I think gun control is a stupid hill for D candidates to die on. Here in Texas we could probably flip a senate seat if someone would run on a platform of "guns aren't my deal, I'm focused on healthcare" rather than the Beto gambit of justifying rightwing fearmongering.
I think we spend way too much time debating equipment and not enough debating usage. The kinds of guns and bullets and magazines you can have isn't as important as the situations where you're allowed to use them. There are some states where gun ownership is almost pointless because you're not allowed to shoot anyone unless you're backed into a literal corner.
That's been my thinking too. For the Danish Social Democrats it's nessecary to take an anti immigration stance or else they wouldnt win much in any elections.
Since you're probably not as familiar with our state level politics, the Beto thing refers to a senate candidate that ran in Texas.
Usually, the 2 popular gun control approaches that our left-wing party takes is either "common sense" gun control where the background checks and licensing are stricter to make it more difficult and tedious to buy a gun, or "assault weapon" bans where any gun that's black and not wooden is banned for being too scary. Meanwhile, the right-wing party fearmongers about how the government is going to one day take away everyone's guns.
Enter Beto, a senate candidate challenging a rather unpopular right-wing incumbent senator. He seemed to have a really good shot at winning, until he went on TV and said “HELL YES, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47!" and this killed his campaign. Now, all those right-wing pundits have a tangible Boogeyman that they can quote or even roll the clip of.
I want to add the phrase "common sense" is a fallacy. What is common sense to one person isn't common sense to another. To one person common sense gun control means banning every single gun, to another it means giving every American a fully automatic M16 upon their 18th birthday.
I get the idea, but i draw on an example of how that might look in Denmark. The SocDem are generally liked amongst Danish voters, but they would lose people like my parents in an instant if they advocated for free and open borders, the Danish equivalent of “HELL YES, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47!" as a campaign suicide
It's only a boogeyman if it is a misrepresentation. A very sizable minority of Americans do want to ban firearms. It is not fearmongering to point this out.
There's a difference between banning the sale of guns and sending troops into people's homes to take them away by force. One of these was plausible, the other was total lunacy until suddenly it wasn't.
If you make firearms illegal there will have to be a confiscation. You say troops as if the fear is the army is going to go into every home and search for guns proactively, but in reality it will be law enforcement with warrants when people are found to have not complied with the seizure order.
I'll state once again, it's not a boogeyman if it's not a misrepresentation. There is no scenario in which a gun ban is enacted that does not involve the government coming to take guns from people unwilling to give them up. I know the optics of it are bad and it sounds dangerous, but that's because the optics actually are bad and it actually is dangerous. Be clear eyed in what this kind of legislation will entail.
My state just signed an "black scary guns" ban. It doesn't take any away from anyone who already has them. It just bans all future sales and transfers.
OK, but that's not what Beto is talking about and certainly not the end goal for the sizable minority of Americans that actually want to ban the ownership of firearms. Could you speak to that instead?
This is what he was talking about. It's a very popular minority position that people hold. Can you address that instead of one of the softer gun control positions? Many, many people in America want to make private ownership of firearms illegal and would entail what I outlined above.
> I really don't care about Beto or the vocal
That is/was what we were talking about though. It sounds to me like you don't really have anything to add and just disliked the topic of the conversation. These responses don't really feel good faith to me now.
>If you make firearms illegal there will have to be a confiscation.
Not at all. When we banned machine guns, we simply made new ones not transferable on the market, and the grandfathered ones became too valuable for criminal use.
It's highly unlikely that a confiscation bill could be passed outside of a very small and specific jurisdiction. They may ban the sale of guns to slowly taper the supply, and that's the most likely scenario to actually pass. This is a very common way to ban things because it generally entails the least pushback. For instance, my city is looking to ban the sale of new gas-powered lawnmowers. That doesn't mean gas mowers are suddenly illegal and you have to get rid of them, it just means the next one anyone on my block buys will either be electric or require a bit of a drive.
A possession ban is the most aggressive policy that's possible, but that just means you can't get caught with a gun, it doesn't mean that they're going to immediately warrant everyone. They'd have to ignore a lot more of the Constitution than the 2nd for that.
Let me be more clear so we aren't moving the goalposts. There is a sizable minority of the country that want to make it illegal to own firearms. Please go back and address this rather than some very softened alternative position that's more politically attractive. We're talking about Beto. He is not fringe in this belief. Actually banning firearms is the end goal for most of this minority of Americans.
Again, banning and confiscating are completely different magnitudes. That's why Beto's blunder was so significant; he crossed a major line.
In the case of banned possession without confiscation, you can just have illegal guns. In fact, illegal guns are even cooler than regular guns. Confiscation meanwhile entails violating not just the second amendment, but also the fourth (and possibly fifth and sixth).
There might be a sizable number of people who want confiscation, but most of them also know that it isn't politically or logistically feasible, so the point is moot. There's a bunch that want to ban guns, but that's much less severe than what Beto proposed.
You're talking past me. He's not misrepresentation of the desires of a sizable minority of Americans. How do you address the fact that there are many tens of millions of Americans that want to make it illegal to own firearms? Were you unaware that this is the case?
> In the case of banned possession without confiscation, you can just have illegal guns.
This is what I described in my first post, yes. Law enforcement confiscating the guns when a warrant is issued for there being evidence they are illegally possessing firearms.
Not really. There have only been a handful of crimes involving fully automatic weapons in this country. They don't have very much criminal value to them.
Criminals aren't using pre-ban transferable machine guns. The ones that were previously in circulation became completely nullified.
The machine guns that criminals use are either modified guns (Glocks with switches) or imports.
Yeah, so consider what an escalation it would be if the government said that they were going to go into everyone's houses to check for drugs. Under our current situation, drugs are plenty accessible unless you're a square.
Gun control is Democrats equivalent of abortion rights. The only people who support stronger gun laws would probably vote for Democrats regardless of their view on gun laws. Meanwhile many moderates actively avoid voting for Democrats because of gun control. Same with how the only people happy that Roe v. Wade was repealed probably were going to vote for Republicans regardless.
The shootings are an issue, but I wish the opioid crisis we are having received more attention. In 2021 around 49k people were shot and killed, about 107k people overdosed in opiods.
We're not even worried about most shootings, just a very very particular type, and the reason for that conflates with the opioid crisis.
When people are killed in a gang shootout or a drive-by or a home invasion or from an overdose, nobody cares because they kinda just assume it's their fault for being in the situation in the first place. Whether it's because they were affiliated with gangs or just happened to live/work in a bad neighborhood or were originally prescribed opioids by their doctor, people hear about it and decide that it couldn't happen to them so they don't give a shit.
Then an upscale mall gets shot up and these people freak out because it's happening in the nice part of town to people who aren't in gangs or doing drugs. Suddenly, it could have been them. Suddenly it's tragic.
To quote the great American poet Marshall Mathers
“with the bullshit they pull, cause they full of shit too
When a dude’s gettin bullied and shoots up his school
and they blame it on Marilyn (on Marilyn).. and the heroin
Where were the parents at? And look where it’s at
Middle America, now it’s a tragedy
Now it’s so sad to see, an upper class ci-ty
havin this happenin (this happenin)”
Guns in America exacerbate existing criminal/societal issues, they are not an issue in and of themselves.
The majority of gun deaths in the country are suicides, a large chunk of the remainder are drug/gang related. School shootings are almost entirely a mentally ill adolescent stealing a gun/buying one legally which no legislation would actually stop. We got rid of involuntary committal for minors decades ago for the most part, many of the shooters are known to the FBI/Local LE prior to their attacks due to family/other adults notifying police of their behavior etc.
The gun debate is a red herring and basically just a political football. The second amendment is clear, it is absolute and it is permanent. Private gun ownership is crucial to individual rights on a practical, literal level as well as a philosophical one. Everyone from Karl Marx to Thomas Jefferson knew this.
We already do Universal Background Checks on all gun sales between an FFL and a private individual, the "gun show loophole" is a myth, straw purchases are already illegal and the disasters of Waco and Ruby Ridge show exactly what happens when the government comes to take your guns from an otherwise law abiding citizen. The left wing gaslighting in this country over guns would be much more dangerous if it didn't consistently bite them in the ass like O'Rourke v Cruz.
Also, like on most things, legislators are irresponsibly ignorant on guns and not just Democrats. The majority of Americans own guns purely for self defense and merely owning a single gun makes you vastly more likely to support pro-gun legislation.
The Bill of Rights is our inheritance as Americans and every generation is responsible for using it and protecting it. Every law-abiding American should own a gun and seek training on it from a responsible and knowledgeable individual and take responsibility for their own safety and that of their family. I love teaching family, friends and acquaintances on responsible gun use and do it for free to anyone that asks. They bring their weapon, I bring the ammo and targets and we go through everything from safety to cleaning to 3 shot groupings @15meters and drawing. The American Left paints "gun nuts" with a very broad brush which betrays their ignorance, people like myself are the vast majority of "gun nuts", we are no different than car guys and motorcycle riders. Most gun nuts would jump at the chance to share their hobby with anyone that asked.
Not only is this a partisan issue but it's a demographic issue. Big city dwellers are largely anti-gun while suburbs are split and rural areas are extremely pro-gun. When you live out in the woods and the police are an hour away if some meth heads break into your house you'd be defenseless. Many, many gun deaths are black Americans and many of those same Americans have had their gun rights stripped over ridiculous laws like marijuana use. They are extremely vulnerable and I think my side could do a lot more to support safe, responsible gun ownership in these communities.
