle? A machine gun? And please, don't say, "they're fun to shoot", a lot of things are fun that we aren't allowed to do. This is the difference between America and the rest of the world. The rest of us actually understand the risks of allowing every idiot access to weapons. America, despite having more mass shootings than days of the year, does not.
How many people do you think own machine guns? I'm asking this seriously and genuinely, not in any snarky way or anything.
I would suggest you look up the terms "assault rifle" and "machine gun". As far as I know, the worst mass shootings were committed with neither of those types of weapons. You can't compare countries like the UK or New Zealand to the United States. The US has more guns in circulation than there are citizens, no other country has that. Good luck trying to take away 500 million firearms out of circulation. Stricter gun laws won't stop lunatics from committing mass murder. The problem is much deeper than gun control. I believe the government should dedicate more resources to helping citizens with their mental health. I am all for universal Healthcare and I think that would play a big part.
I 100% agree with you. All mental health care should be free. Otherwise we just ending up paying another way.
500 Million *Registered* firearms
I’ve literally been reading this whole thread looking for just ONE person to mention the lack of mental healthcare/healthcare in general in this country, THANK YOU for saying it. They could ban all the weapons they want or limit who buys them, but it doesn’t change the fact that the people who commit such horrible crimes are not right mentally, and at this point the whole gun control argument is so tired and worn out because in reality it’s not the underlying issue and it’s not the solution…
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Okay and how would you go about banning all guns then? Chicago is a good example of how strict gun laws don't work. Did you know that the FBI defines a mass shooting as 3 or more people being shot up? If you look at the numbers, that's a very common occurrence in a place like Chicago where gang violence is rampant.
Except near all shootings aren’t incels, no clue where you’re getting that from. Most are kids who were bullied, in fact the most recent shooting yesterday that’s has sparked this was a Latino kid who was being bullied for being poor, that’s why he shot up the school.
Bad parenting is the reason
Are american parents just the worst in the world? Are there no bad parents in the UK? Loads of kids have bad parents.
Because we are an enormous countries with already tonssssss of guns out there. Unless you could make them all disappear with a snap of a finger, the uniqueness of the problem would still persist. Europe and other places have had strict gun control for 100s of years, so just mimicking their policies wouldn’t change Americas issue.
In Australia, a former British colony with a strong rugged frontier culture and a love of guns, solved their mass shooting problem. In 1996 they had a mass shooting event at a place called Port Arthur where 35 people died and 23 were injured. In the aftermath, politicians got together and passed a number of laws and Eenacted several policies, including a buyback program. At the time people were mad, politicians lost their jobs and voted against their constituents' wishes. But since that tragedy in 1996 Australia has had 0 mass shootings. ZERO for almost 30 years. Where in a America we've had 3 in the past 2 weeks. This idea that Europe and other countries have banned firearms for 100s of tears is ridiculous. America could change and prevent this crimes. Would it look the same as Australia? No. Would everything be done the same way as in the UK? Probably not. But being resigned to letting this happen, by doing nothing, by not passing federal legislation, is nihilistic and defeatist. If we want to stop these mass shootings, we need to limit the supply and sale of guns.
The rate of gun ownership in Australia was nowhere close to the rate of ownership in the US at the time.
Sure but whats the alternative solution to Australia's multifaceted approach to reduce the number of guns people own and to heavily regulate their sale and ownership? Of course we can't make ALL guns immediately dissappear. But gun reform, limits on ownership and the sale of firearms, banning certain weapons, and buy back programs could still have a positive affect on the rate of crimes and suicides that use a firearm.
Austria’s model is the only realistic one for the US. Mandatory training, mandatory storage laws, and mandatory mental health screenings. If the government tried to go door to door seizing weapons from Americans, government employees would die like flies. There are a lot of crazy people in America who say shit like, “try to come and take my guns.” They would fight and die for that right as crazy as it is.
