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0 pointshga13y ago0 comments

The Swiss are an obvious exception, although their gun-grabbers are steady tightening things.

But I think you're wrong about the path that restrictions would take in the US: the slowly boiling a frog approach won't accomplish the goal, anything too quick, sharp and raw will merely spark the 2nd American Civil War during which "gun violence" will go way up. And most any restriction scheme will increase gun violence, if only on the part of the authorities using force to seize guns and the like.

Maybe in the long term public attitudes could be changed, the 2nd Amendment repealed, and the path you envision might happen, but that's the work of generations and will require a reversal of the renorming of gun ownership we've seen in the last quarter century (I take Florida's 1987 establishment of a shall issue concealed carry license regime as the start; today 42 states have them, de facto or de jure).

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RyanMcGreal13y ago

Gun control in the US can start with control of those types of firearms most likely to be used in mass shootings: automatic and semi-automatic weapons with magazines that accommodate large numbers of rounds. The US can do what other countries have done successfully: ban sales, restrict ownership, and offer amnesty/buyback for weapons already in circulation.

The US can also mandate safe storage of weapons and ammunition in separate, locked, secure cases. That in itself would reduce the incidence of gun suicide and so-called crimes of passion by introducing a long-enough delay between decision and action that sanity prevails.

hgaOP13y ago

And the fact that "the US" (I assume the Federal government) trying to do this now, before changing the culture (see Holder's 1995 remarks on "brainwashing") would spark a civil war is ... a minor detail?

Unless by "restrict ownership" you mean, say, the same as the current policy for handguns, can't buy unless you're 21? Can be gifted with one, though.

"Lock up your safety" (so called "safe storage") is off the table per the Supreme Court. D.C. insisted on that sort of insanity and got slapped down in Heller, the state must allow guns to be readily available for self-defense.

RyanMcGreal13y ago

I don't think a real commitment to gun control would spark a civil war. So far, the paranoid right-wing tough talk has not coalesced into anything like a real movement, let alone a rebellion, despite the widespread belief among a certain segment of Americans that the president is a radical Muslim, foreign-born Manchurian candidate determined to turn American by stealth into a socialist dictatorship.

Then again, I might be wrong about the civil war bit. It's possible that America is simply culturally incapable of regulating its firearms in a safe, responsible way, and that a death-by-firearms rate several orders of magnitude higher than the rest of the industrialized world is an intractable side-effect.

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0 pointshga13y ago0 comments

The Swiss are an obvious exception, although their gun-grabbers are steady tightening things.

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RyanMcGreal13y ago

hgaOP13y ago

Unless by "restrict ownership" you mean, say, the same as the current policy for handguns, can't buy unless you're 21? Can be gifted with one, though.

RyanMcGreal13y ago

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