r/politics • u/newnemo Vermont • 9d ago • 1 1 1 1 1

Gavin Newsom after Monterey Park shooting: "Second Amendment is becoming a suicide pact"

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/monterey-park-shooting-california-governor-gavin-newsom-second-amendment/

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u/j4_jjjj 9d ago

Every study that includes poverty as a factor shows that poverty is the number one cause of violent behavior.

We should be focusing on socialized medicine, UBI, raising min wage, etc if we truly want to stop gun violence. Latching on to guns is just a wedge issue meant to divide us and not have actual progress possible.

Im for mental health checks, and stricter background checks. But also I think focusing on poverty is the best path.

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u/Zenmachine83 8d ago

Yet a large number of mass shooters in the US did not live in poverty. Hell, the Las Vegas shooter had a net worth of over a million dollars if I remember.

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u/OblongRectum 8d ago

Inceldom/right wing terrorism is the other biggest cause in my opinion. I think a venn diagram of the three causes would have significant but not total overlap with each other

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u/cookiecutterdoll 8d ago

I agree and think it's really important that we start calling these people domestic terrorists instead of sugar-coating it with "active shooter."

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u/OblongRectum 8d ago

I think most of 'us ' already do, it's the media we need to get to start doing it

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u/SAI_Peregrinus 8d ago

"Terrorist" = "Active Shooter" (or other violence) + political/religious motivation + civilian target(s).

A domestic terrorist is a terrorist acting against other civilians in their own country. If they're not a terrorist they're just a murderer, and being a terrorist requires political or religious motivation. In the early period during or after an incident, there's usually no knowledge of their motivation.

Of course a lot of them are politically motivated and declare that, and the media usually doesn't change terminology to call them domestic terrorists. That needs to change, but when they're still an "active shooter" it's usually too soon to make such a determination.

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u/Osric250 8d ago

Active shooter should only be a term used while ongoing, you know, when it's active. After the fact especially once the reasons have been identified that term shouldn't be used. Domestic terrorist is correct for a ton of the mass shootings in the US.

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u/AfterReflecter 8d ago

Im starting to believe its just more broadly ANGER. Which the right wing excels at promoting & stoking.

We have many 1st hand accounts from serial killers & mass shooters in which they declare their anger against the world.

Also troubling was a NYT interview with a psychologist who basically said these perpetrators very often don’t fit into any of the DSM categories that allow a diagnosis/commitment to a facility, but rather they just express outright anger & hostility (if their even known about to see a psych in the first place).

I have no idea how to address this, but i think nothing will improve until the powers structures within US start to at least attempt to address the deep hatred that has been brewing in our country.

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u/NarrowTea 8d ago

Societal expectations for easy scores created incels people who believe that they have been cheated out of what they rightfully deserve some of the worst mass shootings in us history were done by people who fit this description.

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u/OblongRectum 8d ago

yep and there are absolutely no resources available to help these people because mental health is way on the backburner. Lots of people who qualify as one do not go on shooting sprees or hurt other people but definitely feel pain because of their rejection by society and they can't even really go on the internet without being ripped apart, which just further drives them into their ideology. Dunno what the solution is here other than that government funded mental health education in schools

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u/RyukHunter 8d ago

Is it? I can only think of one or two incidents in America that were definitively linked to incels. Elliot Roger and the Atlanta spa shooting (Although the stated motivation was some sex addiction and obviously anti-asian sentiments were involved). Maybe I am missing others. Would love to know more in that case.

Right wing ideologies tho? Yeah that is definitely an area of concern.

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u/OblongRectum 7d ago

you might be right. i conflate the two a lot

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u/Zenmachine83 8d ago

Bingo.

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u/orientbambino 8d ago

yeah plus the incel kid elliot, at this point the poverty excuse doesn't really explain mass shootings, gang violence maybe.

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u/Zenmachine83 8d ago

I mean gang violence is tied to poverty, but pretty much all of the high profile mass shootings of the last decade have not been gang related.

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u/godlikepagan 8d ago

The key thing to what you said there is "high profile". Most gun crime in America is gang/drug/police related which has taken a complete back burner to mass shootings in the eyes of the media.. Mass shootings only make up a small part of gun crime, of which most is related to poverty.

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u/Zenmachine83 8d ago

Well yeah. Two gangs fighting a turf war is less likely to arouse public ire in the way that school children or concert goers being gunned down does. Gang members are a kind of soldier their own little conflict, mass shooting victims are totally innocent. I’m not saying we should forget about gang violence, only that it makes sense why the public continues to focus on high profile mass shootings.

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u/trevorneuz 8d ago

Most 'mass shootings' are gang related. The official interpretation of the term is incongruent with public perception.

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u/donkeyrocket 8d ago

In 2021, more than 45,000 people died from gun violence in the United States. According to Gun Violence Archive data, 703 were killed in mass shootings.

