Exactly, no one is sharing the deranged off the wall shit on here because anything that doesn't fit the dominant narrative on Lemmy is pretty quickly downvoted.
American terrorists are Christians. No matter what evangelicals and other say. They'll tell you about the terrorist, "he wasn't a REAL Christian" but he was. Instead of fixing the cancer in their religion, Christians will brush away every bad person as "not real" so they can keep ignoring the problem.
The shooters are commiting the same sins that their church leaders commit. Pride, greed, wrath.
I've heard "good Christians" hand wave their responsibility for bad behavior by saying things like "we're all sinners" or "I'll have to confess later!"
I guess that latter one is Catholic, but it's all the same.
Religion was a necessary framework for transmitting moral knowledge in a time when people didn't have a stable foundation. Centuries ago. It's absurdly flawed and grows communities that are extremely vulnerable to corruption and radicalization.
Catholicism's rule is as long as you confess your sins you're all good. You can be the worst human alive, but perfectly good in the Catholic god's eyes so long as you confess
It really is a religion designed to allow bad behaviour by anyone who knows the rules
Ah but you see, statisticians are part of the conspiracy. Anyone with an education who can actually read and interpret trends is just in on it! I haven't personally experienced a mass shooting, therefore my state is the safest in the nation!
Either that or we simply aren't Christian enough to ban all other religions yet and God tests his most faithful, yadda yadda
In short: You have to qualify to own a gun. Assholes don't get guns. And by fullfilling the laws to own a gun you actually earn respect in your community.
I am member of a German gun club where the local population, the regional police and a couple of NATO soldiers train. It took me nearly one year before I even was allowed to touch a loaded gun, all through my 14th year I was basically just taught how to clean and repair my rifle, how to handle it, how to NOT use it, only then how to use it. And after ten months I was finally given a single bullet.
I am now 30. Nowadays my family owns and shares a Sig Sauer 200, locked inside the gun club. Everyone except my Mum shots around 25 bullets per month, once a year the whole gun club repeats basic training which includes mental health checks.
And after basic training we have special events. For example six years ago a local NATO garrison was massively downsized and so they offered us to use up their overaged surplus ammunition. I got to shot pretty much anything from 9mm to 7,62mm for basically free - we collected money for the victims of a local house fire so I put €50 into the collection.
Did I ever shot a gun outside the gun club?
Actually: Yes. When I was in the US I joined my Uncle on duck hunt. He was like "ok, hold the big rifle while I show you how to shot a duck using 12gd bird shot." - he misses, I aim and shot the duck mid-air with a .308. I didn't know ducks could explode, but yes, they can. I paid with a badly aching shoulder, I wasn't used to those powerful cadridges any more. He looked angry at me and grumbled the plan was to eat the duck not turn them into fine mist. The other three ducks he left for me to shot and wondered where I had learned to operate a gun like that.
When I told him a US lieutenant taught me to operate exaclty the same rifle in my gun club he was like "WTF?". I might mention the lieutenant immediatelly settled down in my town after his duty was over because he liked Bavaria so much and wanted his kids to grow up in a less crazy nation.
I appreciate your perspective on this. What you describe is about more than just 'assholes don't get guns', although that is a crucial aspect. The way your family owns just 'a' gun, trained for a long while before shooting, respect for following gun laws. This is the opposite of the usual experience around guns in the US. We as a culture in the US are careless and wanton with guns in general from what I've seen.
I was shown how to use a gun when I was 6 years old, my parents were responsible though so it was only an air pistol, but heavy duty, not airsoft. We had a shotgun, 9mm pistol and a .22 rifle in the house never locked up, didn't even have a safe to lock them if my dad wanted to, and the shotgun was often stored loaded. When people here get together to shoot, it's not odd to hand a loaded gun to someone that has never been to a range or even seen one fired before. Plenty of people are much safer than this, but I would guess my experience is the more common from what I've seen.
From what I can tell, most gun safety training in the US is a single sentence: Always treat it like it's loaded, and keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot.
What are your views on 'objects' such as personal hand grenades or professionally made improvised fertiliser explosives?
I find it absolutely disgusting that I'm not allowed to turn MY innocent 4 wheel brumm brummm object in to a fun party popper object of devastation!!! It's political correctness gone mad it is !!!
(Do I need the /s?)
Edit: "Not Qualified" is not the right wording. Because Qualification only plays a secondary role. It is all about the licence.
In Germany carrying a gun without the right licence would be illegal possesion of a firearm.
But wait, even if you have a licence you can get fined for illegal transport and handling of a firearm.
Carrying a conceiled small sidearm without a special permit is big trouble. Transporting a firearm without a locked enclosure and not seperated from the ammunition is also a serious offence. At home you need a locked container. All in all it got so complicated that my Dad stopped storing guns at home. He sold one and put the other into the gun club. The club is really helpful, we can lend legal transport containers and for guns which we are not allowed to move in public they offer transport services for a small fee, usually that means a police officer moves the gun in his free time using legal transport containers in exchange for a beer.
Classic case: Someone dies and you find a loaded pistol in his inheritance. You bring it to the police. You did three offences: Carrying a conceiled firearm in public, carrying a firearm without proper container, carrying a loaded firearm. The legal way would have been: Calling the police to retrieve the firearm. To be honest, the state attourney usually closes those cases rather quick as "minor incident without criminal intent" but you still get a serious talk.
There are some exceptions for old historic muzzleloaders which are often fired at historic events without bullets. We don't have those so I don't know barely anything about those rules.
I’d be surprised if it could even happen legally, there’s no reason to have a rifle with you to duck hunt. If DNR caught you you’d get a ticket for poaching ( you have a permit for ducks but you are out with gear to hunt deer ) and they’d keep the guns. Yes, even on private land.
It's not that hard of a shot...ducks typically move in a straight line. It's a dumb shot to take for sure, but it's not an impossible one. If OP really has the training he says he has, I'd buy it.
The target wasn't elevated. We were elevated. I tried to explain that the duck was just taking speed to take off but honestly I don't know the right English word for that maneuver. And as I hinted, I had fired the exact same rifle two years earlier at our gun club several times. Also, I paid with an aching shoulder for my recklessness.
While we should have better access to mental (and physical) health care, that's probably not going to fix the too frequent "Someone knocked on my door so i shot them" murders that happen too often.
It also won't solve the "and then the police shot him" murders.
There are a lot of things wrong with the US and its dominant culture. I'd say most of the blame and the blood is on conservatives. Which makes a kind of sense - if you have a shitty system and you are fighting to keep it as is, you're probably a shitty person with shitty takes making the world worse.
If someone just thanos snapped away the conservatives, or at least the authoritarian subset of them, many problems would vanish overnight.
Healthcare is unobtainable for most, housing is now a pipe dream for most, prosperity falling apart, working until you die. "We need to incarcerate all the drug addicts and kill the crazy people".
If only the mass shooters would just target the rich instead of the general public, but I agree with you. A Thanos snap on a good chunk of the conservatives would fix a ton of shit.
I guess it’s not technically unobtainable, it just puts you into financial ruin to utilize healthcare. I call that unobtainable if you’re trying to be financially responsible.
When I look at housing and I see that it has to consume %50 or more of people’s annual budget, that means young people need to earn around 115-150k/yr in order to become homeowners, and that’s only after banks have shifted the goal posts. Young professionals are also much more likely to be saddled with 30-65k of student debt.
When you combine that with the inflation spike that happened last year, and the rising rents, there’s many people earning only $25/hr but rent is $2k/month.
Just fucking good times. The next spike will probably be the suicide rates.
The "funny" thing about the police shooting people for having guns is that it essentially means Americans don't actually have the right to own/carry guns. They only have the right to buy them.
Even if you don't have a gun it's a problem, if you are are stopped by police for a random check^1. You are asked for your license and registration papers. You move your hand 1 cm to get it, cop suddenly realizes you could theoretically have a gun, then decides to shoot you first because self defense.
The possibility that literally everyone can have a firearm makes living there so much more dangerous compared to not having the option of shooting back whenever it would be needed for actual self defense.
^1 probability for random police checks has an inverse proportionality to the whiteness of one's skin color.
They just claim they feared for their life and now they're declared not guilty. There is no specific law saying they can just shoot you for having a gun, but there's plenty of other laws, precedents etc. making it absolutely legal for them to shoot you for having a gun.
We all know if that happened the democrats would fuck it up. They’d stop everything they were working on and set up conservation efforts for conservatives. They’d have musicians raise awareness of the unprecedented threat the conservatives are under and tell everyone where they can donate to those left griftless. The real shitty thing is that without the Republicans around to fuck it up it’ll probably actually work.
Oh I long for the day we can tour a historical conservative town reenactment.
"Over here, notice the giant American flag, and even more prominent Trump 2024 flag. On the other side, a comically large truck requiring a ladder to enter, believe it or not, these were often chosen for low fuel efficiency and modified for extra pollution. Up ahead we see a teenager who has just been kicked out of their parent's house for being gay, a house containing a meth lab, six churches, and a neighbor wielding an AR-15 'just in case'."
I'm not a prescriptivist in general, but I draw the line when it doesn't make any sense AND makes it harder for people to understand each other/meaningfully communicate what they actually mean to say.
You can have opinions on two completely separate, entirely unrelated issues at the same time. And it's not an either/or topic of conversation. We can have both.
But yes, the conservative mainstream attack on Trans is definitely intended to distract from all of their monumental failings.
That doesn't mean it doesn't warrant some discussion, though. Just not the amount it's getting.
What you're saying doesn't constitute a strong argument. My position is that we should notinclude trans people in those categories because, later on, we cannot remove them (which would be much worse). You, on the other hand, seem to opt for ignoring that and, through ignorance, place people with views similar to mine in the position of oppressors trying to remove those people from that category. That's malevolent.
You're either a fed or a bot, I don't care to find out for either. Trans people make up 1% of the United States and within that 1% barely any trans people play sports. The news has hyper actively focus on the ones that do.
If you want to make an entire section of sports for less than 1% of the United States pick your self up by your bootstraps and go nuts. Other wise, who cares.
Trans people make up 1% of the United States and within that 1% barely any trans people play sports.
As I mentioned, you don't need to have 10% of people with an unfair advantage in sports; you just need a few on the podium. You completely ignored that because it's easier for you to fight with an imagined bot than an actual argument.
If those athletes' performance would align with others, that wouldn't be an issue. What I'm raising as an issue is that they could build muscle differently, and even bone density can be different for men and women. It's impossible to eradicate all those characteristics. That's what trans people are trying to do and they have made progress, but some things stay, especially for those who began transitioning late after puberty.
yeah, gonna second that counter point. this is not worth the government's time... it's sports, it doesn't actually matter. let the leagues or whatever figure this out for themselves.
People without legs participate in runs in the Paralympics, and some of their prosthetics are quite bouncy. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point they beat runners with legs using those prosthetics.
I would prefer for them not to compete with "regular" runners because the balance between having legs and bounciness of the prosthetics shouldn't be the deciding factor when determining the winner.
Letting people with prosthetics compete with each other and not with people with legs is fair for both groups.
I'm not a native speaker, and it seems like you hear what you want to hear. My responses were polite, but please continue with your whistle-blowing, it's evident that argumentation is not your strong suit.
Absolutely nothing you said is new or novel though, that was their point. It's the same line the right has been using for the last... 10 years or so? Idk, whenever they decided they were mad about it. You're repeating talking points whether you know it or not.
Right, hasn't changed for Republicans, or him, or you apparently. Everyone else has heard the argument and doesn't actually care. It's sports, it's not that important.
Do you want the federal government making rules for baseball? The argument is so incredibly stupid it makes it seem like a bad faith argument. It's not the integrity of the sport they're concerned with at all.
Hope I helped clear that up for you T-Bone, let me know if you need further clarification.
Why not let the governing bodies for the sports themselves make that distinction and then allow the schools to follow suit? To assume someone would transition purely for a sporting advantage of some kind is asinine.
Transitioning is incredibly traumatic for the body (and mentally) you are not as strong after the fact as you were before.
This argument has existed before Trans. I rememberan Olympic sprinter opened this debate. She had more masc hormones than average. She didn't take masc hormones, she didn't drake performance enhancing drugs, she wasn't Trans. She was just born with more than the average male hormones than the average woman and there was a debate on if that gave her an unfair advantage.
Every time you people shift the goalposts, you shift them even more when it's finally met. If a naturally born woman gets the same argument, when will this argument end? When women can't compete in sports at all? Back in the kitchen taking care of house and family?
