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>> Making guns illegal won’t stop anyone touched enough to shoot up a school/gay bar/concert/grocery store. They’re going to find a way to do it. Somehow in my

by v-erne 4y ago

>> Making guns illegal won’t stop anyone touched enough to shoot up a school/gay bar/concert/grocery store. They’re going to find a way to do it. Somehow in my country (Poland) and in most of Europe they do not find a way to get the guns. Most of incidents of this class is done with knife or with some kind of vehicle (car or truck). I think that throughout history we had like literally one or two shootings in schools and I don't think in any one instance there was automatic weapon involved. To think that this kind of prohibition of gun possession does not work You have to be really ignorant of what really is happening in other countries.

NateEag 4y ago
Sure - you can't shoot people (with bullets) if you don't have a firearm. What gun control proponents miss about the US is that we literally have more guns than people. I don't know of a feasible way to take even a meaningful fraction of those out of civilian hands, just at a practical enforcement level. Never mind the political nightmare taking guns away en masse would produce. It might just actually trigger a civil war here.
- renaudg 4y ago
  You have to start somewhere and before considering taking them out of people's hands, not adding any more assault weapons is progress. The Uvalde shooter purchased his a few days prior to the attack. Who knows what might have happened if he hadn't been able to.
- v-erne 4y ago
  I still insist that this seems like lack of political will rather than means. I'm sure that there are a lot of ways that this can be done. It's like with this old saying about how You eat an elephant (a piece at a time). Same here - this can be done slowly and gradually. It does not have to be done out right. They could start with limiting current sale of guns (by bringing some control over to who can buy what and when). Introduce some sort licences (but maybe for guns bought after the law was introduced). And than taxing the shit out of bullets (for personal use). Prohibit trade of guns between people (only b2c, this could be quite hard and unpopular but could address the problem of existing guns). And then start to buy guns of people with sufficient premium on price. This could be costly but I believe that over the time would eliminate this strange culture of mass gun possession.
  - ThrowawayR2 4y ago
    > "I still insist that this seems like lack of political will rather than means." Lack of political will = the voting public doesn't want it, literally. If the public wanted it, federal and state legislatures would be in session right now to pass such laws. Why doesn't the public want it? All the things you suggest hassle legitimate firearms owners, which is a significant voting bloc, driving them right into the arms of the extremist 2nd A. groups and spiking firearms sales drastically every time new harsh legislation is proposed, making the problem even worse. So why insist on following the same losing strategy that has been followed by gun control advocates in the past? It is culture and public perception that needs to change and addressing that is not something that can be fixed by legislation.
    - v-erne 4y ago
      >> Lack of political will = the voting public doesn't want it, literally Since when this stopped the politician from serving their own intrests (and intrests of the money behind them)? But You are right it would be better to change the culture but the problem is that there is not a lot of money in taking away guns and at the same time there is a lack of ideological front that could influence people (for example churches somehow do not have problem with guns)
injb 4y ago
That's an interesting point though. In Poland, you can own certain guns, right? A Polish friend of mine told me he owned various guns, including semi auto pistols.I know you can own these in other central European countries too, like the Czech Republic, Switzerland and probably others. These guns can generally fire at least 15 rounds as fast as you can pull the trigger, and you can reload in seconds. The Virginia Tech killer used 2 of these to kill 32 people. Now I'm sure my friend had to go through more extensive vetting than they have in the US. But here's the strange part: many US mass shooters would pass these checks anyway. Not all, certainly. But many would. So when you say "they do not find a way to get the guns", you're suggesting that the potential mass murderers are out there, looking for a way, but failing to get the guns. But clearly they should be succeeding occasionally, the legal way. And yet we don't see it. Why not? We need to know what else is different about the US. But why complicate things by comparing the US to vastly different countries? Why not compare it to a mostly similar country: itself from the recent past. The US has had essentially the same gun laws forever. There have been 2 major overhauls to US gun ownership: one in the 30s and one in the 60s. Other than that, basically no changes. But these mass killings are fairly new, having started in earnest in the late 90s. Why? It's not surprising that the body count has increased, since AR-15s are more deadly than the kind of guns Americans used to commonly own 30 years ago. They have become incredibly popular in recent years and are very cheap and accessible now. But as I pointed out earlier, there's nothing stopping anyone from racking up a huge number of victims using the kind of semi automatic pistol that has been around for over 100 years, and we do see this in the US. This question weighs on my mind all the time. What is different about the US? I feel as though I know the answer, but it's ephemeral, hard to put words on it. Everything is more extreme here. Success, failure, happiness, misery, love, hate. So in a sense it's not that surprising that the crimes are more extreme too. But I know that's not a very useful observation. I just know that it's 100% possible for people to be able to own guns, and for this stuff to not happen. Hopefully it's possible in America too.
- pnutjam 4y ago
  - injb 4y ago

