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Unpopular opinion: make private gun ownership illegal instead of forcing kids to be monitored to make sure they're not carrying

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
umvi 7y ago
Unpopular opinion: basically no one dies by guns in schools so don't even bother with clear backpacks.
- zepto 7y ago
  Exactly. Force schools to quantify this risk against others. More kids die cycling to school than by guns.
  - qxnqd 7y ago
    Schools aren't responsible for kids who die cycling to school.
    - zepto 7y ago
      No, but they are responsible for not subjecting them to unreasonable policies.
  - nguoi 7y ago
    Do clear backpacks increase the risk of dying from cycling?
    - werfds 7y ago
      No, but if we're forcing the kids to have clear backpacks because of an infinitesimal risk, we should ban them from biking to school, being driven to school and playing in the school football team. Which is ridiculous.
      - nguoi 7y ago
        That's a poor comparison though. Both of the others provide other benefits: a method of commuting to school or exercise. Potentially even scholarships. Fashionable backpacks do nothing.
        zepto 7y ago
        Freedom from arbitrary restrictions does something.
        nguoi 7y ago
        Welcome to mandatory education
        zepto 7y ago
        Seems like you agree with me that this has nothing to do with guns and everything to do with the dysfunction of the school system.
        Mirioron 7y ago
        Imagine you're a teenage girl and you need to carry sanitary products with you. I imagine that for some of them this is essentially a nightmare scenario. That's a direct harm to kids.
        nguoi 7y ago
        This is a good point and I hope they can work around it (such as by allowing small opaque bags inside the bag).
        deathanatos 7y ago
        At which point the clear outer bag is defeated.
      - tomatotomato37 7y ago
    - noonespecial 7y ago
      No. But clear backpacks do nothing at all to make them safer. And everyone with half a brain knows this. It conditions the entire population to accept security theater and government surveillance as part of everyday life. This sets the entire society up to be unable to resist government overreach in the future. Clear backpacks increase the risk of death from tyranny.
      - nguoi 7y ago
        >But clear backpacks do nothing at all to make them safer I must be missing most of my brain then because, to me, this sounds unfounded.
        zepto 7y ago
        What sounds unfounded?
        drdeadringer 7y ago
        I think the quoted part about "clear backpacks do nothing at all to make them safer" is what the commenter found unfounded.
        dsfyu404ed 7y ago
        Someone who wants to pack heat to school isn't gonna be stopped by a clear backpack. They'll cut out a texbook or hide it on their person. Look to the TSA's track record to see why making the formerly hidden visible doesn't actually help that much.
        nguoi 7y ago
        Look at how that same argument fails to apply to suicide statistics being reduced by removing access to guns or falls from bridges. You're trying to apply a logical train of thought to an inherently illogical act of homicide. But even if you can apply that, it doesn't work. The gun and ammo you can fit in a textbook is smaller than what can fit in a backpack. Backpacks are good at carrying things, that's why we - and school shooters - use them. So if someone wants to pack heat, they'll be less effective. Maybe the effect from this is insignificant. But how sure do you have to be for the risk of dead children to be less bad than someone not being allowed a cute backpack?
  - cbm-vic-20 7y ago
    High-school kids playing football are more likely to die directly or indirectly from playing than they are from being shot.
  - Jako33 7y ago
    Yeah you are right. Following your logic and your risk assessment, I assume you are getting your children firearms rather than bicycles for Christmas, Happy Holidays...
  - ravenstine 7y ago
    More people die of hypothermia every year than get killed from mass shootings.
  - hanniabu 7y ago
    Hmmmm, we should also ban bicycles and sidewalks! /s
- TheSoftwareGuy 7y ago
  Part of the problem is not just the actual risk, but the perception of risk. People deserve to not feel like they are going to be shot when they show up to an educational institution, and that feeling has been withering away lately
  - homonculus1 7y ago
    That's the vast majority of the problem, to be specific, as that perception is far out of proportion to the actual risk. So address the fearmongering and contextualize how rare these incidents are, insteading of blaming gun owners and further eroding civil liberties.
    - foldr 7y ago
      School shootings are unacceptably frequent in the US, regardless of how infrequent they are in an absolute sense. Many countries go decades without a single school shooting.
      - homonculus1 7y ago
        The framing of this comparison is fraught due to unequal bucketing. Most other countries are the size of US states or even cities, so they can boast individually low numbers while in the US everything gets bundled together. The US should instead be compared to something like all of Europe or all of Western Europe.