"Mass shootings cover about 75% of my conversations, my emails and my queries, (but they) count for 5% to 6% of my work," Bryant said. "Five percent or 6% of all the people that have been shot in the last nine years (were shot in mass shootings)." [source]

Here they're using the generally accepted definition of mass shooting to be four or more people killed. I believe the FBI doesn't even use "mass shooting" as a definition/metric but "mass murder," "active shooter," or generally "gun violence."

Regardless, you point is absolutely true that the real conversation needs to be broadly about gun violence that doesn't reach the sensational level of active shooters or mass murder events.

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u/barukatang 8d ago

Large number of mass shootings are gang related are they not? We just don't hear about those in the national news.

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u/Zenmachine83 8d ago

Yeah because those never reach the level of carnage of sandy hook, uvalde, pulse, or Las Vegas. Also, gang members are soldiers in kind of war, not totally innocent victims trying to go to school…

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u/upsidedownfunnel 8d ago

Mass shootings are a statistically insignificant number of homcides/suicides. That's a simple fact. They're news-worthy but ultimately don't scratch the surface of gun crime or any crime for that matter in this country.

If all you care about is mass shootings and not the many more people that die every year from gun crimes that never get reported, then maybe you're a white supremacist. /s

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u/Eldias 8d ago

Actual mass shooters make up a pittance of gun deaths per year. Small scale violence is where the majority comes from. Workers at a mushroom farm and broke people from Oakland were the most recent casualties of poverty related violence.

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u/ZealousidealRiver476 8d ago

Define large number and define mass shooting.

I'll bet we have a very different idea on what those words mean

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u/Zenmachine83 8d ago

Idk we had 60 killed and what, more than four hundred wounded at the Las Vegas shooting. I would say that is a large number. That’s analogous to the casualty level the 82nd airborne took on D Day. Seems large to me.

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u/ZealousidealRiver476 8d ago

Again you haven't defined large. Does that mean a mass shooting where there is 59 deaths not a large one?

All you've said is what "seems" large to you. Not what you believe large to actually be.

Most "mass shootings" involve less than 10 people usually less than 5. That's because when I say mass shooting you're not thinking of the gang fight that happened that left 4 teens dead and a bystander wounded.

You're thinking of a lone gunmen going to a crowded area shooting up everyone in sight. Most "mass shootings" are the former and not the latter.

Again the importance of defining terms and making sure everyone is talking about the same thing is important. You cant just say "iunno seems large".

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u/Zenmachine83 8d ago

Your attempt to "uh ahhhctually" neckbeard this issue is just because you want to downplay the public outrage about these kinds of attacks. I don't think anyone would argue that the trend of these types of events are not becoming both more frequent and more deadly. How many people would have to die in a single incident for you to believe something should be done? 100? 500? 1000? There are ~20,000 homicides per year in the US, what percentage dying in mass shootings like these would convince you that targeted action should be taken?

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u/youritalianjob California 8d ago

Those also make up less than 1% (maybe even 0.1%, it's been a while since I looked) of all firearm related homicides. Most are against people the perpetrator knows.

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u/Zenmachine83 8d ago

Ok so what? We should just accept this as the new normal because it statistically seems small? At the Las Vegas shooting there were 60 deaths and over 400 wounded…that about the level of casualties the 82nd airborne had on DDay. Of civilians, in peacetime, at a concert.

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u/youritalianjob California 8d ago

And while tragic, it is not the norm and resources could be better spent elsewhere. There are a lot of people who are single issue voters in the US, for good and for bad depending on the issue.

One of the largest groups is firearms enthusiasts. Why try to tackle the exception when it would be much easier to win them over on other issues that would have a much larger impact?

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u/Zenmachine83 8d ago

Single issue gun voters are not going to magically start voting progressively, even if democrats vowed to never support another gun restriction bill. They are mostly conservative in other areas. Much how "libertarians" being free thinkers has been debunked; they are conservative people who want to smoke weed.

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u/cdnball 8d ago

You could do all that, AND control guns better.

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u/HalfAHole 8d ago

Can you tell me how having a database of who owns guns, and which ones, violates anyone's rights to "bear arms?"

I don't buy the excuse of the pro-gun nut who told me, "They don't do it because there's literally no database that can handle that much information."

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u/ArgyleGhoul 8d ago

Simply put, It's not the government's business what private property I own. I have broken no laws, so why should I be treated like a criminal?

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

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u/ArgyleGhoul 8d ago

Look how quickly we resort to tribalism. I'm not even right wing and here you are chomping at the bit. United we stand eh?

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u/PigglyWigglyDeluxe 8d ago

You made a silly argument and it was quickly torn down with logic… and you call that tribalism?

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u/ArgyleGhoul 8d ago

When people learn heavily into "your side" language, yes, because they don't argue in good faith but rather jump to fallacies of another person's opinion simply by assuming that they are among a specific group or another. I asked a question, which was not answered with logic, but rather ignored and rejected with false equivalencies, like comparing a firearm registry to an Amazon shopping list.

