OK..do we take away guns or not?

[The Curmudgeon]

I’m over in Paris for six days right now, and nothing gets you more in the mood for a short break than seeing yet another mass shooting happened on the day you set off. Oh, and it’s the deadliest one yet. Nice to see someone is keeping score.

So, as it’s not one of those pesky foreigners doing it, and once you wade through the rancid shit of conspiracy theories, it inevitably leads to the discussion that just won’t go away.

Guns in America. Just what do we do here?

There’s a meme going around right now about Australia, who had a mass shooting in the 80’s and then banned the sale of firearms 14 days later, and there’s been zero incidents since. That can’t be ignored. But going by that, guns aren’t available over the counter in Scotland, but that didn’t stop Thomas Hamilton from walking into a primary school in the 90’s and killing dozens of six year old children.

So, this conversation inevitably turns heated and ugly on every social media board, but I know it won’t here.

What do we do?

[trashcanman]

I'm some kind of weirdo who likes guns politically, but hates them personally. I think most gun owners are scared little boys who need to be able to effortlessly harm somebody a a moment's notice to feel like a man. Johnny Cash sang Dpn't Take Your Guns to Town and there's a lot of wisdom there. Investing in a gun for protection is kind of a waste unless you get to actually use it for something, right? How many dicks with concealed weapons permits are just wandering the streets looking for an excuse *cough*GerogeZimmerman*cough*? I mean, how often does any non-cop ever stop a crime or whatever with a gun?

www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-guns-self-defense-charleston-20150619-story.html

Yeah, about half as often as they kill somebody BY ACCIDENT with them. I don't like those odds. On the other hand: muh freedoms. The Second Amendment is likely the only reason our government hasn't gone full fascism yet. God knows, it's been trying, but subduing an armed populace is a hell of a job so they've had to rely on the media to try and control our minds instead. I also kind of like that the fact that having more guns than people makes us essentially uninvadable. NO country will ever be stupid enough to put troops on the ground here. Red Dawn was a goddamn joke. You think urban warfare in Iraq is tough? Please. It'd be a real life bullet hell here.

But here's the fucking truth: we cannot possibly hope to enforce a ban on guns in America. No way. There are too many of them out there and too many of the owners are likely to use them to protect their property if people come to take them by force. It'd be an absolute nightmare and catastrophe bordering on civil war in places. What I'm really worried about are the REASONS that somebody decides to just up and murder an entire concert or a school.

It's not just the guns; there's something in our culture that brings this on. It sure as hell isn't the same movies, music, and video games that every other country enjoys as well. Perhaps our constant glorification of the military? Do other countries do that shit? Train people to kill and send them to countries to crush a populace that is practically incapable of doing them harm, calling them heroes, and then leaving them destitute in the streets or in prison with PTSD and pretending they didn't end up that way because of what we made them do? I don't know, but I do know it's pretty messed up that politicians are bought up and prevented from passing laws requiring background checks for all gun purchases. I don't think it's too much to ask that before you sell somebody an implement designed only to kill, you check and see if they are schizophrenic or did time for murder or whatever. I really don't see the downside there.

[Ben]

I saw the headlines in Germany, so you're not the only one who started a vacation off on the wrong foot, Curmudgeon. This shit sucks. Fuck people.

What do we do about it? There are a lot more layers to cut through to answer that question than most people are willing to admit. I'm a gun owner (I have 4 of them) and a concealed carry permit holder, so I've got skin in the game on the pro-gun side. I am also philosophically with Trashcanman--the proliferation of firearms is a check on those in our government who would otherwise turn fascist on us. The anti-gun crowd likes to laugh at that idea and crow about how U.S. civilians could never ever in a million years defeat the U.S. military if they came for us, but it would never get to that point, because who has the political nutsack to try to round up 400 million firearms by force if even 1% of gun owners (which is something like 1 million people) decide to shoot back? Yeah, keep dreaming, gun control advocates. Firearm ownership is a legitimate check on government power and always will be.

Is there a way to keep these mass shootings from happening, though? Statistically speaking, they're anomalies. It just seems like mass shootings happen all the time because the media sensationalizes them. But like terrorist attacks, mass shootings are still really fucking scary anomalies. It's easy to see why people want to do something about that. Who doesn't?

But the problem is that there is no "get rid of all guns" option. It's impossible. And ironically, the first step if we actually wanted to try would probably involve building a wall on the Mexican border. But that aside, even if there's a buyback program so no one loses their financial investment in firearms, and even if nobody resists, there's just no way to track down all 400 million firearms in this country. People will bury them in the backyard. People will hide them and falsely report them stolen. And again, we've got additional problems controlling the entry of illegal firearms into our country because we aren't an island nation. Guns are always going to be here. It's just a reality.

So if we can't get rid of all the guns, then what? Make it harder to get them, right? Well, it already isn't that easy. Every handgun purchase requires a federal background check, as do all high capacity rifle purchases. The only thing you can really buy anymore without a background check is small caliber stuff to shoot squirrels, single shot rifles, and shotguns, and people aren't using those weapons in mass shootings for obvious reasons (slow rate of fire, weak caliber, and so on).

This Vegas guy, as far as I've seen, passed a background check and purchased all his firearms legally. What then? What would have stopped him? A mental health evaluation prior to purchase? Seems like a great way for the government to come up with arbitrary excuses to keep people from purchasing guns. Not only that, but who's to say that will stop more of these guys? They're insane in the sense that they're committing mass murder, but how many can be diagnosed prior to committing violence? The Aurora, CO shooter is the only one in recent memory I can think of who turned out to be totally nuts. And the Sandy Hook shooter had Aspberger's, but it isn't as if that's a warning sign for mass murder.

There are tons of additional problems. Surveys of convicted criminals have shown that they get tend to get their guns illegally in the first place, whether the gun itself is a black market item or they get other people to purchase weapons legally and then illegally pass them on to criminals (straw purchasing). Gun theft is always an issue too, though it doesn't happen as often as people think. Making it harder to buy a gun in a store doesn't stop these things.

It feels really cold to put it this way, but mass shootings are, as far as I can tell, an unavoidable side effect of our right to bear arms. With 400 million firearms in one country, there will always be gun crime. But there's good news too. Gun crime (homicide in particular) has been steadily decreasing for decades even as firearm ownership has gone up. Mass shootings are statistically rare, awful as they may be. Also, I have to call bullshit on your article, Trashcanman. Justifiable homicide is a ridiculous standard to use to measure successful defensive gun use. It's taught in concealed carry classes that merely producing a firearm is enough to dissuade a would-be criminal about 90% of the time. Because who the fuck wants to get shot? They've done studies about defensive gun use, and even the most conservative estimates report tens of thousands more successful DGUs than gun crimes annually. I also know of one study that found concealed carry permit holders are less likely to commit a crime than police officers. Which is pretty staggering. More info on defensive gun use here: reason.com/archives/2016/01/05/you-know-less-than-you-think-a/2

I'm only scratching the surface here, but the bottom line is that it isn't feasible to get rid of all the guns, and we already have all the common sense legal measures in place to attempt to prevent mass shootings from happening. The next step, I think, is to prosecute straw purchasers more rigorously.

[The Curmudgeon]

So, uh... this thread remains depressingly relevant, doesn't it?

[trashcanman]

Seriously. What the hell, America?