this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
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My opinion is that these shootings are a greater failure in this country than simply gun control. There is a LOT we need to work on to decrease mass shootings. While I admit, I am more on the personal responsibility side of the gun control debate, I am not against well thought through legislation. I don't think that most of the proposals for gun control are rational, detailed, and written with an even cursory understanding of firearms.
To start to address mass shootings, I believe that we need to expand our healthcare in this country. Both physical and mental healthcare. If people are physically well, and can get treatment that doesn't threaten to bankrupt them, then they will have more opportunities to develop better coping mechanisms. They will be able to seek healthcare options and not feel like they are left to fend for themselves. The isolation from a society that doesn't care or help them is detrimental, and while I have no studies to back it up, I would think that a society with a healthcare system thats prerogative is the patient instead of profit would help.
I think the aspect of mental healthcare speaks for itself. So people don't lash out and can seek other means of dealing with issues. I also believe that the stigma of seeking mental healthcare and it's ability to impact people's rights and job prospects is a hindrance. We should not make it so that if someone seems help, that they are punished for it.
I believe we have a big culture shift that needs to occur. Too much do we use rhetoric that reinforces that firearms and gun violence is the ultimate solution to a disagreement. "Fuck around and find out" when used in the context of firearms is terrible. Firearms should be considered the last resort to protect life. Not property and not your feelings.
Firearms are not conflict resolution! We need to work to give people better ways of solving and deescalating conflicts.
We need to work on our wealth disparity. We should be elevating our poorest so that they don't have to resort to violence or crime. As most firearm crimes are not mass shootings, we need to address the other parts of firearm use.
We need to work on our community involvement. Bring people together, break down the walls between us, and get past the cliques.
There is a lot we need to do, but gun control is only a small piece of solving gun violence.
Addition:
Stop the 24 hour news cycle and please please please stop naming criminals by name and showing their faces. Delete the "claim to fame" angle that comes with horrible crimes.
For community involvement, what comes to mind for me is: walkable neighbourhoods, libraries even in small towns and local sports clubs.
But there must be a minimum of gun laws: Buying, owning, operating only under license, storage at home in a safe and ammunition in a separate safe. That's really the bare minimum.
Regarding the news cycle. Yes! Stop the 24 hour, constant fear being fed to the populace.
You are remarkably safe in your own home. Get rid of the fear mongering!
Stop making national news of local issues. The constant national attention to some random horrible things that doesn't affect 99.99% of the viewership doesn't need to be highlighted.
I'm not against gun laws, but I'm going to disagree with your minimums. Anything regarding storage is essentially unenforceable until after a tragedy has occurred. It can't be used to preempt a shooting but only to punish the owners afterwards. Those sort of things need to be community driven. The gun community should be talking about storage more and shaming those that don't follow it.
It also implies that everyone's situation at home allows them 1) to purchase two safes and 2) to have room for two safes and 3) limits their ownership of either guns or ammo to the size of that safe. It also doesn't make much sense to have two safes if the person doing the shooting is the one that is buying the ammo and guns in the first place. It also places undue burdens on those that do not have children and do not have children that come into their home.
As much as it is laughed at in California, but when you buy a gun you either need to bring a lock or buy a lock with it. They are the cheapest things, but it's at least a minimum safety that isn't onerous. Even if no one uses them once they get the gun home.
As for operating under a license, what would that do beyond the existing restrictions for procuring firearms? Do they expire and what would happen then?
We need comprehensive laws grounded in addressing specific issues, not something to create an idealistic and narrow view of what gun ownership is or should be.
I think we should have federal programs on gun information and educational programs. We can teach people and build a culture on gun safety and storage. Maybe programs to subsidize the purchasing of safes and reimburse or reward owners that make safe choices.
One could require a receipt or proof of purchase for a safe or a lock when buying a gun.
That's intentional.
I was specifically addressing teenagers access to their parents guns, specifically to prevent school shootings.
Like a car license. You may not be checked all the time, but every once in a while and it's a crime to not have it if you're driving.
That's why in CA they make you buy a lock. But I don't really know anyone that uses the one they had to buy.
