Reality works such that reduced gun possession rates correlate to reduced gun violence and gun deaths. That’s the only reality we need to observe to be in favor of anyone choosing not to sell guns.
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But they’ve decided they no longer want to be part of the problem. Kind of like how CVS decided to stop selling tobacco products a few years back.
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And I’ll fall back to the point that one chain of stores policy had nothing to do with the US laws - thus nothing to do with comparing the difference in availability in other countries.
But it hasn’t actually reduced availability. At least not in any meaningful way.
They don’t sell Oldsmobiles any more, has that affected the availability of cars, or just mean you go to the Chevy dealer instead of the Old’s dealer?
Well that is a fair point. Margins on lower end firearms and bullets are pretty thin. Though I do believe they do squeeze ammo makers just like they squeeze so many other companies because of their volume. But I do believe they have a slim margin on a lot of that stuff. They’d have to.
I’d find this a better comparison if it wasn’t for the fact that 99.9+% of gun owners don’t kill anyone per year, but you can’t say the same thing for cigarettes.
But still - this is nothing more than a “feel good” move. Hell, because it is Walmart I suspect this is because of numbers, not some sort of moral high ground. Hunting rifle ammo costs considerably more per box than the plinking ammo for ARs or the bulk 9mm ammo.
Like I said, they stopped selling handguns in the 90s, we still have handguns doing most of the homicides. They stopped selling Semi-auto rifles in 2015. If one sees this as some sort of moral victory in a “culture war”, go on with your bad selves. If you think it is actually going to have much of a real world impact of availability, I am disappoint.
Here’s the thing: I shoot, I have shot, I will shoot – and I want it complicated like an SAT trig test to buy over 100 rounds of ammo, and you should have a good reason.
If someone on the would-be aspirant side of the equation can’t buy the potential murder of dozens/hundreds over the counter in 30 seconds from hundreds of locations Nationwide and they have to work a little harder on their kill-plan, I’m enthused.
Because – and it’s funny – Canada hasn’t had a double-digit mass shooting since 1989, and they still have elections and a free press and etc.
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99.98% of the people who smoke don’t die of lung cancer per year, actually, so it seems like a pretty apt comparison to me. (source)
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Also: You can’t kill 20 people with cigarettes in a minute. Or kill someone with a scoped cigarette from 599 feet away. I’ve never seen someone smoke at 30 kids in an afternoon.
Also: 99.9+% of gun owners don’t kill anyone per year, but their guns – guns stolen from “good” owners are used in crime, as are guns sold, w/o background checks, after the natural-causes demise of their “good” owners – sure do.
Also: with 270 M guns in ’ Merica, a hypothetical per-gun, not per-gun-owner, kill-per-year rate of less than 99.9% (if you’re one person with 10 or 100 or a 1000 guns, thassa lotta guns) is still 270,000 kills, which is a lot of hypothetical dead humans to blithely accept as part of a Second-Amendment right to own expensive murdertoys. (Edited for bad math on my part.)
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Coming next: A Texan bill requiring large supermarkets chains to carry common types of guns and ammunition if they want to keep their tax breaks.
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It’s really hard for me to feel sorry for you.
Owning guns may be a nice hobby for you, but if my hobby was part of a systemic problem like the mass killing you have in the US I’d gladly drop it.
Do other countries even sell firearms in retail stores ? This may seems like a normal thing for you, but it is not.
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Nope. But it doesn’t have to. Their money, their store, their decision, their conscience.
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I’m a Swiss shooter, and I don’t even know how to get ammo other than 20 shots at a time from my village’s gun club. Why would I need/want it anywhere/anytime else?
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Remember that you ask this for a country where police fired 55 bullets at a sleeping person. Which is half the number German police would use.
All of them. In a year.
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SAT test and a database on purchases to limit stockpiling. Happily many will fail the former - even if it’s true/false and 5 questions long.
27 million is 10% of 270 million.
0.1% of 270 million is 270,000.
270,000 would still be a lot of death, but that’s one death per 1200ish people in the US (population of 327.2 million) rather than one in 12. For what it’s worth, a website I found listing lifetime odds for death from selected causes lists your odds of dying from a gun assault at 1 in 285, below things like heart disease, cancer, motor vehicle crashes, and falls but above being a pedestrian, being a motorcyclist, drowning, fire or smoke, etc.
With great power must come great responsibility. If a gun owner is unwilling or unable to shoulder the great responsibility the power of owning a gun grants, should they really own a gun? On the other hand, if they’re willing to be responsible for their gun 24/7/365 (keeping it locked in a gun safe when not in use [safely] or in transport to someplace to be used safely, etc.) that’s okay by me.
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You’re right. I’m bad at math.
Still a lot of dead people, tho.
Also, people don’t walk into malls with heart disease, cancer or drowning and randomly give people heart disease, cancer, and lungs full of water.
Also, if your firearms philosophy cites Spider-Man, it may not hold up to scrutiny, you know?
The problem I have is conflating the average gun user (around 80 million of them) with mass shooters or people involved in illicit activities. There is SOME overlap, obviously, but the average gun owner hurts no one and had no desire to.
Just like the average person with mental illness is not violent.
The average Mexican or South American immigrant is not in MS-13, a drug cartel, or otherwise a criminal.
The average Muslim is not a terrorist.
The average homosexual is not a pedophile.
And all the other groups who have bad elements within them which negatively taints the rest of them.
.
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She can always hold a garage sale.
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I have no problem with gun owners, I just think your hobby should be way harder.
And I think all gun owners and collectors have a small part of responsibility in the normalisation of the American gun culture. This is not a mundane tool, this is not a normal thing to carry a gun in the public space, this is not a normal thing to display firearms at home, or to brag about them.
Also, you just can’t compare yourself to groups of people who are actually victim of discrimination. because you are not a victim of discrimination. Not even a bit.
Just drop this one. It’s a really bad take.
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It’s not the SAT, but in Canada to be able to purchase a gun you first have to take a one-day gun safety course (two days if you also want to be able to buy certain guns classified as “restricted”) and apply for a personal acquisition license (PAL). I don’t have my PAL, but I have a number of friends who do, some of them ex-military and one of whom works at a shooting range. I’m told that on the PAL application form there is a question that basically asks “Why do you want a gun?” and that if you write down anything other than “hunting” or “target practice at the range”, you are probably not getting your PAL.
Entirely anecdotal of course, but it seems to be the accepted wisdom.
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