- California authorities found a man illegally owning 248 guns and 1 million rounds of ammo.
- The state attorney general said he also had 3,000 magazines and several grenades in his home.
- The guns included 11 machine guns, 133 handguns, and 60 assault rifles, authorities said.
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Of course they do. They make the same calculation you do when you decide to drive over the speed limit: how likely am I to get caught, how serious will it be if I get caught, do I really need to take this risk, etc. That’s why some criminals only break the speed limit, other criminals only steal things from empty stores, other criminals inflate the value of their real estate holdings to get cheap loans, commit campaign fraud to hide an affair with a porn star, and then attempt to launch a coup to stay in power.
Let’s look at how similar criminals might make a decision about using a gun as part of their crime in London vs. St. Louis.
Pretty much any crime done with a gun increases penalties here in the US.
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That’s an idiotic point of view. There aren’t “criminals” and “non-criminals”. Virtually everybody is a criminal, it’s just that most people only break minor laws, like running red lights, infringing copyrights, littering, etc. Those people don’t break other laws because the risk vs. reward calculation doesn’t work out for them.
Even a big criminal like Donald Trump who has broken dozens if not hundreds of laws isn’t out shooting people because that’s not the kind of crime he does.
There isn’t some magic switch that turns someone from “honest citizen” to “criminal”, it’s a whole spectrum of law breaking. Even that old lady who goes to church every day probably goes faster than the speed limit, parks illegally, etc. For someone in the middle of the spectrum, say someone who cheats on their taxes, tries to scam old church-going ladies out of their money, etc. there are kinds of crimes they’ll do, and other kinds of crimes they won’t do.
Way at the criminal end of the spectrum, you have people who commit violent crimes. But, not every violent crime involves a gun. Muggers and carjackers don’t always use guns because the extra punishment is a slight deterrent. So, the law deters them. However, since the US is a society of gun nuts, it doesn’t offer as much of a deterrent as it would in some place like the UK or Japan.
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Dodging the point yet again, I see.
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Yes, and I know you got the point because it’s obvious how hard you’re trying to pretend you didn’t understand it. I know I got through to you, and I know that you understand the strength of my argument because you’re working so hard to pretend you didn’t see it. I know I convinced you, but you’re afraid to admit it because you’ll lose face.
You can keep pretending, but it’s just not believable, sorry.
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You mean you “couldn’t care less”, not you “could care less”.
Dear America — David Mitchell’s soapbox
You’re repeating bad NRA propaganda. There is zero evidence that gun control doesn’t work, and a literal fuckton of evidence that it does.
So be brainwashed if you will, but there is literally no science at all to support your side, so you’re essentially worse than a Flat Earther in this argument. Since they at least offer attempts at explaining their insanity. You don’t, you just say something without having any actual evidence for it.
https://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/38/1/140.full.pdf+html
This criminal, the one in the article, didn’t pay attention to the laws. He was arrested before he shot anyone with his arsenal.
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So in one incident, a shooter with a history of violence buys guns, keeps them for years, and then shoots up a mall. According to gun fetishists, gun laws would do nothing to prevent that incident. In another incident, a person with a history of violence buys guns, keeps them for years, and is arrested for owning guns he shouldn’t have. Thus, there is no mass shooting incident.
I’m desperately trying to figure out what kind of incident will prove this point without requiring a friggin time machine.
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Oh God I hope you’re a troll, because I just recently joined Lemmy and hoped the quality of users was higher than on Reddit.
“Here, instead of any actual science, have some NRA propaganda that I can’t recognise as propaganda despite refusing to look at the science”
Okay, buddy.
https://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/38/1/140.full.pdf+html
130 studies from 10 countries.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/policy-evaluation/
https://www.axios.com/2023/03/28/mass-shooting-nashville-guns-legally
When implemented on a nation wide level, gun control works as surely as antibiotics work on infections. That’s not up for debate. There is zero evidence against that assertion, and a metric fuckton to back it up.
To me, it’s honestly downright sickening, arguing for the 2A, while all the science is against you and you live in country in which the LEADING cause of death for kids is gun violence. (And yes, 18-year olds are kids as well. Case in point, they can’t even buy beer in the US.)
Gun control works as surely as antibiotics do. Go ahead, show me science that disagrees. Peer-reviewed science. Mine are from Oxford, Harvard and the DOJ. I’ll be waiting.
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“Gun grabbing.”
This is exactly what I mean. You sincerely think using an extremely childish, loaded term like that, while refusing to address the actual science on the matter doesn’t show everyone that I’m right, and you have literally no arguments, thereby proving my point that there is literally no scientific evidence to support your side of the argument. None. Zip. Nada. Zilch.
You’re like a Flat Earther, an anti-vaxxer, a creationist or other some such deluded person. That’s not an insult. It’s just literally what “delusional” means. You can see the truth, you can understand it, but you refuse to believe it in favour of things that are completely imaginary.
Gun control works as surely as antibiotics do. No-one’s coming to “grab your guns” if America instills actual, reasonable gun regulation. I’m from Finland, we’re in the top10 for gun ownership in the world, but there’s practically no gun crime at all. There is, of course, but in the same sense that there is risk involved when you get your wisdom teeth removed. I’m from a rural area. I shot my first guns when I was 12. An officer’s pistol from WWII (my great-grandfather’s), a 12-gauge, a Finnish AK variant (RK62, the one the Israelis based their Galil receivers on, their first ones even being manufactured by Valmet). I had a lot of hunter friends growing up, and I literally slept* next to a gun rack. My dad was a hunter, and my older brother is as well. I then served my conscription for a year when I was 20, in the Finnish army, being an NCO. I love guns. They’re fun as fuck.
They’re also dangerous as fuck. Which is why you need good regulation. Finland has a problem with people fighting when drunk. Without proper gun control, a lot of those folks would be armed and the murder rate would skyrocket and the safety of the society would plummet. In the long run, that is.
And which is why I never had to be afraid of guns despite having driven a taxi since 2007. And having driven a lot of face tattooed bikers drunk as fuck screaming “we’re about to go kill people.”
I’ve hustled drugs more than a decade and never had to be afraid of someone having a gun.
That’s why for instance one of my friends who can’t handle his drink and always gets into fights only had a gun license for a year or two, before he got several charges for assaults and then it took a year or so for the cops to take his gun permits away. (No, not his guns, no-one was “grabbing his guns”, he took them to the police himself, because not to do so would’ve meant not being law-abiding.)
I know black markets and criminals very well, and the most childish thing about your arguement is the fact that you’re ignoring the laws of basic supply and demand. When you restrict legal markets, you affect black markets. Finding a gun here is extremely hard, and when you do find one, it’s extremely expensive. You can get some starter pistols bored into .22’s, but that’s about it. And even those will costs hundreds and hundreds.
How many of the guns sold illegally in the US originated as legal weapons, hmm?
Oh, why did I even bother writing all this, as you won’t want to actually discuss the issue. You’ll just regurgitate the same bullshit NRA propaganda while ignoring reality. Pfff…
Interesting point, post us up some sources on that. I’d hate to be talking out my ass or ya know, making shit up.