America's Gun Control

Yes

@route111 do you live in the uk ?

Not at all. Pointing out how hardened a lot of the hand wringers here actually are allowing migrants to be murdered by their callous indifference.

"you’d have to be pretty hardened not to care about children being murdered in school, repeatedly, wherever the country."

More whataboutery. If you want to discuss immigration policies, go and start your own thread.

@route111 Not sure what you're on about there but any child dying in any way is horrible

Why do we care about children being killed even though they're in another country? Do I really need to answer that?

The US isn't a full democracy. There are very serious flaws in the system and most politicians are in the pay of someone.

Except when it's migrant children being killed at sea because of inhumane asylum policies that people vote for - then it's OK.

‘and as I say, the genie is out of the bottle, and you can't get it back in.’

thats a weaknassed argument, often dragged out by people who do t want to give up their assault rifles.
the bad buys have guns, WE need guns … it’s too late to do anything about it …

And the weapons get more and more powerful, cheaper and more available.
Guns for kids - smaller, lighter, more accurate to shoot, faster. Guns for women, smaller lighter.
The bullets get cheaper, and are developed to do more and more damage as they hit the human body - saves money when one bullet is guaranteed to destroy the internal organs.

Arms companies wouldn’t be spending millions developing these weapons if there wasn’t a huge market for them. Children deaths are funding their research, and profits.

My in laws live in a very gun heavy state.Most households have guns, they do gun safety classes in the high school, kids hunt from 11/12 years old if not before.
It does not feel safe, knowing that everyone - regardless of their mental health, attitude,
politics, health - is armed.
Everyone knows someone or a family affected by gun crime, or by ‘poor’ behaviour around guns - ie mixing booze with guns, drugs with guns, illegal hunting and on and on.
There are times it feels like one big tinder box about to go up.

And the NRA lobby is massively influencial

and as I say, the genie is out of the bottle, and you can't get it back in.

@Wallaw I don't have the evidence but he produced some research or other that did say that. Logically it makes sense. If a woman or man was carrying a gun and an attacker produced a knive or even a gun, then you stand a better chance as the victim of surviving. warped logic I know, but its still logic.

This. If this kind of news doesn't make you shudder and break you heart, nothing will

‘What I don't understand is why anyone outside if the States cares about this.’

you’d have to be pretty hardened not to care about children being murdered in school, repeatedly, wherever the country.

‘We couldn't punish Hamilton, so we punished the innocent.’

is that what we did? Or did we acknowledge that the type of people who want to carry around hand guns are almost certainly the very people who shouldn’t be allowed to?

How many mass shootings have we had since our gun laws were tightened? How many schools shootings?
Speaks for itself, doesn’t it.

This really just isn't true. A large majority of Americans support at least some level of gun control. The problem is that a vast, unwieldy patchwork of state and federal laws and statutes and an intentionally bent reading of a constitutional amendment coupled with politicians bought and paid for by the gun lobby, make figuring out how to enact any kind of reform extremely difficult.

https://www.axios.com/2022/06/05/gun-control-laws-poll-prioritize

What I don't understand is why anyone outside if the States cares about this. Americans are well informed, they know what's happening. They are a democracy, they can change things if they want. Truth us, they're happy with the status quo. All the children that die, at school or at home when they get hold of mommy's gun, that's a price they are willing to pay. As long as no fetus is killed in utro, they're not right bothered what happens to them thereafter. Strange but there you go.

I can see you have a big issue in US in terms of criminals keeping guns but changes here have resulted in no school shootings for a long time

This is a huge positive and children not safe from shootings at school is something I’d avoid

I got into this argument with a guy in America and he provided evidence that you were safer as a citizen if you did carry a gun.

Asking the responsible citizens to surrender guns is crazy if you know criminals will keep there's. If I lived in America I'd have a gun.

What was his evidence? Because there is none that supports this.

The trained police in the Uvalde shooting declined to go in and try to save young schoolchildren because they were afraid of the shooter's gun. Time and time again armed guards fail to stop these shootings. Do you really believe the average citizen is going to be a cool-handed hero and/or save themselves?

