• @kitnaht@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Bernie had this right. Despite being pretty progressive, he wasn’t for outlawing semiautomatic firearms because they were black and looked scary. He believed that the right to arms was justified. This “AR Ban” is a great way to lose a lot of independents, and even some hard D voters like myself. There are a lot of dems who carry, and a lot of them who own the very firearms he wants to ban.

  • @Kiernian@lemmy.world
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    828 months ago

    Holy deep fried frankenfuck will the Democrats NEVER LEARN?!?!?!?!

    AFTER!

    You talk about guns AFTER the election!

    What in the actual pogostickingpopejohnpaul is he THINKING?!?!?

    The optics are 1000% awful here.

    Uvalde wasn’t enough, but a potshot at the planet’s most notorious living felon is?

    • zewm
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      278 months ago

      Lose the election speed run any %

      I’m 100% sure Dems are actively self sabotaging their re-election.

      There is no way the entire party cannot read a fucking room. This has to be on purpose at this point.

      • @Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
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        68 months ago

        P2025 will increase their stock portfolio value so they can dump it all and make millions.

        Then add some more taxes on the middle class to pay for it.

        • They get more fundraising dollars when Trump’s in power too. For the dems who are in states that’ll never vote them out, they’ll make a killing from a second Trump term and they’re rich enough to be insulated from just about all his decisions that fuck the rest of us over.

      • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        58 months ago

        To be fair there’s large swaths of the party that want him to step down. It’s his advisors and aligned leadership that insist on running him and these policies no matter what.

        • bufalo1973
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          28 months ago

          A though has just crossed my mind: what if the advisors want him to be there this way and wait till the last moment to say “you know what? Biden steps down [because of his health] and X runs in his place” so Democrat voters can say “we dodged the bullet”.

    • @crusa187@lemmy.ml
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      178 months ago

      Biden is simply the worst possible candidate, perhaps the only prominent Dem who can lose to Trump. And he’s determined to prove it.

    • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      118 months ago

      He’s trying to motivate the progressives. His campaign has finally figured out that progressives aren’t turning out in the swing states. After over a year of warnings. This, the rent thing, (which progressives immediately identified as entirely too high and a gift to landlords everywhere), and the exponential increase in supposed policy lists. (Which like any gift horse, shouldn’t be checked too thoroughly lest the corporate subsidies they hide shine through)

      What we really need him to understand is the problem is Israel. Any of this would have worked a year ago. But many progressives are not willing to support the genocide in Israel just to buy themselves comfort.

      • @Delta_V@lemmy.world
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        88 months ago

        the left don’t give fuck about gun control - the far left actively oppose it

        its the center right, pearl clutching, NIMBY, yuppy liberals who use it for virtue signaling, but even they won’t be budged on who they’re going to vote for based on the lip service about guns

        • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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          38 months ago

          The center left/right is Biden’s base too, they’re already sure to show up. But I don’t think it’s accurate to say the Left, like progressives, don’t care. They very much care, the ones further to the left want to arm up and the ones closer to the center want to ban guns. It’s an interesting intersection to look at but it pretty much comes down to how threatened they do or do not feel.

    • @tal@lemmy.today
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      8 months ago

      Maybe Biden actually does plan to announce that he’s not running in the 2024 general election. That way, this scores some political points with Democratic voters, but doesn’t impact the election much.

      Other than that, I don’t really see how this makes sense politically. I dunno. Maybe his team has done some kind of analysis and is convinced that a particular demographic in the swing states that they’re trying to win will like this or something, so it might be disadvantageous nationwide but a win locally.

      • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        38 months ago

        Basically, they got some breathing room on the replacement thing because of Trump getting shot at. But I guarantee you behind the scenes the message is the polling numbers in PA come up or else.

        • @tal@lemmy.today
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          8 months ago

          If it’s viable to run someone else, I’m pretty sure that it has to happen almost immediately, if it’s going to happen. The primaries have already happened, so if someone gets run, it’d have to be the party picking them already, and there’s very limited time to campaign.

