GOP: Gentlemen Gentlemen this is a mental health issue which is we can’t ban 2A rights.
Everyone: Ok then give us better mental health?
GOP: Nope that’s commie talk. Just get Jesus. (Also shocked why people hate them)
I support the 2nd. I also support single payer healthcare, including dental coverage and expanded mental Healthcare services. Then again, I dont support Republicans.
If dems got off the 2A stuff they would get more voters ::cough cough:: Texas. I know people that are like yeah abortion is not a deal breaker for me but guns are. Mostly people who are too old to have kids anyway. I’m sure Mass shooting will go down once we have social nets to get people the help they need. Guns are like Cars. Fine when used by responsible adults baaaad otherwise. No one does these things because they have happy content lives.
Watching beto shoot himself in the foot with the gun grabbing line should have been a bigger indicator. Theres plenty of room for pro 2a dems and dems with complex views on the issue. Gun ownership is rising in both parties, dems faster than republicans. Dems cant pass laws even if they win, they can’t afford to do stupid no chance moves that cost them seats.
If Dems focused on what actually would curb the violence, and dropped guns. They’d sweep the elections for decades.
I support legal safe gun ownership, usage, and training. I believe the second amendment doesn’t apply anymore though. “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…” This is not true anymore. It was written in a time where standing professional armies weren’t the norm by people who never expected the US to reach a state to have one.
Gun ownership should be protected by the 9th amendment to an extent though, as abortion and all of our other traditionally held rights are.
certainly looks like you would need to protect yourself against a soon-to-be dictatorship though
I’m really happy with the level headed reasoning in this post and the replies. Feels like I’m not alone in thinking “gun bans are stupid” and “can’t we address systemically WHY people feel the need to flame out in a blaze of violence, to reduce violence?”
Also BTW there’s a “Socialist Rifle Association”, and I might not agree with them on 100% everything obviously, I just think it’s cool and they seem alright.
Call me crazy, but maybe erring on the side of caution makes sense when we’re talking about the right to own tools designed to kill things.
I mean, when you’re talking about, essentially, “Hey just to be safe we’re going to permanently remove one of your constitutional rights without due process.” then it’s a no-go for me.
Imagine if anyone arrested just for being present at a protest that turned violent, whether that individual was violent or not…or even just made a social media post that they agreed with the protestors…well sorry, but just to be safe, we’re going to revoke your first amendment right to assembly for the rest of your life.
Erring on the side of caution, you know. Never can tell when those peaceful assemblies might turn violent and you’ve already shown a risk factor.
I just wish Dems would stop trying to ban any guns, and not because I’m against gun control, but because it’s a losing issue. It’s never passing through this Congress, and if it ever did, the Supreme Court would strike it down. Given that that’s fairly undeniable, why lose the people who organize and vote on this issue alone?
This has been said about many issues in the past. Effecting change isn’t easy but giving up doesn’t help. Americans support gun control. Only our crappy political system stands in the way.
Americans support gun control. Only our crappy political system stands in the way.
What do you think the other person meant when they said, “It’s never passing through this Congress, and if it ever did, the Supreme Court would strike it down.”?
This has been said about many issues in the past.
Which issues? Civil Rights? Gay marriage?
Those are issues in which the American people were opposed, and then societal views changed. As you pointed out, that isn’t the case here. Americans already favor reform, but they aren’t going to vote these people out based on the status quo.
Newtown was the wake up call, if nothing changes after a bunch of small children get massacred, you’re not getting change. Not without wholesale changes. Proposing an AWB is political theater, nothing more.
If it’s popular, why wouldn’t the Democrats keep fighting for it?
Whether it will realistically happen anytime soon, yeah I’d say the odds are very low.
But let’s not just give up as it can’t ever happen.
Also “political theater” is like half of actual politics, so don’t knock it too easily :P
It’s the worst political theater. It makes it look like something is being done when it isn’t. Gun sales go up and liberals feel good. More kids die.
it’s a losing issue. It’s never passing through this Congress, and if it ever did, the Supreme Court would strike it down.
