This guy didn’t just buy automatic weapons at the nearest convenience store. It requires a full investigation by the FBI and permission from the ATF and is a very expensive and lengthy process. It’s possible that he did that and slipped through the system, but we don’t know that yet. More likely, it was illegal to start with.
The total number of crimes involving legally-owned automatic weapons since 1934 (when the laws about them went into effect) can be counted on one hand. About half of which were committed by off-duty cops. Pretty much all crimes involving automatic weapons are with weapons that were illegal in the first place. So that’s just saying that we shouldn’t allow people to do illegal things. Well, people already aren’t allowed to do that, that’s what illegal means.
From the reports, this guy was stockpiling weapons and explosives and therefore it seems rather likely that the automatic weapons were illegal. I guess we’ll find out soon whether this is one of the less than 5 failures in history regarding whether to allow private citizens to own automatic weapons.
Why? There were certainly guns in the 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s, and kids were much more likely to have access to them (and to use them on a regular basis). I grew up in house with a gun rack that had a shotgun and two rifles (or maybe it was the other way around) and we never had to worry about such things. What’s different now? It’s not the guns.
Something’s different for sure, something’s broken, but blaming inanimate objects never leads us to a real solution. We need to get to the heart of the problem and not just ignore it with some half-assed blame-the-inanimate-object solution. Sure that’s easy, but it solves nothing. As a case in point, The War on Drugs has done nothing whatsoever to address the causes of problems. It’s only made things worse. Let’s stop trying to take the easy way out by blaming inanimate objects for our problems. Let’s look at the real problems.
Why would someone open up with automatic fire into a crowd like that? Or shoot up a school. Doesn’t matter whether the weapon was legally or illegally obtained, by the time they’re firing into a crowd, they’re breaking the law and not caring about it. At that point, it doesn’t matter what the laws are. We need solutions that get in before that point.
Oddly enough the vast majority of gun owners, And even NRA members in the country support a good number of stricter gun control measures. Particularly universal background checks. In my experience many (if not most) would be willing to accept even more. If those restrictions meant consistency, both across time and across municipalities/states. Even if that required (which it does) a federal system.
The bulk of opposition seems to come from a subset of hard liners. Right wing politicians. And the NRA in collusion with the gun lobby. And that nexus of industry and politics is what’s made anything goes gun ownership a major plank in the culture war. Convinced a whole lot of people, many of whom don’t own many if any guns at all. That it’s more important to be opposed to even discussing the subject than to solve any of the problems caused by the current state of our gun laws.
So even where most people agree something needs to change. We can’t even begin to work out what that change would look like. Because very influential, loud, but small groups of people derive great benefit by denying there’s a problem at all. The GOP gets a wedge issue and big donor bucks. The NRA and gun businesses get to make oodles of money selling you modular assault rifles and fashionable accessories.
…you do realize private citizens can’t own automatic weapons, right? I mean, I’m not American and even I know that. It’s technically possible to get a license, but you have to ask a hell of a lot of people for permission, and to the best of my knowledge, a legally owned automatic firearm has been used in the commission of a crime something like once or twice since they were banned, decades ago.
If you want all guns banned, support that. Amendments can be struck down. If you want control it would be perhaps a good idea to draw up what you want controlled, precisely.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and suspect that it was more than that. This guy was willing to kill and die to make a statement. We don’t have enough info yet to more than speculate on what that statement might have been, but about half the world is masculine and we don’t all flip out and do things like that. If we did, none of us would be here to discuss it. So it’s not masculinity.
EDIT: I just realized - I can’t think of one instance like this instantiated by a woman. So I may be partially wrong. I still think it’s more than just masculinity, but now I think that may be a significant part. I’m open to any thoughts as to how masculinity leads to this while femininity avoids it. Out of everything involved, that could be exactly what we need to look at.
It is worth looking at the numbers for some of the early skirmishes of the Revolution to really drive that point home. A quick glance at Wikipedia puts the American death toll at the battles of Lexington and Concord at 49 with 39 wounded. This guy alone accounts for more death and destruction of Americans than the 700 British troops did. You get a similar effect looking at the Battle of Quebec,Harlem Heights, Trenton, or Fort Washington.
Not strictly true. You can’t buy a new automatic weapon, but there are several workarounds by which you could buy one that was grandfathered in before the ban. There are also a number of ways to modify a semiautomatic weapon into an automatic one.
I’m not a big fan of semiautomatic assault-style weapons either. To me, the most important distinction isn’t the mechanism by which a gun fires bullets, it’s “how many people could a competent gunman kill with this device in a short amount of time.” Sandy Hook proved that a semiautomatic rifle was more than enough to get that job done.
It’s certainly true that a would-be killer could still do a lot of harm with a bolt-action hunting rifle or a shotgun or a revolver, but they almost certainly wouldn’t be able to kill dozens of people and wound several hundred in a matter of minutes.
You can modify a gun to be automatic, certainly, but if you do the ATF will come a-hunting for you. They have absolutely zero sense of humor about that sort of thing.
And, yes, legal workarounds do exist but they are rounding errors. The resulting transferable automatic weapons cost vast sums of money and come with intense scrutiny, to boot.
Assault-style is not an actual term. It is meaningless except in the context of the 1994 ban which focused, predominantly, on entirely pointless features.
And, yes, I get that this sort of thing seems like pettifogging distinctions without a difference but laws taking rights away from someone have to be precise. And the way you ban guns is by banning specific features of their construction and operation.
So what you are advocating, if I understand it, is a ban on all semi-automatic (or better to use the archaic designation ‘self-loading’) firearms? That would include all pistols, and nearly all modern hunting rifles, carbines, and so on, correct? You are of the opinion that the right to bear arms must be restricted specifically to those firearms that require some form of manual intervention before being ready to fire again, i.e. pump-action, bolt-action, lever-action, single-shot, and so on, and so forth.
I don’t give a shit about terminology. As I said, the only thing I really care about is “how many human beings could a competent person kill with this weapon in a short period of time?”
If that number is “larger than the number of people any civilian could reasonably be expected to shoot in self-defense” then ban the fucking thing.
Firstly, converting an AR-15 to fire full-auto is not in any way easy. You need a fairly well-equipped machine shop. A determined person willing to antagonize a federal agency can manage it, certainly, but a determined person with a disregard for legality can accomplish a lot of misery especially if they are of a mechanical turn of mind.
It’s somewhat easier for submachine guns which is why there’s a lot of controls on semi-auto versions of automatic weapons, and why the ATF pays special attention to just this sort of gun.
If you want gun control, you must worry about terminology. Terminology makes laws. You can’t control things without laws.
If you don’t want gun control, then by all means carry on. Or if you want a complete ban, just say so loud and proud and get to campaigning. That doesn’t require a lot of terminology, except of course, what constitutes a firearm. But you can solve that problem with maximum projectile speeds fairly well.
No, sorry. I live in the Western US. Modified ARs grow on trees out here. People take them to the gun range. No sign of the ATF. We hear them from soccer games. It’s a distinctive sound.
I’m fine letting some legal experts write the terminology. I’m explaining what I want the laws to DO, which is “make it difficult to obtain weapons that can kill a large number of people in a short amount of time.” If you are ideologically opposed to that approach then arguing about terminology is pointless anyway.
