Judging from Post editor Sally Buzbee’s introduction to the project, as well as from my own reporting, the paper talked to dozens of survivors and family members and weighed the enormous range of their opinions about this issue to craft the feature. It was so much better than I was expecting that it initially blinded me to the way it was bad. But bad in a kind of routine way: The media, as well as certain kinds of activists, believe we need to be presented with graphic, grisly evidence to grasp what are simply facts. This grisly evidence, they posit, will change hearts and minds.
It will not. Upwards of three-quarters of American voters support almost every commonsense gun law. And we know why political leaders haven’t heeded their call: the gun lobby, and its disgusting political servants. But the Post tried, anyway, with its multimedia “Terror on Repeat” project. I won’t impugn these journalists’ motives. I’ll assume they are good. I’ll just tell you what I saw, and why I would like to spare people seeing the same thing. Especially survivors.
If I could snap my fingers and suddenly get rid of all semi automatic firearms in the US I would. Sadly, that’s not the case and there’s no way politically or logistically it’s going to happen.
Are there steps we can take to make things safer? Yes, and we should take them. Red flag laws, more in depth background checks, etc are all good steps that responsible gun owners like myself support.
At the same time, we need to address the systemic issues that are driving people to suicide or mass violence. People with adequate mental health support and a future that doesn’t get bleaker by the day are much less likely to commit violence of any kind.
I know that “just ban them” seems like a good option from the outside, but this is not an issue we can address via legislation alone.
Well, “all” explicitly has to include “those owned by the police and other military/government forces” as well.
I would absolutely love to limit the police to no SBR’s, no machine guns, no high capacity magazines, etc., etc. just like they want to apply to us. I assure you; I am absolutely not being sarcastic. They don’t need that shit. Our cops are way too fucking trigger happy and we enable them by giving them all the toys they want.
Eh, sbrs and sbs’ are only a thing because the original MFA was going to ban pistols too and wanted to close a loophole. They’re not any more or less dangerous than any other firearm.
That said, I’d be down for disarming cops in this fantasy scenario. We’ve militarized our police force to an absurd degree.
Right? I mean, it’s not like anyone else has tried banning guns through legislation and succeeded.
Pretending that the sheer number of “assault weapons” (which is a painfully imprecise word as it is) in the US to any other country is either disingenuous or just foolish. From a cursory search there are about 20 million AR pattern rifles in the US. Let’s say we banned the sale and did a stupendously effective buyback that got say 65 percent of them. I don’t think it would be that high, but it is what it is. Let’s say we give people 500 each for them (no way I’d sell mine for that, but anyway). We’ve just spent 6.5 billion just on one style or semi automatic rifle and there are still 7 million of the goddam things. Compare that to Australia, which confiscated about 650,000 guns total.
So what you’re saying is that we can’t simply ban a single weapon type, we need to ban them all in order to effectively end mass shootings in the US.
Okay! I’m on board with that, if that’s what it takes.
I’m saying that it’s logistically impossible to solve via legislation (on guns) alone. We need to address the systemic problems that we face as a country, and until we do that the violence will continue. I’m all for gun control measures that will make that violence less destructive, but a flat ban will not fix it.
Which then brings us back to how every other country that has tried it has obviously failed. Because obviously, numbers don’t scale.
But please, continue to blow more smoke over the issue. Tell us again how we’ve done nothing, and we’re all out of ideas.
You’re right, I’ve not presented any potential solutions. All I’ve said is fund public health initiatives, address the systemic issues that are leading to violence, and enact sane limits on firearms sales.
But please, go ahead and continue misrepresenting my argument if it makes you feel better.
Except the party that wants to get rid of guns wants to do those things, and the one that doesn’t want to get rid of guns doesn’t want any of those things, and people still vote for the latter because they want guns.
I vote Democrat because there’s nobody viable who’s farther left. I’ll admit it’s frustrating as a gun owner because so many Democrats are tremendously ignorant on the issue, but I agree with them a hell of a lot more than Republicans.
I just want non insane or just plain ignorant gun laws and a decent social safety net, is that too much to ask?
No, the party that wants to get rid of guns says it wants to do those things, but doesn’t actually follow through. In states and cities with Democratic veto-proof super-majorities, most of the things that Dems say they want still doesn’t happen. Take, for instance, affordable housing. We can all agree that good housing that was cheap enough to afford for anyone working full-time–including at minimum wage–is a good thing, right? So we shouldn’t have any problem changing the zoning in an already residential area to allow high-density affordable housing, right? And yet, as soon as the cards are down, Dems turn into NIMBY. Sure, we want to house homeless people, but not near me. Reform criminal justice, but also arrest these black people trying to have a barbecue in a public park. Decriminalize drugs, but arrest the homeless junkies near my Whole Foods.
And I will point out that the states that have Deocratic super-majorities–California, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, etc.–still don’t adequately fund all the shit that would actually solve the underlying problems that lead to violence. (I know for a fact that Illinois has moved money away from public schools to charter and magnet schools, while the public schools in Chicago are literally falling apart.)