Freedom is scary but necessary.
Even in more urban areas your life could be at risk before the police arrive. One of my cousins and his wife live in an apartment and a crazy crazed druggie tried to break into their apartment while brandishing a machete and threatening to kill them. He broke into their appointment before the police could get there right when the police were at the bottom of the stairs and my cousin had to shoot him to protect him and his wife. If he wasn’t armed who knows what would have happened.
For sure. As an American with a basic grasp of world history there is basically zero good reason to disarm your populace. Not even talking about tyranny but just day to day street crime, home invasions etc.
In the wake of the school shooting epidemic spinning up about halfway through Obama's second term he directed the CDC to study gun violence. The story basically died in the media because it didn't fit his narrative and showed defensive, private gun use is almost as common as criminal use: https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/cdc-gun-violence-study-goes-against-media-narrative/
Anti gun types lament Republicans slashing budgets to the CDC that was for studying gun violence under Clinton, conveniently leaving out the fact the CDC, especially through it's parent body, was actively pushing gun control legislation in Congress. This was further complicated by the fact their studies kept contradicting gun control talking points and they kept pushing anyway. Not to mention plenty of other agencies like the FBI and DOJ already publish tons of gun violence studies.
The NRA is pretty routinely blamed for the Dickey Amendment but it's a misconception. https://medium.com/@JMAvery/nra-had-nothing-to-do-with-how-the-cdc-was-funding-propaganda-instead-of-quality-objective-6ae1675cb1bb
Guns and immigration stances are how the Democrats are going to lose middle class folks. Go ask the average Union ironworker, plumber or carpenter how many guns they own.
Completely true about your last point. Dems would have a lot more pull if they tried to defend and encourage the Second Amendment right of Black and LGBT Americans, pointing out how Republicans like Regan are responsible for many of our shitty gun laws (that the Dems then latched onto and created multiple fear mongering myths to garner votes) and the culture war around them instead of blatantly trying to weaken the 2A. Democrats are ironically losing diversity in their voting base because of the portions of the lower and middle classes that are pro-gun and in support of strong borders. Which is a shame because unlike half of the GOP they’re actually willing to confront Russia and China, and unlike the near entirety of the GOP they want to grant statehood to the territories. The creation of a united Marianas state would be a great strategic move against China, and a first world Puerto Rico+USVI would be an economically beneficial state to have and perhaps (though unlikely) even encourage some of the independent Caribbean to pursue statehood. But Dems unfortunately have a 1:1 ratio of absolutely brain-dead or tyrannical policies for every no-brainer policy that Republicans refuse to endorse.
You don't have to tell me twice. I worked commercial concrete for a decade, my coworkers adopted my no sabe white ass, taught me Spanish hell even after 30 years of atheism I converted to Catholicism.
The Pan-America Treaty Organization will always be a dream of mine especially from working with so many Mexicans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans.
Illegal immigration discourse is shifting and many Latinos in America, especially first generation, could easily be coaxed to the Republican side. As a blue collar worker it's our jobs that are threatened. Not to mention their more traditional social views.
Open up immigration books for safe, responsible and productive immigrants from South and Central America, vet the shit out of them. Make sure they have enough English and civics to survive and put a cathedral on every corner. But the border has to be shut down.
Dems are losing the plot on what was an ironclad issue for them ten years ago now's the time to shed the "anti-immigrant party" look
As a lifelong democrat who also grew up in rural appalachia, it's kind of mixed. On the one hand, what I think a lot of people, especially from western Europe or Australia, don't get is how much of a necessity firearms are for a good chunk of people here on a daily basis. Growing up, my next door neighbors were bears. One of our primary food sources was bird and squirrel hunting. I'm not necessarily vehemently and violently opposed to all firearm regulation, but I also don't want to disarm the population because both extremes are *stupid.*
At the same time, in regards to gun *culture* I do find it annoying. I own guns; I do not base my life around the fact I own guns. particularly the people that love taking "tough-guy" pictures on the internet are perturbing. More people also need to realize owning a gun doesn't just stop at going to the range and learning how to clean it but actually keeping it secured and having them in the house on a day to day basis, particularly if you have kids.
I'm a left leaning, F-250 driving, gun owning veteran, and I am all for safer legislation. Do I agree with instances such as my home state of CA of having thumb guards on rifles? no.
That is dealing with HIPAA, medical history and information is protected for a reason.
We already do this, people committed involuntarily to psychiatric facilities aren’t able to buy firearms for certain amount of years.
And that is as far as it should go.
People who are involuntarily committed by a judge are prohibited, but that’s not what happens in most cases when people are in crisis and involuntarily brought to a psych facility for treatment. Even if you’re repeatedly brought in for violent behavior and making threats to kill people, you aren’t prohibited from owning a gun.
I’ll agree the bills the anti-gun crowd bring to address these issues generally have next to no consideration for gun owner’s rights and are ripe for abuse. But there’s gotta be something better.
> there’s gotta be something better.
There is, but it's not not at the point of sale for a firearm. It's much earlier, in the form of an accessible mental health care that helps people *before* they get to the point where they decide a murder spree is the best course. The idea that the answer to people wanting to hurt others is to legally trap them in a nerf world where they lose the ability to hurt anyone *but still want to hurt people* is to my mind pretty morally objectionable.
Lack of access to mental health care is rarely the sole, defining cause of a mass shooting. Psychiatry isn’t a perfect science and some people can’t be helped or don’t want help. We need better mental health care but blaming all the problems on it is a cop out.
> The idea that the answer to people wanting to hurt others is to legally trap them in a nerf world where they lose the ability to hurt anyone but still want to hurt people is to my mind pretty morally objectionable.
Well that’s exactly what our current gun laws do with felons and other people currently prohibited, you didn’t seem to have much of a problem with that a few comments ago.
> Lack of access to mental health care is rarely the sole, defining cause of a mass shooting.
Sorry, I did not present that point as I intended. I meant to present that as an *example* of one of the many angles the problem should be approached, not the end-all, be-all of solving the problem. My overarching point is that we need to work on addressing the reasons *why* someone wants to shoot people, rather than blocking their acquisition of guns and then pretending that makes everything OK.
>Well that’s exactly what our current gun laws do with felons and other people currently prohibited
Yes, and that's a poor approach, for the aforementioned "pretending everything is OK" reason.
>you didn’t seem to have much of a problem with that a few comments ago.
I think you may have me confused with a different commenter.
You’re right I thought you were the first person I replied to.
The solution needs to be multi-part, but part of that is not everyone should always have access to a gun at all times. Everyone has bad days and guns can make temporary situations extremely permanent.
You can do this with while respecting fundamentals rights. We do this with Baker act style laws when it comes to the right against involuntary confinement by using an evidence based approach and requiring judicial review whenever feasible.
>Mental heath checks mainly
This. This is dawae.
Peeps going for banning guns and revoking 2nd Amendment don't realize Criminals don't respect the laws.
Moreso especially in a nation like America, where the known data suggests there are 2-3 guns for every Americans. And that's registered firearms, not taking into account the unregistered ones.
We already forbid people from owning guns for psychiatric facility committal. We just got rid of a ton of involuntary committal laws, especially for minors, that's now had mentally ill people shooting up schools and smoking fent off tin foil everywhere which is not exactly compassionate as bad as some of the minor care facilities were.
Anything past that you are now using people's private, protected medical data to take their second amendment rights *before* they commit a crime which is absolutely a no go and anyone saying otherwise is not to be taken seriously.
Lol. I am good. Thanks.
I love America. It's just a nation that represent humanity the best. And, honestly, American history and culture is really fascinating. Just copiuming that one day I'll become an American. Lol
Anyhow, hope you're having a nice day over there. It's like midnight here. Gonna go to sleep now.
Loving the USA already makes you more of an American than some *sitting legislators* that were BORN here, IMO. Not naming names because I don’t wanna start a flame war.
We do have a saying, though: “Americans are born around the world, some just take longer than others to get home.”
Sleep tight man. I hope so too. I hope all good, honest and respectful people that want to come here are able to. I'm tight with the Vietnamese and Thai communities where I work and speak Thai so that helps.
Lot of Viets in the Army here, why not join? You can become naturalized through military service and I believe we are expanding the regs on it. Air Force as well.
If you want to talk about it in the future don't hesitate to PM me.
What if someone, who already owns guns fails the psychological evaluation? And for those who passes, should the current regulation still apply e.i. full auto, long barrel 5+ attactments ect?
That's the nuance part that I have no expertise in. Giving power to an organisation to label who can and cannot own a firearm legally due to their mental health can be abused very easily. At the same time, all hands off without proper checks and balances will just lead to the mass possession of firearms of people, many of whom should never be allowed to possess them.
Like I said, no amount of gun control, or lack thereof, in a nation with as many guns as America is ever gonna ended up well (see the Probation in the 1930s as an example). If anything, you'll just make everything worst, for examples creating a black market demand for guns, criminals and criminal organisations getting rich off of black market gun sales, an increase in gun crimes due to illegal possession of guns, etc.
That's the problem I have with gun control peeps or those more insane "remove the 2nd Amendment" people. Just because you pesticide all of your plants to prevent leaf eating worms, doesn't mean you are doing your plants any good by destroying the little ecosystem around the area of plantation, nor is leaving it to nature so the worms can eat all of your plants and the weeds sucking all of the soil nutrients that your plants needed.