This argument has existed before Trans. I rememberan Olympic sprinter opened this debate. She had more masc hormones than average. She didn’t take masc hormones, she didn’t drake performance enhancing drugs, she wasn’t Trans. She was just born with more than the average male hormones than the average woman and there was a debate on if that gave her an unfair advantage.
Yes, it's a valid counterargument to what I've written. Defining a woman is hard.
Every time you people shift the goalposts, you shift them even more when it’s finally met. If a naturally born woman gets the same argument, when will this argument end? When women can’t compete in sports at all? Back in the kitchen taking care of house and family?
But I see that being reasonable didn't work for you in the long run.
Its hard to be reasonable when you won't and keep taking our rights away, you people are always shifting the goal posts to meet your own personal ends of what a woman should be.
You are so obsessed you won’t deign to admit it’s irrelevant to lawmaking while the deaths of thousands every year doesn’t even register in this conversation to you.
There should be no issue if the trans woman underwent hormone therapy to having cis female levels of testosterone. No one is going to seriously push for trans women to play sports when they have all the biological advantages to beat women. But once they allow their physical form to transition, I’d argue they’re on the same level as the cis female population, if not at a disadvantage since cis women might produce more testosterone. Testing could be done to ensure validity.
We also don’t care if men have significant genetic advantages. I don’t think it’s as big of an issue as people are making it seem.
I’d argue they’re on the same level as the cis female population.
I would oppose that statement. You can balance hormones, but there are differences in how men grow taller, gain muscles while using different hormones, and fat distribution is different for different genders, with fat located in different places. These things don't disappear after transitioning completely. The trans community would love that because it would improve their lives and they wouldn't be misgendered as often, but it's not how it works for people after puberty.
I’m sorry, but considering that I actually took hormones once when I questioned my gender and then realized I’m cis and stopped, I can’t agree. I literally tried it because I believed ideas like what you are saying and I liked the idea of keeping most of my strength. But that’s not the case.Not having testosterone makes you so incredibly weak. HRT basically forces your muscles to atrophy overnight if it works. Your ability to apply strong force with your hand just disappears. All the shit you grew in male puberty doesn’t matter because the medication will just change it. Anything leftover from masculinization will be cosmetic. Maybe they won’t be as weak of a woman as they would have been if they were born female, but they will still enter a range of strength that is typical for women, and often weaker than many. And all of this reverts if they stop. It did for me. And I was 23 so I’m pretty sure I was after puberty. I simply cannot believe the idea that trans women are always stronger than cis women after my experience. I get that most people just don’t have any actual experience with these things, but the misinformation is horrifically bad. I strongly feel like a lot of straight women in sports/people in general are just transphobic and would look for any reason to disclude them from sports and are willing to die on the hill they made because it’s not about being correct or fair to them. It never feels it’s really about how fair things are in reality.
I really think the issue of trans people in sports should be up to the governing body of the sporting organization. It's not really something the federal government should be concerned about.
You're aware that trans people generally have been allowed to compete, with restrictions, already, right?
You don't need a large population with that advantage to put them all on the podium.
So why hasn't that happened? Trans people have been allowed to compete already, but all these terrible scenarios we keep getting warned about just haven't come to pass.
And we know that because there are like 5 cases of trans women competing and winning things that get brought up repeatedly by TERFs for years. If trans women "dominating" women's sports was so frequent an occurrence, conservatives wouldn't be foaming at the mouth about a trans woman placing 6159th in a marathon.
It's not advisable to allow trans people in those categories because removing them later from that would be inhumane.
That ship has long sailed.
This is literally just a wedge issue. A nothing burger that they have convinced you is important. Its only purpose is division.
We're not going to stop them. They are an emergent phenomenon of American society. So many things would have to change that this country would be unrecognizable. Which might be awesome... but it's not going to happen anytime soon.
Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Norway all had a culture of gun ownership, went through a mass shooting, put severe restrictions on gun ownership, and had dramatic drops in gun violence. All those other countries have similar mental illness rates and other things people blame mass shootings on.
Yeah man. I'm not saying that guns aren't the main issue. We have more guns than people here. It isn't gonna change though-- especially not right now. Gun purchasing seems to be accelerating if anything. Yes, if you or I could snap our fingers and have all guns disappear, that would do it. Actually getting from where we are now to where those other countries are does not seem like a very clear or likely path. I simply cannot imagine the US as we know it becoming that other place.
When Australia banned semi-auto firearms and handguns for general ownership, I was hearing about hiding guns from gun owners around me
If they did, they've kept it quiet, and probably left them buried
But really almost all the banned guns were sold to the government during the buy back, and due to the amnesty many previously illegal weapons were also turned in
It went really well as the worst people for owning guns also really wanted the cash for turning them in, and if they hide them, they're hiding them against an imagined future crash, and cannot really bring them out normally
The issue is that attempting gun restrictions will cause an extremely violent backlash. The reality is that the United States is going to face ever more violence before enough people suffer enough to change.
Those restrictions didn't do anything because they targeted the groups of guns and owners who aren't actually being used in crime or shooting people.
There are sane things you can do that actually help, like requiring safety courses and having regular background checks. Canada already does this and the Conservatives didn't touch this.
Then there are things which arguably do not increase safety but do increase burdens on gun owners and society, like forcing people to register bolt-action hunting rifles (used very rarely in crime), or secure an ATT (Authorization To Transport) every time you want to move a gun literally anywhere, including to hunt or shoot at the range. These are the things the Conservatives changed to make less overbearing because no one could prove they actually help and they were costing a great deal of money. Fun fact: restricted guns are still registered in Canada, and that includes nearly all legal handguns.
On the bright side, at thanks to trans people, people finally give a shit about women's sports. For incredibly bigoted and superficial reasons but hey the wnbc will take it.
Some lists of "mass shootings" include only the public indiscriminate kind, which is what basically everyone thinks of when they hear the phrase "mass shooting," but some do include actual gang violence (turf war) or other violence based around other crime (drug deal gone bad). Your red shirt blue shirt scenario is cute, but that would still probably be the public indiscriminate kind. The two phenomena are very different.
There was an article from a big US news source a few years ago about how there had been over a hundred school shootings in the US that year. Can't remember which source. The list of events included many that happened near a school or on school property but only incidentally. There was at least one where kids shot a gun in a school parking lot when no one else was around. Of course that's still a problem, but again that's a very different phenomenon than a "school shooting" where someone tries to murder 20 students. That's why I brought that up.
Republicans know multiple causes and contributions that lead to mass shootings, but none of them will support doing anything to address those causes because muh socialism.
Those guys aren't me, but thanks for trying to put me into a box for easy handling. Keep your labels to yourself. I don't do this bundle deal nonsense.
Well according to the Supreme Court, police have no duty to protect nor serve the public. Literally, they can watch you get murdered, watch the murderer get away, and still be 100% fine.
Police is for robbing people and slapping labels on them to artificially reduce their market value. They're not gonna do anything about mass shootings because they won't be there when they happen and don't really care so long as their own friends and family are fed. They're also not going to support disarming the population because they will lose that fight by numbers.
are you dumb? thats not what I even meant, if you have ideal justice system and law enforcements, people doesnt need gun for their security, it happens even in so called 3rd world countries.
Where were the police when the police robbed me for everything I ever worked for and kept me in jail until I lied for them to let me out? Oh right. Wish I had a gun so they would be dead.
having guns is fun. hunting is fun. it's also nice to know I can protect my property should someone try to perform a home invasion. guns are fun as fuck
It has taken on a life of its own and has been twisted to the breaking point by gun nutters. It is never enough for them and any push back is like pulling teeth. They have become the terrorist at this point and there is no reason to negotiate anymore.
See it from their perspective: every time they've given an inch, grabbers took a mile. If you want to get concessions you're going to need to give some too.
Dunno, how do you convince a racist person not to be racist? A flat-earther that the world is round? An anti-abortionist that birth control is the most effective way to prevent abortion?
When women got the right to vote did they try and rationalize with the misogynist? Maybe they could meet them half way and say women only get half a vote instead of a full vote? Does that sound like a good compromise to you!
It is like every major social change could have never happened because they would have to "enforce what they thought was right". Slaves would need to convince the slavers and find some middle ground. Maybe be slaves half the year to appease them.
The problem is your are not only dealing with someone who is wrong in the case of gun nutters but they are daring you to come get their precious guns threatening your life. It is in essence terroristic in nature. There is no compromise with terrorists.
So yes, we tell them they are wrong. We grow up and stop giving in to terrorists. Laws are changed but more importantly society changes. Those that can reflect on this and accept they were wrong change or maybe the rest all die of old age. We move on and get past this.
That's not going to happen in the lifetime of anyone who can read this comment.
Because it requires more than a majority of Congress, it also requires 3/4 of the 50 states to vote to ratify it. Only takes 13 states voting NO to prevent it, and there are plenty more red states than that who would never give up our rights so foolishly.
It will never be enough. Look at the responses in this thread and elsewhere. It will never be enough. There is no price too high that it won't happily be paid. There is no regulation small enough that it will be accepted. They have made that exceptionally clear.
There is no negotiation with them. You will never convince them. It doesn't matter if the regulation works or not.
I don't even think it's a might-makes-right issue yet. They have guns, sure. But that's still basically nothing in the face of government force.
My point was more along the lines of that in all of these gun control discussions, there are mistaken expectations from a lot of liberal people.
Liberals keep engaging in this conversation as if it were a negotiation between reasonable people trying to find common ground. That if the cost of a lack of regulation grows too high, that if they make the right arguments, that if they offer the right compromises, they can move towards moderate gun control.
But that's not what's happening. The gun lobby has repeatedly shown that any regulation, no matter how small, will be viewed the same way as a complete forcible disarming, and will be opposed with the same vigour. And that there is no cost of human life that will ever change that.
For the 2nd Amendment types, the conversation is already over. Everything they say is meaningless, because they don't actually care if what they say is true, they don't care if the regulation works or not. They are just saying things to shut down the discourse, and if you counter them, they'll just move on to the next point like nothing has changed. Because to them nothing has changed.
You'll even see them all get together and celebrate with a picture of them pushing a bill that will only add more to the fire we are trying to put out...
If one party promises to solve an issue to their voters, they can actually benefit from not doing enough about it so they can campaign with it again. If one party promises to not stop mass shootings, and the other benefits from promising to do something about them and then not doing enough, nothing much will happen.
I really think this issue is a symptom of the two party system
You can ABSOLUTELY make a good point about mass shootings being the result of mental health disorders or domestic violence, and we should ABSOLUTELY be doing what we can as a society to fix those problems... but we can't ignore the 100% common denominator in literally every mass shooting... which is guns.
The biggest outlier with guns in America is the politicization and them.
Look at Scandinavia, where gun ownership is incredibly high and many firearm laws less-strict than in the US: It's a region of the world that has most of its shit figured out, and having guns there isn't a big deal because the rate of violence is so low.
Here in the US, we've got a broken social system, essentially zero mental health care for those who really need it, easy access to firearms, and hyper-politicization around firearms that pushes mentally-unstable people towards gun ownership.
When the unstable conspiracy-theory nutjobs hear liberals saying that gun ownership is bad they're predictably start stocking up on guns and ammo - specifically the black guns the political left keeps trying to ban. And then they snap.
That's how the guns that make up about 1% of overall firearm deaths started being used much more frequently in mass shootings.
We do need an honest national conversation about guns and their availability, but neither side of the political aisle is willing to really, truly be honest in their policies towards firearms. So we aren't able to have that conversation and what we end up with is the worst of all outcomes.
Democrats support better gun regulation and better social services. Republicans fight against better gun regulation and fight against better social services. Just because Republican's need to rally their base by gleefully twisting any reasonable regulation into "they're taking our guns" doesn't mean the liberal side is being dishonest.
You can't blame liberal policies for being dishonest when pretty much that they have pushed for is completely reasonable. Only one party is being dishonest here.
Democratic gun policies don't target the guns used most-often in mass shootings or homicides.
They often target cosmetic features, or write laws that actively interfere with development of safety features.
A prime example of the latter was a 2002 New Jersey law that would have outlawed the sale of any firearm without smart safety features once ANY gun with smart features became available.
That basically made all manufacturers immediately stop all progress on developing the technology, because releasing it would essentially crater their entire catalog of products. Therefore there's been zero commercially-viable smart guns released to the market for over 20 years.
More recently, the ATF re-interpreted a decision regarding the definition of a stock 10 years after a new category of arm braces hit the market. The stabilizing braces were specifically submitted to the ATF for review before ever being made available to the public, and cleared by the Obama-era ATF.
Now they've changed their position arbitrarily, and now an estimated 20 million gun owners who purchased a firearm legally are committing a felony by owning it, and the vast majority of them don't even know about it.
There's constant talk on the political left about the "gun show loophole."
