"Greg Abbott says gun violence is due to a mental health crisis, not guns. So, America is exceptionally crazy?"
First, in answer to the question, yes. If America allows mass shootings to go on unchecked and actually tries to make it easier for people to get assault weapons, especially the young (see: Texas), whose critical thinking skills…
"Greg Abbott says gun violence is due to a mental health crisis, not guns. So, America is exceptionally crazy?"
First, in answer to the question, yes. If America allows mass shootings to go on unchecked and actually tries to make it easier for people to get assault weapons, especially the young (see: Texas), whose critical thinking skills, maturity, and reasoning capabilities are far from fully developed ... it is collectively crazy. Other progressive, forward-thinking nations -- as close to our own border as Canada -- seem to figure it out, such that their people do not empower dangerous leaders whose actions of self-preservation, and agenda of maximum freedom with a minimum of responsibility to others, are placed ahead of the people whom they are elected and compensated to serve, and for the worst of reasons: hyperpartisan gain and eradication of opposition.
Second, I'm exhausted with opportunists like Abbott and by their strawman argument that the gun violence issue is inherently an either-or proposition: either you have gun control or you have more and better mental health measures. Fact: you can have both. Another fact: not everyone who performs a mass shooting would be flagged by mental health testing. There are various reasons for active shooter situations, not just "clinically crazy" as they might put it. Momentary anger and a lack of control. Misguided revenge motives. Lack of maturity. Peer pressure (e.g. gangs). And so on. All need to be addressed without resorting to a one-size fits-all approach.
The mental health argument falls flat when we factor in that all these shootings have one thing in common: those crazy people are sane enough to recognize that the weapon that can do the most lethal damage, in the shortest amount of time, and with the most defensive potential for the shooter, is a firearm. It is the common denominator in every event, so it is the one to address first and foremost. Wake me when we see a surge in mass attacks on a public place by crazy people wielding a knife or baseball bat instead of a firearm. No, it's about the guns. Always has been. Always will be. Unless we get over our own crazy long enough to seek change instead of more of the same, wishing that the problem would resolve itself as if free beer, pizza, and fairy tales for all.
Abbott/Texas legislature also cut $211 million dollars from budget for mental health. Beyond that Texas has no gun laws. Abbott doesn't care about mental health. None of the Republicans do. He'll do his performative sympathy act for the Dallas victims because it happened in an upscale area. Otherwise he doesn't care.
If anyone in Texas needs a mental health exam it's Greg Abbott, Ted Cruz, Keith Self (US Rep whose district includes Allen, TX)... Oh, hell, lets just put anyone who votes "R" on the list before we run out of digital ink.
If you truly, truly believed that the problem was "mental health" you could loosen the laws around involuntary commitment, expand Medicaid in TX to increase access to care, hire more school counselors, fund state mental hospitals, etc etc. (crickets from Republicans)
The issue though to me is not acknowledging the real nature of these attacks.
I don't remember anyone bemoaning the "mental health" of the terrorists who flew buildings into the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. Why not? They were suicidal and isn't that pathological to most psychologists?
We called a spade a spade. They had been radicalized by extremist ideology and acted in a way that was consistent (rational even) with that ideology. We didn't say there was a mental health crises among young Arab immigrants. We called it terrorism. And then declared war on that ideology.
I'm personally freaking tired of labeling these mass shootings "mental health" problems. IT'S A COP OUT! These shooters are terrorists acting on an ideology that Greg Abbott is too much of a chicken-shit coward to call out. Time and time again these shooters have been shown to be motivated by an anti-LGTBQ, xenophobic, misogynistic, racist world view stewed in an right-wing ecosystem that leaders like Abbott are complicit in.
Shooting into crowds of people with an AR-15 knowing you are going to die because you are that deeply motivated by ideology is not a "mental health" problem. It's a domestic terrorism problem.