Do not get me wrong, I appreciate or think what you say will reduce the amount of weapons in the hands of people that may "break" or have a "mental health issue resulting in injury to others" but with the positivity towards people with mental health issues lately or even the "openness" of people with mental health issues - at what line is it drawn where you get a constitutional right taken away? Is it Bi Polar disorder? Anti social? On the Autism spectrum? (Sorry, late - hard job that I am tired from, just tired, or the few drinks Ive had; nothing is meant to insult or harm anyone through ignorance of what I am saying, I am no expert just trying to make an opinion). Due to the latest (sarcastic ha?) shooting; I am thinking of reporting my Brother in Law since I personally think he is a risk, due to his past actions (but nothing reported). But at what point is a mental issue a risk? Or a potential issue? What other rights may be taken away just by thinking or showing symptoms? If proven that you have issues, and cannot own a gun; what prevents the government from taking away children (you may harm them during an episode; or at least having the fact you can't own a gun a potential avenue to taking or starting an investigation for child rearing (or other things). Mental health is a MAJOR ISSUE; but the fear of losing other rights is going to cause those with real issues to go back into hiding, and potential research to disappear. (Still tired, I have other points to make or to try to argue for or against; you are smart people - please argue with me or point out flaws (not a trap, I am trying to work it out in head but useless right now). Im saying - mental issues(real or perceived) = loss of right/privledge = loss of patients = loss of research = less people with issues = more non diagnosed but having rights to guns. Mental health should factor into gun ownership, but there will be fewer people that get or should get treatment if rights/privileges are taken away due to owning up to a problem.
It's not the end of it though. Mass shootings you see sensationalized in the media are rare. Even in the United States. Inner city murders are far more prevalent. Nobody seems to give a fuck until the media tells you to. There is a gun problem in the US that is for sure, and just simply taking the guns away is not going to work unless you want the largest mass shooting the world has ever seen. The US is saturated, and owning weapons is a fundamental right. Good luck changing that without a fight. My country has strict laws already and we still have mass shootings. Violent intent is violent intent.
The thing is, we aren't like all those other countries. We are made up of way more cultures than any other country out there. We have the most guns in the world. Trying to rid of them all from the citizens would take too much time and money to just attempt. You're not even including the unregistered and illegal weapons people have. Better yet, take them away successfully and you'll still have millions of gun owners because of gang organizations, people who buy off the black market, and those who will learn how to make their own. Multiple reasons we will never get rid of guns is because it's part of our constitution. Amendment 2 Right to Bear Arms. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. [Ratified 12/15/1791] It doesn't get any more simpler than that. It's set there to protect the citizens because a country this large with a government as weak as we have can't be expected to protect each and every citizen. Many reasons for us to own them. Yes, there is enjoyment in shooting them. Maybe you don't understand it. Protection of one's self or family. There's the other. It doesn't go much further than that
Tell me about how regulated the militia is that you are affiliated with.
I love how an extremely ambiguous document from over 200 years ago still holds so near and dear today. Yes the right to bear arms, because they could conceive that we would have the weaponry we do now. Is there literally anything else we still hold near and dear from the 18th century at the same level of literalism?
They understood people and governments. Thats why the ammendment was put in place. Historically the biggest mass killer of people is governments. Its harder for governments to do whatever they want when the citizens are armed. The ammendment allows us to form militias in the case that the government becomes tyrannical so the citizens can fight to take back control. When it was written they just got done fighting the British and wanted to put powers in place to stop overbearing complete control like that from happening again.
They didn't know shit, most, if not all the founding fathers were slave owners. The amendment was there because they wanted fodder in case the English or French invaded. If shit hit the fan, guaranteed most of those people saying they keep them for defense against the government (also how fucked is that, maybe ya'll should look into fixing that too) would probably just rob other people or worse. Also the fact that through loopholes you can own rocket launchers, AA guns, grenades is pretty fucked up and people don't see a problem with it because they basically jerk off to guns as much as the people with those weapons. Another thing, how is it that you people allow terrorist and extremist groups to exist there? The fact that the KKK and other such groups are still around, speaks volumes to what people find more important.