There's no such thing. There's zero firearm sales rules that don't apply at a gun show. Hell - on the background check form (ATF 4473) there's even a box to check for when the background check is being performed at a gun show instead of the dealer's normal location.
But any licensed firearms dealer still has to go through the normal process at the gun show. Private sellers don't, but private sellers never have to go through the process (biggest issue that needs to be addressed in my opinion), so the gun show has nothing to do with it.
You also hear about gun laws on one state not mattering because of the less-strict laws in a neighboring state.
Contrary to popular belief, all long-gun sales have to follow the laws and procedures of birth the state where the purchase takes place AND the state where the purchaser lives. When I was a gun salesman in Texas and a California resident tried to buy a gun from me, I had to follow all of California'a processes as well as Texas's, and I could only sell a long gun that was legal in California.
Why do I use "long guns" as a qualifier? Because the transfer of any handgun to an out of state resident is a federal crime. That applies to dealers as well as private individuals whether the handgun is sold or gifted. My sister lives out of state and if I die none of my pistols can be left to her without committing a felony.
My point is this: most people on the political left don't know shit about guns, existing gun laws, or what would truly be effective. And when they TRY to write dumbass laws their ignorance poisons the well and makes gun owners who might otherwise support good ideas like improved background checks, cracking down on straw purchasers, making NICS available to private citizens, and more get super defensive.
It's like when a 90yo who has never owned a computer tries to regulate the Internet without knowing the first thing about technology. They fuck it up and just make matters worse.
Yes, Republicans are monsters who don't give 2 shits about murder victims. Despite the fact that firearms are a huge hobby of mine I vote Dem every election.
But the Democrats trying to write gun laws are usually no different than the Republicans who say that snow storms are proof that global warming is a hoax.
Honest debate needs honesty from both sides, and the first part of intellectual honesty is being able to admit when you don't understand something.
Repeatedly trying to pin blame on Democrats for a lack of change in gun regulation only further exposes your actual goal here, and that isn't to have an honest conversation. Going as far as claiming they know nothing about guns or gun laws, comparing them to climate change deniers, is a pretty bold stance to take on something you clearly don't understand. No matter how much you need to spread this disingenuous stance, it isn't a both sides issue. If it was, Republicans would entertain the debate - they do not. If Republicans were interested at all they would propose their own valuable legislation - instead they call for thoughts and prayers for the dead children they refuse to protect and say it is too soon to even discuss how to solve this. It is not both sides. Even if Democrats were as dumb as you hope to sell here, they are actually at the table trying. Republicans are too busy choosing money over protecting children. Not both sides at all.
And intellectual honesty requires more than admitting when you don't understand - it means leaving your lies and agenda at the door, neither of which you appear capable of doing.
Oh and nice job dropping your previous social services point on this one, losing battle for your agenda. How very honest of you.
That's literally like saying we should ban cars purely because they cause car accidents... It affects way more people than it needs to and is ultimately very messy and costly. If they found a better way of teaching car safety or making it so people who are too much of an idiot to drive can't drive, that would make more sense, even if it takes time and effort.
Edit: oops replied to the wrong message.
That is another thing worth comparing:
A driving licence in the US costs between $20 and $500. Practically no training required.
In Germany it costs €2000-€4000 with a lot of theoretical and practical lessons.
And that is the reason why you are allowed to drive at 250kmh at the Autobahn.
I mean while we're at it we should dramatically reduce the necessity and prevalence of cars. Car culture sucks socially, economically, and ecologically.
And yet still there isn't really a good alternative... Public transportation is slow and annoying, trains are near impossible for America to create now and still also have the issue of there only being certain times you can use it.
It took decades to get into this car hell and it's going to take decades to get out. There would need to be some short term pain for long term gain. Unfortunately that is like humanity's top weakness.
I live in NYC and use public transit every day. It's not perfect but I'd take it over a car-first model any day.
I think this is a good problem to solve, however in tandem with other problems enabling access to weapons and subsequent deaths of many innocent people.
I do wonder why mass shootings weren't nearly as common before 1980s/1990s, when the United States had even less gun control than we do now. There is more to it than just access to guns for sure. Don't get me wrong, I still think stricter gun control would most definitely help, but I wonder what other factors are causing the number of mass shootings to go up.
Couple that with the concentrated conservative efforts to reduce the quality of education in America - less educated people are more susceptible to those conservative media tactics. They can't keep control over all of the craziness they peddle, look at the House of Representatives - they lost the plot and now we are stuck dealing with the shit show they cultivated.
Those things aren't exclusive to or indicative of a capitalistic society. The latter two reasons you describe also exist in authoritarian socialist and communist countries, yet those don't lead to mass shootings.
I don't think capitalism is the best system, especially not on its own, but none of the responses I've gotten have argued why capitalism is the cause of mass shootings. There are way too many cultural and historical factors involved to say that it's exclusively the fault of the economic structure of the US.
You guys can all downvote as much as you want but it seems no one actually has anything more to say than "capitalism bad" so they harvest some internet points.
Is a government caving in to the interests of the rich exclusive to capitalism?
I think you'd probably have a more sound argument if you spent less time calling people retards and instead actually argued your point. Unless you really don't know why you hate capitalism other than that it's the spooky boogeyman for lemmy users.
You guys use the term capitalism like if it was the boogeyman. Its just not relevant here, all of those things can happen without capitalism. Dont shoehorn a topic you barely understand
People that critique capitalism tend to do it a lot because it drives a substantial portion of human activity right now. Capitalism is probably the primary driver of all violence in the US so it seems relevant. Under a socialist system, there could be lower levels of isolation and inequality, no incentive for gun companies to increase profits so they wouldn't market their guns to every person in America, etc. The defense industry is massive and tied directly to the issue of mass shooters. And when you say 'fix the household,' what does that mean other than dismantle capitalism?
Because unchecked capitalism means paying people as little as possible to maximize profits, which means people are underpaid which causes undue stress at home which leads to bad shit happening.
People are like "ooh it's so complicated everything is complex, you can't sum up issues in one or two sentences." But I can't really argue with this, like shouldn't this be obvious to everyone? People are stressed, we can't afford to live, it seems like our world is going to die in a few decades, all directly tied to our socioeconomic paradigm of capitalism. Of course people are going to start freaking out.
Are you implying that people aren't stressed outside of a capitalistic society? Just because capitalism leads some to high levels of stress doesn't mean nothing else does.
Rampant profiteering off of the backs of laborers for the sake of the few. You think those laborers have the ability to maintain a happy and balanced home life after being exploited by capitalists?
If you can't connect rampant class related abuse to mental health issues, and then to violence, you have no fucking idea about anything regarding the human condition. In fact your breath is starting to smell of boot leather.
Brother you're literally not arguing why capitalism is the cause of this still. All you have is personal attacks and loose correlations.
Class abuse is not exclusive to capitalism.
Mental health issues are not exclusive to capitalism.
Tons of lobbying money goes into making sure those laws never happen, shootings cause a rise in firearm sales. Rinse, repeat. Any talk of well regulated militia bullshit is just lip service to the useful idiots who keep them rich.
They're already rushing to try and false flag this as an angry tranny. If traps are that good at killing children, why would they keep them out of the armed forces? It makes no fucking sense
Getting rid of guns isn't the solution, we have 3D printers allowing anyone to make a gun at home. Banning guns won't stop crimimals from using them. Criminals don't follow laws.
Sincerely, a guy whose been 3d printing almost half his life.
First, people are perfectly able to manufacture their own firearms without additive manufacturing of any stripe. Linking ghost guns to 3d printing is a red herring brought to you by technophobic morons and shit-tier journalism from a slow news day. You can buy the needed stuff at any big box hardware store, tools inlcuded, for less than a printer costs.
Secondly, while it is entirely possible to produce firearms with printers… the people who are able to do so, are completely capable of doing it the other way.
Third, 3d printing has a fully international community. Given that criminals exist in every nation; you’d see ghost guns…. Everywhere.
Finally, the vast majority of ghost guns were in fact legally manufactured, and either purchased through stupid-as-fuck private sale exemptions; using straw buyers; or were originally stolen.
So yes, improving gun control laws would in fact make a difference.
But again, not agreeing with republicans saying it's more urgent than mass shootings, but it's still an issue to be discussed and addressed, in a much less urgent way.
A huge issue existing doesn't mean all the rest of the world's problems are now irrelevant.
I mean, I and many others would argue it is a problem in competitive sports. You can't really have a biological man and a biological woman compete in a physical field together...
There are many factors that you're not considering, like when trans men beat cis women at the sport consistently because of a hormonal disparity. Being trans is not necessarily skin-deep and in many cases trans people do present a physiological difference.
biological woman
I think you mean cis woman. I promise it's not a slur. lol
The point is that they need to shift their priorities. Not that they will because it's all bought and paid for, so to distract people from the real issues, we gotta do something about trans people in sports.
People preventably dying on the daily vs muh TV game person has a penis.
They're related thanks to party politics. The party that talks about trans people in sports also rails against gun control.
Also, no one automatically knows what you mean when you say fair. Because of the nature of the debate, you don't deserve the benefit of the doubt where people assume that when you say "fair" you only mean "trans women who have experienced male puberty need to undergo hormone therapy before being allowed to compete in women's sports." And even the people who politically advocate for that invariably wind up also supporting a ban on puberty blockers, or trans men in men's sports, or never allowing trans women to compete no matter how thoroughly physically transitioned they are, or whatever other nonsense.
Bans are just not something that needs to be legislated. Sports organizations can self police in that regard. If anything, we need legislation to ensure trans people CAN compete in the gender category they identify as, with the sole exception of trans women who haven't yet been able to medically transition.
Take chess, for example. FIDE just passed an insane set of rules around when trans women can compete in women's tournaments, and how trans men have to give up any titles they earned while they were still presenting as female, but the gender divisions in chess are completely unrelated to inherent ability. The lack of women in chess is a cultural issue, like in STEM fields, not related to physical ability at all, and the women's division ostensibly exists as an attempt to draw women to the game. What FIDE is doing is purely anti-trans, and there should be legislation keeping them from implementing that. I've no idea how that would work internationally, but the point is trans people need protection, not bans.
They're related thanks to party politics. The party that talks about trans people in sports also rails against gun control.
And? Are you not allowed to support certain policies of one party and certain policies of another party? Especially if you live in a different country, so you're not voting for either of them anyway?
In most sports, there is no such thing as “men's” sports. You are allowed to participate no matter what you were born as and what you identify as. So why not just go there and leave women's sports, which are explicitly created to make it possible to compete well without having been born with a male body, alone?
That said, I agree with you regaiding chess (which should not be considered a sport at all). There is no inherent advantage of having a male body in chess other than the general tendency of men to have a higher variance in most abilities.
Are you not allowed to support certain policies of one party and certain policies of another party? Especially if you live in a different country, so you’re not voting for either of them anyway?
I never even implied that. You came to a meme about American politics and asked how the two topics were related. Sorry not every meme is custom-made for you.
In most sports, there is no such thing as “men’s” sports.
... are you serious? All the most popular sports, running, swimming, weightlifting, football (American and the rest of the world), basketball, hockey, cycling... I decided to check out the Olympic's website for some other examples and almost all of them have hard gender divisions. A few don't but the vast majority are divided. Chess has an "open" and a "women's" division as you describe, but again, it's because the gap exists thanks only to a dearth of women playing the game in the first place. This is not the case in most sports. Trans women who have undergone sufficient hormone therapy do not have an advantage, and should be allowed to participate.
why not just go there and leave women’s sports, which are explicitly created to make it possible to compete well without having been born with a male body, alone?
People rarely just choose what they're passionate about like that. This is an incredibly flimsy excuse to exclude people from competing in what they actually enjoy doing.
I never even implied that. You came to a meme about American politics and asked how the two topics were related.
The meme implies that the set of people opposing gun control is identical to the set of people opposed to trans women participating in women's sports.
Trans women who have undergone sufficient hormone therapy do not have an advantage
How do you explain why Lia Thomas went from being mediocre at men's swimming to getting the by far first place in women's swimming?
exclude people from competing in what they actually enjoy doing
As far as I can tell, nobody is preventing trans women from participating in men's sports. Though I can't seem to find any sources, everyone talks about women's sports. Do you happen to know ofeany?
clearly two years just wasn't sufficient. that's a person who trained all the way through a male puberty. but what a surprise, by "fair" you really did mean just preventing participation at all, im truly shocked
However the point of the post is that while children are being gunned down Republicans will go silent on solutions. However those same Republicans will gladly call on many other non-life threatening issues as a dog whistle or as a distraction tactic. They will ban every book, fire every openly gay person, ridicule every trans child - all because they are afraid of change. But they won't even humor discussions on how to stop a child from catching a bullet.
