1y ago

Biden renews call for assault weapons ban after ‘tragic and senseless’ spate of July 4 shootings

www.independent.co.uk Biden renews call for assault weapons ban after spate of July 4 shootings

President says ‘epidemic of gun violence is tearing our communities apart’ after mass shootings in Philadelphia, Fort Worth, Baltimore and Chicago

188 comments

According to the Gun Violence Archive, 21,782 Americans have been killed in shootings halfway through 2023.
I know that's not 100% mass shootings, but that's still a stunningly bleak number. Rounding up from the .97 that's five human lives every hour of 2023 up to July.
- That's the price we pay for freedom.
  /s
- That's a fucked up amount of people damn
  
  Shaping up to outpace automobile deaths. Not to imply that our rate of automobile deaths isn't also totally unacceptable, especially compared to peer nations...
- It's bad, but after watching over a million Americans die of COVID while (seemingly) half or more of the country refused to take - or often even acknowledge - the most basic of preventative measures... Well, I just don't know any longer.
  Shootings are far less deadly, and that's a much more murky subject as there are plenty of justifiable reasons to own a gun. You also have to wonder how many deaths are Darwin Awards, or justified self defense... It's just an incredibly complicated subject compared to "hey guys, let's wear masks."
- How much of that is suicide?
  
  Is there an acceptable figure?
  
  About half, it was 54% in 2021. The problem with an assault weapons ban is it will do almost nothing to gun violence. More people are murdered with hammers every year then with ar15s. The vast majority of US gun violence is performed with regular pistols.
  https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/
  If they actually cared about the problem instead of just publicity, then they would look at banning pistols of all magazine capacities instead of rifles. If they wanted to do something acceptable for both sides of the aisle that could eliminate up to 40% of gun violence, they would prohibit people with domestic abuse charges from owning firearms. (See The Problem with Jon Stewart).
  Or they could address the core problems facing people at the bottom of the economic scale, like hunger and mental health amd healthcare, the problems that make them desperate and emotional. Banning guns to prevent murder is akin to banning alcohol to prevent drunk driving. It works, but it hinders the majority of law abiding citizens all because a small percent of people misuse it.
  The sad truth is they dgaf. So they do publicity shit like this that doesn't matter.
- Those numbers are intentionally misleading, they are using people that killed themselves to prop up the numbers. It's disgusting.
  
  And those shouldn't count? Do you have any idea how much easy access to guns increases suicides? Many, many suicidal people would still be alive without the easy access to guns in the US. It's one of the easiest and painless ways to kill yourself.
  
  Explain why they don’t count as gun deaths please.
  
  It's disgusting.
  Yes, people dying preventable deaths is disgusting.
  
  They are definitely not misleading. They break it down in the same page by suicide, accidental killing, and etc. https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
  So it’s 9,611 as non-suicide deaths. That’s 51 per day and 2 per hour.
  
  Is it? Gun violence from suicide is equally a problem. I wouldn't characterise that as a shooting exactly though.
  
  I think it's a fair number to include, but you are right in the fact it inflates the total compared to how the Gun Violence Archive counted it prior to 2020. The number was closer to 15,00 annually with roughly 22,000 in suicides. Bad numbers any way you put it.
  
  They also count criminals shooting criminals!
  
  Jfc are you a troll? A bot?
  A human being can't be this stupid and also figure out how to broadcast it to the rest of the world.

Obviously nothing can be done to change this. There is zero things the government can do to stop gun violence. It must just be an inherent part of life
- No way to prevent this.
  
  Accurate reporting
  
  I'm actually I'll have you know that there was a mass shooting in France one time the last 25 years and therefore that shows that gun churches don't help, according to my conservative cousins

That Philly shooting - you know it was a white shooter cause the police didn't discharge a single shot.

keep talking and not doing anything i love it and ive loved every other time a shooting occurs and this same shit happens
- Americans keep voting for Republicans. They want the death.
  
  ~~Americans~~ pro-gun voters keep voting for Republicans. They want the death.
  The problem is pro-gun people just happen to be overwhelmingly Republican.
  
  Thanks to gerrymandering, Republicans don't even need people to vote for them in order to win elections. Hurray for democracy!

How many times has this exact headline been published in the last X years
- heartbreakingly... a lot - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27NoWaytoPreventThis,%27SaysOnlyNationWhereThisRegularlyHappens
- Truly sad isn't it?

As opposed to all the other shootings, which made good sense and improved general happiness for all affected.

Round and round we go

c/nottheonion

Just a random thought, what if instead of going after guns, the administration came down on high-caliber ammo instead?
Like, just put heavy barriers on the production of 9mm and higher-sized ammunition to the extent the only bullets available in the market for the general public are .22 LR and below, which are less lethal in general. If not anything else it would bring down gun deaths at least.
Their main argument is that there are more than enough guns in circulation already and a ban on them would only affect the "good guys" while the bad guys will get their guns illegally. Well, those guns are useless without their cartridges, and at some point the country will run out of them if no new ones are produced.
As a bonus, choking out the lethal-ammo supply chain won't even violate anyone's 2A rights.
- Two major issues here. One ammunition is an arm and protected by the 2A. You know that people can just cast bullets out of lead like people did for centuries before the popularization of the cartridge right?
  