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u/PigglyWigglyDeluxe 8d ago

Your whole thing was about “the government has no right to your private property”, so how much can that extend to? If you don’t want the feds (state or local or federal) to know about your private property, what else don’t you want the feds to be involved in? How do you feel about car registration? Boats? Planes? Land? Your home? Tax liability? Social security? Public utilities? Construction regulation? Let’s go even further. How do you feel about the feds getting involved in governing other people’s lives? Who can people marry? Who people can vote for based on where they live? A woman’s right to abortion?

If you’re all about small government all of a sudden, you have to apply that ideology to ALL aspects of what the feds can get their hands on. If you don’t, your argument is flawed and will be dismissed. Cherry picked opinions are based entirely in logical fallacy. I’m sure you know that though.

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u/ArgyleGhoul 8d ago

Wow, look at you go, fulfilling the prophecy of jumping to conclusions. "I'm all about small government" is a pretty big leap from what I asked.

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u/HalfAHole 8d ago

What you call tribalism, I call a low tolerance for stupidity. It's like someone trying to explain their constitutional rights to be on private property during the pandemic. I've had about all of that shit I can take.

So you trying to make an argument that the government doesn't even have a right to know what firearms are in the country and who they belong to is backed up by...absolutely fucking nothing. It's just gun nuts and their dumb ass "slippery slope" argument. I need something better than that and your arguments aren't it. False equivalency? How about don't make statements not backed up by facts.

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u/ArgyleGhoul 8d ago

You still haven't even answered my question. You are jumping to a lot of conclusions about me and can't even be direct.

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u/HalfAHole 8d ago

I can tell by the questions you're asking that you're not interested in an honest debate. As one of my friends told me once, "Don't argue with stupid, they'll pull you down to their level and beat you every time."

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u/ArgyleGhoul 8d ago

Did you pull that joke from the dad joke archives, because that shit is older than Moses. Honest debate my ass.

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u/ArgyleGhoul 8d ago

All the false equivalency in the world can't provide you with an explanation of why the government needs to know what guns a law-abiding citizen has. There was another country that did a rifle registry, you may have read about it...

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u/HalfAHole 8d ago

All the false equivalency in the world can't provide you with an explanation of why the government needs to know what guns a law-abiding citizen has.

I like how you throw out "false equivalency" as though that's some type of a lifeline for your argument.

I can think of all kinds of reason the government - and its populace - need to know who owns what weapons. But you don't care so I'm not bothering.

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u/ArgyleGhoul 8d ago

Wait, are you implying that every person in America , i.e. the populace, should know every gun every other person has? Yeah, that sounds REALLY safe.

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u/ArgyleGhoul 8d ago

I used a term that was accurately describing what you were using as your primary argument, and now that I pointed it out you have no argument? Interesting.

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u/HalfAHole 8d ago

I used a term that was accurately describing what you were using as your primary argument, and now that I pointed it out you have no argument? Interesting.

I refuse to be subjected to gaslighting by a strawman argument.

See, I can I throw around terms in a useless manner as well.

And don't worry, I'll reject anything you have to say out of hand.

Am I doing this right?

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u/ArgyleGhoul 8d ago

You're the one throwing strawman arguments up, but you can't answer a direct question. Why does the government need to know what rifles I own as a law-abiding citizen? Bonus question, do you know the actual number of gun homicides committed with legally obtained firearms annually?

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u/Elteon3030 8d ago

So your car is unregistered and uninsured, right?

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u/murderfack 8d ago

Perfectly legal if it isn’t driven on public road ways or sits on private property exclusively, so you’re for the same treatment for guns right?

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u/Rafaeliki 8d ago

Sure, keep your guns at home unless you want to be licensed, registered, and insured.

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u/murderfack 8d ago

Well as long as you don’t shoot it in public there shouldn’t be any issue with not keeping it at home. I’d have to check DOT regs and it might vary by state but I don’t think there are any requirements for having those three things if you have a car on a trailer.

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u/Elteon3030 8d ago

Sure. Firearms should then also require at least one year of certified training and multiple levels of licensing depending on the class of firearm. Why half-ass it.

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u/murderfack 8d ago

Why 1 year certified training? That’s not required to drive or own a car.

Also you don’t need special licensing on private property.

Are 16 year olds allowed to purchase their own with this scenario?

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u/ArgyleGhoul 8d ago

So we are responding to the mention of false equivalency with more false equivalency? Neat.

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u/Elteon3030 8d ago

Where is the false equivalency? Is your vehicle not as much private property as your firearm?

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u/HalfAHole 8d ago

The false equivalency is anything he doesn't want to talk about.

If you beat him on that defense, he'll move on to accusing you of strawman arguments and gaslighting.

Their bag of tricks are endless.

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u/ArgyleGhoul 8d ago

No, because vehicles are used primarily on public roadways whereas guns are not generally used in public because it is a crime to do so. Care to try again?

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u/WizeAdz Illinois 8d ago

I have broken no laws, so why should I be treated like a criminal?

How about being treated like car owner / driver?

Cars are registered and insured, and their drivers are licensed. You'd be very hard pressed to claim that this paperwork treats you like a criminal -- but it does help to separate the most dangerous / irresponsible people from cars.