        crazypyro 7y ago
        Perhaps, a comparison versus the rest of the G7? https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/21/us/school-shooting-us-versus-world-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/21/us/school-shooting-us-versus-...
        homonculus1 7y ago
        I suppose I'm conflating school shootings with mass shootings which is what most people worry about, a la Columbine or Parkland. The figures in your link are mostly gang violence, which is a completely separate although valid issue. We do absolutely have higher rates of targeted gang violence than other countries, which after controlling for factors like density and poverty is highly correlated to young urban male demographics that aren't as prevalent in other developed nations. There is no single policy that can solve the numerous social and systemic failures that generate this problem, but due to the nature of these vendettas they would assuredly be carried out with knives and shanks in the absence of guns.
- grecy 7y ago
  ummm, please explain? Surely the US has by far the highest gun murder rate in schools among developed countries. EDIT: The down votes are interesting - are you down voting because what I said is not true, or because you just don't like that it is true?
  - lolc 7y ago
    Look up how many kids are killed by cars. Then go see how many are killed by guns outside school. Then check how many are killed by guns in school.
    - shadowgovt 7y ago
      It is an interesting aspect of human psychology that more people are afraid of a mass shooting in a school, though far more students will graduate knowing someone who died in a car crash than someone who died in a mass shooting. ... but it is how human psychology works, so the school must account for it.
      - Mirioron 7y ago
        It's essentially the same thing as air travel safety vs cars. What seemed to work for air travel is to make it into trivia so that any time this point comes up somebody repeats back the trivia.
      - slothtrop 7y ago
        Well 9/11 is etched in the collective psyche, still talked about, and the toll there wasn't great either. Acts of terror terrify. I don't think it's so much that people worry about the odds, they just categorically do not want to accept regular school shootings as a normal thing. Why should they?
    - blattimwind 7y ago
      Your argument is very, very weak whataboutism. Just because people die of other things more frequently does not mean that you are not supposed to prevent deaths. Your argument suggests that we should not be bothering with a justice system at all, because far more people die of cancer and heart disease than are murdered or crippled, therefore it would be dumb to put any money down for preventing and prosecuting murders.
ajross 7y ago
That's not an unpopular opinion, though it probably is on this site.
- viridian 7y ago
  It's a very unpopular opinion w.r.t. to America. Gallup conducts a firearms poll every year, and the closest thing to a total ban question is a total ban on handguns. "Do you think there should or should not be a law that would ban the possession of handguns, except by the police and other authorized persons?" should be: 29 should not be: 70 no opinion: 1
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Isn't that the law in most (all?) states now in USA, that you need a license to possess a gun legally (ie need to be an authorised person)? This sounds more like, in common with most polls, it shows how the manner of asking a question alters the answers given? I'd be really interested in how the poll would go without "the police and other", and with using a construction based on "allow ..." instead of "ban ...".
    - seany 7y ago
      > Isn't that the law in most (all?) states now in USA, that you need a license to possess a gun legally (ie need to be an authorised person)? Not really. Only a few states have FOID or FID license requirements: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_the_United_States_by_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_the_United_States_... You might be thinking of license to _carry_ which every state has, though some of have been making progress in removing that requirement as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_carry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_carry
    - mythrwy 7y ago
      You don't need a license to posses a gun in many (most?) states. You do need a federal background check to purchase a gun from a vendor. And a license to carry a concealed gun. But as far as owning a gun, no license needed in any state I've lived in.
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turk73 7y ago
I'd rather just shut down the schools than give up any more rights. If you haven't noticed, our Federal government is totally out of control and has gone rogue and I don't think it's a very good idea to cede any further power or individual rights to that monster. The right to bear arms was paid for in blood and not just once. Good men laid down their lives so we could have these rights. That a few kooks will shoot up schools is sad, but it's hardly a reason to let a bunch of asswipe cucks give up what was fought so hard for.
- lm28469 7y ago
  Education is a right, and imho it should rank higher than guns.
  - Kaiyou 7y ago
