Because other people don't have this problem. And when you get right down to it, they have megaphones and placards, while their opponents have guns. Amazingly, the gun owners have more political power.

My views on gun ownership are complex and don't fit neatly into existing pigeonholes - I'm very much in favor of the right to own weapons, but also in additional social responsibilities that ought to accompany that. I have a lot of sympathy with the gun control crowd even though I disagree with many of their arguments, but the fact is their tactics are simply not working. Unfortunately they don't want to change their approach because they're so locked into the moral dimension of their argument that they're unwilling to consider any other approach. Likewise the 2nd amendment absolutists are so intransigent that they keep retreating to a hardline position of 'shall not be infringed! shall not be infringed!' and then complaining about how unreasonable their opponents are.

Can you elaborate on this? Everyone I know has been citing the UK

Honestly, a lot of the UK stuff seems to almost have more in common with US gun owner culture than their anti-gun campaigners, though obviously organisations like the NRA would not be happy at all with UK levels of gun ownership restrictions. The fact that self-defence is not a valid reason to have a gun or any other weapon here would also be unacceptable to pretty much everyone in the US from what I can tell, not to mention unconstitutional. (This includes stuff like pepper spray.)

You're pretty close. Those rounds are measured in millimeters instead of caliber, so they should be 7.62mm (really 7.62x39mm or 7.62x51mm) and 5.56mm. The equivalent in calibers is .30 and .223. Notably, .223 is also an actual round and some rifles can fire either .223 or 5.56 (iirc, the cartridges are the same dimensions, but the pressure ratings are different).

AR-15's are typically chambered in 5.56mm. An AR style rifle chambered in 7.62x51mm would be an AR-10. Although you can get AR platform rifles chambered in pretty much whatever you want, going all the way up to .50 BMG. It's pretty uncommon to see anything like that, though.

Where does this strawman come from? Can you imagine the negative publicity if celebrity's bodyguard shot and killed someone? How often do you think celebrities are assaulted by attackers armed with guns?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australi...

That being said. America, 300M people. 19,000 firearm homicides last year. Australia, 20M people, 27.

And still has regular shootings in Sydney due to gang violence.

As an Australian, I certainly wouldn't want to swap for the shitshow that is US gun crime.

The US is obviously worse, but to claim Australia has control of gun violence is kind of silly. It's clearly out of police control.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/may/04/gangl...

From your link, 11 gang murders in two years seems pretty good to me.

Personally I'd consider that pretty under control.

I certainly don't live in fear of gun crime here.

It is entirely consistent. Law and order is something conservatives claim to support, so it is logical to want to remove instruments of crime and disorder. The fact that we can find it surprising now tells more about the intellectual trajectory of conservatives over the years. To the point that modern mainstream “conservatives” would have been seen as quasi-fascist rabid nationalists just 20 years ago.

If people haven’t gotten motivated enough after literally decades of this shit, I find it really hard to blame the law.

However, there are 50+ Senators, disproportionally representing low population, rural states, that are beholden to the NRA and its illegal funding and mis/dis-information campaigns.

There are Senators today suggesting that schools be turned into prison-like places (Cruz with his "one door in and out" nonsense), that others are suggesting arming teachers, while ignoring the fact that the school protection officer and local law enforcement engaged the murderer in this school shooting but failed to apprehend or stop him and the SWAT team took 40 minutes to engage the murderer and eliminate the threat.

People have been marching and protesting and demonstrating continuously and yet there is a specific party, the Republicans, and specific lobby groups, that have stopped any change.

Well, there's the political interpretation (NRA lobbying) and the factual interpretation as well: "low population rural states" i.e. where guns are used for hunting & self-defence (low population but also huge, so low density, so the nearest police/neighbours are so far away you can't always rely on their help)

THANK YOU! Say what you will about those supporters but the fact they went that far to support something they believed in (albeit dumb honestly) is admirable.

Meanwhile the people with actual good values are just sharing senators' edgy tweets thinking that makes a difference.

Most people exist in the expansive middle ground between regurgitating Tweets and insurrection.

People do care, and they do protest and march, and like most protests anywhere it does not change anything. Sorry but you seem to have a very naive view of the effectiveness of protests.

By the way, the pro-Trump protests didn’t achieve anything either (other than furthering the US’s slide into bitter ultra-partisan division and total erosion of trust in institutions). Notably, they did not successfully enable Trump to remain president. So what is your point?

In our modern day information, speech, and and privacy are the guns that ensure rights are not stomped on. It’s no longer the wild wild west.

To think that rules written hundreds of years ago never need to be changed is spitting in the face of our founders who realized that the process of amendments are necessary because things change. The irony is that people are defending the second amendment by claiming it cannot be amended.

What we need is an amendment guaranteeing our right to encryption and privacy, so that the KGB won’t even know which door to knock on.

Back then your arms were pretty well matched against the government. Today, not so much. Civilians and their small arms are no match for the KGB or modern US military. If we really wanted a way to check the physical power of the US military we’d need a bit more than some semi automatic rifles. They are literally in their current form just play things for the wealthy who don’t want to give up their gun hobby, and liabilities for the rest of civilian society due to the criminally insane.

Ubiquitous guns change the equation for all kinds of theoretical events. They may be a boon in the "armed populous saves country from corrupt gov't" case, and a curse in another case.

