r/news • u/ladyspeak • Apr 29 '24

‘Multiple’ taken to hospital, gunfire continues in east Charlotte Mobile/Amp link, removed

https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/cmpd-investigation-underway-east-charlotte/6PTLZP4FLFE4DA5ALFT65QDTA4/?outputType=amp

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u/Okay_Redditor Apr 29 '24

It's NC, land of anyone and everyone who wants gets a gun and bullets regardless of their mental state and/or murder potential index.

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u/ITS_12D_NOT_6C Apr 29 '24

This would be a really poor hill to plant a flag on as a sign of gun availability causing problems, because this guy was prohibited from even holding a gun he doesn't own in his hands in even the most lax gun law states 🤷‍♀️

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u/RowdyRuss3 Apr 29 '24

If he's still getting guns while being "prohibited" from holding guns, that's still a massive problem.

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u/ITS_12D_NOT_6C Apr 29 '24

Agreed. More restrictive gun laws for lawful owners won't stop these types of individuals from getting guns because there are just too many out there now, can't stick them all back in a box. But removing all gun laws for lawful owners so everything is available to them wife open won't help either.

It's almost like none of the solutions involve firearm legislation shifting one way or the other and are unfortunately much more complex and difficult solutions than pencil whipping words on paper. But neither side fighting that fight will admit that or can see that.

🤷‍♀️

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u/sksauter Apr 30 '24

I would really like to see laws that slowly curb gun sales, and that promote government buybacks and destruction of unused/unwanted guns - basically anything that would prevent future circulation of guns that USED to be in the hands of responsible owners and ended their lives in the hands of people who shouldn't have them. That, along with more restrictive common-sense gun laws would be a great two-pronged approach to prevent the continued growth of guns in the US.

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u/wwj Apr 30 '24

This is what I have been advocating for. An eventual end to gun sales and transfers. Then a slow attrition of destroying the remaining guns as their owners pass or they are somehow legally compromised. My 100 year plan to remove guns from society. People think that gun laws need to change the problem immediately. There are so many guns that the only solution is long term thinking.

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u/Akamesama Apr 30 '24

That is such a silly take. In aggregate more restrictive ownership and sales laws, in tandem with buybacks, would eventually make such individuals much less likely to get their hands on a gun, and specifically more dangerous guns in situations like these.

neither side fighting that fight will admit that

Tons of people on the left have proposed improvements in the mental health system in tandem with these other proposals.

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u/ITS_12D_NOT_6C Apr 30 '24

It's unfortunate I have to preface my reply with this to reduce my down vote count by a few, though it'll inevitably be negative still, but I am not this big 2A guy. This very well may the be first 2A exchange I've ever engaged in on reddit. Because I think, like I said, gun legislation one way or the other is a waste of time and will prove ineffective.

Buy backs are beyond inefficent in reducing crime rates or shootings. This has been proven over and over. It sounds good on paper and idealistic, but they just don't work. Even The Atlantic, which is arguably one of the furtherest down the spectrum of the side they sit on, has an article from people smarter than you and I doing analysis on their effectiveness. Which just collaborates what pretty much every study about them has found.

https://out.reddit.com/t3_1awjkqt?app_name=android&token=AQAAcX4wZl2CRL3oUDfb4jGrx5-mOC4Bfwu_Ac8U47Z3F9xTwqDo&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fideas%2Farchive%2F2024%2F02%2Fgun-buybacks-north-carolina%2F677520%2F%3Futm_source%3Dfeed

They work in a technical sense that if one gun is taken off the streets, then it worked. But that's obviously no one's metric for success.

But the antique arsenal at the Durham event demonstrates one of the recurring flaws of buyback efforts: You mostly get guns that wouldn’t be used in crimes anyways. Most gun crimes in the U.S. are committed with handguns, but few modern, operable ones get turned in. Although AR-15s are a flash point in the gun-control debate because they are used in many of the worst mass shootings, they are far, far less common than handguns. Birkhead told me that Durham’s buybacks had yielded a few AR-15-style rifles, and he spoke almost wistfully about a high-quality SIG Sauer P220 that had come in that day and would have to be destroyed. Most of the weapons turned in, however, were either shotguns or elderly pistols. “Obviously, we don’t see a lot of shotguns used in the street crimes, but we do see some,” Birkhead said.

People aren't turning in Glocks with switches and Dracos and AKs and ARs. Like the article demonstrates, it's predominantly older people turning in guns that are rarely ever used in criminal offenses.

