That said, I think people need to recognize that in many aspects what's happening is connected to societal issues that gun control and gun regulations will have very little impact on - remember, even in Japan somebody could make some kind of battery ignited home-made shotgun and kill Shinzo Abe.
Countries with strict gun control enjoy far lower rates of firearm accidents, suicides, and murders. IMO it's clearly worth the tradeoff. Very few of us live in a place where only guns can solve our problems.
The fact that occasionally someone goes to great lengths to kill doesn't mean we should make it easier for everyone.
In which case you'd need a strong internal investigatory services in order to root these plots out before they happen by following up on leads and tips.
Well... not to get political, but I think we're hollowing that out too?
............aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyy off.
Australia seemed to have a deeper relationship with guns previously, that stemmed partially out of necessity (farming etc), but there are also a lot of parallels with US culture here – the American dream, being a colony hundreds of years ago, etc, some focus on personal rights and freedoms, being a federation of states, etc. I don't think it was as deep a relationship as the US, but coming from the UK it seemed that Australia had a very different view than the UK.
Australia turned this all around. The culture shifted, and people realised that for the greater good it was something they needed to get past, and they did.
Maybe there's hope for US gun control yet, although the turning point for Australia was a (single) mass shooting. Maybe the US needs a much bigger turning point. I'm a little surprised that the Las Vegas shooting a while ago didn't provide that.
ok let's try data instead of feels. Per Capita, what is the number of mass shootings per year in the USA, and in Japan. I did't know the answer but asked Gemini.
The most recent year for which there is data, apparently, is 2023, during which there were 604 mass shootings in the USA, and 1 in Japan. Given the respective population counts, the per-capita rate of mass shootings in the United States was about 225 times higher than in Japan.
Given that, are you confident that your observation that "one guy made a gun once in Japan" is a strong refutation of the idea that the US could reduce mass shootings by strengthening regulations?
Who will necessarily be so strong they'll be capable of pulling such things off to serve their own ends.
It's an intractable problem all the way down.
She disagreed, I disagreed with her, she made points I feel were unfair oversimplifications “guns have more rights than women,” but we had a respectful discussion but she didn’t want to talk with me anymore after that. I would’ve talked with her after because I value what people have to say and I want to have discussions. I think we can have discussions but we should never take away the rights of citizens.
... having said that, isn't it funny just how much gun violence there is in the one developed country that allows for open slather gun ownership. It's like, yes, you can never stop a determined person from doing violence, but by reducing the availability and power of fire arms you do stop a lot of fools from doing "mass shooter" levels of damage.
How? without decreasing access for sane people or using any of the previous talking points that have been rejected previously. now’s the time to suggest real change that could have an effect but suggesting the tired “no black rifles” will still go nowhere.
So let’s define what your definition of strict gun control is. Also, if you want people to care more, stop including suicides because it drastically changes the numbers.
In 2024, estimated 16,576 deaths in the US from guns (excluding suicide, which is a very large addition on top of that), and 499 mass shootings.
The problem is in people assuming that they are “good”. That’s hubris. The reality is that everyone is equally capable of evil—we’re just looking at taking guns out of the equation so that gun violence becomes highly unlikely.
Your response seems very off topic in focusing on "mass shootings" which are at best an ill-defined marketing term created to lump family annihilation suicides with more public mass casualty events like the pulse nightclub shooting in order to launder dubious policies.
But my whole original comment said nothing about mass shootings to begin with.
So I would say the reaction will be quite different, given that Kirk was a political ally and not a Democrat.
I'm for a lot more gun control than what we have today, but it's "the right of the people" in the text.
You didn’t clarify that by “everything that’s happening” as the preface to your suggestion that gun control is pointless you specifically meant “political assassination and no other gun deaths”. It’s reasonable that someone would see you say that gun regulation wouldn’t have an effect on gun deaths and think that you were talking about gun deaths generally.
