Semi automatics need to be outlawed

[krispos42]

155. The other issue is that 95% or more of homicides are single-victim incidents

While mass shootings grab the headlines, the cold hard fact is that, when the type of gun used in a murder is known, 90% of them are handguns, 5% are rifle, and 5% are shotgun. Banning some configurations of semi-automatic rifles, or limiting magazine capacity, will not, CAN NOT, help the murder rate in this country

The other cold hard fact this that the homicide rate in this country is about half of what it was from 30 years ago. While it seems worse, this is an illusion from the pervasiveness of headline-grabbing news feeds from a dozen directions. The nation is a very small place now, and what happens a thousand miles away from you can easily be shown as if it was happening a block away.

Between CNN, MSNBC, Faux News, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, Twitter, Facebook, Google News, and everybody carrying an internet-connected camera on them 24/7 and able to upload instantly to those entities, when anything happens we know about it almost immediately, and with great intimacy. Events like mass shootings draw a lot of eyeballs and other attention, which also draws copycats and attention-hungry sickos.

It seems to be snowballing. No doubt driven by the stochastic hatred that Dimwit Donnie spews from his piehole, but the communication systems we have also allow tiny populations among a large geographic region to connect and create their own reality bubbles and then marinate in them. Or perhaps the better term is "fester". One example is the Flat Earthers, to cite a non-political group, but there are many more. Comments on news stories, for examples, or on YouTube. reddit.com has groups, called "subreddits", that people of a like mind hang out in. I am to understand that the subreddit the_donald is pretty noxious, but I'm not in the mood to soil my soul to investigate.

Unfortunately, I have no solution. It's not a hardware problem, not really, any more than heroin use is a hardware problem. There are fundamental issues that are not being resolved in our society and it's putting strain on many of us, and the more people there are under more strain, the more of us are going to crack and decide that a random mass killing with "show them". The paradox is that we can't fix society unless we're running things, and treating it as if it is a hardware problem seems to generally keep us from running things!

We need to commit ourselves as a nation to the idea of a large and powerful single-income middle class, and we need to get our progressive agenda moving to do so! What we did on the environment and women's rights in the 60's and 70's let directly to the massive crime drop a generation later. That crime drop was far larger than anything that was accomplished with gun laws or stiffer penalties or more cops on the street, but it was a totally unintended consequence.

How will universal health insurance help lower the crime rate? I don't know, maybe it won't. But there also could be some totally intended and unforeseen way that it does help.