Hrmm Don’t you see, it IS. If one wants new laws, I think it would behoove one to figure out “what do these new laws look like”.
Calling for “more gun control” is like saying you “want to end the opioid epidemic” - what does that mean? How? How broad are you going to go?
Look - I understand most of you know nothing about guns. I’m not trying to be confrontational here. I am tell you, if you want to figure out how to ban something SPECIFIC, you need to know the SPECIFICS on what to ban.
If you want to push for a broad ban on something, then be prepared that too broad of a ban is less likely to fail.
Like I said, if you want to actually ban all AR15s, and anything with similar capabilities, then it would need to be a flat ban on a “removable magazine, semi-auto rifle”. Now, the next day I could do one of two things - add the CA approved “bullet button” to my AR magazine release, requiring a tool to release the magazine, and/or remove the gas tube and plug up the gas hole to make it no longer a semi-auto (this is what they do in the UK). Now I have limited the capabilities of my AR with out making it illegal.
Oh but wait, they also make “AR15 pistols”. I know, the concept is absurd. At least it was absurd until those crafty Swiss/Germans at Sig Saur came up with the arm brace for this type of pistol. It is this fin looking thing that you were supposed to strap to your arm and thus make it more stable for shooting. The ATF said it was ok. Then someone asked, “Well, it isn’t a stock, what if I shouldered it?” And the ATF at first was like, “Well you shouldn’t shoulder it.” And someone asked, "Ok, but what if I do.’ And they ATF was like, “Well technically it isn’t a stock, but if you shoulder it, we can’t stop you.” This effectively just neutered the NFA SBR law, as one can have all the capabilities of an SBR, with none of the absurd legal paper work and restrictions.
Ok, fine, then we change it to, ban “removable magazine, semi-auto rifles and pistols”. Record scratch, you just banned like 95% of the handguns out there. Ok, ok, well then we need to limit it to the .223/5.56 round the AR-15 uses. They already make a plethora of other rounds that work in the AR Platform, and new ones come out every year. Ok ok, so, either white list specific rounds or round under a certain muzzle energy, or black list rounds over a certain muzzle energy. How many law makers know WTF muzzle energy is or what it even means?
ETA - I just remembered, NY has a ban on magazines FORWARD of the grip, which bans the AR type pistols. Also probably bans the old Mauser broomhandle and other old pistols, but it might be an exception under “antiques”.
This is true as for the reasoning for the concept of the “assault rifle”. Ironically, infantry don’t actually KILL a lot of people in war. It is artillery that does the lion’s share, and air support. Infantry hold ground and make pushes and a lot of suppressing fire to do that, hence more bullets per soldier.
They make rifles in .30 cal round though, the AR-10 and the FN FAL are two of the most widely used examples.
But the point is for aimed warfare, like snipers, they all use a .30 caliber or higher round. They offer superior ballistic, more weight to the bullet, and more range. If every AR 15 owners is a potential mass shooter, then every deer hunter is a potential sniper at 100-200 yards or longer.
I may disagree with it, but your point is at least logical.
having read through the entire string between some regulars here. I would ask this (and maybe it was stated and I missed it…I read through quickly)…
the current solution that should be pushed IMO is around ammo capacity. Military grade vs Civilian needs (home defense, hunting, sport) is really about the speed in which you can fire. As many know I am a RET veteran, and I do not own any guns whatsoever as a civilian but have gone hunting before…so I feel I have a solid leg to stand on here when it comes to my knowledge and opinion.
Military grade = total amount of carnage that can be done in as short a time frame as possible. When it comes to civilian gun owners, if they are hunting, they don’t need nor should they want the deer to explode. Home defenders need only one or two shots to ward off an intruder, they don’t need fast reload cartridges and fire off 100 rounds a second.
A very reasonable and prudent first step in lessening these mass shootings would be to restrict the types of ammo, size of weapon magazines for various civilian arms, and (and this one is important) LIMIT and TRACK the ammo civilians purchase. You want a 100 guns in your collection…go for it, that doesn’t make me bat an eye lash. But when Johnny stock piles 10,000 rounds…then my hackles are raised.
Short of it all is…I think the weapon types are a harder sell to start with regulating (I think we absolutely should regulate that too, just perhaps not start there). Ammo is easier to go after I think as a starting point.
As an aside….I still laugh at anyone I know who is an ammosexual and they talk about “2nd amendment keeps the government and military in check. they can’t be taking over because we are armed”. That is utter nonsense. Whatever that moron’s personal arsenal is…it will have zero effect on an AC130 Gunship leveling their house and neighborhood, or a group of M1 Abrams leveling their town, or a Los Angeles Class sub oblitering an entire city off the map…should the military decide to do so.
