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Virginia House approves assault weapons ban
(www.nbcwashington.com)
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this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
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And so what? Americans have always had equivalent, or better, rifles than the military. (I know nothing about the presenter, been told he's rightwing, but there are no political opinions presented.)
So why is weapon choice suddenly a problem? We had AR-15s when I was a child in the 70s. If you would like a weapon that passes this ban, let me introduce the Ruger Mini-14.
FFS, we have a social problem, not a gun problem.
Liberals: "We want gun bans! Lotsa bans!"
Uh, that backfired over alcohol, drugs and abortion...
Liberals: "STFU! BANS!"
Our society is sick, and dems are fighting a losing battle and losing votes. FFS, these idiots could win every election if they would drop these ineffectual bans and get on board with helping us.
Liberals: Ok, let's fund mental healthcare or a social safety net to solve that social problem.
The same people complaining about this law: REE!! Communism, socialism, trans pedophiles in bathrooms...
Don't give me that shit.
I lived in Chicago for over a decade. Chicago has been a Democratic supermajority city, in a Democratic supermajority state for something like 100 years. Under Democratic mayors and aldermen, community mental health and resources were slashed. (I know this because my therapist had been community mental health working with people that were chronically homeless until his position was eliminated by budget cuts.) To social safety nets have been consistently cut, while cops get more and more funding. Public housing? Good fucking luck, there was a 15 year wait when I was living there. The city is still deeply racially divided from the 1960s or so, when redlining was legally eliminated (but lemme tell you, legally ended or not, it's still very, very real).
If Dems really wanted these things in fact, and not in theory, they could have them in Illinois, in New York, in Massachusetts, in New Jersey, in California, in Hawai'i. But they don't. Instead they want gun ban band-aids that fix none of the problems that cause the violence in the first place.
Well it sure as fuck isn't conservatives trying to fund those things. There's a reason I said liberals and not elected Democrats but I guess basic reading comprehension wasn't a priority for your screed. So take that self righteous indignation and shove it up your ass.
Liberals are Dems in the US. But keep insisting that they aren't, and see how far that gets you. Progressive and DemSoc candidates sure aren't getting any traction, because it turns out that the people that tend to support that simply don't vote in significant enough numbers to make a difference.
Most Americans, myself included, don't like giving up personal rights for "security."
To draw a parallel that I figure you'll agree with - far-right rhetoric is on the rise and I think we should do something about it. As much as I disagree with Nazi rhetoric, I absolutely don't think the "solution" to this problem is banning pro-Nazi speech by law. We could easily point to Germany and say "well they had a massive issue with pro-Nazi speech. They banned it, no more Nazi rhetoric! It's that easy!"
The root cause of far-right ideologies (or far-left for that matter) isn't that free speech exists, it's unhappy people radicalized by their living conditions and culture. Germans lived through a terrible economic depression after WWI, where a lot of people experienced homelessness and malnutrition. Fascism gave everyone a job and fewer people starved, plus they stood up militarily to countries that levied the economic sanctions which ruined their economy in the first place. From their point of view, fascism saved them. Fascism didn't happen because the government allowed pro-fascism speech to occur, fascism happened because the horrible economic and world-status of Germany pushed people too far.
Have you thought about what the root cause is behind school shootings and other senseless killings? A cursory understanding of American gun rights and laws, and how they've changed overtime, proves that the existence of certain weapons platforms is absolutely not the root cause. My grandparents could have literally mail ordered full-auto machine guns to their front door, yet school shootings literally never happened. If public access to guns = school shootings, they would've been 100 times more frequent when your grandparents were kids.
Even if we poofed guns out of thin air, the people who would shoot children would still be around. This "solution" does nothing to treat them. It also does nothing to prevent others from becoming as jaded and sick in the head. The end result is still a bunch of radicalized, fucked up people who will lash out at society in other ways besides school shootings. Maybe when the start blowing up schools, stabbing kids, and running them over with huge F-150s, the DNC will start saying "Public access to fertilizer, pointy metal, and cars is the issue! No more fertilizer = no more school bombings! It's that simple!"
You: American exceptionalism; " nah, if it worked ; we woulda already done it!"
Me: I'd rather fix the root cause issue that pushes people to murder children, instead slapping a bandaid over what is 100% a social issue. Maybe we should take real effort to stop climate change. Maybe we should better fund our schools and make college free. Maybe we should increase minimum wage so anyone who holds a job, regardless of what it is, can support themselves and their family. Maybe we should make medical care free. Maybe we should restructure our prisons so they focus on rehabilitation instead of cruel punishment and slave labor. Maybe then, our society wouldn't breed people that murder children because they're so upset and jaded after growing up with zero prospects of having a happy and fulfilling future.
