General Chat / US Gun Laws

The shooting last week at Douglas hit close to home for me. I live one county away and have covered that school's sporting events a couple of times (but never been there). I work part-time at a middle school and that type of thing is always in the back of my mind. 

 

What can we do though?

 

As wonderfully as an assault weapons ban sounds, fact is there are already millions of guns out there. Take them away? Not a great idea either, that could lead to more violence. In many ways, the damage is already done.

 

I wish some common sense was used over 100 years ago when people started making weapons of war. Normal citizens should never have been allowed to get them and it's not logical to think that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would have wanted everyone to have a right to own something like an AR-15. 

 

What I think should be done:

 

Cash/tech for guns program to encourage people to turn in guns for money/laptops/cell phones

Strict age limit of at least 21

Background checks that rule out anyone with a history of violence/threats

3-day wait on any sale, no gun show loopholes

Limit media details on gunmen 

 

Last night Rubio had a decent point about banning assault weapons, the definition makes that hard to do. Guns can be easily modified. However, I think it could be looked at the other way. It might be better to focus on what type of guns should be allowed. Maybe have a few dozen types that are legal and anything else becomes illegal including modified versions.

 

Another major point is the media. I see no reason at all to show pictures of these shooters and run their names all over the news. Yes, the facts need to get out, but these guys get their own version of fame from it. He should just be known as the "Parkland Gunman" or something like that. You can blur his face when showing the pictures of him with guns and in court. It really pisses me off since I work in media. 

 

What do you think?

Ban guns. Problem solved.

I agree with Kumba's points.

First and foremost, I'd like to say that I am in favor of more restriction and control of guns in the US.

I would also like to say though, that a gun ban would simply not work, and I feel that people that treat it as an end-all solution have not done enough research on the topic, and more often than not are projecting their own experiences with those laws in their respective countries.

Ban murder too while we're at it.

It could be a good idea. Personally I think the issue is more "how do you get rid of the inventory that already exists" more so than actually changing the law. So this in some way addresses it, however I don't know how something like this would actually turn out.

Touchy subject. Honestly I don't think I (or anyone here) knows enough about it or has enough information available to them to actually develop a solution. "Bans" in the US often don't work perfectly or as planned. Too much money is available to those who circumvent the laws.

Ban murder too while we're at it.

 

Good idea! Do it. 

i think murder is banned almost everywhere in the world.

The whole just ban guns argument is silly. Even if you want that to be your end game, you cant just do it immediately. Guns are ingrained in the culture of the US. If you want to change the culture and get rid of all guns, you need to start small, and I think Kumbas proposals are a great start. If those were to ever get implemented, then you can start making the requirements stricter, the waiting periods longer, etc.

The biggest boundary to any type of gun control legislation in the US is lobbyists, and in particular the NRA. Whenever someone proposes something sensible, like a mandatory 3-day waiting period, the NRA pops up and says theyre gonna take away your guns right now, dont let them. The campaign finance system is probably the biggest issue with US politics in general, and it plays a major role in the gun issues we have in this country.

Like many problems in the US, the solution will begin with properly funded socialised healthcare. The problem is from the ground up.

How about a throwback to 2013? 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pOiOhxujsE

 

Lots of progress happened in the last 5 years.

...right?

I think a bipartisan common-sense gun law is the best answer here. The amount of times my schools endured active shooter drills, and even a few lockdown cases, is insane. No kid in a first-world country should have to be worried, much less prepared for these things to happen, because they shouldn't happen.

I also want to bring up the glaring oversight in this thread that is Australia. They banned guns in 1996 and haven't had any mass shootings since, so the argument that "criminals will find a way to get guns and kill people" is kind of hilarious to me. I don't want to take away people's guns and their right to bear arms because that is a right ingrained in the foundation of the US, however a civilian militia would be absolutely creampied by the government if they gave them a reason to.

My question is, why is an AR-15 classified on the same level as a handgun? They are both effective at what they do and very effective self-defense options, but at their core, weapons are tools to aid humans in defense. So why are people allowed to own multiple assault weapons when they could defend themselves just as effectively with a pistol? The answer has to be better than "to shoot things with", because if America wants to sacrifice the safety of their children by making assault weapons easy to obtain, for a little target practice at the range, I'm not sure I want to send my future children to school here (also because US education is in the shitter).

The answer has to be better than "to shoot things with", because if America wants to sacrifice the safety of their children by making assault weapons easy to obtain, for a little target practice at the range, I'm not sure I want to send my future children to school here (also because US education is in the shitter).

 
 

This hits very close to home for me right now, being an expectant father. My wife and I have actually discussed moving abroad... not only for more sensible gun regulations, but education and healthcare as well. I hope that things will move along a bit by 5 years from now, but given that we're 5 years on from Sandy Hook and nothing has really changed I can't really count on any change occurring, can I?