I think that’s an unfair assumption. I don’t think we have to get into the minutia of guns in order to regulate them. We really don’t. yes, it’s helpful to have some good definitions, but far too often, the “what do you mean by assault weapons or weapons of war” is just more stalling instead of DOING SOMETHING. And besides, that’s not how that works anyway, on OUR end. On our end, we make demands of our politicians, whose job it is to do the research or to draw on research that already exists in crafting these laws. Maybe the first step is to allow the CDC to do studies on gun violence in the first place. I don’t need to be an expert on ARs if someone at the CDC who has a phd and studies gun violence for a living has a working knowledge of the types of guns that are out there, what they are used for, and what types of guns are employed in various sorts of violent crimes. WE don’t need to be experts to call for solutions. We need people who are experts to help craft solutions along with our elected officials (and input from community groups, too).
Part of the problem is that as a society we no longer believe that people with phds have anything of value to really contribute. But this is why we build societies and institutions. So that we’re all not constantly having to reinvent the wheel on a daily basis. As we’ve evolved socially as a species, we’ve increased individual specialization so that they can come back and contribute effectively to our society, and make it better for all of us instead of us all having to be experts on literally every single little thing that can impact our lives. There is no conceivable way that we can all be experts at all things. None. We farm out knowledge so that we can all actually live our lives. In this case, we need to depend on people who study gun violence and let them offer facts and figures in order to come up with a solution. We don’t all need to become ballistic experts.
The article I posted says quibbling about the type of gun is mostly pointless.
The most effective thing to do is get them out of the hands of people with a history of violence, full stop.
Universal background checks, which have long been a top priority for gun control advocates and policymakers in the United States, appear to have the biggest impact.
The practice of keeping guns out of the hands of people who are at the greatest risk for violence—based on a history of violence—appears to be the most closely associated with decreased rates of firearm homicide.
The problem, as you point out, is that right now any very broad ban is guaranteed to fail. Any sweeping legislation will be extremely difficult. And it’s very true that removing any one type of assault weapon from the mainstream will just mean another will take its place. Incremental bans will not prevent another El Paso or Gilroy from happening.
I think the key is that at least it’s something. If, for now, a very popular assault weapon, or body armor, or the ammunition for these weapons is banned, and it saves one life, or ten lives, that’s something. I’m not sure what else to propose – doing nothing?
I do take Mister44’s point that you want laws to be both EFFECTIVE and PASSABLE. Effective means that they are not easily bypassable by manufacturesrs. Because the Bushmaster and bump stocks were specifically designed to get around laws. You also want your legislation to be able to pass. It is difficult for people who grew up in the suburbs and the city to realize just how popular shooting sports are. When you keep in mind the over representation of rural states in the US Senate you have to realize that a ban on all semi-automatic firearms is not going to in our lifetime. There are simply too many Senators that represent states where a large percentage of people enjoy shooting them. And they do not see why THEY should give them up to keep them out of the hands of the rare people that commit mass shootings. This is why most of the proposed gun legislation is around things like red-flag laws or comprehensive background checks rather than banning specific guns.
Colorado is the 15th state, in addition to Washington, D.C., to say “yes,” [to Red Flag laws] while another 21 have taken at least some steps toward adopting a so-called red flag law. Such laws are now on the books in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia. Maine and Pennsylvania could be next
… which (as of 5/1/19) left fewer states as total holdouts. With the more recent events, there has been a widespread pan-political outcry from the public for solutions NOW, NOW, NOW. A ‘red flag’ USA appears to be a fait accompli. So, keeping in mind what I’ve shown above, think on this:
NRA backs Trump since 2016; he’s their friend. Trump calls for ‘red flag’ gun restrictions. NRA is losing friends; they need all the friends they can get. NRA CEO turns on the waterworks re Trump’s ‘red flag’ and goes all ‘unfair…woe, is me’.
So, is Lapierre genuinely that perturbed, given the seemingly endgame trajectory of ‘red flag’ laws even before the latest massacres? Really? Either way, it sure gives Trump the opportunity to appear strong and resolute in the face of the mighty NRA (even if ‘red flag’ laws flop in the Senate) . Something for Trump to wave about thru 2020; he does read the polls. And the NRA needs a friend in the WH bad.
Fear of gun confiscation IS their brand. It drives their donations, and their political influence. They will spin literally ANY conceivable law that they can into a step onto the slippery slope no matter how tennous the connection because to do otherwise their mone and influence wanes.
First determined to be legal right after the first ones were designed, and then reclassified as restricted under Bush. They only barely existed until the Obama Administration, and the new style that came out then were designed specifically to end round the early ruling that barred the original ones. And these decisions (even the recent ban) are all internal to the ATF. Career regulators that likely predate the administration where the decisions actually came down.
And the current ban only resulted from the Vegas shooting, a reaction to public attention paid to them.
