Communities around the U.S. have seen shootings carried out with weapons converted to fully automatic in recent years, fueled by a staggering increase in small pieces of metal or plastic made with a 3D printer or ordered online. Laws against machine guns date back to the bloody violence of Prohibition-era gangsters. But the proliferation of devices known by nicknames such as Glock switches, auto sears and chips has allowed people to transform legal semi-automatic weapons into even more dangerous guns, helping fuel gun violence, police and federal authorities said.
The (ATF) reported a 570% increase in the number of conversion devices collected by police departments between 2017 and 2021, the most recent data available.
The devices that can convert legal semi-automatic weapons can be made on a 3D printer in about 35 minutes or ordered from overseas online for less than $30. They’re also quick to install.
“It takes two or three seconds to put in some of these devices into a firearm to make that firearm into a machine gun instantly,” Dettelbach said.
Did I say mental health? It’s not mental health. It’s socioeconomic despair. It’s a societal issue, a cultural issue.
You want to see a strong correlation with violence? Look at age of motherhood. The mean age of women when they have their first child.
Australia and Europe commonly wait until they are in their 30’s to have children. The average child in these areas is raised by mature, economically stable adults. Murder rates in these areas are a tiny fraction of the world rate.
Compare to Central and South America, where the average mother is 18 to 22, and the murder rates are large multiples of the world rate.
The correlation holds true across nations, across regions, across cities, across demographics. If you know the age of a motherhood in a given area, you can predict the homicide rate in that area. If you know the homicide rate, you can predict the age of motherhood.
Contrast with guns, where the nation with by far the highest access to guns in the world has a homicide rate well below the world average. The rural areas of that nation have near universal gun ownership, yet the violence is clustered in impoverished areas, where the majority of the population doesn’t actually have guns.
Turns out it’s not actually the guns. It is the motivations of the people carrying them. When those people are figuratively beaten into submission, living paycheck to paycheck with no legitimate prospects, no way to get ahead, saddled with debt, no equity… Violence is not a gun problem. It’s not a mental health problem. Violence is what happens when you systematically subjugate people, and some of them decide they don’t need to obey. Violence is a socioeconomic problem. It is a cultural problem. More specifically, it is a problem of corporate culture, where people do everything they can to take everything they can from everyone they can, and give back as little as they can to as few as they can.
We need universal healthcare. We need to eliminate food insecurity. We need to eliminate housing insecurity.
We need to restore the protections we had against 19th century robber barons. Specifically, we need to reinstate a confiscatory top-tier tax rate. The only people that businessmen hate paying more than workers is the IRS. A confiscatory tax rate forces them to choose between the two.
We need to kill the concept of “renting”. We need to create a owner-occupant credit against residential property taxes, to hold them where they are, or lower them slightly for anyone living in their own properties. A “landlord” who wants that tax credit will have to issue a “land contract” (rent-to-own arrangement, recorded with the county) or a private mortgage to secure the occupant’s credit against that property’s taxes. The occupant will then be paying a fixed rate for the duration of the contract, and will be earning equity.
It is much more feasible to fix those three factors than to enact any form of gun control, and any of those factors will reduce violent crime far more than even a total confiscation could ever hope to achieve.
Holy fuck this is a convoluted waste of words to avoid reality. Want to see a correlation? Bullet wounds and deaths, where you find the first you almost always the latter.
But sure age of motherhood, IRS and landlords. Mate I agree you need to fix all the social issues you have over there but fuck,kids getting shot while at school? It’s the fucking guns that you have everywhere!
When you walk in and find your kitchen flooded do you go and close the water mains or start speculating about the rate at which the snow is melting up in the mountains?
That’s actually an excellent analogy. Here, we have the river overflowing its banks, and you’re busy trying to find the water main. Can’t hurt to shut off the water main, eh? Every little bit helps?
Simpleton.
So instead you sit down, get on lemmy to show your deep knowledge of river banks through hundreds of words while thr rest of the house gets wasted.
All while your neighbours, the ivilised world, is fine and is trying to convince you to close that fuclimg mains and check your pipes.
But no, you sit there doing nothing to fix the problem and try to convince everyone it’s the river banks… and calling them simpletons!
The rest of the civilized world has universal fucking healthcare. The rest of the civilized world has sensible welfare policies. The rest of the civilized world has far less income and wealth disparity.
The rest of the “uncivilized” world, that shares our privatized approach to healthcare, that shares our lack of poverty controls, that shares are obscene degree of economic disparity, but has adopted European-style gun control also has far higher rates of violent crime, gun crime, homicide, and gun homicide than even the US.
You’re looking at the carp swimming in my refrigerator. You’re wondering how you’re going to get him crammed back in the faucet he came out, and looking at me like I’m the idiot for suggesting that it might just be the river rather than a plumbing problem.
Don’t get me wrong, you need to sort that shit too. Universal care etc.
But I’m still here scratching my head with the rest of the neighbourhood that hasn’t been affected by this mysterious river. And remember it’s just your kitchen flooded at the moment. You sure you don’t want to shut off the water mains?
We are concerned, we have this theory that your gun problem might be caused by, you know, guns.
That’s pretty much what I’m getting at: you don’t even know the river exists, let alone the fact that there are people living near it. You just assume that the US is living in a mountaintop commune, because you and everyone you actually know lives in one.
We aren’t.
The only nation in the Americas that actually qualifies for your little club is Canada. The rest of North, Central, and South America is living in a dank river valley.
Of course, of course you guys are special. Want to go check your water mains now or continue this rant that no one can understand you?
Gonna go with simpleton, final answer.