![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
"Mass shootings are a tiny, tiny problem. Which isn't to say that they aren't utterly horrifying in more than one way. People's lives are destroyed, both literally and figuratively. What I mean to say is that if we were to prioritize our political attention to topics according to how many lives were at stake, mass shootings wouldn't even be on the radar.
[...]
"So in 1994, legislators were forced to ask themselves, 'What exactly will this ban do away with?' The category of 'assault weapon' didn't actually exist, and this was an opportunity for gun control advocates to create it, to say exactly what they wanted off the streets.
"As it turns out, they were mostly opposed to things they saw in movies. Which is to say that most of the features that now defined 'assault weapons' had to do with form and not function, totally sidestepping the issue of violent crime altogether.
[...]
"Perhaps most tellingly, semi-automatic (legal) versions of automatic firearms were banned just because they looked like illegal guns.
"When the category of 'assault weapon' had finally been conjured into being, all of its included firearms together accounted for less than 2% of violent crime. None of them had any more functionality than a hunting rifle. It couldn't have been clearer that this was a war founded on image rather than reality."
-- Kontra, 2012-08-09 (Emphasis added, mostly because I feareded too many people would stop with a gut reaction to the first paragraph without that bit of context ... mass shootings make headlines and really hold our attention, but if we want to reduce gun violence, our efforts are probably better spent focussing on the more common forms of it.)
(no subject)
(no subject)
OTOH, folks who live or work out where they need to be armed in case of encounters with dangerous wild animals probably do carry pistols a lot. I'm pretty sure we're not going to find a one-size-fits-all-states approach. (And handguns will keep showing up where most folks have decided they shouldn't be, because they're easy to transport and we don't have customs checkpoints at state borders. Which is not to say we can't accomplish anything; just that we're not going to eliminate problems entirely.)
But yeah, figuring out what/how to do something about handguns will save more lives than getting distracted by scary-looking-movie-guns.
(no subject)
I still believe the best way to reduce gun violence is to just take away the guns, then require gun users to carry firearms licenses and register and insure their weapons for liability damage, just like cars, which kill even more people than firearms. Then add a Federal surcharge of $100 per bullet; the government will never have to raise taxes again. But I know confiscation won't work in this country, and I've already written my Senator with a rewritten Second Amendment. So I suppose I'll have to wait for whatever replaces the current united states for something more reasonable.
(no subject)
I still believe the best way to reduce gun violence is to just take away the guns, then require gun users to carry firearms licenses and register and insure their weapons for liability damage, just like cars, which kill even more people than firearms. Then invoke a Federal sales tax surcharge of $100 per bullet; the government will never have to raise taxes again. But I know confiscation won't work in this country, and I've already written my Senator with a rewritten Second Amendment. So I suppose I'll have to wait for whatever replaces the current united states for something more reasonable.
(no subject)
Requiring insurance and making ammunition really expensive sounds clever, but ...
If there is an actual need for weapons for self-defense, you've just made it unaffordable to the people likely to need it most. If there really is no such need, good luck convincing folks of that (I know you know -- "confiscation won't work in this country" -- I'm just being thorough in my reasoning here), and if there is such a need, convincing people there isn't will be even harder.
Furthermore, with the bullet tax you make practicing prohibitive, so the people who do cough up the insurance premiums are going to be terrible shots and probably have unsafe bad habits if/when they do need to draw a weapon. Hello bystanders!
There's a certain appealing logic to the insurance idea -- after all, a weapon is a tool capable of creating major harm when used correctly or incorrectly. But I think making it expensive enough to do any good will count as an infringement of the second amendment, effectively saying only rich people can have guns. Then again, I'm not an expert on exactly which hairs can be split how many ways when it comes to the Constitution and regulation of arms -- obviously some restrictions are allowed.
(no subject)
(no subject)
But I was under the impression that certain categories of semi-automatic weapons could in fact be aftermarket altered to function in an automatic fashion.
As a pro-hunting, pro-gun person I know says, "If you can't hit what you need to hit with five bullets, you may need to reconsider whether you should be using a gun."
(no subject)
I kinda like this idea.
"But I was under the impression that certain categories of semi-automatic weapons could in fact be aftermarket altered to function in an automatic fashion."
This was addressed in two comments to yesterday's post about terminology. (I had thought so too, but apparently it's a lot harder than that and not often done.)
"If you can't hit what you need to hit with five bullets [...]"
My brother is a collector. Most of his military rifles only hold five rounds. (Also: they're from WWI and WWII.)
Even the magazine-size-limit issue turns out to itself be more complicated than sound-bites and bumper stickers can really cover. I do think there's a discussion to be had there. I don't think the correct answer is obvious yet.
(no subject)
If you're going to make them pink, make 'em all pink.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
1) What if you score a hit with all five bullets, and the attacker keeps coming? Adrenaline, and drugs, are incredible things. This is not at all uncommon. (Answer: You continue firing until there is no longer a threat.)
2) What if there's more than on attacker intent on causing you serious harm?