But our politicians would lose power and money if they fixed these issues, so they'll instead say that AR15s are what's murdering babies and if you don't support banning them, then you're pro baby murder. And people like you will gobble it up.
Disregarding that "most" is probably incorrect and the long history of pro-gun candidates stripping rights from people, who cares what you "don't like"? The south didn't like giving up slaves. Hungry people don't like rationing. We're under no obligation to politely tolerate immoral, harmful things because you don't like them.
Those are also some extremely dubious use quotation marks around security.
It's inarguable that for most people, gun laws that actually work are vastly safer than selling guns to anyone who can fill out a form. Every single person who has ever been killed by a "responsible gun owner" (or a firearm that a "responsible gun owner" failed to secure) would have had better odds under gun control.
But the pro-gun community doesn't care because "fuck you, I got mine". Their security comes at everyone else's expense -- sometimes even at the expense of their own family.
Way more irrelevant that you realize. You're not actually advocating "we should do something about extremism and mental health" like you think, you're advocating "we should do something about extremism and mental health while continuing to maximise the violence they're able to cause with easily accessible firearms.
Oh you mean the things we're already able to do because there isn't a self-absorbed death cult preventing it?
When car and truck attacks started happening, areas with a high number of pedestrians had vehicle blocking installed. The attacks never killed remotely close to as many people as semi-automatic weapons did but waned anyway.
Bomb attacks just aren't happening, despite the pro-gun crowd constantly claiming they will the moment they stop selling guns to people with a history of abuse.
The reality is that building bombs requires far more time, effort and risk for usually underwhelming results. The Boston Marathon bombing killed three people. Sure, Timothy McVeigh still holds the scumbag high score, but where are the copycats? Probably in jail, since buying enough explosives to fill a truck gets you a visit from their feds.
Then of course the token "but knives!", which only works if you don't actually think about it. Terrorists aren't choosing knives, even in the rare cases where a gun isn't an option.
A moderately strong door can stop a knife attack. It's much safer for a coo or armed guard to engage someone with a knife. Stab wounds are more survivable than gunshot wounds. Stabbing multiple people takes far longer and is more physically demanding, especially as they take wounds by being in arms reach.
Can we acknowledge just how low a bar the gun laws set when "someone stabbing as many school children as they can before they're subdued or killed" would be a measurable improvement?
But I'll tell you what: If you give gun control the same 20 years we've politely given your dogshit solution, every time a school is attacked you can come to us and demand solutions.
And I promise we'll do better than blaming video games and gay people, taking millions of dollars of donations from knife manufacturers and staunchly opposing any revisions to the law for the rest of time.
So, what you're saying here is that people are having to make choices about which rights they want. That's not a very strong argument, IMO. I don't like Republicans trying to strip rights from LGBTQ+ people, or trying to cram religion down my throat. I don't like Dems trying to take my guns. Civil rights are civil rights, end of story.
Patently false. Theodore Kaczinski is perhaps the most famous one, but there was also the Weathermen, the Boston Marathon, at least one attempt on the World Trade Center, the McVeigh/Nichols bombing in Oklahoma City, the Columbine murderers had improvised bombs that failed to explode, women's health centers, historically black churches... The list goes on, and on, and on. Bombs have been used in many, many cases, and in some of the worst mass casualty events in US history. (The Oklahoma City Bombing killed 168 people; the 2017 Las Vegas shooting killed less than half of that.)
If that's supposed to be my view, then I guess yours is "rights are granted by slavers and rapists 300 years ago and may never be changed for any reason, even as public attitudes switch".
Sure, we can play the list game if you want. You name a bombing, I'll name a shooting and we'll see who runs out first. If you want to play hard mode, we can limit it to the last 10 years.
So in in other words, the only reason anybody died at Columbine was because they had guns.
Sure, we can play the numbers game too. We can start at Oklahoma and count up "bombs vs guns" since. Honestly though, do we even need to? By your own admission, a single "responsible gun owner" got half way to a literal truck full of explosives that demolished a building.
It's just the pro-gun crowd. They can't shoot people over the internet, so they brigade, downvote and drown out.
Gun violence: a co-location of guns and violence.
We can get rid of the violence without getting rid of the guns. (Guns have different effects on violence depending on how you ask the question, by the way.)