Just because a political party does many bad things doesn't automatically mean that everything they support is automatically wrong. Or do you also oppose animal rights because Hitler's party supported them?
Stop that. Stop trying to have a reasonable stance in the middle.
Really though, I was under the impression that this was the somewhat reasonable stance that even progressive politicians have? I know that there's scaremongering that DeMoCrAtS want big muscular men taking over women's sports, tackling and hurting your daughters but I thought the actual stance was more along the lines of allowing the LGBTQ+ community to play sports while still allowing sports to be fair?
It definitely doesn't seem like some super easy issue with a clear line in the sand that everyone will be ok with. And some of the scaremongering is certainly bigots being afraid of their children even interacting with someone that is LGBTQ+..
So, I'm legitimately curious, what are the actual stances of those on Lemmy?
Edit: keep down voting me while absolutely none of you are willing to engage and help educate me. I'm legitimately reaching out, asking, and trying to understand and all people can do is hit a down arrow. Fuck me for being an ally trying to trying to further my knowledge eh?
How the hell does what I said have anything to do with per capita? The OP is an image claiming a mass shooting every single day of the week?. That has no correlation with per capita statistics.
You seriously think mass shootings happen every single day of the week? Why the hell would I need a source contradict such a and insane statement? The problem these days is that a "mass shooting" is not some unprovoked crime by a nut job shooting up a school. It's two or more people. That also includes gangland shootings between gangs. Current gun laws already completely restrict them from owning guns as criminals so I see no point in even discussing that.
You see no point in discussing that when there's steps that can be taken to control the flow of guns to criminals? And you see no reason to discuss every other mass shooting?
In case you didn't know, that was one of the original intents of the second amendment. The ability to fight against a government that has become tyrannical.
Ah right, so explain how a group of even 50 well trained individuals, (no military careers among them, because that's the point) is going to stop the US Military in the mountains of Appalachia? Between satellite feeds, drones, missile, artillery batteries, and armored vehicles like the MRAP, what exactly is an armed insurrection going to do? I would remind you that, over 100 years ago the us military was already good enough to win a war where nearly half the US went to war with itself, as a second military, and lost. They were, more or less, equally armed as their opponents in terms of weapons (each individual engagement was decided by skill and numbers, not by what weapons they used) and the south were blockaded into surrender. With the reunification, and 100+ years since it has only gotten stronger, to say nothing of the entrance of the Atomic and Digital Ages.
If the us government wants to stomp on the US people by force, it's had the capability for over 70 years now. Since that time a re-examination should have happened to either reaffirm the laws and ammendments set forth, or altered them. You can't reasonably say "then the military should not have X" because that puts the country at a disadvantage on a world stage.
These ammendments were written when it took 30 seconds or more to reload a black powder cartridge. These ammendments were written when you couldn't send an object into orbit and hang there to watch other humans. It was written when slavery was codified and the norm. Since this document was written we have passed a dozen ammendments to it. Theres not "no way to change the second ammendment" there's only people willing to allow it to be changed. Nowadays we don't have issues with feeding colonies, or how to reach a gold rush in them-there moun'ns. We live in a time where more people live in new york city than the founding fathers wrote the document to rule over as a country.
The second ammendment, among the others, is outdated for a different time. It was written to prevent something that, quite frankly, isn't an issue these days. At the time yeah it was all the rage to have yourself an Independance War because the governing country was oppressive. As was made apparent during the Civil War, and is true now - the average citizens uprising to overthrow the government for any reason won't happen without military support anyway. And that means military hardware. You only get military hardware from defectors or thieves, neither of which are going to fight a us army base like it's GTA to get ahold of it.
What does "the right of the people" mean? Because the militia (every able bodied man in the nation) should be kept well armed, we ensured the right of the people (everyone) to keep and bear arms.
You seriously don't think there's too much gun crime in the US? You seriously think that every person involved in every gang shooting has a prior record?
Sure, I'll concede that there isn't a mass shooting every single day of every week every year. Congrats you win. But if you think there's nothing wrong with our current gun laws when we have the highest rates of gun crime, and if you think that even the occasional mass shooting involving little kids is just "the cost of keeping our rights" then frankly I see no further point in engaging with you. And don't for a second think that means you've won, it means you've already lost to the propaganda machine and have accepted loss of life as the cost of doing business. I'm not well trained enough to deprogram you.
What the fuck gun laws do you make to keep CRIMINALS who are not allowed to own or purchase guns from doing so? Any new gun law will have no affect on the criminals. Only those trying to defend themselves legally.
A significant number of guns used in crimes are stolen from legal gun-owners. With legal guns less prevalent, the people you refer to would have less access to them as well. You could require better care in storage of guns, so that they can't be stolen as easily. You could increase funding for combating illegal gun trafficking. I'm not saying these are good solutions to the issue, but there are a lot of things one could do through the law to help keep guns away from criminals.
They also can't be stolen if they're carried around by the owner and used to kill the person threatening people's lives. Not enough finding out these days. Too many gang members expecting to just get a slap on the wrist. If they start dropping like flies we would hopefully see less gang members fucking around.
Not all gun crime is committed by previously convicted CRIMINALS. Do you think a high schooler getting ahold of dad's gun and shooting up their school has been previously convicted?? Mental health issues for sure but an existing CRIMINAL record is doubtful.
And the whole good guys with gun stuff is absolute bullshit. Fat lot of good it does when the "good guys" wait outside while a shooting takes place because they're too scared for their own lives to put their "good guy" guns to good use. So I guess your feelings must basically be fuck the victims then? Would you like to blame the victims while you're at it? They picked a bad day to show up to class, should've stayed home right?
Get your head out of your ass and your ass out of the sand. This definitely isn't some clear cut easy issue, but if you ask me the answer to world record levels of gun crime isn't to sit back and do nothing because it might take a gun away from some theoretical, law abiding good guy.
And mind you, I am a law abiding gun owner. I've done sport shooting and a little hunting since I was old enough to take hunters safety. And guess what. I didn't have to do a damn thing for my gun. No application, no permit, no mental health evaluation, no background check.. I literally don't have a driver's license because that is more difficult to obtain than a fucking gun! If that's not fubar to you then IMHO you're hopeless. Sorry to be that way but idk how you even get so deep up inside the NRA's asshole and I'm definitely not diving in to get you.
I believe in the second amendment and I know there are responsible gun owners out there. That does not automatically mean that people should die just so that I and others like me don't have to go through some fucking paperwork to obtain something designed to kill.
That's beyond stupid. You actually believe that? When you think mass shootings do you think sla nut job going into a school to kill people, or a drive by? Because that high figure is absolutely conflating the two.
Are you honestly telling me you believe that there's a mass shooting every day? I don't think there's been enough mass shootings as people think of them to fill out the month in the last 50 years.
Source: A fox News opinion piece written by a guy driving through a city one time and heard a loud sound in the distance that could have been a gun shot.
There have been 41 school shootings in the 2020's in the United States where 3 or more people of been injured or killed. 160 total incidents with no restrictions on victim count.
Gang shootings often kill bystanders as much as 'criminals'. Do you really think a 15 year old gang member in a rough place where shootings are common had a lot of choice? A lot of 'gang shootings' are by kids.
Quite possibly the most astute thing I’ve seen on 4chan.
It's just a thousand monkeys at typewriters in there.
Occasionally you get a work of Shakespeare in all the gibberish.
Green texts that reach the outside are usually pretty astute, political comment, alternative humor or sharp social commentary. See [email protected]
Exactly, no one is sharing the deranged off the wall shit on here because anything that doesn't fit the dominant narrative on Lemmy is pretty quickly downvoted.
That said, I did upvote this post lol
Also Republicans: "this violence is the result of us not beiing Christian enough as a nation"
Also also Republicans: saying the above while being from a state in the union that's both one of the most Christian and most violent in the nation.
American terrorists are Christians. No matter what evangelicals and other say. They'll tell you about the terrorist, "he wasn't a REAL Christian" but he was. Instead of fixing the cancer in their religion, Christians will brush away every bad person as "not real" so they can keep ignoring the problem.
The shooters are commiting the same sins that their church leaders commit. Pride, greed, wrath.
I've heard "good Christians" hand wave their responsibility for bad behavior by saying things like "we're all sinners" or "I'll have to confess later!"
I guess that latter one is Catholic, but it's all the same.
Religion was a necessary framework for transmitting moral knowledge in a time when people didn't have a stable foundation. Centuries ago. It's absurdly flawed and grows communities that are extremely vulnerable to corruption and radicalization.
It's time to move past religion.
Catholicism's rule is as long as you confess your sins you're all good. You can be the worst human alive, but perfectly good in the Catholic god's eyes so long as you confess
It really is a religion designed to allow bad behaviour by anyone who knows the rules
It's quite the coincidence, many other highly religious countries tend to be extremely violent.
Ah but you see, statisticians are part of the conspiracy. Anyone with an education who can actually read and interpret trends is just in on it! I haven't personally experienced a mass shooting, therefore my state is the safest in the nation!
Either that or we simply aren't Christian enough to ban all other religions yet and God tests his most faithful, yadda yadda
God bless America everyone!
I get what you're saying, but also don't forget to never trust a statistic you didn't doctor yourself
In Germany we have on average more privately owned guns than most US states. Still... we had just TWO mass shooting in 20 years.
Why?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08GbT5ZEs08
In short: You have to qualify to own a gun. Assholes don't get guns. And by fullfilling the laws to own a gun you actually earn respect in your community.
I am member of a German gun club where the local population, the regional police and a couple of NATO soldiers train. It took me nearly one year before I even was allowed to touch a loaded gun, all through my 14th year I was basically just taught how to clean and repair my rifle, how to handle it, how to NOT use it, only then how to use it. And after ten months I was finally given a single bullet.
I am now 30. Nowadays my family owns and shares a Sig Sauer 200, locked inside the gun club. Everyone except my Mum shots around 25 bullets per month, once a year the whole gun club repeats basic training which includes mental health checks.
And after basic training we have special events. For example six years ago a local NATO garrison was massively downsized and so they offered us to use up their overaged surplus ammunition. I got to shot pretty much anything from 9mm to 7,62mm for basically free - we collected money for the victims of a local house fire so I put €50 into the collection.
Did I ever shot a gun outside the gun club?
Actually: Yes. When I was in the US I joined my Uncle on duck hunt. He was like "ok, hold the big rifle while I show you how to shot a duck using 12gd bird shot." - he misses, I aim and shot the duck mid-air with a .308. I didn't know ducks could explode, but yes, they can. I paid with a badly aching shoulder, I wasn't used to those powerful cadridges any more. He looked angry at me and grumbled the plan was to eat the duck not turn them into fine mist. The other three ducks he left for me to shot and wondered where I had learned to operate a gun like that.
When I told him a US lieutenant taught me to operate exaclty the same rifle in my gun club he was like "WTF?". I might mention the lieutenant immediatelly settled down in my town after his duty was over because he liked Bavaria so much and wanted his kids to grow up in a less crazy nation.
I appreciate your perspective on this. What you describe is about more than just 'assholes don't get guns', although that is a crucial aspect. The way your family owns just 'a' gun, trained for a long while before shooting, respect for following gun laws. This is the opposite of the usual experience around guns in the US. We as a culture in the US are careless and wanton with guns in general from what I've seen.
I was shown how to use a gun when I was 6 years old, my parents were responsible though so it was only an air pistol, but heavy duty, not airsoft. We had a shotgun, 9mm pistol and a .22 rifle in the house never locked up, didn't even have a safe to lock them if my dad wanted to, and the shotgun was often stored loaded. When people here get together to shoot, it's not odd to hand a loaded gun to someone that has never been to a range or even seen one fired before. Plenty of people are much safer than this, but I would guess my experience is the more common from what I've seen.
From what I can tell, most gun safety training in the US is a single sentence: Always treat it like it's loaded, and keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot.
What is the penalty if you are caught with a gun you are not qualified to have?
Prison sentence up to 5 years.
Over an object.
Literally the war on drugs all over again.
What are your views on 'objects' such as personal hand grenades or professionally made improvised fertiliser explosives?
I find it absolutely disgusting that I'm not allowed to turn MY innocent 4 wheel brumm brummm object in to a fun party popper object of devastation!!! It's political correctness gone mad it is !!!
(Do I need the /s?)
Yeah except how once you use the gun, the fucking gun is still there and can't be flushed down the toilet.
That greatly depends on the gun. And the toilet, honestly. Have you seen those golf ball ones? Those could take a .380 or a double deuce, I bet.
