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Why can't USA remove weapons from homes?

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Re: Why can't USA remove weapons from homes?

#31

Post by throwaway4good »

eimrine wrote: post #29
throwaway4good wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think Donbas would have been more peaceful and stable had there been more weapons there?!

I really think Donbas would have been more peaceful and less separatist if there had been more weapons before Strelkov's campaign of 2014. I can tell even more - there would be no Bucha massacre if any household of Bucha had something more powerful than a shotgun (50m effective range). And by the way, getting allowed for using even a hunting weapon in Ukraine requires passing through tremendous bureucracy. For exampl…

A large part of the population in Donbas is pro-Russian. So they would have guns too? Or would they not have guns?

Re: Why can't USA remove weapons from homes?

#32

Post by eimrine »

throwaway4good wrote: post #31
eimrine wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really think Donbas would have been more peaceful and less separatist if there had been more weapons before Strelkov's campaign of 2014. I can tell even more - there would be no Bucha massacre if any household of Bucha had something more powerful than a shotgun (50m effective range). And by the way, getting allowed for using even a hunting weapon in Ukraine requires passing through tremendous bureucracy. For exampl…

A large part of the population in Donbas is pro-Russian. So they would have guns too? Or would they not have guns?

They would have guns too, mr. Putin gave them much heavier weapons anyway. I would see a pro-Russian citizen of Ukraine with an ability to have a gun here but with no ability to have guns in the country they prefer - Russia.

Re: Why can't USA remove weapons from homes?

#33

Post by daviddever23box »

Nextgrid wrote: post #27
proc0 wrote: post #5

Why so much focus on the tools and not the problem? Crazy people will use whatever to harm others. Should we ban literally everything that could be harmful? Guns today, knives tomorrow, how about no more acid or cleaning supplies, then no more cars either since you can drive a truck through a crowd, right? I think addressing the underlying cause would be much more effective. A gun in a society full of healthy people…

Crazy people are everywhere and yet their destructive impact is greatly reduced if they don't have easy access to ranged deadly weapons.

Right - mass shootings are bad for (criminal) business, and are (at least in the United States) exclusively the domain of radical actors.

Put simply - America has a radicalization vector x mental health x access to rapid-fire guns problem. Take away the rapid-fire component (semi- or fully-automatic weapons) and that would significantly reduce the mass-shootings problem.

As far as the radicalization vector goes, the abolishing of Section 230 protections would be a good start (and I am grossly oversimplifying this).

I have no solutions for the mental health component; there are way too many factors to discuss here, related to insularity, economics, education and outcomes.

Re: Why can't USA remove weapons from homes?

#34

Post by EddieDante »

1. The US isn't a "fully democratic country". It's a republic with somewhat democratically elected officials.

2. The Constitution isn't easy to amend. Congress can move to amend the Constitution, or two thirds of the governments of the individual states can do so, but the people themselves don't have that authority. (Otherwise you'd see evangelicals pushing amendment after amendment to rip out the Establishment Clause and declare that the US is officially a "Christian nation".)

3. I won't give up my firearms until the police give up theirs. All I've got is a lever-action rifle. They've got AR-15s, which is basically a M-16 that can't do full auto.

Re: Why can't USA remove weapons from homes?

#36

Post by krapp »

Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #3

I don't know, from the outside it looks pretty wild to me. With all the shooting and rioting I see why a considerable proportion of the population sees the second amendment as still being highly relevant. It's the same thing with things like Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges. The most reasonable explanation why these are not constitutional amendments yet is that a considerable amount of Americans, at least over a…

The Second Amendment has the added catch that half the country is armed to the teeth and has promised to bathe the country in blood if anyone even tries to touch it... and that half would need to agree to allow a constitutional convention to begin with, which they never, ever will.

So it doesn't even matter how many Americans support it or don't, we literally just have to accept it either way at the point of a gun.

Re: Why can't USA remove weapons from homes?

#37

Post by krapp »

ddingus wrote: post #4

"What the people wish for" You imply the wish is for there to be no guns. The hard fact is that simply is not true. Americans have a wide range of opinion on the matter ranging from no guns, through various scenarios where there are guns and various ownership scenarios and regulations, and through to gun ownership being basically unfettered. Sidebar: The US currently is not a fully Democratic nation! It is a Republic…

>My own take on guns, given the lack of consensus and the solid nature of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, is robust gun education made mandatory for everyone as part of their basic education on their way to adulthood.