I agree with most of what you say, but I worked in mental health, both in a locked psych ward and on-call in the community, and making it easier to commit people involuntarily strikes me as a really bad idea. So much of our mental health crisis is, at root, a housing crisis. Incarcerating people (because that is what involuntary commitment is) puts them into a system that's both really hard to exit successfully, and is an overkill for most of their problems. If someone is hungry and doesn't have a warm, safe place to sleep, they will be mentally ill, and it'll exacerbate other issues to the point where the hunger and lack of safety are really easy to miss.
I disagree, having worked locked psych ward in a state with comparatively permissive involuntary commitment laws and outpatient/ER in a state where "imminent danger to self or others" was the cutoff.
Under the "imminent danger" cutoff, someone who is schizophrenic and totally incapable of self care didn't meet criteria for involuntary commitment, because they weren't actively suicidal or homicidal, even with their family crying and begging for admission.
The lack of consistency between states was really alarming to me. NY state circa 2017 was very reasonable to me. I see NYC loosened it more under Eric Adams, and I'll be interested to see the data associated with the policy change.
Montana has the same criteria and it broke my heart more than once to have a client who I knew needed a much higher level of care than we could provide be denied admission to a secure hospital unit or the State Hospital. We also had a DA that wanted to keep his court ordered admission statistics low so clients more or less had to fail a suicide attempt for him to consider them.
My state also has "gravely disabled" as a standard; it seems very odd not to have it as an option. Not saying I disbelieve you; just that it seems like a really glaring oversight. I'm in Washington, and broadly satisfied with our rules surrounding involuntary commitment.
I'm sorry but why are we discussing mental health? Most mentally ill people don't commit mass murders. A more sinister ingredient is the white supremacist, Neo-Nazi bile spread by right-wing media. The real problem is assault weapons, body armor and large magazines easily accessible to these people.
Charlie likes to ask if we have become immune to the mass slaughter. I don't think that is the case. The problem is we have one party who can and has stymied all efforts to control the spread and use of these weapons of mass destruction. This is all on the Republicans who are completely beholden to the NRA and the gun industry.
The only solution is to vote them out of office. The Democrats need to make this as big an issue as reproductive rights.
Yes! Exactly what you wrote. For people like Abbott and MAGA, it's racism. Carlson went off about transgender terrorism coming for us after one recent shooting. Or if it's an Hispanic name attached to the shooter, they'll scream about the dirty brown people or immigration. Right now they're falling apart because the shooter with the Hispanic last name is a Nazi lover, right wing incel, covered in swastikas who posted hate all over social media. It is domestic terrorism fomented by FOX News and MAGA politicians.
If I could snap my fingers and remove all the Assault rifles this second, don't you think we'd still see extremists driving trucks into peaceful BLM protests or gay pride parades? Or throwing Molotov cocktails into synagogues? Or committing arson at immigrant owned businesses? I do! We'd have a lower body count, but we'd still have a domestic terrorism problem.
Were "The Troubles" a mental health crisis? If so the Good Friday Accords seemed to address it better than SSRI's. Were the Jets and the Sharks merely "symptomatic" of a mental health crises of low income youth on Manhattan's West Side? (they do attempt to make this argument to Officer Krumpke, but even they know it's BS). Take this argument to it's extreme, and one could argue that the Ukrainian war is simply a Russian mental health crisis driven by alcoholism and mass psychosis.
People do drive trucks and cars into protest marches. It happened in Charlottesville. But, as you say, the body count is lower. It harder to kill people with a car or a Molotov cocktail than with a pistol or an assault rifle.
For that matter, if we allowed ordinary citizens to own howitzers or Black Hawk helicopters with machine guns, there would be more deaths. The Second Amendment supporters never seem to address that issue. They draw the line at assault rifles. They do not demand the right to own assault helicopters.
It is a slippery slope argument, but if we say the Second Amendment can have no restrictions whatever, than a billionaire would be free to construct and own nuclear weapons. It is not that expensive or difficult to make them. North Korea can do it.
Per CNN: The gunman had worked for at least three security companies and had undergone hours of firearms proficiency training in recent years, according to a database maintained by the Texas Department of Public Safety.
The shooter was approved to work as a security guard in Texas from April 2016 until April 2020, when his license expired, according to his profile in the Texas Online Private Security database.
