Being a fully democratic country, the policy makers should do what people wish for. Does that mean people do not want to change this stupid constitution which might have made sense when the country was wilder and people needed to be armed? No wonder the country is full of crazy people inside and outside the government.
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 is just a tool.
> 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 similar instances outside the US - e.g. the NZ mosque shooter - cite the same sources in their manifestoes.
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.
> 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, and such a law would only put innocent people at risk.
> 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.
> but the priority should be to stop selling weapons to people who obviously doesn't need them
If the government uses them, why not law abiding citizens? It's not like guns will disappear forever, they will still be in possession by government and anyone who wants to break the law. Regardless, you can never control anything 100%, people will STILL have guns, one way or another, just like anything else that's illegal but still exists.
> but criminals are also people; they only fire their weapon if they feel they have to.
Yes, when they feel like they have to take your stuff.
I think my basic point is that police is not efficient at solving crimes or preventing them, and that is a higher priority than preventing people from owning a gun because they could potentially get radicalized. Let's see crime under control first.
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.
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.
> those who break the law with the guns they currently have
Those who break the law regularly have the means & connections to buy a gun illegally.
I very much doubt distressed teenagers will have the money & connections to buy a gun illegally especially on short notice.
Definitely won't stop all crime (just like it doesn't even in countries where guns are illegal) nor resourceful, determined attackers, but would definitely cut down on crazy teenagers doing mass shootings.
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.
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 third of them, simply don't agree with it.
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.
I live in the UK and very few people have guns, even the police are not routinely armed. Yet, we still have these kind of events from time to time.
You could ban guns today and they will still be around for the next few hundred years. It's natural to search for answers in times like these but sometimes there just aren't any.
Realistically: no, we don't. The one and only school shooting, Dunblane, was a catalyst for the UK gun ban, and that was in the 1990s. There have been a few terrorist attacks carried out with bathtub-made explosives, some truck and knife terrorism, and a few shootings a year carried out mostly by organised crime.
The US shooting epidemic is far more deadly than the Troubles was, an actual paramilitary civil war.
The US has spent far more effort trying to ban abortion than to deal with school shootings.
The constitution doesn't constrain the US. The judges sitting on top of it are foremostly politicians - if they wanted to, they could take things in a different direction.
Indeed. The Roe V Wade overthrow shows how it's done. Judges are permanent legislators; it's been a critical part of the Republican project of past decades to pick them to ensure particular outcomes.
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 and operates as a representative government. Direct democracy is not a part of US politcs on a national scale at this time.
Some States do have direct democracy in the form of citizen initiatives that can get put on a ballot given sufficient public support is shown. Usually this involves gathering signatures and for that work to meet some metrics that represent meaningful public support. And States handle these in various ways too. Some States allow their elected legislature to overrule. Others do not.
These initiatives can become law based on public support in the form of some type of majority vote in the States that permit them.
In any case, on the National scale, representative government is the norm, and that means the citizens elect people who they believe will represent their opinions on policy well enough to live with.
There is a growing movement toward more direct democracy, and allowing citizen initiatives on Presential election ballots is something many, and a growing number of Americans, believe would improve our politics considerably.
I am an American who believes that form of direct democracy would be good for the nation and could perhaps check to some useful degree the currently toxic impact of money in politics we struggle with today.
End Sidebar.
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. Our Supreme Court has affirmed gun ownership is an individual right, and like other individual rights, comes with some responsibility.
Given the guns are just here, and given they won't just go away anytime soon, I suggest we make sure people are competent and well educated all around on guns. Said education would include use, repair, history, safety, and many other topics people could use to make more and better choices more of the time.
There may be better ways to improve on all this and I am open to anything frankly. Just offering my own take here for the sake of discussion.
Source: My own military service and training.
There are no easy answers, just the human work long overdue.
>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.
>In its decision, authored by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court was careful to stress the limited nature of its ruling. Writing for the majority, Justice Scalia noted: “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. [It is] not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
Individual rights are subject to regulation, and in general, the idea here is the minimum regulation necessary to maximize the utility of the right for everyone. What happened here is by affirming gun ownership as a basic right as speech is a basic right, the responsibility part can now be sorted out over time as it has been done for speech.
Go read the decisions. It's in there. With rights come responsibilities. And that is, in my view, exactly the right thing to do.
We have a few limits on speech, for example. There is criminal speech.
There are a few limits on gun ownership. And those will generally pass the courts given their scope and purpose is as described above. There is criminal gun ownership.
Now, to be clear here, I am not advocating any restrictions whatsoever. No means tests, no licenses, nothing of the sort.
Just education. In particular, the same education I got, and that many get as part of their gun ownership experience. Not talking about licenses or anything. Just education. Ownership would not be predicated on said education.
Surely you are not advocating we fail to educate people who are carrying deadly weapons around? I've passed my own on, and have saved lives. Frankly, having had it, my own life was saved at least once. And the stats play out favorably. Just educating people, and doing nothing else, improves on the injury and death stats we face today.
The goal of said education?
The people will self-regulate to a far more effective degree than we currently see today, and that is all.
You appear to be advocating a free for all, and that's not at all what SCOTUS did. Nor should they.
I'm sure if Russian cruise missiles were dropping on American schools every few weeks, killing dozens of pupils, something would be done, and yet in this case everyone rushes to collaborate with the enemy and ensure they're armed.
Ok, let us look at 8 years ago. Igor "Strelkov" Girkin with 51 soldiers started from Crimea and went to Sloviansk (Slavyansk) and captured the city with 140 000 citizen. That action started the Donbas war. OK, there was kind of anarchy because there was no President (Yanukovich has escaped to Russia before the war and it was before acting president Turchinov). But anyway what will happen with 52 armed men if they enter into any 100k+ USA city for the sake of separatism? I bet they will be killed in first hour before even entering the city and all separatism sympathisers will be punished as well.
If the US was to go through a period similar to the post-Soviet breakup, I would be very pessimistic on how violent it would be, owing to the numbers of weapons present in the country.
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 example, if I want a shotgun to practice shooting at plates and bottles, I need to declare my goal as becoming a hunter. Becoming a hunter requires passing an exam on fauna species (for not shootng a Red Book species, obviously). But I don't want to be a hunter because Ukraine is not a USA and seing wild animals in forest is a rare event (believe me, I am living less than 1 km to a nearest forest and it is a tough natural forest, not a park with sparce trees). And going through hunterness is not the only bureaucracy obstacle to becoming an owner of firearms.
Imagine seeing a military colon going to capital of your country at the assault rifle range and having no ability to do anything except of wishing good luck to the capital, because of the decisions accepted in the capital.
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.
On the other hand, Japan seems like a nice place.
Edit: will clarify I'm not an ACAB supporter or anything like that.