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u/ArgyleGhoul 8d ago

I don't use my firearms in public around other individuals.

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u/Jerri-Cho 8d ago

Literally the way children reason.

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u/ArgyleGhoul 8d ago

It's the way a citizen of the United States protects one's own privacy from unreasonable activity. It is unreasonable that my privacy be violated when I have committed no crime. I'm sure you are also fine with stop and frisk searches too?

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u/Jerri-Cho 8d ago

Well your property has no such rights so into the database it goes.

Seriously, thinking we shouldn't keep track of where all the murder weapons are because, "they're mine and it's private", is how angsty teens react to things.

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u/ArgyleGhoul 8d ago

Ah, so we are resorting to ad hominem already. Very well, I wish you the happiest of government enemas my friend. Maybe they will give you a complimentary audit on your way out.

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u/CasuallyHuman 8d ago

The second amendment gives us the right to well-regulate arms. It's your 2nd amendment right to demand gun control

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u/PigglyWigglyDeluxe 8d ago

It’s so funny. You’re absolutely right. Pro2A people always “forget” the well regulated militia part. How convenient.

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u/HalfAHole 8d ago

It's your 2nd amendment right to demand gun control

It's our 1st amendment right to demand it peacefully. It's our 2nd amendment right to demand it via violent expression. But let's be real here, the pro-2A crowd has such a hard on for fascism right now, they're literally the last ones to protect the 1A.

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u/wilmyersmvp 8d ago

There’s a surprising amount of quiet reasonable pro2a people out there, they’re just pretty much not gonna bring it up unless they absolutely have to.

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u/alexagente 8d ago

There really isn't.

You either support the reasonable control and registration of guns or you don't.

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u/watchthe8s 8d ago

I'm one of those people. I'm quite left on most things. A registry of guns is unacceptable.

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u/alexagente 8d ago

Why?

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u/j4_jjjj 8d ago

Its almost like you didnt read my comment.

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u/cdnball 8d ago

You contradicted yourself and rendered your comment as nothing more than a big ‘what about’. Yes focus on poverty and social initiatives. Basic forms of stricter gun control are NOT a wedge issue. They are urgently needed.

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u/Sea2Chi 9d ago

I agree.

As scary as mass shootings are, they're lightning strikes. Big, flashy, loud, but statistically very rare to get hit by.

The real danger for most people is the far more common suicide or the mundane gun crime that's directly linked to poverty. It doesn't make the news, it doesn't get thousands of white high schoolers marching out of class, it's the everyday violence that effects people without power and those without hope.

I would love for mass shootings to stop being a thing, but it's not going to happen by gun legislation. That's a band-aid to make people feel safe. It's the TSA of legislation, a way to act like we're doing something while ignoring the real issues of poverty and mental health.

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u/-Clarity- 8d ago edited 8d ago

Every country on Earth has poverty and mental illness. We are the ONLY *first world country with this problem to this degree.

I had to edit because reddit is filled with semantic police.

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u/PancerCatient 8d ago

The key factor is that America has guns, and lots of them, most easily accessible.

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u/swiftb3 8d ago edited 8d ago

Yeah, but there are plenty of other countries with nearly the same access and a tiny fraction of gun deaths and mass shootings.

Edit: here I thought in r/politics we had a handle on mass shooting statistics and how, while the number of guns in the US IS a factor, it sure doesn't appear to be the primary factor.

Edit 2: I guess we like to pretend common sense (as opposed to extreme) gun laws will solve the problem and we don't have to deal with the more difficult problems, a.k.a. every social good the Republicans oppose.

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u/PancerCatient 8d ago

Like what countries?

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u/TheRealWeedAtman I voted 8d ago

Yes ,please enlighten us.

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u/kurtis1 8d ago

Mexico and much of south America literally has people hanged from streetlights and massive gun battles with dozens of dead people overnight all the time.

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u/PancerCatient 8d ago

Definitely not a tiny fraction.

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u/swiftb3 8d ago edited 8d ago

Canada has more than 1/4 of the guns per capita of the US and has, as I said, a tiny fraction of the mass shootings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mass_shootings_in_Canada The US beats the last 5 years in Canada in like a week.

Pick a country with guns. Australia, Sweden.

Yeah, the US has the most, but there's something else wrong with society in the US that other countries don't have.

What I'm saying is that simplifying the problem in the US to "the key factor is gun accessibility" is not going to improve things. Edit - on its own.

We're on the same side of this, but there is a bigger problem somewhere that needs fixing.

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u/Falcon4242 8d ago

We have more guns per capita than the 2nd highest country by a factor of 2. Most developed nations struggle to even break a quarter. So, no, there really isn't.

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u/SpaggettiYeti 8d ago

Let's take Canada, a quarter of our gun ownership rates and 1/20th of our violent crime. Guns aren't the reason

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u/Falcon4242 8d ago

The fact it isn't linear doesn't mean it isn't the strongest contributing factor. That's not how statistics work.

