Not everything that is dead in the water is identical. We are (to mangle a concept) orders of magnitude more likely to control “assault weapons” than we are handguns. NJ HAS an assault weapon law, you can’t buy one, you can only own one if you’ve owned it since before 1990 and registered it.
Sure, but any sort of national AWB resurrection is not happening for decades at best, and it likely again–won’t stop mass shootings, won’t lower the homicide rate. AWB was a bad idea. You should look elsewhere.
Your glasses are rose-tinted. American progressives spilled blood and sweat for 200 years to expand the definition of “the common good” to include non-whites, non-males, non-Christians, non-aristocrats, etc etc.
Having said that, I don’t actually disagree with the rest of your post. I’d only argue that the ‘fading memory’ is of a time when fundamental rights were meant to align with the ‘right’ sort of people. It’s not about protecting rights for everyone - just about protecting rights for myself.
Really? Not even in the face of a known threat?
The law in PR back in my childhood also restricted personal carry to cases of people with a shown need — my paternal grandfather, a small town merchant who could be expected to carry and handle large cash amounts between his shop and the bank come payday, was one of the people who qualified. Sat in his desk drawer for decades unused to everyone’s fortune. Eventually after his passing that gun was handed over at the police station by his heirs.
We’re in rather violent agreement.
There was a reason I chose the word ‘notion’ (of the common good):
[we now return to the original discussion]
Someone like your grandfather falls under the “A job in a security profession” area for me - it was not for personal self defence, but because of his job working with money.
One other very general point (before I take my phenomenal dog for a long walk):
No problem in the US can have a solution that reduces profit (don’t overthink that). “Solutions” have to make money … for ‘the right people.’
I’m often reminded of the famous speech by RFK:
And this is one of the great tasks of leadership for us, as individuals and citizens this year. But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction - purpose and dignity - that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
By ignoring the common good, emphasizing American Exceptionalism, and institutionalizing Social Darwinism, it’s but one way we entrench the Rat Race (the treadmill). The only way to avoid a dystopian life of relative misery is to be able to buy your way to the top.
I won’t even begin to list all of the ‘solutions’ that are really nothing but our capitalist system’s market responses to misery (I lied. Just one: after one of the mass shootings, I saw a piece about $300 kevlar (read: bulletproof) children’s backpack book bags (FFS)), where reductions in the misery might yield immeasurable benefits to most instead of unimaginable profits to a few.
It is yet another way in which the US privatizes immense profits and socializes immense loss, privation, and pain.
Woof.
Guns as deterrent?
Louisiana is a Constitutional Carry state: Age Verification - NRA
Alabama is a Constitutional Carry state: Age Verification - NRA
Mississippi is a Constitutional Carry state: Age Verification - NRA
Missouri is a Constitutional carry state: Age Verification - NRA
Alaska is a Constitutional Carry state: Age Verification - NRA
Why those states, and in that order? Well, they (quite coincidently, I’m sure) are the top five states with the highest murder rates, from worst on down: Murder Rate by State 2023
Why the fuck should I look anywhere for the solution? You’re the one who wants the guns, you figure out how to have them without 30,000 Americans dying of gunshots every year. The gun loving people of this country have been pawning off this problem for decades, fix it yourselves.
Pass your “sensible” gun legislation, fund the enforcement of it, and shove the wonderful results you get right in our stupid liberal faces. We can take it.
That list isn’t quite accurate according to CDC mortality data or the FBI data from 2020 (FBI hasn’t finalized more recent data.) FBI data became available for 2020 in December of 2021.
The CDC homicide mortality data lists the following as the top 5 (worst) homicide states (numbers are homicides per 100,000 population):
- Mississippi - 20.5
- Louisiana - 19.9
- Alabama - 14.2
- Missouri - 14.0
- Arkansas - 13.0
The major difference being your order wasn’t quite right, and instead of Alaska being in the top 5 Arkansas is the #5 state.
Alaska ranks quite a bit lower–7.3 per 100k, and it is the 24th highest state for homicides. Quite a few blue states with restrictive gun laws, unfortunately for your point, rank higher than Alaska in homicides (Maryland, Illinois, Delaware.)
And this is a bad attitude ignoring reality. I don’t “want the guns”, I have them. I have a recognized right to have them, backed by the United States Supreme Court–whose composition you are all but powerless to affect for years to come. I have backing me many of the fifty States, and enough Senators in the Senate to stop any legislation you want. Additionally, gun ownership is so vast that there are more guns than people in America
We have the guns, we have what we want, and frankly you have little power to implement any changes at all without the consent of at least some gun owners. I think to be honest many gun control advocates simply assumed they did not have to talk to us or work with us–that is certainly how they legislated and behaved for 30 years, perhaps they assumed gun ownership would die out and they’d just out vote us and we’d have no options. It didn’t work out that way, if anything gun ownership is now spreading outside of many of the typical historical demographics which further undermines your efforts.
