Well, most of them can.

Pursuing one issue does not preclude pursuing another. Gun control and health care are not mutually exclusive; addressing one does not prohibit anyone from addressing the other.

"And it's even possible we'll have Trump as president again in 2024! "

Unlikely. This bill certainly won't be the determining factor, your protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. It's unlikely to pass as it's drafted, but expanded background checks - supported by 94% of voters (Quinnipiac University poll) - will likely be addressed in some form.

This is a third bill.

And I doubt seriously that we'll have the county all nice and fixed up in 22 months.

We need a long-term, sustained control of Congress and the presidency to make America a well-run country again and throwing out away on stupid, useless shit like this will cost far more lives than this bill will save. Which will be statistically insignificant, just like the
previous one.

I had hopes that one or both of the House bills might actually pass in the Senate. This bill will harden opposition and puts both of them in serious jeopardy.

There is a contingent that seems to believe any positive news means even the most extreme gun control measures have overwhelming support. They haven't realized that the insistence on trying to pass every "reasonable" gun control measure (every gun control measure of course is "reasonable&quot is one of, if not the major, reason NO gun control measures get passed.

Yet there will still be those who insist "no one is talking about bans".

Meanwhile these "assault weapons" account for a miniscule number of the hundreds of shootings occurring every day.

to use against Democrats

So there's that...

I hate to have to say it, but they are our version of those Republicans fighting what *they* regard as evil, like:

Brown people voting
Those not white, male, and heterosexual deciding what to do with their own bodies

the mere existence of which allegedly causes harm

The crypto-fascist Robert Bork illustrated the mindset perfectly, with his theory of 'moral harm' :

Dan Baum, in a Harper's article (August, 2010)..

Last edited Mon Mar 15, 2021, 08:00 AM - Edit history (1)

Wrong. This bill would be useful cleaning up after my dog.

This notion and the kind of opposition and hate it will inspire is exactly the antithesis of the President's message of healing and working to fix what's gone wrong during the '45 years'. (And yes, those last 4 feel like they were 45 actual years. Hell this one last year feels like at least 20.)

I saw racism and unreasoned hate flourish. Economic life for the middle class was stagnating until a year ago. Many of those folks are now in line at food giveaways. We have a neighbor. She's a nurse, a single mom with 3 teenage boys. At least she was until the hospital's became flooded with folks dying of Covid and she had a breakdown and was unable to work. Now her landlord, a retired woman has to sell the property because our friend can't pay the rent on the house she's lived in for the last four years. Her boyfriend moved in and helped for a bit then he lost his job.

At this time our Senate majority is slim. Senator M of WV held up the American Rescue Plan and managed to kill the $400/week that might have helped my neighbor afford better... better than $100 less at least. The $300/week was due to run out days before the Plan became law with Biden's signature.

Today's priority isn't this ban. Today's priorities are keeping people from dying, getting them vaccinated, keeping them fed, protecting them from being homeless and finding them jobs.

I understand S. 736 is headed for committee before reaching the full Senate. Best case is that it dies there.

I said wrong to your guess that maybe 10 lives a year might be saved because passing economic measures that help folks RIGHT NOW is the priority. My wife isn't talking to several of her oldest friends because they supported 45. Two of our closest family friends are dead from Covid. Delays and hiccups in helping healthcare workers and facilities will cost lives. Delays with financial and job help will leave people homeless and hungry. Leaving people on the edge nervous, hopeless and worried is taking a toll.

The country has been wounded by Covid-19 and left with untreated and poorly treated wounds by 45. I've read that suicide rates are up in some places. I've read that the virus attacks African Americans and some other minorities more often and more severely than other groups. I don't know if 45 did more to prevent suicides by letting folks die of the virus or if the unemployment is lower than it would be because some of homeless and hopeless people killed themselves. Unemployment might be even higher than double what it was 14 months ago if so many people hadn't needlessly died.

As sick as I am of his supporters, they still vote and they have Senators and Representatives in Congress. IMNSHO, if the Party wants to take up another AWB it should happen, if at all, after we unseat a few more Republican Congress folk and not before. Sooner than that is just a well aimed shot at our own foot.

