A "common sense" proposal that will piss off both sides

[Gulf of America]

I think we need to be discussing the "root of the problem" ideas, as they have wide application outside of mass shootings. We need to be looking at our past and trying to understand what the unintended consequences of our actions have been. That said, progress on that front is certainly difficult and time consuming.

I think I could be fine with most, if not all, of @VikingsGuy list. I love to see some progress on suppressors, for sure.

I couldn’t agree more. I just don’t think the lack of a cure for the disease should be used as an excuse to avoid treating the symptoms while we work on the cure.

 

[VikingsGuy]

Ummmm Are you saying guns are not regulated?? Might want to re-think that comment. Booze is regulated, so I guess no one drives drunk anymore.

Ummm I was responding to your premise that other than guns we don't blame/regulate the object in a series of provided examples - I was just rebutting that premise. As for effectiveness, that argument can be made about every law so not a very useful tool.

 

[longbow51]

Chuck Schumer Blocks School Safety Bill Named After Parkland Victims

The Democratic majority leader said that the Senate is "going to vote on gun legislation" and that Americans "are tired of moments of silence."

www.newsweek.com

VG already posted GOP blocked the gun bill. Manchin and Sinema likely against as well.

Maybe the best way to solve this problem is with term limits. Thomas Sowell and Ben Carson can solve the inner cities and HT can take on guns.

 

[longbow51]

And boy oh boy do we ever need Martin Luther King. And Billy Graham.

 

[VikingsGuy]

So many repeat posts along the lines of "there will always be evil, so no point in having laws to address", is a weird line of thought. No one is pretending that any of the 50 odd things we could do to pre-emptively address the issue would result in zero evil, but rather, it is offered that a comprehensive set of laws and initiatives could meaningfully reduce the frequency/impact of inherent human "evil". (Clearly, this is possible as other nations have successfully done so with guns - but in my calculus they have gone too far)

No law is perfectly effective. (note: the following is not making a direct equivalency to gun laws that may come under 2A scrutiny, but rather challenging the false premise that the inherency of human evil makes all efforts pointless.) Since DUIs still happen should we not prohibit open containers in vehicles? Set minimum drinking age? Mandate seatbelt usage? Hold bars libel for overserving patrons? Since the unscrupulous will always fleece the unsuspecting, should we have no laws about business registrations? Bonding requirements in certain fields? Training requirements in certain fields?

I don't think a position that ultimately rests in a logical, and not at all strained, premise that all preemptive laws are pointless cuz' #humannature is a credible counterargument to our current problems.

 

[SAJ-99]

No not that theory at all just if you take away a mentally ill person's access to an AR do you honestly believe that there gonna just say ah screw it, I'm gonna start a garden instead now. There just gonna use a different tool then we can blame that one. I'm not arguing that an AR platform will rack up a body count but it has nothing to do with the root of the problem at hand.

So our opioid problem has nothing to do with opioids, but we seem comfortable doing a lot regulating of them.

 

[Cornell2012]

3. You can't simply declare "Gun Free Zones" and expect them to work. If it did, we'd have "Hurricane Free Zones" here in Florida. We see that they don't work, and in fact create a horrible sense of false security.

This is a bad faith argument and you know it. You are pretending like human behavior is something that government, policy, and laws have no impact on.

 

[406dn]

The more I consider this the more certain I am that there will be a day that the 2nd amendment will be revisited. Not in my lifetime, it will take longer than that for the politics of it to ripen.

A majority Americans are not gun owners. Many of them are "meh" about guns. They are not necessarily opposed to gun ownership but will never own one themselves. They do however realize that their children and themselves are forced to accept the risk of being a victim of gun violence. Over a span of time the forced acceptance of that risk will change their opinions on guns, and their place in society.

Every person under 30 has grown up knowing there is a mass killing risk at their school, store, nightclub, etc. That is also the society every child being born will enter. I grew up in the 50's and 60's. There were certainly problems, but mass killings in schools was not one of them. Even raising our kids, I did not give mass killings in a school much thought. Our kids were about out of high school when the Columbine shooting took place. That seemed like a one off. Well, it no longer does. It seems fairly ordinary. I definitely give some thought that our grandchildren must face that possibility.