This means only rich or well to do people can own guns?
I'm okay with storage laws in homes that are primary residences to minors. But I don't believe that any storage law on its own prevents it. There is no way to ensure it's being following once the gun is taken home. It's why I am much more in favor of trying to influence gun culture to make improper storage stigmatizing.
Those with concealed carry licenses do get checked as they are to tell an officer when they are carrying. I wouldn't be against these laws being federal. As for just ownership, do you just check everyone if they have a license or only when the police see the gun? Or when they go shooting on public BLM land?
The analogy for driving breaks down because you can buy a car without a license. You just can't drive it on public roads. Though you can on private roads without a license.
Other countries have random gun inspections for licenced gun holders, to make sure they are stored safely. like you said, a cultural shift is needed; that would be part of it.
Why are you against holding people accountable for their mistakes legally? Are you really arguing this needs such a soft touch as kind words suggesting people take gun safety seriously?
Is this some sort of system of thought where you craft rules set around yourself as the "ideal gun owner"?
Go ahead and try and re-explain this: "It can't be used to preempt a shooting but only to punish the owners afterwards." How is punishing bad behavior a bad thing again? When someone is killed by an improperly stored gun, oftentimes family members, we should make sure we are extra nice to the person who made the oopsie?
Oopsie! Sorry nephew, you just were meant to meet god sooner than most, right? Better keep treating guns like a broom or a mop we leave lieing in the corner.
Because I don't believe in using the justice system for punitive retribution and instead for reformative use.
That punishing people for this will do nothing but sate some perceived need for vengeance.
And, as for me, maybe because I'm empathetic I can only imagine how terrible they feel afterwards and I'd literally be suicidal if one of my firearms were used in a mass shooting or negligent discharge that killed someone. Doubly so if it were my child.
I don't consider myself the "ideal gun owner." I'm trying to have a discourse on, if we are bent on using legislation to address this issue, how we can do so in a manner that's going to have traction in the gun community, have impactful, measurable changes that improve safety, and lastly actually get followed by gun owners.
I personally, don't think punishing someone after the fact is going to prevent tragedies like this shooting. So instead of having some raging justice boner to fuck these parents we try and address what led to it.
Countries that focus on rehabilitation still have prisons, your fantasy land where we rehabilitate without any form of punishment is ridiculous.
Sure youd feel suicidal, and yet theres stories of family's that refuse to take guns out of the home even after an accidental shooting or a suicide. So your empathy is taking you in the wrong direction I'm afraid.
Since parents are just now being held accountable, I'm absolutely sure it will have an effect whether laws are passed or not. Holding enablers responsible will prevent people enabling people who shouldn't have guns.
Reform isnt hard. Ban all semiautomatic weapons outright. Licenses to own the rest. Buy back any gun that is now illegal for 5x original purchase price. Put them all in a giant pile and melt them down. Move on with our lives as crazy people struggle to mass murder with muskets or attempt to buy something on the black market for thousands of dollars.
The news problem is a generational thing. Younger generations overwhelmingly avoid those types of media, and when they do watch it often find the arguments hollow and sensational. Better media literacy likely.
As long as people are alive that watch it, and as long as news is considered entertainment instead of truth, it will keep happening. Best bet is to just turn it off.
Yea. I also think that other forms of "news" that the younger generation use is wholly unregulated. That there is no recourse for "influencers" that fabricate news on those platforms.
Yeah thats a whole other trap on its own, using social media sources that have no legal journalistic requirements to be truthful or make corrections.
For me I try to go to communities that allow a diverse range of perspectives, and then use mainly international media that have solid reputations.
They should just make all guns voice activated and fire only one round at a time. And the shooter has to yell "Avada Kedavra".
universal healthcare and basic income, paid with increase in the top 1%'s marginal tax rate, would solve a LOT of Americans problems.
Fear of losing basic income is a great crime deterrent.
Are you going to steal from that gas station if you could lose your basic monthly check for 20+ years?
You think kids would drive drunk if you told them that if they were caught, they would lose their basic income for life? Most think it's a slap on the wrist, maybe some community service, IF they get caught.
damn, now THAT'S a deterrent! Capital punishment? pfft. Losing your monthly living stipend? real shit.
