New Zealand banning assault and semi-automatic rifles
reuters.com
reuters.com
The rest of the world sees that the US constantly ties itself in knots over the gun issue, and the horrific loss of lives. Hopefully NZ's swift response shows that things CAN change.
In the US, this is the question used to neuter the second amendment. It isn't there to protect us from deer. The 2nd is meant to be used against people. The right that exists is the ability to protect your rights, life, and property, through force if necessary.
We don't live in a world where the people and the government can reasonably expect to have symmetrical physical warfare capabilities. This argument is irrelevant today.
The only area where the exists any form of symmetry would be cyber weapons, not physical.
Defending against other individuals is still a viable argument, and is the only reason I think we need to be careful about how far we go with regards to gun control, but that has some tight limits and I think we can find more effective solutions than guns if we put some effort into it and take it seriously.
We don't need any of that stuff to keep the balance. Iraq, Afganistan, and Vietnam are proof of this. Insurgencies are extremely effective against our military. The only real requirement for them to exist is a sufficient quantity of small arms, and maybe some improvised explosives. The argument is still very much relevant. What's happening in Venezuela right now would not be possible without having first disarmed the populace.
I probably shouldn't reply to an obvious troll account but... yes.
That is exactly how revolutions happen throughout the world - with weapons procured through the black market or otherwise illegal means. It's only the US which insists that a right to revolution be legally defined and protected by the very government its people theoretically intends to revolt against... and yet even with the Second Amendment, domestic terrorism and revolt against the government is still illegal in the US.
And Americans have started enough such revolutions around the world that they should have figured this out by now.
> In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length" at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense.
In other words, they held that the weapon in question was not covered specifically because they did not believe it to be military equipment. It logically follows that "ordinary military equipment" is what is protected by the Second Amendment.
The NRA president testified to congress in 1939: “I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.”
It was only much later they started lobbying against any and all control.
It's also the only "democratic" country where police officers shoot innocent citizens every day.
Go figure.
Go figure.
So whether or not we're safer in this situation is basically a dice roll.
That is, we talk about assault rifles as if they were easily defined but they can be functionally the same as sport rifles but with different grips, and the larger default magazines.
As a side note, they’ve been heavily restricted in the US for civilian ownership since 1986, and manufacture for civilian ownership has been banned since 1986. As a result, the supply is very limited and the cost for a civilian legal M16, for instance, hovers around 20 thousand dollars. I believe one has been used in the commission of a crime in that time period since 1986, and the transfer and sale and even movement of them is also heavily restricted and subject to a BATF background check and a local sheriff approval.
Of course you’re misusing the word to mean anything that looks scary or looks like it might be a civilian legal non select fire rifle, but we’re scientists, we ought to do better. The 1994 “assault weapon ban” didn’t ban any assault weapons. It also catapulted the Republicans to power and destroyed the Democrat party for nearly 20 years as this is America and we don’t like people pretending parts of our Constitution don’t exist.
It is not precise enough, that is my point. You can take an assault rifle and manufacture a sport version that removes military convenience features but is still as deadly. Not so with the auto or semi-auto designation.
They are right to focus on magazine size in legislation. Also ammo type.
The ambiguity comes in from the more recently coined term "assault weapon" that is rather similar to "assault rifle" but means something different. Some would say this similarity was intended to confuse the matter and provide the connotation of military "machine guns" when using the term to the general populace. And to further cloud the issue, there is no universal definition for "assault weapon" when used to refer to certain firearms. Generally it is used to define cosmetic features rather than any real functional differences.
Also the "selective fire" of assault rifles means you can select either semi-auto or full auto, which I think should be preferred terms in legislation. That is, you ban weapons that are automatic or semi-automatic (or both.) And again, the particulars of the magazine.
Banning magazines is ridiculous. Banning cosmetic features as the "AWB" in 1994 did is even more ridiculous -- it's intellectually dishonest.
The problem is not "how deadly" a gun is.
That's all going to be very, very controversial. Personally, I don't want it, any of it, but as a responsible owner of high capacity, semi automatic rifles, I'm willing to at least meet the other side halfway. I love going out to the range and blasting away at old cars and crap, but I don't think an outright ban is the answer. We have to find a middle ground.
These don't seem like problems to people who don't have firearms as part of their culture, but they're important to those who do. I honestly don't know what a good solution would look like. I believe in the purpose of the second amendment, and I like knowing that I have the right and ability to defend myself, but it has become clear that society is not fit enough to handle the current state of things. I don't really know what a good solution looks like.
Recently I heard a quote that might add some to this discussion: The police are there to protect the government and society, not you. So if we put that together and apply it to this issue, without a gun of your own, you're left dependent upon the police who may not protect you, per se, but they will protect civil order and the government. Who decides what that civil order is?
I don't know the answer either but I accept the responsibility as a gun owner to come to the table, and find a solution.
Yes, that ideology describes a lot of (if not the majority) of outspoken gun owners, but "outspoken gun owner" tends to be a self-selected filter for pro-NRA identity politics.
They're playing right into his hands. They skipped the step where you negotiate with the terrorists and went straight to accepting his demands. I guess that doesn't matter when you need to be seen doing something.
Edit: I mean that the shooter wanted NZ gun control as a means to the end he seeks. Not that it is the end he seeks.
The shooter left a long manifesto. It contained quite a bit about white nationalism, but you’re the first person to suggest that it was secretly about gun control.
Boogaloo in the US seems iffy because any gun control measures strong enough to touch it off would probably be a non-starter because if there's a civil war brewing (let alone a racially charged one) the people that make up the base of the party that usually pushes gun control would very much want to be armed. Boogaloo resulting in some sort of white supremacist victory is laughable. Europe copying either is just fantasy.
The fact that the NZ politicians are doing exactly what a terrorist asked for is what annoys me most here.
2. Outlaw guns in the US
3. Race War 2020
4. ????
5. Profit
Pretty much the TLDR of this guy's manifesto.
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Context as to why I posted earlier today: I was born, grew up and lived in Christchurch until 2012 when I moved to Melbourne.
I was there and working in the main hospitals (sysadmin / ops engineer running the primary patient management and some lab systems) and in that role during both of the two major earthquakes that levelled the city.
The emotional, mental and social stress of those two major ‘natural’ disasters were so incredibly deviststing and this this shooting has surely got to pile on for people still living there.
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Do you support the right to arms for Uighurs?
'At first I did not speak out because I did not believe they were coming for me.'
If a commenter is resorting to these, it's evidence they have little of value to add to the conversation beyond concern trolling.
> Who made up that silly rule?
I guess I did. But I can't be the only one sick of seeing these low effort memes pop up around here.
It's not a "low effort meme", it's appropriate sometimes.
The Second Amendment does not apply to citizens. None of the BoR do; they are restrictions on governmental power.