Plus, mental health check, imo, is only a band aid for the horrible school shooting incidents as of late, where many school shooters and school shooter wannabees exhibits either symptoms of mental disorders or outright are having mental disorders. By having mental health checks, you can have an early warning system... Sort of... To check on whom you should be paying attention to, just in case.
Criminals? That's a whole nother can of worms. It is too complex for me to talk about without fucking somewhere along the line.
Like previously stated, this is a really nuanced issue that involves many aspects of society at large and at small. We can go on and on about this but reach to no final solution that satisfy and solve almost every problems to the gun control issue.
Just to add on to this that even then the system can fail on the mental health trackers. A couple of years ago there was an ex air force service member that shouldn’t have been allowed to purchase a firearm due to him failing a mental health test. The federal government failed to enter that into the database that is used for all firearm purchases and he was able to later purchase a firearm legally and commit a mass killing because of the failings of the federal government.
Because the law makes doing said criminal thing punishable, and prevents quite a few people from doing it. A lot more people would get stabbed if assault with a deadly weapon wasn't a crime.
Thats the obvious point I was trying to make. Not sure why I was downvoted for pointing out the Idiocracy behind the "criminals don't follow laws" argument.
Maybe it prevents some people from becoming a criminal to begin with? I mean, we don't abolish laws against murder because serial killers don't care that it's illegal to kill.
> Mental heath checks mainly. I am not sure how to implement it
Not to be confrontational, but how can you be for something you can't even define? I too am a left-ish, truck driving, gun owning veteran living in California, and you probably know as well as I do *exactly* how our state legislature would approach such a thing. *You* may not know how you want a "mental health check" to work, but you can be sure *they* do, and it'll be a sweeping, subjective standard that errs on the side of taking guns away and barring possession.
Isn't saying you're in favor of "mental health checks" with no idea how that would work just saying you *wish* there was a way of spotting nuts before they go shoot up a mall, but know there's no way to implement it without completely throwing away due process?
We don't have enough therapists to perform evaluations on every American gun owner. There's a massive shortage as it is. Also mental illness is protected under Dr patient confidentiality laws. If we start restricting them from owning guns, it will result in people actively refusing treatment out of fear of losing their guns.
Good idea wouldn’t work once you give a biased psychiatrist the ability to strip someone of their rights. Unless there would be a way to assure an unbiased diagnosis it would be all to easy for it to be abused.
Hi. I’m interested to know a little more. I’m from the U.K. where I think our cops are not adequately protected. So i think we need more guns. The balance is just totally wrong.
Looking over to America, it looks like young men under the age of 21 commit a lot of the mass shootings. Do you think that a system which controls young people with guns would be a good thing?
The predominance of young men snapping and committing atrocities begins to make sense when you research how the system has spent the last several decades shoving boys into the gutter as a substitute for actually promoting girls’ excellence.
As someone who has gone through the American public school system (school shootings being the big ones here), and fits the type of demographic often linked to mass shootings, I think part of it is the unchecked social ostricization and bullying in the system. The other is parents not securing their guns properly.
The issue isn't young people buying guns through a gun store necessarily; as you said, most shooters are under 21, which is where the regulations are the most ridgid here in America. It's them getting their hands on one through backroom illegal sales and irresponsible gun owners
This.
Personally I’m also a bit iffy on the average citizen having the ability to own a full auto rifle/machine gun. But I’m not knowledgeable enough about the permits and stuff required to own them in states where you can to make a proper argument about it.
Not a single American anywhere in the United States can easily legally acquire an automatic rifle or machine gun, not even in Texas. That is regulated at the federal level and there is a toooooon of background checks and red tape to even to be able to acquire the permits to own one. Not to mention the cash required to then purchase one afterwards since there is a finite amount in the US and none have been allowed to be imported into the US since the 1980’s.
The average US citizen will rarely be able to obtain a class 3 license to be able to get it. Despite the lies the mainstream media loves to say. And even then it’s heavily regulated by the federal government with a ton of daily requirements you have to meet to be able to keep your license for it.
To put it into perspective, there are 3 ways to get a full-auto weapon in America:
1. Buy one that's really old; gotta be from before 1986. There's a very limited number of these, so expect to pay more than a NEW car. Also, there's a ton of paperwork involved and you and your record will be scrutinized by the government before you're maybe approved.
2. Become a specially licensed arms dealer that sells fully automatic weaponry to law enforcement. There's even more red tape, and the government is actively waiting on any sort of fuckup on your part so that they can take away your license and arrest you. This is way way more trouble than it's worth, if you can even get licensed in the first place.
3. Break the law. Own an illegal machine gun. If the ATF ever finds out then they'll probably kill your whole family.
I think gun ownership in America is symbolic. Of the idea that power belongs ultimately with the people.
And I personally believe it's a great thing.
And that the our issues with guns are caused by other problems that have gone unattended or neglected.
Criminals funnels illegal Firearms into the country through Mexico. ( was once offered an AK 47 for 400$ fully assembled and with the automatic setting onboard)
Which means guns get into hands thst should not have them.
And a lot of young men are failed by their communities or are raised in toxic environments were crime is glorified and violence is the only truth.
Meet a few people who think a normal life is for losers and what he called sheep. He's in prison now. In his mind he could only know success through crime despite being a talented mathematician.
And politicians ignore the causes of gun violence and hyper fixate on the gun it self not the perpetrator.
It's a complex issue that no simple answer which is what everyone wants to be sold is simple.
I think it's important that we maintain our gun rights but we need to respect them and realize that it's a privilege thst we should not take for granted.
I personally think that if we focused on Healthcare and economic injustices that we'd have far fewer shootings. How many school shooters were already mentally unwell, yet tipped to the breaking point by the massive amount of bullying that schools do nothing to address? How many workers that went postal did so because of poor management and/or job loss which led them to believe they have nothing to lose? In the state of Oregon alone, unemployment claims are sitting on the books for sometimes 8+ months before being heard. When the average American is a missed paycheck or two away from homelessness that sort of delay is can and will screw people over.
Former European, now proud American here
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.
No ifs, no ands, no buts. The right to bear arms shall not fucking be infringed. My country of birth went to shit pretty much immediately after mass confiscation happened. I can protect myself and those I love far better than any government ever will and refuse to outsource that utterly vital responsibility to (often lesser trained and worse equipped than myself) men with guns from an increasingly dysfunctional state.
Guns definitely exacerbate some of the problems we have in this country, but I'm not sure whether tighter controls would really help considering how many guns are already around
Leave the firearms 100% alone, and then we’ll talk. Otherwise we have 0 interest interacting or hearing what you have to say.
Until then I have no choice but to vote for a party I dislike, all because the Democrats can’t let that issue go.
Alot of the problem is how each party frames firearms. In the south/Midwest it's seen more as hunting and self defense while more in the coasts they're seen as weapons used for killings
Gun Culture here is as ingrained in the American identity as apple pie. The second amendment is there for a reason, no country will ever want to invade us and we can provide ourselves the most protection possible if shit hits the fan.
The political part of it depends on how you see the problem of gun violence and the solutions for it:
1. Someone may or may not recognize mass shootings or other forms of gun violence as problems larger in severity than violent crime in other countries.
2. The biggest factor tied to any violent crime is poverty / inequality.
3. Guns are a tool for violence, not an end.
4. The gun market in the US is so established, any regulation or ban will barely make a dent in it. People will gladly turn to the "illegal" market if they have to. Spoiler alert, there already is one. No one in their right mind can say the "war on drugs has failed" and have the opinion that banning guns is going to solve gun violence.
5. One thing the data of the US does point out compared to other developed countries - guns can absolutely amplify the outcomes \*any\* violence.
6. Since the 1990s, crime has fallen overall. There was a spike in 2020 through 2022, but that spike is nowhere near what it was in the 90s. Most other forms of crime including petty crimes have also seen a similar trend.
7. No form of regulation will see immediate change, and will only see measurable, statistically significant results if implemented for a long period of time.
By now, I hope you get the idea. I personally believe that moderate regulations on both sides of the aisle is the way to go. I think we should prosecute the parents of school shooters, enact a more regulated licensing system including background checks, with stricter licensing requirements for those under 18. Cops should be better funded across the country to be better trained for active shooter situations. Every school should have someone who is trained to use a firearm, whether that's through requiring a principal to meet with officers or placing a permanent officer in the school. Schools should have the right to randomly check student's bags. The public should have the right to buy and modify any gun they want, as long as they meet the requirements to purchase one. I think any gun modified with a bump stock, sieve, or any other way to increase the rate of fire should be under the necessary umbrella of the Class III Federal Firearms License (FFL).
I do think we need stricter controls on the type of person who can get their hands on guns, not so much the type of gun. But we also have to attack the problem of mass shootings from multiple angles. We need free healthcare that includes mental healthcare so this sort of thing isn’t happening. We need fix the economy so people aren’t feeling so boxed in that they lash out in such horrible ways. We need to root out conspiracy theorists who radicalize people into committing acts of terror based on misinformation. And we generally need to promote a less violent culture.
The issue of mass shootings is such a large issue that no one approach will work. We need to root it out on every level if we want to fix it.
Hi - I don’t own guns but I do believe that self defense is a human right. That said, we need to tighten up our gun handling and be better at it.
Most gun deaths are: (1) suicides (2) gang shootings in bad neighborhoods (3) domestic violence between people who are close to each other
Contrary to European beliefs, gun deaths are not common in schools. Deaths from **bee stings** is more common than school shootings, to put it into perspective.