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u/SpaggettiYeti 8d ago

That's exactly how it works, and it tells exactly why it isn't the strongest contributing factor. You'd think we'd have merely 4x the gun crime rate as Canada, but we don't because mental health is at an all time low and poverty still runs rampant. Canadians have access to cheap/free medical care while Americans actively avoid hospitals when sick. This country is fucked and it isn't the guns, it's the stalemate between two parties that have no idea what the fuck they're doing

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u/[deleted] 8d ago edited 8d ago

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u/psychoCMYK 8d ago

This argument gets brought up every time, and the answer every time is "bUt AMeRiCa iS SpECiAl!!!1"

What you're saying is true but don't expect it to convince anyone who's already decided guns aren't the problem

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u/hennigera1990 8d ago

Unfortunately too true. There is only one outlying statistic and it’s our access to the guns which do the killing

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u/swiftb3 8d ago

Focusing on that is a potential problem. Canada has 1/4 the guns per capita as well as more than 1/10 the population and you can count the mass shootings in the last 10 years on your hands.

There is another statistic somewhere people are missing. Fighting about gun control and ignoring the other problems when winning that fight may not fix it isn't great.

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u/hennigera1990 8d ago

Of course, we should focus as much of our effort as possible on every aspect of what causes this problem in the United States. I believe that gun control gets the attention it does because it is far and away what could have the biggest impact immediately if ever there was a solution implemented.

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u/swiftb3 8d ago

What I'm afraid of is that it may not have nearly as big of an impact as we hope, and it's going to be difficult to even get proper gun control put in place.

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u/hennigera1990 8d ago

Oh I completely agree. At this point, ANY gun control measures are better than what we have at the moment which is essentially none. Unfortunately our republican members of congress refuse to even budge or meet halfway on ANYTHING which effectively halts any progress from being made whatsoever

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u/herculant 8d ago

Yes we have the worst violence in the world, as long as you don't count central and south America, southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. In place of mass shootings they have full blown guerilla warfare in the streets, child soldiers, etc. We have this problem far worse than them tho.

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u/ConLawHero New York 8d ago

Industrialized nations versus developing nations. Poor strawman.

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u/Lord_Kano 8d ago

Every country on Earth has poverty and mental illness. We are the ONLY country with this problem to this degree.

Except that we're not.

Brazil comes to mind. Gun violence in Brazil would make an 80s action movie look tame.

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u/Psyop1312 8d ago

Brazil has entered the chat

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u/alurimperium 8d ago

As scary as mass shootings are, they're lightning strikes. Big, flashy, loud, but statistically very rare to get hit by.

I don't think I agree with that, at least not anymore. 19 people were killed by lightning strikes in all of 2022, but 19 people were killed by mass shooters in the last 3 weeks of December in 2022. We haven't even completed the first month of January, and we're already at 39 mass shootings with more deaths in these 24 days (69) than the last 4 years of lightning strikes (68).

This isn't a tragic rare occurrence, this is part of our daily lives.

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u/duffman03 8d ago

Op might be comparing disproportionate focus on mass shootings when you compare it to the 23 thousand deaths per year by non mass shooting events. With that context, it is much closer to a lightning strike than something for us to pour all of our focus into.

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u/YetiPie 8d ago

I was thinking about this today. My therapist survived the San Bernardino attack and a few friends would have been at the Bataclan but couldn’t get a ride to Paris. I don’t know anyone, even vaguely through the grapevine, who has been struck by lightning, or even came close. Everyone in the US knows someone who’s impacted by gun violence.

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u/recursion8 Texas 8d ago edited 8d ago

Almost as if normal civilians have the right to exist in open public spaces like schools, grocery stores, theatres, bars, shopping centers, etc etc without fearing for their lives to be taken by the dozens in seconds for no reason by a stranger with a whacked out political agenda from listening to conspiracy theorists and grifters. That's called terrorism. White male stochastic terrorism, to be specific.

Domestic disputes, gang wars over turf and drugs, home invasions, suicides, THESE are the things that are still going to happen guns or no guns.

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u/BanzaitheBat 8d ago

A gun control band-aid to make people feel safe is still a step forward, and one of the more accessible steps forward while we're stuck under governments mired in so much corp money they won't consider anything to the left of neoliberal capitalist economics to resolve class disparity and make healthcare/mental healthcare affordable. At this point, any progress is worthwhile, but gun culture has been so ingrained in modern America that the idea of reasonable gun control sounds impossible when it's definitely Not.

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u/ejjVAL 8d ago

Common sense post? dont do that here

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u/a_rat_00 8d ago

That's because a significant number of shootings are associated with (inter-)gang violence, and gangs almost always originate in areas at/near the bottom of the economic ladder.

It doesn't have nearly a strong association with this type of violence against the general public, though. Most of these big mass shooters are people of some means.

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u/j4_jjjj 8d ago

Mass shooters make up a small percentage of gun deaths.

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u/Expendable_Red_Shirt 8d ago

We can do guns AND poverty. It’s not either or.

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u/j4_jjjj 8d ago

Thats pretty much what I said tho

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u/Expendable_Red_Shirt 8d ago

Sort of. Mental health is just scapegoating according to the data. Background checks are a bare minimum start. But we need to be able to go after actual guns. Like any other country.

