On Wednesday evening, a rifle-toting gunman murdered 18 people and wounded at least 13 more in Lewiston, Maine, when he opened fire at two separate locations—a bowling alley, followed by a bar. A manhunt is still underway for 40-year-old suspect Robert Card, a trained firearms instructor with the U.S. Army Reserve who, just this summer, spent two weeks in a mental hospital after reporting that he was hearing voices and threatening to shoot up a military base.
While the other late-night talk show hosts stuck to poking fun at new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson on Thursday night, Stephen Colbert took his rebuke of the Louisiana congressman to a whole other level.
“Now, we know the arguments,” Colbert said of the do-nothing response politicians generally have to tragedies such as this. “Some people are going to say this is a mental health issue. Others are going to say it’s a gun issue. But there’s no reason it can’t be both.”
I gave up after Sandy Hook. If the population can’t prevent assault weapons from being sold after such a gun butchers children, then they won’t make their representatives do anything that makes a difference. You have to fix it someday, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
The year of Sandy Hook, the gun lobby increased their “donations” to Republicans from $8 million to $16 million per year, where it remains to this day.
Also, be wary of saying “assault weapons” as it’s vague and used by the pro-gun crowd to undermine discussion – semi-automatic guns are the weapon of choice for criminals, terrorists and domestic abusers and are not necessary for hunting nor hobby shooting.
It’s why they’re strictly controlled in most countries.
Oh God the only time fascists start wanting to be a grammar Nazi.
It’s semi automatic weapons. Just because you can switch out one pin to make it full auto means nothing.
It’s a magazine not a clip!
Just like every word in the world, they’re all made up and become defined by the culture using them.
If I say assault weapons and you understand what I mean, then the word is fine.
Once you get into the legal areas, absolutely everything needs to be defined. Under assault weapon it’ll start listing every type and parameter with strict definitions of what they mean. They like to pretend that’s not part of the bill though lol.
However, there are farm rifles that have been semi-automatic for many decades, such as the mini-14. Also my Ruger 10/22 is an auto loading semi-automatic rifle.
Neither of these would be considered an assault rifle as they do not have a pistol grip.
I think that we should just allow these types of weapons under a owner’s permit, and then make sure that people take a basic training course, mental health and background checks, and make them liable for any harm that may cause through their ownership or negligence with these weapons.
I should also make it way harder to get a concealed weapons permit and restrict pistols more than rifles as most gun shootings are with pistols.
This is similar how Austria approaches gun ownership which in some ways is more lax than the US (they allow suppressors for instance).
Unfortunately rational discourse around gun laws in this country just simply does not happen. People are not motivated for change around these laws if they’re not motivated by emotional response.
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The problem is that the “assault weapon” wording makes it easier for pro gun to dismiss you. The US has a lot of people obsessed with guns. I’d love if the US could just ban guns entirely, but reality is that we’d have to at least start with reasonable baby steps and cannot give them any easy way to get out. By using the “assault weapon” wording, you’re just making it easier for them to dismiss gun legislation cause they’ll claim “it’s too vague” (even if it’s not).
It’s unfortunate that wording has to matter so much, especially in colloquial usage, but it’s such an uphill battle to get even the slightest gun restrictions in place, so we sadly do need to be perfect. And yeah, it’s stupid. It’s dumb that the US can be like it is and people will still defend their guns to the death. But we have to account for that if we want to make anything better.
Within days of Sandy Hook, an ex friend of mine showed me footage he saw on Alex Jones throwing questions into if they weren’t all actors. People will go to ridiculous levels of hypocrisy or mental blindness to ensure they don’t have to actually assess their values and beliefs.
Everyone talks about assault weapons and mad shootings and ignores the vast majority of gun homicides.
All types of rifles combined make up 3% of homicides, and just about 1% of firearm deaths (handgun suicides are about 2/3rd of gun deaths).
That’s the reason the Dems didn’t really care when the AWB expired in the 2000s. Every single objective study of homicide rates, gun murder rates, and mass shootings showed no statically-significant impact of the AWB.
The real danger was easy, cheap access to handguns. A $1000 rifle that’s hard to conceal isn’t nearly as dangerous as a $200 handgun that can hold just as much ammunition and be easily concealed.
But after DC v Heller, it became clear that handgun ban wasn’t going to be possible, so the focus switched back to black rifles.
We have a lot of broken gun laws in this country, but I’m much more concerned with cheap zinc handguns designed to be disposable than I am an AR-15.
