Gun Policy in the USA

Did you read the article? He said a .22 will lodge in the lung and we can take it out, but a 9mm will blow the lung out of the back of your body and there is no rational basis for us to have 9mm.

I have developed an intolerance to listening to Biden. I need a translator for every speech.

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Biden has yet to say a true thing about firearms in his entire career. Of course he considers the smallest semi-automatic caliber to meet FBI standards to be “high-powered”.

I think start with the data that shows how poorly the US rates with gun related homicide versus other countries and then look to emulate the countries that do better. No sacred cows. Examine your prejudices, misconceptions and attachments.

What is the US rate of gun-related homicides compared to other nations when you compare guns per person in the population?

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No, look again at what I said.

What do you mean by this?

Can you explain the conclusion you have reached by following the path you’re suggesting for me?

Some first world countries also have a high number of civilian guns per capita, such as Austria, Finland, Switerland, Norway…
It would be interesting to make some comparisons to see why these kind of massacres don’t happen so often there.
Those are wealthy countries, but so is the USA.
Perhaps differences in education,wealth distribution, culture? Ethnic homogeneity could be another factor.
One thing I don’t see in people from those countries is making gun ownership as a part of one’s self-identity. They might own a gun or two, and that’s it.
They don’t talk about it. They don’t pose for pictures with them to post on social media.
They just own them.

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I wasn’t meaning that is what you were asking. I was asking in on my own, kind of getting at what @deandre_va_der_saar talked about below.

Population explains the disparities in every country you mentioned. Those are all tiny nations compared to the USA, with 330 million people. If we go with the notion that roughly 1 in 20 million people on the planet will snap in someway and go on some publicly destructive killing spree, well, these sort of things won’t happen very often in a nation of 5 million people compared to one of 330 million.

In fact, one of the nations you mentioned has a higher per capita mass shooting death rate due to a single particularly tragic event. Should that disqualify every gun control measure Norway has undertaken?

This is true for most people in the USA as well. For those who it isn’t, the gun nuts are allowed to be just as obnoxious as the people who make veganism, their sexuality, their job, or their lifting the main component of their identity.

This is a thread about policy, so I’ll put two questions forward.

For any nation you suggest the USA ought to emulate, can you explain the effect that landmark gun control legislation had in those countries? If we look at the UK, you ought to be able to see how the violent crime rate was effected when the landmark gun control legislation was passed. You know, before and after sort of thing. Pick your country and make the case for the effectiveness of their landmark gun control laws.

What is the policy you suggest should be implemented in the USA?

BTW, I’m good with local, state and federal policy being discussed here.

Well, first it was the AR15, now Biden is talking about 9mm…thats the lefts gun policy, ban them

Question.
Very recently a large portion of the USA thought the election held in 2020 was fraudulent. Many still do. The demographic of those who think the election result is / was incorrect overlaps very heavily with gun ownership.
In short what I am asking is - a huge number of gun owners think the government HAS ended voter rights. If ever gun ownership were going to “keep the government in check” would it not have been after the 2020 election? People stormed the capitol building, but did they keep the government in check? Those people are now in jail. I’d say not.#

EDIT - I know @twojarslave is keen to keep this on topic. But I think this is. If the right bear arms IS to keep the government in check. And preserve voter rights fine. But would this not be a signal of its failure to do so? And thus this argument is weakened.

If you think my assessment is wrong let me know.

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I didn’t suggest USA emulate any nation, just maybe look into some of their policies and see if some of them could be worth considering.

No gun legislation passed in the UK would fly in the US, that’s why I mentioned countries with high number of civilian guns per capita.

But like I said, economics, eucation, culture and demographics might be more of (or at least as much) a factor than gun policy per se.

Well I agree with everyone that says it makes no sense that you can own a gun when you’re 18 but you can’t legally drink before 21.

So I would lower the drinking age to 18.

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Who should the principled 2A supporter be shooting at right now if that person believed that the 2020 mail-in election was something other than the most secure election of all time?

I’m not sure what the difference there is, but my question still stands. If there is a particular law you think is effective, can you explain what the effect was? For the record, I have examined many of those policies in many nations across the world. I’m asking you if you can name a place where gun control was enacted and the rates of violent crime dropped because of it. Good luck with that.

