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Original poster

Why can’t America ban automatic weapons?

905 replies

MaryPoppinsPenguins · 14/02/2018 22:42

I don’t get it. I honestly don’t. After Sandy Hook that should have been enough... statistics speak for themselves.

Why? What don’t I get?

OP posts:
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26
Julie8008 · 15/02/2018 00:43
  1. The USA has been 'brainwashed' in the right to own a gun for so long it is ingrained in their society.
  2. Their education system isn't very good.
  3. Half the population have below average intelligence.
  4. The high percentage of literal Bible believers gives them a 'divine' justification to be good 'Christian Soldiers'.
  5. Their lack of health care for the poorest means mental health problems aren't treated.
  6. They dont believe in collective well being due to the historical threat of communist Russia, so its every man for themselves.
  7. And lets not forget the classic, 'Guns dont kill people, people kill people'.

On the plus side, gun manufactors are going bankrupt because ironically Trump has been very bad for business.

Plumsofwrath · 15/02/2018 00:45

The root of it is that there are just so many people with the same sense of absolute righteousness (grounded in religious belief, “freedom”, the Consitution as they choose to read it, whatever) as NotAnotherEmma.

They believe their bullshit so utterly and completely that if you question it they take it as an attack on their very being. As though you’re questioning their human rights, basic actual rights as a human being. They are insular and have no self-doubt, and they come at you with (sometimes literally) guns blazing, if you dare suggest that there are any flaws in their right to gun ownership. Their arguments never make any sense, because they’re not grounded in fact. They’ve been peddled a story, told in language that often uses words like ‘freedom’, ‘rights’, ‘liberty’ and ‘God’, and they buy into it with all their believing cells.

It’s ingrained in their psyche. You’ll never be able to pry weapons from these people’s hands. It’s the American way.

MaximilianNero · 15/02/2018 00:57

3) Half the population have below average intelligence
Well...yes. Even if everyone in America had an IQ of over 150, half of those people would still be below the average!

I don't think it will ever happen, high level lobbyists are too dogmatic and invested in preventing even really moderate measures involving background checks etc, even things that the majority of gun owners would support.

iggleypiggly · 15/02/2018 01:06

The NRA give too much money to the government... so today is the **18th school shooting of 2018... school has roughly been 31 days (obviously exc holidays/weekends) ... it’s hideous, these poor innocent children. How can anyone defend legal guns????

GrockleBocs · 15/02/2018 01:06

Many years ago I read an NRA magazine that claimed Glasgow was more dangerous than any city in the USA. It cited all sorts of hospital admissions and police reports but didn't actually quote mortality rates.
It also subscribed to the idea that all the bad guys have guns and to disarm the good guys is akin to unilateral disarmament and every right thinking person will be shot on their front porch.
So large swathes of the US are afraid to disarm and genuinely believe everywhere else is less safe.
The UK never had that gun culture. Guns were shocking here 40 years ago and we pulled further back. I don't know how the US can pull back. And so more teens will murder more teens. Sad

Nibledbyducks · 15/02/2018 01:09

The USA...can buy a gun in the supermarket, but can't be trusted with a kinder egg....

nocoolnamesleft · 15/02/2018 01:20

We last had a mass shooting in the UK in 2010 (Cumbrian shootings). We last had a school mass shooting in the UK in 1996 (Dunblane).

Proper gun control saves lives. Demonstrably. I prefer to live in a country that prioritises the lives of their citizens in general, and their children in particular, over a fetishisation of military grade weaponry.

bluepears · 15/02/2018 02:04

the stats do speak for them selves news.gallup.com/poll/21346/crime-rate-lower-united-states-canada-than-britain.aspx

iggleypiggly · 15/02/2018 02:13

bluepears some more stars for you

www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/world-us-canada-41488081

iggleypiggly · 15/02/2018 02:13

*stats

bluepears · 15/02/2018 02:14

The USA...can buy a gun in the supermarket, but can't be trusted with a kinder egg....

err u can buy kinder eggs in the usa www.walmart.com/ip/Kinder-Joy-Candy-0-7-oz-Container/761513725

annandale · 15/02/2018 02:17

Because the Constitution allows them to be owned.

An amendment to the constitution is required.

bluepears · 15/02/2018 02:18

igeek.com/w/images/0/05/USvUKAdjust.png banning guns would not help any way

ineedamoreadultieradult · 15/02/2018 02:19

Guns don't kill people, people kill people. But they kill far fewer people if they don't have a gun!