Like I said, it will take time. There was a time when our country allowed slavery. It took generations before the political will forced a change. That one took a war to make the change. I never thought I'd see the day marijuana would be legal. There was no bigger square than me back in the day. I have never tried it, never will. We had a fifty year war on it before it changed in the public's eye.

 

[Cornell2012]

In my mind the various proposals aim to tackle mostly different parts of gun violence:

1. Improving the conditions that lead to gun violence, preventing it from ever happening. (Social, economic considerations)
2. Making it more physically difficult for gun violence to happen (access to weapons, ability to get to targets). (Background checks, Red Flag laws, mandatory safe storage, school security, etc.)
3. Lessening the impact of violence if it does happen. (Restrictions on types of guns and ammo available, magazine limitations)

In practicality we are never going to completely rid ourselves of gun violence. There are steps we can take (socially? legally?) that will likely reduce the body count though. The questions we should be asking are "how much impact with x or y proposal have on the outcome?" and "how much ground are gun owners willing to give up for that improved outcome?"

 

[Irrelevant]

So many repeat posts along the lines of "there will always be evil, so no point in having laws to address", is a weird line of thought. No one is pretending that any of the 50 odd things we could do to pre-emptively address the issue would result in zero evil, but rather, it is offered that a comprehensive set of laws and initiatives could meaningfully reduce the frequency/impact of inherent human "evil".

I think some may be expressing the simple change we've seen in the last few decades. Automatic weapons have been available since WWI, but when did people start mass shooting crowds without a motive? Sure there was and still is gang violence but that at least had some kind of motive right? I think now people are feeling there is more of an evil out there that has no motive, that is just out there to kill people, KIDS for God's sake, for no apparent reason. Were those people always around, previously doing other terrible things but on a smaller scale, maybe simple serial killers, or do we have more "evil"/crazy in the world? It is a little of both, that we have more crazy simply because we have more people.

To some degree you can't legislate for the black swan event. It's very nature leaves it outside of the ability to do away with.

 

[El Jason]

The more I consider this the more certain I am that there will be a day that the 2nd amendment will be revisited.

Agreed.

 

[longbow51]

The more I consider this the more certain I am that there will be a day that the 2nd amendment will be revisited. Not in my lifetime, it will take longer than that for the politics of it to ripen.

A majority Americans are not gun owners. Many of them are "meh" about guns. They are not necessarily opposed to gun ownership but will never own one themselves. They do however realize that their children and themselves are forced to accept the risk of being a victim of gun violence. Over a span of time the forced acceptance of that risk will change their opinions on guns, and their place in society.

Every person under 30 has grown up knowing there is a mass killing risk at their school, store, nightclub, etc. That is also the society every child being born will enter. I grew up in the 50's and 60's. There were certainly problems, but mass killings in schools was not one of them. Even raising our kids, I did not give mass killings in a school much thought. Our kids were about out of high school when the Columbine shooting took place. That seemed like a one off. Well, it no longer does. It seems fairly ordinary. I definitely give some thought that our grandchildren must face that possibility.

Like I said, it will take time. There was a time when our country allowed slavery. It took generations before the political will forced a change. That one took a war to make the change. I never thought I'd see the day marijuana would be legal. There was no bigger square than me back in the day. I have never tried it, never will. We had a fifty year war on it before it changed in the public's eye.

You may be correct IF we start actually enforcing laws and incarcerating violent offenders for a very long time. But, that doesn't seem to be the case right now. Violent offenders are walking and folks (lots of women and former anti-gun folks included) are arming themselves at record rates.

So, make it safer, and, you're right, maybe folks wouldn't see guns as essential. But, you can't have increasingly wanton lawlessness and disarm the populace.

And you and I may be the only two people who ever went to college who never smoked a joint. I trust neither of us owned slaves either. Quite different from the purpose of the Second though.

So, fix the violent crime problem first. Somewhere between my mandatory 3-5 years for crime with a firearm, to Randi's 15-20, and can't remember exactly who posted (forgive me, long thread) death penalty for same and then maybe we'll disarm.

Then, OTOH, I think about the war in Ukraine, where they begged for guns and ammo against an invading force. For civilians.

