Political Memes

Gunowners don't like licenses because if the goverment can decide who owns guns, then they'll use it to keep guns out of the hands of people they don't like.

New York City abuses its may-issue system to prevent anyone from obtaining a license to carry concealed, unless you pay high bribes to the police (or are police).

Most gun laws disproportionately affect the poor. Polities such as New York State require people undergo a certified training course before they can purchase a handgun (police excepted of course). I see people complaining that a single day of voting is insufficent, that their hourly job doesn't leave them a window to go vote. This is much worse with a carry course, where you have to perfectly attend multiple classes that you're paying hundreds of dollars to attend. It's a steep cost to exercise a right.

These are addressable problems: all handgun licenses should be shall-issue if you meet the requirements, mandated training courses should be free and people should be compensated for their time like jury duty.

As for the "you shouldn't even talk about gun laws unless you can tell a .45 from a 9 mm in the dark" part/is that really so unreasonable, minus the hyperbole? When Republicans use phrases like "If it's a legitimate rape, the body has ways of shutting it down" and then try to claim that life starts when the heart does, is it OK that they are wildly wrong about the human body and are trying to legislate it?

In your opinion, what new benefits would requiring a license to own guns have? How will requiring this license supplement existing laws? Specifically, how would this change improve the gun "problem?"

Maybe the people you talk to who claim to be well versed in firearm safety oppose licensing requirements like this because they're well versed in existing gun laws and the culture war against ownership? Not because "muh guns!"

Your grandparents could've mail-ordered machine guns to their doorstep, no background check required. Hell, when they were kids, they could've walked into a corner store and bought a rifle with their saved up lunch money. That's what my grandpa did.

If gun laws have only gotten stricter over this time, then why are mass shootings essentially a new thing? What changed between now and then that could explain it? Living conditions have plummeted, people are poorer, breaking the poverty cycle is basically impossible, our public schools aren't getting proper funding, prisons are cruel and don't reform, college tuition has skyrocketed, healthcare has become inaccessible, women are losing bodily rights, etc.

Unfucking our society in all the ways our corporate and political elite have fucked it would do more to curb violence than anything else. Why would anyone mindlessly kill others if society's worth living in?

The US doesn’t have a problem with fully automatic or select fire weapons. They exist, sure. But given they’ve been banned since 1986 and are prohibitively expensive to own, requiring multiple tax stamps and hoops to jump through, they are almost assuredly not used in violent crime. Or for anything other than hobbyist activities.

What seems to garner the most attention here are semi-automatic rifles with removable magazines. There is almost nothing mechanical differentiating an AR-15 or similar rifle from a common hunting or farming rifle like the Ruger American Rifle. They’re often mislabeled an “assault weapon”, a term without a concrete definition, or worse an “assault rifle” which does have a concrete definition that aligns to the very guns you call out as not having practical use. Namely, to qualify as an assault rifle, it must be capable of select fire or fully automatic fire.

Ironically, most acts of violence committed using a firearm are done with pistols, which outside of demonstrably ineffective magazine limitations have gone widely untouched by proposed or enacted gun control efforts. Which is especially ironic considering that the NFA was enacted in 1934 primarily focused on handguns - this is why the US has restrictions on ownership of short barreled rifles and shotguns, because the impetus was to focus on weapons which could be easily concealed. By the time the law was passed, however, pistols had been exempted, but the weird language around SBRs and SBSs was left intact.

Broadly, though, gun control in the US has been primarily motivated by class and racial division. Most of the FUD you hear about guns is directly the result of Reagan’s gun control policies as Governor of California in response to not wanting the Black Panthers to have legal access to firearms - which they were using to protect their neighborhoods from violent crime that police wouldn’t respond to. Criminalizing certain weapons gave police the ability to profile and discriminate against minorities under the guise of public safety, and we’ve been treading that water ever since.

The solution to America’s perceived gun problem is universal basic income and universal healthcare. Ending the war on drugs would help too. Without the stress of being impoverished and without having to worry about being able to afford medical care, people tend not to commit crimes. Most gun violence in the US is gang related, and US policies today systemically and disproportionately see the incarceration of people of color for violent and non-violent crime alike. Our penal system is geared for punishment, not rehabilitation, so a person who is now a felon is left with very few options to make an honest living. People turn to gangs to make money, because without income you cannot live in this country.

Eliminate the poverty, decouple healthcare from employers, and stop criminalizing drugs - subsequently arresting and incarcerating so many people for non-violent offenses - and you dramatically reduce the likelihood of a person being left in desperation with few options outside of a life of crime. In turn, gang violence and gun crime overall will plummet.

We’re just too busy picking a team and rooting for the other team’s destruction to actually attack the root of the problem, because doing that might make people realize that it’s all been set up like this to keep us from looking at the class division more closely.

Another sane approach by NZ.

Yanks seem to think that in countries with gun control, you can't get a gun. I could get one if I want. If I needed a shotgun or a deer rifle, I could easily acquire one.

Literally nobody needs an automatic rifle or a pistol, other than to kill another human.

It's that simple, but I think the decades of leaded petrol makes it a bit difficult for them to comprehend

It's not "perceived" as a right, it literally IS a right, enumerated in the Constitution and confirmed excessively by precedents set in the highest court. There will be no change to that right without an Amendment ratified by 75% of the 50 US states.

Please don't give them any ideas. I don't want any more freedom!

I don't think you comprehend the vastness and remoteness of the American West.

There are places where the law enforcement response time is over an hour simply because it takes that long for the one deputy working the county to drive from one side of the country to the other. There's no point in having more deputies working a county where there are only 2 people living per square mile. Nor is there the finances to hire additional police protection.

Most of the USA that is not the case, but it is a reality for some places in the lower 48 states. Alaska is that to another level.

Police funding is a function of city or county, and sometimes state population. Metro area have the funding. Rural places just can't afford to employ enough police to reduce response time to under 30 minutes.

Fortunately an unmanned air strike is still considered an unacceptable response to a police assistance request.

There's a saying "when seconds count, the police are only minutes away". That's a best case scenario and usually only true if you're in a good neighborhood in the suburbs. The police can take hours to respond to a call, and that's when you don't live in the boonies. Rural people need to be able to take care of themselves for the most part.

I have certainly met them, both online and in person. One of my best friends is one of them. He thinks all guns everywhere should be banned. He gets angry that one of my hobbies is target shooting. He can't comprehend that I'm enjoying it for the challenge it is, and not training to mass murder people with my single shot, bolt action rifle.

Just because you havent met them, doesn't mean they don't exist.

I personally know LOTS of people who feel that way. My best friend feels that way. And although I do not feel that way, I do empathise with that position. To suggest no one feels that way seems out of touch to me.