Why can't USA remove weapons from homes? Being a fully democratic country, the policy makers should do what people wish for. Does that mean people do not want to change this stupid constitution which might have made sense when the country was wilder and people needed to be armed? No wonder the country is full of crazy people inside and outside the government. |
On the other hand, Japan seems like a nice place.
Edit: will clarify I'm not an ACAB supporter or anything like that.
I think addressing the underlying cause would be much more effective. A gun in a society full of healthy people is just a tool.
Because the tools are part of the problem. Tools aren't neutral, availability influences use, policy influences mentality, and so on.
After the modern crane technology was invented there are exponential increased in the number of high rise buildings including the skyscappers.
That runs into the first amendment.
It's not that these people are ""crazy"" in a medical sense, they're radicalized. They proceed in an anger-fuelled response to things they believe. Which they believe because other people have told them. Both on the internet and in regular media. From a medical point of view, they're ""functioning"".
It's notable that similar instances outside the US - e.g. the NZ mosque shooter - cite the same sources in their manifestoes.
What if the tool in question is _made_ for killing? If you think it's just as easy to kill a lot of people with a knife as with a gun, you're in for a surprise.
Put simply - America has a radicalization vector x mental health x access to rapid-fire guns problem. Take away the rapid-fire component (semi- or fully-automatic weapons) and that would significantly reduce the mass-shootings problem.
As far as the radicalization vector goes, the abolishing of Section 230 protections would be a good start (and I am grossly oversimplifying this).
I have no solutions for the mental health component; there are way too many factors to discuss here, related to insularity, economics, education and outcomes.
2. The Constitution isn't easy to amend. Congress can move to amend the Constitution, or two thirds of the governments of the individual states can do so, but the people themselves don't have that authority. (Otherwise you'd see evangelicals pushing amendment after amendment to rip out the Establishment Clause and declare that the US is officially a "Christian nation".)
3. I won't give up my firearms until the police give up theirs. All I've got is a lever-action rifle. They've got AR-15s, which is basically a M-16 that can't do full auto.
It's the same thing with things like Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges. The most reasonable explanation why these are not constitutional amendments yet is that a considerable amount of Americans, at least over a third of them, simply don't agree with it.
So it doesn't even matter how many Americans support it or don't, we literally just have to accept it either way at the point of a gun.
You could ban guns today and they will still be around for the next few hundred years. It's natural to search for answers in times like these but sometimes there just aren't any.
The US shooting epidemic is far more deadly than the Troubles was, an actual paramilitary civil war.
The US has spent far more effort trying to ban abortion than to deal with school shootings.
You imply the wish is for there to be no guns.
The hard fact is that simply is not true.
Americans have a wide range of opinion on the matter ranging from no guns, through various scenarios where there are guns and various ownership scenarios and regulations, and through to gun ownership being basically unfettered.
Sidebar: The US currently is not a fully Democratic nation! It is a Republic and operates as a representative government. Direct democracy is not a part of US politcs on a national scale at this time.
Some States do have direct democracy in the form of citizen initiatives that can get put on a ballot given sufficient public support is shown. Usually this involves gathering signatures and for that work to meet some metrics that represent meaningful public support. And States handle these in various ways too. Some States allow their elected legislature to overrule. Others do not.
These initiatives can become law based on public support in the form of some type of majority vote in the States that permit them.
In any case, on the National scale, representative government is the norm, and that means the citizens elect people who they believe will represent their opinions on policy well enough to live with.
There is a growing movement toward more direct democracy, and allowing citizen initiatives on Presential election ballots is something many, and a growing number of Americans, believe would improve our politics considerably.
I am an American who believes that form of direct democracy would be good for the nation and could perhaps check to some useful degree the currently toxic impact of money in politics we struggle with today.
End Sidebar.
My own take on guns, given the lack of consensus and the solid nature of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, is robust gun education made mandatory for everyone as part of their basic education on their way to adulthood. Our Supreme Court has affirmed gun ownership is an individual right, and like other individual rights, comes with some responsibility.
Given the guns are just here, and given they won't just go away anytime soon, I suggest we make sure people are competent and well educated all around on guns. Said education would include use, repair, history, safety, and many other topics people could use to make more and better choices more of the time.
There may be better ways to improve on all this and I am open to anything frankly. Just offering my own take here for the sake of discussion.
Source: My own military service and training.
There are no easy answers, just the human work long overdue.
This violates the Second Amendment, as it would be a means for the government to infringe upon the right to keep and bear arms. As written, that right permits no qualifiers, limitations or responsibilities.
States could potentially make gun education mandatory for gun ownership, but of course many (including Texas) simply wouldn't.