    Owning guns is a right, and imho it should rank higher than education.
    - lm28469 7y ago
      Honduras must be heaven then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_regulation_in_Honduras https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_regulation_in_Hondura... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_problems_in_Honduras https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_problems_in_Hondur...
  - sdinsn 7y ago
    > Education is a right I can't find that in the constitution.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  > The right to bear arms was paid for in blood and not just once. And worse, gun restrictions only benefit criminals. There's plenty of people who legally own firearms and protect their homes and their property legally. They also avoid plenty of crime since criminals tend to run when a gun is pulled on them especially in stand your ground states. They've tried banning everything in England and criminals will still kill people with just about anything. First it's the guns, then knives, then machetes. You can run over people, are you gonna make cars illegal too? People who want to hurt people also don't care what laws there are, they can buy guns illegally. Worse yet, depending on where you live, if something happens in your home, it's a lot safer to have a gun than to wait for cops to come to draw the chalk lines on you and your family.
systemtest 7y ago
Or just fix the underlaying issue. Switzerland has 2 million guns on 8 million citizens. Yet no school shootings. Why don't they have school shootings and can we apply the Swiss system to the United States?
- ptah 7y ago
  it's not as easy to get guns in switzerland as in the US
  - some_random 7y ago
    It is though, manual arms are arguably easier to buy than in the US. Semi-automatics require more work, but it's still easier than buying an NFA item.
  - sschueller 7y ago
    It's not that hard either (over 18, don't have any violent crime history or mental issues (self harm) and Swiss citizen (exceptions exist)) however not every type of gun or knife is legal. Magazines for guns over 20 rounds are not legal and neither are rifle magazines with more than 10 rounds. Fully automatic guns are not permitted unless it was received during military service. Butterfly knifes and throwing knifes are also illegal. [1] https://www.fedpol.admin.ch/dam/data/fedpol/sicherheit/waffen/Brosch%C3%BCre/waffenbroschuere-d.pdf https://www.fedpol.admin.ch/dam/data/fedpol/sicherheit/waffe...
    - ptah 7y ago
      what is school going age in switzerland
    - rtkwe 7y ago
      Also ammo purchases have similar background check style requirements so it's difficult to bypass the systems unlike the US. It's always weird when people bring up Switzerland like it disproves the push for tighter gun laws, all it really shows is that tight gun laws work and you don't have to completely ban guns. [0] [0] They do have a high rate of suicide by guns than the rest of Europe though and that number has dropped as, surprise surprise, gun laws have been tightened.
TheRealSteel 7y ago
This is actually a popular opinion in almost every developed nation except the US.
- Kaiyou 7y ago
  Only inside your personal echo-chamber, though.
some_random 7y ago
"Restrict more, different rights to make us safer^tm"
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  Most laws restrict some right to make us safer, and most laws succeed at that. For all the vehicular homicides in the US, there'd be more if we didn't require driving on the right-hand-side of the road and not driving on the sidewalk. The question is always where the tradeoff point should be, not whether there's any tradeoff.
  - sdinsn 7y ago
    The difference is that driving is not a constitutional right.
    - shadowgovt 7y ago
      Indeed, and the number of people who would be interested in a Constitutional convention to discuss that (as well as other things that are assumed necessary for a free and stable American society under just laws) is higher than a younger me would have anticipated. ... but a younger me was born before Columbine.
sojournerc 7y ago
First of all, making something illegal does not make it disappear, and you're also grossly overestimating the occurrence (as are the people calling for clear backpacks) of school shootings. The vast majority of shootings are between criminal gangs - making the guns illegal will not magically make criminals into upstanding citizens. Consider that the news cycle and FUD have created a terrible availability bias in our country that increasingly leads to draconian actions like those mentioned in the article. https://quillette.com/2019/11/29/the-availability-heuristic-and-mass-shooting-fears/ https://quillette.com/2019/11/29/the-availability-heuristic-...
- wbronitsky 7y ago
  One school shooting is far too many. I reject your argument vehemently. We are talking about murdered children.
  - Kaiyou 7y ago
    One school kid being run over by a car is far too many. We should ban cars!
  - sojournerc 7y ago
    What was I arguing? I merely pointed towards a well known psychological bias that's resulting in feel-good measures that do little to ensure _actual_ safety. There are many more risks to our children we should consider before this one, and there's only so much political capital to do it. Authoritarianism is one of those risks...
