Can America be fixed?

[Zaf]

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[SlowManiac]

It is MUCH harder to get hold of firearms in Australia than in the US. Of course you can get hold of banned substances and items but it it's just a layer of security - it's the best we can do. I mean if banning things is wrong then why can't I own a tank, or a hand grenade? We ban them because people would do dumb things.

Of course you can't legislate against atrocities but you can try put all the barriers you can to protect people. The world is not black and white Zaf. Sometimes some people (law abiding gun owners) have to make sacrifices to that the rest of us can be safe.

That bloke in Las Vegas killed almost 60 people and fired over 1000 rounds. I really can't see that kind of thing happening in Australia partly because of the gun laws here. It's just too difficult to get that kind of weapon.

Anyway - I appreciate your civil response to my somewhat angry first post. I honestly find it hard to believe this is up for debate.

 

[Dales Cannon]

You can buy a tank...

It is not hard to get a gun licence and buy a firearm. Just follow the process. It does take a bit of time and there are restrictions on the legal guns you can buy. US is a whole lot easier with a larger selection legally available.

 

[SlowManiac]

You can but the fun bits will be removed!

 

[Zaf]

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[Tubbsy]

There are many reasons for semi autos, be it for target shooting, hunting etc all of which do require reasonably fast follow up shots, then there's the reason that some people just like them.

I don't see any reason for v8's or higher unless you regularly do pretty hefty towing but I won't ever advocate to have them restricted from the average joe that doesn't "Need" them per se.

I think if you were going to use a car analogy here, the kinds of weapons used by the school shooter and that guy in Vegas might be more equivalent to a track car. So something you can own and use at particular locations with professional oversight, not drive on the public road.

Perhaps a solution to allow people to own this kind of weapon could be that it needs to be stored and used at the gun club, not at home. As some above have alluded to, when there is a laissez faire attitude to safety around guns, shit is going to go wrong eventually.

Also mentioned by someone earlier in regard to civil liberties, we don't just get to do whatever the fuck we like; it's unfortunate if the many responsible gun owners have to suffer for the actions of the few, but the school shooting story plays on repeat in the 'States, so clearly the current situation is not working.

New Zealand still allows these rifles to the average punter under their standard car A licence but they are only allowed to have a 10 round mag in it on cat A which imo is fine, but if you apply for the E Endorsement (I think it was) you are allowed to have semi autos with a collapsible stock and a 30 round mag.

Heck, you can even have machine guns there if you can statisfy the reason lol.

I had no idea the Kiwis had such easy access to this stuff. I'm assuming it's not like the US where you can stroll in to Wal Mart and stock up with everything you need in every other suburb?

If any teenage New Zealander can pop out and buy an AR-15 and keep it at home, then perhaps their gun culture is very different to that of the Americans.

Different problems need different solutions.

Why kill loads of people to begin with? What drives someone to do this? is the reason treatable?

Focus on that.

What kind of time frame would you put on solving this? If it is indeed the easier or fairer solution, perhaps restrict access to the guns until all mental health issues are resolved. Then make the guns available again. The NRA and the bleeding hearts meeting in the middle!

As I said before, this doesn't need to be an either/or solution. Clearly there is work to be done on mental health and social inclusion. Absolutely work on that. Congress isn't paralysed in the meantime, so they can look at gun access issues at the same time.

the major issue with gun related deaths in the U.S is gang warfare, so by solving that issue and satisfying the jobless issues in poor african/latino communities where the majority of the violence occurs you will find America isn't that violent.

School shooters seem to largely be middle class white boys with legally owned weapons. Cutting their supply seems like a relatively easy place to start.

Gang warfare with illegal guns is obviously a whole other issue. Solving inequality in those communities is another thing Congress could be doing something about. Not really something Trump has much interest in I suspect.


I think we can all agree that having literally hundreds of kids shot up at school over the past decades is an absolute fucking disaster, and if my kids were going to school in the US, I'd damn well want something to be happening about it.