Edit: "Not Qualified" is not the right wording. Because Qualification only plays a secondary role. It is all about the licence.
In Germany carrying a gun without the right licence would be illegal possesion of a firearm.
But wait, even if you have a licence you can get fined for illegal transport and handling of a firearm.
Carrying a conceiled small sidearm without a special permit is big trouble. Transporting a firearm without a locked enclosure and not seperated from the ammunition is also a serious offence. At home you need a locked container. All in all it got so complicated that my Dad stopped storing guns at home. He sold one and put the other into the gun club. The club is really helpful, we can lend legal transport containers and for guns which we are not allowed to move in public they offer transport services for a small fee, usually that means a police officer moves the gun in his free time using legal transport containers in exchange for a beer.
Classic case: Someone dies and you find a loaded pistol in his inheritance. You bring it to the police. You did three offences: Carrying a conceiled firearm in public, carrying a firearm without proper container, carrying a loaded firearm. The legal way would have been: Calling the police to retrieve the firearm. To be honest, the state attourney usually closes those cases rather quick as "minor incident without criminal intent" but you still get a serious talk.
There are some exceptions for old historic muzzleloaders which are often fired at historic events without bullets. We don't have those so I don't know barely anything about those rules.
Absolute bullshit, nobody is shooting a duck mid-air with a rifle. Your story is fake and lame.
I’d be surprised if it could even happen legally, there’s no reason to have a rifle with you to duck hunt. If DNR caught you you’d get a ticket for poaching ( you have a permit for ducks but you are out with gear to hunt deer ) and they’d keep the guns. Yes, even on private land.
“I am now 30” thats where I tapped out. You lasted way longer than I did.
It's not that hard of a shot...ducks typically move in a straight line. It's a dumb shot to take for sure, but it's not an impossible one. If OP really has the training he says he has, I'd buy it.
Thanks for the interesting read. Really goes to show how mad we are in the US for handing out guns like candy
You shot a 308 round into the air? Isn't that unsafe? If you missed the bullet could go anywhere.
Even if he hit, the bullet is still going anywhere. Who even takes a rifle?
There have been at least 2 mass shootings in Germany since March a simple Google search reveals. 🤔
Shouldn't "mass shootings" include "mass"?
I mean a shooting with 0 dead surely doesn't count as such and three people from a youth gang isn't exactly a typical mass shooting either.
Well, it's mass shootings not mass killings. However, that's not really important in this discussion when you can point to the in March and this .
Reichsbürger Waffenlager und so? Gibt ja trotzdem genug schwarze Schafe.
If you'd actually received as much safety training as you claim, you never would have taken a shot at an elevated target with a center-fire rifle.
The target wasn't elevated. We were elevated. I tried to explain that the duck was just taking speed to take off but honestly I don't know the right English word for that maneuver. And as I hinted, I had fired the exact same rifle two years earlier at our gun club several times. Also, I paid with an aching shoulder for my recklessness.
Wow, it's like the third recent green text where anon is talking about real world stuff in a grown-up way.
So anon turned out all right in the end?!
no
While we should have better access to mental (and physical) health care, that's probably not going to fix the too frequent "Someone knocked on my door so i shot them" murders that happen too often.
It also won't solve the "and then the police shot him" murders.
There are a lot of things wrong with the US and its dominant culture. I'd say most of the blame and the blood is on conservatives. Which makes a kind of sense - if you have a shitty system and you are fighting to keep it as is, you're probably a shitty person with shitty takes making the world worse.
If someone just thanos snapped away the conservatives, or at least the authoritarian subset of them, many problems would vanish overnight.
Healthcare is unobtainable for most, housing is now a pipe dream for most, prosperity falling apart, working until you die. "We need to incarcerate all the drug addicts and kill the crazy people".
If only the mass shooters would just target the rich instead of the general public, but I agree with you. A Thanos snap on a good chunk of the conservatives would fix a ton of shit.
That thanos snap better take care of a all the very corrupt politicians and unchecked capitalists as well pretty please.
What do you mean?
What do you mean?
I guess it’s not technically unobtainable, it just puts you into financial ruin to utilize healthcare. I call that unobtainable if you’re trying to be financially responsible.
When I look at housing and I see that it has to consume %50 or more of people’s annual budget, that means young people need to earn around 115-150k/yr in order to become homeowners, and that’s only after banks have shifted the goal posts. Young professionals are also much more likely to be saddled with 30-65k of student debt.
When you combine that with the inflation spike that happened last year, and the rising rents, there’s many people earning only $25/hr but rent is $2k/month.
Just fucking good times. The next spike will probably be the suicide rates.
The "funny" thing about the police shooting people for having guns is that it essentially means Americans don't actually have the right to own/carry guns. They only have the right to buy them.
Even if you don't have a gun it's a problem, if you are are stopped by police for a random check^1. You are asked for your license and registration papers. You move your hand 1 cm to get it, cop suddenly realizes you could theoretically have a gun, then decides to shoot you first because self defense.
The possibility that literally everyone can have a firearm makes living there so much more dangerous compared to not having the option of shooting back whenever it would be needed for actual self defense.
^1 probability for random police checks has an inverse proportionality to the whiteness of one's skin color.
Police cannot shoot you (legally) for carrying, now whether they follow the law is a different matter
They just claim they feared for their life and now they're declared not guilty. There is no specific law saying they can just shoot you for having a gun, but there's plenty of other laws, precedents etc. making it absolutely legal for them to shoot you for having a gun.
Of course, this is why body cams are one of the greatest innovations in policing.
Mental health is a scapegoat for discrediting people via appeal to authority fallacy.
It is not only the authoritarian conservatives that want gun rights
We all know if that happened the democrats would fuck it up. They’d stop everything they were working on and set up conservation efforts for conservatives. They’d have musicians raise awareness of the unprecedented threat the conservatives are under and tell everyone where they can donate to those left griftless. The real shitty thing is that without the Republicans around to fuck it up it’ll probably actually work.
Oh I long for the day we can tour a historical conservative town reenactment.
"Over here, notice the giant American flag, and even more prominent Trump 2024 flag. On the other side, a comically large truck requiring a ladder to enter, believe it or not, these were often chosen for low fuel efficiency and modified for extra pollution. Up ahead we see a teenager who has just been kicked out of their parent's house for being gay, a house containing a meth lab, six churches, and a neighbor wielding an AR-15 'just in case'."
The Real Issues(tm)
You're literally falling for the republican wedge issue
not falling, 'literally'. figuratively, yes.
One valid and recognized definition of literally is “figuratively”. Words and usage changes overtime in a society.
Recognised but never valid.
I'm not a prescriptivist in general, but I draw the line when it doesn't make any sense AND makes it harder for people to understand each other/meaningfully communicate what they actually mean to say.
You haven't drawn any lines, God, you're typing words.
I meant figurative lines, not literal ones.
You can have opinions on two completely separate, entirely unrelated issues at the same time. And it's not an either/or topic of conversation. We can have both.
But yes, the conservative mainstream attack on Trans is definitely intended to distract from all of their monumental failings.
That doesn't mean it doesn't warrant some discussion, though. Just not the amount it's getting.
You can, but you have mistaken opinion from distraction.
What you're saying doesn't constitute a strong argument. My position is that we should notinclude trans people in those categories because, later on, we cannot remove them (which would be much worse). You, on the other hand, seem to opt for ignoring that and, through ignorance, place people with views similar to mine in the position of oppressors trying to remove those people from that category. That's malevolent.
You're either a fed or a bot, I don't care to find out for either. Trans people make up 1% of the United States and within that 1% barely any trans people play sports. The news has hyper actively focus on the ones that do.
If you want to make an entire section of sports for less than 1% of the United States pick your self up by your bootstraps and go nuts. Other wise, who cares.
As I mentioned, you don't need to have 10% of people with an unfair advantage in sports; you just need a few on the podium. You completely ignored that because it's easier for you to fight with an imagined bot than an actual argument.
If those athletes' performance would align with others, that wouldn't be an issue. What I'm raising as an issue is that they could build muscle differently, and even bone density can be different for men and women. It's impossible to eradicate all those characteristics. That's what trans people are trying to do and they have made progress, but some things stay, especially for those who began transitioning late after puberty.
Counterpoint, this is dumb as fuck
Wow, such a thoughtful and well-reasoned argument.
yeah, gonna second that counter point. this is not worth the government's time... it's sports, it doesn't actually matter. let the leagues or whatever figure this out for themselves.
Do you even listen to yourself?
I advocate for the creation of separate categories for those people.
Separate...but equal?
People without legs participate in runs in the Paralympics, and some of their prosthetics are quite bouncy. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point they beat runners with legs using those prosthetics.
I would prefer for them not to compete with "regular" runners because the balance between having legs and bounciness of the prosthetics shouldn't be the deciding factor when determining the winner.
Letting people with prosthetics compete with each other and not with people with legs is fair for both groups.
Bigots love segregation.
"Those people" Sounds familiar. What were you saying about malevolence and being the oppressors, again?
I'm not a native speaker, and it seems like you hear what you want to hear. My responses were polite, but please continue with your whistle-blowing, it's evident that argumentation is not your strong suit.
Absolutely nothing you said is new or novel though, that was their point. It's the same line the right has been using for the last... 10 years or so? Idk, whenever they decided they were mad about it. You're repeating talking points whether you know it or not.
What a great non-argument you made. Republican said it and it hasn't changed so it must be wrong.
Right, hasn't changed for Republicans, or him, or you apparently. Everyone else has heard the argument and doesn't actually care. It's sports, it's not that important.
Do you want the federal government making rules for baseball? The argument is so incredibly stupid it makes it seem like a bad faith argument. It's not the integrity of the sport they're concerned with at all.
Hope I helped clear that up for you T-Bone, let me know if you need further clarification.
Did you make chat gpt write this?
I'm not a native English speaker.
Why not let the governing bodies for the sports themselves make that distinction and then allow the schools to follow suit? To assume someone would transition purely for a sporting advantage of some kind is asinine.
The reasons a person transitions don't really matter if they do it later in life and can benefit from it.
Transitioning is incredibly traumatic for the body (and mentally) you are not as strong after the fact as you were before.
This argument has existed before Trans. I rememberan Olympic sprinter opened this debate. She had more masc hormones than average. She didn't take masc hormones, she didn't drake performance enhancing drugs, she wasn't Trans. She was just born with more than the average male hormones than the average woman and there was a debate on if that gave her an unfair advantage.
Every time you people shift the goalposts, you shift them even more when it's finally met. If a naturally born woman gets the same argument, when will this argument end? When women can't compete in sports at all? Back in the kitchen taking care of house and family?
Crazy how conservatives finally found an excuse to watch the WNBA.
Yes, it's a valid counterargument to what I've written. Defining a woman is hard.
But I see that being reasonable didn't work for you in the long run.
Its hard to be reasonable when you won't and keep taking our rights away, you people are always shifting the goal posts to meet your own personal ends of what a woman should be.
You’re clueless.
See: The first sentence of my statement.
You are so obsessed you won’t deign to admit it’s irrelevant to lawmaking while the deaths of thousands every year doesn’t even register in this conversation to you.
Who cares?
It's high school sports. They should be out having fun, not obsessing over which of them will make it into the fucking Olympics.
There should be no issue if the trans woman underwent hormone therapy to having cis female levels of testosterone. No one is going to seriously push for trans women to play sports when they have all the biological advantages to beat women. But once they allow their physical form to transition, I’d argue they’re on the same level as the cis female population, if not at a disadvantage since cis women might produce more testosterone. Testing could be done to ensure validity.
We also don’t care if men have significant genetic advantages. I don’t think it’s as big of an issue as people are making it seem.
I would oppose that statement. You can balance hormones, but there are differences in how men grow taller, gain muscles while using different hormones, and fat distribution is different for different genders, with fat located in different places. These things don't disappear after transitioning completely. The trans community would love that because it would improve their lives and they wouldn't be misgendered as often, but it's not how it works for people after puberty.
I’m sorry, but considering that I actually took hormones once when I questioned my gender and then realized I’m cis and stopped, I can’t agree. I literally tried it because I believed ideas like what you are saying and I liked the idea of keeping most of my strength. But that’s not the case.Not having testosterone makes you so incredibly weak. HRT basically forces your muscles to atrophy overnight if it works. Your ability to apply strong force with your hand just disappears. All the shit you grew in male puberty doesn’t matter because the medication will just change it. Anything leftover from masculinization will be cosmetic. Maybe they won’t be as weak of a woman as they would have been if they were born female, but they will still enter a range of strength that is typical for women, and often weaker than many. And all of this reverts if they stop. It did for me. And I was 23 so I’m pretty sure I was after puberty. I simply cannot believe the idea that trans women are always stronger than cis women after my experience. I get that most people just don’t have any actual experience with these things, but the misinformation is horrifically bad. I strongly feel like a lot of straight women in sports/people in general are just transphobic and would look for any reason to disclude them from sports and are willing to die on the hill they made because it’s not about being correct or fair to them. It never feels it’s really about how fair things are in reality.
