President says ‘epidemic of gun violence is tearing our communities apart’ after mass shootings in Philadelphia, Fort Worth, Baltimore and Chicago

  • @massacre
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    381 year ago

    Ban automatic guns to start off.

    “automatic” - not sure if you realize it, but every automatic in this country is HEAVILY regulated behind stamps and they cost an absolute small fortune. They are also pretty much never involved in mass shootings. They’re more of a gangland modded trigger type gun.

    So I presume you actually mean “semi-automatic” here… and if that’s the case, that’s basically everything but pump-action shot guns, lever-action & bolt rifles, and revolvers. Now… there’s no shortage of any of those, but semi-auto dwarfs that in terms of sheer volume of guns in the United States. And are you saying ban them all going forward? Or ban them all retro-actively? The former would be a herculean effort. The latter, you’d likely start an actual domestic war over if you got it anywhere near actual law.

    I’m just here to educate, BTW. https://www.stonekettle.com/2015/06/bang-bang-sanity.html is a fantastic read. I recommend it for both gun-owners and gun-haters alike. It’s the first real-world solution I’ve seen that I think both could find fairly reasonable.

    • @sdchoni
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      English
      31 year ago

      I appreciate the link, that is probably one of the best suggestions I’ve seen on gun laws.

    • blazera
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      fedilink
      -161 year ago

      right, semi-automatic, my bad, any autoloading gun. Ban on sales going forward, new and used.

      • @massacre
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        41 year ago

        The reality is that this is unlikely to happen even for what are colloquially coined “assault weapons” again - though it happened once, so I suppose it might… I recommend reading the article and I try to post it often to get the word out to more people. The best part is that it’s likely to trigger hard left gun haters and hard-right gun fetishists alike, but lands on solid, pragmatic ground that I think most reasonable people in the US would agree with (and to, should it be pursued for law). All without banning anything and this is noted in the article since bans don’t really work for the intended purpose when there are already hundreds of millions of guns like this for sale/trade in the US after such a go-forward ban.

        • blazera
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          fedilink
          -11 year ago

          alright, I read the article. As far as I can tell it’s not proposing anything relevant to gun violence in America.

          You’re right it’s unlikely to happen, in the same vein its unlikely the US will stop having third world levels of gun violence. The majority opinion of guns in America is admiration, and that’s both the cause of all our gun violence, and the blockade to any efforts to address that violence. All I can do is be one opposition voice and try and convince others. What Americans are used to isnt normal in the rest of the developed world, and measures that are considered unachievable fantasy here are reality elsewhere.

          • @massacre
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            11 year ago

            I’m genuinely curious why you think that article does not propose anything relavant to gun violence. It’s entirely about gun violence. And it’s using conservative mentatlity, especially “Personal Responsibility” as well as NRA’s own rules to recommend new laws governing that personal responsibility. And more to the point it’s about changing (over time) exactly the mentality you point out about guns in the us. So I truly don’t understand how that’s not a practical starting point. The liklihood of removing guns entirely from the US like the UK or other countries is slim to none given the 2nd Amendment and political climate, and so to me that’s tilting at wind mills.

            All that being said, the analogy of drunk driving and the efforts to pass laws to force responsibility there have had both a massive impact on number of drunk driving incidents and certainly deaths. You can’t stop people from violating the law, but you can hold them accountable is the point and now in the US after 40+ years of DUI/DWI laws, constant messaging, and consequences, you can see that minds have changed and society with it. People used to drink and drive as a matter OF COURSE - that just doesn’t happen many places anymore in the US. Nobody took away cars, ability to drive, ability to drink, but you combine those and you’re likely getting put in Jail. Certainly if you do it more than once. I’d characterize it as people now caring about this on a whole in society where in the 50’s/60’s/70’s it was rampant.