- slothtrop 7y ago
  > you're also grossly overestimating the occurrence The bodycount might not be "spectacular" but the rate of school shootings in the U.S. dwarfs other developed countries. Fatalities 200+ so far. At any rate, you don't know what they were 'estimating' exactly. > The vast majority of shootings are between criminal gangs - making the guns illegal will not magically make criminals into upstanding citizens. Criminals retrieve their weapons through underground networks. School shooters do not. They're just students. They've either grabbed what was lying around at home or bought them. Such that, accessibility to school shooters is hampered were it the case that legal distribution were more restricted. Add to the fact, circulation of guns in the underground is only possible and bloated because of the sheet number of legal guns.
twodave 7y ago
This, or literally any other action that isn't crazy in the sense of attempting to suppress personal privacy or the idea of protecting oneself. People want to feel safe and capable, not guilty and dependent.
philwelch 7y ago
We’d still monitor them anyway, to make sure they’re not carrying scissors. Seriously: https://i.redd.it/hzigm9tmiyn21.png https://i.redd.it/hzigm9tmiyn21.png
delfinom 7y ago
2nd amendment good, 4th amendment bad, mmkay
goodluckchuck 7y ago
We have the second amendment because - as it states - private ownership of militia-style weapons is "necessary to the security of a free state." So, I would ask you to please consider both sides. There are risks to having guns when you don't need them, but there are also risks to NOT having them when you do. I think it's fair to say that if you ever do "need a gun" then you really, really need a gun. From my research civil wars tend to kill 2-3% of the population, with untold more maimed, displaced, etc. In the US, that would equate to 8.2 Million dead. That's hundreds of years of "gun violence." The other thing I would ask for is a bit of humility. I've never fought a war, started a revolution, overthrew a government, formed a new one, had it fail, formed a second one, etc. but the people who wrote and adopted the second amendment did (and by a 2/3rds majority). So I'm really not qualified to say what "the security of a free state" depends on, and with all due respect neither are you.
jakebasile 7y ago
It's a good thing the innate right to self defense, from which the right to keep and bear arms is derived, is not subject to your unpopular opinion.
TurkishPoptart 7y ago
Likely unpopular reply: nothing would really change.
shoes_for_thee 7y ago
yeah it'll be like when we made heroin illegal and then there was no more heroin.
jriot 7y ago
You mean unconstitutional opinion.
- kickopotomus 7y ago
  Quite honestly, the amendment should have been worded differently and I believe that is part of the reason we are in the mess we have found ourselves in today. For some reason, many Americans only ever seem to quote the final clause of the amendment: ..., the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. However, the meaning of the final clause is modified by what comes before it: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, ... Now, there are two important things to note: 1) in the context of the constitution, "person" or "persons" is used when referencing an individual or individuals but "people" is used when speaking generally about a collective group. This can also be seen in the 4th amendment: The right of the **people** to be secure in their **persons**, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures... 2) Madison wrote the 2nd amendment as a way to provide the States recourse against a corrupt Federal government. At the time when the constitution was drafted, states were much more distinct and separate entities, and the revolutionary war was fresh on the mind so the ability for individual states to train there own militias was an important stipulation. Bearing this in mind, I do not believe that the 2nd amendment was written as a right provided to individuals but instead as a right afforded to states.
  - jriot 7y ago
    Outside of discussing 18th-century language, do you really believe Americans are going to turn over their guns because a politician comes along and says we have been misinterpreting it thus we must all turn in our guns?
    - kickopotomus 7y ago
      Alone, most likely not. However, the second amendment has never been formally challenged in such a way and there is little legal precedent formalizing the right for Americans to individually own weapons. It would be naive to think that any change to US law with regards to guns will change anything overnight but we have to start somewhere and allow for the culture around gun ownership to change over time.
jdkdnfndnfjd 7y ago
I will never give up my right to carry a weapon. Liberals say they want to ban guns and then they turn around and foam at the mouth when cops try to take away the guns if it’s a black persons guns. I would consider giving up guns if liberals would let cops do stop and frisk. Or let cops do anything really. But liberals don’t care because they live in their mansions, far away from any danger. And rich SV CEOs throw money at anti capital punishment efforts while they relax in their mansions where they are sure to never encounter anyone that it might be used on.