          The general election is November 5. It’s currently July 17. That’s three-and-a-half months in which someone would have to sell themselves to the public.

          goes back to look at presidents who didn’t run again

          https://www.britannica.com/story/have-any-us-presidents-decided-not-to-run-for-a-second-term

          Johnson is not the only U.S. president who decided not to seek a second elected term. The others are James K. Polk, James Buchanan, Rutherford B. Hayes, Calvin Coolidge, and Harry S. Truman. (Theodore Roosevelt declined to run in 1908, after being elected president in 1904 and serving one term, but he again sought the office—and lost—as a third-party candidate in 1912.)

          So looks like the closest equivalent would be LBJ and Truman, and they still did so at the end of March in the election year, with twice the amount of time remaining that’s still left for 2024, and before the primaries.

          Like, I don’t think that it’d be realistic to wait and see what happens in the polls and then have someone run with even less time.

          • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            38 months ago

            Oh yeah they aren’t talking about waiting for long. That’s why Biden is throwing progressive policies at the wall. 5% rent, AWB, SCOTUS reform…

            And I thought there was a fourth. So I went to go look and the breaking news is he has Covid, right after saying he’d step aside if a major medical condition happened. So that’s going to get spun into a thing.

            You know I remember when I started studying politics and I was thankful we had nice campaigns instead of the drama laden ones you see in other countries. I think I even uttered it once and forgot to knock on wood. I’m sorry guys, I jinxed us.

            • @tal@lemmy.today
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              28 months ago

              So I went to go look and the breaking news is he has Covid, right after saying he’d step aside if a major medical condition happened.

              Ah, you’re right, news just coming out about it today.

      • @Kiernian@lemmy.world
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        108 months ago

        No, nor should they try, nor should they stick with their current seemingly nonsensical policy ideas about guns.

        The “gun problem” as it stands is really more of a symptom of our mental health crisis, our ridiculously confrontational “news” cycle, and a number of other HUMAN factors that aren’t going to be solved by banning a particular model of gun, though and no one seems to want to hear that.

        Screeching “Ban the right’s favorite model of toy” right before an election is beyond tone deaf, and an incredibly dumb move politically that won’t do squat except mobilize the NRA voters to vote the other way, which we DO NOT NEED with democracy in this country at stake.

        I can personally count multiple handfuls of coworkers and acquaintances who might have voted for him that will now vote trump or stay away from the polls over this.

        • @hydrospanner@lemmy.world
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          28 months ago

          No, nor should they try, nor should they stick with their current seemingly nonsensical policy ideas about guns.

          I can’t decide if I’m amazed, impressed, or utterly disgusted that the “stick to their guns” play on words was right there and you didn’t go for it.

  • TunaCowboy
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    818 months ago

    Braindead take, is Biden gonna come to my rescue when some christofascist militia has me on my knees in front of a ditch?

    • oce 🐆
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      8 months ago

      Sounds like a similar argument to how christofascists justify owning military weapons. It’s very disturbing from a European point of view.

      • @BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world
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        228 months ago

        The countries with nukes get permanent seats on the UN Security Council.

        Maybe once the US has been around for a few more centuries it’ll be different. in the meantime, if the crazies are armed you should be too.

        • oce 🐆
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          18 months ago

          That’s military not civilians, it seems justified as long as there are authoritarian regimes with imperialist ideas. Completely unrelated to civilians having military weapons. Unless you’re saying civilians should have nukes too.

        • oce 🐆
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          88 months ago

          Seems Ukrainian stopped it pretty well without having civilians carrying military weapons outside of military duty.

          • @Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
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            108 months ago

            Not true at all. Ukraine was handing out AKs like candy to any citizen willing to fight for several days before the invasion.

            • oce 🐆
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              28 months ago

              Because they were expecting a foreign military invasion, it still is military duty.