I really think the issue of trans people in sports should be up to the governing body of the sporting organization. It's not really something the federal government should be concerned about.
Concern troll detected
You're aware that trans people generally have been allowed to compete, with restrictions, already, right?
So why hasn't that happened? Trans people have been allowed to compete already, but all these terrible scenarios we keep getting warned about just haven't come to pass.
And we know that because there are like 5 cases of trans women competing and winning things that get brought up repeatedly by TERFs for years. If trans women "dominating" women's sports was so frequent an occurrence, conservatives wouldn't be foaming at the mouth about a trans woman placing 6159th in a marathon.
That ship has long sailed.
This is literally just a wedge issue. A nothing burger that they have convinced you is important. Its only purpose is division.
ROFL!
We're not going to stop them. They are an emergent phenomenon of American society. So many things would have to change that this country would be unrecognizable. Which might be awesome... but it's not going to happen anytime soon.
Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Norway all had a culture of gun ownership, went through a mass shooting, put severe restrictions on gun ownership, and had dramatic drops in gun violence. All those other countries have similar mental illness rates and other things people blame mass shootings on.
Yeah man. I'm not saying that guns aren't the main issue. We have more guns than people here. It isn't gonna change though-- especially not right now. Gun purchasing seems to be accelerating if anything. Yes, if you or I could snap our fingers and have all guns disappear, that would do it. Actually getting from where we are now to where those other countries are does not seem like a very clear or likely path. I simply cannot imagine the US as we know it becoming that other place.
When Australia banned semi-auto firearms and handguns for general ownership, I was hearing about hiding guns from gun owners around me
If they did, they've kept it quiet, and probably left them buried
But really almost all the banned guns were sold to the government during the buy back, and due to the amnesty many previously illegal weapons were also turned in
It went really well as the worst people for owning guns also really wanted the cash for turning them in, and if they hide them, they're hiding them against an imagined future crash, and cannot really bring them out normally
The issue is that attempting gun restrictions will cause an extremely violent backlash. The reality is that the United States is going to face ever more violence before enough people suffer enough to change.
Canada is not a great example though. Liberals put in bills for gun ownership restrictions and Conservatives remove it when they get into power.
Those restrictions didn't do anything because they targeted the groups of guns and owners who aren't actually being used in crime or shooting people.
There are sane things you can do that actually help, like requiring safety courses and having regular background checks. Canada already does this and the Conservatives didn't touch this.
Then there are things which arguably do not increase safety but do increase burdens on gun owners and society, like forcing people to register bolt-action hunting rifles (used very rarely in crime), or secure an ATT (Authorization To Transport) every time you want to move a gun literally anywhere, including to hunt or shoot at the range. These are the things the Conservatives changed to make less overbearing because no one could prove they actually help and they were costing a great deal of money. Fun fact: restricted guns are still registered in Canada, and that includes nearly all legal handguns.
Genocide is part of our culture
Yup, sure is. The USA wouldn't exist without it.
On the bright side, at thanks to trans people, people finally give a shit about women's sports. For incredibly bigoted and superficial reasons but hey the wnbc will take it.
They care for exactly long enough to write bans then they go back to mocking women's sports. There's no actual improvement.
We're actually averaging almost 2 per day this year so far.
Its strange you only hear about the big ones every month then.
The public indiscriminate kind, gang violence kind, or the 3 kids shot a gun once goofing off in their school parking lot kind?
What does that even mean? Indiscriminately killing people in public? Like a mass shooting? Lol
"Person opens fire into church killing 5 and injuring 12"
"that's a mass shooter"
"the gunman was wearing red and those killed wore blue"
"that's gang violence"
Do you see how stupid that take is?
Oh my bad I thought you were being genuine, this is obviously bait, please carry on
Some lists of "mass shootings" include only the public indiscriminate kind, which is what basically everyone thinks of when they hear the phrase "mass shooting," but some do include actual gang violence (turf war) or other violence based around other crime (drug deal gone bad). Your red shirt blue shirt scenario is cute, but that would still probably be the public indiscriminate kind. The two phenomena are very different.
There was an article from a big US news source a few years ago about how there had been over a hundred school shootings in the US that year. Can't remember which source. The list of events included many that happened near a school or on school property but only incidentally. There was at least one where kids shot a gun in a school parking lot when no one else was around. Of course that's still a problem, but again that's a very different phenomenon than a "school shooting" where someone tries to murder 20 students. That's why I brought that up.
Republicans know multiple causes and contributions that lead to mass shootings, but none of them will support doing anything to address those causes because muh socialism.
Republicans don’t deserve the lives they live.
Nobody deserves anything. Deserving is the shittest concept. I deserve to die because life is shit, but nobody will help.
I'm pretty sure I deserve at least a million bucks but you do you
A million bucks?! You know what you could do with that money? Two chicks, man.
You know what I'd do with a million bucks? Nothing. I'd relax, I would sit on my ass all day, I would do nothing.
Well you don't need a million bucks to do nuthin'. Hell, look at my cousin, he's dead broke, don't do shit.
Haven't you been reading this thread? The police will help
🤣
"i LiTerAlLy cAn'T TelL tHem ApArt!"
Simple way to stop mass shootings is to ban guns like anywhere else on the world.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41488081
Oh look, it's those guys who think the law works.
Ha, jk. It's the tools trying to disarm their opposition.
Those guys aren't me, but thanks for trying to put me into a box for easy handling. Keep your labels to yourself. I don't do this bundle deal nonsense.
This you?
Nobody need guns besides the cops. If you need guns than there is a problem with your country.
Cops don't need guns because cops shouldn't exist.
No no no MUH AMANDMENTHHH!!!
Just dropping in to ask if anyone has that image. I need it to win several arguments I'm currently having on the internet.
This one? https://twitter.com/OpTicMaNiaC/status/1637280489898749954
Thank you. I will not forget this. I would fight for you.
Centrists: "No but really, trans people playing sports is a massive problem, one that we should devote many resources to solving."
The gun laws in US are joke, why even allow people to have guns? what is police for?
You obviously haven't met our cops.
yes..... 😅
wE need to BAN TASERS
Well according to the Supreme Court, police have no duty to protect nor serve the public. Literally, they can watch you get murdered, watch the murderer get away, and still be 100% fine.
Police protect the govt. Period. Nothing else.
Police is for robbing people and slapping labels on them to artificially reduce their market value. They're not gonna do anything about mass shootings because they won't be there when they happen and don't really care so long as their own friends and family are fed. They're also not going to support disarming the population because they will lose that fight by numbers.
When seconds count, police are minutes away.
And the ambulance is even further away dealing with the last wannabe clint Eastwood that acted on that dumb as fuck sentiment.
Well that's just a logistics problem. Really easy to solve.
are you dumb? thats not what I even meant, if you have ideal justice system and law enforcements, people doesnt need gun for their security, it happens even in so called 3rd world countries.
Where were the police when the police robbed me for everything I ever worked for and kept me in jail until I lied for them to let me out? Oh right. Wish I had a gun so they would be dead.
Guns are fun but so is having a society where I don't have to live in fear of dying. There should be some rules on who can carry a gun.
That society doesn't exist even in your dreams. You are going to die.
Everybody knows that mate.
Not me I'm built different
having guns is fun. hunting is fun. it's also nice to know I can protect my property should someone try to perform a home invasion. guns are fun as fuck
It's especially fun when it turns out the police are nobody's friends. Oh wait.
inb4 "why would you shoot someone who just wants your TV?"
Someone who just wants to steal my TV isn't breaking in while both cars are parked out-front.
What about a home invasion? They are not uncommon in a lot of places.
Be careful treading that line. For gun loving muricans, they love their 2nd amendment more than their actual constitution.
What do you mean?
When is enough going to be enough?
The 2nd Amendment was a mistake. It’s time to repeal it.
It has taken on a life of its own and has been twisted to the breaking point by gun nutters. It is never enough for them and any push back is like pulling teeth. They have become the terrorist at this point and there is no reason to negotiate anymore.
See it from their perspective: every time they've given an inch, grabbers took a mile. If you want to get concessions you're going to need to give some too.
Oh I have, but they are just wrong
Dunno, how do you convince a racist person not to be racist? A flat-earther that the world is round? An anti-abortionist that birth control is the most effective way to prevent abortion?
The answer is you don't. They are just wrong.
When women got the right to vote did they try and rationalize with the misogynist? Maybe they could meet them half way and say women only get half a vote instead of a full vote? Does that sound like a good compromise to you!
It is like every major social change could have never happened because they would have to "enforce what they thought was right". Slaves would need to convince the slavers and find some middle ground. Maybe be slaves half the year to appease them.
The problem is your are not only dealing with someone who is wrong in the case of gun nutters but they are daring you to come get their precious guns threatening your life. It is in essence terroristic in nature. There is no compromise with terrorists.
So yes, we tell them they are wrong. We grow up and stop giving in to terrorists. Laws are changed but more importantly society changes. Those that can reflect on this and accept they were wrong change or maybe the rest all die of old age. We move on and get past this.
That's not going to happen in the lifetime of anyone who can read this comment.
Because it requires more than a majority of Congress, it also requires 3/4 of the 50 states to vote to ratify it. Only takes 13 states voting NO to prevent it, and there are plenty more red states than that who would never give up our rights so foolishly.
It will never be enough. Look at the responses in this thread and elsewhere. It will never be enough. There is no price too high that it won't happily be paid. There is no regulation small enough that it will be accepted. They have made that exceptionally clear.
There is no negotiation with them. You will never convince them. It doesn't matter if the regulation works or not.
I don't even think it's a might-makes-right issue yet. They have guns, sure. But that's still basically nothing in the face of government force.
My point was more along the lines of that in all of these gun control discussions, there are mistaken expectations from a lot of liberal people.
Liberals keep engaging in this conversation as if it were a negotiation between reasonable people trying to find common ground. That if the cost of a lack of regulation grows too high, that if they make the right arguments, that if they offer the right compromises, they can move towards moderate gun control.
But that's not what's happening. The gun lobby has repeatedly shown that any regulation, no matter how small, will be viewed the same way as a complete forcible disarming, and will be opposed with the same vigour. And that there is no cost of human life that will ever change that.
For the 2nd Amendment types, the conversation is already over. Everything they say is meaningless, because they don't actually care if what they say is true, they don't care if the regulation works or not. They are just saying things to shut down the discourse, and if you counter them, they'll just move on to the next point like nothing has changed. Because to them nothing has changed.
pretend all victims are in a better place while pocketing NRA dues like no tomorrow
You'll even see them all get together and celebrate with a picture of them pushing a bill that will only add more to the fire we are trying to put out...
If one party promises to solve an issue to their voters, they can actually benefit from not doing enough about it so they can campaign with it again. If one party promises to not stop mass shootings, and the other benefits from promising to do something about them and then not doing enough, nothing much will happen. I really think this issue is a symptom of the two party system
PSA: about 2/3 mass shootings are domestic violence related. If you want to fix mass shootings, start at fixing the household.
https://injepijournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40621-021-00330-0
You can ABSOLUTELY make a good point about mass shootings being the result of mental health disorders or domestic violence, and we should ABSOLUTELY be doing what we can as a society to fix those problems... but we can't ignore the 100% common denominator in literally every mass shooting... which is guns.
The rest of the world has deep, deep family problems, too. Yet doesn't have these problems.
And a lot of it has guns too.
The biggest outlier with guns in America is the politicization and them.
Look at Scandinavia, where gun ownership is incredibly high and many firearm laws less-strict than in the US: It's a region of the world that has most of its shit figured out, and having guns there isn't a big deal because the rate of violence is so low.
Here in the US, we've got a broken social system, essentially zero mental health care for those who really need it, easy access to firearms, and hyper-politicization around firearms that pushes mentally-unstable people towards gun ownership.
When the unstable conspiracy-theory nutjobs hear liberals saying that gun ownership is bad they're predictably start stocking up on guns and ammo - specifically the black guns the political left keeps trying to ban. And then they snap.
That's how the guns that make up about 1% of overall firearm deaths started being used much more frequently in mass shootings.
We do need an honest national conversation about guns and their availability, but neither side of the political aisle is willing to really, truly be honest in their policies towards firearms. So we aren't able to have that conversation and what we end up with is the worst of all outcomes.