It's confusing keeping all these guys straight, but I think the man you' referring to was thrown out of the Army about 2007 for being mentally unstable.
Plus, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, though he claims after every mass shooting in Texas that the problem is a "mental health issue", cut nearly $20 million from the budget of the Texas Health & Services Commission, which oversees mental health services! What a hypocrite freaking hypocrite.
Couldn't agree more. The mental health rationalization fails under even the slightest scrutiny. Sure, the people who commit these acts may have mental illness of one sort or another. However, other developed nations have rates of mental health issues at or near that of the U.S. but do not have the shootings. This is a uniquely american issue. Isolate the variables and you are left with the easy access to guns. Sure -- one could use bats or knives but the body count would be much lower.
And, as I pointed out to someone yesterday, for some reason we don't have a bunch of mass shootings using weapons like a fully automatic Thompson sub-machine gun with a 100 round drum. Of course, such weapons cannot be purchased by anyone who can convince someone at a gun show that it is a good idea to sell it to them.
Even it it is a mental health problem, why do these guys want to make it easier for troubled souls to gain immediate access to weapons? No background check? No waiting period? No mandatory safety/proficiency training? Concealed carry for all anywhere (except NRA conventions) . . . .
Always ask your GOP legislator(s) why, if it is such a good idea to allow citizens to conceal carry in general and in public, it is a bad idea to allow it inside the buildings where they work.
Part of it is their paranoia about the government coming to take their guns. Anything that slows down the purchase is seen as part of the slippery slope.
The other part is the mathematically irrational calculation of it being better to be armed in a very low likelihood event vs. having a substantial increase in such events as more people are armed. I think it is a bit akin to the people who are afraid to fly but are fine driving. The math of the risk is clear, but that feeling of control overrides the (semi) advanced math our lizard brains aren't wired to process.
The National Firearms Act of 1934 is why you do not see people running around with fully automatic weapons or weapons (other than pistols) with a barrel length of less than 18 inches.
This act was passed during the period of "gangster" violence in the 30s, when many in organized crime used fully automatic weapons (the Thompson and BAR were favorites--Clyde Barrow liked a sawed-off BAR, if I remember correctly.
(For those unfamiliar, a BAR is Browning Automatic Rifle, designed for use in WW1 (but too late) and used extensively as a squad automatic weapon during WW2. It fired a full-power rifle cartridge, unlike the Thompson (a submachinegun that uses a pistol cartridge).
The act did not ban these weapons. It just taxed the bejeezus out of the transfer of these weapons, making it uneconomical to have one or sell one.
US v Miller ruled that the law was constitutional --on the basis (and this is "funny") that the possession of such weapons had nothing to do with a well-regulated militia.
The reality is that you CAN buy and own a machinegun (and it is actually economical because the tax imposed has never really been updated since the 1930s (the tax is $200, which was a LOT in the 30s, not so much now). Of course, there IS an actual background check that takes several months and other limitations.
My father had a friend back in the 70s who was a weapons collector (his entire house was literally full of weapons going back to the 1600s--and when I say full, I mean pretty much every room in the house has gun stands along the walls that were filled with weapons). He had actual machine guns (Browning m1919, M2 (.50 cal), BARs, MG 34, MG 42, and others).
He also had an extensive collection of military uniforms, medals, etc.
Your comment highlights a question always lurking in my mind. It’s often observed that AR15s and similar guns are “weapons of war” and shouldn’t be in civilian hands. So I say, why don’t civilians have anti-aircraft weaponry in their home arsenal? Or anti-tank grenades? Somewhere we have drawn a line of what’s allowed in the civilian arsenal. Who decided these lines, that allow automatic weapons of war, but not killer explosives capable of bringing down an aircraft?
Our laws do. Laws we can change, and as others have pointed out, stand up well to constitutional challenge.