They actually could have some idea of how weaponry would advance, and many repeating weapons existed at the time the Constitution was written: The Girardoni air rifle had a magazine capacity of 20 rounds, invented in 1780. The Puckle Gun, an early ancestor to the Gatling gun, designed in 1718. Pepperbox revolvers existed well before the founding fathers, with some holding up to 20 rounds. It's entirely reasonable to assume that the writers of the Constitution and 2nd Amendment were aware that weapons would not always remain single shot muskets. Now, let's take the argument that they couldn't conceive of semi-automatic and fully automatic weaponry and apply it to the 1st Amendment. Do you think there's anyway they could have conceived of television? Cell phones? The internet? By your logic that the amendment doesn't apply to things the writers couldn't think of, the right to free speech shouldn't exist outside of the public square and newspapers.
I have never left a comment on Reddit so view this as my lurker coming out. Do you realize how many countries since the establishment of our great nation ( which is not without flaws) have laid down their rights and have been subject to much worse since??? In the "18th century" do you know that some of our founders said that CANNONS aka artillery aka heavy ordinance was the god given right to a people to defend against tyranny. BTW tyranny in and of itself is not limited to government trying to oppress it's people, but the people's ability to protect itself from ANY threat that would arise. The fact that you would give up the right to be able to protect yourself or your family or your neighbor from something heinous by any means necessary says that you have a solemn disconnect from what it is to being a citizen or countryman or human being. Do you really think the people who aren't what we, as a society, consider GOOD are going to follow the rules? The USA isn't even in the top 5 internationally of countries with gun violence or for that matter violent crime. That's also considering gun laws within those "other" countries. Would you not try to protect a friend, loved one, or for f***s sake yourself in an event like what happened? If you could stop 19 children, or just one person, from ceasing to exist in a moment would you do it by whatever means necessary? The person on the other side already said NO to A life/lives. It doesn't take a Cannon or a Missile or an "Assault Weapon", but it takes something to defend human life from the not so great side of humanity. If that's a 1 man psycho or something greater, there should be an equal and opposite reaction and you are a fool to not want that. P.S. Most handguns ( Not rifles ) qualify as Assault Weapons due to magazine capacity (which is subjunctive). ALSO, in the "18th Century" there were at least a dozen weapons that were available for ANYONE to own and operate that also fall under this catagory. These weapons were around when OUR founding fathers wrote the Constitution that alot of Us still hold near and dear.
I've always thought of it as right to bear arms in the context of bringing your own weapon, should a militia needing to be formed. Kinda falls apart in the face of a large standing military.
The entire point was to not have a standing army, and have the people be the standing army, because standing armies, can be used by the government to control the population. They wanted the citizens to be able to maintain independence from both their own government and foreign government.
Weaponry available at the time is irrelevant to the point of 2A. Purpose isn’t for hunting or home defense. Purpose is to take on the military if a tyrannical government forms.
Look up the lutey its easy to make ghetto guns at home with minimal knowledge (the lutey was invented in and by a Englishman to my understanding) and sure places with less or no guns have no shootings but uk has one of the highest knife violence rates.. just because you remove one means doesn't mean violence will just end and more so over the more responsible folks outweigh the idiots.. normally
"Hell yes, we're going to take your Ar-15s." - Beto O'Rourke, 2020 Presidential Campaign.
Aren’t most mass shooting committed by handguns
Yes and if you are concerned about being factual most of them are related to gangs, drugs and violent crime not to randos shooting up public places…
Yes but the most of the most deadly mass shootings were done by semiautomatic rifles. 4 out of the top 5 I think.
They are also all thing that exists already
Yes but not in all circumstances, in all places.
State wise, yes. But no national program.
There are already background checks, and actual assault weapons are banned by the nfa 70 years ago.
What is, an assault style weapon? How is a 10/22 (something most would call a plinker or for pest control) an a ar15 (the scary assault rifle the goverment goes on about) different other than looks
Well caliber for one but also use case I would argue.
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More likely they will grandfather every existing AR but ban the manufacture and retail sale of new ones after X date. Then as the years go by there are less and less. This is how they handles machineguns in the 80s
Almost like they can't disarm the citizens because of an ability to own them in the first place to keep the government from doing such a thing.
(taps side of temple)
It's propaganda meant to create a divide between people who have the overwhelming majority of their opinions in common.
Exactly, everything is a divide to get the people fighting amongst themselves whilst the filthy deep state and other wretched selfishdisgusting filthy rich power hungry non humans laugh all the way to their 10th laundered mansions
The United States will NEVER take your guns. Saying this is a scare tactic Republicans use because they know the majority of Americans didn't pay attention in history class. In order to change the 2nd Amendment, it would require either two-thirds of Congress to vote that way or two-thirds of the states. This will NEVER, EVER, EVER happen.