You know, that’s exactly what people said about Roe v. Wade and about banning abortion.
Turns out that you can keep losing on an issue for 50 years, yet winning only once will drastically change the trajectory of the entire issue.
That’s the opposite situation. Pro-life voters and pro-gin voters are the 2 largest single-issue voting groups in the country.
Look at it this way. If you swapped Trump and Biden’s positions on abortion but changed nothing else, how many pro-choice Democrats would have voted for Trump?
Basically zero, right. Meanwhile, millions of pro-life Republicans would have flipped because abortion is the singular issue upon which they base their vote.
Guns are in the same boat. Hundreds of thousands of voters vote strictly based on their love of guns. There’s no political advantage in the general election for being anti-gun, and the Dems are sacrificing a whole lot of seats to fight this losing battle.
Yeah nevermind that the constitution says “shall not be infringed”’ If abortion rights were in the constitution there would be no way of banning it, just as it is with firearms.
Actually it says that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.* It says nothing about procuring them. Banning gun sales is totally on the table. Plus, “arms” is kinda a funny word. It doesn’t mean just guns. Yet most people would agree that I shouldn’t be allowed to build bombs in my basement. Isn’t that a violation of the second amendment?
Imagine just for a second, that they drop the issue and gain control of all 3 branches and then actually do something about it rather than constantly struggling to win because of single policy voters.
Roe had good results, but it wasn’t a good decision.
Casual observers of the Supreme Court who came to the Law School to hear Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg speak about Roe v. Wade likely expected a simple message from the longtime defender of reproductive and women’s rights: Roe was a good decision.
Those more acquainted with Ginsburg and her thoughtful, nuanced approach to difficult legal questions were not surprised, however, to hear her say just the opposite, that Roe was a faulty decision. For Ginsburg, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that affirmed a woman’s right to an abortion was too far-reaching and too sweeping, and it gave anti-abortion rights activists a very tangible target to rally against in the four decades since.
Ginsburg and Professor Geoffrey Stone, a longtime scholar of reproductive rights and constitutional law, spoke for 90 minutes before a capacity crowd in the Law School auditorium on May 11 on “Roe v. Wade at 40.”
“My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped the momentum on the side of change,” Ginsburg said. She would’ve preferred that abortion rights be secured more gradually, in a process that included state legislatures and the courts, she added. Ginsburg also was troubled that the focus on Roe was on a right to privacy, rather than women’s rights.
“Roe isn’t really about the woman’s choice, is it?” Ginsburg said. “It’s about the doctor’s freedom to practice…it wasn’t woman-centered, it was physician-centered.”
Yes, there’s no way Roe would have been overturned by that Congress or that Supreme Court (50 years ago). Just like this Congress and Court will not allow significant gun control. Republicans gerrymandered districts and refused to seat a justice, thereby changing those things. Thank you for proving my point.
They kept pushing it as an issue they care about, and eventually they got through. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t.
Seriously. Pivot to mental health funding or something. At least that has a chance of passing and even if it doesn’t cut down on shootings it will still help people.
It’s also a lightning rod issue that turns more voters away than it attracts.
Sure there are staunch anti-gun people under the Democrats’ tent but they’re not the kind of people who will vote Republican if the party suddenly scaled back or ended its decades long futile efforts at gun bans.
On the other hand there are a ton of white working class voters on the suburban-rural fringes of swing states who would absolutely at least consider a Democrat if the party wasn’t so easily cast as “gun grabbers and job killers who only care about minorities”.
You get a pro-union, pro-legal-gun Democrat on a ticket who speaks on issues affecting rural whites as much as they do urban non-white voters (who are equally important), and you’d have a winner in many of these areas where they’ve been quite red, but not so rabidly Trumpy as other areas.
Even moreso if that’s a change that happened at the party/platform level.