They fully expect the rest of us to help them drive Democratic electoral chances over a cliff

And as demonstrated upthread, they don't like it when we decline the 'honor'

Let's hope that President Biden is wise enough to emulate his former boss by making soothing noises in their
direction while quietly watching their plans get buried in committee...

I have read about their great "help" of some people in a country in Africa. What I remember is they had a great PR stunt where they gave infant formula to people who had lots of difficulty feeding their families. The supply of formula mix given out lasted long enough for the mother's milk to dry up which made nursing impossible, after that the formula was still available of course just no longer free.

It's great that the Senate now has a majority of Democrats. Mitch McDoNothing has proven himself to be nothing more than a pimple on the ass of progress. President Biden's American Rescue Plan needed to be passed before the approaching cliff of ending federal unemployment assistance. Republicans felt left out and all voted against it and it still passed. What kind of delay would have been involved to listen to their objections and bandy back and forth what should and should not be included? To that party line whine there is the clear answer of expeditious need. The majority of Americans will see that.

After assuring that people are fed and protected from being homeless, Democrats need to think about preserving control of the Senate, House and Presidency. Would anything be gained in giving back the Majority Leader spot to McConman just to pass some useless ban that would likely be tossed by the trump installed SCOTUS critters or simply undone by the next Republican controlled Congress?

Discontinuing aid that suffering people have come to depend on is worse than criminal, it's inhuman. Leaving folks anxious and worried about that aid till the last minute is far less than ideal.

We have a handful of seats in Congress that now give us a majority and we have the Presidency for another 46 months for sure. I'd like to see the REAL priorities handled first without pipe dreams being used as ammunition by the party of distractions and doing nothing.
We have 94 weeks for sure to handle two critical priorities:
1) End the further crippling of the country from the virus.
2) Not lose the House.

I've been fortunate so far. My job is "essential" so my daily life has been largely unchanged for the last year as I was working regular hours and still going to my place of employment. Nobody in my family got sick. I don't know anybody that died, either.

Fundamentally, we can't get this shit done if we're not in power. Two years isn't going be enough time because you KNOW the Senate will move like molasses.

There is a hell of a lot to do that will save many more lives than another ban on rifles that look scary.

Our two closest family friends died near the beginning of the pandemic.

I've read many opinions dodging gun issues as a blame for mid-term losses. We have the Senate by ONE vote. Our majority in the House is by about 2%. I agree that the Senate is an inertial body. It was designed that way to a good end. There a handful of Senate seats up for reelection in 2022 where the winning margin that placed those folks in the Senate was less than 2.5%. Maggie Hassan won in NH with like 0.1% of a margin. Do anything that loses 1 seat and anti-progress boat anchor mitch is steering the ship.

I'm not saying don't challenge Republicans. Challenges based on a list of priorities is the clear direction for now. Many healthcare issues, economic measures and improvements to medicare/social security ought to come first.

Everyone agreed that the Rescue Plan was a huge priority. Senate Republicans voting to pass was zero, not one. It took almost 2 months to get through and one of the holdouts was a Dem Senator in a red state.

Another AWB:
I don't see it as a priority ahead of ANYTHING relating to virus and the economy.
I don't see it passing.
I don't see it enhancing or even maintaining the slim majority we have in Congress.
Finally, I don't see it as anything except a Republican excuse for not cooperating on the real priorities.

There are, at best, 10% of the voting population that vote on this one issue above all others. Period.

However we agree on one thing; banning something by description is silly. There's always a workaround. We need to base restrictions on what actually makes something dangerous. Function, not feature.

That is why I suggest and support the prohibition on manufacturing, importing, transferring or possessing any semi auto weapon that accepts an interchangeable magazine. Reduce the rate of fire and rate of injury/death follows.

Over decades of discussion with those who have in depth knowledge about firearms and should be best equipped to offer constructive advice on reducing the lethality of their use I have become weary of beating my head against that wall. Decades of compromise with the gun supporters has netted nothing and so the death toll (and injury at a rate 3 times that) is once again on the increase. I have come to the point of just fuck your feelings*. No more compromise.