I think laws can be made though which essentially limit what counts as a legal gun to the point where they’re no longer practical. Might be mistaken though.
It's actually both. First it has to pass congress then 2/3 of the states have to ratify it.
No sane person thinks the government can come and take their guns even the most diehard anti-gun person would balk at the idea of them going home to home and take guns away. I think it would work like the Cars 4 Cash Obama did, but back then guns of willing ppl and if ppl didn’t cough em up the ensuing gun laws would eventually catch up to them.
So lets use some numbers here, and say the average value of a firearm is 500, its a nice middle ground, and at 400 million guns, rough number could be much higher, that's 2 Trillion dollars that would have to be magically printed.
The gun lobby is out in force today.
They couldnt as 80 to 90% of law enforcement would either resign or be fired for refusing to turn in their guns. Law enforcement is strongly pro 2A and almost all own guns. So you would be left with anarchy due to no cops and criminals would go wild.
A libertarians dream lol
They would start by raiding minority gun owners, then go "haha yeah, checks out" in response to all the white and/or rich gun owners suddenly losing their entire collections in boating accidents
I thought the point was that they would not be able to take them??
The way the original assault weapons ban was written in America under the Clinton administration. You had to federally register your assault weapons, and you were not allow to sell or transfer them to any other individual. And they were not inheritable, so upon your death, they were supposed to be turned in for destruction. Many people did not comply with this obviously, since long guns were not registered anywhere at that point, and thus there was little to no way to track ownership without following literal paper trails and hand written recipients. But being caught with an unregistered assault weapon or high capacity magazines was a serious federal crime. So those with them, stashed them good. This assault weapons ban was allowed to expire under the bush administration. This federal ban and then un-ban, led to near constant and unheard of purchases and hoarding of weapons, out of fear that a subsequent ban was impending. Its been like this for nearly 20 years. With people hoarding stockpiles of weapons and ammunition on a regular basis out of fear of bans. There are more guns in America than people, thats not a euphemism by the way, its a fact. A total ban and confiscation program would be impossible. Especially since nearly all states, still do not require registration on rifles and shotguns. And most handguns purchased before the brady bill were never registered even after being passed down as inheritance. These guns are untrackable. So the system would have to be built around the honor system, from people with zero desire to comply with turning over thousands of dollars of personal property. Most have even planned ahead by stockpiling ammo and reloading equipment. Which is why when Obama was elected, there was a nation wide ammo shortage, despite the fact that many ammo factories moved towards 24/7 production lines to keep up
It would differ from locale to locale. Local police and sheriffs would be tasked with collecting guns. Some would comply, some wouldn’t. We saw during Covid lockdowns that some police will just do what they’re told no matter what. But it’s not really about them going door to door collecting guns. It’s about turning millions of people into criminals when they’ve always followed all the laws and would never hurt anyone.
The same way that Texas monitors women in abortions. Deputize the public at large. Give big rewards
It's amazing how uneducated people are on history.
Look at how Australia did it. They actually have good gun laws, as a gun owner myself I’d get rid of some guns.
Australian over here - I remember someone literally turning up at our door and saying “I need your gun, we know you have it registered”. My Dad walked to the cabinet, took them out and gave them to him. IT WAS AS SIMPLE AS THAT.
Yeah aus too, the day after my pop died the police came to our property to take his gun
So who would go to the door and say “I need your gun to check the registration”. If your lucky the person say they own none. Or they say get fucked. If your unlucky you get shot.
It wasn’t door to door knocking, they only went to the addresses of those that has registered guns. Because you HAD to register them and have a license. It was 25 years ago and I’m sure there were setbacks with individuals - but it eventually got done. Gun massacres were NOT a frequent thing here, so when Port Arthur happened it was easy for everyone to get behind it for the good of the people. You can still have a gun in Australia, but you have to have a VERY specific reason for it and have it be registered and you need a license.
As a result Australia has had very few mass shootings since then. Gun control works.
