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this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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Or another reason to get strapped. Cause if it comes down to it, at this point banning them wouldn't stop it. You would need to confiscate them.
That's the issue though. If you banned guns tomorrow, how do you get them all out of private hands? Send the National Guard door to door to search the whole country? People would hide their guns or lose them in the lake within 5 minutes of the first search. We desperately need to do something, but any solution will be difficult due to the overwhelming number of guns just floating around.
I don't think you necessarily need to strip people of the possessions in their homes to regulate gun ownership. There can be comprehensive legislation in place without taking extreme action like that to improve the situation but for some reason Americans oppose any legislation at all.
You don't go straight for the ban, even if that's the end goal. You focus on making it more expensive and difficult to own guns, and you focus on changing how people think about them. The ultimate goal will take care of itself over time (even if multiple lifetimes). The thing is that Americans have a unique perspective on guns, but since we don't see this perspective in other countries (quite the opposite in most cases), we know it's not a manifestation of a human trait. It's cultural and therefore, learned. Learned traits may be to difficult to unlearn in a single generation, but you can do it over larger stretches of time. Sucks for us who are alive now, but good for the future.
I don't disagree. But there's also the other side of things: Some of us are terrified of being round up and thrown in camps. Its not hard to see when they are using the same play book as the Nazis, who got a lot of influence from the US. And while I'm not saying we shouldn't ban guns. It has worked for a lot of countries. And I think it's a great idea. But there's a point where I also need to be able protect myself. They're already stocked up. Banning guns doesn't change that. So if they do decide to start a civil war, they're already prepared. Is it gonna be like how it used to be where each side stands opposite each other in a field and shoot at each other? No. It's been talked about how it will likely be a lot of terrorist attacks. But if it gives some people a fighting chance, then they might need it.
Will I need it? Not as likely. For starters, I live in Portland. It's not likely I'm gonna have any issues. But for some other queer people in some towns and states, this might eventually be it for them.
I feel like part of the reason why Americans are facing threats of civil war now is related to refusing to regulate guns in any way so the Right feels empowered to act, maybe on a gun fever. It's not the only reason, but they must feel tough carrying around their hot metal. Probably also why the Right freaks out every time gun regulation is on the table. 🙄
You are of course free to do what you feel is necessary. I could conceivably see how it could come to that, but we can't see all things either. Maybe having a gun is precisely what people get shot for in that theoretical future as opposed to having it represent any valid defense. It may make one feel safe, but that's not the same as being safe. In the meantime, having a gun is a step away from a more ideal future rather than a step towards it. More guns doesn't solve the issue of too many guns. And without a doubt somebody's gun owned for well intentioned self-protection will be used by somebody to harm themselves or others.
You're just engaging in fantasy if you think that a gun ban would actually get rid of guns in the hands of Those People. Do you have any idea how many unregistered guns are in private hands, especially right-wingers? It's hundreds of millions.
Now imagine that every one of those was declared immediately illegal. Try to imagine the logistics of going around to collect them all up. How many police officers does it take to bring down one armed attacker now? You know they send a whole squad out. How many do you think it would take to go take away hundreds of millions of guns whose owners don't want to give them up?
It is simply not possible.
You would be better off to buy your own guns than to hold out hope that the fascists will have theirs taken away.
This is stupid. It's like saying we shouldn't ban crack because of all the private crack collections that people have. No one claims it's going to get rid of 100% of crack in the country, but it is going to solve a lot of problems.
Banning guns will have a massive, possibly even overnight reduction in the number of gun deaths and mass shootings in the country (and technically the entire world). Some ammosexuals might try going out with a bang, but once those get cleaned out society will improve significantly for everyone.
But we did ban drugs, and they are still around... including crack
Drugs won that war.
Yeah, but you can’t just walk into walmart buy some crack.
Edit: at least not through the front door
Well..... lmao, have you been by the tire section lmao 🤣😂
Crack gets used up, meanwhile I've got a 75-year-old rifle that still functions, well maybe not fine, but about the same as it did off the assembly line
M1A?
Type 53, supposedly a trophy from Vietnam
I get that you're only replying to what the other person said, but it's so odd to me as an outsider when Americans so often pivot the gun control conversation around disarming the other side when schools, clubs and malls get shot up every other week with several deaths each. I can't imagine getting shot being a possibility in my day to day and watch as everyone gets tangled up in political squabbles, essentially halting any real solution to the real problem.
The issue that you imagine is not our actual reality. Our day to day life in America is very safe overall, and there's no reason to live in fear of shootings because they are very rare. Most people in the USA have never seen a person shot in real life. What you see on the news is amplification of every violent event, without the perspective that these are a tiny fraction of a percent of the overall experience.
Homicides by firearms are not even in the top 10 causes of death in the USA. People keep clamoring on and on about "all the kids getting shot" but when you look at the actual numbers, 99.9999% children are not affected by gun violence. It's simply not an urgent problem that has a viable solution.
I lived in the US for 11 years and know at least someone who was affected by a shooting. I don't think I'm just imagining things.
Well of course some people are affected by it. I said most people have never seen any person shot in real life, in the USA. It's not happening everywhere all the time like people seem to think it is. Violent crime of all types is in fact rare in the USA, only affecting a small fraction of a percent of the population.
There's quite a lot of people affected by it, there's no need to diminish the numbers by speaking in percentages or exaggerating my claims to absurdity. I don't think 52 school shootings last year is nothing--that's one every week. That's too many young people killed every single week. And of course it's not happening everywhere all the time, nobody says that. My point is that getting randomly shot at the mall or at a school on a shooting spree is a reality that exists in the US that's almost non-existent where I live. Unfortunately for us, gun violence from organized crime is very much a problem for us precisely because the US refuses to regulate its gun trade because the conversation always goes sideways.
I'm not saying it'd be an easy thing. I'm saying we should have never let it go this far to begin with and shrugging our shoulders and going "oh well" is less than an impractical solution. It's no solution at all.
You're starting to understand the reality of it. There is no solution to gun violence that can be realistically implemented. We should instead be addressing the problems that create desperate poverty situations that lead people to crime.
banning guns isn't going to solve anything
Australia is a different country, they were never even a tenth as gun-brained as America.
Indoor smoking isn't enshrined in our constitution, indoor smoking never had a cult following, and most importantly, you can't weaponize indoor smoking to prevent a ban on indoor smoking like you can weaponize firearm ownership to prevent a ban on firearm ownership.
How about we start thinking about logistics, step by step. Starting with this: where do you plan to find an army or a police composed of trained, armed people, who all vehemently believe that we should take away civilian firearms, who aren't afraid to die on any given housecall? Built from Americans? And where do you plan to find enough of them to seize 400 million guns?