It would actually be bizarre for a reader to read “everything that’s happening” and think “the person that wrote this is referring to the first shooting at a school today and specifically excluding the second shooting at a school today”
Aren't there other potential ways to fix society from your example of your stolen car other than "we should just arm everyone"? Shouldn't the answer be we should have police actually help these situations and we should do more to reduce the rates of people living lives where they're more likely to steal a car in the first place?
Japan is, famously, a country where the system generally works. Hell, a late train would get you a letter for your boss. It's a bit different in places where the police don't have the resources, or dangerous individuals aren't removed from the public.
And you clearly have a “too few people want to solve these” problem. Most of you even voted to the person who campaigned that he wants to make these worse.
This won’t be solved, and will it be made worse in America for the next decade for sure.
At least one HN, this story is already getting 100x(!) the reach, when it doesn't even involve lawmakers.
[As a necessity for a free state, A well trained and in good working order group of able bodies citizens capable of fight for defense of self and state, is required], the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Militia is just the people. Oxford 1800s has well-regulated to mean “in good working order”.
I would love to live in a world where everybody has what they want but we don’t live in that world. That being said there is no excuse for somebody taking something that does not belong to them. I was deeply hurt by these experiences and forever changed in the way that I think and act. I learned that sometimes when I told people about the things that had happened to us, I felt that that person had sympathy for the criminals and no sympathy for me. I learned that it is a fact that police cannot be everywhere, they cannot react instantly, and even if they can react sometimes they won’t for political reasons. I still think of the time where I was sucker punched by some man on the street for no reason which is what initially lead me to purchase a firearm for self-defense. I can’t fix society, but I can protect myself and my loved ones.
My intention was to point out that the not-mass shooting overshadowed the mass shooting in the news. Obviously both are bad, but 3 people dying in a single shooting incident is worse than 1 person dying in a single shooting incident, yet the 1 person dying is the one that gets the news coverage.
The Obama CDC study on gun control concluded that guns are used to stop far more crimes than they are used for in crimes. It concluded that a household with a gun saw far less bad outcomes than a household without during home invasions. It concluded a lot of things that didn't sit well with the left, so after all the fanfare to make it, it was downplayed by that admin. Read it, it's quite interesting.
Think through that a bit.
The US populace is vastly larger and better armed and capable than Afghanistan.
The US military requires a massive economy to function. If it tries to attack itself, those little armed people could stop it, the economy would crash, and the US military would crumble without needed support and supplies.
A final issue is the US troops would lose a lot of soldiers if they were told to go attack fellow citizens. The soldiers would quit, would hesitate, would not want to kill people they view as their own people.
So armed citizenry absolutely have major power against the govt.
Finally, if you were in a country where the govt set out to kill its citizens, would you rather have arms or be completely unarmed?
For example, https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...
No gun will save you during genocide if you are a target. Best case scenario you kill few attackers and die anyway.
Congress around 1982 had the Library of Congress issue a study about this in great depth, with millions of citations to historical documents, which give ample evidence and quotes. You may have to dig to find it, but it's a good read to gain more understanding.
Also the second militia act of 1792 actually required all able bodied men to own guns, and this was the law for well over the following century.
The founders had no qualms about everyone having arms.
I can come up with a multitude of political violence examples in countries with strict weapons laws - New Zealand, France, Japan. Then if you add in other weapons - cars, knives, bombs, the list gets even longer.
The point is - gun control won’t stop political violence. Perpetrators will use other means at their disposal.
How could that make any sense?
I'm kind of surprised to hear somebody in America think it's a likely enough thing to happen to be worth the obvious societal cost of the wide spread weapons.
Realistically, if they did come for you, how much use would your weapon be? Do you believe that it would mean the difference between your life and death, or just that you'd feel better going having been able to put up some defence? Several genocides have happened in neighbouring countries from where I live in living memory, and it isn't at all clear that having access to a weapon allowed anybody who was targeted to survive.
The cost in mass shootings (now nearly two per day in the US) is a real cost borne by society at large. Your cost is still only hypothetical, and of unclear value if the worst did happen.