The "it can't happen here" rings a little false in these days of the Ministry of Truth.

And just to rant, we have a President who has been in the Senate since Christ was a mess cook who thinks the Second Amendment is about deer hunting.

 

[Shangobango]

The more I consider this the more certain I am that there will be a day that the 2nd amendment will be revisited.

May as well revisit the rest of them while they are at it.

Sure hope I don’t live to see the day.

 

[Deleted member 28227]

I think some may be expressing the simple change we've seen in the last few decades. Automatic weapons have been available since WWI, but when did people start mass shooting crowds without a motive? Sure there was and still is gang violence but that at least had some kind of motive right? I think now people are feeling there is more of an evil out there that has no motive, that is just out there to kill people, KIDS for God's sake, for no apparent reason. Were those people always around, previously doing other terrible things but on a smaller scale, maybe simple serial killers, or do we have more "evil"/crazy in the world? It is a little of both, that we have more crazy simply because we have more people.

To some degree you can't legislate for the black swan event. It's very nature leaves it outside of the ability to do away with.

Howard Unruh 1949
Andrew Kehoe 1927

I’m sure there are other examples… not sure where you fit all the various frontier violence/Indian war/gangs of New York etc into this…

We are all so much better off in 2022 than folks were in 1822.

 

[ImBillT]

I’ll give you common sense. Let my wife carry a gun in her classroom. Other local districts allow it, just not hers. She knows multiple other male and female school staff with CHLs that want to carry at school.

The cops in Uvalde were on scene almost immediately and wasted almost an hour before going inside. Law enforcement has a similar record in most school shootings.

As long as we live on this earth, there will be evil people. The only things you can do about them is be prepared to protect yourself and your loved ones.

 

[VikingsGuy]

I’ll give you common sense. Let my wife carry a gun in her classroom. Other local districts allow it, just not hers. She knows multiple other male and female school staff with CHLs that want to carry at school.

The cops in Uvalde were on scene almost immediately and wasted almost an hour before going inside. Law enforcement has a similar record in most school shootings.

As long as we live on this earth, there will be evil people. The only things you can do about them is be prepared to protect yourself and your loved ones.

This thread is not meant to focus just on the very rare school shootings - there are bigger problems a foot we shouldn't forget.

 

[ImBillT]

And you and I may be the only two people who ever went to college who never smoked a joint. I trust neither of us owned slaves either. Quite different from the purpose of the Second though.

I guess I make three, but I didn’t graduate.

 

[ImBillT]

This thread is not meant to focus just on the very rare school shootings - there are bigger problems a foot we shouldn't forget.

I thought you wanted to talk about gun laws. Where you can have guns is a rather important part of gun laws. If I back up my reasoning with yet another shooting of unarmed people(disarmed by law) what’s the big deal? I’ll delete my posts in here if you want.

What is the bigger problem with gun laws than not allowing people to defend themselves with them?

 

[VikingsGuy]

I thought you wanted to take about gun laws. Where you can have guns is a rather important part of gun laws. If I back up my reasoning with yet another shooting of unarmed people(disarmed by law) what’s the big deal? I’ll delete my posts in here if you want.

What is the bigger problem with gun laws than not allowing people to defend themselves with them?

The attempt was to talk about broad solutions, gun laws included, but a bunch of "just arm teachers" posts don't address the other 45,000 annual gun deaths - deaths impacted by mental health system issues, economic issues, failed urban cores and rural communities, etc. So, yes, your remarks are on topic, but more generally this very narrow item has been raised dozens of times on this thread already despite its very small portion of the bigger problems. It seems like way too many folks want one-sentence solutions for encyclopedic problems - I can say it isn't surprising, as this is how we got here. It is also that way for every other issue facing the nation - a series of predictable pre-packaged one-sentence dismissives used to cut off any nuanced discussions. It does get tiring.

 

[Redman]

Why have more laws, more regulations when we don't enforce the laws that are in place now? When they are enforced the punishment, if any does not fit the crime. Laws, rules and regulations are obeyed by law abiding citizens. If there were true consequences for breaking the law then possibly people would reconsider their actions. Instead infamous acts are publicized and even glorified on the web, Hollywood movies or a Netflix series.