Also, full auto isn't allowed and aren't what the typical assault rifle is. They look identical, but the legal ones don't have the spray and pray setting. Which is kinda my point using the Thompson Sub Machine gun (1930's gangster weapon) as an example. If you wanted max carnage, you wouldn't take an AR-15, you'd take a Tommy gun. If you hadn't skipped arm day, you'd take a belt-fed M-60. We restrict such weapons for obvious reasons (just like the explosives you mention).
If grenades are criminal, only criminals will have grenades. And yet, we don't have many grenadings these days, even in that sub-category of situations the gun crowd likes to cordon off with terms like 'gang-land' or 'gang-bangers'.
Yes, but if 'the enemy" is a bunch of little kids or Walmart shoppers. Sarge is going to order semi-auto fire to do maximum damage. "Spray and pray" was used mainly to give everyone else a chance to hit the dirt, since a whole magazine goes off in just a few seconds. (watch out for the nextgen object of desire, the civilian m-249 SAWS, firing 100 round belts. Currently selling for about $8k.)
But when was this discussion at which there was universal agreement? Given that we are consumed with disagreement over the fine points of automatic weapons legality? And why does nobody question where that line is, given that the discussion about “rights” for weapons is quite heated?
Thanks for your response with some details. I really don’t know much about ARs and the various capabilities.
I'm no expert, but the line is pretty firmly drawn at full auto vs. semi-auto. Also firmly drawn at no explosives, period.
The gun people don't argue that because they know they'd look terrible doing so, even though many of their arguments should require them to do so. A good guy with a couple of grenades and a light machine gun would be more effective in taking down a bad guy as well as more effective resisting an oppressive government.
You enlightened me about full-auto versus semi-auto. I didn’t know that. So I guess that’s where the line has been drawn on military weaponry for civilians, and why we aren’t bickering over anti-aircraft explosives for Christmas.
I've been saying that for years. If it isn't about the weapon, why are some things deemed off-limits to the public that could find "reasonable" uses for them if given the chance? Surely some of us could find beneficial applications for a flame thrower, no? Wouldn't hand grenades liven up any Fourth of July fireworks show? And so on. What could possibly go wrong since many of those same people are deemed to be responsible real and potential gun owners, and at age 18 and without the need for extensive background checks or mandatory training?
The overlap between what the military has and uses and what civilians can now purchase is tiny. It may come down to just a sidearm, like the old 1911 Colt or, more recently, the Beretta 9m. The AR-15's you can buy now differ from what the military uses in a number of ways, but--critically--not in any way that affects a person's ability to shoot up a school.
That is outside my area of expertise. Perhaps a commenter more familiar with the in-and-outs of landscaping would know. My involvement with the weed torch is seeing them in the hardware store.
OMG, that is amazing! I've been using a weed whacker for decades when I could have been out there along the road roasting a dead patch around my mailbox?!? A few days of doing that and the neighbors would probably stop walking their dogs on my section of the street!
On a somewhat related note, I do not recall ever reading, after the perpetrator has been killed or arrested, that he (always "he") was stoned on "killer weed." And having that substance in your possession will still give you 3 hots and a cot for years in more states than not.
As we see from poll after poll, stricter gun regulations enjoy overwhelming support. The crazy comes in when you see how many people vote for politicians who won't tighten the gun laws, and who frequently loosen them instead. Because too many people are too tribal to ever consider voting for someone not of the tribe, even when your own tribe is doing a poor job of representing you.
Someone had mentioned on other threads that the assault weapon ban was originally proposed when certain whites noticed that "militant" blacks were carrying them in public. And the mental health rage among Abbot and others is a crock since they refuse to all any checks on the ownership of weapons. Can't even check on the mental health if someone wants to. It's buy the gun, kill, then check "mental health".
"Greg Abbott says gun violence is due to a mental health crisis, not guns. So, America is exceptionally crazy?"
First, in answer to the question, yes. If America allows mass shootings to go on unchecked and actually tries to make it easier for people to get assault weapons, especially the young (see: Texas), whose critical thinking skills, maturity, and reasoning capabilities are far from fully developed ... it is collectively crazy. Other progressive, forward-thinking nations -- as close to our own border as Canada -- seem to figure it out, such that their people do not empower dangerous leaders whose actions of self-preservation, and agenda of maximum freedom with a minimum of responsibility to others, are placed ahead of the people whom they are elected and compensated to serve, and for the worst of reasons: hyperpartisan gain and eradication of opposition.