  How effective would the casted bullets and cartridges be in general? Is it very easy to make quality ones that won't spoil the gun itself?
  How easy would it be to scale them up? I confess, I don't actually know much.
  Also, does implementing production quota limits amount to violating 2A? Isn't the amendment about securing the rights of the public to own firearms, and not securing manufacturers from regulations?

When the government disarms first then we'll talk.
- Can you please expand on your idea here? How do you think that should play out, what would the consequences of the government disarming be?
  What alternative solution do you propose to deal with non-government gun violence?

We all know that if and that's a big IF democrats passed a gun control bill there will be instant lawsuits and eventually thrown out for being unconstitutional. Which for many in the US it is. Its pointless at this point.
- "We should all just resign to the ever growing possibility that we could be shot and killed while going about our daily lives. There's nothing to be done about that."

SHALL. NOT.
- Should currently incarcerated criminals should be allowed to own guns?
  
  Yes.
- nah they probably should tbh

At this point I feel like Biden and most dem reps have no intention of any gun control. They call for assault weapon bans again, it'll get bogged down in arguments over what constitutes an "assault" weapon, nothing will get passed and people will forget about the shooting. They can tell progressive dems they tried, and they can tell conservative dems they havent actually banned any guns.
Ban automatic guns to start off.
- Ban automatic guns to start off.
  "automatic" - not sure if you realize it, but every automatic in this country is HEAVILY regulated behind stamps and they cost an absolute small fortune. They are also pretty much never involved in mass shootings. They're more of a gangland modded trigger type gun.
  So I presume you actually mean "semi-automatic" here... and if that's the case, that's basically everything but pump-action shot guns, lever-action & bolt rifles, and revolvers. Now... there's no shortage of any of those, but semi-auto dwarfs that in terms of sheer volume of guns in the United States. And are you saying ban them all going forward? Or ban them all retro-actively? The former would be a herculean effort. The latter, you'd likely start an actual domestic war over if you got it anywhere near actual law.
  I'm just here to educate, BTW. https://www.stonekettle.com/2015/06/bang-bang-sanity.html is a fantastic read. I recommend it for both gun-owners and gun-haters alike. It's the first real-world solution I've seen that I think both could find fairly reasonable.
  
  I appreciate the link, that is probably one of the best suggestions I've seen on gun laws.
  
  right, semi-automatic, my bad, any autoloading gun. Ban on sales going forward, new and used.
- Full-auto isn't banned? Are you sure you know what laws are needed if you don't know the current laws?
  
  Nothing tells you exactly how much a person knows about guns than them suggesting a law.
  Also have them define assault weapon, that usually shows exactly how much thought they put into it.
  Also ask them to define the AR in AR-15... Usually telling
  
  Fully automatic firearms are not banned in all states but heavily regulated. They are used in basically no crimes though because of extensive background checks, registration process, and cost. A really shitty one is several thousand dollars, one that someone would actually desire is tens of thousands.
  
  it's not, but I did mean semi-auto
- It's not something they can do. Republicans control the House. Dems simply don't have the authority, if they did you might actually see some real action...
  Until the Supreme Court kills it.
- Just once I'd like to see the corporate Democrats play political hardball against the Republicans the way they do against progressives.
- Perhaps you mean semi-automatic guns? Automatic guns are exceedingly rare, very expensive and effectively never used in any type of gun violence short of war. If you do mean semi-automatic, with no qualifiers, you are now banning many guns that most ban advocates promise they aren't coming for, "grandpa's hunting rifle".
  
  Yeah i meant semi automatic. No one needs to be able to kill as many times as they can pull a trigger. If you miss your first shot when hunting youre probly not gonna get any better shots.
  Confiscation isnt feasible, it would have to just be a ban on future sales and resales. So grandpa keeps his rifle
- As is the tradition

Here's an idea: all new guns must only be operable by the person who purchased them after going through rigorous background checks. This will be done using fingerprint technology. The gun simply will not fire unless it is in the right hands.
- So a technology that doesn't exist?
  
  Fingerprint trigger locks already exist, they are just not built-in to guns yet (as far as I know.)
  https://bisongunlock.com/#:~:text=THE%20NO%2DCOMPROMISE%20GUN%20LOCK&text=Unlike%20traditional%20gun%20locks%20that,in%20any%20other%20tough%20situation.
- It's not really that easy unfortunately. You can essentially 3D print gun parts now, and you can buy parts separately to make kits pretty easily to get around any kind of restrictions like that.
  
  If it is so easy to 3D print guns or put together the parts, how is it that gun control measures in other countries are still effective?
- Lol, fuck no
- Only if the government replaces all of its weapons with unreliable biometric smart guns first. I refuse to accept a status quo where the United States government is better armed than its citizens.
  
  Um, the US government IS better armed than its citizens. Also, I would say ideas and behavioral controls are more effective at controlling citizens than weaponry outside of a war.
  People are out there stockpiling weapons thinking they are free but they are mentally and behaviorally controlled by the media.

Start with your damn son.... Then you can talk other people out of guns

188 comments