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The UK and Canada have similar occurrences, but not in the vast number as the United States. We all understand the access to firearms is the problem.
Except for all the people trying to deflect blame from firearms by blaming mental illness. Without any will to actually address mental illness, of course.
It's all about the access to firearms.
Other countries have easy access too, so no, that is not simply it. Look at Switzerland for example, where you can take your military service weapon home.
Military are trained to use it. Part of the issue in the United States is the lack of quality training for civilians and improper background checks. We should be checking for mental health disorders and other red flags like domestic violence and criminal activity.
So it is not all about the access?
"your MILITARY SERVICE weapon"
Yes, it's about access.
The military service part is affecting the "access"
/facepalm
Try to keep up champ.
They literally already do that
The access isn't as easy at all. It's also the culture though. Nobody buys guns for fun or to show off, they aren't toys, there are barely any gun ranges and you don't bring your kid to it.
You maybe have a gun for hunting, it isn't an assault rifle and you only pull it out when you do go hunting.
Why not both?
How do you effectively remove firearms from the equation at this point? Doesn’t the US have something like 120 guns per 100 residents? I don’t want to be the guy tasked with taking someone else’s gun away, that sounds incredibly dangerous. It also doesn’t seem fair to task someone else with that duty.
I won’t disagree that it’s a problem, but I don’t have a solution either.
Every country that currently has gun control laws, at some point didn't have gun control laws and did have an armed population
They all managed to pull it off, the USA is unique in thinking this is an impossible task. And they haven't even tried
Every country that currently has gun control laws, at some point didn't have gun control laws and did have an armed population
Many of those countries had only an armed aristocracy, and they made those laws to keep firearms out of everyone's hands before there were hundreds of millions of armed people.
No. All these countries had crap loads of guns. UK is a good example.
Interestingly enough, you can still purchase rifles and shotguns in the UK… you can even purchase an AR-15 or a Beretta ARX 160 legally in the UK so long as it’s chambered for .22LR and approved by the police. You just have to tell them it’s for a shooting club; not self defense.
When the UK passed their laws, it was more targeting handguns.
One of the biggest problems around guns in America is the culture. Dickbags seem to want to associate manhood with the usage of this one specific type of tool.
You can buy pretty much anything in the UK if you meet legal requirements. People have machine guns and even bloody tanks. But they have them for a good and valid reason and don't go on killing rampages.
Guns regs don't mean no guns. Gun regs mean no guns for idiots.
Yet you have provided no possible options as to take action. Nice work on the reply. 👍
To provide actual discussion:
Increase rigor for screening on all firearm purchases
Removal of any and all "gun shop loopholes"
Voluntary, no questions asked, buybacks on any firearm
Two of these make it harder for new guns to enter the equation, while not making it impossible for a reasonable adult to get one, and the final drastically lowers the number of guns in circulation.
Voluntary, no questions asked, buybacks on any firearm
That's already a thing for the most part. You can walk into any gun/pawn shop and sell your gun there and they'll be happy to take it off your hands AND pay 5x more than a gun buyback program from the state.
Removal of any and all “gun shop loopholes”
That was never a thing. The "loop hole" was selling private party since no individual person has access to the NICS.
The reason you're going to get more for a gun at a pawn shop or gun shop is because they're going to resell them. The idea with a government initiative would be to decommission the guns.
It's my understanding that the term "gun show loophole" is used is because it was/is a common enough practice to meet at gun shows and sell as private sellers, thus bypassing the requirements for bg checks.
I also realized now that I typed gun shop instead of gun show, so sorry if that caused confusion, I'm going to blame autocorrect.
The reason you’re going to get more for a gun at a pawn shop or gun shop is because they’re going to resell them. The idea with a government initiative would be to decommission the guns.
Now you had all of that energy and resource that went into making the gun + the energy required to destroy it vs letting someone who actually wants it, and it mentally OK using. And what if it's a historically significant firearm? Trying to destroy guns is not going to get firearms owners on your side.
Opening up NICS so the average Joe selling private party can double check the person they're buying it from would be a huge step forward. That's a win win for both sides.
Worked just fine in Australia.
I don't think Australia ever had "the right to bear arms" which is why that won't fly well.