This isn't a both sides thing.
Democrats support better gun regulation and better social services. Republicans fight against better gun regulation and fight against better social services. Just because Republican's need to rally their base by gleefully twisting any reasonable regulation into "they're taking our guns" doesn't mean the liberal side is being dishonest.
You can't blame liberal policies for being dishonest when pretty much that they have pushed for is completely reasonable. Only one party is being dishonest here.
Democratic gun policies don't target the guns used most-often in mass shootings or homicides.
They often target cosmetic features, or write laws that actively interfere with development of safety features.
A prime example of the latter was a 2002 New Jersey law that would have outlawed the sale of any firearm without smart safety features once ANY gun with smart features became available.
That basically made all manufacturers immediately stop all progress on developing the technology, because releasing it would essentially crater their entire catalog of products. Therefore there's been zero commercially-viable smart guns released to the market for over 20 years.
More recently, the ATF re-interpreted a decision regarding the definition of a stock 10 years after a new category of arm braces hit the market. The stabilizing braces were specifically submitted to the ATF for review before ever being made available to the public, and cleared by the Obama-era ATF.
Now they've changed their position arbitrarily, and now an estimated 20 million gun owners who purchased a firearm legally are committing a felony by owning it, and the vast majority of them don't even know about it.
There's constant talk on the political left about the "gun show loophole."
There's no such thing. There's zero firearm sales rules that don't apply at a gun show. Hell - on the background check form (ATF 4473) there's even a box to check for when the background check is being performed at a gun show instead of the dealer's normal location.
But any licensed firearms dealer still has to go through the normal process at the gun show. Private sellers don't, but private sellers never have to go through the process (biggest issue that needs to be addressed in my opinion), so the gun show has nothing to do with it.
You also hear about gun laws on one state not mattering because of the less-strict laws in a neighboring state.
Contrary to popular belief, all long-gun sales have to follow the laws and procedures of birth the state where the purchase takes place AND the state where the purchaser lives. When I was a gun salesman in Texas and a California resident tried to buy a gun from me, I had to follow all of California'a processes as well as Texas's, and I could only sell a long gun that was legal in California.
Why do I use "long guns" as a qualifier? Because the transfer of any handgun to an out of state resident is a federal crime. That applies to dealers as well as private individuals whether the handgun is sold or gifted. My sister lives out of state and if I die none of my pistols can be left to her without committing a felony.
My point is this: most people on the political left don't know shit about guns, existing gun laws, or what would truly be effective. And when they TRY to write dumbass laws their ignorance poisons the well and makes gun owners who might otherwise support good ideas like improved background checks, cracking down on straw purchasers, making NICS available to private citizens, and more get super defensive.
It's like when a 90yo who has never owned a computer tries to regulate the Internet without knowing the first thing about technology. They fuck it up and just make matters worse.
Yes, Republicans are monsters who don't give 2 shits about murder victims. Despite the fact that firearms are a huge hobby of mine I vote Dem every election.
But the Democrats trying to write gun laws are usually no different than the Republicans who say that snow storms are proof that global warming is a hoax.
Honest debate needs honesty from both sides, and the first part of intellectual honesty is being able to admit when you don't understand something.
Repeatedly trying to pin blame on Democrats for a lack of change in gun regulation only further exposes your actual goal here, and that isn't to have an honest conversation. Going as far as claiming they know nothing about guns or gun laws, comparing them to climate change deniers, is a pretty bold stance to take on something you clearly don't understand. No matter how much you need to spread this disingenuous stance, it isn't a both sides issue. If it was, Republicans would entertain the debate - they do not. If Republicans were interested at all they would propose their own valuable legislation - instead they call for thoughts and prayers for the dead children they refuse to protect and say it is too soon to even discuss how to solve this. It is not both sides. Even if Democrats were as dumb as you hope to sell here, they are actually at the table trying. Republicans are too busy choosing money over protecting children. Not both sides at all.
And intellectual honesty requires more than admitting when you don't understand - it means leaving your lies and agenda at the door, neither of which you appear capable of doing.
Oh and nice job dropping your previous social services point on this one, losing battle for your agenda. How very honest of you.
Where am I defending Republicans here? Show me one place where I've defended their behavior.
crickets
Nobody will argue against you because you are right. It's just not sexy
That's literally like saying we should ban cars purely because they cause car accidents... It affects way more people than it needs to and is ultimately very messy and costly. If they found a better way of teaching car safety or making it so people who are too much of an idiot to drive can't drive, that would make more sense, even if it takes time and effort. Edit: oops replied to the wrong message.
That is another thing worth comparing: A driving licence in the US costs between $20 and $500. Practically no training required. In Germany it costs €2000-€4000 with a lot of theoretical and practical lessons. And that is the reason why you are allowed to drive at 250kmh at the Autobahn.
I mean while we're at it we should dramatically reduce the necessity and prevalence of cars. Car culture sucks socially, economically, and ecologically.
And yet still there isn't really a good alternative... Public transportation is slow and annoying, trains are near impossible for America to create now and still also have the issue of there only being certain times you can use it.
It took decades to get into this car hell and it's going to take decades to get out. There would need to be some short term pain for long term gain. Unfortunately that is like humanity's top weakness.
I live in NYC and use public transit every day. It's not perfect but I'd take it over a car-first model any day.
I think this is a good problem to solve, however in tandem with other problems enabling access to weapons and subsequent deaths of many innocent people.
I do wonder why mass shootings weren't nearly as common before 1980s/1990s, when the United States had even less gun control than we do now. There is more to it than just access to guns for sure. Don't get me wrong, I still think stricter gun control would most definitely help, but I wonder what other factors are causing the number of mass shootings to go up.
Rising economic inequality is my guess. It's very easy to lash out in anger and violence when everything about society tells you that you are a loser.
The rise of conservative media, probably. You've had decades of fox news and talk radio doing their thing, and now we have stochastic terrorism.
Couple that with the concentrated conservative efforts to reduce the quality of education in America - less educated people are more susceptible to those conservative media tactics. They can't keep control over all of the craziness they peddle, look at the House of Representatives - they lost the plot and now we are stuck dealing with the shit show they cultivated.
Nice dog whistle for systematic problems with capitalism
How the FUCK is captialism the cause of mass shootings lol
Yea it's sooooo weird "How the FUCK is captialism the cause of mass shootings lol"
Those things aren't exclusive to or indicative of a capitalistic society. The latter two reasons you describe also exist in authoritarian socialist and communist countries, yet those don't lead to mass shootings.
In fact, there are capitalist countries that have easy access to guns that don't experience mass shootings on the scale of the US. Look at Canada, for example, who rank 7th in gun ownership per capita but have experienced four total mass shootings compared to 101 in the USA. (sauce: https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/mass-shootings-by-country/ and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country)
I don't think capitalism is the best system, especially not on its own, but none of the responses I've gotten have argued why capitalism is the cause of mass shootings. There are way too many cultural and historical factors involved to say that it's exclusively the fault of the economic structure of the US.
You guys can all downvote as much as you want but it seems no one actually has anything more to say than "capitalism bad" so they harvest some internet points.
The nra is allowed to "lobby" the government to tell them all how great guns are. How do you retards not see that's a problem with capitalism lol.
Is a government caving in to the interests of the rich exclusive to capitalism?
I think you'd probably have a more sound argument if you spent less time calling people retards and instead actually argued your point. Unless you really don't know why you hate capitalism other than that it's the spooky boogeyman for lemmy users.
I don't know, I haven't tried the other sorts of economic organization! Let's find out, yeah?
You guys use the term capitalism like if it was the boogeyman. Its just not relevant here, all of those things can happen without capitalism. Dont shoehorn a topic you barely understand
People that critique capitalism tend to do it a lot because it drives a substantial portion of human activity right now. Capitalism is probably the primary driver of all violence in the US so it seems relevant. Under a socialist system, there could be lower levels of isolation and inequality, no incentive for gun companies to increase profits so they wouldn't market their guns to every person in America, etc. The defense industry is massive and tied directly to the issue of mass shooters. And when you say 'fix the household,' what does that mean other than dismantle capitalism?
Because unchecked capitalism means paying people as little as possible to maximize profits, which means people are underpaid which causes undue stress at home which leads to bad shit happening.
People are like "ooh it's so complicated everything is complex, you can't sum up issues in one or two sentences." But I can't really argue with this, like shouldn't this be obvious to everyone? People are stressed, we can't afford to live, it seems like our world is going to die in a few decades, all directly tied to our socioeconomic paradigm of capitalism. Of course people are going to start freaking out.
Are you implying that people aren't stressed outside of a capitalistic society? Just because capitalism leads some to high levels of stress doesn't mean nothing else does.
Rampant profiteering off of the backs of laborers for the sake of the few. You think those laborers have the ability to maintain a happy and balanced home life after being exploited by capitalists?
Workers are exploited in nearly all forms of economic structure. How does profiteering lead to mass shootings?
If you can't connect rampant class related abuse to mental health issues, and then to violence, you have no fucking idea about anything regarding the human condition. In fact your breath is starting to smell of boot leather.
Brother you're literally not arguing why capitalism is the cause of this still. All you have is personal attacks and loose correlations. Class abuse is not exclusive to capitalism. Mental health issues are not exclusive to capitalism.
Weak af.
If you're not smart enough to understand it's ok.
Tons of lobbying money goes into making sure those laws never happen, shootings cause a rise in firearm sales. Rinse, repeat. Any talk of well regulated militia bullshit is just lip service to the useful idiots who keep them rich.
Sure but political corruption and bribery is not exclusive to capitalsm.
Is there a system outside of capitalism where always keeping sales peaking is a priority? Where profits are prioritized over human life?
Not exclusive, but inevitable.
So establishing a watchman force that arrests cops specifically since cops account for the plurality of DV incidents
Sure, but that takes decades. So gun control NOW, and fix the household issues.
They're already rushing to try and false flag this as an angry tranny. If traps are that good at killing children, why would they keep them out of the armed forces? It makes no fucking sense
Getting rid of guns isn't the solution, we have 3D printers allowing anyone to make a gun at home. Banning guns won't stop crimimals from using them. Criminals don't follow laws.
Seriously…. STFU.
Sincerely, a guy whose been 3d printing almost half his life.
First, people are perfectly able to manufacture their own firearms without additive manufacturing of any stripe. Linking ghost guns to 3d printing is a red herring brought to you by technophobic morons and shit-tier journalism from a slow news day. You can buy the needed stuff at any big box hardware store, tools inlcuded, for less than a printer costs.
Secondly, while it is entirely possible to produce firearms with printers… the people who are able to do so, are completely capable of doing it the other way.
Third, 3d printing has a fully international community. Given that criminals exist in every nation; you’d see ghost guns…. Everywhere.
Finally, the vast majority of ghost guns were in fact legally manufactured, and either purchased through stupid-as-fuck private sale exemptions; using straw buyers; or were originally stolen.
So yes, improving gun control laws would in fact make a difference.
I mean, gun control is 100% americas biggest problem and ppl shouldn't get guns without proper training
But trans in sport is indeed a valid issue to address and do something against.
I can't decide whether to laugh or roll my eyes so I'll do both
10/10 comment
But again, not agreeing with republicans saying it's more urgent than mass shootings, but it's still an issue to be discussed and addressed, in a much less urgent way.
A huge issue existing doesn't mean all the rest of the world's problems are now irrelevant.
And yet one of those is not a problem. It has been made into a problem by people who don't want other certain people existing, which is different.
So yeah, I'll roll my eyes again. I hope I don't strain them.
I mean, I and many others would argue it is a problem in competitive sports. You can't really have a biological man and a biological woman compete in a physical field together...
There are many factors that you're not considering, like when trans men beat cis women at the sport consistently because of a hormonal disparity. Being trans is not necessarily skin-deep and in many cases trans people do present a physiological difference.
I think you mean cis woman. I promise it's not a slur. lol
The point is that they need to shift their priorities. Not that they will because it's all bought and paid for, so to distract people from the real issues, we gotta do something about trans people in sports.
People preventably dying on the daily vs muh TV game person has a penis.
Again, it's 100% america's biggest issue and I'm not agreeing with republicans.
Yet, I just noted that it's also a thing that needs to be discussed. In a much less urgent way, but still it's an issue.
We gotta do something about trans people playing sports =/= we want children to show us their junk
Jesse what the fuck are you talking about
Something something projection.
What do these two issues have to do with each other? I support gun control as well as fair sex-based separation in sports.
They're related thanks to party politics. The party that talks about trans people in sports also rails against gun control.