The UK is often brought up as a model nation when it comes to gun control. What was their rate of violent crime before the passage of their landmark gun control laws vs after?

You’re free to look this up on your own, but the law had no effect. Rates declined at a rate similar to most other western countries at the time, including the USA. That a peaceful people remained peaceful after passing gun control does not speak to the efficacy of gun control laws whatsoever. The fact of the matter is that the UK and most commonwealth countries gave up their ability to defend themselves not for improved outcomes in society, but to assuage the feelings of moral busybodies intent on passing self-congratulatory policies that can be used to brow-beat their opponents.

If the people are happy with their laws, good for them.

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Okay - in which case the statement that “guns keep the country safe, democratic and free” is false?
Only that quiet a few people have fire arms for the purpose of “preserving democracy”. Only to then say the last election result was fraudulent. I do not see what else needs to happen before there is more civil unrest.
If as you say there is “no one to shoot at” then guns are the wrong tool for the job. So why keep them?

It just seems to be an odd juxtaposition.

FYI -

Violent crime did go up after 1996. But to link that to disarming the people is wrong. Gun ownership was low. Carrying in public was still illegal. The rise in crime was more linked to a new government rather than disarmament.

The true argument for the Second Amendment was weakened with the adoption of a standing army.

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Whether it was fraudulent or not, not a whole lot changed in principle. And no one thought it would. Americans have widely adopted the ideas of St. Abraham and his string pullers, and there’s no reason to go to war over an election. People die in war. An election determines whether you’re going to pay 49% or 51% of your earnings in taxes.

Well, here we are. How much guns have to do with that I can’t say for sure, but here we are.

I’m not sure I understand this. You’re suggesting that our lack of armed uprising against our mail-in president renders guns generally ineffective at providing a means for armed resistance?

Have you considered that many conservatives would prefer that all of the woke absurdity and economic disaster should be allowed to play out, so the American people might better understand why policy matters? Have you considered that there are many other layers of government that can be won besides the office of president?

You may find it odd that Americans haven’t begun a shooting war with unnamed nebulous forces, but that doesn’t seem strange to me.

I’m suggesting that there is almost no link whatsoever between the UK’s violent crime rate and the presence or absence of gun control laws. All of the data suggest this to be true, both in the UK and here in the USA.

I live in Maine, which has very low levels of crime compared to most western countries. I can literally own a machine gun here. You could change that tomorrow and our crime rate would neither go up or down because of it. We would remain the most peaceful state in the country.

Most of our most violent places here in the USA have extremely strict gun control and have for some time. The decades-old argument of Chicago Democrats is that Indiana Republicans are to blame for violence in Chicago. If only they would pass Chicago gun control laws the war-zone conditions in the city, overseen by generations of one-party Democrat rule, would finally subside.

Mass shootings in particular are a very new phenomenon, at least compared to the invention and availability of repeating firearms. Semi-automatic, clip and magazine-fed weapons (invented in the late 1800’s) were available by mail with no background check and decades went by with no mass shootings at all. It wasn’t until the 1960’s came around that these things began happening in the ways we know them today.

Something changed, and it wasn’t the gun laws.

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I can’t tell whether he(and the other non-Americans that post similar things) is serious. I’m not sure whether they’re just poking fun at some imaginary idea of Americans, or they’re truly surprised that Americans(being thought of as many times manlier than Europeans, I suppose) don’t go to war over everything that happens.

Guns control arguments are sort of like modern racism arguments. When I’m listening to an upper-middle class white lady with no black friends or family go on and on about how white people like her are irredeemable racists corrupted by implicit bias, well, I believe her. She doesn’t speak for me, but if she wants me to believe that she is a racist, I will readily believe her.

Similarly, when Europeans or even Americans suggest that they ought not be trusted with firearms, I also believe them. They don’t speak for me, but I fully accept that they may have uncontrollable violent tendencies that would manifest if allowed near a gun. It seems that the same line of thought is now extended to knives in the UK. I trusted my 6 year-old with a knife and a carving stick at camp, but I can understand why some societies don’t trust adults with sharp objects.

That’s why local government is important. Some places function a lot better when they keep sharp objects away from the adults and police social media to eliminate the scourge of people saying mean things online.

I don’t think the USA would benefit from that, but if people in the UK like how that is working out, good for them.

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