I feel like from a campaign strategy standpoint, guns are just a lose-lose for the Democratic party. Playing to a base that would be loyal anyway for other reasons, even if the party dropped that position completely (which would not only eliminate a deal breaker issue for rural Democrats but also eliminate a cornerstone of the GOP platform in “protecting the second amendment”). Unless they did a complete about face and suddenly became as cozy with the NRA as Republicans, anti-gun voters might be upset, but they’re still voting blue.
After all there’s still abortion, electoral reform, racial justice, the environment, education, foreign policy, infrastructure, legal weed, LGBT rights, healthcare, and a host of other issues where the Dems are still their people.
The same can be said for literally every issue.
“Oh if only the Democrats stopped talking about abortion, electoral reform, racial justice, the environment, education, etc. they’d be more appealing to certain voters!”
Capitulating on a widely supported issue just to possibly attract a minority group of voters is a show of weakness.
Enforce our ban on domestic abusers owning firearms. We already passed it, but no one enforces it. It would eliminate a huge chunk of gun violence in the nation, but its not as appealing to the mob as the “assault style” ban.
What do you propose?
I guess I’d ask you the same question. I don’t have a proposal because I don’t think any of it will make it through Congress. And if it somehow made it through Congress, the Supreme Court would strike it as unconstitutional.
Short of voting out these members of Congress and balancing the court, there’s no hope of reform. So drop the issue to appeal to more voters. Win more elections, balance the court, then you’re in a position to effect change.
Also, AWBs are pretty useless. They tend to grandfather in existing weapons and they exclude handguns, which are the weapon used most often to commit murder. Magazine limits, which were in the 1994 law, were the only piece to show a genuine reduction in violent crimes.
I guess my proposal would be to repeal and replace 2a. Probably won’t happen until the silent gen and the boomers are gone.
Plus if they focused on mental health and preventive measures they could maybe bring over some fire arms enthusiasts, who otherwise vote republican or atleast get them to not vote.
Mind you the effectiveness may be scattershot at times since its alot easier to get the guy going postal than it is to get the an ideologically motivated shitbag.
It’s not a mental health issue. There are people with mental health issues all over the civilized world and those countries don’t deal with mass shootings weekly, even if the citizens are allowed access to guns. It’s the relatively unrestricted access to firearms with minimal to no oversight of gun owners, and no rules to secure said firearms.
Edit: well, here we go again.
Okay and? This was my point, ya aint gonna get a solid backing for any type of gun control due to the courts. I support firearms licensing, so long as its about as easy/hard as getting a drivers licence. The thing is though that going “its the guns” while technically true is about as helpful as going “its cause of capitalism” great youve found the problem now what practical solution do you have?
My point was moreso to give an example of what the Dems could do to syphon votes from the republicans. The current “lets ban guns” shtick clearly aint working so come up with a better solution. I think folks who make their identity all about firearms are stupid, but that also means they should be easy to be made apathetic on voting at minimum.
“minimal oversight and rules” he says. Tell us you’ve never bought a gun without telling us.
Please don’t speak about things you have no clue on. There are plenty of rules and restrictions. The fact that our federal government can’t or doesn’t enforce them properly means the law abiding citizen should suffer?
The fuck outta here with that nonsense.
Because it wasn’t the reauthorizing of the assault weapons ban, it was an entirely new version of… The same measures we had 2 decades ago…
The fuck are you talking about it would never pass Congress or the supreme Court, it’s the same damn thing we already had you muppet.
Are you under the impression the politics of 1994 are remotely similar to 2023? Have you read the Supreme Court cases of Heller (2008) or Bruen (2022)?
Name call all you want, but you’re the one tragically out of touch. This Congress, especially the Republican majority in the house would NEVER pass this bill. SCOTUS has completely changed gun rights in this country since 2008. First finding an individual right to gun ownership, then drastically reducing those gun limitations that are allowable under the 2nd amendment.
