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In the US, there are more firearms than people. About one-third of all households have at least one firearm [0]. The vast majority of these people have never

In the US, there are more firearms than people. About one-third of all households have at least one firearm [0]. The vast majority of these people have never had a serious brush with law enforcement, but some significant portion would refuse to part with their guns if a ban were enacted tomorrow. While it is said that nearly all Americans are felons [1], most Americans do not intentionally commit felonies or think of themselves as being on the opposite side of things from law enforcement. That would suddenly change for millions of ban-defying US citizens, and it's hard for me to imagine a likely scenario where that decreases violence in the US. [0] https://www.npr.org/2016/01/05/462017461/guns-in-america-by-the-numbers https://www.npr.org/2016/01/05/462017461/guns-in-america-by-... [1] https://ips-dc.org/three-felonies-day/ https://ips-dc.org/three-felonies-day/

EForEndeavour 7y ago
Why do you assume a ban would take effect "suddenly"? As you rightly point out, it would make no sense to apply a gun ban instantly, tricking millions of Americans into technically becoming felons.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  I think the point is that millions of Americans feel so strongly about gun ownership that they would rather be felons (and 'molon labe' their guns) than give them up.
  - madhadron 7y ago
    Am I the only one who finds the use of "molon labe" farcical? I mean, the Persians did come and take them and killed the entire Spartan force in the process.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
      It makes more sense in context, take Patrick Henry's words in 1775 to understand what liberty and the preservation of constitutional rights means to Americans. "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" or Thomas Jefferson in 1787: "We have had 13. states independent 11. years. there has been one rebellion. that comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. what country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. what signify a few lives lost in a century or two? the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure."
      - coldtea 7y ago
        That was at a time when wars were fought with such arms, and the police had the same. Heck, that was true for 100+ years afterwards still. Now the police even has tanks and army level guns, and the army of course has 1000x the resources, airplanes, drones, etc. And of course, at the time the states were indeed independent and fighting fiercely for that. Now (and ever after the Civil War) it's all a charade, from what I understand, and it's all as the Federal government says, not really a union of independent states (as independent countries), but a state divided in N prefectures that just happen to be called states...
        invalidOrTaken 7y ago
        All the more reason to preserve what is left, then.
        coldtea 7y ago
        It is said that "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.". I'd say this idea, that after you are guaranteed worse results, you should double down, is even more insane. If anything, what I wrote is all the more reason to find new strategies that don't involve "we'll fight them with guns". Besides who'll do the fighting? The kind of people that have guns are in more in favor of fascism and army rule than those who don't. So all it takes to get them on the side of the opressors it's to sell it to them as army control, as opposed to "big government" control.
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      It was a successful delaying action. They were outnumbered hundreds to one and never expected to defeat the entire enemy army themselves. They knew they were going to lose that battle, but the intent was to help win the overall war, which the Greeks did. And if you kill many more of the enemy than they do of you despite being vastly outnumbered, you can justifiably say you gave a lot more than you got, which is a victory of sorts in its own right.
      - EForEndeavour 7y ago
        > And if you kill many more of the enemy than they do of you despite being vastly outnumbered, you can justifiably say you gave a lot more than you got Getting (benefitting) a lot more than you gave (spent) makes more sense to me.
        nickynickell 7y ago
        In this context we're talking about death: giving more death to the enemy than they could give to you. Ultimately the meaning is the same as your rewording. Just a bit more grim.
      - madhadron 7y ago
        A different reading of the history is that it was a political move by the other Spartan king to force Leonidas to die in a lost cause with a small force in order to remove a rival.
    - eitland 7y ago
      Meanwhile it allowed the rest of Greece to organize a defense and it also inspired them to fight, defeating their enemies later.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      Or rather: killed a small percentage of Spartans (the "300" + some allies), hardly "the entire Spartan force", while having huge losses themselves, and giving time to the rest of the Greeks to prepare and ultimately kick them off. So there's that...
  - tootie 7y ago
    We don't have to take anyone's guns. Even if we made some currently legal weapons illegal, just grandfather current ones and let attrition weed them out. I'll accept a solution that takes 30 years over nothing.
    - tomschlick 7y ago