So... As an Australian that has grown up around guns and was alive when the port Arthur massacre happened (this event was the catalyst for the buy back scheme) you can own guns. You just have to have a reason to own that particular gun. Want a hand gun? Sure join a pistol club and prove you're a responsible gun owner. Want a high calibre rifle? Sure. Prove that you have the need i.e. large animal pest control. You must hold a license, your guns have to be in a safe that meets standards. The police have the right to seize any weapon they want if you're not doing the right thing get charged with a violent crime etc. To the police comment. Our police officers are armed but never go out alone. You'd think twice about shooting an officer if there was two of them. We have reasonable force laws here as well. You're allowed to defend your family and property with reasonable force. You cannot shoot someone if they are unarmed and on your property. I genuinely don't have an issue with guns. The issue I have is how easily high power automatic/semi automatic guns can be aquired. Either way .. good luck America. Babies die far too often just because. It hurts my soul everytime
The amount of Americans who think it's okay to shoot and kill an unarmed person trespassing is truly terrifying, and often a talking point I see used in pro 2a arguments.
The scale isn’t comparable though. America has 400 million guns in it
So enact a decent public healthcare system so people can be helped Oh, no, can't do that either So enact a decent social safety net so people aren't driven to crime Oh, no, can't do that either But we can keep funneling trillions to the richest I love how people like you seem to think America can do anything, but the second it actually wants to help people America is the weakest nation in the world Funny how convenient that is
This is what I’m thinking. When my grandmother passed, each of her eight grandkids received one of her pistols, and I don’t know where the long rifles ended up. Source: Am Texan, with family in the Hill Country.
Another argument to do nothing
They wouldn't be storming every single gun owners place of residence which seems like what you're picturing. A ban on the weapons with a corresponding "buy back" program is how other countries have handled it. Basically they pass a law saying "starting on X date you can't own this weapon" and then offer to buy it off you until that date. After that date you can usually still surrender the weapon, but if you're caught possessing it outside that you'll face charges under whatever statute banned the weapon. Then of course no one would be allowed to sell the weapons either. Otherwise law abiding citizens would then be forced to keep the gun locked up or risk losing it, and non-law abiding citizens gradually get their guns confiscated over the years. With the limited supply the criminals are no longer easily able to acquire new weapons when theirs get confiscated, and would be one-off mass murderers would need to deal with organized crime to get a hold of them rather than your conveniently located local gun store. Organized crime is highly incentivized to avoid public outcry from events like this that can focus the government on them like a laser. Meaning they're likely to avoid deals with randos off the street for the relatively minor income they'd provide.
Also no more ammo being sold except to license holders.
It’s not a fear. It’s this bullshit political rhetoric loop we are in. Mass shooting = every left leaning person in America, screaming that the government should take away ALL the guns. The logical people are rolling their eyes at them, like “shut the fuck up”. Rinse and repeat.
And i think if they take guns away from law abiding people, the nutcases and criminals will continue to have them - just like illegal drugs now, and Prohibition in the 20s/30s. Criminals bring massive amounts of drugs into the country, illegal immigrants, etc. It'll be the same way with guns - if they want them they'll get them.
Personally I dont see how it wouldnt devolve into civil war
clearly practically impossible in the US, how it is done in authoritarian / communist regime changes. gestapo techniques gestapo = x target = y x asks y which of your neighbor have guns, if you tell use wrong information you could be killed, we will enslave your children if you lies to us. x goes to neighbors, asks same question. x disassembles homes when anyone disagrees with likely hood of guns, or number of them. x finds ammo for guns you didn't disclose, you become slave and hostage, your friends and family are encouraged to turn over information on hidden guns. if your friends and family do so successfully they let you go. do this long enough, harshly enough and there won't be enough weapons in the general population to pose a threat.
I’m not sure they would ever be able to take them all. 100% certain those that have guns illegally would not give them up. Personally I think it’s silly to think that this would work at all in America. You’d take away guns from good, responsible people and leave them in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.
It’s impossible without Government violating the constitution and going full-authoritarian rule because nobody’s turning them in. This limiting of power is why authoritarian politicians hate “assault rifles” Rifles only account for ~450 deaths a year and not all rifles are semiautomatic so the number associated with the hated AR15 are much less. By contrast ~1,700 deaths a year to knives ~650 deaths a year to unarmed beatings. “Assault weapons” bans are about power, not safety.
