NY Times prints article admitting Assault Weapons bans mostly ineffectual:
The SDMB Gun Krew helped to educate me on this matter. They taught me that the Assault Weapons ban never really prevented anyone from obtaining such weapons.
So of course it failed.
Sure, but there’s a whole lot more to it than that. For one, assault weapons are used in a very small percentage of gun crimes, so a ban is destined to have very little affect on the big-picture numbers. For two, “assault weapons” are a nebulous thing to define, and any ban is destined to have no real affect on the availability of long guns that can poke lots of little holes in things very rapidly, because I’ve just defined every modern hunting rifle ever made. For three, the mere suggestion that maybe we shouldn’t encourage people to go out and buy the exact same gun used by <insert mass shooter here> seems to have the opposite effect.
Which is not to say that I believe Damuri Ajashi’s ridiculous assertion that the push for an assault weapons ban somehow prevented more reasonable gun control from getting passed, but I do think banning assault weapons, or even suggesting it, is counter-productive in today’s political climate. In that regard, I think this NY Times article is a good thing. It also shows, I think, that many gun control proponents are reasonable people, unlike… well, this is the pit, right?
I think the focus on assault weapons was because moral panic and media mythmaking had pushed the idea that “evil black rifles” were somehow orders of magnitude deadlier than more traditional firearms. That quite simply, gun control advocates thought it would play in Peoria, whereas an open call for banning handgun possession wouldn’t. But the sheer illogic of how “assault weapons” were defined, that the bans infringed on too many people, and that the incrementalism of gun abolition was becoming obvious sparked a backlash.
P.S. seriously, no snarkiness intended, what do you consider reasonable?
Is this really what you think? Because this just seems silly to me. I was barely a teenager when the 1994 assault weapons ban was being debated, so I have no idea what was going on in the national psyche back then, but the recent debate seems to be a direct response to high profile mass shootings. It’s true that many of those shootings did not involve assault weapons, but some did, and to a public who is either ignorant or indifferent about the difference, “black scary weapons” are associated with war, mass murder, and very little else.
I have half a dozen close friends who own AR-15s, AKs, SKSes, and other typical assault weapons. Most of them rarely get fired because of where we live. About half of them were bought for no reason other than “they might be banned soon, so I might as well buy one now.” They don’t hunt with them, they don’t intend to use them for self defense, I don’t think any of them harbor any serious fantasies about the S hitting the F, nor do I think any of them are preparing for an uprising against the government, although a couple of them make me wonder sometimes. In short, from where I sit, these are toys for boys with too much money on their hands.
So that’s the equation – “big scary black guns” that are associated with mass murder, and gun owners who can’t seem to come up with a good reason for why they need them (and who therefore resort to retorts like “I don’t need a good reason to exercise my rights,” which are much less effective outside of their echo chamber than within). To a casual suburbanite or city-dweller who doesn’t follow the debate too closely, banning assault weapons seems like a no-brainer.
This doesn’t require a media conspiracy, or a sinister plan to slow-roll a total gun ban. All it requires is people hearing about a guy who used an AR-15 to kill a bunch of people who just wanted to watch Batman. “Wouldn’t it be nice,” normal people might say, “If he hadn’t been able to purchase an M&P15 with which to kill innocent moviegoers.” It’s really only when that line of thinking is coldly broken down into it’s nitty gritty mechanics – what is an assault weapon, how many of them are out there, how big of a numerical problem is this really – that it starts to fall apart. And I, and at least a few of my fellow lefties, are able to be trained that it’s not a good idea. That no matter how much it just feels right, it’s not going to have the effect that we want it to have.
The larger issue of handgun violence is much more esoteric to suburban voters. City dwellers want to ban handguns because they see their communities ripped apart by drugs, gangs, and bullets, but for most people arguing about gun control on the internet, the fact that handguns are involved in orders of magnitude more homicides doesn’t really factor into the equation. The idea of an assault weapons ban isn’t about reducing gang crime, it’s about preventing the next Newtown. Calling that “moral panic” instead of a “normal human response to a tragedy” is really very cynical indeed.
Let people own what they want but have licensing and registration so that we can close the loop on straw purchases. I think the 100% background check bill that was shot down recently would have been “reasonable” in the sense that I don’t think it infringed on anyone’s rights, but I also think it would have fallen short of having an effect on inner-city gang crime. Law enforcement needs a way to trace a handgun used in a drug-related homicide in Chicago to the asshole in Indiana who bought the gun and sold it off, no questions asked, to an intermediary who sold it to a criminal.
I don’t think this would solve gun crime overnight, but it would give the state the tools it needed to track down those who are making it easy for criminals to get their hands on guns, without preventing law-abiding citizens from owning guns. I’m sensitive to the fact that this would inconvenience rural gun owners, and I’d like to think that accommodations could be made to limit that inconvenience, but at this point “licensing and registration” is a complete non-starter thanks to the “it will lead to confiscation” nutjobs, so I don’t think anyone’s been able to have a reasonable debate about how it might be most effectively implemented.