Many years ago, a relative of mine was at a scene where a gun was shot in a crowded area (not an AR-15 type with massive firepower). Guess what? The scene was absolute fucking chaos, even when the police arrived. It was almost impossible to figure out who the original shooter was in the mayhem. One person was injured. If others had randomly started shooting back, people would have been killed.

For what it's worth, I'm American and lived there until we moved to the UK quite a few years ago and I have never seen a gun other than the standard hunting rifle my father-in-law used to use on occasion and those carried by armed police.

A lot of people seem to think that the US could go from the present free-for-all to a UK-style of strictness overnight, or at least relatively quickly. I don't think this is the case at all. In the UK we've had a century of restrictions being tightened to get to where we are now and it would be hopelessly optimistic to imagine that the US would be able to progress any faster. Especially given the climate today in the US is much more gun-centric than it was here a hundred years ago. Private gun ownership in the UK back then was a lot lower than the rate of more than one gun to a person the US has now.

If the US were to tighten restrictions they would need to figure out a way to ensure that it wasn't just the legally-held firearms handed in, it wasn't just the responsible owners handing them in. A UK-style amnesty and then outright ban would just mean it left guns in the hands of criminals, emboldened because they knew that people were less likely to be able to fight back.

As to why America has so many guns, I think the cultural element is often missed. Guns were a necessary part of daily life for so long in a way that wasn't the case elsewhere. For centuries, guns were truly needed - to ward off invasion, to overthrow the government, to protect against indiginous people angry about having their land taken away, to protect against wildlife, to protect against criminals in an age of expansion when the enforcement of the law depended on "good" people being able to outgun the bad.

Many police forces in the US operate on the "deputy" system, a hangover from the days where sherriffs would swear in citizens to give them the power of the law and assist in catching/killing criminals.

Personally I think the balance needs to be somewhere between the US system and the UK system. Note that other countries around the world have much more relaxed gun laws than the UK does whilst not having a dramatically higher incidence of gun crime, especially mass shootings. Mass shootings are predominantly a US thing, aside from genuine terrorist attacks (I don't count most US shootings as terrorist incidents). They are fuelled by media coverage of other mass shootings - one incident inspires the next.

I got into this argument with a guy in America and he provided evidence that you were safer as a citizen if you did carry a gun. He was a rabid supporter of the NRA. I guess the genie is out of the bottle and however many guns are handed out to responsible citizens there are far more in the hands of criminals. Asking the responsible citizens to surrender guns is crazy if you know criminals will keep there's. If I lived in America I'd have a gun. The only thing they can possible do is restrict people having assault rifles and screening out people with dodgy mental health. Even that isn't done.

I am ignorant in the American law system so do forgive me (willing to learn if anyone replies!) - but is there not a way to tighten the law up? Make it harder to own certain types of guns, make it harder to get a license, etc,? like not get rid of the amendment but just make it harder and a longer process to be able to get a gun? And yearly or quarterly reviews of said licensing etc.?

again, I admit I am ignorant on the American law system so I am not sure if or how it would work in practice.

Wise words.

The safest places to live with the lowest level of crime both in the USA and in the UK are those with the highest level of LEGAL gun ownership.

Given the number of guns in the USA the only thing gun control would do is lower legal gun ownership, criminals would care.

The UK handgun ban " worked" because we never really had a problem prior to Dunblane. Had the local police force done its job properly that massacre would never have happened.

Gun crime in the UK is way higher than pre ban.

It's worth reading about the links to Thomas Hamilton and the local senior police.

Hand gun ownership was heavily policed and when the ban came in, every registered gun was handed in.

We couldn't punish Hamilton, so we punished the innocent.

Many in the USA believe they have an inherent right to ownership, that government doesn't grant rights to citizens. Taking their guns away or even registering them would lead to a war.

Funny how anti gun politicians, the first thing they do when they gain power is surround themselves with people carrying guns. UK too, not just the USA.

I am not saying I would wish USA style gun laws in the UK but it is far from the simple gun control is good stuff UK people often believe.

I own and enjoy firearms but even I baulk at America's unhealthy obsession with firearms, I don't believe there's any really easy fix, it's been developed since the 1700's and was cemented into their being during the 1800's, banning guns isn't going to happen; it's enshrined in their constitution and to try would just be a way to speed run into a civil war.

Or so many men being lazy abusive arseholes.

But still MNers keep discussing this things.