Losing it for life is too drastic and isn't what any behavior specialist would suggest.
There needs to be a path to earn it back. For example, hours of community service based on the offense and that increase with each offense.
It would also want to incentivize future legislatures excluding people by targeting groups. The drug war and its imbalance towards treatment of minorities as an example.
Its not UBI if not everyone gets it. We don't have freedom unless everyone can vote, always.
If I murder someone and lose basic income for say five years does it go up to ten years if I murder another person or could it be served concurrently?
I would expect you'd be in prison for at least five years so are you suggesting you've killed someone while in prison or that basic income is the only punishment?
In any case, I am not suggesting anything concrete here, just going forward with the thought experiment. Basic income first, then we can work on how to use it as a deterrence.
Oh, I was thinking of it as a replacement of the prison industry. So just let everyone remain free but just lose basic income instead. It interested me because I think I could do without the extra income, save the tax payers money, and accomplish some personal goals at the same time.
Y'all realize what you're describing is just a poor tax, right? Anyone with significantly higher income over base income would...just break the law anyway.
If we're talking using money to deter crimes, it needs to be a sliding scale. You're a millionaire and got a speeding ticket? That'll be $50,000.
Aw dang it, we are only allowed to use one punishment as a country so I guess you are right. Maybe we could like, lock the rich people that commit crimes in a small room with a bed and a toilet.
I guess you missed the if. The topic is literally regarding monetary related punishments. That does even remotely imply forgoing anything else.
That's along the lines of what I was thinking. Making care more available is good but still having to get financially destroyed for it potentially isn't a great incentive to use services
So we just need to solve all depressive disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, etc., across the entire country. Only then can we solve gun violence.
In the vast majority of instances, having a gun in the home is more dangerous for those living in the house than for any potential threat. Its irresponsible at best and at worst it will cause the deaths of those closest to you.
And before you say it, I do believe some people need guns, but you should be required to have a valid reason to own one, and it should be appropriate amount of firepower for that reason.
To "solve" gun violence, yea. But to significantly reduce it, we only need to make progress.
It was sort of meant to be rhetorical.
Even if I agreed with you, gun control has been proven to work across the world, while not a single country has yet to solve mental health in a meaningful way.
I'm not saying that it's not a part of what needs to happen. Well thought out, thorough gun control is something thats going to be a part of this.
But as shit as it may be to say, with current gun culture, the 2nd amendment, and the 4th amendment protection from unreasonable searches makes the sort of gun control adopted in other countries improbable here.
The suggested legislation that I hear typically revolves around storage, which leading up to a tragedy is unenforceable (4th amendment) and therefore can't prevent a mass shooting. The banning of firearms wholesale, which is unpopular in so large a part of the population it would be practically impossible. Restrictions based on features that are so ubiquitous it would be like banning smartphones; it's not that there aren't guns without them but it's most guns made within the last few decades.
My perspective is that gun control is the surface level way of dealing with a growing symptom in this country. One that taking away guns doesn't actually fix. It's the knee jerk reaction "quick fix." That doesn't really fix anything, just hides how deeply broken our society has gotten.
So personally, I'm not against gun control in principle. I'm against the "common sense" gun control proposals. Because many of them are formed with minimal understanding of firearms or from a narrow viewpoint on how people use guns.
(As an aside, I'm against the term "common sense" gun laws because it insults anyone that disagrees, puts them on the defensive, and makes having a good discourse on ways we can work together to solve the issue.)
Or maybe theres nothing different between someone here and in a different country.
People get upset everywhere. Upset people do irrational things. When the possible things someone can do include shoot every nearby person with a rapid fire rifle, then those will happen more often.
Other countries stab or burn or poison, but far less people are killed or injured.
I'll put it like this, you will never make certain every single person at every moment of the day does not act out in anger. As long as people act out anger in violence, they will seak tools to aid that.
Hence, guns banned by default with exemptions for those that need it, rather than the other way around.
I don't think anyone is saying that those need to be solved before we can attempt to solve gun violence.
