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submitted 3 months ago by jeffw@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world
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[-] KevonLooney@lemm.ee 181 points 3 months ago

Biden is doing this to drive a wedge into Republicans. The gun nuts and the ones that don't care about guns will have differing opinions because now gun violence affects them directly. It's really smart.

Biden looks presidential. Trump has three choices:

  1. Come out against AR-15s, for obvious reasons. This makes gun nuts less likely to vote for him.

  2. Come out in favor of AR-15s. He looks insane to Republicans who don't care about guns.

  3. Trump ignores the issue or waffles and looks unpresidential.

Number 3 is most likely. Of course the correct answer is number 4: propose a competing policy that is nuanced. But that's impossible for trump.

[-] tiefling@lemmy.blahaj.zone 81 points 3 months ago

How many Republicans don't care about guns?

[-] foggy@lemmy.world 105 points 3 months ago

The ones that are republicans for tax purposes.

[-] EleventhHour@lemmy.world 28 points 3 months ago

Is that enough to matter? And is this issue enough for them to change their vote, given the tax stuff? All the other shit Trump does certainly doesn’t matter.

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[-] KevonLooney@lemm.ee 25 points 3 months ago

Lots of them. Do you know any Republicans? None of them care about issues that don't affect them and their families. Even other "conservative" issues. They are not driven by policy.

Only Republicans with guns care about guns. And only 50% of Republicans have guns.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own-guns.aspx

They don't care about each other. Liberals care about what other liberals think. Stop thinking like someone who cares about policy.

[-] 5C5C5C@programming.dev 20 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I've had to explain this to a lot of people who naturally assume that any organization of people will be organized around some kind of shared values. Most of the time that's true, but not for Republicans.

Republicans are just a mish mash of obsessive single-issue voters, and by in large they just don't care about the other single issues that their fellow party members are going on about.

At the head of the Republican party it's people who want to minimize their tax burden, eliminate regulations on corporations, and cannibalize as much of the US government as they can into for-profit institutions. You could say that's three issues instead of one, but the overarching theme is to cater to personal greed, no matter the harm to society. These are the ones who are primarily pulling the strings in the party, at least historically.

Just below them is the military industrial complex and gun manufacturers who just want to sell guns no matter the harm to society. They like to rile up 2A fanatics with conspiracy theories that the government is out to steal all their guns so they'll be defenseless, paving the way for King Biden to ascend to his throne. The industry only cares about selling guns and the fanatics only care about having guns, and neither care about any kind of harm to society.

Then there's the radical Christians whose obsessions cover an eclectic mix of social reactionary positions and literal death cult worship (e.g. Christians who give absolute support to genocide in Palestine because they think Israel's conquest is a crucial step towards the rapture, which they believe is imminent). Broadly speaking the people in this group just want to hoist their religious doctrines onto everyone they can by any means available and no matter the harm it causes to society. They literally only care about "God's Kingdom" in the afterlife.

Then there's people who just lack any capacity for adaptation or learning. Their obsession is to feel like things are staying the same, or even reverting back to a past that they only know how to view through rose tinted glasses. They can't be bothered to comprehend the problems we're facing as a society or how the past was not the idyllic utopia that they mistakenly remember, nor can the old way of doing things sustain a growing and transforming society. These people just want to exist in comforting ignorance by feeling like they get to remain in familiar surroundings, no matter the harm to society.

There's really only one thing that truly unites them: Each one wants one specific thing no matter the harm to society, and that one specific thing that they each want IS HARMFUL to society. But they work well together because none of them care about the harm being caused by any of the others, and as long as they all tow the same line, each one gets what they want.

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[-] TunaCowboy@lemmy.world 55 points 3 months ago

Gun control, especially banning the most popular and utilitarian platform, is a massive political loser. This is incredibly poor timing for a struggling campaign.

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[-] 14th_cylon@lemm.ee 37 points 3 months ago

Trump ignores the issue or waffles and looks unpresidential.

and that is what's gonna get him. because up until now, he looked soooo presidential 😂

[-] Fester@lemm.ee 35 points 3 months ago

Any of those options will work fine for Trump. He doesn’t need to have policies, strategies, or responses to anything. His voters can’t remember it anyway. You think they remember that he banned bump stocks in the first place? He could promise to ban AR-15s one day, then criticize his own proposal the next day, and he’ll just get cheered by both sides. Voters are fucking stupid.

