@dr-pepper Very well, there are circumstances where an automatic weapon is useful.
Now let me ask you a completely unrelated question: Are there circumstances common enough to warrant an individual civilian to own an automatic weapon (specifically an automatic, not a pistol, or shotgun)? Follow up to that: If the answer is yes, does legalizing automatic weapons do more good (like in the situations in the previous question) or more harm?
Your explanation of US violence rates is amateurish and in direct contradiction to pretty much every study ever done on the topic. Furthermore, your criticisms of US policing and prison should apply doubly to liberal European countries like France and England. And yet those have less violence than the US and a lot less gun violence.
The problem is that the guns will be removed from the hands of innocent people that had them legally and the remaining guns will be the ones obtained illegally.
If I could point and go “NU!” I would be doing so. That’s the NRA rhetoric I’m talking about. Their unofficial motto since forever has been “If we criminalize guns, only criminals will have guns”. Time and data have proven again and again how false this statement is. If there are less guns, less criminals will have guns. One reason the US has so many mass shootings is that it is so easy for criminals to get guns. Sure, if someone was really intent on committing a gun crime, they would find a way to do so illegally. But as things stand, they don’t have to be really committed to it, they just need that spur of the moment desire to shoot up a school and they can have their weapons in hand within minutes.
I question the statement that “people consider guns to be a necessary evil”. Every piece of gun propaganda out there, from magazines I see in Rite Aid to Deep South Congressional testimony speaks about the “right” to own a gun. As if it’s something that everyone must have and is required to have. I’m not scared of people having their legally owned guns taken from them. Why should I be? Fakert, I would welcome it. These people sadly bought into the ridiculous pro-gun narischkeit and are so utterly convinced that they need their guns that any attempt to limit the danger is seen as equally evil as genocide.
Now on to your questions:
- It would be a long and slow process to get all the illegal guns off the streets and into scrap piles. The government should start programs to destroy any illegal gun or any used in a crime. Then they should start severely limiting the number of guns allowed to be manufactured, bought, and registered. It would take years, even decades, but over time the number of guns will hopefully drop to a level where a criminal will have a hard time getting one
- First off, I have my doubts if criminals refrained from breaking into homes out of fear of guns. Break ins happen in trigger happy cities too. Second, mace, tasers, baseball bats, and alarm systems work fine. I would even possibly consider that a small caliber limited capacity pistol (.22 with less than six bullets before reloading) would be useful. I see no logical reason why anything more is necessary
- How many dangerous weapons are flowing across the Southern open border on a daily basis? More or less than are bought legally at gun shows?
- “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. “If we criminalize guns, only criminals would have guns”. Don’t you understand how serious this is? You didn’t even realize it, but at some point in you educating yourself about firearms you’ve absorbed literal corporate propaganda into your psyche and are convinced that you came up with it on your own!
- It’s not a zero sum game. You can take guns away from people and help with mental health. In both the long and short run it would help. If you think that you need an AR-16 machine gun to protect yourself from someone with BPD having a bad day, then that says a lot about the state of both mental health and gun control in this country.