A (DU) minority view on guns.

[krispos42]

104. Grover Norquist is a stain on the ass of American politics

The sooner he retires to tax-free Somalia, the better the country will be.

The difference is that, while unions and clean energy and single-payer healthcare will drive the base and the corporate backers nuts, it will not be as long, as reactionary, nor as deep as passing either draconian or pandering gun-control laws.

And the rank-and-file conservatives may initially oppose such things, but over the course of a few years such things like a living wage will become simply the new normal.

In contrast, progressives, who simply don't have a deep, person, and sustained interest in gun control do have such feelings for those drug legalization and taking on the private prison industry and the MIC and such.

People that don't own guns and have to do absolutely nothing to continue to not own guns, don't get nearly as involved as people that do own guns and feel the need to get politically active in order to continue to do so. Right?





Since you desire to drastically reduce the total number of firearms in America and the total number of households that own guns (this would be bringing America more in line with Europe, yes?), you have two options.

Option one: freeze the number of guns in America (rough guess: 275 million) and wait for the population to grow to about 1.2 billion.

Option two: reduce the number of guns in America by shutting down sales of new guns (directly or through things like onerous regulation) and taking existing guns out of circulation.

Since the number of guns confiscated by police in any given year (for reasons such as arresting a person that had a gun on them) is comparatively tiny, it would take centuries to significantly disarm the population if you waited until a gun was used in a crime before confiscating and destroying it.

So, you would have to accelerate the process of removing used guns from the general population. One way is to decide that some guns are "assault weapons", and order them to be turned in. California has been making some noises in that direction; they banned new sales of "assault weapons" there a couple of decade ago but now they're considering making people that currently own grandfathered guns turn them in or sell them out-of-state.

Another way would be to prohibit guns (maybe some kinds, maybe all kinds) from being received by anybody but the police or a federal gun dealer. If a person needs to sell their guns, they could only sell them to the government. If a person died, his or her guns would be turned in to the government rather than being sold to a dealer, another private seller, or handed down to a relative.

You might decide to outlaw handguns, for example, and pass a law prohibiting a handgun from being transferred to anybody except the police. If a person owns a handgun now, they can keep it, but that person becomes the last owner of the gun. Once he dies or gets an attack of conscience and turns the gun in, the gun is destroyed by the government.



Stopping sales of new guns would stop about 13 million guns a year from being introduced into America. Outlawing transfers of guns to anybody but the government would take out... let's see...

US mortality rate is 8.1 per 1,000 people, so about 2.48 million people die a year. There's about 95 guns per 100 people in the US, so that would be about... 2.36 million? Plus voluntary turn-ins, police confiscation, losses due to fire and other accidents. Call it about 2.5 million per year.

Maybe more in the first couple of decades as older white men with lots of guns die off first.



And it may poll at 50%-plus, but how motivating is it? Remember, people that don't own guns aren't going to get their knickers in a twist about registration or paperwork or arbitrary limts, now are they?