Guns make people feel safe.
They don't actually make you safer.
You're more likely to be killed by your own gun than someone else's.
Realistically, you have no hope of protecting yourself with a gun if you're surrounded by gangbangers with a bunch of guns all pointed at you.
Etc, etc...
The gun debate isn't a debate about facts, it never was. It's a debate about feelings, and scared people won't change their minds unless they stop being scared.
Nobody in America right now is trying to make people feel safe, not in an era where the President of the United States feels it is appropriate to personally attack... anyone for any perceived slight, in public, with verbal violence and in the case of anyone looking even vaguely hispanic, physical violence.
Trump has already issued a statement blaming his political opponents for the death before the perpetrator has even been identified.
"It's long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible. For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now. My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that funded and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country."
> That said, I think people need to recognize that in many aspects what's happening is connected to societal issues that gun control and gun regulations will have very little impact on - remember, even in Japan somebody could make some kind of battery ignited home-made shotgun and kill Shinzo Abe.
The event was set up so nobody could have direct access to Kirk, which would have been required for the "home-made shotgun" approach. There were barricades and bodyguards in front of him, and a waiting car in case he had to be whisked away. Shooting someone from 200+ yards requires more precise weapons than someone can make themselves. I think it's also important to note that Utah literally started allowing open carry on college campuses a few weeks ago. Not only did all those "good guys with guns" not prevent the assassination, having a large number of armed people in a crowd makes finding the shooter more difficult, as we've seen from police arresting the wrong suspect multiple times.
Technically true. But gun control means political violence will have to engage much closer and is less likely to be as deadly. Do we want more or less death+maiming in our political violence?
Granted, this decreases access for everyone. But I'd argue sane people would not demand private gun ownership in today's environment.
My point isn't that outlawing guns would stop every possible scenario. Rather it would make killings of all kinds far less likely, which is a win for everyone--even hate-spewing pundits.
Thankfully, whatever they meant then, we live today and can change the constitution and the laws to suit present circumstances. Nothing is sacred.
Citation please. NCVS data puts defensive gun use around 70K instances per year while OJP.gov data puts firearm crimes in the 400K range.
The issue is political violence. Whether it’s done up close or far away is a distraction from the fact it exists.
All being said, I am no military guru and I could be wrong
This is the thought process of the morally depraved, upon which every tyrannical government establishes its power.
Now, how about your evidence?
The purpose of my original comment was that the US dwindles Japan in firearms, but Japanese still manage to kill themselves just fine. So it's not a strong point by the parent I responded to. If Japan maintained that decrease for several more years, I think this would be worth revisiting, but for now it doesn't have much weight.
https://rockinst.org/blog/public-mass-shootings-around-the-w...
The US is an outlier in how many guns we own, with about 1/3 of American adults owning guns, and we are also an extreme outlier in mass shootings unless you compare us to places that lack rule of law. How many more people need guns before that mass shooting number goes down to 0, do you think?
I think that all rights are hypothetical until they are used. People in America have the right to free speech and assembly but depending on your perspective these rights are hypothetical for most people because they don’t use their speech or right to assembly very often or to the fullest extent. In some states, women have the right to have an abortion but many don’t use that right so hypothetically for them it doesn’t have any value. I think with the right to keep and bear arms it’s the same, for a good person defending themselves with a gun this hypothetical right becomes applied and has an immeasurable value to them. I don’t think we should discard any of our rights even if they are rarely used. I don’t think the risk of a genocide or civil war is infinitesimal, I think these sort of events happen often and are guaranteed over a long enough timeline. I think that people who are well armed would be better off in these situations and may even be the people who put something like a genocide to a stop.
In other words, the sum total of America's values have resulted in a citizenry that lives with existential dread. Maybe those values need a second look?
Note that Montana, the worst state for suicide, is about the same as South Korea at 28/100k.
I say this sadly as having had a friend kill herself in High School via a gun her dad had lying around. And ya, it was a red state (Mississippi).
