8 ms·

Why can't USA remove weapons from homes?

6 points by bluefone 4y ago

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.

eimrine 4y ago
If your kind of stupid constitution would be in Ukraine, Russian invasion just not happens.
- throwaway4good 4y ago
  If you look at 8 year old civil war in the Ukranian Donbas - it is not really weapons they are missing.
  - eimrine 4y ago
    Ok, let us look at 8 years ago. Igor "Strelkov" Girkin with 51 soldiers started from Crimea and went to Sloviansk (Slavyansk) and captured the city with 140 000 citizen. That action started the Donbas war. OK, there was kind of anarchy because there was no President (Yanukovich has escaped to Russia before the war and it was before acting president Turchinov). But anyway what will happen with 52 armed men if they enter into any 100k+ USA city for the sake of separatism? I bet they will be killed in first hour before even entering the city and all separatism sympathisers will be punished as well.
    - throwaway4good 4y ago
      Do you really think Donbas would have been more peaceful and stable had there been more weapons there?!
      - eimrine 4y ago
        I really think Donbas would have been more peaceful and less separatist if there had been more weapons before Strelkov's campaign of 2014. I can tell even more - there would be no Bucha massacre if any household of Bucha had something more powerful than a shotgun (50m effective range). And by the way, getting allowed for using even a hunting weapon in Ukraine requires passing through tremendous bureucracy. 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.
        throwaway4good 4y ago
        A large part of the population in Donbas is pro-Russian. So they would have guns too? Or would they not have guns?
        eimrine 4y ago
        They would have guns too, mr. Putin gave them much heavier weapons anyway. I would see a pro-Russian citizen of Ukraine with an ability to have a gun here but with no ability to have guns in the country they prefer - Russia.
    - throwaway4good 4y ago
      If the US was to go through a period similar to the post-Soviet breakup, I would be very pessimistic on how violent it would be, owing to the numbers of weapons present in the country.
Tabular-Iceberg 4y ago
I don't know, from the outside it looks pretty wild to me. With all the shooting and rioting I see why a considerable proportion of the population sees the second amendment as still being highly relevant. 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.
- krapp 4y ago
  The Second Amendment has the added catch that half the country is armed to the teeth and has promised to bathe the country in blood if anyone even tries to touch it... and that half would need to agree to allow a constitutional convention to begin with, which they never, ever will. 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.
  - Tabular-Iceberg 4y ago
    If it's the half of the country then it's a moot point, since you need a two thirds majority to pass a constitutional amendment anyway.
ddingus 4y ago
"What the people wish for" 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.
- pjc50 4y ago
  > robust gun education made mandatory for everyone as part of their primary education. Nineteen children have received a particularly final form of gun education as part of their primary education yesterday.
proc0 4y ago
Why so much focus on the tools and not the problem? Crazy people will use whatever to harm others. Should we ban literally everything that could be harmful? Guns today, knives tomorrow, how about no more acid or cleaning supplies, then no more cars either since you can drive a truck through a crowd, right? I think addressing the underlying cause would be much more effective. A gun in a society full of healthy people is just a tool.
- pjc50 4y ago
  > addressing the underlying cause would be much more effective 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.
  - proc0 4y ago
    Getting radicalized also has underlying causes. If everyone was at risk of this most people would be radicals, but of course most people listen to stuff like conspiracy theories and dismiss them quickly enough. Why not treat the problem in a way that focuses on this small part of the population that is susceptible to becoming radicalized? In other words, we know most people don't fall into that, so why treat everyone as a potential radical, instead of seeing what the difference is and trying to close the gap.
- thatwasunusual 4y ago
  > Why so much focus on the tools and not the problem? 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.
  - proc0 4y ago
    Regardless of the design of the object, it is the person who uses it. Obviously many guns are not for killing people, and those that are exist for protection. The real question is how would you collect the guns from criminals... they can't even collect their guns now, since I guess they wouldn't just hand them in without a fight. How would a new law solve this problem? Criminals will still hold on to what they have, and such a law would only put innocent people at risk.
ge96 4y ago
I'll never support no weapon ownership, can't defend yourself against say the gov. On the other hand, Japan seems like a nice place. Edit: will clarify I'm not an ACAB supporter or anything like that.
- thatwasunusual 4y ago
  Is this even an argument, or are you being sarcastic?
  - WaxedChewbacca 4y ago
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  When it comes to police brutality and lack of accountability I feel like the "defend yourself against say the gov" ship sailed ages ago.
dazc 4y ago
I live in the UK and very few people have guns, even the police are not routinely armed. Yet, we still have these kind of events from time to time. 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.
- pjc50 4y ago
  Realistically: no, we don't. The one and only school shooting, Dunblane, was a catalyst for the UK gun ban, and that was in the 1990s. There have been a few terrorist attacks carried out with bathtub-made explosives, some truck and knife terrorism, and a few shootings a year carried out mostly by organised crime. 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.
throwaway4good 4y ago
The constitution doesn't constrain the US. The judges sitting on top of it are foremostly politicians - if they wanted to, they could take things in a different direction.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pjc50 4y ago
  Indeed. The Roe V Wade overthrow shows how it's done. Judges are permanent legislators; it's been a critical part of the Republican project of past decades to pick them to ensure particular outcomes.
EddieDante 4y ago
1. The US isn't a "fully democratic country". It's a republic with somewhat democratically elected officials. 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.
deleted 4y ago
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thatwasunusual 4y ago
> Obviously many guns are not for killing people, [...] 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.
- proc0 4y ago
  > but the priority should be to stop selling weapons to people who obviously doesn't need them 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.
  - thatwasunusual 4y ago
    > If the government uses them, why not law abiding citizens? Crikey, you must be some kind of special stupid. Are all countries "law abiding" when it comes to use of weapons, you think?