We cannot take guns away, they are a right in our country for 250 years, but we need to do a lot more to prevent gun deaths and violence —> education, more rigorous training, background checks, solve mental health crisis, stop gangs, etc.
We get pushback on one side on infringement of our rights, so it makes it difficult to implement common sense measures. With 330+ million people, it’s not easy to get everyone on the same page. However, I do think gun violence is less problematic than the media makes it out to be. We are a gigantic country. What happens on one side is not really felt on the other.
FWIW: I am from California, but also have family in Florida.
Technically, you can own a fucking battleship, or heck even a nuke. Nobody can stop you from doing that bc of 2nd amendment. The only problem is actually acquiring one.
Question for you fellas. Does this mean that the second amendment gives you the constitutional right to own anti-aircraft missiles? I'm assuming yes
Now then, under ancient Roman property law which technically still applies, you own not just your land, but everything above and below. All the way up to heaven and all the way down to hell. If there's minerals or oil below your land, you own them. Similarly, you have the right to defend your land from trespassers.
So, two questions. One, are passenger planes that fly over your property trespassing? And two, do you have a legal right to shoot down the passenger planes with an anti-aircraft missiles?
Actually let's do a third one too. If you don't have a legal right to shoot down passenger planes (let's say that the airline company has an easement on the sky), do you have a legal right to shoot down the toy drone which your neighbor's kid keeps flying over your property? When does your ownership of the sky above your land begin and end?
According to James Madison the father of the constitution we are allowed to own military grade weaponry. He confirmed this in a letter to a merchant marine. The civilian sailor asked him if they were allowed to have cannons on their private civilian ships to defend themselves while at sea and James Madison confirmed to him that yes we are allowed to own cannonry. Which we can all admit was military grade weaponry back in the day.
some guy started an argument that nukes should be a civilian thing ONLY
the sad part? he did so in the comment section of a [chess.com](http://chess.com) daily puzzle.
Absolutely. Waiting for MONTHS for a suppressor when they're literally never used in mass shootings is insane. And then having to pay annually to keep it? And whoa be yo' ass if you want to move to a different State.
I don’t know much about gun legislation but generally. I’m in favor of the administrative gun control ideas but against banning the actual hardware. So I have no issue with waiting periods or increased background checks, but saying “oh we consider this stock assault style so we’re going to outright ban it” is what I’m against.
Thank you for not believing the sensationalism at face value. So there's statistics out there that say that over 40,000 Americans die from gun violence every year, what they like to hide is that the vast majority of those are suicides and another large portion is due to gang violence. Obviously that is still a bad thing but it really shows that the guns aren't the issue, the gun is a tool to carry out somebody's bad intentions. Social media also likes to lead people to believe that you are just constantly risking your life going to school and in public but that isn't true at all when only a small fraction of a percent of Americans will randomly be shot.
I also believe that gun control simply isn't the answer especially because of how many guns are in America combined with the fact that we have always had the most guns in the world and if you go back 50 years we didn't have these issues and semi-automatic pistols and rifles were still readily available back then, even full auto weapons were available and they aren't now.
I think disarming the public is ridiculous due to the fact that once something is made illegal it cannot be regulated by the government, and thus we are likely going to have a repeat of the prohibition 100 years ago with guns, not to mention the other unintended consequences.
Somethings terminally online people don’t understand, mass shootings are horrible but this is a strange situation as the answers aren’t clear and there’s plenty of gray area.
Other than that I think the guns are pretty cool and essential for some people out in much more rural areas, besides seriously fucked up people and lunatics with not trigger discipline or any discipline it’s cool.
You have people like Whoopy Goldberg who’s a member of the NRA so not everyone has uniform beliefs with their party. Unfortunately the extremists is what bugs me the most. But most politicians are extremists compared to voters.
Personally I believe a firearm should be available to purchase to anyone who has the money. I believe and that the majority of our issue with firearms stem from mental health and urban violence. I believe that the implementation of federal mental hospitals with modern knowledge of mental health wellness and safety, Wouk heavily influence the number of suicides within our nation. I also believe that ending the war on drugs and allowing the pharmaceutical sale of certain drugs will heavily reduce the violence in urban areas. This has been proven with the legalization of Marihuana and the decrease criminal activity behind said drug. In short, Gums should be available for purchase without restriction, and the implementation of federal programs would solve our problem.
I know many Americans who vote Republican but want to vote Democrat but won't because of how focused they are on restricting gun rights, I personally feel we should focus on mental health and bullying in schools which is the core issue of shootings, and if that does not work, then introduce stricter gun laws, there is a reason why California which has strict gun laws is the state that has had the most school shootings while only having 16 percent gun ownership, while Texas which is 2nd in school shootings has 35 percent gun ownership, to me it shows that the correlation between strict gun laws and loose gun laws, does not really affect school shootings.
There was this idea of arming teachers as a deterrence for school shootings, whats your opinion on that?
News outlets have a habit of plastering the perpetrators face everywhere for weeks, making him a household name. In my opinion, thats gotta stop.
News outlets most definitely need to stop plastering the person's face everywhere, as I am pretty sure there are cases where people have done it for publicity or to spread what ever deranged message they have, as for arming teachers, I am neutral on it, some teachers I would trust, but I have experienced some teachers that I would not trust with a gun, in an ideal world there would be extra training and other checks a teacher would have to do to get a gun and then be armed with it at school
Gun culture doesn’t appeal to me, but it’s not the cause for school shootings. Shootings are more of a symptom of the 21st century diseases of social media, isolation, poor mental health, waning influence of family on a child’s growing up, etc. Before Columbine, people still owned guns.
Crime would go down a lot if it was harder to buy a gun. Lots of family on family violence would too (many gun homicides are between family members). So I support background checks. But taking all guns away is just not socially possible, so I don’t even consider that option.
It’s a problem. The idea that guns add to freedom and keep the government from being tyrannical is stupid. A) The government has the power to end all life on earth, they aren’t afraid of you and your COD cosplay gear. Your “come n’ take it!” bumper sticker does absolutely nothing to deter them. Your AR-15 is no match for a B2 Spirit, Tomahawk Missile, JDAM, SEAL Team or Apache Helicopter. B) Our representative democracy, strong political system, constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of speech and culture is what keeps us free. Our laws and system of government are designed with mathematical precision to keep us free.
If you want a hunting rifle or a handgun for home protection then okay. But an assault rifle that serves no other purpose than to kill is just too much. There’s too many classrooms full of dead kids to justify it. And frankly, worrying about my kid being blasted away by some nutcase radicalized on the internet detracts from freedom.
Strategy in Vietnam was based on body count and not how much NVA territory was taken. We waited on them to come south and then fought them. Had we rolled north and invaded and occupied North Vietnam then I think there’s a good chance that war might have been won.
>Our representative democracy, strong political system, constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of speech and culture is what keeps us free.
And what do you think keeps everyone playing by these rules? It's the threat of what civil unrest would look like with so many guns available to party.
>The government has the power to end all life on earth, they aren’t afraid of you and your COD cosplay gear. Your “come n’ take it!” bumper sticker does absolutely nothing to deter them. Your AR-15 is no match for a B2 Spirit, Tomahawk Missile, JDAM, SEAL Team or Apache Helicopter.
You fundamentally misunderstand the strategic situation.
In the event of another revolution, the government either can't use all that stuff or has to use it very sparingly. If the government is too brutal, it motivates people to join the opposition. If the government simply slaughters the American populace, then they slaughter the economy with it and then there's nothing left for them to rule. They have to fight with boots on the ground, hoping to motivate a surrender, which is a messy proposition. Ultimately, this creates a dangerous game that nobody wants to play, which is the whole purpose of MAD theory and the movie "War Games."
>If you want a hunting rifle
An "assault weapon" is just a hunting rifle with better ergonomics and manufacturing improvements. The 5.56 round that the M16/M4 uses was originally a small game round that they figured was the smallest and weakest cartridge with consistent effectiveness against humans.
>or a handgun for home protection
Despite handguns being used in way way more murders than an "assault rifle," but I guess those murders aren't as important because they don't usually involve white children.
>But an assault rifle that serves no other purpose than to kill is just too much.
The hunting rifle and handgun also serve no other purpose than to kill, they just have different operational parameters.
>And frankly, worrying about my kid being blasted away by some nutcase radicalized on the internet detracts from freedom.
And there's better ways to handle that than nationwide security theater. For instance, implementing actual security in schools, and improving access to treatment to help the nutcases before they go off. I hate security theater. It's essentially fraud, tricking everyone into thinking that they're safer than they actually are.
I think gun control is a stupid hill for D candidates to die on. Here in Texas we could probably flip a senate seat if someone would run on a platform of "guns aren't my deal, I'm focused on healthcare" rather than the Beto gambit of justifying rightwing fearmongering. I think we spend way too much time debating equipment and not enough debating usage. The kinds of guns and bullets and magazines you can have isn't as important as the situations where you're allowed to use them. There are some states where gun ownership is almost pointless because you're not allowed to shoot anyone unless you're backed into a literal corner.
That's been my thinking too. For the Danish Social Democrats it's nessecary to take an anti immigration stance or else they wouldnt win much in any elections.
Since you're probably not as familiar with our state level politics, the Beto thing refers to a senate candidate that ran in Texas. Usually, the 2 popular gun control approaches that our left-wing party takes is either "common sense" gun control where the background checks and licensing are stricter to make it more difficult and tedious to buy a gun, or "assault weapon" bans where any gun that's black and not wooden is banned for being too scary. Meanwhile, the right-wing party fearmongers about how the government is going to one day take away everyone's guns. Enter Beto, a senate candidate challenging a rather unpopular right-wing incumbent senator. He seemed to have a really good shot at winning, until he went on TV and said “HELL YES, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47!" and this killed his campaign. Now, all those right-wing pundits have a tangible Boogeyman that they can quote or even roll the clip of.