But the legal on plain reading of the law, then ban when a justification is developed after a public scandal, redesign to exploit a technicality, get banned again cycle is an excellent example of how the reactionary stamp down whatever’s the current controversy approach to gun control is a major part of the problem.
The bump stocks will be back. And likely when people are less focused on them. A legal argument or law suit, a different set of regulators, a design tweak.
Your country heavily restricted guns, and semi automatic/self loading fire arms 20 years ago and conducted large scale buybacks to reduce the total number of guns.
Fact of the matter is almost no other country in the world has as many firearms as the United States, there is a gun here for every man woman and child. We have more guns than countries embroiled in civil wars.
And in terms of level of regulation, what we have sits much closer to nations that functionally don’t have a government, than to our peers in industrialized nations.
Fact of the matter is that other places have guns. But no one has guns quite like we’ve got guns. Even the sorts of guns we have are different, most other countries, even before restrictions, most of the guns were sporting arms. And that was the case in the US through the 70’s. Since then the vast majority of fire arms in the US have been hand guns, military style weapons, and weapons meant for self/home “defense”.
You aren’t wrong that the culture is a factor. Over a century of fire arms marketing has deeply imbedded the idea that a fire arm is mostly for, and actively needed to defend ones self. But out current situation really didn’t kick in until the NRA went crazy balls, the modern GOP formed, and 2nd amendment movements, militia groups etc took political control 40 years ago. They’ve pushed fire arms as an identity, and not just a need but a duty. Propagated the idea that the average person is constantly under threat, stoking racialized fears of crime and cultural changes with guns as a solution. The idea that guns are neccisary to protect beloved 'Murica from overly restricted government. And they have passed very particular sorts of fire arms laws for very particular justifications. And used threat of even limited regulation as a wedge issue. Both to foster record gun sales and to let them embed unrelated policy.
So as far as I’m concerned the laws have bred the culture as much as the other way around. They’re both a result of the same ideological project. And the culture in question is not gun culture per se. But America’s overall culture of racism and fear. We are where we’re at, both on guns and in other ways. Because people sought to feed and build off that to gain power and raise profits.
And frankly we aren’t at all the only country with that sort of problem currently.
That’s a big part of why I don’t tend to think that simple, piece meal, target changes to our gun laws won’t have much impact on our current string of mass shootings. And building regulations around the idea of preventing them will impact nothing.
The massive number of shootings we’ve seen are in large part politically motivated. These are terror attacks, fostered and carried out by extremist movements. Even many countries with minimal access to guns still have terror attacks. And most have an awful lot more than the US.
As many of these as we’re seeing they’re still comparatively rare, and are a drop in the bucket in terms of shootings and gun deaths in the US. You could ban and confiscate every type of gun available, and these sorts of extremist movements wouldn’t go away. Even as every other kind of gun death might all but disappear, you’d still get this shit. Remember the Christ Church shooter was Australian, and he seems to have primarily been radicalized by American political thought.
It’d have an impact, but the largest and deadliest terror attacks are carried out with things like fire, bombs, and vehicles. And attacks of that sort are far more common globally. It’d be harder to carry out this sort of medium sized attack for sure. And this sort of thing need to be considered if you really want to fix the situation here.
But what frustrates me about this piece meal, respond only to the scary headline events approach is it not only does nothing about the culture problem. Its a big part of how we got the culture problem. We’re gonna put a time limited ban on big magazines, pass a background check law that won’t flag these assholes. And we’re gonna be having this same fucking arguement 10 years from now.
Thing is that .308 is a much larger, more powerful cartridge than the .223/5.56 used in the ARs and similar guns. And a major reason those things are so effective, militarily or in the shootings, is the combination of high firing rate and low recoil. Any given shot carries less ballistic power, and the overall rate is lower than automatic fire. But you are putting out accurate fire much faster. And that combination when pointed at a mass of people (or feral hogs per up thread) is why we’re getting body counts like this. .
And because of this the Vegas shooter paradoxically, probably would have killed far more people without the bump stocks. There are ar15 style rifles in .308 and some have been used in mass shootings. But its fairly rare, and casualties are lower. There is a reason we so often see semi-auto .223, magazine fed weapons in these things. And its not just because they’re very popular.
If you look at the current selection and marketing for mini-14. Well its got all those features now. And while I’m not sure if it was directly based on the m-1/m-14, it is mechanically very similar. And was designed to both look like it, and named after it. Meaning it is essentially an identical thing to the ar15, it just persisted through the AWB by not adding features that became popular after it was developed.
Which is not to argue over anything you’re saying. I just find it interesting that the mini-14 went from an example of the AWBs inadequacy, whichever end of it the debate were coming from. To a default “what about” for the anti-restriction side.
In either case simplified bans of “military derived” cartridges or arms doesn’t really seem to account for the real practical concerns. I don’t really think they neccisarily act as a suitable analog either. I think it’s just targeted in the wrong direction, and offers the same ability to design around the law that the AWB did.