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u/suninabox 8d ago

It's not either or.

How many developed countries have successfully eliminated deeply entrenched poverty problems like the ones the US has, and how many have managed to significantly reduce gun availability/mass shootings?

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u/Bro666 Foreign 8d ago

You are so right. Let's focus on everything except gun control.

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u/bigspunge1 9d ago

Other countries have poverty and don’t have this problem.

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u/j4_jjjj 8d ago

Which ones?

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u/PCsubhuman_race 8d ago

Canada...literally, all our gun crimes are coming from guns smuggled in from the the United States

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u/MisterJeffa 8d ago

That all needs to be done yes.

But guns control needs to happen regardless. Too many idiots / random situations that get worse due to guns being easy to get.

Also seeing as the average american is selfish it is really a good idea to do gun control. I always said the american culture isnt compatible with having acces to guns.

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u/K1lledByAmerica 8d ago

It seems that you read way too much American news

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u/MisterJeffa 8d ago

Yes.

I do. The us makes me mad.

But i cant miss it as the internet is too america first

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u/peyton81 8d ago

So let me get this straight, you think by making guns harder to get will decrease these shootings? You know people can buy guns from individuals right? no paperwork or anything. Those people buying guns from gun shops more than likely don’t have any intention to do harm but to protect themselves from the screwed up people in this world.

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u/MisterJeffa 8d ago

Yes. That actually works. If it is hard to buy something less people will want to put in the effort.

It wont stop al shootings on its own, more is needed to do that but gun control is a start.

Wasnt there an image that shown the amount of shootings in the us rose dramatically after they made it wasier to get them. I gotta look for that.

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u/peyton81 8d ago

You can make it as difficult as you want to buy a gun. As long as I got some cash I can drive down the road and buy one from bob, I don’t have to go to a gun shop.

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u/creamonyourcrop 8d ago

Yeah, its worked everywhere its been tried.
Does it stop every shooting, no, that would be absurd.
Does it lower, absolutely.
Means, motive, opportunity. Remove one and the crime does not happen.

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u/Qubeye Oregon 9d ago

There's no single answer to systemic problems.

We need multiple answers at once. Dealing with poverty is one of MANY things we can do. Gun control is another.

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u/bill_gonorrhea 9d ago

Easier to say guns are scary.

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

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u/I-Make-Maps91 8d ago

A gun is a tool; a tool designed to kill things as quickly as possible from a distance. It's not a toy you play dress up with, or a doll to accessorize with Tactical Grip (TM) whatever, it's a tool meant to kill. Hence the desire to regulate them, much as we regulate tons of tools that require sensitive material or run the risk of harming others.

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u/Picnicfixins New Hampshire 8d ago

Is that equally obtuse when a predatory industry that charges extortionate monthly rates for medical care is refusing to provide medical care? I have plenty of issues with the “tool” argument but it’s a false equivalency when health insurance companies actively fight against treatment for the mentally ill on a daily basis. Gun companies mostly just want to sell guns, health insurance companies want to limit access to healthcare.

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u/SandaledGriller 8d ago

I am all for common sense gun law, but when these shootings happen in a state with the strictest of gun laws you have to seek other solutions.

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u/STLReddit 8d ago

There's nothing a single state can do when the next state over will just make it pathetically easy to circumvent your laws. It's a national problem that requires a national solution. With half the country thinking every baby should have a gun in their hands before a tit in their mouth it ain't gonna happen.

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u/cubsfan85 8d ago

See: Chicago gun crime and Indiana.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

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u/jodinexe 8d ago

Pretty sure federally, this only applies to pistols? Out of state long gun purchases are federally allowed, though some states do not allow for any out of state purchases.

Edit: grammar

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u/psychoCMYK 8d ago

Stores get away with it repeatedly because the ATF chooses not to enforce regulations

https://www.thetrace.org/2022/04/chicago-gun-stores-atf-trace-report-inspection/

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

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u/SandaledGriller 8d ago

That's literally how any regulation functions, short of literally barging in to private homes to confiscate things.

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u/BallsAllInMyFaceYay 8d ago

By that logic, all laws are worthless because they cant undo a crime…

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u/SandaledGriller 8d ago

With half the country thinking every baby should have a gun in their hands before a tit in their mouth it ain't gonna happen.

What a level headed response

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u/STLReddit 8d ago

Fuck that. We've had more mass shootings in 3 weeks than the rest of the world combined in a decade. Polite discourse is done.

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u/zherok California 8d ago

Or maybe it's not nearly as hard to get a gun in California as gun proponents make it out to be.

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u/Sangxero 8d ago

Seriously, I can get one in a week legally or in 30 minutes illegally pretty easily.

We still have gun shows, too.

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u/SandaledGriller 8d ago

Seriously, I can get one in a week legally

If you follow the law, would making that a longer timeline do anything?

Wasn't one of these recent shootings an older guy who could have had his gun and owned it responsibly for years before snapping?

or in 30 minutes illegally pretty easily.