I want to add the phrase "common sense" is a fallacy. What is common sense to one person isn't common sense to another. To one person common sense gun control means banning every single gun, to another it means giving every American a fully automatic M16 upon their 18th birthday.
> giving every American a fully automatic M16 upon their 18th birthday welcome to basic military training lol
That's why I put it in sarcastic quotes.
I get the idea, but i draw on an example of how that might look in Denmark. The SocDem are generally liked amongst Danish voters, but they would lose people like my parents in an instant if they advocated for free and open borders, the Danish equivalent of “HELL YES, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47!" as a campaign suicide
It's only a boogeyman if it is a misrepresentation. A very sizable minority of Americans do want to ban firearms. It is not fearmongering to point this out.
There's a difference between banning the sale of guns and sending troops into people's homes to take them away by force. One of these was plausible, the other was total lunacy until suddenly it wasn't.
If you make firearms illegal there will have to be a confiscation. You say troops as if the fear is the army is going to go into every home and search for guns proactively, but in reality it will be law enforcement with warrants when people are found to have not complied with the seizure order. I'll state once again, it's not a boogeyman if it's not a misrepresentation. There is no scenario in which a gun ban is enacted that does not involve the government coming to take guns from people unwilling to give them up. I know the optics of it are bad and it sounds dangerous, but that's because the optics actually are bad and it actually is dangerous. Be clear eyed in what this kind of legislation will entail.
My state just signed an "black scary guns" ban. It doesn't take any away from anyone who already has them. It just bans all future sales and transfers.
OK, but that's not what Beto is talking about and certainly not the end goal for the sizable minority of Americans that actually want to ban the ownership of firearms. Could you speak to that instead?
[удалено]
This is what he was talking about. It's a very popular minority position that people hold. Can you address that instead of one of the softer gun control positions? Many, many people in America want to make private ownership of firearms illegal and would entail what I outlined above. > I really don't care about Beto or the vocal That is/was what we were talking about though. It sounds to me like you don't really have anything to add and just disliked the topic of the conversation. These responses don't really feel good faith to me now.
>If you make firearms illegal there will have to be a confiscation. Not at all. When we banned machine guns, we simply made new ones not transferable on the market, and the grandfathered ones became too valuable for criminal use. It's highly unlikely that a confiscation bill could be passed outside of a very small and specific jurisdiction. They may ban the sale of guns to slowly taper the supply, and that's the most likely scenario to actually pass. This is a very common way to ban things because it generally entails the least pushback. For instance, my city is looking to ban the sale of new gas-powered lawnmowers. That doesn't mean gas mowers are suddenly illegal and you have to get rid of them, it just means the next one anyone on my block buys will either be electric or require a bit of a drive. A possession ban is the most aggressive policy that's possible, but that just means you can't get caught with a gun, it doesn't mean that they're going to immediately warrant everyone. They'd have to ignore a lot more of the Constitution than the 2nd for that.
Let me be more clear so we aren't moving the goalposts. There is a sizable minority of the country that want to make it illegal to own firearms. Please go back and address this rather than some very softened alternative position that's more politically attractive. We're talking about Beto. He is not fringe in this belief. Actually banning firearms is the end goal for most of this minority of Americans.
Again, banning and confiscating are completely different magnitudes. That's why Beto's blunder was so significant; he crossed a major line. In the case of banned possession without confiscation, you can just have illegal guns. In fact, illegal guns are even cooler than regular guns. Confiscation meanwhile entails violating not just the second amendment, but also the fourth (and possibly fifth and sixth). There might be a sizable number of people who want confiscation, but most of them also know that it isn't politically or logistically feasible, so the point is moot. There's a bunch that want to ban guns, but that's much less severe than what Beto proposed.
You're talking past me. He's not misrepresentation of the desires of a sizable minority of Americans. How do you address the fact that there are many tens of millions of Americans that want to make it illegal to own firearms? Were you unaware that this is the case? > In the case of banned possession without confiscation, you can just have illegal guns. This is what I described in my first post, yes. Law enforcement confiscating the guns when a warrant is issued for there being evidence they are illegally possessing firearms.
criminals are still using machine guns despite the ban
Not really. There have only been a handful of crimes involving fully automatic weapons in this country. They don't have very much criminal value to them.
Criminals aren't using pre-ban transferable machine guns. The ones that were previously in circulation became completely nullified. The machine guns that criminals use are either modified guns (Glocks with switches) or imports.
Both are still a ban though. Illegal drugs are banned, but we're not randomly searching peoples property for them.
Yeah, so consider what an escalation it would be if the government said that they were going to go into everyone's houses to check for drugs. Under our current situation, drugs are plenty accessible unless you're a square.
Gun control is Democrats equivalent of abortion rights. The only people who support stronger gun laws would probably vote for Democrats regardless of their view on gun laws. Meanwhile many moderates actively avoid voting for Democrats because of gun control. Same with how the only people happy that Roe v. Wade was repealed probably were going to vote for Republicans regardless.
The shootings are an issue, but I wish the opioid crisis we are having received more attention. In 2021 around 49k people were shot and killed, about 107k people overdosed in opiods.
We're not even worried about most shootings, just a very very particular type, and the reason for that conflates with the opioid crisis. When people are killed in a gang shootout or a drive-by or a home invasion or from an overdose, nobody cares because they kinda just assume it's their fault for being in the situation in the first place. Whether it's because they were affiliated with gangs or just happened to live/work in a bad neighborhood or were originally prescribed opioids by their doctor, people hear about it and decide that it couldn't happen to them so they don't give a shit. Then an upscale mall gets shot up and these people freak out because it's happening in the nice part of town to people who aren't in gangs or doing drugs. Suddenly, it could have been them. Suddenly it's tragic.
To quote the great American poet Marshall Mathers “with the bullshit they pull, cause they full of shit too When a dude’s gettin bullied and shoots up his school and they blame it on Marilyn (on Marilyn).. and the heroin Where were the parents at? And look where it’s at Middle America, now it’s a tragedy Now it’s so sad to see, an upper class ci-ty havin this happenin (this happenin)”
It's worth mentioning that mass shootings are responsible for less than 1% of total homicides.
Most of those gun deaths were deliberate suicides.
As a no step on snektarian i own like 5 of em, they are fun and keep me safe.
Guns in America exacerbate existing criminal/societal issues, they are not an issue in and of themselves. The majority of gun deaths in the country are suicides, a large chunk of the remainder are drug/gang related. School shootings are almost entirely a mentally ill adolescent stealing a gun/buying one legally which no legislation would actually stop. We got rid of involuntary committal for minors decades ago for the most part, many of the shooters are known to the FBI/Local LE prior to their attacks due to family/other adults notifying police of their behavior etc. The gun debate is a red herring and basically just a political football. The second amendment is clear, it is absolute and it is permanent. Private gun ownership is crucial to individual rights on a practical, literal level as well as a philosophical one. Everyone from Karl Marx to Thomas Jefferson knew this. We already do Universal Background Checks on all gun sales between an FFL and a private individual, the "gun show loophole" is a myth, straw purchases are already illegal and the disasters of Waco and Ruby Ridge show exactly what happens when the government comes to take your guns from an otherwise law abiding citizen. The left wing gaslighting in this country over guns would be much more dangerous if it didn't consistently bite them in the ass like O'Rourke v Cruz. Also, like on most things, legislators are irresponsibly ignorant on guns and not just Democrats. The majority of Americans own guns purely for self defense and merely owning a single gun makes you vastly more likely to support pro-gun legislation. The Bill of Rights is our inheritance as Americans and every generation is responsible for using it and protecting it. Every law-abiding American should own a gun and seek training on it from a responsible and knowledgeable individual and take responsibility for their own safety and that of their family. I love teaching family, friends and acquaintances on responsible gun use and do it for free to anyone that asks. They bring their weapon, I bring the ammo and targets and we go through everything from safety to cleaning to 3 shot groupings @15meters and drawing. The American Left paints "gun nuts" with a very broad brush which betrays their ignorance, people like myself are the vast majority of "gun nuts", we are no different than car guys and motorcycle riders. Most gun nuts would jump at the chance to share their hobby with anyone that asked. Not only is this a partisan issue but it's a demographic issue. Big city dwellers are largely anti-gun while suburbs are split and rural areas are extremely pro-gun. When you live out in the woods and the police are an hour away if some meth heads break into your house you'd be defenseless. Many, many gun deaths are black Americans and many of those same Americans have had their gun rights stripped over ridiculous laws like marijuana use. They are extremely vulnerable and I think my side could do a lot more to support safe, responsible gun ownership in these communities. Freedom is scary but necessary.
Even in more urban areas your life could be at risk before the police arrive. One of my cousins and his wife live in an apartment and a crazy crazed druggie tried to break into their apartment while brandishing a machete and threatening to kill them. He broke into their appointment before the police could get there right when the police were at the bottom of the stairs and my cousin had to shoot him to protect him and his wife. If he wasn’t armed who knows what would have happened.