Fire more accurate rounds per minute, in a rifle sized cartridge. If it was just about carrying more ammo, and putting more rounds out. We’d be seeing more sub machine guns, pistol sized rounds and even higher possible firing rate. And we’d be seeing more automatic guns, legal or illegally converted pop up.
Its about lots of bullets in a gun you can actually control, in a round that’s big just enough.
That’s a really specific and slippery thing to try to directly regulate.
The theory underpinning the weapons they carry makes them excellent for clearing a Walmart though.
We aren’t exactly in the middle of a massive increase in public sniper attacks. And the most prominent such attacks in the last couple of decades like the beltway sniper. Still uses ar15 derived weapons.
Even in military situations higher caliber, bolt action sniping is a limited specialist sort of thing. The most common approach to what we call sniping, the “dedicated marksman” role. Tends to use semi-auto guns in lower calibers than the other sort.
I do think that you need to understand them, at least broadly. And at the very least drilling down into minutia demonstrates that the base idea our regulations are based on. Of banning specific, dangerous things, connected to specific kinds of events. Without impacting anything else, or removing anything already sold/produced from the public or even from the market. Is kind of fruitless. Especially if you can’t zero in on what actual specific thing needs to be regulated.
Having gone back and forth with Mister44 on this a few times. He’s a fairly reasonable person on the subject. And I don’t think he’s making a “why bother” sort of arguement on the subject. More poling holes to demonstrate why what we’ve been doing hasn’t been working well, and why its unlikely to work as we expect.
I think that’s very much the case. And often times the mandatory gun types are focusing on a very basic, limited definition of whatever it is they’re defending. Bickering over terminology, or claiming expertise to make sure things are presented they way they prefer.
Absolutely. But I do think you need to pin down specific steps, have a plan with practical ideas. We’ve basically been playing wack a mole for decades.
Some of what’s being pushed right now is right in line with that. Universal background checks for example.
Some of it is just trying to redo shit we already did, but stopped doing. Even though it seemed to work. Like restricting magazine capacity. But there’s nothing indicating we’re going to do it any differently. All the existing hi-cap magazines will remain out there, and remain transferable and legally sellable. There’s just a fuck load more of them out there because of the break we took.
And some of it, as is tradition, seems to be misdirected to the point where it won’t have as much impact. The red flag laws and gun restraining orders. This is important, and it would fucking work. But the domestic violence part of it, which is the important part, seems to have become disconnected from the idea. And you know if we’re supposedly trying to impact mass shootings. Most of those guys, even some of the ones with histories of mental illness or domestic violence, aren’t gonna fail those checks any more so than they did existing background checks. Its an idea that’s drifted from practicality based on the framing.
Yes. I agree. And I think he’s also well aware (if he has half a brain) of just how calcified majority opinions have (will?) become and that ‘sensible’ laws are inevitable. Time and times are against him. All he can do is play to his die-hards.
If you caught the latest weird about Epstein. Dude was dreaming of building a forced breeding camp stocked with trafficked girls so he could “spread his genes across the human race”.
So no. A lot of people see that and think its an awesome idea.
I’ll address what I take as directed at me. I wrote and re-wrote my post because I wanted to add something and not be ‘that guy’. From another country who just says ‘so why don’t you fix this the way everyone suggests’.
Australia has 3.5 million guns for a population of 25 million.
In Australia we have one gun per 7-8 people. Take in gun collectors and non returned guns (my uncles safe had them that the family only found when he got put into care), not to mention illegal guns (yeah we are an island and we still manage to have them). We still don’t come close to a gun per person. Not now, probably not ever.
One per 7-8 is a lot though. It is still more then enough for a massacre (+3 people dead and forget about the wounded) it’s still enough to make the news. It’s still enough to be paranoid about the government. More then enough to get your idiotic rant published. More then enough to control pigs as well as the USA does.
I can’t be the person who says just change your laws. It’s not that simple. It wasnt that simple here and we had processes in place. What I can say is question the culture. The USA is being lied to about guns by people with guns.
Yeah the Christchurch shooter was Australian we tried to disown him but he was ours. We are a country full of racism and stupid politics. We are at times a stupid backwards country with politicians as self serving as yours. We hope he was an anomaly because as a neighbor to New Zealand we suck.
No legislation starts with that level of specificity; it starts with an intent.
The specifics get developed in the legislative process. Via hearings, expert testimony, public input, the committee process. I’ve been involved in several bills- none of them started with those specifics - though often stating this was needed prior to beginning the process was an indicator of who wanted to kill the bill.
The specifics of the 1964 civil rights bill, the ACA, the defense budget- not listed out before the process.
Hey - and if they get it slightly wrong and we think that not enough people have guns- we can always amend it.