But there is a definite mental health crisis in the USA, and that's certainly not helping our gun violence issue.
That and abject, perpetual, and generational poverty.
And I'm sure the latter contributes to the former.
Weird how other countries haven't solved these "other issues", yet have managed to curb gun violence.
"No way to prevent this, says only country in the world where this regularly happens"
Gun control works on gun violence as surely as antibiotics do on infections. Now can proper hygiene and a healthy populace make it so there's less need for antibiotics? Yes. But are they still extremely necessary exactly because of how well they work in bacterial infections? Yes.
Gun nuts never have any science to back up their indirect nra propaganda. Gun control advocates do. Here.
https://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/38/1/140.full.pdf+html . https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/
I'll stay here to wait for any science at all, but it will never come. What I will get is angry gun nuts using shitty "rhetoric" instead of having a single peer reviewed study.
I never said there was "no way to prevent this" I'm saying there is a fucking shitload we need to do to prevent this and gun control, in whatever form it takes is going to be only a piece of the puzzle.
And no shit, does getting rid of guns get rid of guns violence. You aren't spouting something revolutionary.
I'm not even against gun control. I'm against the knee jerk reactionary bullshit and narrow viewpoint of anti-gun individuals that don't want to engage in any serious discussion of HOW to enact gun control other than take away guns.
I'm not a gun nut, and that's just a rude thing to say. It's divisive, insulting, and worst of all, it means you've already made an opinion and written off anything that I may say.
I'm tired of people pretending they're for gun regulation while they're pretending "it's only a small part of the puzzle".
Like honestly, you feel gobsmacked in how you can have such high gun violence rates with similar mental health issues as countries which do have proper gun control and for some reason don't the issues that the US does.
It's purely about gun regulation ffs. Oh no, am I being insulting to someone who doesn't think gun control would really help. Someone who pretends mental health program would do more.
Fucking ridiculous man.
Yeah as close as this country is to civil war, anyone coming for guns will be met with the wrong end of said guns. It would create all out war here.
There are more guns than people in this country, I don't see any way to reverse that statistic without further, much more massive and widespread bloodshed.
Other countries are like "we don't have guns its the obvious solution". Sure. But your entire culture isn't predicated on the idea things like gun ownership is considered an inalienable right that can and should be defended with said guns.
I'm all for making things better but I don't see guaranteed civil war as the best choice here.
Yeah this is the exact type of bullshit I was talking about.
Australia had a very strong gun culture as well. Then Port Arthur happened.
They had a voluntary buyback program and got back what would be the equivalent of about 12 million guns with the current US population.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/opinion/australia-banned-assault-weapons-america-can-too.html
Like I said and I'll keep saying, people opposing gun control have literally nothing but wanna-be-gotcha shitty indirect NRA propaganda. Of which "no but it wouldn't work here in the country which is the only country which can't seem to figure out gun control, because it doesn't try it, because our country has people who like guns and I'm sure no-one else ever has".
Yeah I don't buy it.
Gun buybacks here have been tried probably thousands of times, on smaller scales than at a federal level. They don't work. They get a few shitty actual guns and there's even memes around people making zip guns for $5 and turning them in to collect whatever money is offered.
What would undeniably happen is that much of the left here would turn in some of their guns and the vast majority of the right would snicker at the "libtards gibbin up dere freedums" while they buy more guns.
This isn't Australia, though that sounds like a wonderful place to live.
Also lol @ a 12 million gun "equivalency" when the US has like 320 million people and even more guns.
Let's math:
Assuming only 1 gun per person, which is laughably low,
12m/320m = 0.0375 or 3.75% of guns
Congrats you've collected nearly 4% of the problem from people who were not the problem. Were they the problem, they'd have kept their guns.
Can you imagine nukes being considered a conflict resolution?
Technically, they are.
I agree there needs to be a culture change. But on a global scale, the US is basically one of the leading countries in mental healthcare. Which, kinda shows a lot of isn't evidence based
I agree there needs to be a culture change. But on a global scale, the US is basically one of the leading countries in mental healthcare. Which, kinda shows a lot of isn't evidence based