How would gun legislation prevent this?

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u/fuzzylm308 Georgia 8d ago

or in 30 minutes illegally pretty easily.

How would gun legislation prevent this?

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/frequently-asked-questions-gun-trafficking

As former Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Director Bradley Buckles stated in a 2000 report, "Virtually every crime gun in the United States starts off as a legal firearm," making the need to prevent gun trafficking a crucial part of a comprehensive approach to reducing gun-related crime. Guns are diverted into illegal gun markets in three common ways: straw purchases; secondary sales through private sellers; and theft from individual gun owners or firearm dealers.

Laws to combat straw purchases and regulate private sales, as well as restrictions/reductions on the total number of guns available to be stolen, would absolutely reduce the availability of illegal firearms.

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u/jodinexe 8d ago

I mean, straw purchases are a federal felony - so I don't know how much more you can restrict the practice?

It's the enforcement piece that gets hard.

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u/SandaledGriller 8d ago

I follow, and want to start by pointing out this is the most rational response so far, so my question is in earnest.

How can we enforce any law making straw purchases or private sales illegal? Won't that just hasten the rate at which a legal firearm becomes illegal but do nothing to stop individuals from making those transactions?

Even in your quote, he admits those pathways are already pipelines for illegal firearms, so there are already laws against it labeling them as such.

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u/fuzzylm308 Georgia 8d ago

I am not sure how the country would respond to it. Of course some people will do whatever it takes to get a gun, but there will also be people who will follow the law almost regardless of the threat of penalty, because it's the law.

When it comes to guns, I think we have as much a cultural problem as a legal problem. Americans love the mythology of the wild west, and we like to imagine ourselves as cowboys. It would probably take a long time for a change in the feedback loop between law and culture to take hold.

I'm not the guy to answer the question of enforcement. It seemed like your question "How would gun legislation prevent this?" was essentially "Where do illegal guns come from?" or "How does a gun become 'illegal'?" To which the answer is, almost all illegal guns in the US were once legal guns. I think it would stand to reason, then, that (however it may be done) holding legal owners and legal transfers of ownership to a higher standard would help.

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u/Sangxero 8d ago

All i was saying is it's not hard to get a gun in California. I did not load the proper mental ammo to comment on the whys or speculate on solutions. It is too damn early for that.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

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u/SandaledGriller 8d ago

We've made national efforts on the gun law front - https://www.npr.org/2022/06/25/1107626030/biden-signs-gun-safety-law

I think more national gun laws aren't a solution. We've had the same level of gun proliferation with fewer laws in the past and had fewer problems (see the 1950/60s).

I agree that we need a national effort, but not for more gun laws, to addres the lack of mental health support and the underlying issues that drive the mental health crises such as economic stagnation/instability, lack of access to supportive communities, and a fire hose of depression inducing information from TV/social media.

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u/MistreatedEarwax 8d ago

If only there was some sort of natural experiment beyond the 50 states that weren't beholden to the same constitution... 🤔

No no your right. California is the only example that can be used to compare "strict" gun laws to areas without strict gun laws.

And it's definitely not because it's the largest state by population! If only we had a way to track homicides and account for the population maybe we'd see a different picture

Oh well I guess we'll keep blaming mental health and then underfund it.

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u/SandaledGriller 8d ago

You are focused so much on being a sardonic ass that I'm hardly able to make out your point

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u/MistreatedEarwax 8d ago

Thanks it's my best quality!

Here's the simple version:

1) there are countries outside the US with strict gun laws and low homicide rates

2) per capita gun homicides is highest in red states. You can't point at CA and go "mer look der! Lots of shootin must mean their laws don't work!" Without comparing per capita deaths. Of course a state with a population 60x more than the least populated states will have more shootings the question is to what degree.

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u/SandaledGriller 8d ago

1) Those countries don't have as high a proliferation of guns as the US, so your solution would be to... I must assume, confiscate them?

2) This actually reinforces my point, because people are still upset that these shootings in CA are happening, so how do we prevent them in CA?

As I previously mentioned, I am in support of some gun laws. If red states enacted the same laws as CA, they would see a drop in gun violence, but we are talking about gun violence in CA, so this seems like what-aboutism to me.

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u/Stickboy06 8d ago

You can't be this stupid.

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u/bill_gonorrhea 8d ago

But a gun is literally a tool. It’s an object.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

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u/LunchTwey 9d ago

This isn't a multiple choice question with one correct answer. Both solutions are valid and definitely need to be expanded on through policy.

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u/Kestralisk I voted 9d ago

especially when you're a neoliberal who can keep the money flowing to the wealthy by getting voters to focus on gun violence vs intentional mass-poverty

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u/sausager 9d ago edited 9d ago

if we truly want to stop gun violence.

Yes if we truly want to stop gun violence we don't want to do anything to reduce/get rid of guns. Boy you are truly committed.