This violates the Second Amendment, as it would be a means for the government to infringe upon the right to keep and bear arms. As written, that right permits no qualifiers, limitations or responsibilities.

States could potentially make gun education mandatory for gun ownership, but of course many (including Texas) simply wouldn't.

Also, means testing has a bad history of being used to disenfranchise certain demographics, and I can easily see mandatory gun education being used to deny people of color access to firearms simply as a product of government only providing necessary educational resources to white majority areas.

You can have the Second Amendment, or effective gun legislation, but under the current definition of the former by the Supreme Court you can't have both.

Re: Why can't USA remove weapons from homes?

#38

Post by proc0 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #27
proc0 wrote: post #5

Why so much focus on the tools and not the problem? Crazy people will use whatever to harm others. Should we ban literally everything that could be harmful? Guns today, knives tomorrow, how about no more acid or cleaning supplies, then no more cars either since you can drive a truck through a crowd, right? I think addressing the underlying cause would be much more effective. A gun in a society full of healthy people…

Crazy people are everywhere and yet their destructive impact is greatly reduced if they don't have easy access to ranged deadly weapons.

Sure, but I don't think that's feasible, and it would just leave those who break the law with the guns they currently have and probably will not be taken away because police would have done that already. The discussion is typically how can we get law abiding citizens to not have guns. This is accusing everyone of being a potential killer, when you might need to protect yourself in places that police might not be quick enough or even available.

Re: Why can't USA remove weapons from homes?

#39

Post by proc0 »

pjc50 wrote: post #6
proc0 wrote: post #5

Why so much focus on the tools and not the problem? Crazy people will use whatever to harm others. Should we ban literally everything that could be harmful? Guns today, knives tomorrow, how about no more acid or cleaning supplies, then no more cars either since you can drive a truck through a crowd, right? I think addressing the underlying cause would be much more effective. A gun in a society full of healthy people…

> addressing the underlying cause would be much more effective That runs into the first amendment. It's not that these people are ""crazy"" in a medical sense, they're radicalized. They proceed in an anger-fuelled response to things they believe. Which they believe because other people have told them. Both on the internet and in regular media. From a medical point of view, they're ""functioning"". It's notable that s…

Getting radicalized also has underlying causes. If everyone was at risk of this most people would be radicals, but of course most people listen to stuff like conspiracy theories and dismiss them quickly enough. Why not treat the problem in a way that focuses on this small part of the population that is susceptible to becoming radicalized? In other words, we know most people don't fall into that, so why treat everyone as a potential radical, instead of seeing what the difference is and trying to close the gap.

Re: Why can't USA remove weapons from homes?

#40

Post by thatwasunusual »

proc0 wrote: post #23
thatwasunusual wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why so much focus on the tools and not the problem? What if the tool in question is _made_ for killing? If you think it's just as easy to kill a lot of people with a knife as with a gun, you're in for a surprise.

Regardless of the design of the object, it is the person who uses it. Obviously many guns are not for killing people, and those that are exist for protection. The real question is how would you collect the guns from criminals... they can't even collect their guns now, since I guess they wouldn't just hand them in without a fight. How would a new law solve this problem? Criminals will still hold on to what they have,…

> Obviously many guns are not for killing people, [...]

This is utter bullshit. ALL guns are made for _killing_. It's irrelevant who - or what - is being killed. You can of course say the same about knives, but they aren't all the effective.

> The real question is how would you collect the guns from criminals...

That would indeed be a problem, but the priority should be to stop selling weapons to people who obviously doesn't need them. No one needs to own automatic rifles. Australia was able to deal with the problem decades ago.

> Criminals will still hold on to what they have, and such a law would only put innocent people at risk.

Again, utter bullshit. You are under the impression that criminals LIKE to shoot people, like they have nothing better to do. Sure, there will be killings, but criminals are also people; they only fire their weapon if they feel they have to.

If less people have guns, there will be less escalation of conflict. That's why we in Norway strive to have our police force not to carry weapons all the time; we know that if the criminals _know_ that the police they encounter carry weapons, then the criminals will also carry weapons, and people will get killed.

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