*That is the 'editorial' you, not the OP personally.

as something like 9 mil NEW individuals have bought their first gun this past year or so, not counting the current owners buying more. Ammo shelves are basically empty. Reloading supplies, the same or near so. What changed in the last few months? Why is all this stuff disappearing, with the ammo companies working 3 shifts? If I was a new gun owner of the Democratic leaning persuasion, and I had just purchased an "evil black rifle" with all the accessories, and MY party comes out after the elections, and deems me unfit to own these things, and I'm to turn them in at what will probably be a good loss, who do you think I will be supporting/voting for next time? Gun control has ALWAYS hurt our Party, and I'm sick of THAT. None of my firearms has killed anyone while in my possession (I have several military collector's arms, some going back 100 yrs+, so I can't speak for their history). Some have been in my possession for 40 years, and I haven't gone insane or gone on a shooting spree. It is a tool, a toy, like a hammer or a 9 iron. Misuse it, go to jail. Stay in jail. Simple.

The difference lies in what each particular sect of Prohibitionists deem to be evil.

For the Republican ones, it's:

*Brown people voting (or worse, trying to become legal US residents)
*Non-straight, white, males doing as they see fit with their own bodies

For gun prohibitionists, it's:

*Guns and gun owners

Your interlocutor has previously envisioned a mass roundup of 'noncompliant' gun owners.

If one were to change that to 'undocumented migrants', it would fit right in with what the Pubbies have been spewing
as of late

As for the controllers intractable delusions of popularity, puritanism of all stripes inevitably leads to false consensus effect:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consensus_effect

"I'm right, therefore everybody that disagrees with me is wrong." mentality.

I'll repeat this, for yours and others' benefit:

Democrats do not have the votes to pass this all on our own, and the last time something like it
*was* passed, we promptly lost the next Congress to the Republicans

Thank you for demonstrating yet again that gun control advocacy (like all puritanical movements)
is a hotbed of both false consensus effect and fascistic tendencies:


https://www.democraticunderground.com/126213599#post4

Purity is all that matters: guns = bad and if it means we lose congress because of 'the black shroud thingy that goes up' or the fact some tunz scare them, that's worth it to them.

I disagree, but I respect your "no bullshit" approach. It has always been foolish to try to target certain "types" of semiautomatic rifles. The Newtown shooting (Sandy Hook school) was done with an AR-15 that was not an "assault weapon" as defined at the time; Connecticut had actually banned them a couple of years before the Federal ban in 1993, and without a sunset provision. So at the time of the shooting, Connecticut had had an AWB in effect for 20 years.

Now, scary media images aside, handguns are of course much more deadly than rifles. Less than 400 people a year are murdered with any kind of rifle, and semiautomatic rifles are a subset of that number. Handguns are something like 7,000 people a year.

So if we're trying to reduce the murder rate, the logical thing to do would be to outlaw sales and ownership of all handguns with no grandfathering of current guns. So, basically, confiscation. All handgun owners would be forced to sell their handguns to the government, with the only exceptions being the usual suspects: cops, security guards, and bodyguards.

But this doesn't really come up. It's about a culture war and publicity; they try to ban high-profile guns like AR-15s because they continue to think it's both low-hanging fruit AND effective in stopping mass shootings.

SQUIRREL! CULTURE WAR! SHINEY SQUIRREL!!11!1

I did not say rifles. I said semi automatic firearms with interchangeable magazines. That includes pistols last I looked.

It is also deflection to change the definition of gun violence to 'murder' and tabulate only 7,400 incidents when everybody else is talking about close to 40,000 deaths and more than 100,000 injuries.

Another deflection is 'All handgun owners would be forced to sell their handguns to the government'. I didn't say that and don't advocate it. Semi automatic with interchangeable magazines.

Culture wars?? Ya' want to bring Dr Seuss and Mr Potato Head in here too? Sure, anything to keep from talking about the subject at hand.

around 75% of them, along with roughly half of all rifles.

Good grief.

re-direction and gun dogma?

That's not re-direction or "gun dogma"....it's your proposed policy.

removable magazines. And yes, that's what I'm advocating. I'm tired of fucking with less than 10% of voters who think they own the United States. Just get over yourself, ok?