Second, I'm exhausted with opportunists like Abbott and by their strawman argument that the gun violence issue is inherently an either-or proposition: either you have gun control or you have more and better mental health measures. Fact: you can have both. Another fact: not everyone who performs a mass shooting would be flagged by mental health testing. There are various reasons for active shooter situations, not just "clinically crazy" as they might put it. Momentary anger and a lack of control. Misguided revenge motives. Lack of maturity. Peer pressure (e.g. gangs). And so on. All need to be addressed without resorting to a one-size fits-all approach.
The mental health argument falls flat when we factor in that all these shootings have one thing in common: those crazy people are sane enough to recognize that the weapon that can do the most lethal damage, in the shortest amount of time, and with the most defensive potential for the shooter, is a firearm. It is the common denominator in every event, so it is the one to address first and foremost. Wake me when we see a surge in mass attacks on a public place by crazy people wielding a knife or baseball bat instead of a firearm. No, it's about the guns. Always has been. Always will be. Unless we get over our own crazy long enough to seek change instead of more of the same, wishing that the problem would resolve itself as if free beer, pizza, and fairy tales for all.
If it's not a gun problem but a mental health issue, why don't we prohibit mentally ill people from having guns?
Abbott/Texas legislature also cut $211 million dollars from budget for mental health. Beyond that Texas has no gun laws. Abbott doesn't care about mental health. None of the Republicans do. He'll do his performative sympathy act for the Dallas victims because it happened in an upscale area. Otherwise he doesn't care.
If anyone in Texas needs a mental health exam it's Greg Abbott, Ted Cruz, Keith Self (US Rep whose district includes Allen, TX)... Oh, hell, lets just put anyone who votes "R" on the list before we run out of digital ink.
If you truly, truly believed that the problem was "mental health" you could loosen the laws around involuntary commitment, expand Medicaid in TX to increase access to care, hire more school counselors, fund state mental hospitals, etc etc. (crickets from Republicans)
The issue though to me is not acknowledging the real nature of these attacks.
I don't remember anyone bemoaning the "mental health" of the terrorists who flew buildings into the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. Why not? They were suicidal and isn't that pathological to most psychologists?
We called a spade a spade. They had been radicalized by extremist ideology and acted in a way that was consistent (rational even) with that ideology. We didn't say there was a mental health crises among young Arab immigrants. We called it terrorism. And then declared war on that ideology.
I'm personally freaking tired of labeling these mass shootings "mental health" problems. IT'S A COP OUT! These shooters are terrorists acting on an ideology that Greg Abbott is too much of a chicken-shit coward to call out. Time and time again these shooters have been shown to be motivated by an anti-LGTBQ, xenophobic, misogynistic, racist world view stewed in an right-wing ecosystem that leaders like Abbott are complicit in.
Shooting into crowds of people with an AR-15 knowing you are going to die because you are that deeply motivated by ideology is not a "mental health" problem. It's a domestic terrorism problem.
In the military, where the guns are a given, pains are taken to weed out the unstable. The drill sergeants value their lives.
I agree with most of what you say, but I worked in mental health, both in a locked psych ward and on-call in the community, and making it easier to commit people involuntarily strikes me as a really bad idea. So much of our mental health crisis is, at root, a housing crisis. Incarcerating people (because that is what involuntary commitment is) puts them into a system that's both really hard to exit successfully, and is an overkill for most of their problems. If someone is hungry and doesn't have a warm, safe place to sleep, they will be mentally ill, and it'll exacerbate other issues to the point where the hunger and lack of safety are really easy to miss.
I disagree, having worked locked psych ward in a state with comparatively permissive involuntary commitment laws and outpatient/ER in a state where "imminent danger to self or others" was the cutoff.
