'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
The gun buy back was good deal to encourage people to turn in any old guns that they either didn't want to licence or were unable to licence (due to having a criminal record or the gun being fully automatic).
Having a modern up to date, searchable central registry of guns, ownership, and requiring every sale to be recorded is a major advantage for Australia over the US.
In Australia twelve years olds can join a gun club (with parental permission) and the majority of people can own a gun if they wish - subject to a record free from violence and a demonstration of competance and ability to keep and store weapons safely.
I'm in rural Australia and have some guns for feral control use.
My neighbour has a fairly decent assortment of guns and shoots ULR (ultra long range) targets at 5,000 yards.
Annual setup and test with initial flight path drone PoV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7owwTz7Z0OE
This would be a challenge in the US due to the uphill work required to get all US states and territories on the same page to uphold and enforce the same simplified set of core firearm regulations.
Unifying gun laws in America wouldn't just dike up the blood tide, it could actually increase the responsible shooting public's choice of guns. The sheer number and variety of weapons kept from the US marketplace by the gun lobby is frustrating and hilarious, considering that their war-cry elicits voter anger like almost no other.
Let's think about this: how about a National Energetics License Program[0]? Totally free. Base it on something like the Security Clearance program, but make it so it doesn't cost a bazillion dollars. Measure the amount of energy (kJ/S) the handheld can put downrange in, eh, 10 seconds. Divide it by the mass-volume of the device. Create several classes based on this. Class 1: equivalent to single shot weapons, anyone can have it. Class 2: equivalent to low-capacity semiautos, revolvers, requires something like Public Trust clearance. Class 3: equivalent to high cap semiauto, Secret clearance. Class 4: full auto, Top Secret. Etc etc.
Also, in my opinion, suppressors don't make it easier to liquidate schoolchildren, but they do keep the quiet outdoors. Nix the tax stamp. Also also? Those eight hundred dollar Chinese M-14 knockoffs? Belgian rifles? Mil-surp SVT-40s? Oh yeah, keep 'em comin'. Colt might be pissed. Screw 'em.
In other words, it's a slightly less onerous process than the one you have on your Kia. It would prevent . . almost everything that hits the news, because damn, there is nothing tracking rapid fire weapons, at all. I could drive to the next state over and buy almost literally anything cash in hand, short of an actual full auto. This means that I'd at least need to show I'm not a flake of the first order.
And shooters would legit be pretty damn happy. Unless it's that guy with the Rivian who just shovelled fifty thousand dollars into buying a tenth-hand PKM because FULL AUTO. He might be pissed. Screw him.
But if you screw with your NEL, oh man, you would be done. So, so, so done. Lose the weapon or get it stolen[1] when it's unsecured? Yeah, you got problems. You'll get bad shit for anything bad that happens with your weapon. Hell, how parents dodge accessory charges for most of these shootings is a mystery to me. In Florida, this one chick left an AR on the sofa with a full mag, a round racked, safety off (State 4, aka Instant state, which means SOMETHIN'S GETTIN' SHOT). Anyway, her kid grabbed it after getting pushed around and shot his buddies outside. The little bastard's in jail basically forever, but her and the fam?> Nah, they're good. That is hot bullshit, and if you don't think so, I'm not sure what else to say.
[0] We used to have citizen shooting agencies, back in the day when people didn't think the government was coming to take their babies and testicles.
[1] Don't get me started on pawn shops that stay in brisk business while somehow getting a quarter of their inventory "stolen" every six months. Motherfuckers, you're not even trying to hide what you're doing . .
I appreciate your well-thought out response but I gotta ask, are you a gun/shooting enthusiast or do you know a lot of them?
I ask because I'm related to several and they regard basically ANY regulation/"red tape" as a giant PITA.
This could be the geo area I'm in. Also, we're all quite old. Could also be I always end up in really obscure "ranges", due to the fact that more "normal" commercial ranges have regs against shooting mil-surp. Also, hell, they're expensive.
I still keep my mouth shut about politics (unless prompted) - I'm not an idiot - but no one is freaking out about the usual freak-out subjects, unless it's a new caliber or some Range Character or something like that.
[1] Something that unifies all of that crap into one big license is just better, and if I get cheap import ammo and rifles too? It's a no-brainer - it's less bureaucracy, more fun. I do suspect, however, it's too complex of an idea for Congress to pull off without it getting yoinked into something even stupider. Basically, we need to figure out a way that it makes money for rich people. Also, Democrat leadership - or their committees - will need to learn what a "bolt" is, if they want to effectively legislate on it. The Assault Rifle Bans are King Stupid.
You couldn't. At least not legally. Buying firearms from a private party in another state is illegal by federal law. You could only buy long guns from a federally licensed dealer in a neighboring state if that firearm is legal in your state of residence. If you wanted to buy a handgun from a federally licensed dealer, it would have to be transferred to a dealer in your state.
>In Florida, this one chick left an AR on the sofa with a full mag, a round racked, safety off (State 4, aka Instant state, which means SOMETHIN'S GETTIN' SHOT).
Can you mention where these State levels are defined? What you described sounds closer to Condition 0 on the firearm condition readiness scale.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Cooper#Firearm_conditions...
>Condition 0: A round chambered, full magazine in place, hammer cocked, safety off.
If we're talking about frustrating the gun industry, then all of your licensees should be able to privately manufacture firearms in the classifications they are allowed to have.