All that matters is that he keeps the steady supply of hateful buzzwords flowing. You can’t win chess against an opponent who’s playing hungry hungry hippos.

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[-] PythagreousTitties@lemm.ee 19 points 3 months ago

Trump already said he'd take away everyones guns, no questions asked, years ago. No one that supported him even blinked. This means nothing to them.

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[-] kitnaht@lemmy.world 101 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Bernie had this right. Despite being pretty progressive, he wasn't for outlawing semiautomatic firearms because they were black and looked scary. He believed that the right to arms was justified. This "AR Ban" is a great way to lose a lot of independents, and even some hard D voters like myself. There are a lot of dems who carry, and a lot of them who own the very firearms he wants to ban.

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[-] Kiernian@lemmy.world 80 points 3 months ago

Holy deep fried frankenfuck will the Democrats NEVER LEARN?!?!?!?!

AFTER!

You talk about guns AFTER the election!

What in the actual pogostickingpopejohnpaul is he THINKING?!?!?

The optics are 1000% awful here.

Uvalde wasn't enough, but a potshot at the planet's most notorious living felon is?

[-] zewm@lemmy.world 28 points 3 months ago

Lose the election speed run any %

I’m 100% sure Dems are actively self sabotaging their re-election.

There is no way the entire party cannot read a fucking room. This has to be on purpose at this point.

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[-] not_that_guy05@lemmy.world 65 points 3 months ago

Nah, I think I'll keep my shit and wait for the far right to move.

The fuckin scenario we are in I swear.

Far right: let's kill the left and do fascism.

Democrats: let's ban weapons right now while there's threats of violence against democrats.

Really?

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[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 59 points 3 months ago

Just as dumb as when Beto said it before his election...

It'll never pass, and he thinks saying it will get votes, but all it does is motivate idiots to vote trump, even tho he actually did an executive action to try and close a loophole.

It might not have stood, but it worked for a couple of years.

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[-] AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml 52 points 3 months ago

Banning guns is a losing policy for democrats. It only ever hurts them. I really wish they'd stop lighting political capital on fire with statements like this

[-] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 28 points 3 months ago

I said this decades ago... if Dems dropped the gun shit and embraced safe shooting sports, they would win every damn election.

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[-] Linkerbaan@lemmy.world 50 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

This is like begging for Republicans to start making up conspiracies about how the Democrats set this all up to take away their gun rights.

[-] billiam0202@lemmy.world 39 points 3 months ago

Uhh... They've been making those up for decades.

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[-] npz@lemm.ee 50 points 3 months ago

It seems like such a lazy non-solution. Essentially telling shooters "Hey, from now on, you can only use ALL THE OTHER GUNS" as if that solves something.

[-] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 29 points 3 months ago

This is the problem. All banning the AR will do is drive the popularity of another platform up. There's a crapload of powerful semi-auto customizable platforms out there, it's just that the AR variant is the most popular. It's a stupid solution because it's no solution at all - and I don't mean that as a "not good enough so we should do nothing at all" thing, it's just a completely pointless solution.

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[-] PP_BOY_@lemmy.world 47 points 3 months ago

I can think of literally no better reason to keep ARs legal than the events of last week.

[-] xionzui@sh.itjust.works 45 points 3 months ago

Yes, this is the exact intention of the second amendment. Armed resistance against tyrannical government. If the rise of fascism in America isn’t the time to use it, it’s meaningless.

The founding fathers envisioned state militias that would rival the power of the federal army and keep it in check. That ship has sailed, so it already lost a lot of its bite, but any power it still has can only be justified for that purpose

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[-] TunaCowboy@lemmy.world 44 points 3 months ago

Braindead take, is Biden gonna come to my rescue when some christofascist militia has me on my knees in front of a ditch?

[-] oce@jlai.lu 50 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Sounds like a similar argument to how christofascists justify owning military weapons. It's very disturbing from a European point of view.

[-] BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world 21 points 3 months ago

The countries with nukes get permanent seats on the UN Security Council.

Maybe once the US has been around for a few more centuries it'll be different. in the meantime, if the crazies are armed you should be too.

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[-] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemm.ee 33 points 3 months ago

The cops will bring the rope.