      > I'll accept a solution that takes 30 years over nothing. Guns last a lot longer than 30 years. 80-120 years sounds more like it. They are not going away anytime soon even if you do ban them (which wont happen).
      - tootie 7y ago
        Then why do people keep buying them?
        tomschlick 7y ago
        1) different guns do different things 2) they become collectors items 3) just because we can
        CydeWeys 7y ago
        Why do people buy tens of thousands of Magic cards when you only need 40 in a deck to play?
    - analognoise 7y ago
      The whole point of having guns is so that if somebody tries to take them away from you, you have the tools of preventing that. The police in Hong Kong would be a lot more respectful if the (massive, dense) crowd was armed with more than laser pointers. The riots in LA where Korean shop owners defended their property. Etc., etc. Hell there were violent protests in Ferguson, MO not long ago. "Gun Control" was originally just a mechanism to keep the (black, brown) population from owning guns; just a way of disarming the black/brown population. Look at the past laws, and current policing! Some people in the US think "It can't happen here, now we should get rid of guns!" - as we watch the authorities putting children in cages, and protests in other countries where the police beat up protesters, and riots where people defend their loved ones and property, the rise of White Nationalism from "simmer" to "boil" and people still think we shouldn't have guns? There's absolutely no way, in hell, Americans would willingly disarm - nor should we.
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    I mean, if millions of New Zealanders (and Germans, and Brits, and...) feel like that, why would we expect the US to be any different? (compliance rates for previous gun confiscation efforts overseas have been laughable - like, "I don't think there's been one with over 50% compliance" tier laughable)
- word-reader 7y ago
  The Trump administration actually did this with bump stocks with an administrative determination that bump stocks constitute an automatic weapon. Granted, it wasn't millions, but probably at least tens of thousands of people had a few weeks notice to destroy their bump stocks or be in felony possession of an automatic weapon. At the federal level, this is already more gun control than the Obama administration implemented.
ineedasername 7y ago
We had an assault weapons ban before, related shootings declined, and millions of people did not become criminals overnight.
- harimau777 7y ago
  The old "Assault Weapons Ban" grandfathered in existing guns. Since AR-15s and similar rifles are so much more common now its possible that re-instating the ban wouldn't help as much without also implementing a gun buyback. That could in turn be very expensive. Not necessarily insurmountable, but potentially a significant obstacle.
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    That just means it will take longer for the full effects to kick in. The gun lobby puts out tons of arguments that amount to "your proposed solution isn't perfect so it shouldn't be done."
    - stale2002 7y ago
      The law would be reversed long before it had a chance of actually succeeded. Lots of people care a whole lot about gun rights. And all you need to do is win 1 Congress and presidency, to temporarily reverse the law, and allow people to purchase these guns again, and reverse all the effects of the law.
      - ineedasername 7y ago
        Yes, unfortunate but true. And probably true of just about any controversial legislation, meaning whichever direction you want the country to go, over the long term it just swings back and forth.
- ufmace 7y ago
  Which ban are you referring to? I've yet to see any evidence that any such ban has reduced violent crime in any way.
tootie 7y ago
America has vast and currently unimpeachable rights to weaponry. There is a huge swath of policy space between that and banning gun ownership. We can reduce gun ownership, trafficking and weapon deadliness a thousand different ways while not adversely impacting legitimate usage. Universal background checks, limiting purchase frequency, banning 100-round barrels, increasing liability for dealers.
- yourduskquibble 7y ago
  100 round barrels?
  - coldtea 7y ago
    Yes, 20 round barrels can just kill like 5-6 people, 10-12 if you're lucky and it's a dense crowd, so they're ok /s
    - AdrianB1 7y ago
      There is nothing like a 20 round barrel, the most barrels in an gun is around 7 or 8 on platform mounts and the weight it in thousands of pounds. A barrel is not a unit of measure for rounds. Learn something about what you want to discuss if you want to have any valid point, being clueless and talking is not a good idea.
      - nickynickell 7y ago
        They were joking, and you're being needlessly hostile. Plus you're wrong on multiple counts. Most of the counter examples are historic, but still. Yes, barrel is not a unit of rounds, but there are situations where it would be appropriate. Superimposed loading is where multiple rounds are loaded in the same barrel and are fired sequentially. This is a very old idea, but for a modern take on it look up (the now defunct) Metal Storm. Terrifying stuff. There have been guns with many more barrels than 7 or 8. Volley guns have been made with anywhere from just a few to nearly a hundred barrels. They weren't always big platform mounted monstrosities either. A famous example would be the nock gun: a 7 barrel, shoulder-fired flintlock.