              • @Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
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                58 months ago

                Nope. A civilian fighting in a war does not make them part of the military. It makes them a civilian fighting in a war.

            • @14th_cylon@lemm.ee
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              28 months ago

              Ukraine was handing out AKs like candy to any citizen willing to fight for several days before the invasion.

              regardless of whether this statement is true or not, it would be because they were expecting and preparing themselves for military invasion.

              also there was armed conflict already in progress before start of the “3 day special operation”.

              Not true at all

              so completely true after all… 😆

              • @Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                No, you said Ukraine fought Russia back without arming their civilian populace, then tried to walk it back by saying they were expecting an invasion. Yeah, no kidding. But the fact of the matter is that they did exactly that. They handed out full auto rifles and held bomb making classes for the public. Ordinary people fought back, and a rifle behind every bush was indeed critical to pushing Russia back.

                Yes, it is absolutely true that Ukraine fought Russia by having ordinary citizens fighting back with military weapons.

                • @14th_cylon@lemm.ee
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                  28 months ago

                  then tried to walk it back

                  i couldn’t have tried to walk anything back for two reasons:

                  1. i am not the person you originally replied to.

                  and

                  1. the two statements are not contradictory, so there isn’t “taking anything back”.

                  But the fact of the matter is that they did exactly that. They handed out full auto rifles and held bomb making classes for the public. Ordinary people fought back, and a rifle behind every bush was indeed critical to pushing Russia back.

                  that is how it works. you are a civilian, until you are given weapons and task to do, such as fight invading armed forces.

                  how long you were on a army’s payroll before is just splitting hair. different para-military and guerilla forces are part of the armed conflicts all over the world.

                  and from the context of this discussion it is pretty clear that “civilians carrying military weapons outside of military duty” refers to some fucking meal team six redneck from some confederate state who only ever saw a war in television and carries his assault rifle to walmart to protect himself against people laughing at his small dick, not people fighting in actual war.

                  so thanks for playing darling, better luck next time.

      • If you think arming yourself because there are organized fascists in the country is a similar argument to fascists wanting guns to do fascism you’re a fascist and nothing less.

        • oce 🐆
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          18 months ago

          Ah, didn’t know you would consider most of EU and the developed world to be fascist, thanks for the insult.

        • chingadera
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          148 months ago

          I’m with you until the last part, I’ve tasted it, and I wouldn’t wish it on DJT himself. I understand the emotion, but there’s a better way homie

        • 🐍🩶🐢
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          58 months ago

          Hey, I appreciate you at least. At my old job they had a big office in Monterrey, and they were some of the most hard working teams I had the pleasure to work with. I absolutely lost my shit if anyone treated them any differently and I hated how the company ran that division. Working with those teams is the only thing I miss.

          The fact that they always had to get permission for any time off from the team leads, were scrutinized for every cent, and often not even given the tools they needed for their job, all in the name of “saving” money, was absolute bullshit. There really were some ridiculous double standards. We never denied time off and purchased what you needed. We knew how shitty the system was and did what we could.

          So, one shitty American to an awesome Mexican, thank you. For every cook, every maid, field slave, factory worker, engineer, installer, and human from your country that just wants to exist somewhere safe, feed their family, and have a roof over your head, thank you.

  • @not_that_guy05@lemmy.world
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    658 months ago

    Nah, I think I’ll keep my shit and wait for the far right to move.

    The fuckin scenario we are in I swear.

    Far right: let’s kill the left and do fascism.

    Democrats: let’s ban weapons right now while there’s threats of violence against democrats.

    Really?

    • @crusa187@lemmy.ml
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      78 months ago

      Just wait for it, Dems are preparing to finally kill the filibuster just days before they lose to republicans in a landslide defeat due to running the worst possible candidate, simply because he promised the donors nothing would fundamentally change and actually delivered on it.

      Afterwards, they’ll eat ice cream and blame the left for not voting hard enough.