Under the "imminent danger" cutoff, someone who is schizophrenic and totally incapable of self care didn't meet criteria for involuntary commitment, because they weren't actively suicidal or homicidal, even with their family crying and begging for admission.
The lack of consistency between states was really alarming to me. NY state circa 2017 was very reasonable to me. I see NYC loosened it more under Eric Adams, and I'll be interested to see the data associated with the policy change.
Montana has the same criteria and it broke my heart more than once to have a client who I knew needed a much higher level of care than we could provide be denied admission to a secure hospital unit or the State Hospital. We also had a DA that wanted to keep his court ordered admission statistics low so clients more or less had to fail a suicide attempt for him to consider them.
My state also has "gravely disabled" as a standard; it seems very odd not to have it as an option. Not saying I disbelieve you; just that it seems like a really glaring oversight. I'm in Washington, and broadly satisfied with our rules surrounding involuntary commitment.
I'm sorry but why are we discussing mental health? Most mentally ill people don't commit mass murders. A more sinister ingredient is the white supremacist, Neo-Nazi bile spread by right-wing media. The real problem is assault weapons, body armor and large magazines easily accessible to these people.
Charlie likes to ask if we have become immune to the mass slaughter. I don't think that is the case. The problem is we have one party who can and has stymied all efforts to control the spread and use of these weapons of mass destruction. This is all on the Republicans who are completely beholden to the NRA and the gun industry.
The only solution is to vote them out of office. The Democrats need to make this as big an issue as reproductive rights.
Yes! Exactly what you wrote. For people like Abbott and MAGA, it's racism. Carlson went off about transgender terrorism coming for us after one recent shooting. Or if it's an Hispanic name attached to the shooter, they'll scream about the dirty brown people or immigration. Right now they're falling apart because the shooter with the Hispanic last name is a Nazi lover, right wing incel, covered in swastikas who posted hate all over social media. It is domestic terrorism fomented by FOX News and MAGA politicians.
I don't think I've seen someone conflating radicalization in our country and the gun violence. Excellent point! Thank you!
If I could snap my fingers and remove all the Assault rifles this second, don't you think we'd still see extremists driving trucks into peaceful BLM protests or gay pride parades? Or throwing Molotov cocktails into synagogues? Or committing arson at immigrant owned businesses? I do! We'd have a lower body count, but we'd still have a domestic terrorism problem.
Were "The Troubles" a mental health crisis? If so the Good Friday Accords seemed to address it better than SSRI's. Were the Jets and the Sharks merely "symptomatic" of a mental health crises of low income youth on Manhattan's West Side? (they do attempt to make this argument to Officer Krumpke, but even they know it's BS). Take this argument to it's extreme, and one could argue that the Ukrainian war is simply a Russian mental health crisis driven by alcoholism and mass psychosis.
People do drive trucks and cars into protest marches. It happened in Charlottesville. But, as you say, the body count is lower. It harder to kill people with a car or a Molotov cocktail than with a pistol or an assault rifle.
For that matter, if we allowed ordinary citizens to own howitzers or Black Hawk helicopters with machine guns, there would be more deaths. The Second Amendment supporters never seem to address that issue. They draw the line at assault rifles. They do not demand the right to own assault helicopters.
It is a slippery slope argument, but if we say the Second Amendment can have no restrictions whatever, than a billionaire would be free to construct and own nuclear weapons. It is not that expensive or difficult to make them. North Korea can do it.
Per CNN: The gunman had worked for at least three security companies and had undergone hours of firearms proficiency training in recent years, according to a database maintained by the Texas Department of Public Safety.
The shooter was approved to work as a security guard in Texas from April 2016 until April 2020, when his license expired, according to his profile in the Texas Online Private Security database.
It's confusing keeping all these guys straight, but I think the man you' referring to was thrown out of the Army about 2007 for being mentally unstable.
Yes, it was him.
Plus, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, though he claims after every mass shooting in Texas that the problem is a "mental health issue", cut nearly $20 million from the budget of the Texas Health & Services Commission, which oversees mental health services! What a hypocrite freaking hypocrite.
It was actually $211 million dollars.