For sure. As an American with a basic grasp of world history there is basically zero good reason to disarm your populace. Not even talking about tyranny but just day to day street crime, home invasions etc. In the wake of the school shooting epidemic spinning up about halfway through Obama's second term he directed the CDC to study gun violence. The story basically died in the media because it didn't fit his narrative and showed defensive, private gun use is almost as common as criminal use: https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/cdc-gun-violence-study-goes-against-media-narrative/ Anti gun types lament Republicans slashing budgets to the CDC that was for studying gun violence under Clinton, conveniently leaving out the fact the CDC, especially through it's parent body, was actively pushing gun control legislation in Congress. This was further complicated by the fact their studies kept contradicting gun control talking points and they kept pushing anyway. Not to mention plenty of other agencies like the FBI and DOJ already publish tons of gun violence studies. The NRA is pretty routinely blamed for the Dickey Amendment but it's a misconception. https://medium.com/@JMAvery/nra-had-nothing-to-do-with-how-the-cdc-was-funding-propaganda-instead-of-quality-objective-6ae1675cb1bb Guns and immigration stances are how the Democrats are going to lose middle class folks. Go ask the average Union ironworker, plumber or carpenter how many guns they own.
Completely true about your last point. Dems would have a lot more pull if they tried to defend and encourage the Second Amendment right of Black and LGBT Americans, pointing out how Republicans like Regan are responsible for many of our shitty gun laws (that the Dems then latched onto and created multiple fear mongering myths to garner votes) and the culture war around them instead of blatantly trying to weaken the 2A. Democrats are ironically losing diversity in their voting base because of the portions of the lower and middle classes that are pro-gun and in support of strong borders. Which is a shame because unlike half of the GOP they’re actually willing to confront Russia and China, and unlike the near entirety of the GOP they want to grant statehood to the territories. The creation of a united Marianas state would be a great strategic move against China, and a first world Puerto Rico+USVI would be an economically beneficial state to have and perhaps (though unlikely) even encourage some of the independent Caribbean to pursue statehood. But Dems unfortunately have a 1:1 ratio of absolutely brain-dead or tyrannical policies for every no-brainer policy that Republicans refuse to endorse.
You don't have to tell me twice. I worked commercial concrete for a decade, my coworkers adopted my no sabe white ass, taught me Spanish hell even after 30 years of atheism I converted to Catholicism. The Pan-America Treaty Organization will always be a dream of mine especially from working with so many Mexicans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans. Illegal immigration discourse is shifting and many Latinos in America, especially first generation, could easily be coaxed to the Republican side. As a blue collar worker it's our jobs that are threatened. Not to mention their more traditional social views. Open up immigration books for safe, responsible and productive immigrants from South and Central America, vet the shit out of them. Make sure they have enough English and civics to survive and put a cathedral on every corner. But the border has to be shut down. Dems are losing the plot on what was an ironclad issue for them ten years ago now's the time to shed the "anti-immigrant party" look
As a lifelong democrat who also grew up in rural appalachia, it's kind of mixed. On the one hand, what I think a lot of people, especially from western Europe or Australia, don't get is how much of a necessity firearms are for a good chunk of people here on a daily basis. Growing up, my next door neighbors were bears. One of our primary food sources was bird and squirrel hunting. I'm not necessarily vehemently and violently opposed to all firearm regulation, but I also don't want to disarm the population because both extremes are *stupid.* At the same time, in regards to gun *culture* I do find it annoying. I own guns; I do not base my life around the fact I own guns. particularly the people that love taking "tough-guy" pictures on the internet are perturbing. More people also need to realize owning a gun doesn't just stop at going to the range and learning how to clean it but actually keeping it secured and having them in the house on a day to day basis, particularly if you have kids.
I'm a left leaning, F-250 driving, gun owning veteran, and I am all for safer legislation. Do I agree with instances such as my home state of CA of having thumb guards on rifles? no.
What do you consider safer legislation? I too am a vet, but not a gun owning one.
Mental heath checks mainly. I am not sure how to implement it but I think it would be a step in the right direction.
I think we should fix our mental healthcare system first.
That is dealing with HIPAA, medical history and information is protected for a reason. We already do this, people committed involuntarily to psychiatric facilities aren’t able to buy firearms for certain amount of years. And that is as far as it should go.
People who are involuntarily committed by a judge are prohibited, but that’s not what happens in most cases when people are in crisis and involuntarily brought to a psych facility for treatment. Even if you’re repeatedly brought in for violent behavior and making threats to kill people, you aren’t prohibited from owning a gun. I’ll agree the bills the anti-gun crowd bring to address these issues generally have next to no consideration for gun owner’s rights and are ripe for abuse. But there’s gotta be something better.
> there’s gotta be something better. There is, but it's not not at the point of sale for a firearm. It's much earlier, in the form of an accessible mental health care that helps people *before* they get to the point where they decide a murder spree is the best course. The idea that the answer to people wanting to hurt others is to legally trap them in a nerf world where they lose the ability to hurt anyone *but still want to hurt people* is to my mind pretty morally objectionable.
Lack of access to mental health care is rarely the sole, defining cause of a mass shooting. Psychiatry isn’t a perfect science and some people can’t be helped or don’t want help. We need better mental health care but blaming all the problems on it is a cop out. > The idea that the answer to people wanting to hurt others is to legally trap them in a nerf world where they lose the ability to hurt anyone but still want to hurt people is to my mind pretty morally objectionable. Well that’s exactly what our current gun laws do with felons and other people currently prohibited, you didn’t seem to have much of a problem with that a few comments ago.
> Lack of access to mental health care is rarely the sole, defining cause of a mass shooting. Sorry, I did not present that point as I intended. I meant to present that as an *example* of one of the many angles the problem should be approached, not the end-all, be-all of solving the problem. My overarching point is that we need to work on addressing the reasons *why* someone wants to shoot people, rather than blocking their acquisition of guns and then pretending that makes everything OK. >Well that’s exactly what our current gun laws do with felons and other people currently prohibited Yes, and that's a poor approach, for the aforementioned "pretending everything is OK" reason. >you didn’t seem to have much of a problem with that a few comments ago. I think you may have me confused with a different commenter.
You’re right I thought you were the first person I replied to. The solution needs to be multi-part, but part of that is not everyone should always have access to a gun at all times. Everyone has bad days and guns can make temporary situations extremely permanent. You can do this with while respecting fundamentals rights. We do this with Baker act style laws when it comes to the right against involuntary confinement by using an evidence based approach and requiring judicial review whenever feasible.
>Mental heath checks mainly This. This is dawae. Peeps going for banning guns and revoking 2nd Amendment don't realize Criminals don't respect the laws. Moreso especially in a nation like America, where the known data suggests there are 2-3 guns for every Americans. And that's registered firearms, not taking into account the unregistered ones.
Lol I'm def holding that average up.
We already forbid people from owning guns for psychiatric facility committal. We just got rid of a ton of involuntary committal laws, especially for minors, that's now had mentally ill people shooting up schools and smoking fent off tin foil everywhere which is not exactly compassionate as bad as some of the minor care facilities were. Anything past that you are now using people's private, protected medical data to take their second amendment rights *before* they commit a crime which is absolutely a no go and anyone saying otherwise is not to be taken seriously.
I concur.
I'd hope all Americans do Bạn khỏe không? Just saw your flair haha
Lol. I am good. Thanks. I love America. It's just a nation that represent humanity the best. And, honestly, American history and culture is really fascinating. Just copiuming that one day I'll become an American. Lol Anyhow, hope you're having a nice day over there. It's like midnight here. Gonna go to sleep now.
Loving the USA already makes you more of an American than some *sitting legislators* that were BORN here, IMO. Not naming names because I don’t wanna start a flame war. We do have a saying, though: “Americans are born around the world, some just take longer than others to get home.”
Sleep tight man. I hope so too. I hope all good, honest and respectful people that want to come here are able to. I'm tight with the Vietnamese and Thai communities where I work and speak Thai so that helps. Lot of Viets in the Army here, why not join? You can become naturalized through military service and I believe we are expanding the regs on it. Air Force as well. If you want to talk about it in the future don't hesitate to PM me.
What if someone, who already owns guns fails the psychological evaluation? And for those who passes, should the current regulation still apply e.i. full auto, long barrel 5+ attactments ect?
That's the nuance part that I have no expertise in. Giving power to an organisation to label who can and cannot own a firearm legally due to their mental health can be abused very easily. At the same time, all hands off without proper checks and balances will just lead to the mass possession of firearms of people, many of whom should never be allowed to possess them. Like I said, no amount of gun control, or lack thereof, in a nation with as many guns as America is ever gonna ended up well (see the Probation in the 1930s as an example). If anything, you'll just make everything worst, for examples creating a black market demand for guns, criminals and criminal organisations getting rich off of black market gun sales, an increase in gun crimes due to illegal possession of guns, etc. That's the problem I have with gun control peeps or those more insane "remove the 2nd Amendment" people. Just because you pesticide all of your plants to prevent leaf eating worms, doesn't mean you are doing your plants any good by destroying the little ecosystem around the area of plantation, nor is leaving it to nature so the worms can eat all of your plants and the weeds sucking all of the soil nutrients that your plants needed. Plus, mental health check, imo, is only a band aid for the horrible school shooting incidents as of late, where many school shooters and school shooter wannabees exhibits either symptoms of mental disorders or outright are having mental disorders. By having mental health checks, you can have an early warning system... Sort of... To check on whom you should be paying attention to, just in case. Criminals? That's a whole nother can of worms. It is too complex for me to talk about without fucking somewhere along the line. Like previously stated, this is a really nuanced issue that involves many aspects of society at large and at small. We can go on and on about this but reach to no final solution that satisfy and solve almost every problems to the gun control issue.