Like I said, I think there’s compromise to be had, but I’m not sure you want it. But I also know that I’m on the side that already won this debate and I’m trying to explain where we are coming from and reforms that I think would be palatable. But if you make it oppositional, we can just nope on out–we have no reason to play ball with you, we have everything we want and then some.
I don’t want a compromise, I want fewer dead people, a LOT fewer. If what your pitching isn’t fewer dead people, then I don’t know what we’re even talking about.
BTW, what gun legislation are liberals stopping? Is there some liberal stopping Mississippi from passing your sensible legislation and reducing their homicide rate?
Thank you for the correction.
Arkansas is also a Constitutional Carry state: NRA-ILA | Arkansas Gun Laws
What would change the minds of gun owners is not the number of shootings or the number of deaths, it would be changing who are the victims and who are the perpetrators. If black individuals shooting up white evangelical Christian churches in rural areas suddenly became a thing, then I suspect a great many second amendment absolutists might suddenly find some room for sensible gun control. Polls show a majority of gun owners favor things like background checks as do a majority of NRA members. Why is such a simple thing opposed by the radical right?
You seem to be arguing against someone other than me–I’ll leave you to it.
Aw, I was looking forward to your response. I was looking forward to hearing your explanation of how democrats are the ones blocking common sense gun reform.
No, you just cherry picked a few European nations (Canada and Australia are part of the Commonwealth, no?), while ignoring the rest of the world, like Africa, South America, Asia, etc. Let me pick and choose only 7 nations out of 100, and I can prove anything. But none of those nations had a high murder rate before gun controls.
That is a tautology. If we still had 20K murders a year, but none by guns, what would have been achieved?
Australia’s new gun laws didn’t even reduce gun violence, let alone the murder rate:
Abstract
The 1996-1997 National Firearms Agreement (NFA) in Australia introduced strict gun laws, primarily as a reaction to the mass shooting in Port Arthur, Tasmania, in 1996, where 35 people were killed. Despite the fact that several researchers using the same data have examined the impact of the NFA on firearm deaths, a consensus does not appear to have been reached. In this paper, we reanalyze the same data on firearm deaths used in previous research, using tests for unknown structural breaks as a means to identifying impacts of the NFA. The results of these tests suggest that the NFA did not have any large effects on reducing firearm homicide or suicide rates. (JEL C22, K19)
Many times people, even Supreme court Justices have explained the Militia clause (it is meaningless vis a vis individual gun rights). But yes, rules are permitted:
2. Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited.
It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any
manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment
or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast
doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by
felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or
laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of
arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those
“in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition
of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons
Interesting you bring that up. It was committed by a 18yo confused youth, a fan of Tucker Carlson, etc
Fox News suddenly goes quiet on ‘great replacement’ theory after Buffalo shooting
Suspect was allegedly motivated by the theory, but network has barely mentioned gunman’s reasoning, even after Tucker Carlson pushed the concept in more than 400 of his shows… s details of the Buffalo mass shooting emerged over the weekend, much of the media focussed on the shooter’s self-stated motivation: his belief in “great replacement” theory, the racist notion that white Americans are being deliberately replaced through immigration…The absence of coverage of the motive was revealing, given Fox News’s most popular host, Tucker Carlson, has pushed the concept of replacement theory in more than 400 of his shows – and has arguably done more than anyone in the US to popularize the racist conspiracy.
So, who should we blame here? The gun? Or Tucker Carlson, who daily buttfucks the 1st Ad with this sort of racist lies? Maybe we need to repeal the 1st Ad, too?
Modnote: Your post is attacking a poster, when not in the pit, you must stick to attacking the content of the post and not the poster. Please refrain from doing this again.
Excellent point. The main cause is of course poor people turning to drugs- which makes them either more poor or drug dealers- who are the primary cause of gun violence. Maybe this War on Drugs is a failure.
South Africa as a model of gun laws? 
The USA has a homicide rate of 6.3, about in the middle, but hardly anything to be proud of. South Africa has a murder rate of 33.5 or FIVE times that of the USA.
Not true. But sure, banning the sale of “assault weapons” could be done, and doesn’t run afoul of the 2nd Ad… We might even see a reduction of 1% of the murder rate in the USA, maybe even 2%. Is that something significant? Meh. I wouldn’t fight against it, mind you. I am neutral on the idea, as long it is banning the sale.
We aren’t South Africa, or Venezuela, Brazil, Lesotho, or any other fundamentally broken country (citation needed).
What is your point, that SA is as terrible compared to us as we are to Sweden? I agree with you, SA is shamefully violent and should try to be more like us, and we should try to be more like Sweden.
I am sort of curious what part you think isn’t true, the heinous killings part or the basically a toy part.
These are sensible ideas that might make a difference. Do you think that a majority of gun owners would support these reforms?
Way upthread, @DrDeth proposed this: (my bold)
This is something that I’ve thought should have been implemented years ago. Would a majority of gun owners support this?