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[deleted]

umvi 7y ago

Unpopular opinion: basically no one dies by guns in schools so don't even bother with clear backpacks.

zepto 7y ago
Exactly. Force schools to quantify this risk against others. More kids die cycling to school than by guns.
- qxnqd 7y ago
  Schools aren't responsible for kids who die cycling to school.
  - zepto 7y ago
    No, but they are responsible for not subjecting them to unreasonable policies.
- nguoi 7y ago
  Do clear backpacks increase the risk of dying from cycling?
  - werfds 7y ago
    No, but if we're forcing the kids to have clear backpacks because of an infinitesimal risk, we should ban them from biking to school, being driven to school and playing in the school football team. Which is ridiculous.
    - nguoi 7y ago
      That's a poor comparison though. Both of the others provide other benefits: a method of commuting to school or exercise. Potentially even scholarships. Fashionable backpacks do nothing.
      - zepto 7y ago
        Freedom from arbitrary restrictions does something.
        nguoi 7y ago
        Welcome to mandatory education
        zepto 7y ago
        Seems like you agree with me that this has nothing to do with guns and everything to do with the dysfunction of the school system.
      - Mirioron 7y ago
        Imagine you're a teenage girl and you need to carry sanitary products with you. I imagine that for some of them this is essentially a nightmare scenario. That's a direct harm to kids.
        nguoi 7y ago
        This is a good point and I hope they can work around it (such as by allowing small opaque bags inside the bag).
        deathanatos 7y ago
        At which point the clear outer bag is defeated.
    - tomatotomato37 7y ago
  - noonespecial 7y ago
    No. But clear backpacks do nothing at all to make them safer. And everyone with half a brain knows this. It conditions the entire population to accept security theater and government surveillance as part of everyday life. This sets the entire society up to be unable to resist government overreach in the future. Clear backpacks increase the risk of death from tyranny.
    - nguoi 7y ago
      >But clear backpacks do nothing at all to make them safer I must be missing most of my brain then because, to me, this sounds unfounded.
      - zepto 7y ago
        What sounds unfounded?
        drdeadringer 7y ago
        I think the quoted part about "clear backpacks do nothing at all to make them safer" is what the commenter found unfounded.
      - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
        Someone who wants to pack heat to school isn't gonna be stopped by a clear backpack. They'll cut out a texbook or hide it on their person. Look to the TSA's track record to see why making the formerly hidden visible doesn't actually help that much.
        nguoi 7y ago
        Look at how that same argument fails to apply to suicide statistics being reduced by removing access to guns or falls from bridges. You're trying to apply a logical train of thought to an inherently illogical act of homicide. But even if you can apply that, it doesn't work. The gun and ammo you can fit in a textbook is smaller than what can fit in a backpack. Backpacks are good at carrying things, that's why we - and school shooters - use them. So if someone wants to pack heat, they'll be less effective. Maybe the effect from this is insignificant. But how sure do you have to be for the risk of dead children to be less bad than someone not being allowed a cute backpack?
- cbm-vic-20 7y ago
  High-school kids playing football are more likely to die directly or indirectly from playing than they are from being shot.
- Jako33 7y ago
  Yeah you are right. Following your logic and your risk assessment, I assume you are getting your children firearms rather than bicycles for Christmas, Happy Holidays...
- ravenstine 7y ago
  More people die of hypothermia every year than get killed from mass shootings.
- hanniabu 7y ago
  Hmmmm, we should also ban bicycles and sidewalks! /s
TheSoftwareGuy 7y ago
Part of the problem is not just the actual risk, but the perception of risk. People deserve to not feel like they are going to be shot when they show up to an educational institution, and that feeling has been withering away lately
- homonculus1 7y ago
  That's the vast majority of the problem, to be specific, as that perception is far out of proportion to the actual risk. So address the fearmongering and contextualize how rare these incidents are, insteading of blaming gun owners and further eroding civil liberties.
  - foldr 7y ago
    School shootings are unacceptably frequent in the US, regardless of how infrequent they are in an absolute sense. Many countries go decades without a single school shooting.
    - homonculus1 7y ago
      The framing of this comparison is fraught due to unequal bucketing. Most other countries are the size of US states or even cities, so they can boast individually low numbers while in the US everything gets bundled together. The US should instead be compared to something like all of Europe or all of Western Europe.
      - crazypyro 7y ago
        Perhaps, a comparison versus the rest of the G7? https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/21/us/school-shooting-us-versus-world-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/21/us/school-shooting-us-versus-...
        homonculus1 7y ago
        I suppose I'm conflating school shootings with mass shootings which is what most people worry about, a la Columbine or Parkland. The figures in your link are mostly gang violence, which is a completely separate although valid issue. We do absolutely have higher rates of targeted gang violence than other countries, which after controlling for factors like density and poverty is highly correlated to young urban male demographics that aren't as prevalent in other developed nations. There is no single policy that can solve the numerous social and systemic failures that generate this problem, but due to the nature of these vendettas they would assuredly be carried out with knives and shanks in the absence of guns.
grecy 7y ago
ummm, please explain? Surely the US has by far the highest gun murder rate in schools among developed countries. EDIT: The down votes are interesting - are you down voting because what I said is not true, or because you just don't like that it is true?
- lolc 7y ago
  Look up how many kids are killed by cars. Then go see how many are killed by guns outside school. Then check how many are killed by guns in school.
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    It is an interesting aspect of human psychology that more people are afraid of a mass shooting in a school, though far more students will graduate knowing someone who died in a car crash than someone who died in a mass shooting. ... but it is how human psychology works, so the school must account for it.
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      It's essentially the same thing as air travel safety vs cars. What seemed to work for air travel is to make it into trivia so that any time this point comes up somebody repeats back the trivia.
    - slothtrop 7y ago
      Well 9/11 is etched in the collective psyche, still talked about, and the toll there wasn't great either. Acts of terror terrify. I don't think it's so much that people worry about the odds, they just categorically do not want to accept regular school shootings as a normal thing. Why should they?
  - blattimwind 7y ago
    Your argument is very, very weak whataboutism. Just because people die of other things more frequently does not mean that you are not supposed to prevent deaths. Your argument suggests that we should not be bothering with a justice system at all, because far more people die of cancer and heart disease than are murdered or crippled, therefore it would be dumb to put any money down for preventing and prosecuting murders.

