(04-26-2021 03:16 PM)Rice93 Wrote: For the 3rd or 4th time I answered your question to the best of my ability. I didn't have the time to go back and research the details of the recent shootings to which you had referred.
*edit* If you think these laws wouldn't do much do you have an explanation as to why Canada has such lower rates of gun violence than the US?
Addressing any SINGLE event is a waste of time. I mean, if we're writing laws to stop THIS guy and then writing laws to stop THAT guy, we're going to be chasing our tails for quite some time.
The phrase 'common sense' has a meaning, although we may all draw the line in a different place... the idea is that these solutions make sense to anyone with common sense... and where we might disagree isn't on their efficacy, but their cost/benefit.
As I have said numerous times in numerous ways... rendering a weapon useless for self-defense is not a common sense idea. Any laws like this are not common sense, but nonsensical. Lots of laws are like this.
Laws that are not 'must issue' are similarly nonsense... especially if the people making the determination have a clear bias against gun possession. That seems so obvious I don't know why we have to discuss it. Laws in the alternative make much more sense. If you have a 'common sense' reason to deny someone a gun, you can do so.
Finally to the clear point of 'common sense' laws... let's talk about what you are trying to stop... Is it 'mass murders'? Is it suicides? Is it accidents? Is it shootings resulting from other crimes? Targeting those groups would require somewhat different methods... doesn't it make sense to look at the numbers and attack the biggest problems first? Even if you weight it based on 'ability to impact', at least you look at data and not merely rely on the 'emotion' of 'dead children'.
So I want to know what 'common sense' gun laws you think we should have and don't. To me, common sense would be to lessen drug laws, focusing on treatment for simple possession and even distribution, UNLESS a weapon is involved, in which case they go away HARD with no/little trade-off.
As to Canada, what you imply but don't exactly say is that you think the difference between the US and Canada in terms of our experience lies in our gun laws. You need to prove that up first rather than suggest that this is the difference, and thus we could have a 'better' outcome if we followed their gun laws. This is the epitome of American ignorance and is a massive part of the ACA and discussions about healthcare... where we look at other nations and simply assume that if we do today what they're doing today, that we will have similar outcomes... and then we scratch our heads and blame 'the other side' when it inevitably fails to deliver the outcomes.
We fail compared to Europe in terms of healthcare because MOST of those places have long histories of compliant populations based on royal rule... a history of compliance... so when they started passing healthcare laws (often 50+ years ago) their populations complied and they are NOW reaping the benefits. Telling an American he can't have a 60 oz sugar filled soft drink or food with a laundry list of ingredients is like telling them they can't breathe. BY FAR, individual choice and freedom is the greatest deterrent to improving healthcare outcomes in this nation... because too many people will choose a twinkie over a carrot. 'Socialism' (and I put that in quotes because I am referring to it as a direction, not a political thought) only furthers this, because individual choice/being different is not only encouraged, but favored... AND it is now funded.
How about we pass laws where you must prove that you NEED alcohol to get a license to drink? We could certainly cut down on drunk drivers and all of THOSE deaths (including liver damage etc etc etc) but we don't, do we? Why? What happened when we tried? Think about all of our efforts to curtail smoking? While it has certainly improved, how many die from THAT every year?
I think there is simply something in the American psyche that doesn't like being told what to do... AND there is something in our psyche to seek 'more'. Look at crime in the US vs crime in Canada. Look at population densities. I think familiarity breeds contempt. You can't just compare laws and outcomes in two different nations and pretend that everything else is 'the same'.
Mass shooters in the more common vernacular (a disaffected person who would have passed a background check) don't tend to happen in particularly dense populations. Drive By's (which are SOMETIMES 'mass shootings' depending on how effective they are) are usually related to other criminal activity and do. That's not an absolute, but it does seem anecdotally true.... So the rules to impact one event should be different from the ones to impact the other.
THAT is common sense... and I just don't see it in most of the proposals coming from the 'biggest voices' from the left on this issue.
WHat I most often hear from them is things that are designed to have a major impact on what they call a SYMPTOM, but little impact on the 'disease'. A law banning semi-auto rifles would absolutely reduce the number of semi-auto rifles in circulation... and THAT would be heralded as 'success' simply because people don't tend to want to be criminals... but I see almost no evidence that this would have a meaningful impact on the number of gun deaths.... and it would more likely turn millions of law-abiding gun owners into now disaffected persons, more likely to 'lose their minds' and go on a shooting spree.
(04-26-2021 06:37 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: I guess my question is how can someone who readily admits that he/she knows relatively little about guns form a useful opinion about what are "common sense" gun controls. Shouldn't someone have reasonable knowledge of the subject matter before opining on what constitutes "common sense"?
While this comment is targeted, I think it applies even more universally. If you come into ANY conversation with a large bias or an alternative goal, the barrier for 'common sense' becomes much less. What I mean is, if you have the opinion that fewer guns in circulation means fewer mass shootings... things that don't remove the number of guns in circulation become 'non-starters' for you. I'd ask the question differently.... If I could show you (and I can't, its just a way of thinking) that having everyone in the country have a gun would lead to fewer mass killings, would you be willing to do that?? If the answer is 'no', then your goal isn't to reduce killings... your goal is to reduce guns. It is NOT common sense that an elimination of guns would eliminate killings because a) MANY (most?) gun deaths are already from people who are not legal owners of guns and b) there are other ways to kill.
You clearly reduce mass killings by addressing the causes, not the means of that desperation that leads to the outburst.