We had no military objective in Afghanistan.
Our only goal there was to enrich contractors who had stockholders working at the highest levels in the Pentagon and White House. That goal was achieved spectacularly.
It's basically everything, except that which is evil.
neocons love to use disaster to further their deep state dreams.
All it takes is an armed populace that stands by while “those people” (their neighbors) are killed by extremists (their other neighbors).
Good and evil are even more subjective than how people perceive colors. I hope we can at least agree that murder is wrong, and the tools which facilitate the most murder should be the most heavily regulated.
Yemen is in second place for guns per person. How responsive is their government to the people?
Murder is wrong.
Every citizen worth a damn should own guns and the idea that they should not be regulated by the government is enshrined in the 2nd amendment to the US constitution. Every gun law created since is an abberation that should be abolished.
I can see that you like to think of yourself as a rational thinker about this, but you're refusing to answer the actual criticism: actual people are being killed every day due to the availability of weapons in your society. There are nearly two mass shootings per day. So far this year that has led to 250 deaths and more than a thousand injuries[1]. These are not hypothetical abstractions, which is all you seem interested in engaging with. These are real people, many of them children, who find themselves victims of gun violence. You are arguing that your feeling of safety is more important than their actual safety. All of your arguments amount to a continuation of your position that you put your own feelings ahead of the actual deaths of people in society around you. This is a very selfish way to engage in your society.
I will just casually ignore your reductionist argument, I’m sure you’ll understand. Reasonable people don’t argue that way as all arguments would just … boil down to nothing.
The debate over guns actually hinges on the extent to which the individual should be empowered to defend themselves, and historically, it hasn't just been about guns, but about all weapons, and even martial arts (which have also been banned at various points in history). Governments don't like to empower the individual, because they want to maintain a monopoly over violence (for many practical reasons), and because empowering individuals often creates its own set of trust problems (which is true for anything -- how many drivers are trustworthy, for example). Defenseless individuals are easier to govern from an administrative perspective, and if a government is good at protecting the populace from threats, it works. In fact, it can be better for the population as a whole, at least while the government is competent. But life is messy, and there are points where individuals need to defend themselves. As systems break down, not only does the need increase, but also the effectiveness of the means, because the threats you have to defend yourself against by definition don't play by the rules.
This, imo, is the real point of the second amendment. The Bill of Rights is essentially a declaration that certain rights are derived from a higher authority than government, which is why they are inalienable. No one needs permission to defend themselves, and it's my belief that the right to bear arms was put in there to ensure that should the system fail or become ineffective, the people would still be able to exercise one of their most fundamental natural rights. It certainly wasn't an accident, because it was the second thing that they added. The verbiage around government and militias makes sense in the context of having just fought a war of independence, but it also makes sense when you consider that it's often well-meaning governments that take this right away.
Shall we say prisoners have the right to bear arms? Felons with a violent past? People with mental illness? Surely there must be limits. Few rights are absolute in every circumstance.
When was the last time that private gun ownership helped overcome a dangerous government?
Whatever the reason for the 2A, in practice, it has contributed to far more death than it prevented.
What exactly is irrational?
The second amendment isn't about safety or preventing death, it's about the right of the individual versus the overall collective. Governments and systems break down, but what doesn't change is the individual's right to defend themselves. Whether or not you think it improves individual safety in practice is irrelevant, because it's not your call (nor even the government's) to make.
If a person shouldn't have firearms, then they shouldn't be on the street. They should be in jail/prison. Period. I don't know that anyone that has argued that prisoners should have guns. You would have to be a fool. If a person shouldn't have access to guns, then they shouldn't have access to any other freedom. The ultimate purpose of owning firearms is to fight a tyrannical government. For that purpose, less limits is better for the people. This right is absolute, and anyone espousing otherwise is a tyrant or a fool.
Regulated has more than one meaning. Read which is which.
The word has many meanings. Learn which one the phrase in the Constitution is using.