this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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Empty words from someone that does not understand how countries with less guns still work and don't have CHILDREN KILLING IN THEIR SCHOOLS ALL THE TIME
To be fair there are countries with a shitload of guns where this doesn't happen. This is mostly US being a shithole.
At compared to the other western countries, the gun rights in the US are a huge difference to almost all others. Switzerland is the one big exception I can think of, partly because of the huge shooting history / culture (which is often still actively celebrated) and because soldiers can take a private weapon to home (which had the original sense that in case of war, they could directly have a gun).
Yeah, I actually suspect it's not guns, but the US gun culture itself.
I live in austria, we have gun rights and like 33guns/100people (if I remember correctly) and we never had a single school shooting in our history, also the terrorists involved in the shooting in vienna a few years ago illigaly imported their guns from serbia
But there is law governing how you store your firearms and ammunition, so kids can't access them, right? It's not true freedom then /s
That's just not true / comparable. While Austria has more gun rights than in most other Western countries, it's nothing in comparison to the US. In Austria, the only guns you can freely buy are single shot guns. And for those, you need to wait three days until you get them.
To get a very limited amount of semi-automatic weapons, you need to, similar to other western countries, have a Weapons possession card that's subject authorization. To get it, you don't only need a psychological report but also a justification, be 21 and need to fit other requirements. You also need to report every weapon you get so Austria knows where the weapons are.
In the US meanwhile, it depends on the state you're living very much, but in some states, you can get semi-automatic weapons (which are completely banned in Austria) in a shop in just minutes. And that without any background checks, psychological reports, justifications, approval required, without anything like that. In many states even convicted criminals can get guns like that. And it's often not even age restricted. In the US, guns are sometimes a presents for kids which they can just…own and use (while in Austria everything is obviously 18+).
And the biggest difference is carrying a gun. In Austria, you are not allowed to carry them in public (and getting that licence is almost impossible for normal people). While in the US (in many states), you can just carry any gun around in public whatsoever. So even if the police sees you having weapons in public, they can't / don't do anything about that, because it's just legal.
I general, the gun rights in Austria are bigger than in most of other Western Europe. But even Obama's 2012 proposal to significantly lower the freedom of guns in the US would have resulted in still much bigger gun rights than in Austria. There is just a huge difference.
Also there are around 1.332.000 guns in Austria, with around 9.2 million people, that's around 14 guns per 100 people.
You do have some errors in your little rant. While firearms are easier to acquire in the US as a rule, there are still some restrictions and forms you need to fill out. Plus there can be a near byzantine set of laws that each state and even cites can pass to further restrictions on purchase and ownership. It might be the biggest issue about firearms ownership that there are few national laws for enforcement. It's mostly up to each state and city regulations and enforcement.
Convicted felons are pretty much barred from firearms ownership across the US. The only real exceptions might be a billionaire who can buy anything. Or perhaps it's just easier to pay some else to shoot people for them.
Everyone has to fill out a Form 4473 which is a universal federal background check against a data base to see if you can legally own a firearm. It is an electronic background check done at the time of sale and transfer. It can take a few minutes or a few hours to get done. And you can be disqualified for a simple misspelling or even if your name is similar to a some who is barred from purchase. Then it's up to you to get your name cleared. All and any firearms purchases through a dealer MUST have a Form 4472 attached. And the dealer must keep a record after the sale for a fairly long period of time. A good number of states have further restrictions and requirements on the purchase and ownership of firearms. Which require further state background checks and issuance of a special card to buy a firearm. And individual cities can impose further restrictions yet.
Minors, under 18 years of age, (a few are 21), in the majority of states cannot legally buy a firearm. And are generally only allowed to handle or use a firearm with an adult present - some exceptions would be during a hunting season and only when hunting. But even then, there will be an adult somewhere around.
Carrying a handgun publicly, with the exception of a very small number of states, is very controlled. Some states, like California or New York are quite restrictive to the point that pretty much only wealthy people can actually afford to pay for all the hoops you might need to jump through to get such a permit. A tiny number of states, like Texas allow for common carry laws without a permit, (often called Constitutional Carry). But the majority of states require that you have taken a special class and then go through more special background checks by local law enforcement to get the permit issued. And these permits require renewals every few years with more background checks every time.
Again, I think the biggest issue is the lack of a uniform national set of laws and requirements for firearms purchase and ownership is what confuses everyone. States are considered to have most of the power to make many laws that the federal government can't over ride. Sometimes this is a good thing and sometimes not so good perhaps. But it's the system we have for better or worse.
you can buy this here in austria without a Waffenpass or Waffenbesitzkarte, you literally just need to be 18
https://www.brownells.at/PUMP-RIFLE-308-WINCHESTER-16-Pump-Rifle-308-16-TROY-INDUSTRIES-INC-Black-Pump-Action-101-Round-33-36-85-lbs-16-None-Removable-Polymer-1-x-10-Round-Medieval-Muzzle-Brake-100041732
EDIT: yeah, I thought I had the wrong numbers in mind
EDIT1: also, the Waffenpass (the thing you need to carry them in public isn't hard to get https://www.oesterreich.gv.at/themen/gesetze_und_recht/waffenrecht/2/Seite.2450900.html#Voraussetzungen)
If you're talking about buying a firearm from a store, that's simply not factually correct.
