US on track to set record in 2023 for mass killings after series of shootings

At least, that was the idea.

It's pretty clear the difference isn't the presence of guns, or the "restrictions" (in Brisbane you need a licence that boils down to knowing gun safety), it's an attitude. The attitude in the US seems to be it's perfectly acceptable to use a gun for self defence, up to and including killing someone. In the rest of the world we are happy to delegate killing people for crimes to the government, so under no circumstances is it legal to threaten someone with a gun, let alone shoot them. Accordingly the rest of the world's population is happy to have fairly mild restrictions on gun use that allows their use for anything (sport, farming, game hunting, ...) bar personal protection from other people.

I suspect the person you are respond would disagree violently on this one point. To them the entire point of owning a gun is self defence. They insist they must have the right to kill someone.

Throwing fuel on the fire just leads to hastier emotional decisions not better decisions.

Take a look at the availability of the mosin nagant rifle.

https://www.nps.gov/spar/learn/historyculture/making-guns.ht...

https://interestingengineering.com/video/guns-factory

That 114-year-old pistol is not only still functional, the only way you could tell it wasn't factory-new when I bought it a few years ago was that the black hard rubber grips were starting to turn a little brown at the edges, and the nickel finish was discolored in a few places on the slide. I've since restored the grips and carefully polished the finish to correct those two points.

Off the top of my head, I have at least two shotguns, one pistol, and four rifles that have been in my family for >100 years. One of those rifles is so old that I'm unsure who first acquired it. It's a "Pennsylvania long rifle". Made long before serial numbers were "a thing", I'd date it to about 1820 based on the style. I know my great-great-grandfather had it, because I have a photograph of him using it as an old man in the early 1900s.

But let's pretend they don't. I'm all for universal mental health care. How does that help? What can we do to curtail gun violence, if we take the stance that it's a mental health issue? Evaluate everyone before letting them buy guns? Sold! Hell, I'll give mine back (after I've damaged them beyond use so no one can have them in the future).

We can play "Is it mental health?" all day but even if it is and we're going through a period of collective psychosis, I don't see how addressing mental health could ever really help here.

First, let me say that "pointing at whomever is there" is a big step too far. Also, arbitrarily pointing a gun at someone who is not a threat to you in order to intimidate them is already a separate crime in the US - "brandishing". In the few states that don't have specific brandishing laws, that act typically falls under "assault" or "assault with a deadly weapon".

That said, it's very common for people to answer the door armed. I do. Generally that's a holstered pistol on my belt, but if I'm not wearing "street clothes" at the time it could be a tiny pistol in my pocket, a full-size pistol in my hand behind the door so it can't be seen, or a carbine similarly concealed.

Why? I grew up in a place where police response averaged a half hour or more. My home was a half mile (~0.8km for those of you outside the US) down a private gravel road; if someone was at my door that I didn't expect or recognize, chances are they were unwelcome. Generally that means salesmen, but we weren't the only people familiar with police response times, so precautions were well-founded.

Today it's partly a habit for me. Like many people, I have a cloud-connected camera system around my home and a doorbell camera. I never have to go to my door without knowing who to expect when I open it. It's not entirely habit though - if I'm physically answering the door and don't recognize the person on the other side, I can reasonably expect that the purpose of the interaction will be to eject them from my property. A firearm is nothing more than a tool to facilitate doing that with minimal risk to myself and my family.

> And this should be policed by other gun owners!

We do! Gun stores have the ability to deny a sale to anyone, at any time, for any reason. They exercise it regularly. If you don't believe me, find someone who can legally own a firearm and have them go into a gun store while smelling of weed, or alcohol. Alternatively, have them act erratically in the store. Then ask to buy a gun. Chances are they'll be refused service and told to leave at that point. If not, the person at the counter will give them a "Form 4473". There's a fair chance that the employee will use the time spent by the customer to fill out the 4473 to call the police. If the customer fills it out and their answers indicate that they are not a prohibited person, expect the employee to call in the background check and then pretend that the response is delayed. The customer will be instructed to come back later, at a specific time or when called. Police will be present when they're told to return.

Seriously. I've worked in a gun store and spend a fair amount of time in them, and I've seen this (or variants thereof) play out many times. If you come in and can't suppress your crazy long enough to hold a courteous conversation, you're not buying a firearm from them.

> But it's been drawn into this culture war where if we admit that Crazy Bob perhaps shouldn't have guns, then the "liberals" win or whatever.

What I see is that we're not afraid to "self-police", but see attempts to pass laws with an arbitrary means of depriving citizens of their rights without due process as a (rather obvious) attempt for the government to acquire the tools to disarm citizens at their leisure. In other words: it's not that we think Crazy Bob should be armed, but that we would much rather risk Armed Crazy Bob than to give the government the ability to apply the "Crazy" monicker to whomever they like.

I strongly disagree with the characterization that firearms are a "hobby to most".

That might have been the case as recently as the 1980s, but the push for gun control in the 1990s, culminating in the "Assault Weapons Ban" of 1994, galvanized gun owners. I believe that a comfortable majority of gun owners today see through a political lens, not as a hobby.

There's a reason the AR-15 became so prominent so quickly: they were (ineffectively) banned in 1994. When the Assault Weapons Ban expired in 2004, they flew off the shelves. They became symbols of the resistance to gun control, to the point that they acquired the nickname "America's Rifle".

Now consider that in 1994, there were far, far fewer ARs in citizens' hands and a gun culture that was largely oriented around hunting. In 2023, American gun culture is firmly rooted in political activism.

If it is a tiny bit of friction, then SCOTUS would likely allow it. If not, it could be struck down. But what tiny bit of friction is being proposed that will have an impact on homicides?

It seems your argument is that reducing the number of guns will reduce shootings and that we can reduce them with "a tiny bit of friction". But the courts are generally holding that if the restrictions prevent qualified individuals from obtaining a gun, then it is not a tiny bit of friction, but an infringement on rights. It seems these are incompatible.

I have three firearms in my safe right now that were 100% legal when I purchased them. They came with a copy of a letter sent to the manufacturer by the ATF that clearly and explicitly states that they are legal as configured. January 31st of this year, the ATF decided that not only are they illegal, but they've always been illegal. If I don't destroy, modify, or register them they will each carry the same penalty as if I had manufactured machineguns in - checks calendar - 22 days.

Oh, and the registration process requires me to sign a statement indicating that I have committed a felony. The ATF has promised not to prosecute me for it, but... well, forgive me if I don't trust the ATF.

This is not the first time I've had hundreds or thousands of dollars of my legally-acquired property declared retroactively illegal.

I'd love "a tiny bit of friction", because this is ridiculous.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/gun-violen...

But it's also plausible that like OP says outside influences take advantage of the condition being present.

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The best kind of misinformation is misinformation that is true but not representative of the real situation. Have you checked our heart disease deaths? It is *factually* an issue many orders of magnitude more important to the average American. And yet…zero discussion seems to happen about it online?

And why wouldn’t there be foreign influence? It’s quite an easy checklist:

* do Russia and China have the technical capability to make social media accounts and post in English?: Yes, obviously.

* do Russia and China have any motive to drive fearful divisive narratives in the US?: Yes - we are their primary geopolitical opponent

With both of these true, to assume they’re not doing it for some reason out of kindness requires a lot of mental gymnastics.