America needs to address its gun hypocrisy

Great Debates
61

Thank you, that makes it much more clear and will hopefully direct the discussion a bit.

While I hesitate to say never, I agree it will likely be at one to two generations before we attempt a serious discussion of any sort of repeal of the 2nd, which would be pretty much a requirement to any sort of confiscation of existing guns with the standing body of constitutional law.

Things could change if 2nd amendment issues were decoupled from party platform, but pardon me if I don’t hold my breath. If we did go with universal open carry, I would certainly want to see our society invest in technologies that have never been rendered sufficiently dependable - biometrics and firearm security (such as safes you can’t pick with a bobby pin).

62

Nonsense: Red Flag laws can get any guns owned out of the husband’s hands. In some case, same with a stalker, but that varies a lot.
Thieves and Cartel members are often convicted criminals, which cannot buy or own a firearm.

Sure, they can still get guns on the black market or steal them, but it is harder, cost more, and more difficult. Yes this means that no laws can 100% prevent a bad guy from getting guns, just like laws against murder do not 100% prevent murders. So, what? We might as well not have laws against homicide?

There is no way to 100% prevent criminals, all we can do is prevent some, deter others, and imprison more.

63

The more guns permeate a society, the easier it is for criminals to get their hands on them.

64

What is your solution?

Door to door confiscation? What?

65

This is a cultural issue; we can certainly make it much, MUCH harder for guns to continue proliferating, but grabbing existing guns isn’t a solution until people realize that no, they don’t need them. Buy back programs are a much better option.

66

Okay, I can back voluntary buy back programs, but they don’t get many guns off the street.

What else?

67

My solution is registration and liability laws that make gun owners civilly and criminally responsible for damages done with the firearms they own.

68

The issue with this is two fold:

One, in the event of a stolen firearm, pretty much the entirety of tort law doesn’t allow the legal owner to be liable for damages caused by a criminal in possession of the stolen property. Changing the boilerplate underpinnings of tort law is . . . not impossible, but probably no more likely than repealing the 2nd.

A better application of this would be for owners whose firearms are used without direct permission, but as something similar to an “attractive nuisance” as it applies to residents and/or guests of the household. If I have a firearm in the household in a situation where it is not properly secured (see my prior posts and threads for details), and an invited guest or minor in the household uses it, then yes, I absolutely see possible criminal or civil suits being filed. In most jurisdictions, they ARE. But, and this is huge, in the event of an in-family shooting, it seems to have been the opinion of many judges that doing ‘further damage to the family’ by imprisoning one or more parents is detrimental to the emotional or financial wellbeing of the child.

Again, in the second thread I linked back in post #30, @k9bfriender linked an example of where a responsible guardian left children in their car, unsupervised, which had a firearm (still no news on whose) present. One of the children fatally shot another, and we were asked to discuss what the results would be. My prediction, which was later borne out, was a 2nd degree felony under the child endangerment laws.

– I’m still following that case as I promised in the thread but there’s been nothing in the news since the last time I updated the thread –

So, yes, charges were filed, and this is in Texas, which is certainly a gun-friendly state.

So, we could absolutely consider making the charges more strict in negligent use of firearms, or failure to secure firearms that lead to such negligence, but absolutes are hard to come by: which is why we have lawyers, judges and juries to try as much as possible to apply the law fairly. Which doesn’t always happen.

69

If we already have effective laws, why do people need guns to protect themselves from criminals who can’t buy guns? Oh right…

And here, as I noted, is the tip top pro-gun thought process regarding criminals getting guns. Can’t be stopped, and the only defense against it is to arm yourself and hope you get to shoot first.

Step 1 - review best practices in other countries that have a firearm death rates 95% lower than ours.

Step 2 - implement some of the things they do that effectively prevent homicidal criminals from getting guns.

Step 3 - do not implement pathetic scratching at the edges programs that can’t be expected in any way to effectively remove guns from the possession of criminals.

70

People already are responsible, but not after their guns are stolen. No insurance in the world cover deliberate acts o or covers stuff that happens after it is stolen.

And exactly what good would registration do? SCOTUS ruled that criminal do not have to register their guns. So only law abiding citizens would? How would that help?

