this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
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Nah, this is a bad take.
There's an obvious connection to guns being easily available and mass shootings.
In the trivial sense, in that you need access to guns to do mass shootings sure
But it's way more complex. The USA is absolutely insane in how available they are, you can just fucking buy one off the shelf without a waiting period etc. You can often carry it everywhere, you can also access absolutely bonkers weapons like semi and fully automatic rifles designed to kill humans in war.
But guns are easily available in Australia: you do a 4 hour training course, pay about 100 bucks and fill out a form, say you have a safe place to store them (it'll be checked in the next year or so), and about 2 months later you can have one. It's easier than getting a license for a car! Our last mass shooting with more than 10 dead was 1996 and 10 wounded was 1999.
The USA has about 10x the guns per person but has mass shootings all the time, as well as tremendously more violence in general.
Fucking iceland has about 1/4 the guns per person of the USA and approx twice aus with similar laws and their last mass shooting was like 2005 or something?
The UK has like 1/3 as many guns per person as aus but is a waaaaay more dangerous place in terms of violent crime and even restricting it to guns comparing the same casualties for aus it's 2010 and 2018 respectively
That's not "easily available". That's technically available, but difficult to get. Is there anything, other than a driver's license, that requires that much time, effort and investment?
Getting a mortgage? Getting fit? opening a business? having a child? modifying a car? building an extension? getting vaccinated for travel?
Loads of things require more effort and cost that people do with similar or longer time frames. Nobody would say "it's technically possible but difficult to build a shed" but you've gotta go back and forth with council approval, the builder, contractors etc yet almost every house has one.
edit: also in case you're not familiar a driver's licence here requires 120 hours supervised driving, 20 at night, one knowledge test, one hazard perception test, a driving test, 3 years probation with zero tolerance and reduced speed limits (on the first year you can't even take multiple passengers at night). It is not even in the same league as a gun licence yet almost everyone has one and nobody claims they're difficult to get.
Even a motorcycle license requires a 2 day training course, a test, 1 year learning and another test, then 3 years probation. They're considered super easy to get! It costs more and takes longer than a gun licence.
There are millions of car/bike licences, clearly it's not the licencing requirements stopping people from getting guns.
Involves a mandatory 2 month waiting period?
How is that relevant?
Takes more than 2 months to do the paperwork?
Again, how is that relevant?
More than 2 months?
By whom? Lunatics?
Because it's a tool that's extremely useful, that many people have to use multiple times per day. It would be extremely difficult to get through modern life without transportation, but guns have no real use in daily life.
Oh you appear to be under a misapprehension, it doesn't take 2 months to do the paperwork. It takes about 15 minutes, but you have to wait for a cooling off period and then for processing which depends on the current admin load. So it's very quick in terms of effort, it takes you an afternoon including the training course and then it's just a matter of waiting with no more effort required.
To address your questions, for my mortgage it took us about 3 months to get everything together, not including the saving for a deposit. We needed to get a conveyancer, find the house obviously, get preapproval which involved getting lots of information about our finances and stuff together and applying to multiple banks to compare offers, then we paid a deposit, got a building inspection, needed to get insurance which was another few days of shopping around a phone calls, then we had to wait while a bunch of legal shit was done and the contract to settle which was 2 months. So yes! a lot more involved and expensive than when my wife got her licence which as mentioned only took an afternoon's effort.
Getting fit is relevant because it's an example of something people do which requires way more effort; it requires multiple days per week for months! yet more people are fit than own guns.
Child same deal as fit but more paperwork. My sister just had kids and aside from the pregnancy which was obviously rather intense they had to move, negotiate time off with work, apply for various benefits from the government, multiple screenings etc and vaccinations. She was busy as hell and she's committed to being busy as hell for like 10 more years. Heaps more effort than a firearms licence, and again very common.
Travel vaccines is a multiple week program (you can't get them all at once) and each visit to the doctor is 100 dollars or so. Plus wait times, travel like owning a firearm is often a luxury hobby so I think they're comparable. Defs harder to travel than get a gun, yet again most people do it here at some point.
You can call all of NSW lunatics if you like, but motorcycle licensing is usually done by people who already own a car and are doing it for a hobby. I did it and found it easy, at the training most conversation was about how easy it was and how excited we were to ride. When I talk to people who don't ride they have never mentioned the licensing as a barrier but instead it is almost always fear of injuries (quite reasonable) or lack of desire.
You can invent your own standards for what counts as onerous licensing, and if you're in the USA I can see why the aussie system would look very difficult. I only mean to show that it isn't considered difficult here, and provide common examples of things people do that involve way more paperwork, cost, and/or time. It's also worth nothing that some states in australia have much more lax licensing requirements for firearms without much higher ownership. It is a lack of desire which stops people, a minor barrier is enough to stop people who are just mad at someone and wanting to shoot them from doing that. People that premeditate crime aren't stopped, and yet no shootings problem.