The cycle of democratic gun control bills is as follows: 1. Ban a certain class of firearms based on cosmetics features (because they do not understand what they are legislating) 2. Watch as gun manufacturers make the same guns without those features 3. Get mad and call them names 4. Back to 1
I mean the Republican Attorney General of Florida is asking the Republican super-majority Supreme Court to overturn the gun control law passed in the wake of Parkland by Republicans and signed into law by a Republican Governor as unconstitutional. Dems might know less, but Rs will accept nothing.
The problem is that they create legal categories (e.g., assault weapon) that do not align with reality. Does the gun look like something from a video game? Must be an assault weapon. Is it wood and looks like you could hunt with it? Not an assault weapon.
Gun control is the only culture war issue on par with the sorts of things that make up 90% of Republican politicking. No real knowledge of the issue, just a strong cultural aversion bordering on disgust that becomes its own raison d'etre
You could craft a gun control bill with tiered licensure, mandatory background checks, waiting periods, and storage requirements that would satisfy all but the most lunatic gun nuts and dramatically reduce gun deaths. But then you'd have to understand guns on some level, which dems refuse to do.
do this in exchange for fixing the NFA and gun nuts would love it, even
This is absolutely correct, and if you want to see how the current Democratic policy would go, just take a look at Canada, where our gun control laws are non-sensical.
The basic classification system for firearms in Canada is logically consistent (mostly). The problem you run into is that a firearm you can use for hunting or sport usually also works against people. And whenever there's a high-profile incident of this, the electorate demands *something* be done.
So, in Canada, rifles and shotguns are defined according to cartridge and barrel length and a few other things. As long as it's not automatic, it's unrestricted and fairly easy to acquire. That is, unless it's based on an AR or AK platform, or another type that was reclassified for whatever reason.
Do y'all have mass shootings like we do, or are the laws working mostly as desired? Also, how many guns used in Canadian crimes are sourced back to the US? See, it still sounds like an upgrade to me.
Yes, but not anywhere near as many. Many, but certainly not all. I'm not arguing the US shouldn't do anything about the epidemic of gun violence, just the opposite. I'm just saying the Canadian approach is not one to be admired. Canada does regulate guns based on appearance, which is non-sensical.
Fair.
Absofuckinglutely you could not craft such laws. You cannot craft ANY law in the USA to limit people's ability to buy and use basically ANY kind of firearm. If gun control advocates misidentify guns that's a tiny part of the problem, not THE problem.
I think this is more a case of “Do Something” We’ve been trying to heavily restrict handguns since the original NFA (that’s why there’s the whole thing about SBR’s) all the way up to Heller but for various reasons we can’t get that done So we end up with non solutions
The AWB gets a lot of shade but the magazine restrictions were meaningful. Existing ones got pretty expensive. And once it was gone you see mass shootings getting worse
This is obviously and indisputably false. The gun lobby has made it absolutely clear that they'll accept almost no restrictions on guns. Biden's gun violence bill was pretty weak tea and the NRA still opposed it. Also, no chance that two conservatives on SCOTUS would accept any of that.
I don't think this is going to blow your mind, but the sort of person who lobbies for the NRA is exactly the sort of "lunatic gun nut" who I suggested would never be satisfied
Right, but that also describes ~99% of congressional Republicans. This story from Maine has it all: mainemorningstar.com/2025/04/15/g...
Yes, we are extremely aware that 99% of modern Congressional Rebpublicans are batshit crazy extremists. That's what their party has been filtering for for twenty years.
Yes, and I've known many gun owners in my life who hold their nose and vote Republican because they won't write any more dumb gun laws, even if they otherwise dislike them. I think this is a selfish and short-sighted thing to do, but it's very real.
Yep. It's incredibly frustrating, but I can't entirely blame them when a lot of the Dem establishment modeled their views on Feinstein, and will push blatantly unconstitutional gun bills just to stick it to their ideological opponents, knowing it will be ineffective and stricken by the courts.
I do agree that the biggest problem is they are banning guns based on appearance instead of functionality. The ban should be for all semi-automatic weapons and anything with an interchangeable magazine. That would ban all assault-style weapons and handguns. It would still allow most hunting rifles,
No one who actually whinges about firearm classification would want this solution because they don't actually want to entirely limit access to semiautomatics. It's why there's also this discussion about the minutiae of semiautomatic rifles and not crew-served weaponry.
I think they should legalize the use of ATGMs against the personal vehicles of arms manufacturer execs. It's responsible gun ownership in my book.
Call it preemptive self defense.
revolvers, and shotguns. I would prefer they go further but this is a first step to getting a handle on the gun problem in our country that no other developed country faces. Make it explicit that a hammer, bolt, or pump action has to take place before a single shot is fired. It won't end gun
violence but it will make it a whole lot less deadly. Anyone who fights it is someone that cares more about their guns than children's lives and they aren't someone that needs to be listened to.
That rhetoric right there is why it'll never happen. That and the question of who's going to do the door to door searches to enforce it against people who will happily shoot at cops, and both outnumber and outgun them.
If you don't have a regulatory state that is willing to employ violence to enforce a regulation, you don't have a state at all. Might as well spill some nuclear waste into water reservoirs.
The scale of violence you're describing here is beyond your own comprehension.
Part of the issue is that you can't comprehend 50,000 people dying by guns as anything but a statistic.
It's treated that way when it's automobiles.
Smoking tobacco? 10x the number, treated as a statistic. But guns, those are peculiar.
You mean the thing that is very heavily regulated and has warning stickers all over it? They aren't even allowed to advertise in anything but trade magazines anymore and smoking is consistently going down.
The biggest issue to me is a populace that isn't willing to do it for the greater good. Australia had a major mass shooting and within months people were lining up to drop off their guns to have them destroyed. American society is completely broken and devoid of any empathy.
That's entirely the issue, the regulatory hurdles are caused from incrementalist solutions to try and appease everyone.
If by 'regulatory hurdles' you mean 'the existence of the Bill of Rights', then yes, there are issues preventing an easy mass ban of firearms.
You mean the one with the words "well regulated" in it?
Yeah, which the SCOTUS, much as I disagree with them on some topics, have been very clear about in cases over the last 20 years.
And your shooting it down immediately is why gun violence will remain the leading cause of death among children in the United States. Just be honest and say that you love your guns more than the lives of children. Every other developed country doesn't have this problem.
I mean, a big reason they do this is probably because they're not going to take massive blowback for a more substantial change that the Supreme Court will immediately shoot down
Or, bear with me here: We could have public education, introduced on age-appropriate recommendations of educators, including reading, writing, analytic & critical thought, civics, history, languages, arts, philosophy, Constitutional interpretation, insurgency, counterinsurgency, guerrilla/counter
guerilla warfare, the use, cleaning, maintenance, & retention of state-of-the-art, hand-held military shoulder weapons & side arms. Sociology and psychology would be good, too.
The cycle of Republican gun control bills is as follows: 1. Prevent the passage of new gun control bills. 2. Back to 1.