Regardless of the content of the article, bringing up New Hampshire and then not coming back to it is bizarre. The murder rate in NH is 40% of Massachusetts.
Arguably true about Japan, but Australia has tons of guns. It’s just especially high in rural areas. And they do ban some certain categories of firearm, which doesn’t always make sense, California-style (something like pump action rifles = ok, pump shotguns = not for some reason).
“Hunting weapon” doesn’t mean anything. It’s any weapon taken on a hunting trip. Pretty much all are suitable for some hunting purposes and not for others. Some jurisdictions may restrict calibers to a minimum, or require certain calibers in high-density areas, but there’s no category of hunting weapons.
I dont know where you get your numbers but that 70% who dont own guns? Well maybe they live in a safe community where they dont need them? Maybe they are too old or too young? Maybe they dont qualify due to being in trouble or having mental issues (its hard to actually buy a gun)? In the video both the girls try to buy a gun but find out they dont qualify (too young, must be over 21). They also might not be able to afford one.
But the point is YOU DONT KNOW how much of that 70% number are people who dont own a gun because they dont want to. There could be many reasons but its wrong of you to ASSUME that those 70% dont own guns because they are anti gun or something. Heck up till 2 months ago I also didnt own a gun (I bought a shotgun to try out skeet shooting).
Now if you can somehow PROVE that those 70% dont own guns because they dont want them, then go ahead.
I just sold two cars and bought one, and there was precious little red tape. What kind of red tape do you mean?
As for pool fence laws, they are meant to keep kids from drowning. Where is your cutoff for enough dead kids to make it worth forcing people to be responsible?
They are absolutely right. Gun Laws in the USA do NOT reduce violence.
I wonder why that is?
I mean, gun laws in other places reduce violence a whole hell of a lot. Take Vancouver, a city of 600k people. It’s a city with a fair number of sketchy areas, particularly the Downtown Eastside. I visited their Police Museum over the summer with my family and noted their homicide rate in one of their displays. It’s in the teens! Last year they had their “highest murder rate in a decade”… 17.
It’s a city the size of Baltimore and they had 17 murders, in a whole year. Baltimore manages that in under 3 weeks.
Why do our gun laws do NOTHING when gun laws in other places work?
Could it possibly be because our gun laws focus on
instead of actually reducing the number of guns in the country? No wonder they don’t do shit for reducing violence.
I don’t see any insults. At least, none directed at you.
Clearly, Australians must be smarter than Americans because Australians have solved their gun problem while Americans appear befuddled and confused. I guess it must be magic, then, because we Americans clearly just can’t figure it out.
It’s not clear to me at all that Australians are smarter than Americans…it’s clear that they are different than Americans with different priorities and history. It’s IS clear to me that you don’t like Americans (whether you are one or not…I’m guessing you are, but maybe not) and clear to me that you like to paint with a broad brush, over generalize and that you think that differences=stupid when the differences are ones you don’t agree with.
It is not clear that gun laws work elsewhere either. True Western European nations general have fairly strong gun laws and low crime rates.
But if you compare ALL nations, not just cherry pick a few, the fact is that the USA is right in the middle of the pack in murders. There are many nations (Mexico) with strong gun laws but very high homicide, and other nations (Finland, Switzerland) with many guns but few murders.
If you dont cherry pick the nations you want, there is no correlation.
“Differences = stupid” when people are making excuses to avoid taking responsibility for human lives.
In fact, I’m not even sure I would use the word “stupid” for that. Words like “evil,” or perhaps “amoral.”
I mean, if someone was ignorant about the success other countries have had in reducing their gun violence, they could at least claim ignorance as an excuse for their bad decisions. But these people aren’t ignorant. They know the situation and they know what works, and they refuse to implement it. They would rather hurl insults at children, and say grieving parents have no souls, and claim that murdered schoolkids are crisis actors, because all of those things allow them to avoid responsibility for solving America’s epidemic of mass shootings. And they do all of these things because owning their stupid fucking metal toys is more important than saving human lives.
So, yeah, aside from ‘stupid,’ and ‘evil,’ I’m not sure what other words would apply to such a situation.
And it’s militantly unsurprising you moved from stupid to amoral and then evil…it’s pretty much evident you feel that way. It’s also clear that you simply don’t understand the actual issue. It’s not that Americans don’t understand how other countries can do this while we can’t. That’s the fundamental disconnect you have on this issue. I understand perfectly why and how other countries have implemented or imposed on many cases gun control on their citizens or population. Americans, as a whole, don’t WANT to do that as we have a different outlook on personal gun ownership. To YOU they are ‘stupid fucking metal toys’, but that’s YOUR opinion, and one you use as a yardstick to call an entire nation stupid, evil and amoral. Would be like me saying that X country is stupid, evil and amoral because they allow their citizens to drink alcohol or smoke tobacco or myriad other things societies allow that WILL kill a non-zero number of their citizens.
At any rate, I don’t think this discussion is profitable to either of us. You clearly want to rail against Americans for their stupid, evil and amoral ways, and myself, I don’t see that there is much that can be done aside from howling at the moon. Until and unless a majority of Americans WANT to ban guns, or even heavily restrict them it’s not going to happen. And pointing at the Australians is essentially meaningless, since Australians aren’t Americans and Australia isn’t America. To YOU that means Americans are stupid, ignorant savages who are evil as well, but to me it simply means we are different, with a different history and different priorities. Or to put it a different way and to paraphrase Austin Powers dad, the two things I really hate are people who are intolerant of other people (or paint with broad brushes and say silly things) and…the DUTCH!