EForEndeavour 7y ago

Why do you assume a ban would take effect "suddenly"? As you rightly point out, it would make no sense to apply a gun ban instantly, tricking millions of Americans into technically becoming felons.

CydeWeys 7y ago
I think the point is that millions of Americans feel so strongly about gun ownership that they would rather be felons (and 'molon labe' their guns) than give them up.
- madhadron 7y ago
  Am I the only one who finds the use of "molon labe" farcical? I mean, the Persians did come and take them and killed the entire Spartan force in the process.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
    It makes more sense in context, take Patrick Henry's words in 1775 to understand what liberty and the preservation of constitutional rights means to Americans. "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" or Thomas Jefferson in 1787: "We have had 13. states independent 11. years. there has been one rebellion. that comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. what country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. what signify a few lives lost in a century or two? the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure."
    - coldtea 7y ago
      That was at a time when wars were fought with such arms, and the police had the same. Heck, that was true for 100+ years afterwards still. Now the police even has tanks and army level guns, and the army of course has 1000x the resources, airplanes, drones, etc. And of course, at the time the states were indeed independent and fighting fiercely for that. Now (and ever after the Civil War) it's all a charade, from what I understand, and it's all as the Federal government says, not really a union of independent states (as independent countries), but a state divided in N prefectures that just happen to be called states...
      - invalidOrTaken 7y ago
        All the more reason to preserve what is left, then.
        coldtea 7y ago
        It is said that "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.". I'd say this idea, that after you are guaranteed worse results, you should double down, is even more insane. If anything, what I wrote is all the more reason to find new strategies that don't involve "we'll fight them with guns". Besides who'll do the fighting? The kind of people that have guns are in more in favor of fascism and army rule than those who don't. So all it takes to get them on the side of the opressors it's to sell it to them as army control, as opposed to "big government" control.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    It was a successful delaying action. They were outnumbered hundreds to one and never expected to defeat the entire enemy army themselves. They knew they were going to lose that battle, but the intent was to help win the overall war, which the Greeks did. And if you kill many more of the enemy than they do of you despite being vastly outnumbered, you can justifiably say you gave a lot more than you got, which is a victory of sorts in its own right.
    - EForEndeavour 7y ago
      > And if you kill many more of the enemy than they do of you despite being vastly outnumbered, you can justifiably say you gave a lot more than you got Getting (benefitting) a lot more than you gave (spent) makes more sense to me.
      - nickynickell 7y ago
        In this context we're talking about death: giving more death to the enemy than they could give to you. Ultimately the meaning is the same as your rewording. Just a bit more grim.
    - madhadron 7y ago
      A different reading of the history is that it was a political move by the other Spartan king to force Leonidas to die in a lost cause with a small force in order to remove a rival.
  - eitland 7y ago
    Meanwhile it allowed the rest of Greece to organize a defense and it also inspired them to fight, defeating their enemies later.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    Or rather: killed a small percentage of Spartans (the "300" + some allies), hardly "the entire Spartan force", while having huge losses themselves, and giving time to the rest of the Greeks to prepare and ultimately kick them off. So there's that...
- tootie 7y ago
  We don't have to take anyone's guns. Even if we made some currently legal weapons illegal, just grandfather current ones and let attrition weed them out. I'll accept a solution that takes 30 years over nothing.
  - tomschlick 7y ago
    > I'll accept a solution that takes 30 years over nothing. Guns last a lot longer than 30 years. 80-120 years sounds more like it. They are not going away anytime soon even if you do ban them (which wont happen).
    - tootie 7y ago
      Then why do people keep buying them?
      - tomschlick 7y ago
        1) different guns do different things 2) they become collectors items 3) just because we can
      - CydeWeys 7y ago
        Why do people buy tens of thousands of Magic cards when you only need 40 in a deck to play?
  - analognoise 7y ago
    The whole point of having guns is so that if somebody tries to take them away from you, you have the tools of preventing that. The police in Hong Kong would be a lot more respectful if the (massive, dense) crowd was armed with more than laser pointers. The riots in LA where Korean shop owners defended their property. Etc., etc. Hell there were violent protests in Ferguson, MO not long ago. "Gun Control" was originally just a mechanism to keep the (black, brown) population from owning guns; just a way of disarming the black/brown population. Look at the past laws, and current policing! Some people in the US think "It can't happen here, now we should get rid of guns!" - as we watch the authorities putting children in cages, and protests in other countries where the police beat up protesters, and riots where people defend their loved ones and property, the rise of White Nationalism from "simmer" to "boil" and people still think we shouldn't have guns? There's absolutely no way, in hell, Americans would willingly disarm - nor should we.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  I mean, if millions of New Zealanders (and Germans, and Brits, and...) feel like that, why would we expect the US to be any different? (compliance rates for previous gun confiscation efforts overseas have been laughable - like, "I don't think there's been one with over 50% compliance" tier laughable)
word-reader 7y ago
The Trump administration actually did this with bump stocks with an administrative determination that bump stocks constitute an automatic weapon. Granted, it wasn't millions, but probably at least tens of thousands of people had a few weeks notice to destroy their bump stocks or be in felony possession of an automatic weapon. At the federal level, this is already more gun control than the Obama administration implemented.