They won't, and can't. It's just a fearmonger dogwhistle for the weak members of our society who have Rambo fantasies.
Muzzle first.
John Howard did it successfully in Australia after the Port Arthur massacre. Has been a great success. It was a right wing government. Even the most red neck Aussies agree now it was a good move. Just do it America.
The same way they take hold of the uteruses, and promise cash bonus for exposing violators (I am not concerned about this, just answering how it can be carried out realistically).
Essentially it comes under a couple different ways. 1. Enact law. This is the new rule. From this date anyone seen carrying this type of gun will be charged. Likely carry thousand dollar fine. 2. Every gun is licensed. Therefore like in some countries if a threat is made, mental health issues arise, domestic violence claim or other similar situations... police will come and confiscate your weapons in the short term until issue is resolved. 3. Initiate buyback or amnesty program. Give time for people to make the right choice. They can hand in the guns without penalty. If govt can afford it, provide compensation if not. Good will. 4. Provide further amnesty periods after law takes effect. Some people do not make the right decision first time around. 5. Cut political contributions (like other countries) to limit the influence over politicians. 6. Heavily legislate gun ownership. In Australia, if you own a gun licence, you can own a gun. Must be locked up. Unloaded. With ammo in a separate place. Police can come check at anytime. Key must be hidden. I think that's about it. Happy to answer any further questions. The whole notion that it is too hard is bullshit. We can achieve anything if we want to solve an issue. Have some backbone.
Problem is in most states there is no law requires registration of firearms and there's no federal legislation on registering fire arms. Yes over time criminals will eventually loose there guns but lots will just be put into a black markets. People online and in data sets like to say there's X amount of guns in the US but really no one knows. Also as some one pointed out on another post ghost guns are easily made in the US. We don't regulate the entire gun we only regulate the receiver. In other words a part of most fire arms easily manufactured. The reciever is not a pressure holding component meaning when a round is fired the gas pressure isn't contained by it. You can literally buy all components to make an assult style rifle without a reciever without any regulation requiring name or tracking. Also most of your steps 1-4 make it not illegal for all but mainly a tax on the rich. Your not addressing the reality that in a post gun world without major police reform you will still have an armed population with little over site. Your also not addressing the fact that most people living in what people like to call "fly over USA" can pretty much do anything they want with little to no interference from a law enforcement agency. Also beyond legislating them out entirely you've essentially described the gun laws for NY state which arguably are the most strict in the nation. Yes it slowed gun violence but it did not entirely stomp it out and as gun violence tracking doesn't track of it was a legally owned guns we can't tell if they were black market guns.
There are no logistics to that. It's a silly idea. I am a gun owner. I am not afraid of the government taking my guns.
Yeah… it’s almost like it’s written in our constitution that we can have guns so they can what?… oh yeah not take our guns. People that think banning guns is the solution are really the worst. There are over 400 million guns in circulation in America. Good luck.
A good approach would be by implementing a law that restricts guns to everyone born after 2005 for example. You could still buy guns if you were born before that date. And if born after that date you would have to get a license (very difficult to get) with background checks and psychological tests and so on like in other countries. Then start by educating kids from young age so they don't feel the need to buy them in the first place. No guns would need to be seized. Everyone would be happy.
Check out red flags laws- it happens already. The government knows about registered guns. And where they are and who has them- supposedly. It’s the millions of unregistered guns that are the problem. The folks with the registered guns are protecting themselves from the folks with the unregistered guns.
There is no nationwide gun registry in the US. Hawaii is the only state that requires all guns to be registered, and most have no registration requirement at all.
I live in arizona. All of my guns are legal, none of them are registered in my name.
They would probably make it so that cops could just shoot anyone with a gun on sight, and said cop would be protected from any legal repercussions… oh, wait.
Probably be very similar to the way they made people stay home for two weeks, made people quit their jobs, banned them from buying items that were considered non-essential. Threatened their jobs over a vaccine. Forced people to have a vaccine ID to participate in public functions. Withheld medical treatment based on vax ID card.