And because you missed my earlier post, I’d like to emphasize that I AM an American gun owner. My beef is with specifically with high-capacity, semi-automatic guns that serve no useful function whatsoever, the evil sons of bitches at the NRA who make a killing off of exploiting American fear and stupidity, and the mouth-breathing retards who believe their bullshit.
Again, that’s your opinion, and one that isn’t currently a majority view. I kind of figured you were an American…no one hates the US like home grown USers. Personally, I don’t think that banning high capacity magazines has much point, but certainly if you COULD ban semi-automatic guns that would have an impact. Unfortunately, the majority of guns are semi-automatic, so gun rights advocates would rightfully see that as an attempt to basically ban a large percentage of guns. So, not very likely unless there is a real sea change in the political climate, which I’m not seeing. At that point you might as well just go whole hog and ban them all, which is just as likely. Even if you could do it, which you can’t, you’d have the issue of there being more guns in the US than people. In Australia they basically had a buy back, but that’s really not going to be an option in the US as you’d be hard pressed to get the funding and the logistics of just getting all those weapons or even a large percentage of them would be a nightmare.
No, the fundamental disconnect is when I see people’s posts implying that this is some kind of great fucking mystery that no one can figure out.
Well, it must be one or the other, so which is it? If they don’t understand, they’re stupid. If they do understand, but choose not to, they are evil. There you go. That’s it.
Well, any nation that produces this many mass killings and refuses to do anything about it must be stupid, or evil, or both.
I just explained to you what can be done. We know what can be done. We just choose not to do it. But I know you know this because…
Yes, that is the point. We know what can be done but we don’t want to do it. We CHOOSE to let people continue committing mass murder because we don’t want to do anything about it. Please don’t say you “don’t see that there is much to be done” when you very clearly do understand what CAN be done, you just believe it WON’T be done.
We CAN fix this problem. We CHOOSE not to.
It’s called a ‘case study.’
Yes, America fetishizes their stupid fucking metal toys and Australia doesn’t. That’s not a difference worth respecting.
Well, not semi-auto rifles, etc, since they are very rarely used in crimes. In fact, if you waved a magic wand and made them all go away here in the USA, it *might *reduce murders by 4%.
Now if you include semi-auto pistols, which are very common, then I have no idea. They are used in a lot of crimes, no doubt.
Certainly a magic wand* poof *would reduce murders for a bit, until revolvers took their place.
I don’t give a flying fuck about your “fun.” I don’t. I really, truly, deeply don’t. Because there is no hobby on Earth whose ‘fun’ outweighs my child’s life. None.
And yes, high-capacity, semi-automatic weapons are very frequently used in crimes and they are ESPECIALLY used in mass shootings. And in other countries, banning those SPECIFIC firearms - even while retaining low-capacity, slower-firing guns - did wonders to solve the problem of mass violence.
Because here’s the thing: In a mass shooting, the only thing that matters is volume of fire. The guns that produce the greatest volume of fire are high-capacity, semi-automatics (short of an actual, belt-fed automatic weapon). Therefore, limiting the number of high-capacity, semi-automatic weapons with box magazines would limit the volume of fire a mass shooter is able to use. Limiting them to things like lever-action rifles and revolvers would reduce the rate of fire and the number of bullets that can be expended between reloads.
Here’s an idea: Take a Glock to a shooting range, along with a Single Action Army. See which one can fire more rounds per minute. Go ahead. You come back and tell me how it went.
Tell one of those people who got shot in Las Vegas how your ‘fun’ is more important than their life.
Christ. I’ve shot so many M-4’s and 249’s I’m bored of it. I spent twenty years shooting the damned things and there’s nothing ‘fun’ left in it.
And you know what? If you want to shoot things for fun, boy do I have the thing for you! It’s called the Single Action Shooting Society, and it’s gives you all the make-believe cowboy action your heart could desire. At least that way if you ever decide to snap or some troubled teenager steals your guns, there will be some kind of impediment to their reloading.
Yeah, they prioritize not having a mass shooting every fucking day over the ability for psychopaths to acquire totally unnecessary murder weapons. How could anyone imagine that Americans would be stupid for having that flipped?
The NYT and the FBI disagrees with you on "high-capacity, semi-automatic weapons are very frequently used in crimes ". Rifles of all sorts are used in about 4% of crimes.
Home | Bureau of Justice Statistics FBI’s Supplemental Homicide
*Reports show that 57% of all murders
in 1993 were committed with handguns,
3% with rifles, 5% with shotguns,
and 5% with firearms where the type
was unknown. *
The actual figure is 3%, but 5% is unknown, so I rounded up.
Yes, the media does indeed blame "assault weapons’ for mass shootings and indeed they are common there. However, mass shootings of that sort are extremely uncommon, despite media attention.
Personally, I don’t think that banning high capacity magazines has much point, but certainly if you COULD ban semi-automatic guns that would have an impact. Unfortunately, the majority of guns are semi-automatic, so gun rights advocates would rightfully see that as an attempt to basically ban a large percentage of guns. So, not very likely unless there is a real sea change in the political climate, which I’m not seeing. At that point you might as well just go whole hog and ban them all, which is just as likely. Even if you could do it, which you can’t, you’d have the issue of there being more guns in the US than people. In Australia they basically had a buy back, but that’s really not going to be an option in the US as you’d be hard pressed to get the funding and the logistics of just getting all those weapons or even a large percentage of them would be a nightmare.