Gun control in the US

[Fraudornot]

With the assassination of Charlie Kirk looking like it’s been carried out by someone probably suffering from mental health issues with access to guns, why are Americans so unwilling to address gun control. I would love to hear from Americans to know why there is the reluctance.

Can you imagine what a bloody mess it would lead to - literally?

And even if the law-abiding complied and surrendered their guns, the law-breakers wouldn’t. So what’s the point?

Agree. It's a odd country which is pro life until a baby is born but then more pro guns after. Women really are at the bottom of the pile.

If you truly want to understand it, you need to find a right you personally consider to be fundamental, and work out how removing it in some way could save lives.

So, say, if it were clear that removing the right of women to go out without a male chaperone would reduce killings, saving 10,000 lives per year in the UK, would you give up the right for women to go out alone?

Or would you find all sorts of other ways you think the issue could/should/would be addressed better, short of removing that right?

(I hope it's obvious I'm neither supporting the idea above, nor saying it would save lives. Probably the opposite. Find a different example if you prefer. But you need to think of something you personally really highly value, and once you do, you'll probably find yourself making the same type of arguments about how of course that right can't be taken away, that would be absurd, of course other solutions need to be found, etc.)

This is the analogy I made with drinking alcohol. If alcohol was banned so many lives would be saved. But do people want to give up their freedom to drink alcohol to save those lives?

I'm anti-guns but I think it's a sobering thought when you make the analogy to alcohol.

No country which has had as widespread gun culture and gun ownership as the US has managed to successfully ban guns.

America has tried to ban alcohol and failed, and has tried to ban drugs, and failed. Both just took the control of those things out of the legal sphere and made criminals very rich as a result.

American here (grew up in the UK), it blows my mind that people are so willing to accept something like this. The guns are the problem. It's beyond clear. Why they can't acknowledge this, I'll never know. Looking to the gun amnesties in Australia in the 90s and the impacts, there is a way out. At the very least automatic and semi automatic weapons should only be for military. It is sickening and saddening what is happening today. The republicans will twist this crisis into a "sick individual/mentally unwell discussion" while completely ignoring the root problem. I mean trump almost got his head taken off by a shooter. When does this end?! People rely on the constitution, which was designed to be re-written every 20 or so years, and view it as some holy document that is unmodifiable. It is just truly so sad that people can't get out of their own ways to create a safer society.

So you ban guns. What next?

School shootings decrease

In very simple terms I think it’s because there’s no point shutting the stable doors after all the horses have bolted.

We cannot comprehend this because our stable doors were never freely open.

I can't imagine how gun control would work over there now. There are so many guns, estimated to be 120 per 100 people. It would be impossible to track them all down, a lot wouldn't give them up willingly and who is going to wrestle them from them? It's too far gone at this point. I can't see how it would ever get to a point where someone who wants one for nefarious reasons wouldn't be able to get one.

Ban the sale of ammunition? I know some people would make their own, but I assume most people would simply run out.

The reason we hold on to the second amendment is because the British took away the colonist guns and they couldn't fight back We are allowed to protect ourselves from both our government and foreign threats. I didn't read anything about the killer being crazy and his family were hunters like many.

It takes a while and some learning but it will eventually sink in.

OTOH, if I was an American, aware of the constitution and fearful for my democracy there's no way I'd hand my weapons in atm. Not with a rapist, lying, corrupt, President who has zero respect for the Constitution or the office he holds, in power.

The way that these are described as "God-given rights" is utterly baffling to me. I can't say that I've ever read a bible from cover to cover but I don't ever recall reading "and the Lord decreed that every man shalt have an AR15".

Though it does seem that these people only care about the first and second amendments. The ones guaranteeing due process and birthright citizenship are hated by MAGA.

How many deaths are caused because an incel got hold of their parents' guns? How many accidents happen because kids mess with loaded guns carelessly left lying about the house? Not all gun deaths are caused by criminals, many are the result of people who were perfectly "law-abiding" being careless.

Here in the UK we have rules about how weapons are stored. Ammunition must be stored seperately. Introducing similar rules to the US would go some way to reducing the five figure death toll. As would requiring private sales to be registered in the same way that commercial traders are.

The law breakers are currently in power in the US.

So I kind of get why Americans feel the need to hold onto their weapons. The 2nd ammendment exists so they can overthrow damaging, tyrannical regimes like Trump's.

This doesn't make sense to me because Trump is trampling all over their beloved constitution.

Trump is the reason the Founding Fathers granted Americans the right to bear arms in the first place.

I expect the NRA to step up at any minute now, to defend American democracy.

Some of their regulations on hunting were stricter than many in Europe, number of certain species was controlled. No shooting in hours of darkness. State by State and may not be up to date.

Because they are too stupid and too arrogant to see that every school shooting, every dead child, is down to them, their policies and is their own fault.

They have a murder rate that is 5 per 100,000 people per annum. The UK has a rate of 0.95 per 100,000 people per annum. Other places in Europe are lower.

Think about that. Five times as many deaths. They knowingly & happily settle for all those extra deaths. All that extra pain and grief. Just sick.

I have no sympathy for Charlie Kirk at all but my heart bleeds for his children.

When that part of the constitution was written, I assume that automatic weaponry didn't exist. The constitution hasn't kept pace with modern technology.

If Americans want to uphold the right to bear arms, why can't it be restricted to the type of weapon that was available at the point in time when that amendment came in? At least then there would be a reduction in the numbers slaughtered.

There's a good argument to say that all killers have mental health issues

What rules would you have brought in that would have prevented this particular incident with Charlie Kirk?

I haven’t seen a single thing to say that The shooter had a criminal record, a history of mental illness, was underage, didn’t own the gun license etc.

Apart from a complete ban? Which realistically is never going to happen.

I could see you could have a ban on weapons in particular spaces e.g University campuses, but then the assassin would have just shot Charlie Kirk somewhere else.

This is completely different from the horrendous tragedies at many schools over the years, where often the killers could have been prevented by just slightly more stringent rules. But the Americans won’t even go for that!

I really think it is a hopeless case in the US and in particular it is pointless anyone outside of their peculiar culture trying to understand it.

I think they are completely bonkers but I wouldn’t try and impose my world view on them any more than I would on many other cultures that I disagree with but don’t fully understand.

The thing is that it is so ingrained. There are guns manufactured for children. You wouldn't let a 7 year old drive a car but you can give them a gun as a birthday present.

And that's it. You don't need a gun safe, a licence of some type any training and any move to bring in any of that is resisted.

I can understand families shooting to feed them selves and to control vermin but I don't think anyone needs a machine gun for that.

But again - these rules and regulations are fine when people follow them. But a hell of a lot of people won’t. And no one can make them!

The law-abiding might comply, but it won’t make a blind bit of difference to the law-breakers, and considering the amount of guns in the US - 500 million of them! - who on earth is going to enforce these rules? The army, the police? The scale of gun ownership makes it an impossibility. It just can’t be done.