  • @givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    658 months ago

    Just as dumb as when Beto said it before his election…

    It’ll never pass, and he thinks saying it will get votes, but all it does is motivate idiots to vote trump, even tho he actually did an executive action to try and close a loophole.

    It might not have stood, but it worked for a couple of years.

    • @Rakonat@lemmy.world
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      98 months ago

      On its own its a dumb idea, but I do think another commenter had it on the money how this is more a ploy to catch trump with his pants down. Trump can either agree and piss off his pro gun base (and look like a coward given his previous statements), he can argue against it and seem like hes inviting more violence and alienate anyone in his base who thinks gun violence is bad. Or he can ignore it and look like hes a doddering old fool oblivious to whats happening around him.

      • @Delta_V@lemmy.world
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        28 months ago

        alienate anyone in his base who thinks gun violence is bad

        ie exactly nobody

        to his base it would look strongbrave to ignore it with the most bigly beautiful thickskin

  • @AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml
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    608 months ago

    Banning guns is a losing policy for democrats. It only ever hurts them. I really wish they’d stop lighting political capital on fire with statements like this

    • @Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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      278 months ago

      I said this decades ago… if Dems dropped the gun shit and embraced safe shooting sports, they would win every damn election.

        • Queen HawlSera
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          28 months ago

          I actually know a guy who plans on voting for Trump simply because “They can’t drag me to the concentration camps if I have guns”

          He doesn’t think Biden wants to drag him off btw, he thinks Trump will… but it won’t matter because he had guns…

      • @AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml
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        108 months ago

        The number of people I know who won’t vote for them because of gun shit is too damn high. There are cheaper ways to solve gun violence anyway. Single issue voters are dumb, but democrats need to accept that they exist and this is the biggest single issue

      • Rich people would lose a lot of money should that ever happen, so whenever things start to look even a little good, you bet your ass some idiot in the Dems is going to scream “hell yes we’ll take your guns”.

  • @Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    This is like begging for Republicans to start making up conspiracies about how the Democrats set this all up to take away their gun rights.

  • @npz@lemm.ee
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    508 months ago

    It seems like such a lazy non-solution. Essentially telling shooters “Hey, from now on, you can only use ALL THE OTHER GUNS” as if that solves something.

    • @RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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      308 months ago

      This is the problem. All banning the AR will do is drive the popularity of another platform up. There’s a crapload of powerful semi-auto customizable platforms out there, it’s just that the AR variant is the most popular. It’s a stupid solution because it’s no solution at all - and I don’t mean that as a “not good enough so we should do nothing at all” thing, it’s just a completely pointless solution.

      • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        178 months ago

        Noooo you don’t understand, banning pistol grips and front sight posts is totally effective! It totally didn’t spawn an entire new segment of “compliant guns” that had the same level of lethality the last time we did it…

          • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            118 months ago

            Crime as a whole went down. In fact crime was already on the way down when the super predators bill and the AWB were passed. And the guns responsible for the majority of gun deaths were and are pistols, not “Assault Guns”. If you want to talk about preventing mass casualty shootings then let’s have that conversation. But Columbine happened in 1999. The AWB did not prevent mass casualty shootings.

        • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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          88 months ago

          It never has in the past. It’s always come down to cosmetics and new sales of 30 round magazines. So you’re left with the actual rifle and a magazine well that you’re just not supposed to put certain magazines in, on the honor system…

        • I clicked down through the article to see what they meant by “assault rifles like” the AR-15, but they didn’t link to any actual source describing what they meant. So I couldn’t tell you what guns are on the list.

                • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                  48 months ago

                  Yeah, and the cursed AR-15 pistol. Which really hangs a light on the ridiculousness of legislating form factor instead of measurable stuff like rate of fire, or internal function. Like if we had put into law that any weapon capable of firing X number of bullets per second is a fully automatic firearm and thus banned then bump stocks wouldn’t be an issue. But repeatedly we see the most asinine stuff, like banning thumbhole stocks.