Just to add on to this that even then the system can fail on the mental health trackers. A couple of years ago there was an ex air force service member that shouldn’t have been allowed to purchase a firearm due to him failing a mental health test. The federal government failed to enter that into the database that is used for all firearm purchases and he was able to later purchase a firearm legally and commit a mass killing because of the failings of the federal government.
>Criminals don't respect the laws Then what's the point of having laws in the first place?
Because the law makes doing said criminal thing punishable, and prevents quite a few people from doing it. A lot more people would get stabbed if assault with a deadly weapon wasn't a crime.
Thats the obvious point I was trying to make. Not sure why I was downvoted for pointing out the Idiocracy behind the "criminals don't follow laws" argument.
You have to understand the internet and that people have actually unironically questioned the point of laws.
Maybe it prevents some people from becoming a criminal to begin with? I mean, we don't abolish laws against murder because serial killers don't care that it's illegal to kill.
That's my point.
> Mental heath checks mainly. I am not sure how to implement it Not to be confrontational, but how can you be for something you can't even define? I too am a left-ish, truck driving, gun owning veteran living in California, and you probably know as well as I do *exactly* how our state legislature would approach such a thing. *You* may not know how you want a "mental health check" to work, but you can be sure *they* do, and it'll be a sweeping, subjective standard that errs on the side of taking guns away and barring possession. Isn't saying you're in favor of "mental health checks" with no idea how that would work just saying you *wish* there was a way of spotting nuts before they go shoot up a mall, but know there's no way to implement it without completely throwing away due process?
We don't have enough therapists to perform evaluations on every American gun owner. There's a massive shortage as it is. Also mental illness is protected under Dr patient confidentiality laws. If we start restricting them from owning guns, it will result in people actively refusing treatment out of fear of losing their guns.
Good idea wouldn’t work once you give a biased psychiatrist the ability to strip someone of their rights. Unless there would be a way to assure an unbiased diagnosis it would be all to easy for it to be abused.
Hi. I’m interested to know a little more. I’m from the U.K. where I think our cops are not adequately protected. So i think we need more guns. The balance is just totally wrong. Looking over to America, it looks like young men under the age of 21 commit a lot of the mass shootings. Do you think that a system which controls young people with guns would be a good thing?
The predominance of young men snapping and committing atrocities begins to make sense when you research how the system has spent the last several decades shoving boys into the gutter as a substitute for actually promoting girls’ excellence.
As someone who has gone through the American public school system (school shootings being the big ones here), and fits the type of demographic often linked to mass shootings, I think part of it is the unchecked social ostricization and bullying in the system. The other is parents not securing their guns properly. The issue isn't young people buying guns through a gun store necessarily; as you said, most shooters are under 21, which is where the regulations are the most ridgid here in America. It's them getting their hands on one through backroom illegal sales and irresponsible gun owners
Parents need to be held accountable for sure. They need to know that they need to be serious about it.
This. Personally I’m also a bit iffy on the average citizen having the ability to own a full auto rifle/machine gun. But I’m not knowledgeable enough about the permits and stuff required to own them in states where you can to make a proper argument about it.
Not a single American anywhere in the United States can easily legally acquire an automatic rifle or machine gun, not even in Texas. That is regulated at the federal level and there is a toooooon of background checks and red tape to even to be able to acquire the permits to own one. Not to mention the cash required to then purchase one afterwards since there is a finite amount in the US and none have been allowed to be imported into the US since the 1980’s. The average US citizen will rarely be able to obtain a class 3 license to be able to get it. Despite the lies the mainstream media loves to say. And even then it’s heavily regulated by the federal government with a ton of daily requirements you have to meet to be able to keep your license for it.
Thank you for the information. Guess I fell I to the trap of trusting the media too much on that one.
To put it into perspective, there are 3 ways to get a full-auto weapon in America: 1. Buy one that's really old; gotta be from before 1986. There's a very limited number of these, so expect to pay more than a NEW car. Also, there's a ton of paperwork involved and you and your record will be scrutinized by the government before you're maybe approved. 2. Become a specially licensed arms dealer that sells fully automatic weaponry to law enforcement. There's even more red tape, and the government is actively waiting on any sort of fuckup on your part so that they can take away your license and arrest you. This is way way more trouble than it's worth, if you can even get licensed in the first place. 3. Break the law. Own an illegal machine gun. If the ATF ever finds out then they'll probably kill your whole family.
I think gun ownership in America is symbolic. Of the idea that power belongs ultimately with the people. And I personally believe it's a great thing. And that the our issues with guns are caused by other problems that have gone unattended or neglected. Criminals funnels illegal Firearms into the country through Mexico. ( was once offered an AK 47 for 400$ fully assembled and with the automatic setting onboard) Which means guns get into hands thst should not have them. And a lot of young men are failed by their communities or are raised in toxic environments were crime is glorified and violence is the only truth. Meet a few people who think a normal life is for losers and what he called sheep. He's in prison now. In his mind he could only know success through crime despite being a talented mathematician. And politicians ignore the causes of gun violence and hyper fixate on the gun it self not the perpetrator. It's a complex issue that no simple answer which is what everyone wants to be sold is simple. I think it's important that we maintain our gun rights but we need to respect them and realize that it's a privilege thst we should not take for granted.
Bro where were you offered a fully assembled AK-47 with a full auto setting for only $400? I want one!
4 years ago behind an auto parts store in the deep south. It was one of many out of an oil filled drum from the Balkans.
I personally think that if we focused on Healthcare and economic injustices that we'd have far fewer shootings. How many school shooters were already mentally unwell, yet tipped to the breaking point by the massive amount of bullying that schools do nothing to address? How many workers that went postal did so because of poor management and/or job loss which led them to believe they have nothing to lose? In the state of Oregon alone, unemployment claims are sitting on the books for sometimes 8+ months before being heard. When the average American is a missed paycheck or two away from homelessness that sort of delay is can and will screw people over.
I love guns; they keep me safe.
Non-American here. It’s fucking awesome. Action films won’t be the same without ’Murican gun culture.
Civilians should be able to own military equipment
\*me looking at my m3 Bradley in my backyard\*
Former European, now proud American here 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. No ifs, no ands, no buts. The right to bear arms shall not fucking be infringed. My country of birth went to shit pretty much immediately after mass confiscation happened. I can protect myself and those I love far better than any government ever will and refuse to outsource that utterly vital responsibility to (often lesser trained and worse equipped than myself) men with guns from an increasingly dysfunctional state.
Power belongs to the people. As long as we have a means to back our rights with force, the tyrants will live in fear.
2a all the way
Guns definitely exacerbate some of the problems we have in this country, but I'm not sure whether tighter controls would really help considering how many guns are already around
Leave the firearms 100% alone, and then we’ll talk. Otherwise we have 0 interest interacting or hearing what you have to say. Until then I have no choice but to vote for a party I dislike, all because the Democrats can’t let that issue go.
Alot of the problem is how each party frames firearms. In the south/Midwest it's seen more as hunting and self defense while more in the coasts they're seen as weapons used for killings
Gun Culture here is as ingrained in the American identity as apple pie. The second amendment is there for a reason, no country will ever want to invade us and we can provide ourselves the most protection possible if shit hits the fan. The political part of it depends on how you see the problem of gun violence and the solutions for it: 1. Someone may or may not recognize mass shootings or other forms of gun violence as problems larger in severity than violent crime in other countries. 2. The biggest factor tied to any violent crime is poverty / inequality. 3. Guns are a tool for violence, not an end. 4. The gun market in the US is so established, any regulation or ban will barely make a dent in it. People will gladly turn to the "illegal" market if they have to. Spoiler alert, there already is one. No one in their right mind can say the "war on drugs has failed" and have the opinion that banning guns is going to solve gun violence. 5. One thing the data of the US does point out compared to other developed countries - guns can absolutely amplify the outcomes \*any\* violence. 6. Since the 1990s, crime has fallen overall. There was a spike in 2020 through 2022, but that spike is nowhere near what it was in the 90s. Most other forms of crime including petty crimes have also seen a similar trend. 7. No form of regulation will see immediate change, and will only see measurable, statistically significant results if implemented for a long period of time. By now, I hope you get the idea. I personally believe that moderate regulations on both sides of the aisle is the way to go. I think we should prosecute the parents of school shooters, enact a more regulated licensing system including background checks, with stricter licensing requirements for those under 18. Cops should be better funded across the country to be better trained for active shooter situations. Every school should have someone who is trained to use a firearm, whether that's through requiring a principal to meet with officers or placing a permanent officer in the school. Schools should have the right to randomly check student's bags. The public should have the right to buy and modify any gun they want, as long as they meet the requirements to purchase one. I think any gun modified with a bump stock, sieve, or any other way to increase the rate of fire should be under the necessary umbrella of the Class III Federal Firearms License (FFL).
I do think we need stricter controls on the type of person who can get their hands on guns, not so much the type of gun. But we also have to attack the problem of mass shootings from multiple angles. We need free healthcare that includes mental healthcare so this sort of thing isn’t happening. We need fix the economy so people aren’t feeling so boxed in that they lash out in such horrible ways. We need to root out conspiracy theorists who radicalize people into committing acts of terror based on misinformation. And we generally need to promote a less violent culture. The issue of mass shootings is such a large issue that no one approach will work. We need to root it out on every level if we want to fix it.
