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Biden to announce first-ever federal office of gun violence prevention
(www.politico.com)
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this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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As expected every time guns are brought up in a political context, the comments are already full of people talking past each other while ignoring the real issues.
It is exactly as difficult to get rid of guns in this country as it would be to get rid of the electoral college, and the electoral college has done thing like lead directly to the covid pandemic being far worse than it had to be because Trump fired the guy we had in position to warn everyone if China leaked a pandemic.
Instead of discussing that, all you're going to find in a thread like this is back and forth about getting rid of guns (nearly impossible) or decrying the department as redundant (the DHS is proof this is also meaningless) or the like.
Most people are not asking to "get rid of guns." Most people are asking for restrictions that keep people safe, not least our school children, and a ban on military-style weapons like AR-15s. That's not unreasonable nor impossible.
The difficult problem is the ones who decide to do bad things with guns, don't exactly have much respect for the law. Pass whatever restrictions you want, if someone wants to shoot anyone badly enough, they will find a way.
But that's not really a good reason to not have regulations. "People are going to steal your shit if they want to badly enough" does not mean theft shouldn't be a crime.
AR-15s are functionally the same as the majority of rifles, they're semi automatic. Calling AR-15s military style immediately shows you know almost nothing about guns.
We'd have a better return on our investment banning handguns which are used in more deadly non-police shootings by a whole fucking lot.
You claim that no one is asking to get rid of guns, and then call for a ban on an entire class of firearms (and a vague one, "military-style weapons", which is intentionally vague and demonstrates a lack of knowledge of firearms).
Make a decision please.
IMO a more robust mental and other healthcare system and social services would go a lot farther in preventing these kinds of things. Identifying and fixing/containing the people that are so deranged that they would kill others would stop most killings and the kinds of things that lead up to it. Most of the gun crime is a symptom of a much larger problem of people with little to no support lashing out.
You think Americans are just that much more mentally ill than people in every other developed country on earth? Of course not. The one thing that stands out in the US is easy access to weapons.
Yes I do but that's beside the point. The vast majority of gun owners never do anything criminal with them. It's people with mental health problems who snap or criminals who're using them to perpetrate other crimes (many of whom would probably not be criminals if they had proper social support.
Countries with strict gun control haven't solved the root of the problem. People can still be dangerous without guns and if we can't trust someone to own a gun we really shouldn't trust them to have free reign to interact with society without supervision either.
It definitely feels like a lost cause banning guns. It’s part of the culture. When we banned guns in Australia after one single mass shooting, I don’t believe Australia had nearly as much of a gun loving culture. It was still seen as a tool in the country side for hunting and such. I don’t know the answer to changing culture. It’ll take generations possibly. Smoking was seen like an everyday thing in the 60s. Now it’s disgusting. Perception can change eventually.
If something is not realistically achievable in the short term, that means we shouldn't be able to talk about it?
I disagree. If we limit discourse only to the immediately achievable we stop talking about how things should be, and how best to get there. Sometimes change happens overnight, sometimes it takes decades. It's worth talking about.