Political Memes

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.