    • @commandar@lemmy.world
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      148 months ago

      This is an issue that Biden has consistently refused to understand to be a political loser well before any suggestion of a decline. He’s consistently vocal on it in a way that would suggest he genuinely believes it to be a winning position.

      In reality, it’s practically impossible to do and mostly serves to energize the right and alienate voters in states he actually needs to win. It’d literally be better politically to say nothing on the topic, but he insists on pouring fuel on the “they want to ban our guns” fire.

      I have been, on the whole, positive about Biden, but this is a massive blindspot he’s held for a long time.

      • @Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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        38 months ago

        It’d literally be better politically to say nothing on the topic

        Biden need only say three words to clinch the election right now: “He missed. Damnit.”

  • @Delta_V@lemmy.world
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    448 months ago

    FUCK

    its like he’s trying to lose

    this is not going to get anyone excited about voting for him, but it will galvanize the opposition and push swing voters into staying home on election day at the very least

    • Cyrus Draegur
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      68 months ago

      He IS trying to lose.

      The Democrats don’t WANT to defeat the Republicans because they NEED their favorite excuse in order to get away with the fuckery they like to pull all the time, all their insider trading and industrial kickbacks especially. Whenever you criticize them, they point at the GOP and say “oh so you’d rather THEM?”

      Ironically, electing Democrats fucks up their plans.

    • @JimSamtanko@lemm.ee
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      58 months ago

      I don’t think there’s a lot of people on the left that are huge AR-15 fans. We’d be fine without it.

      • @hydrospanner@lemmy.world
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        178 months ago

        I think you’d be more wrong than you think. As they say, “If you go far enough left you get your guns back.”

        Not to mention moderates of both parties who are gun owners in suburban and rural areas of many of the battleground states he so desperately needs.

        • @faceula@lemmy.world
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          18 months ago

          As someone outside the US this circular debate about US citizens needing guns, because constitution is crazy. We’re over halfway through the year and the US is on track to break annual records, for gun deaths. Yet nothing happens because guns are constitutionality protected. It’s just crazy to an outsider to see absolutely nothing happen as a result. Boom more dead children, thoughts, nothing, boom more dead people. But if only we could do something, boom, more dead children, sigh, yeah but it’s the law. We must protect ourselves from bears. Boom more dead people. Silence.

          • @Malfeasant@lemmy.world
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            38 months ago

            Have you seen how we treat driving in this country? Guns aren’t the problem, a culture of callous disregard for other humans is, and we’re not going to fix that by trying to take guns away.

      • TunaCowboy
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        28 months ago

        While you may be left of fascists, you’re not left. The left is unabashedly pro 2A.

        • @JimSamtanko@lemm.ee
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          18 months ago

          Well, if the what you call the “left” makes all-encompassing blanket statements, then no- I’m not left. I’m a liberal though- and I don’t know anyone that thinks AR-15s are necessary to anyone.

      • @boonhet@lemm.ee
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        88 months ago

        I think they mean you want to have guns AFTER the insurrection.

        But then, what good are AR-15s against Abrams and F35s?

        • @RedAggroBest@lemmy.world
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          158 months ago

          An F-35 can’t stand on a street corner and enforce martial law. This argument falls apart when you look at any armed resistance fighting oppression.

        • @explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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          68 months ago

          Russia is finding out that even those planes and tanks are obsolete compared to cheap drones. At this point any laws we make won’t matter at all in Civil War II.

        • @nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          But then, what good are AR-15s against Abrams and F35s?

          Heres the thing about civil war. You don’t need to fight the f35. You live where the pilot, and his family lives. Theres a reason civil war is a last resort and it’s not because it’s unwinnable, it’s because there’s not much justification for the steps you have to take, so the ends better be damn well justified. To think American is some how immune to how civil conflicts work is fantasy.

    • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      68 months ago

      Dude if the fascists get control of the military then an AR-15 is not going to help you. In fact the best chance we have of avoiding a successful violent coup is military intervention. I know that sucks to hear, but it’s not the 1970’s anymore. The technology we developed for 20 years of fighting an insurgency makes it pretty suicidal to attempt an insurgency against the US military.

      • @hydrospanner@lemmy.world
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        138 months ago

        You mean the insurgency that eventually achieved all of its goals and reclaimed it’s power and control after the most powerful military in the world gave up and went home?

        Or did you mean it’s not the 1970s where that insurgency also did it to the second most powerful military…while a different insurgency did it to the one from the first example?

        You’re absolutely right that in a straight up fight no individual stands a chance against the US military (and I also tend to agree that the military would be the best friend of the people in that awful scenario) but there’s two or three points that muddy the waters here a bit: it’s not going to be just one, it’s not going to be a straight up fight, and if the population were somehow disarmed, there wouldn’t even be any struggle at all.

        I’m not saying I’d fight off a battalion from my front porch wearing my Crocs, but a) anything is preferable to being herded to my fate, and b) it’s not about one armed individual, it’s more about the unappetizing proposition of subduing an armed populace.

        • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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          28 months ago

          No, it’s not the 1970’s, you can’t expect to survive fighting an American infantry platoon with nothing but rifles anymore.

          You guys keep bringing up that the Taliban and Vietnamese won but you aren’t actually comparing the situations. In both situations they only won because we left voluntarily.

          So tell me, if half of America votes in a Fascist, when are they leaving?

          • @HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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            28 months ago

            You’re assuming that people in the military are going to be just fine with bombing cities where their friends live, or where they have family. If you’re going to say that the US military, run by fascists, is just going to steamroll actual patriots, that’s what you’re talking about. But the problem is that those pilots, the drone operators, the guys running artillery batteries, they’re likely going to know people and have friends and family that live in blue cities and states, and once they find out that their own friends have been killed as ‘collateral damage’, they’re likely going to be having second thoughts.

            Israel is able to level Gaza because there aren’t Israelis living in Gaza; how eager do you think members of the IDF would be to bomb the shit out of the Palestinians if they knew their own friends and family were getting killed with every bomb, and with every shell?

            • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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              28 months ago

              Then you don’t need an AR15 because there’s no tyrannical army to fight.

              You can’t have it both ways.

              • @HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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                38 months ago

                Here’s the lovely thing: I don’t need to demonstrate a need in order to exercise a right. I don’t need to prove I need to vote in order to have the right to vote. I don’t have to prove I need religion in order to be permitted to be religious.

                • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                  28 months ago

                  Oh so now you’re just abandoning any attempt to justify why a well regulated militia should allow you to carry around an AR-15 on the daily with no supervision.

            • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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              28 months ago

              No, I’ve told you. You just make it a thing to not get the point. Looking at your post history this is a pattern with you. You ask for clarification, make fun of the argument and then pretend you never got an answer. I’m not engaging with that anymore.

      • xerazal
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        78 months ago

        80’s-action-hero-MC syndrome is so prevalent in our culture it’s not even fucking funny.

    • @GiddyGap@lemm.ee
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      28 months ago

      Maybe look a little outside the US? Other Western countries are far, far safer and have much less gun violence with less weapons in circulation. The difference is the easy access to weapons.

        • @GiddyGap@lemm.ee
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          18 months ago

          And way, way lower gun ownership rates compared to the US. Plus very strict rules for owning a weapon, such as storage.

          • @CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works
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            28 months ago

            This is a strange angle because the UK does not have notably higher levels of knife ownership but has a disproportionately high level of stabbings.

            I think the idea that the cause of gun violence is guns is just flawed. People need a reason to commit violence, they don’t just do it for fun.

  • @Fades@lemmy.world
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    378 months ago

    That fucking horrible assassination attempt would have happened with or without the AR, this is just another knee-jerk emotional reaction, and it could NOT come at a worse time (pre-election). We’re fucked.