99% have removable magazines. Rifles: The AR-15 is the most popular rifle in America, and semiautomatic rifles with detachable magazines along semiauto handguns have dominated the market for the last couple of decades....and there have been a lot of guns sold during that periold. 6 million a year in 2001. 17 million a year today. And while shotguns with detachable magazines have only recently become popular, shotguns only comprise roughly 1/10th of the firearms market.

In short we can quibble over the numbers, but surely you will grant that of all the guns in private hands in the US (likely 400 million at a minimum), at least 100 million of them are semiautos with detachable magazines.

importance less than 10% of voters give to guns. It's about decades of discussions like this that always come down to the same talking points and NRA (soon to be the defunct organization known as the NRA) dogma.

I think the number of guns I'm talking about is considerably more than 100 million. However the buy program wouldn't buy them all. A sizeable number would be hidden in the closet or out in the woods and not sold to the program. That's okay with me 'cause they will fall into about three categories: hidden in the closet where they won't hurt anyone, found in the commission of a crime and confiscated (for real) or rounded up when the DOJ raids the (militia of choice) and also confiscated for real.

I do get exercised when gun nuts so exaggerate their importance to the political process. "Oh! The Dems will lose the congress and Trump will be President!" That's nothing but narcissistic bull shit and the sooner the gunners recognize that and take part in the reasonable regulation of gun ownership the better off we will all be. Be it shots down range or guns possessed, it's quality not quantity. The arms race has to end.

Take part or sit back and let people like me do it for you. That's both an invitation and a challenge.

People like you have been using the same shopworn schtick pretty much the entire decade+ I've been a DU member,
all while you regularly declare that More Gun Control Is Just Around The Corner And We'd Better Get On Board Now, Dammit

I take it we're just supposed to ignore all those new gun owners as well?

I live in Masssachusetts. Supposedly gun-unfriendly Massachusetts, mind you.

There are now nearly twice as many legal gun owners here now as there were back in the oughts. This is verifiable,
as a license is required for all gun purchases

That's according to the state of MA, not some numbers produced ex recto:

https://www.mass.gov/doc/firearms-licenses-active-jan-1-2021

https://www.mass.gov/doc/firearms-licenses-active-jan-1-2021/download


How to recognize the tactics used by anti gun activists in their plan to ban guns

https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x361725#361836


A few highlights:

I can continue to argue against confiscatory gun control policies such as the one you are advocating. Not that it really matters that much, in that I suspect that over the course of the next decade or two (at least), the likelihood of your proposal (or one of similar magnitude) being enacted is virtually nil.

Though you and I know these are only a tiny part of the carnage they get a lot of coverage. Given that less than a third of Americans own guns and only a third of them own the vast majority of guns (five or more and I'm one of those) it seems to me that gun owners are an endangered species. How long do you think the remaining 90% of us are going to put up with your fetish?

But you go ahead with your advocating for doing nothing. It's your right to be wrong.

Last edited Wed Mar 17, 2021, 10:50 AM - Edit history (1)

Doesn't help your case much. Again, it's the person wielding the instrument, not the instrument.

ETA: Did search, again, more info out, revolver was used in older Atlanta shooting, 9mm ammo used (no gun type confirmed, most likely semi-auto). I still stand by my message of the wielder, not the instrument.

Every time there's a high profile shooting, people will say that this was the last straw, and massive, draconian gun control is inevitable. Now, we might see red flag legislation and/or universal background checks passed at the national level....but laws (such as those you propose) mandating that 100 to 200 million guns be confiscated? Not happening.

All control freaks are alike, under the skin

The purpose of the term is to reinforce the idea that only the government has a right to guns.

It's confiscation with compensation.

semantics having exhausted all other deflections.

Oy vey

AMENDMENT V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

It's there, it can be done, it's not confiscation but I really don't care what you choose to call it. It's in the public interest.

If it makes you feel better I'll call it potAto or potAHto. Or confiscation with compensation.

There, feel better?

So, after the Democrats blow their legislative load on this, the law gets suspended while it works its way through the Trumpish federal courts, and the Democrats lose big in 2022 and 2024, and the law is repealed by President Trump on his 2nd term...

at what point to you realize it was a losing idea? After the courts are packed to the brim with conservatives? They privatize Social Security? Reverse Roe vs. Wade? Put Jesus back in public schools? Start arresting liberal activists?

