The one thing I hope we’ve learned from prohibition and the 55 MPH speed limit, is that when the government makes a popular thing illegal, you create a nation of law-breakers rather than having a significant impact on the bad behavior.
As mentioned when California tried to make assault weapon illegal, only 5% of the estimated assault rifles in Santa Clara County (aka Silicon Valley) were registered. It is hard to image the number in a red county or state would much higher.
Why would I want to give a definition that doesn’t include that?
This is an argument about the failure of political will, not the difficulty of defining an assault rifle for the purposes of banning them. I’ll certainly grant that there is a failure of political will — that’s why we have a problem! — but that isn’t because we can’t define the target group of guns to ban.
At the heart of the picture is a semi-automatic pistol, if you add all other pieces it becomes an a assault rifle. There hasn’t been any assault weapon legislation that hasn’t been very easy to get around. In the case of they California legislation they banned specific models, and they failed to ban all or even most weapons. It was trivial easy to remove the bayonet mount, and suddenly it is the gun is no longer an assault rifle. The federal assault weapon legislation looked at functionality, barrel size, stocks, which again was easily gotten around by adding accessory.
It is like the weapons in Fallout 4, it is very easy to turn a rifle into a pistol you just change the stock, and viola your character gets to use his pistol skills.
It is easier to write a law that defines for a pornography than an assault rifle.
The only surefire way to do it is ban semi-automatic receiver and then you made 1/2 the guns in the country illegal, which is problematic even if you expanded the Supreme Court to 15 judges.
wavey
7768
How about a more global perspective? Here in the UK for example, we aren’t an unusually peaceful people. You may have read about our problems with rising knife crime for instance. But I think comparisons with the US could be usefully made, as we have roughly the same level of prosperity.
If guns actually saved lives overall, and given their prevalence over there, surely you would expect rates of intentional homicide to be lower in the US? …instead of four times higher. And it’s a similar story when comparing most countries in western Europe. If you were to claim that guns saved lives, you would also need to explain that, I think.
Yes, that’s what I mean. I’d ban the stock, the extra capacity magazines, maybe the barrel extension. Anything that lets you convert a legal pistol into what would be an illegal assault rifle. Why not?*
I doubt that. I think the problem is a lack of political will, combined with an aggressively pro-gun judiciary, not any difficulty of definition. Other countries have such bans, after all.
(*) I’d ban the pistol, too, but that’s a whole other story.
All semi-autos and handguns should go, unless covered by a strict regulatory framework.
Honestly a shotgun is the absolute maximum you should need for home defence. I’d be horrified if my neighbours owned weapons with better penetrating power than that.
I still think shotguns, revolvers, and older style hunting rifles are all any civilian could need who isn’t intending to commit mass crime or overthrow the government. (I suppose there are also specific sport/target shooting applications for other weapons, but they could be restricted/licensed and also I don’t generally rate hobbies over human lives.)
But America is a death cult country, so it’s moot. The simple fact is, we know how to solve the problem of gun violence because every other developed country has done so. We simply choose not to.
I’m trying to figure out just allowing revolvers or shotguns would have helped the women in Atlanta. You certainly don’t need any fancy gun to kill 3 middle-age women in a small massage parlor, then get in a car and drive to another location to kill three more. A revolver or two, or a shotgun would work just fine, so would probably would an ax or knife.
Multiple murders are ~1% percent of all murders, and in most cases any gun will do when you are killing a single person. The US is pretty violent country, we kill more people with knifes, or blunt weapons, than are murdered by all causes in many Scandinavian country, or Japan or Korea.
But there are many countries (93 to be exact) List of countries by intentional homicide rate - Wikipedia that have worse homicide rates than the US. As Covid has shown, the “developed, G20, 1st world”, label doesn’t magically protect a country from bad things. Our homicide rate ranking is significantly better than our Covid rating.
Mexico has super strict gun laws and a murder rate almost six times our rate, Russia murder rate is much higher (and I’m always suspicious of Russian data) despite having 1/10th the gun ownership
On the flip side Finland, Switzerland and Serbia have 3rd, fourth, and fifth highest per capita ownership rate, with roughly 1/2 the per capita gun ownership of the US but their gun homicide rates between 1/4 and 1/7 the US rate. So the correlation between guns and murders isn’t that strong.
As the two editorial said, trying to ban large classes of guns is not happening and we need to look for other solutions.
Banzai
7773
I would not call the police if someone was breaking into my house.
I would feel less safe with the police and their trigger happy lifestyle invading my home than with a random home invader. I expect that one of my family members or dogs would end up dead in the former, and that my insurance company would have to pay for some stuff for the latter.
So yeah, I’d prefer if the police didn’t have guns at all. Works for a whole lot of countries, and if they don’t want the job, they don’t have to take it. Maybe we would end up with people in the police who actually want to serve and protect instead of shoot people.
There is not a single first world country on that list above the US. The US has a crazy homicide rate for a theoretically stable, developed country. Canada, which has sane but some would say not-restrictive-enough gun laws, sits at 152, and basically every (with some small exceptions) European country is below that.
The correlation between gun CONTROL and murders is pretty strong. Russia is flooded with black market firearms as is Mexico, Finland (only 12% gun ownership there not sure why you single them out) and Switzerland strictly control gun ownership. I know nothing about the situation in Serbia.
“I can think of a scenario in which any legal firearm at all would be bad” is not quite the winning argument you might think it is.
WaPo developed this list. As you can see Finland is #4
I wonder where they get their numbers
What that link shows me is that the countries with higher gun homicide rates than the US are mostly failed states, narco states or states that have undergone years or decades of civil strife. Maybe take them off the table, before you start doing comparisons, unless we think that’s the right comparison set for the US?
Tim_N
7779
Imagine learning later in life that you shot and killed your 8 month old brother when you were three years old.
Guns save lives, though. It is known.
rowe33
7782
Take that stand, Governor Abbott!
KevinC
7783
Guns don’t kill people, small children with guns kill people!
Sorry. It’s all just so horrifying and yet nothing ever changes so I fall back on dark humor/sarcasm, I guess. Poor kid. Both of them.
