Gun Control & RKBA
In reply to the discussion: Why we don't get good gun laws. [View all]krispos42
(49,445 posts)It may be emotionally satisfying, but it's ultimately unproductive.
It's not a hardware problem. At least in the sense you can draw some arbitray line between types of guns and say "problem"/"not a problem".
Actually, blaming "assault weapons" is a useful tool because the politicians and pundents can pretend there is a solution to a pretty much solutionless problem.
Homicidal beserker decides to kill a bunch of people in a random building in a random city in a random state. He (and they are all "he" ) does it at a random time on a random day of a random month, and he does it for a reason that ONLY MAKES SENSE TO HIM. And even a quick police response time gives a minimum of 180 long, long seconds to the beserker to kill and kill and kill
There is no organization to dismantle. Theere are no members to arrest, no leaders interrogate, no finances to freeze, no supporters flip, no headquarters to seize.
It's called "stochatic terrorism", and it's what the purveyers of chaos and hate stoke deep in the world of the anonymous internet. Incels and MAGAts and Qanon and white nationists and Christian nationists and others insulate themselves from reality and delve deep into their own little bubble of reality.
Rerun the Boulder attack, but give the guy pretty much any "lesser" gun, and you'd still have 10 dead innocents. 180 seconds is a long, long time to run through a store shooting anybody that you want.
I mean, I guess you could decide to completely disarm the entire civilian population but that presents its own problems.
So, banning assault weapons and magazine-capacity limits. "This way, they can't kill as many people at the next mass shooting!" is the reasoning, which implicity says the problem of mass shootings is here to stay but they're going to limit the damage and that's a workable solution.
The background check bill that the Democrats passed in the House a few weeks ago... that might actually cut down on both mass shootings and normal, run-of-the-mill shootings.
The assault weapons ban? Not a chance.
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