Also, means testing has a bad history of being used to disenfranchise certain demographics, and I can easily see mandatory gun education being used to deny people of color access to firearms simply as a product of government only providing necessary educational resources to white majority areas.
You can have the Second Amendment, or effective gun legislation, but under the current definition of the former by the Supreme Court you can't have both.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-1521.pdf
https://giffords.org/lawcenter/gun-laws/second-amendment/the...
>In its decision, authored by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court was careful to stress the limited nature of its ruling. Writing for the majority, Justice Scalia noted: “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. [It is] not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
Individual rights are subject to regulation, and in general, the idea here is the minimum regulation necessary to maximize the utility of the right for everyone. What happened here is by affirming gun ownership as a basic right as speech is a basic right, the responsibility part can now be sorted out over time as it has been done for speech.
Go read the decisions. It's in there. With rights come responsibilities. And that is, in my view, exactly the right thing to do.
We have a few limits on speech, for example. There is criminal speech.
There are a few limits on gun ownership. And those will generally pass the courts given their scope and purpose is as described above. There is criminal gun ownership.
Now, to be clear here, I am not advocating any restrictions whatsoever. No means tests, no licenses, nothing of the sort.
Just education. In particular, the same education I got, and that many get as part of their gun ownership experience. Not talking about licenses or anything. Just education. Ownership would not be predicated on said education.
Surely you are not advocating we fail to educate people who are carrying deadly weapons around? I've passed my own on, and have saved lives. Frankly, having had it, my own life was saved at least once. And the stats play out favorably. Just educating people, and doing nothing else, improves on the injury and death stats we face today.
The goal of said education?
The people will self-regulate to a far more effective degree than we currently see today, and that is all.
You appear to be advocating a free for all, and that's not at all what SCOTUS did. Nor should they.
Nineteen children have received a particularly final form of gun education as part of their primary education yesterday.
I need to make an edit: Basic education on the way to adulthood. I did not intend to reference this current event. I just heard about it tonight.
Those who break the law regularly have the means & connections to buy a gun illegally.
I very much doubt distressed teenagers will have the money & connections to buy a gun illegally especially on short notice.
Definitely won't stop all crime (just like it doesn't even in countries where guns are illegal) nor resourceful, determined attackers, but would definitely cut down on crazy teenagers doing mass shootings.
I'm sure if Russian cruise missiles were dropping on American schools every few weeks, killing dozens of pupils, something would be done, and yet in this case everyone rushes to collaborate with the enemy and ensure they're armed.
This is utter bullshit. ALL guns are made for _killing_. It's irrelevant who - or what - is being killed. You can of course say the same about knives, but they aren't all the effective.
> The real question is how would you collect the guns from criminals...
That would indeed be a problem, but the priority should be to stop selling weapons to people who obviously doesn't need them. No one needs to own automatic rifles. Australia was able to deal with the problem decades ago.
> Criminals will still hold on to what they have, and such a law would only put innocent people at risk.
Again, utter bullshit. You are under the impression that criminals LIKE to shoot people, like they have nothing better to do. Sure, there will be killings, but criminals are also people; they only fire their weapon if they feel they have to.
If less people have guns, there will be less escalation of conflict. That's why we in Norway strive to have our police force not to carry weapons all the time; we know that if the criminals _know_ that the police they encounter carry weapons, then the criminals will also carry weapons, and people will get killed.
If the government uses them, why not law abiding citizens? It's not like guns will disappear forever, they will still be in possession by government and anyone who wants to break the law. Regardless, you can never control anything 100%, people will STILL have guns, one way or another, just like anything else that's illegal but still exists.
> but criminals are also people; they only fire their weapon if they feel they have to.
Yes, when they feel like they have to take your stuff.
I think my basic point is that police is not efficient at solving crimes or preventing them, and that is a higher priority than preventing people from owning a gun because they could potentially get radicalized. Let's see crime under control first.
Crikey, you must be some kind of special stupid.
Are all countries "law abiding" when it comes to use of weapons, you think?
For example, if I want a shotgun to practice shooting at plates and bottles, I need to declare my goal as becoming a hunter. Becoming a hunter requires passing an exam on fauna species (for not shootng a Red Book species, obviously). But I don't want to be a hunter because Ukraine is not a USA and seing wild animals in forest is a rare event (believe me, I am living less than 1 km to a nearest forest and it is a tough natural forest, not a park with sparce trees). And going through hunterness is not the only bureaucracy obstacle to becoming an owner of firearms.
Imagine seeing a military colon going to capital of your country at the assault rifle range and having no ability to do anything except of wishing good luck to the capital, because of the decisions accepted in the capital.