Also, no one automatically knows what you mean when you say fair. Because of the nature of the debate, you don't deserve the benefit of the doubt where people assume that when you say "fair" you only mean "trans women who have experienced male puberty need to undergo hormone therapy before being allowed to compete in women's sports." And even the people who politically advocate for that invariably wind up also supporting a ban on puberty blockers, or trans men in men's sports, or never allowing trans women to compete no matter how thoroughly physically transitioned they are, or whatever other nonsense.
Bans are just not something that needs to be legislated. Sports organizations can self police in that regard. If anything, we need legislation to ensure trans people CAN compete in the gender category they identify as, with the sole exception of trans women who haven't yet been able to medically transition.
Take chess, for example. FIDE just passed an insane set of rules around when trans women can compete in women's tournaments, and how trans men have to give up any titles they earned while they were still presenting as female, but the gender divisions in chess are completely unrelated to inherent ability. The lack of women in chess is a cultural issue, like in STEM fields, not related to physical ability at all, and the women's division ostensibly exists as an attempt to draw women to the game. What FIDE is doing is purely anti-trans, and there should be legislation keeping them from implementing that. I've no idea how that would work internationally, but the point is trans people need protection, not bans.
And? Are you not allowed to support certain policies of one party and certain policies of another party? Especially if you live in a different country, so you're not voting for either of them anyway?
In most sports, there is no such thing as “men's” sports. You are allowed to participate no matter what you were born as and what you identify as. So why not just go there and leave women's sports, which are explicitly created to make it possible to compete well without having been born with a male body, alone?
That said, I agree with you regaiding chess (which should not be considered a sport at all). There is no inherent advantage of having a male body in chess other than the general tendency of men to have a higher variance in most abilities.
I never even implied that. You came to a meme about American politics and asked how the two topics were related. Sorry not every meme is custom-made for you.
... are you serious? All the most popular sports, running, swimming, weightlifting, football (American and the rest of the world), basketball, hockey, cycling... I decided to check out the Olympic's website for some other examples and almost all of them have hard gender divisions. A few don't but the vast majority are divided. Chess has an "open" and a "women's" division as you describe, but again, it's because the gap exists thanks only to a dearth of women playing the game in the first place. This is not the case in most sports. Trans women who have undergone sufficient hormone therapy do not have an advantage, and should be allowed to participate.
People rarely just choose what they're passionate about like that. This is an incredibly flimsy excuse to exclude people from competing in what they actually enjoy doing.
The meme implies that the set of people opposing gun control is identical to the set of people opposed to trans women participating in women's sports.
How do you explain why Lia Thomas went from being mediocre at men's swimming to getting the by far first place in women's swimming?
As far as I can tell, nobody is preventing trans women from participating in men's sports. Though I can't seem to find any sources, everyone talks about women's sports. Do you happen to know ofeany?
clearly two years just wasn't sufficient. that's a person who trained all the way through a male puberty. but what a surprise, by "fair" you really did mean just preventing participation at all, im truly shocked
Do I have to repeat for the third time that transgender women are not prevented from participating in sports?
The issues are not opposing stances, no.
However the point of the post is that while children are being gunned down Republicans will go silent on solutions. However those same Republicans will gladly call on many other non-life threatening issues as a dog whistle or as a distraction tactic. They will ban every book, fire every openly gay person, ridicule every trans child - all because they are afraid of change. But they won't even humor discussions on how to stop a child from catching a bullet.
Just because a political party does many bad things doesn't automatically mean that everything they support is automatically wrong. Or do you also oppose animal rights because Hitler's party supported them?
Stop that. Stop trying to have a reasonable stance in the middle.
Really though, I was under the impression that this was the somewhat reasonable stance that even progressive politicians have? I know that there's scaremongering that DeMoCrAtS want big muscular men taking over women's sports, tackling and hurting your daughters but I thought the actual stance was more along the lines of allowing the LGBTQ+ community to play sports while still allowing sports to be fair?
It definitely doesn't seem like some super easy issue with a clear line in the sand that everyone will be ok with. And some of the scaremongering is certainly bigots being afraid of their children even interacting with someone that is LGBTQ+..
So, I'm legitimately curious, what are the actual stances of those on Lemmy?
Edit: keep down voting me while absolutely none of you are willing to engage and help educate me. I'm legitimately reaching out, asking, and trying to understand and all people can do is hit a down arrow. Fuck me for being an ally trying to trying to further my knowledge eh?
According to the downvotes, you're not allowed to hold both of those opinions at the same time.
Biden: "I like ice cream"
Trump: "I did everything right, and they indicted MEeeeee"
The perfect phone call
We need better options.
It only happens every day if you include gang shootings. But that goes against your narrative.
Nobody tell this guy what per capita means. He might blown his own mind.
Our collective iq goes up if he does
Maybe...
How the hell does what I said have anything to do with per capita? The OP is an image claiming a mass shooting every single day of the week?. That has no correlation with per capita statistics.
Normally, I'm of the opinion that there's no such thing as a dumb question. But you're really pushing the line with this.
that would be a time-based correlation
it's not even true
11 this year.
Please, a) give me a source for that, and b) tell me why that changes the point.
You seriously think mass shootings happen every single day of the week? Why the hell would I need a source contradict such a and insane statement? The problem these days is that a "mass shooting" is not some unprovoked crime by a nut job shooting up a school. It's two or more people. That also includes gangland shootings between gangs. Current gun laws already completely restrict them from owning guns as criminals so I see no point in even discussing that.
You see no point in discussing that when there's steps that can be taken to control the flow of guns to criminals? And you see no reason to discuss every other mass shooting?
If the steps involve removing fundamental rights from me and other US citizens than there is no conversation to be had. The answer is no.
if they remove your fundamental rights, you know, just shoot 'em up
In case you didn't know, that was one of the original intents of the second amendment. The ability to fight against a government that has become tyrannical.
Ah right, so explain how a group of even 50 well trained individuals, (no military careers among them, because that's the point) is going to stop the US Military in the mountains of Appalachia? Between satellite feeds, drones, missile, artillery batteries, and armored vehicles like the MRAP, what exactly is an armed insurrection going to do? I would remind you that, over 100 years ago the us military was already good enough to win a war where nearly half the US went to war with itself, as a second military, and lost. They were, more or less, equally armed as their opponents in terms of weapons (each individual engagement was decided by skill and numbers, not by what weapons they used) and the south were blockaded into surrender. With the reunification, and 100+ years since it has only gotten stronger, to say nothing of the entrance of the Atomic and Digital Ages.
If the us government wants to stomp on the US people by force, it's had the capability for over 70 years now. Since that time a re-examination should have happened to either reaffirm the laws and ammendments set forth, or altered them. You can't reasonably say "then the military should not have X" because that puts the country at a disadvantage on a world stage.
These ammendments were written when it took 30 seconds or more to reload a black powder cartridge. These ammendments were written when you couldn't send an object into orbit and hang there to watch other humans. It was written when slavery was codified and the norm. Since this document was written we have passed a dozen ammendments to it. Theres not "no way to change the second ammendment" there's only people willing to allow it to be changed. Nowadays we don't have issues with feeding colonies, or how to reach a gold rush in them-there moun'ns. We live in a time where more people live in new york city than the founding fathers wrote the document to rule over as a country.
The second ammendment, among the others, is outdated for a different time. It was written to prevent something that, quite frankly, isn't an issue these days. At the time yeah it was all the rage to have yourself an Independance War because the governing country was oppressive. As was made apparent during the Civil War, and is true now - the average citizens uprising to overthrow the government for any reason won't happen without military support anyway. And that means military hardware. You only get military hardware from defectors or thieves, neither of which are going to fight a us army base like it's GTA to get ahold of it.
lolololol you guys vs F32s
Rights are made up. If we say you don't have "the right" to own particular weapons in particular cases, then you don't.
What does well regulated militia mean?
What does "the right of the people" mean? Because the militia (every able bodied man in the nation) should be kept well armed, we ensured the right of the people (everyone) to keep and bear arms.
You seriously don't think there's too much gun crime in the US? You seriously think that every person involved in every gang shooting has a prior record?
Sure, I'll concede that there isn't a mass shooting every single day of every week every year. Congrats you win. But if you think there's nothing wrong with our current gun laws when we have the highest rates of gun crime, and if you think that even the occasional mass shooting involving little kids is just "the cost of keeping our rights" then frankly I see no further point in engaging with you. And don't for a second think that means you've won, it means you've already lost to the propaganda machine and have accepted loss of life as the cost of doing business. I'm not well trained enough to deprogram you.
What the fuck gun laws do you make to keep CRIMINALS who are not allowed to own or purchase guns from doing so? Any new gun law will have no affect on the criminals. Only those trying to defend themselves legally.
A significant number of guns used in crimes are stolen from legal gun-owners. With legal guns less prevalent, the people you refer to would have less access to them as well. You could require better care in storage of guns, so that they can't be stolen as easily. You could increase funding for combating illegal gun trafficking. I'm not saying these are good solutions to the issue, but there are a lot of things one could do through the law to help keep guns away from criminals.
They also can't be stolen if they're carried around by the owner and used to kill the person threatening people's lives. Not enough finding out these days. Too many gang members expecting to just get a slap on the wrist. If they start dropping like flies we would hopefully see less gang members fucking around.
There is so much data from decades of crime research that shows that is not how crime prevention works.
Not all gun crime is committed by previously convicted CRIMINALS. Do you think a high schooler getting ahold of dad's gun and shooting up their school has been previously convicted?? Mental health issues for sure but an existing CRIMINAL record is doubtful.
And the whole good guys with gun stuff is absolute bullshit. Fat lot of good it does when the "good guys" wait outside while a shooting takes place because they're too scared for their own lives to put their "good guy" guns to good use. So I guess your feelings must basically be fuck the victims then? Would you like to blame the victims while you're at it? They picked a bad day to show up to class, should've stayed home right?
Get your head out of your ass and your ass out of the sand. This definitely isn't some clear cut easy issue, but if you ask me the answer to world record levels of gun crime isn't to sit back and do nothing because it might take a gun away from some theoretical, law abiding good guy.
And mind you, I am a law abiding gun owner. I've done sport shooting and a little hunting since I was old enough to take hunters safety. And guess what. I didn't have to do a damn thing for my gun. No application, no permit, no mental health evaluation, no background check.. I literally don't have a driver's license because that is more difficult to obtain than a fucking gun! If that's not fubar to you then IMHO you're hopeless. Sorry to be that way but idk how you even get so deep up inside the NRA's asshole and I'm definitely not diving in to get you.
I believe in the second amendment and I know there are responsible gun owners out there. That does not automatically mean that people should die just so that I and others like me don't have to go through some fucking paperwork to obtain something designed to kill.
One of the articles about the Maine shooter the other day claimed there had been 500 and something so far in 2023. That's almost 2x per day.
That's beyond stupid. You actually believe that? When you think mass shootings do you think sla nut job going into a school to kill people, or a drive by? Because that high figure is absolutely conflating the two.
Delete your account and fuck off back to reddit.
It sounds like all you want is an echo chamber. Plenty of those on Reddit. I haven't been there in 8 years.
Ah well, just a lot of whining libs then ey?
Cite your sources.
Are you honestly telling me you believe that there's a mass shooting every day? I don't think there's been enough mass shootings as people think of them to fill out the month in the last 50 years.
No, I'm honestly telling you that I don't believe your assertion that it's all gangs. Seriously, cite your sources.
Source: A fox News opinion piece written by a guy driving through a city one time and heard a loud sound in the distance that could have been a gun shot.
Don’t forget there has also been some solid reporting by suburban facebook moms.
There have been 41 school shootings in the 2020's in the United States where 3 or more people of been injured or killed. 160 total incidents with no restrictions on victim count.
Link
How many can he linked to crime or gang activity?
aaaaand that's how disposeable everyone is to these guys, yaaaaaaaay!
Criminals chose that life.
Gang shootings often kill bystanders as much as 'criminals'. Do you really think a 15 year old gang member in a rough place where shootings are common had a lot of choice? A lot of 'gang shootings' are by kids.
More legal gun owners means less gang members eventually. I'm all for them finding out after fucking around.
I just want less people shot and killed in general but alright then
Bruh... That's republicans, always has been.
Remember that time Trump banned bump stocks in a weekend, something Obama tried for 8 years to do? If not, here's the NPR article on it
Why is this relevant? What point are you trying to make here? You seem a little lost and confused.
So you're saying MAGAts eat shit as long as daddy trump feeds it to them?
Unflinching support of Israel’s ongoing genocide is sadly one of the few things R and D parties seem to agree on.
Do republicans not like bombing Muslims?
Ah. A moron. Hello there, moron.
It's a bipartisan sentiment
those poor poor muslim cinamon rolls, never hurt nobody