In principle I agree licensing and registration would be a good idea; but in principle voter ID is a good idea too. The well is too thoroughly poisoned to think either doesn’t have a background agenda, and you don’t have to be a “nutjob” to be concerned about it. Put it this way: a general confiscation would be impossible to enforce without universal registration. Think of it as the canary in the coal mine.
I think anyone who considers a general confiscation to be in any way possible, or worth any consideration, is a complete nutjob. It’s like being afraid of a dictator plotting to take over the world. It cannot happen.
I’d agree that both licensing and registration and voter ID sound like good ideas to the layperson, but I reject the notion that they both come from the same place, or that both have a “background agenda” that one needs to be wary of. Voter ID did not grow out of some groundswell of concern for rampant voter fraud, and I think it’s roots can be pretty satisfactorily traced to “deliver the state of Pennsylvania to [Republicans]” sort of political horseshit. The only background agendas that make sense for the licensing and registration crowds are A) concern for people dying and B) nefarious desire to disarm the populace in order to impose some sort of draconian law and order. One of those seems like a noble goal, and the other one seems like fiction.
You don’t have to be a nutjob to be concerned, no. I didn’t mean to imply (and I don’t think I did) that everyone who is at all concerned about potential confiscation is a nutjob. I think people who are convinced that registration will lead to confiscation are nutjobs, and I think those nutjobs are stifling any sort of reasonable debate we could have about, oh, I dunno, “How can we implement licensing and registration while assuaging concerns about confiscation?” Too many people would basically respond to that question with, “You can’t, it’s impossible, all gun control talk is about confiscation and I won’t listen to anyone who says otherwise.” And those people are well funded, well organized, and they vote.
I’m not interested in rehashing the entire gun control debate in the “stupid gun news” thread, but if you honestly think that general confiscation is impossible without registration, you’re a bit of a nut. And if you think the only reason licensing and registration is ever proposed is so that nefarious leaders can confiscate all guns at some point, then you’re a giant nut.
Is this meant to be framed as a compromise? For many folks, they can already own what they want without the licensing and registration. Where is the value proposition?
It only cannot happen because Americans wouldn’t stand for it. Similarly, they’re not standing for baby steps in that direction, like de facto universal registration and assault weapon bans. And before you say that all people want is a reasonable compromise, I would point out that we already have several compromises, that hard-core gun rights believers already object to. There’s the 1934 National Firearms Act, a punitive tax on supposed “criminal” weapons; the Gun Control Act of 1968, which banned the importation of many guns and placed severe restrictions on interstate transfer; the ironically named Firearms Owners Protection Act, which literally in the dead of night snuck in a ban on any new full-auto firearms. How many more “compromises” are there going to be?
No, it’s not meant to be framed as a compromise. I’m not looking to “give” gun owners anything. In my ideal world gun owners would say, “Holy shit, gun crime is a huge problem in certain parts of the country. I’m willing to inconvenience myself somewhat in order to help save lives, reduce crime, and in general improve the lives of many of my fellow citizens. Because the less those citizens are worried about being shot, assaulted, or robbed, the more productive they’ll be as citizens. If they’re more productive then I’ll have to pay less in taxes for social programs. The rising tide of fewer dead people will lift all ships, so to speak. This inconvenience of me having to get a license, register my handguns, and make all transfers through an FFL is a small price to pay for a better America. Furthermore, I, in no way, believe stupid hyperbole about how this will lead to confiscation of all guns.”
Crazy, right?
Well, yes. Or at least I hope it’s illegal.
So what? Are you seriously arguing that 17-year-olds should be allowed to carry guns? Really? Teenagers?
Yes, I’m aware of the mechanism for amending the Constitution. I’m aware that the Second Amendment will not be repealed in my lifetime.
Here’s a thought: I used to be open-mined about gun ownership. I believed that it was every American’s right to own and even carry guns, without being burdened by unreasonable regulation.
Since I’ve been exposed to the gun rights “advocates,” I no longer believe that. I now realize that they cannot be trusted with guns. I’m sick of it all. I changed my position on gun rights not because of reports of crime, or school shootings, but because of the fucking loons out there demanding their “rights.”
In what way was any of that legislation a compromise? Did the original text of any of those laws propose general confiscation, but were whittled down to a mere ghost of their original gun-grabbing intent? The only way those laws could be construed as compromising anything is if you start from the gun nut’s position of “no new legislation ever!”
This comic explains it better than I could: Illustrated Guide To Gun Control
That comic seems to suggest that the government wanted to ban all guns in 1934, but compromised by only banning some.
Cite?
^ How can there be a first 7 years and a last seven years for the period from 2000 to 2013? Why include 2008 twice? I am obviously not a statistician.
2000-2006 = 7 years inclusive
2007-2013 = 7 years inclusive
2012 thread: Why the dramatic spike in mass shootings lately?
In other news. DC passed a “may issue” concealed carry law to comply with court order to stop infringing on the right to bear arms. Noone thinks that the Chief of Police is going to issue a license to anyone other than private security.
Alan Gura is already back in court to have the law struck down. I think his chances are at least 50/50. I look forward to seeing this issue decided by the supreme court.