Is it because alcohol, tobacco, and firearms also have legal pathways? So they spend time tracking down cheats and checking/enforcing regulations?
Is it because alcohol, tobacco, and firearms also have legal pathways? So they spend time tracking down cheats and checking/enforcing regulations?
Brother, I can talk dumb and ineffective gun laws all night long without repeating myself.
Problem is that people, of any political persuasion, don’t get the notion of political capital. I rant about it a lot. :)
No matter how right you think you are, no matter how scientifically valid your reasoning, no matter how sensible, no matter what, making laws costs goodwill. Decisions cost votes. And votes determine one’s ability to stay in office and effect the sorts of changes one, and hopefully, their constituents want.
Knowing that and factoring it in is what politicians need to be doing. FFS, this is high school Government 101.
Guns for example:
“We want a ‘high capacity’ mag ban!”
Well, none of that works like you think. High cap mags jam, the military won’t even use 'em, only mass shooter idiots, and I’d rather their shit jam. Besides, swapping a mag is trivial for a shooter, 4-seconds if he sucks. Can we talk about it?
“Children! Safety! WANT!”
OK, it’s gotta cost voters, and cost you a chance to make real changes.
“WANT!”
tl;dr If the Democrats had brains enough to read the room, they’d drop the non-stop gun ban shit, take the issue back from the assholes, gain all those single-issue voters and sweep the polls everywhere.
“WANT!!!”
They just change the definitions when it suits them.
High capacity used to be the big 50-100 round mags. Now when they say “high capacity” they mean standard capacity 30 round or even smaller. Plenty of places ban anything over 10 or 15.
Yeah, because there’s no legitimate self-defense purpose to load more than 10 rounds. If you can’t do it in 10, you can’t do it.
So I have no idea about guns but would you say there is no legislative way to end the fact that the USA is the only first world country with a mass shooting like every other day?
Again I am not arguing for or against any one particular measure or ban.
I don’t know anything about high cap mags or whatever.
But I do know that other countries seem to show a correlation between stricter gun laws and less fatalities by gun.
Or is it your 2nd amendment that stands in the way of effective legislative measures?
It just seems like a problem that should be so easy to solve and as a European it just seems strange that you guys seem to be completely unable to even make improvements.
Other countries have universal healthcare and functioning social services. I suspect there’s a stronger correlation between those things and lower levels of violence of all types.
I think the issue here is that lawmakers don’t know enough about guns to write laws to regulate them effectively. They just ban things that sound dangerous because it makes it look like they’re doing things without actually having to do things.
Republicans have a legitimate argument that Democrat gun control laws are fucking stupid, and Democrats have a legitimate argument that we need more gun control. Most of us just sit here wishing you can be allowed to own a gun, but not buy a fucking assault rifle from some random dickhead at at a gun fair.
It would require a constitutional amendment to outright ban guns, and our Congress can’t agree on year to year budgeting. Getting the required votes to ban guns would be functionally impossible. Honestly even if it didn’t require an amendment I don’t think it would be realistically passed as a regular law.
So: banning guns outright is off the table entirely.
More gun controls always seemed to be approached in an incredibly stupid way- they tend to ban the scary things rather than the dangerous things.