 

[flamin'trek]

Do do you actually believe we don't have access to firearms in Australia? I think everyone just puts blinkers on when they talk about Australia's restrictions, and instantly forget things like the Monash University Shootings, the Sydney Lindt Cafe Seige, Hectorville, Hunt Family, etc (as if Port Arthur was the last!). as if the ban actually magics them out of existence or something. I'm guessing you think because Marijuana is a "banned" substance you can't access that either?

These kinds of fucked up events will happen, you can't legislate against them because they're outside the bell curve to begin with. You're definitely not going to stop it by enacting laws on people not trying to subvert them to begin with.

What are you hoping to achieve? Or moreso, what possible good do you think a ban would do? Try and keep how well Prohibition worked, and the War on Drugs is working, in mind when you answer that question.

Since Port Arthur in Aus we've probably lost less people to the shootings you describe in all that time than America has lost in the last week. Scale it back a bit for the population size difference and we are still a long way ahead.

When your history is one of 'cowboys and indians' shooting each other up, what hope do they have. Sure, we've had our share of historical 'wars' and 'massacres' with the indigenous folks but it hasn't embedded itself in our culture the way the yank's gun-slingers folklore has.

 

[Zaf]

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[SlowManiac]

You are saying that 8500 people were killed by guns in one year and quoting that in support of gun ownership....

 

[Zaf]

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[johnny]

I believe almost all of the weapons used in the incidents provided started out their lives as legally owned and purchased. Is that correct?

 

[johnny]

I think you have a failing in imagination.

Aren't the semis that Brevik used illegal or at least highly restricted in Australia? If so, that would require a strong imagination to think of it occurring here.

 

[Zaf]

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[johnny]

Respectfully, if that is a point you wish to assert, I'd suggest you supply supporting evidence for it, rather than asking for someone else to prove it or disprove it. Further, if you want to ask the question, ask the question, don't pose a hypothesis and then ask for evidence to support it. Not that everyone isn't already wearing their biases quite openly, but the sake of a civil discussion you can at least pretend you're interested in actually finding the answer regardless of its outcome instead of overtly trying to justify your position.

Respectfully? I don't think so, that was a huge over reaction to me saying "I was under the impression that......, is that correct?". It was a simple question asking if what I thought was right, assuming that given you cited those cases you might actually have that info at hand. And you accuse me of bias?

So with that, I'm out.

 

[Tubbsy]

If they were not legally owned initially, surely that implies that either they were manufactured by criminals (unlikely), stolen (gun control problem), obtained fraudulently (gun control problem) or people with criminal records are able to legally purchase a gun (gun control problem).

So easy access to legal guns creates easy access to illegal guns.

 

[Zaf]

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[Freediver]

When selling shit like this is legal serious questions need to be asked. Even the resident gun nuts couldn't argue for that one.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ce-on-special-offer-in-salute-to-donald-trump

 

[Skydome]

I think if you were going to use a car analogy here, the kinds of weapons used by the school shooter and that guy in Vegas might be more equivalent to a track car. So something you can own and use at particular locations with professional oversight, not drive on the public road.

The Vegas shooter wasn't from understanding using mil specced firearms, I believe he was using civilian legal firearms with a bumpinator on it.

My comment re cars stands.

Perhaps a solution to allow people to own this kind of weapon could be that it needs to be stored and used at the gun club, not at home. As some above have alluded to, when there is a laissez faire attitude to safety around guns, shit is going to go wrong eventually.

Don't agree with this either. That would just create an easy target for criminals to hit.

I had no idea the Kiwis had such easy access to this stuff. I'm assuming it's not like the US where you can stroll in to Wal Mart and stock up with everything you need in every other suburb?

Only gun shops, similar to here but with more freedom on what you can actually own.

If any teenage New Zealander can pop out and buy an AR-15 and keep it at home, then perhaps their gun culture is very different to that of the Americans.