Like, pass laws and enforce laws and appoint judges that interpret the laws. And if we're not passing and enforcing and appointing, then the Trump-sucking REPUBLICANS are.

Maybe you've just forgotten or something, but we, Democrats, can't make life better if we're not in charge.

Remind me again... how many votes did Al Gore lose Florida by?

Oh yeah, 537. So if a mere 269 working-class gun owners had decided that Al Gore wasn't that bad on guns and pulled the (metaphorical) lever the other way, the entire Dubya travesty would have been avoided.

A single cinema's worth of voters pissed at Al Gore because Gore looked them in the eye and told them obvious lies about 'assault weapons'. 90% of gun murders are done with handguns, and Gore said that the problem was pistol-grips and bayonet mounts on semi-automatic rifles. And they didn't vote for him.

And what was it in 2016? Something like a few tens of thousands of voters in three critical states voting the other way would have Hillary Clinton as president?

If we make society better, the violence will go down! But we can't fix the ills of society, the root causes of violence, if we're not in charge!

This was proven when we made society better in the early 70's by making contraception (the pill and the IUD, for example) widespread and common and legalizing abortion nationwide.

We made society better by removing lead from gasoline, paint, and other consumer products, and we in general began cleaning up the environment.

We didn't do those things to lower the crime rate, we did them because they were the moral and ethical things to do. However, by making society better, we also lowered the crime rate a generation later. With fewer children being poisioned by lead, and fewer children being born to mothers that weren't ready to raise them, the crime rate dropped by a third between 1990 and 2000. Fewer children were born into desperate situations that fostered a life of crime, and fewer children had the increased aggression and decreased intelligence and empathy caused by lead poisoning, so there were fewer career criminals entering adulthood.

That's what I want to do. Attacking the hardware will not fix society; it's not a hardware problem. Obviously there are some things we can do but the fundamental problem is not hardware.

Public ranges giving out free loaners to use at the range? IMO, this section was referring to the taking of land away from private citizens to be used for parks, schools, transportation access, etc. This has been the past use of this section, I believe it would be a FAR reach to extend this to a personally carried/owned item. Why not extend it to baseball bats, golf clubs, hammers, and swimming pools?

..yet complain that talk of culture war is a 'deflection'.

Some things are obvious:

You want a culture war just as badly as the craziest of Republicans (granted, not against the same 'enemies')
-but the mindset is exactly the same. Puritans of all stripes are more alike than different

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1172207939

Hmmm....

Moving on, I will cop to misreading your post slightly. I focused on "assault weapons", which are usually meant to be semiautomatic rifles of a certain configuration. I still appreciate that you don't try to weasel around with stupid and useless definitions regarding pistol grips and folding stocks.

There are several catagories of "gun violence" and not recognizing the differences between them is a critical error. The majority of firearm deaths are suicides, which would not be reduced at all by your ban. One shot, one suicide. That's about 18,000 people per year.

And the vast majority of firearm homicides are single-victim homicides. About 95% of homicide incidents only have one victim, and 4% are double-victim homicides. So nearly all of the time only a few shots are fired despite the ultimate magazine capacities of the guns involved.

So again, how many people are you saving? Let me put it another way: what will save more lives, Democrats passing Medicare for All, or passing Feinstein's ban on "assault weapons"?

And with your ban, we'd still have compensated confiscation of all semi-auto guns by the government. At least, that would bring get rid of the most guns in the shortest amound of time. An alternative is to grandfather in current guns but prohibit sales of new guns and sales of used guns to anybody but the government. This, however, will take get rid of the guns very slowly, not finishing up until about the year 2100 even if the policy goes untouched for the next 79 years.

And of course, with your ban or Feinstein's ban the market will of course respond. There are already pump-action AR-15s, for example. AR-15s with no gas mechanism that take every magazine and accessory that exists for regular AR-15s, but are pump-action and thus not "assault weapons". And revolvers remain a popular choice for handguns.

So why pick this hill to die on?

Universal background checks are a good idea, and will save far more lives. And will do this without stirring up the Republicans in 2022.