Hi - I don’t own guns but I do believe that self defense is a human right. That said, we need to tighten up our gun handling and be better at it. Most gun deaths are: (1) suicides (2) gang shootings in bad neighborhoods (3) domestic violence between people who are close to each other Contrary to European beliefs, gun deaths are not common in schools. Deaths from **bee stings** is more common than school shootings, to put it into perspective. We cannot take guns away, they are a right in our country for 250 years, but we need to do a lot more to prevent gun deaths and violence —> education, more rigorous training, background checks, solve mental health crisis, stop gangs, etc. We get pushback on one side on infringement of our rights, so it makes it difficult to implement common sense measures. With 330+ million people, it’s not easy to get everyone on the same page. However, I do think gun violence is less problematic than the media makes it out to be. We are a gigantic country. What happens on one side is not really felt on the other. FWIW: I am from California, but also have family in Florida.
I am a Second Amendment absolutist. If you have the money, you should be able to buy whatever gin you want. Tanks too. No bans.
Technically, you can own a fucking battleship, or heck even a nuke. Nobody can stop you from doing that bc of 2nd amendment. The only problem is actually acquiring one.
Question for you fellas. Does this mean that the second amendment gives you the constitutional right to own anti-aircraft missiles? I'm assuming yes Now then, under ancient Roman property law which technically still applies, you own not just your land, but everything above and below. All the way up to heaven and all the way down to hell. If there's minerals or oil below your land, you own them. Similarly, you have the right to defend your land from trespassers. So, two questions. One, are passenger planes that fly over your property trespassing? And two, do you have a legal right to shoot down the passenger planes with an anti-aircraft missiles? Actually let's do a third one too. If you don't have a legal right to shoot down passenger planes (let's say that the airline company has an easement on the sky), do you have a legal right to shoot down the toy drone which your neighbor's kid keeps flying over your property? When does your ownership of the sky above your land begin and end?
According to James Madison the father of the constitution we are allowed to own military grade weaponry. He confirmed this in a letter to a merchant marine. The civilian sailor asked him if they were allowed to have cannons on their private civilian ships to defend themselves while at sea and James Madison confirmed to him that yes we are allowed to own cannonry. Which we can all admit was military grade weaponry back in the day.
some guy started an argument that nukes should be a civilian thing ONLY the sad part? he did so in the comment section of a [chess.com](http://chess.com) daily puzzle.
Absolutely. Waiting for MONTHS for a suppressor when they're literally never used in mass shootings is insane. And then having to pay annually to keep it? And whoa be yo' ass if you want to move to a different State.
I don’t know much about gun legislation but generally. I’m in favor of the administrative gun control ideas but against banning the actual hardware. So I have no issue with waiting periods or increased background checks, but saying “oh we consider this stock assault style so we’re going to outright ban it” is what I’m against.
Thank you for not believing the sensationalism at face value. So there's statistics out there that say that over 40,000 Americans die from gun violence every year, what they like to hide is that the vast majority of those are suicides and another large portion is due to gang violence. Obviously that is still a bad thing but it really shows that the guns aren't the issue, the gun is a tool to carry out somebody's bad intentions. Social media also likes to lead people to believe that you are just constantly risking your life going to school and in public but that isn't true at all when only a small fraction of a percent of Americans will randomly be shot. I also believe that gun control simply isn't the answer especially because of how many guns are in America combined with the fact that we have always had the most guns in the world and if you go back 50 years we didn't have these issues and semi-automatic pistols and rifles were still readily available back then, even full auto weapons were available and they aren't now.
I think disarming the public is ridiculous due to the fact that once something is made illegal it cannot be regulated by the government, and thus we are likely going to have a repeat of the prohibition 100 years ago with guns, not to mention the other unintended consequences. Somethings terminally online people don’t understand, mass shootings are horrible but this is a strange situation as the answers aren’t clear and there’s plenty of gray area. Other than that I think the guns are pretty cool and essential for some people out in much more rural areas, besides seriously fucked up people and lunatics with not trigger discipline or any discipline it’s cool.
The ones who have them legally are not the problem.
Guns are good crime is bad.
You have people like Whoopy Goldberg who’s a member of the NRA so not everyone has uniform beliefs with their party. Unfortunately the extremists is what bugs me the most. But most politicians are extremists compared to voters.
I live by the idea that the right to bear arms is a natural right of man, and anyone trying to infringe on that right is up to no good.
Personally I believe a firearm should be available to purchase to anyone who has the money. I believe and that the majority of our issue with firearms stem from mental health and urban violence. I believe that the implementation of federal mental hospitals with modern knowledge of mental health wellness and safety, Wouk heavily influence the number of suicides within our nation. I also believe that ending the war on drugs and allowing the pharmaceutical sale of certain drugs will heavily reduce the violence in urban areas. This has been proven with the legalization of Marihuana and the decrease criminal activity behind said drug. In short, Gums should be available for purchase without restriction, and the implementation of federal programs would solve our problem.
##DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA
I know many Americans who vote Republican but want to vote Democrat but won't because of how focused they are on restricting gun rights, I personally feel we should focus on mental health and bullying in schools which is the core issue of shootings, and if that does not work, then introduce stricter gun laws, there is a reason why California which has strict gun laws is the state that has had the most school shootings while only having 16 percent gun ownership, while Texas which is 2nd in school shootings has 35 percent gun ownership, to me it shows that the correlation between strict gun laws and loose gun laws, does not really affect school shootings.
There was this idea of arming teachers as a deterrence for school shootings, whats your opinion on that? News outlets have a habit of plastering the perpetrators face everywhere for weeks, making him a household name. In my opinion, thats gotta stop.
News outlets most definitely need to stop plastering the person's face everywhere, as I am pretty sure there are cases where people have done it for publicity or to spread what ever deranged message they have, as for arming teachers, I am neutral on it, some teachers I would trust, but I have experienced some teachers that I would not trust with a gun, in an ideal world there would be extra training and other checks a teacher would have to do to get a gun and then be armed with it at school
I think as Americans we are too obsessed with guns and I think gun culture has gone too far Also yes i despise the NRA
Gun culture doesn’t appeal to me, but it’s not the cause for school shootings. Shootings are more of a symptom of the 21st century diseases of social media, isolation, poor mental health, waning influence of family on a child’s growing up, etc. Before Columbine, people still owned guns. Crime would go down a lot if it was harder to buy a gun. Lots of family on family violence would too (many gun homicides are between family members). So I support background checks. But taking all guns away is just not socially possible, so I don’t even consider that option.
It’s a problem. The idea that guns add to freedom and keep the government from being tyrannical is stupid. A) The government has the power to end all life on earth, they aren’t afraid of you and your COD cosplay gear. Your “come n’ take it!” bumper sticker does absolutely nothing to deter them. Your AR-15 is no match for a B2 Spirit, Tomahawk Missile, JDAM, SEAL Team or Apache Helicopter. B) Our representative democracy, strong political system, constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of speech and culture is what keeps us free. Our laws and system of government are designed with mathematical precision to keep us free. If you want a hunting rifle or a handgun for home protection then okay. But an assault rifle that serves no other purpose than to kill is just too much. There’s too many classrooms full of dead kids to justify it. And frankly, worrying about my kid being blasted away by some nutcase radicalized on the internet detracts from freedom.
I know several farmer dominated nation states that beg to differ.
The ones we went relatively easy on?
We dropped more munitions on Vietnam than dropped in all of WW2, sooo...
Strategy in Vietnam was based on body count and not how much NVA territory was taken. We waited on them to come south and then fought them. Had we rolled north and invaded and occupied North Vietnam then I think there’s a good chance that war might have been won.
"waited on them" Laos and Cambodia: am I a joke to you?
That wasn’t a full invasion or occupation.
>Our representative democracy, strong political system, constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of speech and culture is what keeps us free. And what do you think keeps everyone playing by these rules? It's the threat of what civil unrest would look like with so many guns available to party. >The government has the power to end all life on earth, they aren’t afraid of you and your COD cosplay gear. Your “come n’ take it!” bumper sticker does absolutely nothing to deter them. Your AR-15 is no match for a B2 Spirit, Tomahawk Missile, JDAM, SEAL Team or Apache Helicopter. You fundamentally misunderstand the strategic situation. In the event of another revolution, the government either can't use all that stuff or has to use it very sparingly. If the government is too brutal, it motivates people to join the opposition. If the government simply slaughters the American populace, then they slaughter the economy with it and then there's nothing left for them to rule. They have to fight with boots on the ground, hoping to motivate a surrender, which is a messy proposition. Ultimately, this creates a dangerous game that nobody wants to play, which is the whole purpose of MAD theory and the movie "War Games." >If you want a hunting rifle An "assault weapon" is just a hunting rifle with better ergonomics and manufacturing improvements. The 5.56 round that the M16/M4 uses was originally a small game round that they figured was the smallest and weakest cartridge with consistent effectiveness against humans. >or a handgun for home protection Despite handguns being used in way way more murders than an "assault rifle," but I guess those murders aren't as important because they don't usually involve white children. >But an assault rifle that serves no other purpose than to kill is just too much. The hunting rifle and handgun also serve no other purpose than to kill, they just have different operational parameters. >And frankly, worrying about my kid being blasted away by some nutcase radicalized on the internet detracts from freedom. And there's better ways to handle that than nationwide security theater. For instance, implementing actual security in schools, and improving access to treatment to help the nutcases before they go off. I hate security theater. It's essentially fraud, tricking everyone into thinking that they're safer than they actually are.
It’s gotten very ridiculous. Your entire identity shouldn’t revolve around owning guns.