Statesian here. There are a CRAPTON of mass shootings here. If we do nothing about guns, the shootings will still happen. What is the leftist answer for reducing mass shootings without disarming the proletariat?

  • ComradeSalad
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    9 months ago

    Red flag laws for extreme behavior (domestic abusers, those making active, credible, and targeted threats against themselves or others), allowing psychiatrists or psychologists to place holds on a persons ability to own guns, cracking down on straw purchases especially for known “under the table” gun distributors.

    Mandating that firearms be purchased with either a gun safe or trigger lock as to prevent accidental discharge and to keep them out of the hands of children.

    Mandating first time gun owners take a short class in proper gun storage, handling, cleaning, and safety.

    All of these things can be reasonably done without disarming the proletariat and they would reduce the gun death statistic SIGNIFICANTLY. The disarming of the suicidal or those in psychological distress along with domestic abusers would cut the amount of guns deaths by nearly 2/3rds.

    • Beat_da_Rich
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      9 months ago

      In general, I would also support additional barriers for firearm ownership under the age of 25. Not make it illegal persay, but give some extra hoops to jump through.

      Most of these mass shooters are men in their early twenties, where the decision-making part of the brain is not fully developed and most are in a very vulnerable transition stage in life.

      • ComradeSalad
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        9 months ago

        Ehhhh I’m not sure about this one either. If a person can sign up for the military at 18, own a car, vote, sign legal contracts, etc, or buy alcohol and tobacco at 21, then limiting firearms to 25 seem infantilizing and misguided.

        It’s a similar argument that a lot of right wingers use to say “raise the voting age”.

        Also the brain development is a decent point, but its a lot more overblown then people make it out to be. 25 is actually the general average as people can be done at 22 or need until 27, and the level of development relies more on life experience and education then it does on some brain wiring.

        If a person is hellbent on killing people like a mass shooter, then they will use anything they can get their hands on, hence why they’ve used cars before for example. Limiting everyone based off of a handful of the most deranged people is a bad idea.

        • Beat_da_Rich
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          9 months ago

          Fair points. I didn’t say I supported banning young people from firearms though, but would entertain giving them extra scrutiny depending on the legislation.

        • D61 [any]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          Ehhhh I’m not sure about this one either. If a person can sign up for the military at 18,

          Well… to add some context to this, if you’re in the military you don’t walk around every day with a weapon/ammo. You are not allowed to keep personal firearms on your person while one duty or on post without a really REALLY good reason. You are not allowed to store privately owned firearms in your barracks or on post housing (and probably off post housing too but you’d have to piss off all sorts of people to get them to comb through your house looking for stuff to gig you on). So its not that far out there.

          • ComradeSalad
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            9 months ago

            The point is that in this hypothetical, you can go and use a gun, along with grenades, rockets, missiles, bombs, jets, tanks, gunships, helicopters, ships, and satellites to kill those your government has declared enemies. All at 18 years old.

            But for some reason a civilian can’t own a gun till 25?

            • D61 [any]@hexbear.net
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              9 months ago

              Correct, its not that big of a deal to live in a society organized around the organized use of firearms instead of unorganized individual gun ownership.