Id ban all sale of them and offer generous buybacks. You can’t actually disarm a population, everyone just ends up saying they dropped their gun in a lake.
I’m guessing you have some thoughts on this, where do you think the line is? What regulations would you accept?
A generous but non compulsory buyback program would have the same effect as the nfa, disarmament of people in direct proportion to their wealth and income. Would it be alright with you if only rich people who weren’t swayed by the high prices on offer were armed? Currently in America that’s how ownership of fully automatic firearms, suppressors and rifles and shotguns with barrels shorter than 16” are handled.
How would your ban on sales apply to private party sales?
The rich can have more guns for a bit, it would only last a generation. Id outlaw all sales private or public, anybody inheriting a gun wouldn’t be permitted to use it.
The only guns would be state owned, for employees or to rent out at ranges and hunting grounds so people can still keep it as a hobby.
Basically phase out the private ownership of guns inside a generation or two. It’s not perfect and would definitely piss off a number of people, a lot of which would find workarounds but I don’t see a better way to do it.
How would inheritors of guns be prevented from using them? How would you prevent private, undocumented sales?
Are you saying you’d ban hunting on private land?
I’m not asking little “gotcha” questions to “get you”, but to try to slowly make it clear how big of a project a firearm ban in America would be. My hope is that you’ll recognize the high cost and low chance of success makes a firearm ban a worse way to approach stochastic violence than simply improving conditions for people who perpetrate it.
Not having a shooting every week is worth whatever we have to pay.
There’s no perfect solution but doing nothing is definitely the worst option. In any case, it’s easier to get rid of guns then to cure all mental health issues. Saying things like improve conditions as a solution is just hand waving in my opinion.
If you’ll indulge me, the lemmy markup for big text isn’t something I know so you’ll just have to imagine it’s a header:
Behold, the liberal vision for your future: it’s easier to disarm the poor than to improve their conditions!
It’s not as satisfying when the words are little.
The fundamental problem with your position is that it relies on outright dismissal of any possible improvements to American society.
If you approach any problem with the supposition that nothing can ever get better then of course your only course of action is to restrict people and no matter what complexity you’re up against that proposition of restriction will always be the best option. After all, a better world is not possible.
Society has always been improving, life’s a lot better than it was 20 years ago. Improving to the point where shootings stop is seriously heavy. Mental issues are way more complicated than blanket gun bans.
You are dismissing my solutions as being too hard and too costly, while not really being critical of your own offerings.
Mental health issues clearly needs to be prioritized more but you can’t wave a magic wand and ban depression. Not to mention that there are hundreds of different aspects that bring about a shooting. They all involve guns but the reasons that brought the person to the brink are always different. Sometimes, it’s literally just racism (which is arguably a mental health issue but you get my point).
What you are saying is the equivalent of “Don’t ban guns! Cure America of everything else instead”.
It’s such a tall order it’s literally meaningless. Im not saying society can’t improve but that the difference between our solutions is the difference between planting a tree to get out of the rain and buying an umbrella. And mind you, I’m super willing to try to improve society, but right now, we need an umbrella because we are getting covered in blood and it sucks.
The thing I keep failing to convey to you is like it or not America has nearly 300 years of gun ownership deeply ingrained in its culture and banning guns would be as big of a social change as providing basic income, housing and healthcare if not bigger.
To give just one example of many, we don’t have any expectation that the police will protect us. I don’t mean that policing is an inherently oppressive system of hierarchical violence based on slave patrols, but that our court system has literally ruled that the police don’t have any requirement to protect us from crime. We are expected legally to protect ourselves against violence.
What kind of changes would that society need to make if suddenly only criminals had guns (I can see why people love to deploy that one, it slaps)?
That’s just one small aspect of how guns are a part of America and while I appreciate your desire to cut through the gordian knot, I hope it clarifies some of what makes your deceptively simple proposal problematic.