Not sure of your source, but I have an NBC post that lists the cuts as 10 times that amount.
I got it from a CNN report after the Uvalde shooting. But your source makes Abbott's comments even more disgusting. Thanks for the correction.
Don't forget, he's going to eliminate rape too.
*eye roll*
Couldn't agree more. The mental health rationalization fails under even the slightest scrutiny. Sure, the people who commit these acts may have mental illness of one sort or another. However, other developed nations have rates of mental health issues at or near that of the U.S. but do not have the shootings. This is a uniquely american issue. Isolate the variables and you are left with the easy access to guns. Sure -- one could use bats or knives but the body count would be much lower.
And, as I pointed out to someone yesterday, for some reason we don't have a bunch of mass shootings using weapons like a fully automatic Thompson sub-machine gun with a 100 round drum. Of course, such weapons cannot be purchased by anyone who can convince someone at a gun show that it is a good idea to sell it to them.
Even it it is a mental health problem, why do these guys want to make it easier for troubled souls to gain immediate access to weapons? No background check? No waiting period? No mandatory safety/proficiency training? Concealed carry for all anywhere (except NRA conventions) . . . .
Always ask your GOP legislator(s) why, if it is such a good idea to allow citizens to conceal carry in general and in public, it is a bad idea to allow it inside the buildings where they work.
Part of it is their paranoia about the government coming to take their guns. Anything that slows down the purchase is seen as part of the slippery slope.
The other part is the mathematically irrational calculation of it being better to be armed in a very low likelihood event vs. having a substantial increase in such events as more people are armed. I think it is a bit akin to the people who are afraid to fly but are fine driving. The math of the risk is clear, but that feeling of control overrides the (semi) advanced math our lizard brains aren't wired to process.
The National Firearms Act of 1934 is why you do not see people running around with fully automatic weapons or weapons (other than pistols) with a barrel length of less than 18 inches.
This act was passed during the period of "gangster" violence in the 30s, when many in organized crime used fully automatic weapons (the Thompson and BAR were favorites--Clyde Barrow liked a sawed-off BAR, if I remember correctly.
(For those unfamiliar, a BAR is Browning Automatic Rifle, designed for use in WW1 (but too late) and used extensively as a squad automatic weapon during WW2. It fired a full-power rifle cartridge, unlike the Thompson (a submachinegun that uses a pistol cartridge).
The act did not ban these weapons. It just taxed the bejeezus out of the transfer of these weapons, making it uneconomical to have one or sell one.
US v Miller ruled that the law was constitutional --on the basis (and this is "funny") that the possession of such weapons had nothing to do with a well-regulated militia.
The reality is that you CAN buy and own a machinegun (and it is actually economical because the tax imposed has never really been updated since the 1930s (the tax is $200, which was a LOT in the 30s, not so much now). Of course, there IS an actual background check that takes several months and other limitations.
My father had a friend back in the 70s who was a weapons collector (his entire house was literally full of weapons going back to the 1600s--and when I say full, I mean pretty much every room in the house has gun stands along the walls that were filled with weapons). He had actual machine guns (Browning m1919, M2 (.50 cal), BARs, MG 34, MG 42, and others).
He also had an extensive collection of military uniforms, medals, etc.
It was literally a freaking museum.
Your comment highlights a question always lurking in my mind. It’s often observed that AR15s and similar guns are “weapons of war” and shouldn’t be in civilian hands. So I say, why don’t civilians have anti-aircraft weaponry in their home arsenal? Or anti-tank grenades? Somewhere we have drawn a line of what’s allowed in the civilian arsenal. Who decided these lines, that allow automatic weapons of war, but not killer explosives capable of bringing down an aircraft?
Our laws do. Laws we can change, and as others have pointed out, stand up well to constitutional challenge.
Also, full auto isn't allowed and aren't what the typical assault rifle is. They look identical, but the legal ones don't have the spray and pray setting. Which is kinda my point using the Thompson Sub Machine gun (1930's gangster weapon) as an example. If you wanted max carnage, you wouldn't take an AR-15, you'd take a Tommy gun. If you hadn't skipped arm day, you'd take a belt-fed M-60. We restrict such weapons for obvious reasons (just like the explosives you mention).