I'd rather see the focus shifted on the people who own guns rather than the guns themselves. You can ban AR-15s and the gun crime rate would hardly budge because the concealibility of a handgun lends itself more to crime than a rifle. A blanket ban on guns wouldn't work in a country where a) people/voters perceive they have a right to firearm ownership and b) where most of the "gun culture" isn't to blame for gun crimes or gun deaths.

 

Some common sense regulations on guns themselves like removing the gun show loophole, banning the sale of high capacity magazines, bump stocks, and other gun attachments that are deemed used to primary do harm to humans. The bulk of the regulations should be around gun ownership though; the things Kumba and Saxman mentioned are a good start.

 

Banning guns would be next to impossible in America not just because of the culture but of how many firearms exist and the fact that gun manufacturers have one of the strongest lobbies in all of washington. If they ever did a complete gun ban without progressively, over time, weaning people away from them. It would lead to mass rioting, almost every republican state in the union not following federal gun laws.

 

Hardcore conservatives almost rightfully think that any gun regulation is dogwhilsting for banned them altogether and that it would lead to a slippery slope eventually ending in the ban and destruction of supply of firearms in america. You're gonna have to lie to people convincingly enough to end up doing something that will benefit everyone. 

 

The 2nd amendment shouldn't be a thing really and the constitution should be amended to provide positive human rights rather than just negative rights (google that if you don't know what i mean), but that's a long way off.  

While homicide and massacre are two different things, I get that gun crime in general is a much greater problem than mass shootings, but the fact that the gun lobby has such a powerful influence over Washington goes to show just how out of touch the government is with gun violence victims, that it cannot distinguish between the two, or just don't care.


(https://projects.ore...ting/gun-deaths)

This is a map representing the number of gun homicides from 2004-2010 (I don't really vibe with the color choice, but...) which shows the prevalence of homicides by county. As you can see, there is an overwhelming amount of dark red in the Deep South, comparatively. I'm not jumping to any conclusions because I would like to be as unbiased as possible, and that being said, I won't mention the D or R words. Now, I'm not a data analyst, but I am in my third year of engineering school which has required more than Wikipedia research to get by, so bear with me, even if it's just maps.

 

Below is a map pinpointing the mass shootings (4 or more deaths) that have occurred since Sandy Hook (1607 of them). It doesn't take much imagination to start connecting certain parts of the two maps together. However, causation=/=correlation, yadda yadda, so let me explain this point further. Yes, the map below does also line up well with a US population density map, but I believe there is one thing further we should consider in order to understand the difference between homicide and mass shootings.

 

(https://www.vox.com/...ings-sandy-hook)

 

For purposes explained below, here is a map of all school shootings since Sandy Hook (>290):

(https://everytownres...hool-shootings/)

 

I mentioned education earlier, and that the US education system is failing (to be specific, shrinking in size). It shouldn't come as a surprise that due to shrinking budgets and dwindling faculty numbers over the past 10 years, some students have become disenchanted with education and will either drop out, recluse, or lash out. Further, it makes logical sense that the likelihood of mass shootings increases where population does. So we can roughly assume that wherever the state of education is prosperous, students will be relatively safe, as well as the opposite scenario.
 

Below is the last map I want to show, which illustrates the amount of dollars spent per student in each US county. The correlation should be clear between this one and the two above.

 

(https://www.npr.org/...a-money-problem)

In the article that map is from, the author points out that many low-income school districts are the result of low property taxes of the region. Now, I would consider a high-powered weapon a luxury item, because it is not required to survive in 21st century America. It is widely known that liberals like high tax rates and conservatives prefer the opposite. If a family were to live in a low-taxed environment, it is highly likely that their school system would be underfunded/understaffed, thus giving that family's children a lower quality of education than they would have received in a high-taxed environment. 

 

Obviously, uneducated people are more likely to make bad decisions, and I would call purchasing an assault weapon a dumb decision, solely on the basis that it can legally only be used to shoot targets. It is a poor investment for anyone who values a return on investment (which in this case, is negative unless used for hunting). So, what does dumb people + low income + bad investments get? A desperate angry person with a gun. And that is never a good situation in any case - whether they decide to go rob a bank, kill the person who did them wrong, or the people that lived the life they never could. And what's worse, it's a deathtrap; once you're in, good luck getting out, because nobody is going to want to help you.

 

tldr; Homicide and mass killing are two separate entities, with similar roots. Mass shootings are hard to predict, but are more likely to happen in densely populated areas. Much is the same for school shootings, which are an extremely complex phenomenon that have no single cause. However, two ways to improve the chances of not getting shot in a classroom would be to increase the property tax rate for counties whose school districts are failing and underfunded, and to make sure that whoever purchases an assault weapon has a very strong legal reason to own it, without any red flags or suspicions.

A major point I forgot to mention, since I was focused on the gun aspect, is the media. I see no reason at all to show pictures of these shooters and run their names all over the news. Yes, the facts need to get out, but these guys get their own version of fame from it. He should just be known as the "Parkland Gunman" or something like that. You can blur his face when showing the pictures of him with guns and in court. It really pisses me off since I work in media.