  • Stern
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    368 months ago

    Handguns used in ~2/3 of all gun murders in the U.S.: I sleep

    AR-15 used in one assassination attempt of geriatric running for president in 2024: REAL SHIT

    • Schadrach
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      8 months ago

      It’s also the most common rifle in the US, which is why it keeps showing up in various shootings that get media attention. They’re not super great rifles for any application, but they’re good for just about anything and designed to be modular so you can swap parts around if you need to.

      That probably cost him a few votes, since he is now openly one of those gun grabbers who hates the 2nd amendment that the GOP claims all Dems are as a scare tactic.

    • @whyalone@lemm.ee
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      48 months ago

      An AR-15 semi-automatic rifle or variant has reportedly been used in multiple mass shootings in recent years, including the Sandy Hook, San Bernadino and Las Vegas shootings. I think here is the real problem with ARs

      • Stern
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        8 months ago

        Okay? That doesn’t change the numbers though.

        https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/

        The FBI collects data on “active shooter incidents,” which it defines as “one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area.” Using the FBI’s definition, 103 people – excluding the shooters – died in such incidents in 2021.

        In 2020, the most recent year for which the FBI has published data, handguns were involved in 59% of the 13,620 U.S. gun murders and non-negligent manslaughters for which data is available. Rifles – the category that includes guns sometimes referred to as “assault weapons” – were involved in 3% of firearm murders. Shotguns were involved in 1%. The remainder of gun homicides and non-negligent manslaughters (36%) involved other kinds of firearms or those classified as “type not stated.”

        103 deaths in mass shootings vs. 13,620 gun murders means that the odds of you dying in a mass shooting are less then 1%. AR’s and attempts at bans thereof are meaningless feel-good legislation that doesn’t fix anything. They aren’t magic murder guns with homing bullets, they’re just popular guns because they’re perfectly adequate for what they do. Ban them and dudes will just use a different rifle… or multiple handguns.

        Completely for gun control, but the needless focus on AR-15’s when all the stats say it’s fucking dumb to do so annoys the shit out of me and reeks of taking advantage of the stupid who say shit like, “Why not shoot them in the arm???”. There are so many FAR better things Dems could push for. Modernize the ATF’s database. Plug gunshow loopholes federally rather then the hodgepodge of states we have now, put extreme risk/domestic violence laws on the books, tackle ghost guns before they become a larger issue. The list goes on, and on, and on.

      • @Malfeasant@lemmy.world
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        38 months ago

        Most car accidents involve at least one Toyota Camry. Does that mean Camrys are bad? No, it just means there are a lot of them.

        • @whyalone@lemm.ee
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          28 months ago

          Not a good analogy, you don’t see Toyotas running over kids in schools. I think the point we both made at the beginning,was guns used to kill innocent people. I am not against guns, but crazy people should not have access to them.

          • @lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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            28 months ago

            If someone’s too dangerous to own a gun then they’re too dangerous to be out in society unsupervised at all. They should be institutionalized and given mental health treatment until they’re no longer dangerous. Just taking their guns away won’t prevent them from harming others. They might not be able to do as much damage without guns but why is any body count whatsoever acceptable?

            • @whyalone@lemm.ee
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              18 months ago

              Good luck getting help in the usa The Mental Health Systems Act of 1980(MHSA) was legislation signed by American President Jimmy Carter which provided grants to community mental health centers. In 1981 President Ronald Reagan, who had made major efforts during his governorship to reduce funding and enlistment for California mental institutions, pushed a political effort through the Democratically controlled House of Representatives and a Republican controlled Senate to repeal most of MHSA.[1] The MHSA was considered landmark legislation in mental health care policy.

      • @outdated2139@lemmynsfw.com
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        38 months ago

        In high profile mass shootings. I don’t know if there is data on it but I’d assume most mass shootings are committed with handguns.