Every single firearm sold by an FFL holder must have a form 4473 filled out, and each person buying a firearm must go through a criminal background check. ANY felony conviction that could have sent you to jail for more than a year--regardless of whether or not you got jail time--permanently bans you from owning a firearm until the conviction is expunged (and in many states, your gun rights need to be proactively reinstated). Any misdemeanor domestic violence conviction will likewise bar you from legally owning a firearm, as will having an active retraining order. Being involuntarily committed to a mental facility will bar you from ever owning a firearm at a federal level (without a judicial proceeding to restore your rights), and being voluntarily admitted will cost you your rights in some states.
Keep in mind that these are federal regulations that supersede any state or local regulations. A state can not opt out of the NICS or decide that gun stores don't need to comply with BATF regulations. The only "exception" per se is that, in my state, a carry permit means that the gun store doesn't have to send in form 4473 for approval; you've already passed a more stringent background check--including fingerprinting--so it would be moot. You do still need to fill out a form 4473, and the gun store is still required to retain a copy, but the instant background check is deemed irrelevant.
I'm not arguing one way or another but I want to clear up some very common misconceptions about US gun laws.
This is just blatantly untrue and I wish people would stop parroting it. If you go to any shop you need to pass a federal background check to buy any non-vintage firearm (pre-1899..not exactly a ton of those floating around). The exception here is private firearm sales, i.e. I go to Craigslist and sell a rifle or handgun. The law states the seller has to have no reasonable cause to believe they would be an unlawful possessor (weak, yes). With that said, almost half of the states (22 per Wikipedia) have implemented state-level laws requiring a background check for private sales.
Again, objectively untrue. You are not buying a firearm from any legal, licensed dealer in the US without going through a background check. And a violent criminal offense will get you barred from purchasing. For the 28 states without laws around private sales, the seller can be federally legally liable if they sell to someone that is not legally allowed to have a gun and they use it to commit crimes.
No, a child cannot legally own a firearm. The parent can purchase and own a firearm that they are allowed to use, but they do not own it. In many states if the child hurts themselves or others with such a firearm the parents will be held liable, many states have laws around safely storing firearms when children are around.
In most states if you don't have a license to conceal carry and you do you are breaking the law and can be charged. I'll say this one isn't entirely false but heavily depends on your state.
A large part of why this issue gets nowhere is that neither side can even agree on what is true today, rather than what should be true to bring down the issue of violent crime. If one side says "They're totally unregulated you can just buy one off Amazon and start blasting. We have to do something!" The other side is gonna think "Well they obviously have no idea what they're talking about, no point in listening to what they have to say"
Gangs illegally acquiring their guns is how it works everywhere, even in the USA.
Sweden and Canada have pretty high rates of gun ownership and don't have this problem. That said American school shootings are not as common as they are made out to be, there has been a lot of statistical fudging to make it look so much worse than it is.
What all three countries do have are problems with gangs and they're only getting worse as poverty drives people to crime. America has it worse because it has more poverty, but we will all catch up soon enough.
My guy, any amount of school shooting is more common than they should be.
Idk how you make shooting students / children out to be much worse than it is. Kinda seems like any stat greater than 0 should be unacceptable and cause for massive societal reevaluation.
Im just gonna point out we as a culture have been dealing with this problem of just random acts of violence for quite awhile, its just that what came before mass shootings is kinda glossed over / forgotten. Before the mass shootings we had bombing campaigns, the una bomber being the most notable. Its just that unless it was really big it rarely got all that much attention and due to how everything was disconnected at the time unless you were the FBI you may not have even noticed it was a thing.
The problem is that the Columbine mass shotting and rise of cameras kinda killed off the mass bombers. Also Columbine happened right when this shift was happening and thusly became the standard for what people do. If it was instead some dudes shooting up a police station I suspect that would have become the norm.
Canada has ~1/4 the firearms per capita compared to the US. My guess is that doesn't matter, as you go over 1 gun/resident the added guns probably don't have much of an impact.
However, most shootings in the US are with handguns (restricted in Canada), and a bunch of high-profile shootings with ARs (prohibited in Canada). Concealed carry is practically never allowed, and open carry isn't either. Safe storage is required, so you can't carry unsecured guns in your car either. Storing loaded firearms is forbidden. Owning firearms for self defense is forbidden by law (using them as such may or may not be, depending on the circumstances).
TL;DR: it's not just how many guns, but also what you're allowed to do with them.
This is the real answer.
When you look at serious violent crime, defining that as robbery, battery, forcible rape, and murder, the rate of serious violent crime is similar in the US and UK (edit - and Australia!). The UK has largely removed firearms from the equation--which is easier, since they're an island, and didn't start with 600M firearms--and it has decreased the murder rate, but their overall violent crime rate is still quite high. Despite nominally having single payer health, the system has been intentionally broken by conservatives, and poverty is pretty significant. You see the same kind of sharp economic divides in the UK that you see in the US.
The predictable result is violence.
Murder isn't the problem, it's a symptom. It's like saying that the awful cough and shortness of breath is your problem, and then thinking that cough syrup (with codeine!, since that's the good shit that works!) is going to fix the underlying pneumonia.
School shootings aren’t a gang problem, and school shootings are way more common in the US than any other developed country.