Throughout the corridors of many state Capitols, families are sharing emotionally gutting stories of tragedy caused by mass school shootings with the hope that revealing their trauma will convince lawmakers on either side of the political aisle to reconsider firearm policies.
I’ve never heard a single politician propose banning guns. I’ve only ever heard Republican pundits SAY that Democrats want to take away your guns.
Sensible gun regulation can be enacted without banning all guns. It’s only the extreme right that interprets the 2nd amendment as disallowing ANY regulations.
The right uses the 2nd amendment to cut off ANY discussion of gun reforms, and the eventual result COULD be that the 2nd amendment is eliminated using the methods you described, since it could be seen as the only way to enact sensible restrictions.
I don’t want to lose the second amendment, do you? I’d rather see sensible regulations put in place while still largely retaining the right to bear arms. If those of us who are interested in gun ownership fight tooth-and-nail against ANY regulations, then it will make efforts to eliminate gun ownership entirely more likely to eventually succeed.
I’d prefer be part of the conversation to determine where the right line is on gun rights, rather than trying to cut off the conversation entirely by invoking the 2nd amendment.
Beto O’Rourke is probably the most notable:
https://youtu.be/lMVhL6OOuR0
Biden too:
https://joebiden.com/gunsafety/
Which has since been taken offline and now has the best 404 ever… CNN archived parts of it here:
https://www.cnn.com/factsfirst/politics/factcheck_b584f336-923d-49d9-98c5-d82883116eb4
“Along with banning the “manufacture and sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines,” Biden’s plan includes mandating that people who own assault weapons either sell theirs to the federal government or properly register them with the authorities.”
Of course I’m aware of the calls for banning assault weapons and that we had an assault weapon ban for many years. Certainly a reasonable discussion should be had about where the line is. I’m not sure whether I agree with the assault weapon bans or whether they have a good classification, but either way they aren’t calling for banning ALL guns, they’re calling for banning certain types of guns.
This just proves my point that the 2A crowd is shooting themselves in the foot by not being willing to discuss reasonable reforms.
If you insist that the 2A allows you to have a gun that can shoot up a football stadium, then people are eventually just going to eliminate the 2A altogether, which would be harmful IMO.
Instead we should acknowledge that there IS room for sensible reforms. For example, people should not be able to have nuclear missiles. Seems like common sense to me, maybe that’s a good place to start? Maybe there we can work our way down through artillery and figure out where the line is on guns that can shoot up massive crowds of people.
Instead of insisting that a sentence written hundreds of years ago means you can do whatever you want with no restrictions, maybe come up with a reasonable argument as to why it is important for our democracy for you to bear those particular arms.
Also, if you’re going to take on the tyrannical government, you’d probably need those nuclear missiles.
From a rights oriented perspective “that’s how it starts”. Especially for the folks online calling for an Australia style ban.
That would require a new amendment and that’s just not possible given the current governmental dysfunction. You’d have to start by getting 290 votes in the House, the same folks who needed 15 tries to get the 218 votes needed to decide who their own leader would be. :(
People confuse semi-automatic rifles for fully automatic rifles. I was uneducated myself, until I went out and bought an AR-15 myself and ran through a training class with it. I felt I needed that experience to speak intelligently about it.
Like any other semi-automatic, it fires one time every time you pull the trigger. It’s not dramatically different from other kinds of rifles, other than it automatically ejects the shell and loads the next round instead of the shooter having to do it manually with a lever, pump or bolt.
But man, have you SEEN some of those non semi-auto shooters?
Pump:
https://youtube.com/shorts/TUSjkwGopdw
Bolt:
https://youtube.com/shorts/I5P7qlix-hU
Lever:
https://youtube.com/shorts/CHJEwLtmLXw