ajross 7y ago

That's not an unpopular opinion, though it probably is on this site.

viridian 7y ago
It's a very unpopular opinion w.r.t. to America. Gallup conducts a firearms poll every year, and the closest thing to a total ban question is a total ban on handguns. "Do you think there should or should not be a law that would ban the possession of handguns, except by the police and other authorized persons?" should be: 29 should not be: 70 no opinion: 1
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Isn't that the law in most (all?) states now in USA, that you need a license to possess a gun legally (ie need to be an authorised person)? This sounds more like, in common with most polls, it shows how the manner of asking a question alters the answers given? I'd be really interested in how the poll would go without "the police and other", and with using a construction based on "allow ..." instead of "ban ...".
  - seany 7y ago
    > Isn't that the law in most (all?) states now in USA, that you need a license to possess a gun legally (ie need to be an authorised person)? Not really. Only a few states have FOID or FID license requirements: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_the_United_States_by_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_the_United_States_... You might be thinking of license to _carry_ which every state has, though some of have been making progress in removing that requirement as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_carry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_carry
  - mythrwy 7y ago
    You don't need a license to posses a gun in many (most?) states. You do need a federal background check to purchase a gun from a vendor. And a license to carry a concealed gun. But as far as owning a gun, no license needed in any state I've lived in.

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turk73 7y ago

I'd rather just shut down the schools than give up any more rights. If you haven't noticed, our Federal government is totally out of control and has gone rogue and I don't think it's a very good idea to cede any further power or individual rights to that monster. The right to bear arms was paid for in blood and not just once. Good men laid down their lives so we could have these rights. That a few kooks will shoot up schools is sad, but it's hardly a reason to let a bunch of asswipe cucks give up what was fought so hard for.