Once they are of legal age for a cat A license they can actually own a 10 shot AR-15 and store it at home and currently on cat A it doesn't even have to be registered.

Different problems need different solutions.

Sure but I always get annoyed when people use America as an example for not relaxing our firearm laws when we are more similar to Kiwis.

What kind of time frame would you put on solving this?

As long as it takes but for as along as people are getting distracted by doing things that won't solve the root cause the longer things won't change.

If it is indeed the easier or fairer solution, perhaps restrict access to the guns until all mental health issues are resolved. Then make the guns available again. The NRA and the bleeding hearts meeting in the middle!

Not ever going to happen, and even if it does I will guarantee you it won't be reversed, or at least not easily.

For the most part gun control isn't about having "Logical" firearm laws in, it's about trying to stop firearm sales and production altogether. gun control advocates always use Australia as their preferred country of choice for firearm laws but our laws are anything but logical and fair, New Zealand's laws on the other hand, seem to be the fairest but no gun control advocate i've ever seen wants New Zealand's laws because you can still own the big bad AR-15 on cat A with 10 round mag with no registration

As I said before, this doesn't need to be an either/or solution. Clearly there is work to be done on mental health and social inclusion. Absolutely work on that. Congress isn't paralysed in the meantime, so they can look at gun access issues at the same time.

What constitutes gun access though? this is very broad wording depending on who you ask and in any case, no significant gun control reform will ever get through in the states so both sides might as well focus on mental health issues inequality and agency communication because this school shooter was alerted to the FBI prior and the FBI failed to do anything, similar deal with other school shooters, FBI was either tipped off or the person was known to the FBI but the FBI did nothing or they had no communication on mental health or crime related issues a shooter had done in other states due to communication issues and etc.

School shooters seem to largely be middle class white boys with legally owned weapons. Cutting their supply seems like a relatively easy place to start.

Not really, otherwise it would have happened already and most of these shooters seem to have mental health or inclusion issues any way.

Gang warfare with illegal guns is obviously a whole other issue. Solving inequality in those communities is another thing Congress could be doing something about. Not really something Trump has much interest in I suspect.

And the chunk of the firearm deaths are in these poor communities yet we've seen consecutive governments not caring about these communities or the deaths to firearms that happen every night in these communities.

If people were serious about stemming the deaths firearms cause it would seem to be logical to target gang warfare and help out disadvantaged communities where the majority of firearm deaths occur but I don't see people caring about the plethora of gun deaths in poor communities which really rubs me up the wrong away as it even comes off as racist to me that many of people up in arms the way they are now never seemed to bat an eyelid at all the poor people dying to firearms ?

 

[Tubbsy]

Just to reset on all this and get back onto OP's topic line.

1. What is the problem you're trying to solve?
2. How large is the problem?
3. How do you propose to fix it?
4. Do you think what you have proposed is actually achievable?
5. Why will this fix work?

1. Stop high school students from carrying out massacres of children in schools

2. Small (if viewed in a dispassionate statistical sense, i.e. kids shot vs population size), Huge (if viewed from the bigger picture of the impact that these events have on every kid attending the school, their families, the community at large and beyond).

To me, and most people I would imagine, a thirteen year old kid getting his head blown off at school huge significance to society at large. A couple of drug dealers picking each other off for territory doesn't resonate in the same way.

3. Obviously I'm not a law maker or weapons expert. From what I read, weapons like the AR fire very rapidly, are accurate at distance and can carry a lot of ammo. So these kids have the confidence that they're going to be able to hit a lot of people without having to get too close to them. If this type of weapon was not available for a teen to buy, or for his parents to store at home, then perhaps you wouldn't get these events.

4. Sure, why not?

5. Because ultimately these guys are cowardly and wouldn't put themselves in a similar situation with a lower powered weapon, or bat or knife because they'd probably get smashed over the head with a chair before they did anywhere near the damage they do now.

 

[Zaf]

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