America's Gun Control

Because the post I replied to made no sense.

I know nothing but an interested why do you say this

This is the case in many countries, not just America.

Automatic weapons are almost always registered with the Feds.

You don't know much about guns, do you?

My SIL now asks if there are guns in the house her kid is having a sleepover at. Answer is always yes.
Are they in a locked cabinet with ammo held separately? Then kid can go to the play date.
if not. Then she politely tells them she won’t be sending her kid round.

@Florenz that’s BS and the rhetoric of the Republicans - the government are going to attack you for your guns!
I thought these ‘good guys’ were law abiding citizens? Suddenly they will break the law?

stop sales of assault rifles and their type, gun amnesty, buy back the guns, campaign and explain, make it socially unacceptable to own weapons of war, then enforce the handing over of illegal
weapons with fines and consequences, while explaining to Bob, Bubba and the other morons why normal people do NOT need automatic weapons.
It’s a culture change and may take a generation or more.
but what’s your alternative? Sit around while you wonder if your kids are going to get murdered at school? In the mall? At church? In the cinema?

AT the end of the day, if the US wants to ban guns, or ban some kinds of guns, people would have to accept the US government forcing their way into otherwise innocent people's homes and forcibly taking their guns from them, which would involve killing them in many instances.

It would be a nightmare. Sales of unregistered/black market guns would skyrocket. Criminals would be making fortunes and America would be split asunder.

Can something be done? Of course. Overnight? No. But gradually automatic weapons, weapons of war, can be taken out of daily US life.

It’s the same old same old. People claiming they want something done, while declaring ‘nothing’ can be done.
you’d think the ‘greatest’ nation on earth might be able to start coming up with solutions, or at least listen to the ideas others have of what to do and where to start.

I totally sympathise with the Americans who want gun reform and just know they are up against it, it must be so demoralising. Its the Americans who say a gun is my right and I'm going to have one and u can't stop me that I have a problem with. These people I say don't care about dead children. And u do have them people obviously who live there. We have had a few on this thread. Conveniently they haven't replied when asked about caring about dying children.

Great. Now just tell us how to get it through again, ok? Because I really don't think any of us on the latter part of this thread are voting for politicians who are against this.

You all just keep saying the same things over and over again, patting yourselves on the back for your moral superiority and solutions that fail to take the real world into account.

I was also going to mention Moms Demand Action. A very interesting grassroots group lobbying for gun control and helping candidates to run for various offices on anti-gun platforms.

https://momsdemandaction.org/about/victories/

I wish more than anything that could be reinstated, but the political atmosphere and the number of assault rifles in circulation are very different from how things were in 1994.

I don't need to suggest anything novel. There's a proven way of reducing gun deaths, one actually tried in the US with some apparent success. It was the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act 1994. It prohibited the manufacture (for civilian use) of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines. It wouldn't stop every mass shooting by any means, but it would be a start.

It's their choice to have the right to bear arms. But I just cannot get my head round the lack of controls around them

That to me, yes is stupid

How to demonstrate that you don't understand anything about America while not saying that you don't understand anything about America...

Thoughts and prayers are for people powerless to make meaningful change. Politicians shouldn’t be wittering on about thoughts and prayers, outside of their private lives.

Never called anyone dim (unlike some posters on here who have called a whole population of people stupid, idiots, uncaring etc etc) but the fact is many posters on here don't get it. A lot of people want to change gun laws and are working to do that but our system makes that really f-ing hard. Not lack of concern on the public's side (or at least not the majority) but Citizens United, a stacked supreme court, a patchwork of local and federal laws which tend to give priority to those who are often the minority, corrupt and over lobbied politicians who have been in power way too long and have got way too comfortable, governors who don't give a shit because they know that their state leans towards gun ownership and they don't want to touch that third rail of politics. My point is that saying people on this thread don't care about dead children is insulting when most of the people responding are those who live in the place where they fear their own child dying and are desperately trying to better the situation. Look at moms demand action for a group of people who are actively working to change laws and where they can't change them, are standing for political positions and changing the system from the inside. Look at the people who took a day off today to march to the state capitol on Tennessee to call on their elected representatives to do something. Look at newly elected house reps standing in hallways shouting at their Republican colleagues to do something. Sigh.

Instead, the three-term congressman from Tennessee suggestedthat Americans should focus on more thoughts and prayers

Fucking hell, there was me thinking that "thoughts and prayers" was just a meaningless platitude typed on Facebook so that people can ensure that they're publicly seen to care about something (a form of virtue signalling), but here we have a congressman who actually thinks that it'll solve anything.

Can’t argue with stupid.

You are dealing with people who think the solution to school shootings is to arm teachers.

@StarmanBobby - your outrage is noted. Now please suggest how we stupid Americans actually bring about the reforms that so many of us want while staying within the limitations and practical possibilities of our constitution and political system. And when you've done that, suggest how to get millions of people to hand over previously legal guns while making sure that criminals also comply with the law.

Any of us who live here and agree that the situation is awful are already support the politicians who might be prepared to introduce legislation to ban assault weapons and tighten up the law otherwise. If only we could get the politicians who disagree with us and the people who vote for them cooperate as well, and then get an ultra right- wing Supreme Court to not knock such legislation down...

Frankly your outrage just comes over to us as virtue signalling.

Right now the Ar-15 is the fav assault weapon of choice for the American people, but what happens when a faster, more powerful one is developed? Does everyone get to own that one too?

@newyorker74 sigh away. Like the rest of the world are dim and just don’t get it, while your children practice shooter drills in primary school, your politicians argue that the answer is more guns for the ‘good ’ guys and in the mean time, fuck all changes and the rest of us just wait for the inevitable need that there’s been another, yet another, Mass shooting with assault weapons.

There were an average 40% fewer gun-related deaths per year during the years 1994 to 2004.

That might suggest that something was going on during that decade which acted as at least a partial solution to the problem of angsty adolescents buying assault rifles on their eighteenth birthdays and going on shooting sprees shortly thereafter.