If you want to dive into the type of anger you’re gonna see, think about how nfa stamp havers and other license holders would be affected. When Jim gets visited by the cops he goes to the range with, even if they don’t open up saying “you don’t have your guns anymore, right Jim big wink” he can still claim to have sold or lost them and be fine. When Nancy gets visited by those same cops she doesn’t have any capacity to lie, because as an owner of nfa items or a c&r license holder she’s required to keep records of not just her guns and suppressors and sears, but also their disposal. Despite having dutifully submitted to a much more in depth background check, extensive waiting period, surprise inspection, additional taxes and mandatory record keeping, Nancy can’t just lie and say her guns fell off the truck or that she already sold them. The atf agent has a list of serialized components she’s responsible for.
The person who followed all the rules faces harsher penalties!
What I’m trying to make clear is how complex, cumbersome and expansive such a seemingly straightforward policy would be even if everyone agreed to comply. When you factor in the lack of full compliance it gets even harder to endorse and when you say “what would you have me do, improve society?” it becomes plain old silly to do all that work when you could get the same results by providing housing, income and health care to all with the added benefit of now having housing, income and healthcare.
I don’t see why it has to be one or the other. Getting rid of guns is just one step towards a better society. We can have a higher minimum wage, healthcare and also not have citizens walking around with rifles that came decimate a crowd.
Lazy cops aren’t a reason to have every citizen armed. It’s laughable to bring up criminals since they are only armed because of how easy guns are to aquire. Nobody is getting held up at gunpoint in fucking Canada. And if they did, it would be with a gun we sent over the border.
And ya, it’s complex but when has that ever been a reason not to do the right thing? We send people into space ffs, and again, less complex than curing society of stress.
Ask yourself, and I mean really ask yourself what guns are bringing to your life that’s so worth it.
And no, it’s not safety because having so many guns around, statistically half of them in the hands of people with below average intellect, inherently creates a very unsafe environment and it also makes sure all the criminals have guns as well.
Id ban all sale of them and offer generous buybacks. You can’t actually disarm a population, everyone just ends up saying they dropped their gun in a lake.
I’m guessing you have some thoughts on this, where do you think the line is? What regulations would you accept?
A generous but non compulsory buyback program would have the same effect as the nfa, disarmament of people in direct proportion to their wealth and income. Would it be alright with you if only rich people who weren’t swayed by the high prices on offer were armed? Currently in America that’s how ownership of fully automatic firearms, suppressors and rifles and shotguns with barrels shorter than 16” are handled.
How would your ban on sales apply to private party sales?
The rich can have more guns for a bit, it would only last a generation. Id outlaw all sales private or public, anybody inheriting a gun wouldn’t be permitted to use it.
The only guns would be state owned, for employees or to rent out at ranges and hunting grounds so people can still keep it as a hobby.
Basically phase out the private ownership of guns inside a generation or two. It’s not perfect and would definitely piss off a number of people, a lot of which would find workarounds but I don’t see a better way to do it.
How would inheritors of guns be prevented from using them? How would you prevent private, undocumented sales?
Are you saying you’d ban hunting on private land?
I’m not asking little “gotcha” questions to “get you”, but to try to slowly make it clear how big of a project a firearm ban in America would be. My hope is that you’ll recognize the high cost and low chance of success makes a firearm ban a worse way to approach stochastic violence than simply improving conditions for people who perpetrate it.
Not having a shooting every week is worth whatever we have to pay.
There’s no perfect solution but doing nothing is definitely the worst option. In any case, it’s easier to get rid of guns then to cure all mental health issues. Saying things like improve conditions as a solution is just hand waving in my opinion.
If you’ll indulge me, the lemmy markup for big text isn’t something I know so you’ll just have to imagine it’s a header:
Behold, the liberal vision for your future: it’s easier to disarm the poor than to improve their conditions!
It’s not as satisfying when the words are little.