Source: George floydd protests

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[-] glitchdx@lemmy.world 43 points 3 months ago

I'll give up my guns after the christo-facists give up theirs, not before.

[-] nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 42 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Add the cops to that list for me. Any disarming of citizens while the cops still get more military gear is just class war pretending to be progress.

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[-] Delta_V@lemmy.world 42 points 3 months ago

FUCK

its like he's trying to lose

this is not going to get anyone excited about voting for him, but it will galvanize the opposition and push swing voters into staying home on election day at the very least

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[-] WhyDoYouPersist@lemmy.world 37 points 3 months ago

I dunno, it didn't work out so well for Beto.

[-] PunnyName@lemmy.world 19 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Sad things is, if the people who voted for Biden in Texas had voted for Beto, Beto would have won Texas in a landslide.

Texas gubernatorial race: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Texas_gubernatorial_election
• 4,437,099 for piss baby
• 3,553,656 votes for Beto

Presidential election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election_in_Texas
• 5,259,126 for Biden

[-] Rakonat@lemmy.world 19 points 3 months ago

Shows you how the independents and left aren't strictly anitgun. Was such a huge blunder on his part and the person asking him gave him repeated chances to walk it back and clarify it to not mean what he said, and he still insisted on total ban.

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[-] Fades@lemmy.world 35 points 3 months ago

That fucking horrible assassination attempt would have happened with or without the AR, this is just another knee-jerk emotional reaction, and it could NOT come at a worse time (pre-election). We're fucked.

[-] FinishingDutch@lemmy.world 34 points 3 months ago

Nooo, let’s not. We’re gonna need those pretty soon from the looks of it.

[-] Stern@lemmy.world 34 points 3 months ago

Handguns used in ~2/3 of all gun murders in the U.S.: I sleep

AR-15 used in one assassination attempt of geriatric running for president in 2024: REAL SHIT

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[-] AhismaMiasma@lemm.ee 30 points 3 months ago

Anyone looking to ban weapons must not believe Jan 6th was a genuine insurrection.

Why, oh why, would you disarm the people and give the state a monopoly on violence when that state is teetering on the edge of fascism.

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[-] DontMakeMoreBabies@lemm.ee 27 points 3 months ago

This is a fucking retarded take and I vote Democrat. Jesus.

[-] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 26 points 3 months ago

I want you to imagine the following scenario:

The RIAA: "Internet file sharing of mp3s is eating into our profits. Government, we want you to ban the Rio Volt SP250 mp3 player."

The Government: "Yes, banning only that specific make and model of mp3 player and none of the rest of Rio's product catalog, or any mp3 players manufactured by any other brand, will completely and permanently address this scourge of copyright infringement. Consider it done."

That's you! That's how DUMB you sound!

--GLaDOS.

Here's what happens when you ban a firearm by name: manufacturers change some extremely minor detail, change the model number, and keep selling it. The Tec-9 open bolt machine pistol was used in a few school shootings in the 90's, most prominently the Columbine massacre. California banned the gun by name in state law. The manufacturer responded by moving the sling ring from one side of the gun to the other and calling it the Tec-DC9, with "DC" standing for "Designed for California."

It's not an engineering problem. Banning individual makes and models is how you solve (or at least end) an engineering problem. This is a culture problem.

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[-] HawlSera@lemm.ee 23 points 3 months ago

This does nothing to motivate the left and everything to motivate the right....

Biden, are you TRYING to lose?

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[-] Draegur@lemm.ee 23 points 3 months ago

Fucking typical.

Something comes close to removing a problem created by the conservatives and the Democrats want to take it away!

[-] ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 22 points 3 months ago

The only way this is possible is by rewriting the Constitution. FDR was the last president willing to, and that definitely didn't happen.

Biden doesn't have Constitution rewriting level support.

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[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 22 points 3 months ago

The type of rifle isn't the problem here. If the shooter had used something better it's likely Trump wouldn't have survived.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_tower_shooting

"Charles Whitman killed seventeen individuals and wounded at least thirty-one others over the course of thirteen hours before he was killed on the observation deck of the UT Tower on August 1, 1966.[72]"

And of course, infamously:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_John_F._Kennedy

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[-] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 21 points 3 months ago

Biden tries to throw a sure thing, again.

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this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
660 points (94.4% liked)

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