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Comment on Why is the DEA and ATF separate? Seems like they cover similar things from similar circles.

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](imgur.com/a/pR7CuLA), gain all those single-issue voters and sweep the polls everywhere.

“WANT!!!”

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Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- JustZ@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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toastus@feddit.de ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- Garbanzo@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  other countries seem to show a correlation between stricter gun laws and less fatalities by gun.
  
  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.
  
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- AnotherRyguy@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    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.
    
    You’ve fallen into the trap yourself. “Assault rifles” are defined as “select fire rifles in an intermediate caliber intended for infantry use.” Select fire rifles have been banned in the US since 1986, 37yr ago, unless you have your Class III SOT (which means you have the licencure required to own them because you showed an ATF agent your business plan of selling them to mil and police.)
    
    What you have an issue with is just a regular semiautomatic rifle that cosmetically looks scary and black, but functions just like every other semi auto rifle or pistol on the planet. Not only that, but all rifles (not even just ARs, all rifles) are responsible for 500/60,000 gun deaths for a rate of 0.2% of gun deaths. Banning them would do nothing, mass shooters already use handguns more and as we see from the VT shooting you can kill a lot of unarmed people with them.
    
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    JustZ@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Oh god one of these absolute donkies whining about definitions when guns are the leading cause of death among children.
    
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- SolOrion@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Tbh, “banning the dangerous things” is still not the way to solve this problem imo.
    
    Like could we be incredibly abelist and say “the mentally ill can’t have guns anymore?” Yes, we could, and that may help against mass shootings, but it also further stigmatizes the mentally ill, most of whom will never commit a crime like that anyway since tbh mass shootings are only .001% of our gun crime so it is unlikely. Could we be incredibly racist and say “well 12% of the population commits 50% of the crime, so no more guns for black people?” Yes we could, in fact that was the point of Pistol Purchase Permits and CCW permits, often they require sheriff approval and if that sheriff is a racist, the sheriff who is a police officer in America, where the cops are kinda known for being racist, he can deny the peemit “for any reason.” And yes it is still being used like that in some areas.
    
    Could we say no calibers above .30? I guess, but that would include .45ACP, seems like a dumb thing to ban a fat slow round that can be eaten by a 2x4 (hyperbole but actually not by much lol). And what of 12ga? No Turkey hunting because slugs also exist?
    
    Could we ban all rifles? Yeah, but they are only responsible for 0.2% of our gun deaths at 500/60,000. Not very effective.
    
    Could we ban handguns? Probably not tbh. The support isn’t there yet, they need to get the scary rifles banned first so they can say “see that didn’t work we need to ban handguns now.”
    
    Imo we need to find out and address the reasons for the violence, be it economic instability, or our shit ass school system training people to be factory drones in a country without factories, or whatever. Sure it’s harder, but “all things that are worth doing take effort.” People are looking for an “easy way out,” but there just straight up isn’t one.
    
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