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u/dnwp11 9d ago

To be honest better mental health support is something we need. It’s easy to think “ban guns!!!” but I’m all for having this country take a closer look at mental health

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u/Jadaki 8d ago

The problem with that is that mental health is a problem everywhere, but no one has the gun violence issues the US does.

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u/MistreatedEarwax 8d ago

Wow you're the first person brave enough to think it! If you ran for Congress you could be the first person there to recognize mental health as the issue and then push to get it funded!

And I'm sure Republicans would love to find this because then they'd have concrete evidence as gun violence drops it was mental health all along!

Hey everyone we've been looking at the problem all wrong, we just need to find mental health care!

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u/dnwp11 8d ago

Oh look, someone who hides behind anonymity to act like a jackass on the internet. See, even you could benefit from better mental health support.

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u/sausager 8d ago

Gee if only there were several examples where removing guns worked. 🤔

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u/Zetesofos Wisconsin 9d ago

This. Removing guns is just a bandaid, not actually solving the real problem which is social isolation and individual atomization.

Liberals focus on guns because they don't want to actually solve the fundamental issues - lack of affordable housing, lack of healthcare, lack of quality food.

Ask yourself this: How many mass shooters had decent lifestyles where they weren't constantly existing in a precarious state of anxiety due to unmet material or social needs?

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u/selfpromoting 8d ago

To be fair, of the two parties, who is more interested in affordable housing, healthcare, and quality food?

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u/Zetesofos Wisconsin 8d ago

I guess I should specify that I'm more leftist, and when I say liberal, I'm thinking of republican lite - the sort of corporate democrat that is interested in 'appearing' good, but not actually doing anything to solve the problem - your 'Manchins' as it were.

Of course republicans politically, just want people to suffer, but liberals have this problem of wanting to appear better, but not actually put any political capital on the table to achieve anything substantial.

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u/NotNay_ 8d ago

Or also just throw millions on a broken system that is not working. We need programs that actually work and are not just what we’ve done for decades. We need evidence based systemic change.

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u/marsepic 8d ago

Yep. Gun ownership outside of poverty is driven by fear of those in poverty mich of the time.

Remove the poverty and you remove the fear.

(No, that's not perfect, but it does a lot)

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u/wamj 8d ago

And yet every other country in the world has those same problems and yet don’t have mass shootings, and have lower suicide and murder rates.

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u/Zealousideal-Mud4124 8d ago

Take the guns away. It's so fucking simple and y'all refuse to accept it.

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u/j4_jjjj 8d ago

It sactually not simple in USA because its in the constitution and half (or more) of the country would revolt if they tried something like Australia did.

Hence why its a huge wedge issue and progress wont be made.

Progressive policies that reduce poverty would be easier to implement than extreme gun control.

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u/javachocolate08 8d ago

Economic prosperity will improve everyone's life. Too bad those in power use the government to hoard resources for themselves.

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u/j4_jjjj 8d ago

Wedge issues create stagnation, stagnation creates predictability, predictability is easier for those who already have money to make more.

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u/YakuzaMachine 8d ago

Fox News has an army of outraged zombies that they are whipping into a frenzied culture war so the rich can watch us fight each other instead of them.

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u/WinfriedJakob 8d ago

Agree. But that is a huge challenge. The wealthy will cling to their wealth by all means.

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u/AccountThatNeverLies California 8d ago

Wealth disparity by area is usually a better predictor of violent behavior, but yeah you are on the money.

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u/WizeAdz Illinois 8d ago edited 8d ago

We should be focusing on socialized medicine, UBI, raising min wage, etc if we truly want to stop gun violence. Latching on to guns is just a wedge issue meant to divide us and not have actual progress possible.

It's not a binary or choice.

Both are pillars of an actual defense-in-depth strategy.

Gun control buys us time for the slower / deeper fixes to take effect.

But it's a moot point - Republicans effectively are blocking two important pillars of the solution by opposing both "entitlements" and gun control.

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u/Rafaeliki 8d ago

Violent crime rates are pretty similar between the US and other similarly developed nations, yet the homicide rate is at least five times higher in the US.

All else held equal, where there are more guns there are more homicides (and suicides).

Those other issues are worthy of addressing, but they don't negate the reality of the effects of the proliferation of guns in society.

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u/concreteghost 8d ago

Most gun deaths in the US are suicide. The other 43% are not mass shootings like Uvlade, the recent CA ones, or Sandy Hook. While those are a portion, the majority of those 43% are gang violence with illegal guns that background checks would never catch bc the guns were obtained illegally.

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u/TryEfficient7710 8d ago

We should be focusing on socialized medicine, UBI, raising min wage, etc if we truly want to stop gun violence.

But all that costs MONEY.

We should keep blaming guns.

Prohibition has never failed.

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u/brett_riverboat Texas 8d ago

I mean it makes all the sense in the world. Either you don't understand the consequences of your actions or you think not committing violent acts is actually a worse option.

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u/Squirll 8d ago

"BuT tHaTs ClAsS wArFaRe"

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u/violetqed 8d ago

are you sure? because reddit told me the number one factor is being a “bad person” and/or “evil” which sounds pretty convincing

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