BitterLittlePoster · 15/02/2018 02:19

Still I'd like to give a shout out to my beloved S&W 38 revolver, my Larue Tactical AR-15, and heck even my Spyderco Civilian knife. You're all still in my thoughts this Valentine's Day.

I feel this whole thread is in bad taste. Every time there is a shooting tragedy in my home country everyone and their mother wants to use it as an excuse to push their anti gun agenda.

Fuck that. It's my country too. Twenty five and six year olds were killed with an AR-15. Twenty. Five year olds. And six year olds. With an AR-15. First he killed his mother with her own gun. Did you know that? Kept her real safe, didn't it?

I can't think of many things in worse taste then using people's deaths to push personal political opinions and laws. Family's lost people and others can't wait to line up and use that for political reasons.

Fuck this too. Joking about missing the type of gun that's often used in mass shootings on a day in which 17 teenagers were killed is way worse.

People like you are why this keeps happening.

ineedamoreadultieradult · 15/02/2018 02:21

*The USA...can buy a gun in the supermarket, but can't be trusted with a kinder egg....

err u can buy kinder eggs in the usa www.walmart.com/ip/Kinder-Joy-Candy-0-7-oz-Container/761513725*

That's not a proper kinder egg with a toy in it though. You can't buy those in the USA in case someone accidentally eats the toy!

bluepears · 15/02/2018 02:22

That's not a proper kinder egg with a toy in it though. You can't buy those in the USA in case someone accidentally eats the toy!
it has a toy in (which you would know if you bothered to click on the link)

iggleypiggly · 15/02/2018 02:24

bluepears I feel sad that you are so brainwashed you can’t see the truth... you value your gun laws more than lives? I love that my dc go to school and I don’t have to fear them being shot, I’m glad that they don’t have to do gun safety training ‘incase’ a shooter gets into their school, I’m glad that that isn’t inbred into them as CHILDREN. In England we have fire drill training... I’m glad that my dc are free in their school and that parents can visit it (not do online tours due to safety) . This is the 18th SCHOOL shooting in 2018 the children have been in school approximately 31 days...

ineedamoreadultieradult · 15/02/2018 02:26

bluepears the toy is seperatley from the chocolate. In a proper kinder egg the yoynis inside the chocolate! Anyway more important things need discussing than kinder eggs.

ineedamoreadultieradult · 15/02/2018 02:27

Toy is

bluepears · 15/02/2018 02:29

This reply has been deleted

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katzensocken · 15/02/2018 02:33

Echoing other posters that gun control saves lives.

Mass killing can so easily be achieved with a gun. It's quick, it requires little skill (to fire into a crowd of panicked people) and perhaps most importantly, allows the shooter to distance themselves from what they are actually doing. As gun lovers always say, 'if they didn't use a gun they would use something else.' Most wouldn't. Because they wouldn't be able to go ahead and kill so many with a knife, for example. A knife would be too up close and personal, and it would be much more difficult for them to reliably commit suicide with (if that's what they wished). Plus the obvious - they'd be tackled or shot down by police or bystanders before they could hurt many people.

I don't understand why gun positive folks don't get this. Murder (which yes of course we still have in the UK) is not mass murder. Nor is it mass murder on a very frequent basis, with often no rhyme or reason (as opposed to a targeted killing in the UK from one person to another, or a gang related killing, etc.) It's the sheer loss of life on one occasion at the whimsy of one person that is shocking to us. And it could be prevented with the appropriate laws, but logic doesn't apply apparently.

iggleypiggly · 15/02/2018 02:36

bluepears you really aren’t showing your nation in a great light with your utter stupidity and lack of intelligence. The world can see facts, unfortunately you and some small minded Americans can’t ......

HelenaDove · 15/02/2018 02:36

The USA....................where its easier to obtain a gun than obtain an abortion.

Im in the UK and am horrified at what goes on over there. We just dont have a gun culture here and i see that as a good thing.

Spock25 · 15/02/2018 02:44

Read this article about the change in gun laws after the Port Arthur massscre in Australia 25 years ago.

www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-35048251

“In the 21 years since the laws were passed, about one million semi-automatic weapons - roughly one third of the country's firearms - were sold back to the government and destroyed, nearly halving the number of gun-owning households in Australia.

The number of Australia's mass shootings dropped from 11 in the decade before 1996, to zero in the years since.”

I honestly don’t know what has to happen for the laws to change.

I am a Brit living in America and guns are way up there in “things that keep me up at night”. As well as getting nuked by N. Korea 🙄