lm28469 7y ago
Education is a right, and imho it should rank higher than guns.
- Kaiyou 7y ago
  Owning guns is a right, and imho it should rank higher than education.
  - lm28469 7y ago
    Honduras must be heaven then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_regulation_in_Honduras https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_regulation_in_Hondura... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_problems_in_Honduras https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_problems_in_Hondur...
- sdinsn 7y ago
  > Education is a right I can't find that in the constitution.
giancarlostoro 7y ago
> The right to bear arms was paid for in blood and not just once. And worse, gun restrictions only benefit criminals. There's plenty of people who legally own firearms and protect their homes and their property legally. They also avoid plenty of crime since criminals tend to run when a gun is pulled on them especially in stand your ground states. They've tried banning everything in England and criminals will still kill people with just about anything. First it's the guns, then knives, then machetes. You can run over people, are you gonna make cars illegal too? People who want to hurt people also don't care what laws there are, they can buy guns illegally. Worse yet, depending on where you live, if something happens in your home, it's a lot safer to have a gun than to wait for cops to come to draw the chalk lines on you and your family.

systemtest 7y ago

Or just fix the underlaying issue. Switzerland has 2 million guns on 8 million citizens. Yet no school shootings. Why don't they have school shootings and can we apply the Swiss system to the United States?

ptah 7y ago
it's not as easy to get guns in switzerland as in the US
- some_random 7y ago
  It is though, manual arms are arguably easier to buy than in the US. Semi-automatics require more work, but it's still easier than buying an NFA item.
- sschueller 7y ago
  It's not that hard either (over 18, don't have any violent crime history or mental issues (self harm) and Swiss citizen (exceptions exist)) however not every type of gun or knife is legal. Magazines for guns over 20 rounds are not legal and neither are rifle magazines with more than 10 rounds. Fully automatic guns are not permitted unless it was received during military service. Butterfly knifes and throwing knifes are also illegal. [1] https://www.fedpol.admin.ch/dam/data/fedpol/sicherheit/waffen/Brosch%C3%BCre/waffenbroschuere-d.pdf https://www.fedpol.admin.ch/dam/data/fedpol/sicherheit/waffe...
  - ptah 7y ago
    what is school going age in switzerland
  - rtkwe 7y ago
    Also ammo purchases have similar background check style requirements so it's difficult to bypass the systems unlike the US. It's always weird when people bring up Switzerland like it disproves the push for tighter gun laws, all it really shows is that tight gun laws work and you don't have to completely ban guns. [0] [0] They do have a high rate of suicide by guns than the rest of Europe though and that number has dropped as, surprise surprise, gun laws have been tightened.

TheRealSteel 7y ago

This is actually a popular opinion in almost every developed nation except the US.

Kaiyou 7y ago
Only inside your personal echo-chamber, though.

some_random 7y ago

"Restrict more, different rights to make us safer^tm"

shadowgovt 7y ago
Most laws restrict some right to make us safer, and most laws succeed at that. For all the vehicular homicides in the US, there'd be more if we didn't require driving on the right-hand-side of the road and not driving on the sidewalk. The question is always where the tradeoff point should be, not whether there's any tradeoff.
- sdinsn 7y ago
  The difference is that driving is not a constitutional right.
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    Indeed, and the number of people who would be interested in a Constitutional convention to discuss that (as well as other things that are assumed necessary for a free and stable American society under just laws) is higher than a younger me would have anticipated. ... but a younger me was born before Columbine.

sojournerc 7y ago

First of all, making something illegal does not make it disappear, and you're also grossly overestimating the occurrence (as are the people calling for clear backpacks) of school shootings. The vast majority of shootings are between criminal gangs - making the guns illegal will not magically make criminals into upstanding citizens. Consider that the news cycle and FUD have created a terrible availability bias in our country that increasingly leads to draconian actions like those mentioned in the article. https://quillette.com/2019/11/29/the-availability-heuristic-and-mass-shooting-fears/ https://quillette.com/2019/11/29/the-availability-heuristic-...