And yes, that's absolutely right. And not a bad idea. Since the weapons have a license, there's also penalties for bad faith that can go back to the originator. "Hey this thing's made of pipes!". We're almost in that stew right now with all the garage-built AKs on the market, but there's nothing linking them to anybody, in spite of the fact they blow up every now and then.
We tried unifying the gun laws (and all borne-arms laws!) in America: we passed a single Constitutional amendment which states that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed. It’s the supreme law of the land; no law which violates it has any legal effect. The several states and the United States went ahead and infringed the right anyway, in 51 different ways, and plenty of localities got in on the act, too.
Some folks think that having a single, accurate, searchable registry of arms and their owners makes it tremendously easy for the government to confiscate those arms, and consider that a disadvantage. Imagine how a government might misuse a central database of citizens which indicated who belonged to which disfavoured minority groups …
I remember there was that one guy who said something about repeating the same thing over and over until it became true.
The thing we want to measure is if we can (as a country) live our lives in peace. Better measures of this might be all crime, violent crime, life-span related measures, or even mental health and drug abuse.
Banning one specific thing does not change human nature. We need to take a holistic view to address many issues underlying violent crime, firearm related or not.
The gun is greatest weapon of destruction a regular citizen can have, is allowed to carry and buy. Knifes needs physical proximity to use.
A firearm is the most effective defensive weapon a person can have, surely - but not even close to the most destructive.
If someone’s goal is indiscriminate destruction, an automobile is much more effective. Explosive, incendiaries, or even poisons would be all cause more destruction than a firearm.
Handguns in particular are relatively ineffective as weapons go. A knife attack is more likely to result in the death of the victim than a handgun. The reason handguns are carried more than knives for defense is that knives typically kill through blood loss while firearms do so through immediate physical trauma.
It was stressed again and again to remove access from firearms from them. A gun at home is far, far easier a means to a death known to be guaranteed and painless than the stereotypical means of suicide like jumping from a public structure or overdose---and to the temporarily distorted mind to which suicide is the wrong choice, this ease of execution of a suicide method that is so final and painless is material.
For how unlucky my suffering friend is, at least they did not have access to a gun.
Suicide bags. Those are the way to go for a painless death with better odds of success.
I, for one, would much rather worry about the pugilist in the bell tower or the inevitable school drive-throughs and all their copycats.
Fun to write stuff like that and feel the righteous indignation. If only it were true.
- Intentional homocides per capita: 59th
- Firearms per person: 1st
- Firearm-related deaths per capita: 9th (and 1–8 are all in Central America or South America, with the exception of Jamaica)
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-death...
Unsurprisingly, then, if you break down the rate of homicide by firearm in the US by race, you see similar statistics. ie. European/White Americans have a rate that puts them among the safer European countries; African Americans are among the highest in the world.
The mass shooting in Vegas, in Tasmania, in Norway, in New Zealand, etc?
As an objective fact (your words) extreme mass shootings are strongly correlated with race.
The rest seem more correlated with economic circumstances.
Except you obviously moved the goalposts there.
The "this" there is no way to prevent, in the only nation where it happens, is school shootings. We are not just at the top of that list, we're at the bottom as well, because it doesn't happen anywhere else.
Hence the title.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attacks_related_to_pri...
So much for "this is the only country where this happens".
Granted, some of these are "school stabbings" or "school bombings" or "school throwing kids out of a window", but the death tolls appear to be of similar magnitude. There are exceptions (e.g., Uvalde, where the death toll had more to do with police cowardice than choice of weapon).
The problem here isn't "guy has a gun", the problem is "guy wants to kill a bunch of people". Until the real problem is acknowledged, nothing is going to change.
Which isn't what was said. What was said is this is the only country where this regularly happens. The U.S. comprises 5% of the of the world's population yet endures 24% of the world's primary school attacks over the last 20 years.
Besides, even one example would be enough to refute the OP's claim that "it doesn't happen anywhere else".
The salient point is that this is NOT the only country where this happens. Not even close.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attacks_related_to_sec...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attacks_related_to_pos...
I’m sorry, but I do not believe you at all
You: This is the only country where this happens.
Me: False. Here is some data that shows it happens in many other countries.
What is there to "believe" here? All that was necessary to refute you was to find ONE incident in another country. I found dozens. Linking to the other two lists (each of which also have many incidents in other countries) can only further destroy your incorrect assertion. There's no way those can magically make you right. Even if the other two both had zero (which they don't...far from it), that wouldn't matter in the slightest.
Take the L and move on.
You: move every goalpost
All that was necessary to refute you was to find ONE incident in another country.
Is one isolated incident really all that is necessary to refute the Onion's assertion that this is the only country where this regularly happens?
> Which isn't what was said. What was said is this is the only country where this regularly happens.
I beg to differ. That's exactly what was said.
OP:
> The "this" there is no way to prevent, in the only nation where it happens, is school shootings. We are not just at the top of that list, we're at the bottom as well, because it doesn't happen anywhere else.
(emphasis mine)
You:
> The U.S. comprises 5% of the of the world's population yet endures 24% of the world's primary school attacks over the last 20 years.
That's not what those data show. Plenty of attacks in China, for example.
It's really, really hard for me to understand why gun violence doesn't make you feel indignation, righteous or otherwise.
But right now, I am willing to listen.
>Excessive alcohol use was responsible for more than 140,000 deaths in the United States each year
Firearm deaths don't even break 5 digits.