If grenades are criminal, only criminals will have grenades. And yet, we don't have many grenadings these days, even in that sub-category of situations the gun crowd likes to cordon off with terms like 'gang-land' or 'gang-bangers'.
Yes, but if 'the enemy" is a bunch of little kids or Walmart shoppers. Sarge is going to order semi-auto fire to do maximum damage. "Spray and pray" was used mainly to give everyone else a chance to hit the dirt, since a whole magazine goes off in just a few seconds. (watch out for the nextgen object of desire, the civilian m-249 SAWS, firing 100 round belts. Currently selling for about $8k.)
But when was this discussion at which there was universal agreement? Given that we are consumed with disagreement over the fine points of automatic weapons legality? And why does nobody question where that line is, given that the discussion about “rights” for weapons is quite heated?
Thanks for your response with some details. I really don’t know much about ARs and the various capabilities.
I'm no expert, but the line is pretty firmly drawn at full auto vs. semi-auto. Also firmly drawn at no explosives, period.
The gun people don't argue that because they know they'd look terrible doing so, even though many of their arguments should require them to do so. A good guy with a couple of grenades and a light machine gun would be more effective in taking down a bad guy as well as more effective resisting an oppressive government.
You enlightened me about full-auto versus semi-auto. I didn’t know that. So I guess that’s where the line has been drawn on military weaponry for civilians, and why we aren’t bickering over anti-aircraft explosives for Christmas.
I've been saying that for years. If it isn't about the weapon, why are some things deemed off-limits to the public that could find "reasonable" uses for them if given the chance? Surely some of us could find beneficial applications for a flame thrower, no? Wouldn't hand grenades liven up any Fourth of July fireworks show? And so on. What could possibly go wrong since many of those same people are deemed to be responsible real and potential gun owners, and at age 18 and without the need for extensive background checks or mandatory training?
The overlap between what the military has and uses and what civilians can now purchase is tiny. It may come down to just a sidearm, like the old 1911 Colt or, more recently, the Beretta 9m. The AR-15's you can buy now differ from what the military uses in a number of ways, but--critically--not in any way that affects a person's ability to shoot up a school.
They do sell mini-flame throwers for civilian use. Look- up "weed torch."
Explains why there were suddenly wildfires in unlikely places. Kill a weed with flames, spark floats for miles, hits a drought area, Voila!
Does it work for pest control too? Bug nests, here I come!
That is outside my area of expertise. Perhaps a commenter more familiar with the in-and-outs of landscaping would know. My involvement with the weed torch is seeing them in the hardware store.
Yeah, I've had to wait till night to pour kerosene down a bee's nest in my yard. How 19th century!
OMG, that is amazing! I've been using a weed whacker for decades when I could have been out there along the road roasting a dead patch around my mailbox?!? A few days of doing that and the neighbors would probably stop walking their dogs on my section of the street!
On a somewhat related note, I do not recall ever reading, after the perpetrator has been killed or arrested, that he (always "he") was stoned on "killer weed." And having that substance in your possession will still give you 3 hots and a cot for years in more states than not.
As we see from poll after poll, stricter gun regulations enjoy overwhelming support. The crazy comes in when you see how many people vote for politicians who won't tighten the gun laws, and who frequently loosen them instead. Because too many people are too tribal to ever consider voting for someone not of the tribe, even when your own tribe is doing a poor job of representing you.
Yeah, but what am I to do if I want tighter gun regulations but also want women to be second class citizens?
I guess if you're MAGA, you decide you can't do anything about the killing, and say your lord is in charge.
People who think minorities have "more rights than they do" are in a similar bind! :)
Someone had mentioned on other threads that the assault weapon ban was originally proposed when certain whites noticed that "militant" blacks were carrying them in public. And the mental health rage among Abbot and others is a crock since they refuse to all any checks on the ownership of weapons. Can't even check on the mental health if someone wants to. It's buy the gun, kill, then check "mental health".