Plus Australia is an island. It's a lot easier for that to work when your nearest neighbor is 100 miles away by boat
That's a viable start, and both of your suggestions I am in favor of, but it will not remove the millions of firearms that are already in the hands of 1/3 of the U.S. population. It would also not prevent someone from 3D printing a ghost gun. Considering that some gun owners are also handloading / reloading their own ammo at home, you would effectively need to ban the sale of all smokeless powder as well. However, even in doing that, it would not take back the millions and millions of rounds that people already have.
It's not perfect therefore we shouldn't do anything
Right. And these are all valid concerns, but they exist everywhere. The end of the day, you'll actually never remove firearms from the equation, and I'd argue you really shouldn't. The idea is to limit the access to either people who are damned and determined (3d printers, home gunsmiths and reloaders, etc) and those who are somewhat qualified.
The end of the day, you’ll actually never remove firearms from the equation
Agreed.
Douche.
The answer was clearly "Try"
We haven't even done that yet.
The path on how to start is clear enough. Voluntarily surrendering weapons, followed by mandatory, decades later we'll see results. But I don't think you're the type to participate in gun control discussions in good faith.
The fact that real kinder eggs are illegal because of safety concerns and guns are not is mindblowing.
It is easier to get a gun in the states than it is to get a kinder egg with a little toy in it.
That's an absolute lie. I can buy a kinder egg no questions asked online. You can't sell them as food with plastic pieces inside them, though.
In most US states you have a huge amount of regulation on guns you need to be familiar with and of course it's different state by state.
Try to cross the border into the states with a real kinder egg and then we can talk about where the lies are.
I have? It's literally an FDA thing, not something generally enforced by border patrol or regular cops. Customs might stop you if you declare it but frankly I doubt it. They're more likely to stop you if they think it's a real egg.
How out of touch can you be?
Try how? Go on, what can I do right now today to start fixing the problem? See if you can answer without an insult.
Read further down the thread.
Nah.
You can't, but in Canadian communities where firearms are more prevalent you see the same result. Mental illness and access to firearms is a huge red flag no matter where in the world you are.
Most places solve it with buy backs and slowly tightening the vice. So that people have both incentive and time to come to terms with it before it comes to a point where they would have to fight to keep them. The crazy gun nuts are actually more talk than action, despite how often they "say" they aren't.
We saw a lot of those gun nuts actually take action back on 1/6/2021. I wouldn't write them off.
Those weren't gun nuts, those were Trump nuts.
A large percentage of them probably are, but they where there because of Trump, not guns.
That venn diagram is pretty close to being a circle.
On one side yes, on the other side not so much.
I guess it would be more of an oval at that point.
It’s the same people.
Not many, statistically. And I bet even fewer next time.
Are you counting on a “next time?”
I still would. It's not like ignoring it has been making it better. Many other countries solved the problem exactly the same way. A steadily ratcheting buyback does work for 90-95% of gun owners. And yes you are left with the crazies that are most likely to actually do terrible things with their guns, but at that point they will already be criminals before they even shoot... so it makes things alot easier.
That's another problem I have with simple baning of guns all your doing is disarming the responsible folk as what are you going to do with the people who fight back with said guns and what about the people who hide their guns or people that get guns illegally you have to remember that there are people that break the law
Historically, old America looks very different from the current one. I look at things like our transit network being entirely train-based, and now being completely car-based. That is a HUGE change driven by demand.
The point is just that large, glacial changes over many years are by no means impossible if we’ve set it as a target and there’s motivation. Nobody ever barged into a railway company’s office and said “We’re tearing up your lines by force and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
What kind of argument are you making here? Rail lines were torn up by force. Vehicle manufacturers bought up all the public transit systems in the US and destroyed them to increase dependency on cars.
And then they lobbied hard to make it illegal to cross roads outside of crosswalks, they lobbied for highways and road expansions, and manipulated the public into believing that real freedom comes from owning a car.
None of that was truly driven by real demand, the system was manipulated to increase car dependency to the benefit of the car manufacturers.
A part of the problem, not the only aspect.
Really? I'd say it's a no Brainer. Easy access to firearms IS the problem.
Yeah that take is definitely a "no brainer".
Not in the way you meant it, but still.
I mean it's easily verifiable if you look it up that easy access to guns is the primary cause of gun deaths.
There is no problem on earth that can easily explained by only one thing.
Underestimating problems is an easy way to earn political points while never solving the overall problem.
I would suggest you use more of your brain in the future.
Yeah, except all the research and data points to easy access to guns as the issue. But yeah, bone headed take for sure.
Define easy access… is that some mental defect teenager taking a gun from his parents gun rack?