See, this is the other half of gun violence that doesn’t get talked about in the gun control debate. Americans kill a ton more people with the authority of the government than other countries do. With most western nations having realized capital punishment is a bad idea, America still executes 40-ish people a year. But the police execute a lot more than that in the streets. American police fire a lot more bullets into unarmed black men than German police fire period, even on a per capita basis. I’m not going to say that other countries don’t employ thugs to sustain the privileges of the rich, but they seem to employ far fewer murderous thugs.
When police kill people, they need to be charged. I don’t expect that they will ever be held to the same standard as non-police, but even a standard in the same ballpark would be nice. Seeing stats that suggest more police officers avoided indictment for crimes than non-police officers (when tens of thousands more non-police were charged) speaks to an absurdly rigged system. By not going after cops who kill people, the culture is not just sending a message that authority figures can kill you, it’s also saying that killing is basically not that bad.
Like the slogan “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” It’s reinforcing the idea that it’s fine for cops to kill people. If someone ends up in a situation where there really isn’t any choice but to kill another human being in order to protect their life or someone else’s life, I have every sympathy for that situation. But (1) those situations are extremely rare; and (2) that is a tragedy, not something to be celebrated.
I’m culturally sympathetic to arguments along the lines of “My ex is an abusive drunk and the sheriff’s 20 minutes away, so I need a shotgun under my bed.” Thus, I’m a bit reluctant to require secure storage for absolutely everyone all the time. I guess I’d like to see secure storage of firearms and separate storage of ammunition be the general rule. I’d want to try to finesse the penalties a bit; I’d want criminal penalties for intentional improper storage, but with some limits to encourage reporting of stolen firearms. I’d probably allow people to apply for exceptions based on plausible threats and required training.
That’s where I’d go. I’m not sure that’s greatly more onerous than the zoning rules for pools in my area, which admittedly would only provide for criminal penalties under unusual circumstances.
After reading all of the comments, and thinking many times about this issue, it is clear that gun advocates have invested too much in their point of view to ever give up their guns (even when no one is advocating taking guns away from responsible citizens). We will never agree on how many Newtowns is too many. Nor will we ever agree on a set of solutions, since every small measure is seen as a slippery slope to confiscation.
I know one thing. If the NRA began a massive education campaign in favor of responsible gun ownership, instead of its current policy of advocating for more unrestricted guns everywhere for everything (including stand your ground laws, concealed carry in schools, and constant fear-mongering), they might have a positive effect on the attitudes and polarization around guns. I might view them more favorably if they returned to their former focus on gun safety, and away from the shoot-the-gubmint rhetoric.
My attitude is affected by the major figures who advocate one side or the other. Wayne LaPierre is no one’s idea of a rational spokesperson. Confederate flag-waving, open-carry nut jobs, Cliven Bundy, George Zimmerman, cold, dead, hands Charlton Heston, etc. do not speak for me. Irrational advocacy is not a point in favor of guns.
Family members who have lost family members to random gun violence do sway me. Dead children do sway me. Swimming pools need fences and covers to reduce accidental drownings (mandated in the building code), and households with guns need commonsense measures to keep them out of the hands of unauthorized users. Mandatory trigger locks, gun safes, or similar devices make sense, and if it has to be mandated to force people to adopt them, so be it. Fewer guns available to be misused can only help.
Huh. Someone forgot to tell Gavin Newsom, who’ll probably be California’s next governor. He’s looking to set up background checks before you can buy ammo.
Interesting that rates here in Australia were once nearly as high as the US. Handguns have always been heavily restricted here, and we didn’t have the crack problem the US had at that time.
The actual numbers show a very inconvenient truth - there’s basically two places where guns are a huge problem everywhere in the USA. One is in the hands of suicidal people - we know for a fact that availability of guns increases the rate of suicide - and the other is in the hands of police.
We’ll see how that works out, but I hope they don’t expect to get all CSI using an incredibly elaborate database built by a low bid contractor with data entry done by apathetic WalMart clerks.
See, this is what I was talking about! It seems like everyone’s opinions are automatically divided into two well defined separate camps, but this completely overshadows the moderates opinions thus eliminating virtually any chance for progress in regards to the creation of policy.
You (and I would hinder to guess @Medievalist and myself) however perfectly represent the middle of this discussion while also presenting policy ideas that should not be controversial to any responsible gun owner, gun control advocate, or pro gun advocate. All we should have to do is find the middle ground.
I presume that @Mister44, @clevername, and @tangent would have no problem with working to end preventable gun deaths in the United States, we all just have to make a few compromises to find the solution the we can agree on. This goes for both pro gun control and pro gun advocates. For example, we will not be banning gun ownership nationally (ever) but we will have to allow the federal government to become more involved in gun safety and gun rights. So instead of just yelling “No! No! No!” over and over at each other we should actually be working to find common ground! All of us are human, for fucks sake. We can at least start there.
I think you should need to be an adult to buy guns. ID’s should be checked. Shooting guns from moving vehicles should be illegal. I have never needed a permit, background check, waiting period, or safety class to buy alcohol; although if that day comes, there will be gun purchases . You can have my beer when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers. We already tried banning alcohol, it turned out when alcohol is illegal only criminals profit from the sale of alcohol.
That may be true but people always want what they can’t have. If someone really wants a gun they will get one, look at the terrorist attacks in France.
I would make it “basically 3 places” and add military contractors (Feel free to include the recent scourge of private citizen bounty hunters as well) to that list. Many of them are based here and have worked for our government, which means they are basically being legitimized by our federal government. They have also shown pretty clearly that they are incapable of handling military grade weapons in Iraq so I don’t understand why they should still have access to them here. I’d much rather we brought back militias and used those to beef up our armed forces in times of need. Lots of military grade weapons+full for profit unrestrained capitalism scares the living shit out of me. Private militaries? Thanks but… no thanks.
Gun control efforts jumped the shark when Michael Moore did his little cartoon equating guns and racism, and, but really it made gun control and trolling the same thing for a lot of people, so that they believe if they are trolling then they are working for gun control. People still post that cartoon and they all agree “OMG that is so clever!” Ummm, no, it’s just trolling.
For people who tend to aggregate online, when aggressive self righteousness revs up, reality testing gets kicked to the curb, and anyone that doesn’t automatically toss their salad is perceived as viciously abusive.
However, if a liquor store owner sells to a minor, he can lose his license and be prosecuted for contributing to the delinquency and a number of other crimes. If the minor drives home drunk and kills someone, the liquor store owner can be sued for contributory negligence.
None of these can happen if a gun store owner sells a gun to a minor. That’s by act of Congress, prodded by the NRA.
. You can have my beer when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers. We already tried banning alcohol, it turned out when alcohol is illegal only criminals profit from the sale of alcohol.