The fundamental problem with your position is that it relies on outright dismissal of any possible improvements to American society.
If you approach any problem with the supposition that nothing can ever get better then of course your only course of action is to restrict people and no matter what complexity you’re up against that proposition of restriction will always be the best option. After all, a better world is not possible.
Society has always been improving, life’s a lot better than it was 20 years ago. Improving to the point where shootings stop is seriously heavy. Mental issues are way more complicated than blanket gun bans.
You are dismissing my solutions as being too hard and too costly, while not really being critical of your own offerings.
Mental health issues clearly needs to be prioritized more but you can’t wave a magic wand and ban depression. Not to mention that there are hundreds of different aspects that bring about a shooting. They all involve guns but the reasons that brought the person to the brink are always different. Sometimes, it’s literally just racism (which is arguably a mental health issue but you get my point).
What you are saying is the equivalent of “Don’t ban guns! Cure America of everything else instead”.
It’s such a tall order it’s literally meaningless. Im not saying society can’t improve but that the difference between our solutions is the difference between planting a tree to get out of the rain and buying an umbrella. And mind you, I’m super willing to try to improve society, but right now, we need an umbrella because we are getting covered in blood and it sucks.
The thing I keep failing to convey to you is like it or not America has nearly 300 years of gun ownership deeply ingrained in its culture and banning guns would be as big of a social change as providing basic income, housing and healthcare if not bigger.
To give just one example of many, we don’t have any expectation that the police will protect us. I don’t mean that policing is an inherently oppressive system of hierarchical violence based on slave patrols, but that our court system has literally ruled that the police don’t have any requirement to protect us from crime. We are expected legally to protect ourselves against violence.
What kind of changes would that society need to make if suddenly only criminals had guns (I can see why people love to deploy that one, it slaps)?
That’s just one small aspect of how guns are a part of America and while I appreciate your desire to cut through the gordian knot, I hope it clarifies some of what makes your deceptively simple proposal problematic.
If you want to dive into the type of anger you’re gonna see, think about how nfa stamp havers and other license holders would be affected. When Jim gets visited by the cops he goes to the range with, even if they don’t open up saying “you don’t have your guns anymore, right Jim big wink” he can still claim to have sold or lost them and be fine. When Nancy gets visited by those same cops she doesn’t have any capacity to lie, because as an owner of nfa items or a c&r license holder she’s required to keep records of not just her guns and suppressors and sears, but also their disposal. Despite having dutifully submitted to a much more in depth background check, extensive waiting period, surprise inspection, additional taxes and mandatory record keeping, Nancy can’t just lie and say her guns fell off the truck or that she already sold them. The atf agent has a list of serialized components she’s responsible for.
The person who followed all the rules faces harsher penalties!
What I’m trying to make clear is how complex, cumbersome and expansive such a seemingly straightforward policy would be even if everyone agreed to comply. When you factor in the lack of full compliance it gets even harder to endorse and when you say “what would you have me do, improve society?” it becomes plain old silly to do all that work when you could get the same results by providing housing, income and health care to all with the added benefit of now having housing, income and healthcare.
I don’t see why it has to be one or the other. Getting rid of guns is just one step towards a better society. We can have a higher minimum wage, healthcare and also not have citizens walking around with rifles that came decimate a crowd.
Lazy cops aren’t a reason to have every citizen armed. It’s laughable to bring up criminals since they are only armed because of how easy guns are to aquire. Nobody is getting held up at gunpoint in fucking Canada. And if they did, it would be with a gun we sent over the border.
And ya, it’s complex but when has that ever been a reason not to do the right thing? We send people into space ffs, and again, less complex than curing society of stress.
Ask yourself, and I mean really ask yourself what guns are bringing to your life that’s so worth it.
And no, it’s not safety because having so many guns around, statistically half of them in the hands of people with below average intellect, inherently creates a very unsafe environment and it also makes sure all the criminals have guns as well.