Were a more extreme version of Jan 6th to occur in the future, adding civilian firearms into the mix may not be a good thing.

The only person shot was an unarmed civilian.

Even so, guns have been involved in protests before without a problem.

I think it shows remarkable restraint by the security and protection officers that more people weren't shot on January 6th.

And it is untrue that "civilians" "chose" not to bring guns. There were numerous people that had preparations to be armed and were actively working to that end.

They are currently being tried for sedition.

Untrue, there was no warning. Crowd was let in (there is security footage of this), funneled to a location, and a killzone was setup without their knowledge. The antifa person filming the death was the only person hurling threats in that specific interaction. Both hands of the civilian shot were visible when climbing through the window. Officer could have arrested when she made it through. I guess we're for shooting on sight now.

> I think it shows remarkable restraint by the security and protection officers that more people weren't shot on January 6th.

Yes let's praise cops for not killing more unarmed civilians than they did, very high bar!

> there were numerous people that had preparations to be armed and were actively working to that end.

What a long way to say they didn't bring guns to the event. Any CCW holder has preparations to be armed.

> sedition

Point to a case, noone is being tried for sedition, only trespassing.

I'm saying it's also possible that a portion of an armed population could be manipulated by a dictator to seize power.

And there are lots of other ways this ubiquity of guns change things. Some positive, some negative. If we're talking about a theoretical rebellion then we should also talk about different types of rebellions.

There is a reference for the rebellion the 2A is intended for that we could use.

It's called the American Revolution and the events that led up to it.

The point I'm trying to get across is that there are many different theoretical scenarios for revolutions and rebellions, beyond the one scenario the parent comment theorized, or events similar in spirit to the American Revolution.

For example, the degraded ability for society to agree on what is true may be an avenue for a hostile state to cause civil unrest. That scenario may play out better for the targeted society if the population is not widely armed.

One good example, one bad. Both possible!

Nothing that said dictator would need support from the military (which has demonstrated it is not necessarily keen to go that route), how well will your "well armed" people fare against well trained soldiers with, um, "tanks" (using tanks here as a catchall for all their weapons.)?

A highly motivated and armed insurgency is almost impossible to control, even if you have superior fire-power.

The tank premise is almost as stupid as Biden's nukes / jets threat against the American people.

A country is not going to carpet bomb, send tanks in, or nuke its own people / land.

It takes a lot of brainwashing to get your soldiers to do that to their own people and direct force like that will lead to instant revolts.

What is much more likely is a KGB like secret police that goes around black bagging people, etc. You're much less likely to be able to do that when you know the civilian population has more guns than your secret police.

Great company while pretending to be "the leader of the free world."

I am the furthest thing from a US ultra-patriot who thinks we’re the greatest country in the world, so please don’t ascribe other people’s opinions to me.

Tangent: other than their moderately elevated murder rate, what’s wrong with Uruguay? Is that supposed to be an example of some kind of uniquely shitty country by global standards? (It’s a bad one, if so — Uruguay is a wealthy and highly developed liberal democracy.)

What specifically makes you assume that the US should be doing substantially better than Uruguay or be held to a higher standard?

Well, you don’t really need activists if you don’t really have a problem. So it is not really surprising that countries with saner gun control policies have fewer activists.

Also, the number of activists does not correlate with the opinion of the people overall. Even though the US is not perfectly democratic, the situation does seem to reflect how a majority of states and a large fraction of the people want to live. This is utterly terrifying to us watching from the other side of the pond, but that’s the way it is.

I believe fully automatic assault weapons and machine guns should be available for purchase, new, just like any other weapon. (Fully automatic weapons are legal to buy and own right now in the US, if you pay a $200 stamp tax and wait 9 months for the ATF to process the paperwork, but you can only buy "NFA" regulated machine guns that were registered in 1986 or before ... which means they're all collectors items now, and the cheapest machine guns are $15-20k and up).

Most people I know would like to see the existing laws enforced, and don't want anything new passed or put in place.

The missiles are separately regulated, and likely not legal for private ownership. Missiles and high explosives are licensed and legislated for separately.

Any weapon that’s part of a standard infantry soldiers load out should be available, new from the manufacturer. I don’t have a problem with the background checks that are required for a class 3 weapon, like an m16 or a Thompson sub machine gun (https://dealernfa.com/product-category/machine-guns/all-tran...), but as it stands only wealthy people can still afford to purchase them.

So we -can- put limits on the ownership of weaponry, then?

Interesting.

In my local community groups I see people demanding metal detectors be installed in our schools.

This is in response to: An attempted murderer being chased by police, going into a school he doesn’t belong in, barricading himself inside and murdering children.

It’s feel good security theater. If you’re in the middle of a killing spree you’re not going to stop because of a metal detector. If you’re dealing with kids bringing weapons to school, that’s different — but the responses to this event from people local to me are about 90% make-believe security.

"Regular" gun violence with handguns is another story.

To use a real world example: Columbine was a failed school bombing because their detonators didn’t work because the product they used for the detonator’s changed between their testing and when they purchased the final “real” devices.

The guns were intended to keep everyone terrified and in place until the bombs could kill everyone.

A fluke manufacturing change to the product (I think a clock) between their detonator tests and their actual attack is the only thing that stopped nearly everyone in the school from being killed that day. They even set a bomb outside of the school to kill the first responders when they arrived — again, it was a horrible tragedy, but what happened was so much less than what was intended.