Last edited Thu Mar 18, 2021, 02:41 PM - Edit history (2)

First point of deflection is re-defining suicide as something other than gun violence. First do a google image search on suicide by gun then take into account that a loved one is usually the first to find the body and tell me again that this isn't violence of the worst kind. Further, guns are very effective in suicide. Many, if not most, suicide attempts by other means are unsuccessful and only one in ten attempted suicides is completed in a subsequent attempt. We can safely assume that a number of households would not replace the gun sold [confiscated with compensation] so reducing the number of guns available to suicidal people will necessarily reduce death by suicide.

Second point of deflection is the either/or dilemma of Medicare for all vs gun violence. It is not a binary choice. Stop pretending it is.

Third point of deflection is the offer of an alternative to the immediate purchase [confiscated with compensation] of guns; the 'grandfathering' of existing inventory. Why even bring that into the conversation? (I do appreciate your evaluation of effectiveness though, thanks!)

Fourth point of deflection, the market will react with a substitute for semi auto guns. I've said there is always a work around with gunners and you seem to prove my point. I guess we just need to go the route of Australia and include such things as lever action and pump action as well. When we achieve what I'm advocating it will be a simple matter to include the other methods of rapid fire IF they become an issue which I hope they will not. The goal is not to remove all guns, it is to reduce the number of deaths and injuries.

The final point of deflection is the 'stirring up the Republicans' meme. Do you seriously believe that one more issue will 'stir up' the opposition more than it is now??? You are either demented or mindlessly repeating an NRA talking point.

Now to the next point you will eventually try to make; it costs too much.

"It's hard to shoot that many people with a bolt action rifle or a revolver."

4 people? Ever hear of the "Mad Minute Drill"?

"The Mad Minute was a pre-World War I bolt-action rifle speed shooting exercise used by British Army riflemen, using the Lee–Enfield service rifle. The exercise formally known as "Practice number 22, Rapid Fire, The Musketry Regulations, Part I, 1909", required the rifleman to fire 15 rounds at a "Second Class Figure" target at 300 yd. The practice was described as; "Lying. Rifle to be loaded and 4 rounds in the magazine before the target appears. Loading to be from the pouch or bandolier by 5 rounds afterwards. One minute allowed". The practice was only one of the exercises from the annual classification shoot which was used to grade a soldier as a marksman, first-class or second-class shot, depending on the scores he had achieved. The rapid aimed fire of the ‘Mad Minute’ was accomplished by using a 'palming' method where the rifleman used the palm of his hand to work the bolt, and not his thumb and forefinger, while maintaining his cheek weld and line of sight."

Enfield: Bolt action. 60 seconds. 15 hits for qualifying. First using this on the Western Front, the Germans thought the Brits had massed machine guns.

Revolver: 5 to 9 round capacity, can be reloaded with a speed loader/moon clip rather quickly, and double action is comparable to semi auto. See: Jerry Miculek.

"Jerry Charles Miculek Jr. is an American professional speed and competition shooter known for his many world records, appearances on TV, and internet videos. Miculek is widely regarded as the fastest and most proficient all-around speed and competition shooter in the world, emptying a five-shot revolver in 0.57 seconds in a group the size of a playing card, thus often being dubbed "The Greatest Shooter of all Time". Miculek currently holds five officially sanctioned world records in revolver shooting."

"Fourth point of deflection, the market will react with a substitute for semi auto guns. I've said there is always a work around with gunners and you seem to prove my point. I guess we just need to go the route of Australia and include such things as lever action and pump action as well. When we achieve what I'm advocating it will be a simple matter to include the other methods of rapid fire IF they become an issue which I hope they will not. The goal is not to remove all guns, it is to reduce the number of deaths and injuries."

Sounds like you ARE advocating for the removal of all guns. Except single shots. Maybe somebody can shoot a single shot quickly, you'll back it down to single barrel muzzleloaders, only. And, in Australia, the gangs "market" ARE responding to the ban, making homemade fully automatic guns. And, if you want to reduce deaths and injuries, well, let's ban cars, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, swimming pools, bikes, etc.

Regarding suicide: It is not gun violence when person blows their head off anymore more than it's knife violence when somebody slits their wrists.

