You would think, but there are a whole lot of dumbasses in this country, who look at the results of UHC in other countries and gun control in other countries and just aggressively decide that those dozens of successes, reduced costs, expanded coverage, reduced murders, just don’t apply in Americuh.
So, even if this idiotic proposal of Democrat gun confiscation worked to reduce murders and crime, Republicans would simply decide that it wouldn’t work on non-Democrats, or that it only worked because it wasn’t a complete ban, or it only worked because of whatever random bullshit they want to say, because it’s never been about a logical course of action, it’s just an argument to keep their boomsticks.
Right. And we both know that neither I nor anyone else can ensure that nobody else will steal my gun and use it to hurt people. So what you are saying is that they must be banned. I don’t know why you need to dress it up any differently than that.
It is also pretty silly as I could use that argument to ban pretty much anything. Sure, you are responsible with you car and you obey all the traffic laws, but can you absolutely, with 100% precision, guarantee to me that nobody will steal your car and run down pedestrians? If not, then we’ll just have to take your car.
If there was another country that managed to squash recreational drug use and now deals with a few hundred drug overdose deaths per year compared to our 70,000 per year, do you think we should maybe do what those guys are doing?
Maybe?
Or, should we declare that what worked for them won’t work for us and 70,000 dead Americans a year is normal.
Technically, I’m not concerned that your gun will be stolen. What I’m saying is that if you can get a gun, so can everyone else, including dangerous people.
You say that as if this silly argument isn’t trotted out in every gun control discussion.
Just about any object you can think of can be used to kill (or try to kill) someone. However, the difference between those objects and guns is that those objects are not the most powerful handheld weapons ever designed by humans, and guns are. Which is why, whenever a person needs the most powerful handheld weapon they can get, they get a gun, military, police, whomever. And your dumbass brother in law (for a hypothetical example), who you wouldn’t trust to feed a goldfish, can get a gun that’s nearly as powerful a weapon as we (the country with the most powerful and well funded military in the world) give to our infantry. But, explain again why we should ban golf, because I can beat someone to death with a putter.
A wholesale gun ban in the U.S. would be an absolute disaster.
Before the ban, millions would stock up on everything they can get their hands on… AR-15s, ammo, propellant, gun parts, 30 round magazines, survival gear. You name it. This would be on top of what we already have. (I personally have over 50K rounds of .223 and .308, and would dig deep into my savings to buy more if a ban was coming.) And once the ban was put in place, very, very few gun owners will turn in their guns/ammo/whatever if possession were made illegal. The militias that currently exist would swell in size. The situation would become a powder keg.
I’m not in favor of banning any inanimate/inert objects, like knives, throwing stars, brass knuckles, and firearms. You could just as easily be harmed by a pencil or a saw blade. Dangers exist, bad people and bad actions are rare but do exist, you’re going to have to get used to that.
That said, volatile things like chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, or bombs are not safe to store and have around innocent people, they can indiscriminately explode or contaminate the environment. So yes they should continue to be banned.
Now you’d probably say “Well firearms can go off and hurt people.” Yes, but not on their own, only when handled irresponsibly. Just like a drill, a lawnmower, or a vehicle, they are tools, they are machines.
We are adults, we are citizens, and we should be trusted by default, especially with Constitutional rights. Some say that the writers of the Constitution never envisioned modern firearms, but they also never imagined citizens being able to post a message that would instantly be seen around the world either.
It’s so idiotic that Democrats are already doing it. In Democrat strangleholds, the gun laws are so onerous that it is more or less a de facto gun ban. The people affected by these laws are mostly Democrats. The results speak for themselves in Chicago, Detroit, DC, and Baltimore. I merely proposed the idea in a direct manner.
What is the difference between these “militias” and terrorist organizations? Both use guns, violence, and the threat of violence if they don’t get their way to push their misguided agenda.
And New York, which has a violent crime rate about 1/3rd that of Milwaukee. What are gun laws like in Wisconsin? 1/4th the violent crime rate of St Louis, what are gun laws like in Missouri? Cleveland, Memphis, Mobile? All have a violent crime rate way higher than NYC, all are in states with little gun regulation.
Which, by the way, isn’t an argument in favor of the local city or state gun regulations. They don’t appear to work particularly well, there is no evidence that they work well, there’s no reason to believe they would be effective.
Unlike nationwide gun regulations, which have a long history of at least reasonably effective implementation, even in our own country.
The difference is that you wouldn’t be talking about a negligible number of yahoos, you’d be talking about millions or even tens of millions of people. Enough that “terrorism” would be an insufficient description, with “civil insurrection” a closer fit.
