Gun Policy in the USA

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
121

@ Age Requirement for Gun Ownership

This seems to be a common idea for policy change. We currently have youth groups like the BSA or 4-H offering Hunter’s safety courses. I believe the age for participation in shooting range experiences is usually age twelve and older.

Since this thread is not about personal attacks, my parents put us through a Hunter’s safety course at about age twelve. They gifted my son a .22 caliber rifle at age twelve, to be used only under adult supervision when target practicing at their ranch. We bought him a compound bow about that time, as I recall, that we keep in CA. He may have been a bit younger.

I’m sure this varies by state, but here are the age-related gun laws for the state where my parents live are listed below.

I’m curious about what specific policy changes people would make to limits on training youths in gun safety education above, or to state laws below.

New Mexico state law prohibits any person under age 19 from knowingly possessing or transporting a handgun. Exceptions to this prohibition include:

Attending a hunter’s safety course or handgun safety course;

Target shooting at an authorized shooting range or an area where the discharge of a handgun without legal justification is not prohibited by law;

_ Competing in an organized handgun shooting competition;_

Participating in or practicing for a performance by a 26 U.S.C. § 501(c)(3) organization;

_ Legally hunting or trapping;_

_ Traveling with an unloaded handgun to or from an activity listed above; or_

Possessing a handgun on real property under the control and supervision of the parent, grandparent or guardian of the underage individual.

There is no minimum age to possess rifles and shotguns.

State law prohibits any person under age 18 from hunting with a firearm unless he or she is in possession of a certificate indicating successful completion of a state-approved hunter training course.

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123

I’m down with that. More transparency, more accountability, and more opportunities in the chain of events for a third party to become aware of someone wanting the firearm for bad purposes.

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124

Well, the Western ones, for sure. @EyeDentist had a handy chart maybe he can repost.

These countries are clearly doing something we are not. What is it?

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One of my buddies from grad school posted this back during election season (and he, like me, strongly disapproved of both major-party candidates). I half-jokingly, half-seriously think I would be a much happier person, or at least a less worried person, if there was no Internet. If all I did was go to work, do my job, read the scientific publications that I needed to do my job, go home, lift, cook, watch sports, and sleep…what the hell would I ever worry about?

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126

Totally agree and I would extend that to the nightly news for people that watch it. The vast majority of it is designed to get a certain response and they’re good at what they do.

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Are they or do they just do other things as an outlet for their angst?

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Which means they are doing something which we are not.

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Badum Tsshhhhhhhh

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How many mass shooters are users of psychotropic drugs?

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Well, I don’t know what alternatives to mass shooting there are when a person has reached that level of angst, but more importantly, we’re an outlier - a bunch of similarly situated countries have very different outcomes. There has to be a reason why.

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Could be stabbing their classmates or random people. Maybe, for whatever reason, they don’t act out their anger at schools, but pubs instead. Like the whole glassing thing in the UK for example. Could be higher levels of rape.

I guess my point is, are the underlying conditions really different or is it just a different choice of action. In other words, is there something in their cultures that mitigates the desire to commit a school shooting that we lack. Like two-parent homes, for example. Father figures. Availability of mental health screenings or blue color jobs. Mentorship programs. So on and so forth.

Or do they just stab or rape each other instead?

Do that make sense?

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I don’t have my source but I recall reading that something around 1 in every 20 million people will go on a murderous rampage. That’s been the rate since the 1970s and it’s been true for most of the world. That’s why Norway still leads the way in per capita deaths from mass shootings for this decade. Their 1 in 20 million guy managed to kill a lot of Norwegians.

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I can’t speak to that, but one of the things that gets murky when this discussion comes up is these country to country comparisons. The UK might have 1 mass shooting, okay, they have 60M to our 320M (18%). How about Europe as a whole?

Title aside:
List of rampage killers in Europe - Wikipedia I see France, Germany, Austria, Russia, etc…

European schools are not immune either:

Finland’s in their a few times. So are Germany and Belgium.

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I wonder what the stats would look like if we compared America with “first first world EU.” Itd probably be pretty arbitrary when picking countries but might be a good way to at least attempt to simulate the "melting pot"Ness we have going on

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They are good at what they do. How many of you have ever had the privilege of being around a large group of newscasters prior to their airtime near the scene of a traumatic event? I have(and there were big-time folks there), and it was incredible to watch them rehearse their facial expressions and tone of voice prior to going on air. I left my post, that day, disgusted by them.

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Well, fuck me. I know about one of these in great detail as it happened not far from where I live - I’m flabbergasted that it’s on Wikipedia. I guess I blocked it out of my mind as it happened a couple of decades ago.

In that specific instance it was PTSD/mental issues and an illegally owned AK-47

If you’re feeling like clicking through on the appropriate links where available (which I don’t recommend) you’d see that in a surprising number of cases semi-automatic rifles were used, especially in Russia/Ukraine and the Balkans.

So much for the myth of Europe being gun-free.

EDIT: Here are excerpts from Wikipedia for the most recent shootings, excluding Islamic terror attacks:

where he noticed his estranged wife with a group of friends. He returned home and retrieved an AK-47 assault rifle he illegally owned.

Armed with a CZ 75B semi-automatic pistol, which is manufactured in the town, and an Alfa 820 revolver,

opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle on several people at a gun store and a sidewalk,

when the villager took a hunting rifle and shot dead five men and four women

killed five people and wounded ten others in and outside a bar with a Saiga carbine after an argument with several customers.

armed himself with a Russian hunting rifle IZH-12 and a Czech carbine ZKK-601 with telescopic sight – both weapons were held legally with permit renewed less than a year before

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I don’t know if comparing Eastern Europe and former soviet countries to Western Europe and the USA is a proper comparison.

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Add this to the list of things that never happened.

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Or didn’t go back more than a century.

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Well, in terms of availability of semi-automatic rifles then yes. Don’t forget UK and it’s stringent gun laws are the exception, not the norm.