I suggest you do some reading before spouting nonsense. Your comment somehow states the bill is simultaneously “entirely new” and also the “same damn thing”. Muppet.
Those things will all vanish eventually. We currently have the most conservative SCOTUS in basically a century, and the Republican party is near-fascist politically. These are not sturdy foundations for a legal concept. The truth is, society has never accepted murder and cruelty as a necessary part of society. It’s always just a handful of elitists or bigoted fanatics holding society back.
Eventually, many of our current laws and customs will become viewed as the next version of Jim Crow or anti-LGBT laws, and become so unpopular they get repealed. Some take decades to go down, but they always go down. The concept of gun rights will be one of them.
The court’s opinion swung one way in 15 years. It can swing back in another 15. Three of the 4 oldest justices are Republicans and it only takes 2 being replaced with Democrats to flip the court. Totally within the realm of possibility.
Disagree. The solution is to push for as much gun control as possible, until eventually the dam breaks and the 2A dies. In the long run, gun ownership in the US will resemble how it works in other Western countries, which is to say not much at all.
Disagree. The solution is to push for as much gun control as possible,
That’s essentially nothing.
…until eventually the dam breaks and the 2A dies.
And I think elephants should fart rainbows, but both of our proposals lack any consideration of how we make that happen.
In the long run, gun ownership in the US will resemble how it works in other Western countries, which is to say not much at all.
Eventually? There are roughly 400 million guns in this country…how many generations is “eventually”?
I’m not even disagreeing with you, but hoping doesn’t make it happen. How do we get there? What are the steps? Does your projected path take into account the systemic impediments?
It’s the same story as every other form of cruelty or injustice in American history. People look abroad, realize that such a problem never existed or was solved elsewhere, and eventually will push for the same type of reform in the US.
It doesn’t matter how long it takes or how hard it is. It’s the same story as every other big accomplish of the past, whether it’s ending slavery or women’s voting rights. They took decades to happen, but they all eventually happened.
And now you have lost anyone who like me would be open to voting Democrat more often instead of third party, because I don’t want to flat out lose my 2A rights. I don’t want to vote Republican because I don’t want to lose other rights in the slide towards religious fascism either. If every side is running on a platform of pick which rights you least want to lose, at least I’ll have my guns for protection when the fascists do successfully pull a coup and society collapses.
Yeah, same pro-fascist shit as always. Seen your type a thousands times now.
My feed:
You wanna fix American politics and with that nearly all other problems with it?
Stop the “winner takes all” system you have right now.
You’ll get a hundred political parties that have to compete with eachother. People will start voting more because now there are parties they can actually agree with and you get rid of this “always nearly 50/50” bullshit and one big party that blocks any proposal to actually improve the country
Want to stop the bank on assault rifles? Good luck stopping 20 parties
It’s called First Past The Post system.
CPG Grey has a series of fun videos explaining why we have shity politicians. https://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom/
Banning specific guns is pure theater, even if it passes. There’s zero real safety in it.
Speaking on behalf of the rest of us, we think it would be cool if we tried to see if it would go differently before we just accept the opinion of random people on the internet with zero proven credentials to weigh in on the subject.
If that’s okay with you.
America had an assault weapon ban previously and during that time is when school shootings actually started.
You mean this?
Could you tell us exactly what shooting you believe “started” them all? Because according to the article, lives were saved ass a result of the ban.
Is that why there are very few shootings in other developed countries where gun control is also infinitely stricter?
Like Mexico where the schools have been hardened since the 80s and there are millions of guns and criminals?
Try again. The “Western nation” schtick is incorrect and getting stale.
Ah yes, the famously developed and first world country of Mexico!
It’s not like Mexico is stuck in development hell thanks in large part to it’s larger northern neighbor exercising their significantly larger influence upon them or anything
You’re so insecure about shit that’s bad about the US, it’s kinda pathetic to see you on every comment thread poorly defending the US
