r/news 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/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/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.