Think things through. We need laws that keep the guns out of the hands of criminals, like banning straw man sales.

71

Nonsense. I said nothing at all about arming yourself and shooting first. I proposed banning straw man sales to keep the guns out of the hands of criminals.

None of those other nations have a gun culture with half as many guns as people.

And here is the list of nations by homicide rate:

The USA is right in the middle. Of the major world nations, not one has a homicide rate 95% of America, although Japan comes close. Should we become Japan?

72

But I would posit that firearm owners are responsible until reporting the firearm as stolen (within reason).

The owner should be responsible until owner ship legally changes hands. Which is to say if the owner loans the firearm to a distant cousin or good ol’ George in the neighborhood, the owner still has responsibility. Only after legal transfer of ownership or reporting stolen is it no longer the owners responsibility.

73

Where is Japan anywhere close?
Japan = 0.3%
US of A = 5%

Am I missing something here?

If you count firearm deaths, Japan and it’s ~120M population have dozens of firearm related deaths per year. The cite includes a high in 2000 of 101 and a low in 2018 of 9 in the entire country. Cite

74

This is the thrust of my OP. Some people in the United States say, “we should adopt practices that other countries use to reduce gun violence.” I’m suggesting that this is not feasible in America, so a different approach is warranted. And my suggested approach is to accept the ubiquity of guns and work to educate the populace on how to handle them.

Would it solve all of our problems? Certainly not. But would it move the ball on the issue in ways that the current intractable stalemate has not? I believe so.

75

Yes, exactly! It is gun culture that drives us to have 15,000 gun murders a year when other countries have far fewer, both total and per capita. It is gun culture that makes it impossible to get guns away from criminals.

Gun control isn’t ineffective because gun control is inherently an ineffective way to reduce violence. It’s ineffective because people here actively work to prevent its success, it’s sabotaged by those who love gun culture, who then explain that it doesn’t work, so we shouldn’t even try.

76

Exactly! That’s what we need to fix. Great job identifying the problem!

77

Is this a whoosh?

There is no way to know how many guns somebody owns. Or where they have them stored.

Red flag laws are completely ineffective and will eventually be found unconstitutional.

78

So, before we go back to bickering about existing methods of gun control / violence prevention, can we get back to the OP? I do think Moriarty is correct, the gun culture and presence is here and now entrenched, whatever your opinions about it pro or con. Whether or not we agree with the OP’s suggestion on mandatory awareness and training, it’s a different argument and approach to the ones we have frankly beaten to death.

Other than waiting for a possible future where the 2nd amendment is removed through the constitutional process (almost certainly not soon), or our current circumstances of patchwork federal and state laws that ebb and flow with political passions and constitutional interpretation in courts, does anyone else have a different suggestion?

Because I 100% agree with the OP that we can hypocritical about the role of our culture in gun violence, but also saying it’s an issue solely created by crazed 2nd amendment nuts is a major oversimplification. An article using 2018 info (trying to get a good, pre-COVID figure):

Yeah, it may be a chicken and the egg situation, but we as a culture are compulsive about guns and violence, and we create new works that then reinforce said compulsions. And Hollywood, even with corporate overlords, is generally more liberal politically than the national average.

79

I love action movies and quite a few games that have guns heavily featured (XCOM, for example, is all about that “Tacti-cool” aesthetic). I’ve never had trouble separating blasting away aliens in a video game from my disdain for guns in real life, and I find it hard to imagine that it’s such a big challenge for so many people that this is a significant part of the problem.

80

I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear @Babale. I am NOT saying that video games, or even movies (which is what I was referencing) cause violence in any way. What I am saying though, is that culturally we have a fondness for violent entertainment, frequently including gun violence, and our entertainment reflects and is in turn shaped by it. Which then reinforces said culture.

The OP is talking about our hypocrisy regarding Guns, and I find this a good example of it, and that it is not just 2nd amendment trolls that are part and parcel of the problem.

And absolutely, the answer isn’t “ban violent video games and movies and that will fix gun violence.” But we do need to be aware of how pervasive the culture is, and experienced at all ages in games, movies, and television, except for possibly the most ‘Disneyfied’ households.