wbronitsky 7y ago
One school shooting is far too many. I reject your argument vehemently. We are talking about murdered children.
- Kaiyou 7y ago
  One school kid being run over by a car is far too many. We should ban cars!
- sojournerc 7y ago
  What was I arguing? I merely pointed towards a well known psychological bias that's resulting in feel-good measures that do little to ensure _actual_ safety. There are many more risks to our children we should consider before this one, and there's only so much political capital to do it. Authoritarianism is one of those risks...
slothtrop 7y ago
> you're also grossly overestimating the occurrence The bodycount might not be "spectacular" but the rate of school shootings in the U.S. dwarfs other developed countries. Fatalities 200+ so far. At any rate, you don't know what they were 'estimating' exactly. > The vast majority of shootings are between criminal gangs - making the guns illegal will not magically make criminals into upstanding citizens. Criminals retrieve their weapons through underground networks. School shooters do not. They're just students. They've either grabbed what was lying around at home or bought them. Such that, accessibility to school shooters is hampered were it the case that legal distribution were more restricted. Add to the fact, circulation of guns in the underground is only possible and bloated because of the sheet number of legal guns.

twodave 7y ago

This, or literally any other action that isn't crazy in the sense of attempting to suppress personal privacy or the idea of protecting oneself. People want to feel safe and capable, not guilty and dependent.

philwelch 7y ago

We’d still monitor them anyway, to make sure they’re not carrying scissors. Seriously: https://i.redd.it/hzigm9tmiyn21.png https://i.redd.it/hzigm9tmiyn21.png

delfinom 7y ago

2nd amendment good, 4th amendment bad, mmkay

goodluckchuck 7y ago

We have the second amendment because - as it states - private ownership of militia-style weapons is "necessary to the security of a free state." So, I would ask you to please consider both sides. There are risks to having guns when you don't need them, but there are also risks to NOT having them when you do. I think it's fair to say that if you ever do "need a gun" then you really, really need a gun. From my research civil wars tend to kill 2-3% of the population, with untold more maimed, displaced, etc. In the US, that would equate to 8.2 Million dead. That's hundreds of years of "gun violence." The other thing I would ask for is a bit of humility. I've never fought a war, started a revolution, overthrew a government, formed a new one, had it fail, formed a second one, etc. but the people who wrote and adopted the second amendment did (and by a 2/3rds majority). So I'm really not qualified to say what "the security of a free state" depends on, and with all due respect neither are you.

jakebasile 7y ago

It's a good thing the innate right to self defense, from which the right to keep and bear arms is derived, is not subject to your unpopular opinion.

TurkishPoptart 7y ago

Likely unpopular reply: nothing would really change.

shoes_for_thee 7y ago

yeah it'll be like when we made heroin illegal and then there was no more heroin.

jriot 7y ago

You mean unconstitutional opinion.

kickopotomus 7y ago
Quite honestly, the amendment should have been worded differently and I believe that is part of the reason we are in the mess we have found ourselves in today. For some reason, many Americans only ever seem to quote the final clause of the amendment: ..., the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. However, the meaning of the final clause is modified by what comes before it: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, ... Now, there are two important things to note: 1) in the context of the constitution, "person" or "persons" is used when referencing an individual or individuals but "people" is used when speaking generally about a collective group. This can also be seen in the 4th amendment: The right of the **people** to be secure in their **persons**, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures... 2) Madison wrote the 2nd amendment as a way to provide the States recourse against a corrupt Federal government. At the time when the constitution was drafted, states were much more distinct and separate entities, and the revolutionary war was fresh on the mind so the ability for individual states to train there own militias was an important stipulation. Bearing this in mind, I do not believe that the 2nd amendment was written as a right provided to individuals but instead as a right afforded to states.
- jriot 7y ago
  Outside of discussing 18th-century language, do you really believe Americans are going to turn over their guns because a politician comes along and says we have been misinterpreting it thus we must all turn in our guns?
  - kickopotomus 7y ago
    Alone, most likely not. However, the second amendment has never been formally challenged in such a way and there is little legal precedent formalizing the right for Americans to individually own weapons. It would be naive to think that any change to US law with regards to guns will change anything overnight but we have to start somewhere and allow for the culture around gun ownership to change over time.

jdkdnfndnfjd 7y ago

I will never give up my right to carry a weapon. Liberals say they want to ban guns and then they turn around and foam at the mouth when cops try to take away the guns if it’s a black persons guns. I would consider giving up guns if liberals would let cops do stop and frisk. Or let cops do anything really. But liberals don’t care because they live in their mansions, far away from any danger. And rich SV CEOs throw money at anti capital punishment efforts while they relax in their mansions where they are sure to never encounter anyone that it might be used on.