Given that it’s well known that people can carry guns into restrictive places from the gun-happy areas next-door, I don’t see why anybody would think that this is a meaningful argument.
And my grandchildren are just “going to have to get used to” bulletproof bookbags, weapons drills at schools, and learning that ANYONE on the street could be armed and ready to kill them. That’s your world. Need I tell you how much it sucks?
Do you think you’ll find any legal support for overthrowing bans on concealed and spring-loaded knives, belt-buckle guns and knives, zip-guns, and brass knuckles?
So only items that could “indiscriminately explode or contaminate the environment” on their own can be banned? That excludes well-engineered portable nukes but includes 50-cal belts left on a heater. But you have just admitted that some “arms” bans are legitimate. Where’s the bright line on legitimacy? Is it just personal preference? “Ban bombs but not my grenades!” Is that it?
I say nothing about misused weapons. I say that when more weapons exist, they’re used more. Of firearms deaths in the US, twice as many are suicides as homicides. Reduce available firearms and guys will have to find other ways to snuff it.
For most of US history, the 2nd was not interpreted as an individual right. We have the right as Americans to bear arms in defense of the nation as part of a well-regulated militia. That’s the intent. But the effect? You have the right to kill or be killed. You have no right to life once you’re a “person born”. And generally, you have whatever rights you’re allowed. Don’t be a Black man with a cellphone in your back pocket.
:dubious: On the one hand, gun-rights advocates are telling us that they can be trusted with deadly weapons because they’re so law-abiding and reasonable. On the other hand, they’re also telling us that if legal measures were ever put in place to prohibit ownership of said weapons, they wouldn’t follow the law-abiding and reasonable path of challenging those laws constitutionally while obeying them. Nope, they’d just go to town on stockpiling illegal weapons and knowingly turn society into a “powder keg” or “civil insurrection”.
This is classic abuser talk. “You should trust me and do what I say because I’m a responsible and trustworthy guy, but if you do something I don’t like then I’ll become completely dangerous and irresponsible and it will be ALL YOUR FAULT FOR DRIVING ME TO IT. :mad: :mad:”
Nope. It may be true that gun-rights advocates are responsible rational people with respect for the law. Or it may be true that gun-rights advocates are potential sociopathic loose cannons who would destroy civil society as violent outlaws rather than submit to a legal ban on guns. But it’s not possible for both those statements to be true.
And trying to pretend that gun opponents would be the ones to blame for somehow magically transmogrifying the former into the latter by instituting a legal gun ban is just a transparent evasion of responsibility.
But shootings have not tracked the broad number or availability of guns. Mass shootings, especially in schools, have essentially become a fad since Columbine, fed by publicity and the decay of of social norms. Guns didn’t cause this problem, the meme that it’s somehow “cool” for a disaffected loner to “go out in a blaze of glory” did.
The historical record contradicts you. Repeated court rulings and legal opinions for over a century after the passage of the Second affirmed it was an individual right. The collectivist revisionism only dates from around the beginning of the twentieth century; the post-Heller viewpoint is a restoration.
Would you be as complacent about a law establishing official government censorship boards if somehow a duly elected legislature and governor signed that into law? The whole point of a Bill of Rights is to declare that some things just are not on the table: free speech, freedom of conscience, peaceful assembly- and yes, self-defense. I would HOPE people would rebel against a law passed in blatant violation of what are held to be fundamental freedoms. Or do you take the position that anything- anything whatsoever- that a legislature passes should be obeyed without question?
Lol the “decay of social norms”. Yep, things were better in the 50s when women stayed in the kitchen, blacks bad their own drinking fountains, and we all did the Christian thing and ignored it when priests diddled children.
Or is there some other kind of “social norm” you are referring to?
Well, Civil Disobedience is a good thing for bad laws.
However, here’s the point- in any group, there are a certain amount of nutjobs and sociopaths. There are like 70 Million gun owners, so while no doubt most will hand over their weapons, and some will practice Civil Disobedience, a very few will get violent. I dont see any large group of gun owners saying they will start shooting.
Ban muscle cars and you can expect the same thing. Or Bibles. Or start burning books, because they repealed the First Ad by a group of a Theocratic reactionaries.And of course- a “legal ban”? Since the Constitution makes it clear no far reaching gun ban is legal? Could we not expect some unrest and violence if the government started burning every book that wasnt the King James Bible?
The one where high school students would leave hunting shotguns and deer rifles in the gun rack of their car, parked in the school parking lot. Or the high schools even had gun clubs as an extracurricular activity. Or maybe the one where sociopath narcissistic fuckers like Charles Starkweather got the electric chair seventeen months after committing a murder spree.