Anyway, policies I support that would reduce gun violence that have nothing to do with guns:
*Medicare for all
*Walkable towns of all sizes
*Ban right to work
*Increase in convenient public hang out spaces
*After school group therapy
*$20 minimum wage
*Ban single family housing zoning
*Ban single use residential zoning
*Night sky safe lighting
*Sugar tax
*End corn subsidies
*Mixed agriculture subsidies
*The world's fastest bullet train network
*Ban gas and oil (with change-over subsidies)
*Require biodegradable packaging
*Prosecute wage theft
*Narrow police responsibilities and hand off functions to other groups (E.G. social workers and traffic-specific ticketters)
*Ban bail
*Ban shit tons of stuff surrounding probation/parole
*Ban charging inmates or their families for anything
*Ban civil asset forfeiture
*Rehabilitative prison
*Provide school lunch
*Free college
*House the homeless
*Fund public defenders at the same rate as prosecutors
*Tighter noise pollution laws
*Probably other stuff
The Mini-14 is not a good rifle. Accuracy and reliability are both very poor compared to a bone-stock AR-15; typically you're looking at about 4-5MOA on a Mini-15. Many of the parts are MIM, are are more likely to fail or be out of tolerance than forged and milled parts.
As far as saying that American citizens have access to better arms than the US military... No. Yes, a civilians AR-15 can be better than what the military buys, and civilians usually take better care of their firearms, and don't beat them to shit. But TBH, the AR-15 is one of the best all-purpose mid-sized cartridge rifles out there. Other rifles may be better in some ways, but an AR-15 has very, very good balance between cost, reliability, durability, accuracy, power, range, and weight. Sure, my AR-10 in 6.5 Creedmoor has more power, much better range, and is sub-MOA, buuuuuut ammunition weighs 2x as much and costs 4x as much, my rifle is 1.5x heavier, is 12" longer than a standard M4, and barrel life is about 1500-2000 rounds before it's worn out. (Also, typical infantry firefight ranges are <300y, and often much close than that in urban environments; a long range rifle isn't helpful there.) As far as hunting goes, 5.56x45mm in heavier weight bullets is quite adequate for varmint and mid-sized game at typical hunting ranges.
As far as armaments beyond rifles, American civilians don't have legal access to most of the things that win conventional wars. I can't buy modern artillery shells, or guided missiles. Small arms alone aren't going to win a conventional full-scale battle. OTOH, small arms and IEDs can make occupation impossibly expensive for an invader.
That said - yeah, Lucas Botkin is a far-right christian nationalist homo/transphobic shitbag. T-Rex Arms make great holsters, which sucks, since I'm not ever going to send any money to them for any reason. You have to take a lot of his shooting advice with a handful of salt, because he's not personally that good of a shooter. If you want good advice about how to shoot well, look specifically at people that compete; if a person is telling you how to shoot, but isn't willing to test their own skills on the clock and against other people, odds are that they're full of shit.
And yea - all of the violence is a social issue, and we should be trying to fix those, not banning shit. And by social issue, I don't mean some kind of personal responsibility nonsense, or this garbage idea that we need more harsh deterrents and prisons, more cops, etc.; I mean that we need to stop treating people like they're trash.
hahahaha
This is a fact. The military just gets better toys than rifles alone.
Then when you're all done fixing those social problems, you can have your guns back.
If you don't like idea, jump in your time machine and fuck off back to the 70s.
Cool, now lets do speech, religion, unreasonable search and seizure, right to remain silent, drinking, and voting. Until every single person out of 350M people in the US can use those rights in a way that is deemed socially acceptable, they should be completely eliminated.
We have deemed the way they use those rights to be socially acceptable.
with that attitude, let's do the same for automotives. Back to horse and buggy everyone, too many drunk and crazy aggressive drivers, too many needless deaths. Guess we should just ban em all!
Oh you mean the things we are constantly adjusting legislation for to reduce the risk to the public?
Fortunately, the alcohol lobby isn't donating millions of dollars to Republicans to make sure DUI laws never happen.
It's theater. They want to seem as if they're doing something about the problem, so they pass laws that sure do seem like they're relevant if you pay zero attention, in the hope the public is appeased. How appeased the public actually is, I have no idea.
Yeah they're plenty appeased. They see the constant mass shootings in America and say "thank fuck we don't live there". When their laws do fail, they're scrutinized by the public and the press. They demand to know how it happened and what is being done to stop it happening again. They demand accountability for anyone who dropped the ball.
It's measurably more effective than starting a gun worshiping cult and threatening children who survived school shootings.
If we're talking theatre though, remind us again now many tyrants America has overthrown? How is the crime rate going? How are rights going for women and minorities under the most pro-gun candidates?