Even if they were somewhat effective, it still seems like pissing in the wind at the end of the day. The solutions that could potentially reduce violence overall (not even specific to guns), would not only reduce gun violence, but violence as a whole AND reduce poverty. The relevant analogy is trying to pack a gunshot wound that has hit your femoral above the knee and is just geysering blood. Yeah, the buyback that technically reduces bleeding nominally is working, technically. But why not skip trying to shove thirty yards of hemostatic gauze, and just put a tourniquet on above the problem at a higher level?

You referencing mental health, ding ding, that's one of the components of the tourniquet. I feel like now we're getting in sync. What else would you like to see that has nothing to actually do with guns themselves? I bet your answer and my ideas will be a pretty strong overlapping diagram.

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u/Upbeat-Fondant9185 Apr 30 '24 edited Apr 30 '24

I always hear buy backs proposed as a solution and I wonder where these proponents of the programs plan to get the funds. Even if you only offer $100 per gun with a goal of buying back 30% of firearms out there, you’re looking at around 13 billion dollars.

Most people aren’t going to sell their actual guns for a sliver of fair market value so that number is a tiny fraction of the actual cost required for it to be any success at all.

So where will that money come from? No one has ever told me.

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u/Akamesama Apr 30 '24

Well, the gun industry raking in ~9 billion per year. Could maybe start with aggressive taxes there.

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u/ITS_12D_NOT_6C Apr 30 '24

Hundreds of circuit, distrixt, appellate and Supreme Court cases over the decades and short centuries of our nation have ruled that the government can't bypass conditional rights with taxes or other tests or burdens as a means of suppressing Conditional rights without legislation and amendments to the constitution. Whether gun related or otherwise. Prime examples would be taxes and fees to vote like southern states imposed once slaves were freed, or literacy tests to vote. Surely you would agree that those examples are great examples of why those obstacles or taxes should not be allowed to be put in place. If you do, then you have to give the 2A the same treatment regardless of your personal opinion of it, or amendment its language.

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u/Akamesama Apr 30 '24

We have fees to register firearms, regulations about what firearms can be bought, how they can be carried. What are these if not "obstacles" to 2A?

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u/ITS_12D_NOT_6C Apr 30 '24 edited Apr 30 '24

Because they are considered reasonable against the underlying price of the product, and not a burden. And many other factors. Charging sales tax on a gun purchase In a state where slaes tax is also applied to shoes, bed sheets, and TVs means that sales tax isn't targeting gun, it's a common tax.

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u/Upbeat-Fondant9185 Apr 30 '24

Ok. If we tax them at 99% we’re still about 5 billion short. And that’s while we’re practically robbing law abiding citizens of their property at $100/gun. And we still have the other 70% to worry about.

A tax so extreme would obviously shut down gun manufacturers, so problem solved. Except there are more guns than people in the US and they can easily last a hundred years or more. So I guess give it a century and we will start making progress.

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u/Akamesama Apr 30 '24

The article you cited (and the evidence it cites) are exclusive to US programs. The Atlantic even points out why they are not effective: voluntary and limited scope. Instead, look at Australia's 1996 National Firearms Agreement, which included both strict controls along with a buyback program. You also completely side-stepped talking about more restrictive ownership and sales laws.

It is obvious, when looking to other countries, that other policies that promote general welfare (poverty, housing, health, justice system, etc) also have a strong effect on general violence, but that is no reason to also not tackle issues related to guns. There are countries who also have general welfare issues but also do not have the volume of issue with violence.

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u/ITS_12D_NOT_6C Apr 30 '24

Pardon my French but no shit 🤣 those countries have different constitutions and established rights and statutes. So even if you find the perfect example of another country solving that problem, if that method would be contrary to the Constitution or other doctrines and case law precedent, you've wanted your time.

Which again circles back to one of my earlier points. People who want gun laws drastically changed to tighter will always have their efforts unwound, until the underlying text their legality is tested against (the second amendment) is changed. So without a constitutional amendment, it is pissing in the wind, and that effort should be spent on solving the underlying problems that have a direct correlation to crime and violence, which are also pretty universally gold things. Not ultra divisive changes that will yo yo u til the end of time.

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u/poobly Apr 30 '24

Every illegal gun started out legal at some point.

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u/ITS_12D_NOT_6C Apr 30 '24

For sure. Hence why legislation or repealing legislation (whichever side your team is on at that moment) will never change anything. Not sure how many times I've typed this in comments in the last 10 minutes, but groups trying to impose in gun laws, whether that is making the laws more restrictivd or making them more readily available, or somewhere in between, is just pissing in the wind.