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Nm, extra words for Discourse
We have to pass what laws we can get passed. Bring back the 1994 assault weapons ban. Have universal background checks.
Start with this two first. They will be very good initial steps.
Then, raise the minimum age to 25. Yes 25.
And cap magazine capacity at 5 rounds.
If we can get those four passed then shooting will decrease dramatically
Good idea.
Will have little effect on most gun crime. It is a Max/min, since so many guns, like the Ruger 10.22 have a designed magazine of ten rounds of .22 rimfire. Not to mention pistols designed back as far as 1896 have a 10 round capacity. You’d ban a hundred million guns. Most police handguns carry 2-3 times that.
Okay then 10 rounds.
We keep hearing this but the criminals seem to like them.
But unless it is a federal ban I see no point.
7 posts were split to a new topic: Guns be banned from movies, TV and video games?
Are you talking about “assault weapons”, like the AR15?
Just for the record, no matter how strictly enforced banning product placement in media / games / events is, that it would indeed have a minimal effect on actual gun owners.
But are we talking about banning recognizable weapons in all of the above? Because that would not have a minimal effect on movies / tv / and games especially. Or are we talking about being slightly more targeted, in that ‘real world’ weapons wouldn’t be used, but you would have generic versions of common classes that had no actual physical presence in the meat world as it were?
Again, not that it can’t be done - just expect more pushback from groups outside of guns rights groups on this one. I don’t mean to be pooh-pahing possible options, and I know a number of nations that require less gore and direct violence in their games that the US market allows - just want to be clear on whether we should consider the minmaxing on groups outside of gun owners, which again, would indeed be minimally effected by this option.
My thought is, the latter. It’s fine if the props department decides to base the model guns used in movies on specific real guns. What I don’t like is gun companies paying to use our entire culture as a vehicle to promote gun culture generally and their products specifically.
Simulposted with @What_Exit, I’m not sure if my post constitutes a hijack or not because I’m not talking about tobacco at all, only how I think guns should be treated in media. I hope not so I won’t edit it out but let me know if I am wrong.
Yours appears to be 100% on topic.
We should make all guns look like the one below (which is real). They still do the same thing as any other color but takes away that, “I’m a badass” feeling when carrying one.
I do think that would be counter-productive, in that if anything we want to minimize the perception by all groups that firearms are anything resembling a toy.
If we have ‘hello kitty’ branded firearms, we’d also end up with ‘zombie hunter’ ‘GI Joe’ or other skins that would be right back to the “I’m a badass” concern you brought up.
But the reason I responded to the above, is that it could be possible to consider a mandatory threat / color combination for new firearms so that they could be identified at a glance, the flip side as it were of the earlier efforts to force gun toys to have an immediately visible orange tip to prevent (sadly ineffectively) first responders from shooting kids.
If we wanted to further min-max it in the short term, we could require it specifically on magazines, which would be easier to replace cost-effectively than the entire body of the weapon - something in bright, eye grabbing neon green or whatever was found to be sufficiently visible.
It also makes the weapon look like a toy. Not a good idea.
Stranger
Yeah, making a gun look like a toy seems like a terrible idea, if you’re trying to reduce injuries.
But it makes me wonder about another cosmetic change: has anyone ever required warning labels to be affixed to firearms? Something like, “More than 1,000 children die from firearms every year. Adolescents are at higher risk of suicide in a home with a firearm. Locking firearms in safes protects children.”
A label like that would be fairly low-impact on gun owners (I think–I don’t know how it’d interact with cleaning a handgun, for example, but I suspect that a label could be designed that would not impact cleaning). I have no idea if the label would be effective.
This was done on cigarette packaging for decades with little indication that it had any real effect on use. Of course, tobacco is a very different type of product so the comparison is not particularly apt but I doubt putting such labels on firearms would have any real effect on sales and would likely open up a cottage industry of alternate decals and accessories to cover up the mandated labels with snarky and/or offensive sayings and imagery.
It isn’t really necessary to be coy about the problem, to wit that firearms are readily available to all types of people largely without any real check on their emotional stability, competence, training, and responsibility. As a society we have controls on many other types of products specifically because of the harms that can result from misuse or abuse, and in general we don’t have these controls on firearms because of…reasons. All of the ‘clever’ notions about trying to make firearms unattractive, or put warning labels on them, or even banning certain weapons and accessories because of superficial characteristics that have nothing to do with lethality are all attempts to sidestep the problem, and while they’re favored by politicians who want to walk the narrow path between actual gun control and not getting an ‘F’ on their NRA report card, there is little reason to believe that such easily bypassed or subverted measures would be effective.
Stranger
I agree with you (and others) that making a gun look like a toy is not a good idea.
However, I do think that many who buy guns have their ego inflated by carrying the gun. It makes them powerful or manly or some such.
I’m not sure trying to deflate that ego boost in some fashion is not useful.
This is not a hill I will die on to defend. And I agree we are reaching for something, anything to mitigate gun violence.
I was in no way thinking you were posting in a disingenuous way @Whack-a-Mole, and you may be right that there is probably a power fantasy involved for a lot of people who are buying AR platforms (which is more than just the 15 but not needed for the thread).
One of the problems with creating effective gun legislation is that all-too-often even the politicians are basing their decisions on appearance rather than substance. I’ve made this example before, but it bears repeating. I personally own a Ruger Ranch Hand, which is a 5.56 semi-auto, magazine fed rifle that is visually similar to the old M-14 rifle.
Functionally, it is largely similar to the AR platforms - but very few people make a point of banning it or finding it scary. Because it’s a classic, heavy, wood platform rifle. From the point of people who buy an AR for the ego boost, it probably wouldn’t meet the needs - it’s old school, not tactical (or tactiKool). And I think this is actually recognized by the manufacturers, because these days it’s more common to see the Ranch platform with synthetic black tactical stock- and similar issues along a wide range of firearms.
So I would say yes, there is a realization that looking black and threatening can sell more guns. But, and this worries me more in some ways, they realize that the reverse can be true as well. We can laugh at the Hello Kitty rifle, but there has been a trend in making a wide variety of colors available to gun owners, with Pink being marketed to women who have become a target of some of the advertising.
For example, a SCCY pistol (I own one so using this example) is a small frame pistol for carry, and I’ve seen it suggested frequently to women as an initial purchase for carry purposes. One of the reasons because it comes in 9 (!) different grip colors, including green, pink, purple, red and orange.
So be aware, while we’re thinking options to reduce the appeal to individuals who are attracted to the darker aspects of toxic masculinity, the sellers are simultaneously trying to expand the appeal to those who are turned off by that appearance.
So TL;DR - I want us as a society to actually focus on more than the cosmetics. This thread has been really good about it, but others, and much legislation, dials down on the scary-looking aspect and neglect all too many other factors.