by v-erne 4y ago

NateEag 4y ago

Sure - you can't shoot people (with bullets) if you don't have a firearm. What gun control proponents miss about the US is that we literally have more guns than people. I don't know of a feasible way to take even a meaningful fraction of those out of civilian hands, just at a practical enforcement level. Never mind the political nightmare taking guns away en masse would produce. It might just actually trigger a civil war here.

renaudg 4y ago
You have to start somewhere and before considering taking them out of people's hands, not adding any more assault weapons is progress. The Uvalde shooter purchased his a few days prior to the attack. Who knows what might have happened if he hadn't been able to.
v-erne 4y ago
I still insist that this seems like lack of political will rather than means. I'm sure that there are a lot of ways that this can be done. It's like with this old saying about how You eat an elephant (a piece at a time). Same here - this can be done slowly and gradually. It does not have to be done out right. They could start with limiting current sale of guns (by bringing some control over to who can buy what and when). Introduce some sort licences (but maybe for guns bought after the law was introduced). And than taxing the shit out of bullets (for personal use). Prohibit trade of guns between people (only b2c, this could be quite hard and unpopular but could address the problem of existing guns). And then start to buy guns of people with sufficient premium on price. This could be costly but I believe that over the time would eliminate this strange culture of mass gun possession.
- ThrowawayR2 4y ago
  > "I still insist that this seems like lack of political will rather than means." Lack of political will = the voting public doesn't want it, literally. If the public wanted it, federal and state legislatures would be in session right now to pass such laws. Why doesn't the public want it? All the things you suggest hassle legitimate firearms owners, which is a significant voting bloc, driving them right into the arms of the extremist 2nd A. groups and spiking firearms sales drastically every time new harsh legislation is proposed, making the problem even worse. So why insist on following the same losing strategy that has been followed by gun control advocates in the past? It is culture and public perception that needs to change and addressing that is not something that can be fixed by legislation.
  - v-erne 4y ago
    >> Lack of political will = the voting public doesn't want it, literally Since when this stopped the politician from serving their own intrests (and intrests of the money behind them)? But You are right it would be better to change the culture but the problem is that there is not a lot of money in taking away guns and at the same time there is a lack of ideological front that could influence people (for example churches somehow do not have problem with guns)

injb 4y ago

That's an interesting point though. In Poland, you can own certain guns, right? A Polish friend of mine told me he owned various guns, including semi auto pistols.I know you can own these in other central European countries too, like the Czech Republic, Switzerland and probably others. These guns can generally fire at least 15 rounds as fast as you can pull the trigger, and you can reload in seconds. The Virginia Tech killer used 2 of these to kill 32 people. Now I'm sure my friend had to go through more extensive vetting than they have in the US. But here's the strange part: many US mass shooters would pass these checks anyway. Not all, certainly. But many would. So when you say "they do not find a way to get the guns", you're suggesting that the potential mass murderers are out there, looking for a way, but failing to get the guns. But clearly they should be succeeding occasionally, the legal way. And yet we don't see it. Why not? We need to know what else is different about the US. But why complicate things by comparing the US to vastly different countries? Why not compare it to a mostly similar country: itself from the recent past. The US has had essentially the same gun laws forever. There have been 2 major overhauls to US gun ownership: one in the 30s and one in the 60s. Other than that, basically no changes. But these mass killings are fairly new, having started in earnest in the late 90s. Why? It's not surprising that the body count has increased, since AR-15s are more deadly than the kind of guns Americans used to commonly own 30 years ago. They have become incredibly popular in recent years and are very cheap and accessible now. But as I pointed out earlier, there's nothing stopping anyone from racking up a huge number of victims using the kind of semi automatic pistol that has been around for over 100 years, and we do see this in the US. This question weighs on my mind all the time. What is different about the US? I feel as though I know the answer, but it's ephemeral, hard to put words on it. Everything is more extreme here. Success, failure, happiness, misery, love, hate. So in a sense it's not that surprising that the crimes are more extreme too. But I know that's not a very useful observation. I just know that it's 100% possible for people to be able to own guns, and for this stuff to not happen. Hopefully it's possible in America too.

pnutjam 4y ago
- injb 4y ago