I have three guns. One I inherited, two I bought right before California turned up gun restrictions. Possibly the greatest time for gun makers was when Hilary Clinton had a clear lead in the race for president.

I bought my three when I saw videos of the ATF under Biden start random "knock and talk" sessions for those who recently bought more than one firearm. They're all in a friend's gun safe as I have had bouts of depression, so I won't keep it in my home... I know it kind of defeats the purpose... but I'm very much a supporter of all of my civil rights, including and especially 2A.

I do some range days a couple times a year.

No conspiracy required. There's a lot of money to be made lobbying against guns - in the hundreds of millions of dollars a year - regardless of efficacy.

Until knife killings start to rise (UK). Beyond this, I've seen several interventions of armed citizens stopping a crime in progress, when the police are still in route. When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

My dad was ex-army, retired PD (detective, undercover) and a heavy 2A advocate. I grew up with guns around so it wasn't some weird, scary thing to see. I have many friends who also are heavy 2A who also grew up with guns in the home. It's first a matter of familiarity and second a matter of civil defense. I'm not a fan of "must flea" laws, and not a fan of restricting gun rights at all.

And yeah, if you can afford a tank and the ammo for it, as far as I'm concerned, you should be able to own and operate it. I would draw the line at nuclear weapons and materials.

"documented, empirical fact"

I won't try to make as strong a claim as the person you are responding to, but unfortunately, the politicized nature of the topic makes research on gun violence, especially as it relates to gun laws in the US, extremely fraught. The vast majority of research articles are plagued with issues. One should not just blanket trust the research (in either direction, and there are definitely peer reviewed journal articles pointing in different directions).

The claim you responded to was too strong, but for similar reasons, yours is also far far too confident.

Do you have a source that isn't the anti-pickle alliance's statistics on anti-pickle laws proving why you should implement their anti-pickle laws?

The most common gun death is suicide so that tracks pretty well.

But I doubt most people count suicide as “violent crime”.

Garbage methodology, state by state policies need to use something like a difference in difference study measure actual effect sizing

"gun deaths."

You ever wonder _why_ they state the problem in such an abstract way?

It's because that statistic is an abstract itself. It combines, in my view inappropriately, suicide, murders, and accidental injuries.

There are 2x as many suicides every year over murders.

Anyone bandying about the "gun deaths" statistic has either been misled or is attempting to mislead others.

“Common sense” is a red flag for me. Obama (who I voted for twice, don’t come at me) pitched revoking second amendment rights for people on the Do Not Fly list as “common sense”. My common sense says we shouldn’t use a secret, extrajudicial government watch list with documented problems with false positives to revoke constitutional rights.

https://www.criminalattorneycincinnati.com/comparing-gun-con...

Yet another lie by ommision. Violent deaths by guns have no relation to strength of gun laws. What your link measures is the number of accidental deaths by guns. If gun owners want to kill themselves it's not my job to keep them safe.

It's also a documented empirical fact that arresting the criminals in DC has reduced shootings to virtually zero.

> These are objective facts.

The characterization of the federal government as "broken" (at least in this capacity) and "dysfunctional" is a normative judgment you're making based on your own subjective value preferences.

Some -- perhaps most -- Americans regard the federal constitution's ability to restrain states from enacting policies that transgress against generally accepted individual rights as desirable, and working as intended.

> A broken federal government means guns are easily exported from red states with practically zero gun laws to blue states where they are used to commit crimes

So why are the crime rates in most of these "red states" you are referring to often so much lower?

> Any basic research will yield many studies (including from the American government) showing that the majority of guns used in crimes in Mexico are traced back to the States

I couldn't give less of a fuck if this were true "research" or not: this isn't my problem, nor is it a valid reason to restrict my rights.

Also, please: a multi-billion-dollar criminal enterprise can't build or buy a machine shop and enslave or hire some machinists? They can build submarines and drones, but just couldn't possibly operate without US firearms? What reality do you live in?

Its just a political wedge issue in the US, its not really "about" guns anyway

You don't cooperate with abolitionists using compromise. You will never come to an agreement that satisfies both parties. By definition it is impossible.

Interests are also not always clear, any movement that wants to restrict activities using the law, is going to attract opportunistic power-seeking individuals. There's always crazy carve out exceptions in these proposals that allow the wealthy and the powerful to use and possess firearms that regular people cannot reasonably expect to have. It's laws to protect the powerful from the everyone else. Billionaires are creating armed doomsday compounds in countries like New Zealand, while supporting legislation that makes it harder to own a gun for self defense.

Also mass shootings are statistically the least likely cause of a gun related death. They are in the news because they are novel, not because they are likely to happen to most people.

Calling anything about gun control laws "common sense" is disingenuous at best. I'm coming at this from the "you go left enough and you get your guns back" side of the whole debate, but it's extremely difficult to solve a problem that consists of "tool used for its intended purpose, but in the wrong context".

Guns kill things. That's their primary purpose, it's why they exist. The people who aren't interested in guns for that purpose are easy to please: they don't really care about gun laws except in so much as they stop them from buying fun toys. They'd probably be fine with wildly invasive processes (being put on lists, biometric safeties, whatever), so long as they were given something in return. Something like, "You can have machine guns, but they need to be kept locked up at a licensed gun range".

People who just want guns for hunting are likewise easy to please. I'm not aware of any gun laws that have seriously effected the people who just want to shoot deer, because the tool you use to shoot an animal that isn't even aware you're there is pretty fundamentally different than those you to shoot someone who doesn't want to be shot.

The problem is people who want guns because of their utility against people, whether that means self defense, community defense, or national defense, fundamentally need the same things ( a need that is very expressly protected by the second amendment) as the person who wants to shoot a bunch of innocents. The militia folk might be fine with restrictions on handguns, but handguns are bar none the best choice for the self defense folk. The self defense folk might be fine with the existing machine gun ban, or other restrictions on long guns, but the militia folk need those for their purposes. The self dense folk are probably fine with being put on a list, but the militia folk who are concerned about the holders of that list are rightfully opposed to that.

IMO, the most effective gun law that isn't a complete non-starter to any legitimate groups of gun owners is the waiting period. It's an effective policy that substantially reduces suicide. That's a good thing. Requiring sellers to not sell to people under 18, or those who are obviously a threat to themselves and others is also largely unobjectionable. Punishing parents who fail to secure their weapons from their children, also a good thing.

No one's in favor of mass shootings, but it's not anywhere as simple as saying "common sense gun regulations".