A robber using a gun as a tool of intimidation and violence is a far different problem from a depressed Nebraska farmer using it as tool of suicide. There are core differences and they must be addressed differently.

I am aware that gun suicides are usually successful. Men tend to not to do the "cry for help" suicide attempt and they don't care as much about the mess they're leaving. So, *boom*. If only we had better mental health care in this country, but because of Republicans and conserva-Dems seem to usually be running things, I guess Medicare for all isn't in the future. But that's okay, because you're positive that we don't need silly things like mental health as along as we take away all the suicide hardware.


Second point: Um... have you seen how many bills go to the Senate to die? Bills expire at the end of the Congress, that is, every two years. The Senate is slow as hell in a good year, and the longer it takes the more the insurance industry has time to mount opposition. The bill needs to be worked on, hearings held, amendments passed... M4A would be a huge fucking deal to pass and it will take Herculean effort to get it past McConnell and his evil minions.

Third point, grandfathering. I bring this up because it is in effect as I type this. States that have banned what they define as "assault weapons" generally require the registration of existing "assault weapons" by a certain date (e.g., three months after the bill becomes law). Then, that registered "assault weapon" cannot be transferred to any private party in the state. It can only be sold to fedeal gun dealers or turned over to the police. This is called "grandfathering" and it's happening now. It also happened under previous real and proposed Federal bans. So, no deflection. "Every accusation is a confession".

Fourth point... this is exactly why nobody wants to give your side an inch, because you'll take a yard. You're not addressing the issue of mass shootings by taking away hardware, so when it fails (as it inevitably will) you'll then promote more bans.

Fifth point: guns are the tools of the violent. Taking away guns does not take away the people that are violent. Trying to take away so many guns that the violent criminals will eventually be disarmed is about the most ineffective way I can think of to address the issue. As I stated in my previous post to you (replying to a different post) we need to make our society better so that all violence will decrease. There's a reason that the blue states tend to have less crime; it's because they tend to take care of their people better.


Final point: there are several classifications of multiple-victim homicides with different causes. A study commissioned by the Clinton administration and completed and released during the Bush misadministration defined "mass shooting" as 5 or move victims not including the shooter and not related to the shooter. At least, that's how I recall the definition. Some of the advocacy groups have their own definitions, such as 4 people killed excluding the shooter, or 4 people shot, not necessarily killed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting?wprov=sfla1

And then of course there are the circumstances. A guy that kills his family then himself has different motivation and root causes than a {insert ethnicity or race here} that decides to go shoot every {enter a different race or ethnicity here} in a Wal-Mart. And that's different than disgruntled employee guns down everybody in his department, which is different from angry student guns down students and staff at school, which is different from wanted killer fleeing from the cops leaves trail of bodies across the state. I think that last is generally called a "spree killing".

So that's an issue that makes it more complex. The Mother Jones spreadsheet pinned to the top of the Group has information like that.

I don't have any really good solutions, unfortunately, except just generally make society better so that we are not so stressed. I mean, it's really easy to kill 5 people with a revolver if you're wiping out your family, and that it sadly what happens all to often.

I want to save lives by making life better. I'm not content with "misery levels steady but the homicide rate dropped 5% over the last 10 years".

"misery levels steady but the homicide rate dropped 5% over the last 10 years".

You can't even get that right. Homicides are up 20% while onther violent crimes are down 5%.

Have a nice day, I'm done with this one. Post a last reply and declare victory.

And for clarity i was speaking from the future, as in "10 years after your ban passes".

Regarding current homicide rates:



The massive drop in the 90's was not due to the Clinton AWB, that's for damn sure.

Like i said, I appreciate your straightforwardness with your proposal, but it's politically toxic while being statistically ineffective.

So hanging myself would be "rope violence"? lol
Jumping off a bridge is "bridge violence"?
Or do those sound stupid?

...do you need a detachable magazine or semi auto for that or will a revolver work just as well?

Last edited Sat Mar 27, 2021, 03:21 AM - Edit history (1)

... is why, given that they have created a set of features that are to be banned, they still want to play whack-a-mole with the list of models banned by name. If a model fits the features criteria, then it's banned, right? If it doesn't, it's not. Why the list?