ineedasername 7y ago

We had an assault weapons ban before, related shootings declined, and millions of people did not become criminals overnight.

harimau777 7y ago
The old "Assault Weapons Ban" grandfathered in existing guns. Since AR-15s and similar rifles are so much more common now its possible that re-instating the ban wouldn't help as much without also implementing a gun buyback. That could in turn be very expensive. Not necessarily insurmountable, but potentially a significant obstacle.
- ineedasername 7y ago
  That just means it will take longer for the full effects to kick in. The gun lobby puts out tons of arguments that amount to "your proposed solution isn't perfect so it shouldn't be done."
  - stale2002 7y ago
    The law would be reversed long before it had a chance of actually succeeded. Lots of people care a whole lot about gun rights. And all you need to do is win 1 Congress and presidency, to temporarily reverse the law, and allow people to purchase these guns again, and reverse all the effects of the law.
    - ineedasername 7y ago
      Yes, unfortunate but true. And probably true of just about any controversial legislation, meaning whichever direction you want the country to go, over the long term it just swings back and forth.
ufmace 7y ago
Which ban are you referring to? I've yet to see any evidence that any such ban has reduced violent crime in any way.

tootie 7y ago

America has vast and currently unimpeachable rights to weaponry. There is a huge swath of policy space between that and banning gun ownership. We can reduce gun ownership, trafficking and weapon deadliness a thousand different ways while not adversely impacting legitimate usage. Universal background checks, limiting purchase frequency, banning 100-round barrels, increasing liability for dealers.

yourduskquibble 7y ago
100 round barrels?
- coldtea 7y ago
  Yes, 20 round barrels can just kill like 5-6 people, 10-12 if you're lucky and it's a dense crowd, so they're ok /s
  - AdrianB1 7y ago
    There is nothing like a 20 round barrel, the most barrels in an gun is around 7 or 8 on platform mounts and the weight it in thousands of pounds. A barrel is not a unit of measure for rounds. Learn something about what you want to discuss if you want to have any valid point, being clueless and talking is not a good idea.
    - nickynickell 7y ago
      They were joking, and you're being needlessly hostile. Plus you're wrong on multiple counts. Most of the counter examples are historic, but still. Yes, barrel is not a unit of rounds, but there are situations where it would be appropriate. Superimposed loading is where multiple rounds are loaded in the same barrel and are fired sequentially. This is a very old idea, but for a modern take on it look up (the now defunct) Metal Storm. Terrifying stuff. There have been guns with many more barrels than 7 or 8. Volley guns have been made with anywhere from just a few to nearly a hundred barrels. They weren't always big platform mounted monstrosities either. A famous example would be the nock gun: a 7 barrel, shoulder-fired flintlock.