i would be a lot less skeptical of gun control if liberals were actually out there trying to do something about those trying to leverage the State as a form of violence against BIPOC and queer people (especially trans people) 🙃
@ariadne Yeah, I'm in Canada and the general sentiment is that people are scared of any guns at all. I was talking with a friend about how in the US context community protection with guns a la the Black Panthers is some of the only ways people can get protection from organized hate group violence and the violence of the state.
Really sad when the state fails to fulfill it's end of the social contract. :(
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@adrienne @ariadne Yeah! Our gun regulations are pretty reasonable IMO. I think most provices just require you to keep the bullets and gun stored separately so that kids don't get in them and stuff. Also open carry / small guns are a big no no which is pretty reasonable IMO. Of course the US is just a widely different environment so we can't just apply Canada's standards there overnight. 😅
@ariadne @adrienne @mauve same here, though we have a unique situation where most of the handguns that are causing damage are probably smuggled from the US
nevertheless, the current government continues its march to ban as many long guns as they can, because that's the easy thing to do, and distracts from their empty promises to do something about illegal firearms
(though I guess if you make all firearms illegal, it makes it easier to do something about them...)
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@demize @ariadne @adrienne Honestly, banning assult rifles seems kinda realistic since they seem to be made for mass murder. 😅 I think most of the long guns are here are made for hunting, though some folks also use fancier things for shooting ranges. I'm not very well connected to Canadian gun culture though so I might be missing a lot of nuance.
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umm, no. there is no actual classification of gun called an “assault rifle.”
this is a made up thing by politicians to describe whatever they don’t like at the moment.
same with making your own guns, which is perfectly legal to do, but now they are “ghost guns,” and should be illegal according to politicians.
so we should then ban basic power tools like drill presses and machining equipment for personal use? because they can be used to make a gun? that’s the reality of banning arbitrary categories of things.
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@mauve @demize @adrienne those are just semi automatic rifles. almost all hunting rifles except for bolt action ones (which are based on antiquated technology) can do that.
“assault” rifles are defined as guns which have 3 or more features from an arbitrary list of features which do not have anything to do with rate of fire. and those features do not even count things like detachable magazines, which is hilarious.
the features are things like rails for mounting flashlights/scopes/lasers/whatever, “pistol style” grips (literally has nothing to do with the performance of the weapon), tripods (not going to be helpful for a mass murder event as they slow down aiming), adjustable shoulder support (again useless for changing the performance of the weapon), etc.
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@mauve @demize @adrienne literally when it comes to a mass murder event, an AR-15 or SKS is basically no different from a semiautomatic remington hunting rifle you bought at walmart. one just has wood furniture and the other has polymer furniture. both are equally deadly, can be fitted with extended magazines, etc.
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@ariadne @mauve @demize Sociologically speaking, the US is on an entire separate PLANE from most other countries where firearm ownership is common. Firearm accidents and homicides do happen in, like, Montenegro, but not at ANYTHING like the rate per 100,000 people. The problem with the US is not JUST guns, by any means; it's the fact that US society is profoundly fucking sick in a zillion ways.
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@eviloatmeal @mauve @ariadne @demize Yes, that is what i mean. "Per capita gun ownership" is a spectacularly poor proxy for "likelihood that someone is going to do something fatally stupid and/or malevolent with a firearm".
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@adrienne @eviloatmeal @mauve @demize again, it comes down to fascism control.
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@ariadne @eviloatmeal @mauve @demize Well, and also extremely heavy regulation of things like "treating your guns like toys and then leaving one where your kid can find it". Which is a BIG problem in 'murican culture.
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@adrienne @eviloatmeal @mauve @demize sure, but the people who do that tend to also be fascists. there is a correlation there.
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@ariadne @eviloatmeal @mauve @demize Oh yeah, definitely.
Also the despair problem is a big one. More than half of gun-related deaths in the US are suicides. And the despair problem is, again, related to fascism -- it's pretty hard not to feel despair when the fascists are doing everything they can to kill you, directly and/or indirectly!
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@eviloatmeal @mauve @ariadne @demize I mean, the US' per capita firearm ownership rate is spectacularly high -- it's twice the rate of the #2 country on the list! But taking the mean value is a little misleading because of whackjob fascists who stockpile, like, enough guns for a platoon. IF you look at the percentage of HOUSEHOLDS with guns, the US is still #1 but by a much less drastic percentage. Finland is #2 by households, and they don't have weekly school shootings or anything.
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@eviloatmeal @mauve @ariadne @demize I am in no way opposed to sensible, evidence-based regulation of firearms. But very little of what the US (or even Canada) has been doing lately is either sensible or evidence-based!
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@ariadne @mauve @demize @adrienne
just to clarify here, since we're deep in the legal terminology bit:
"assault weapon" is a legally-defined category that tldrs to "one bullet per trigger pull rifles that look scary"
"assault rifle" is a descriptor of "gun shoots as long as you hold the trigger down, and uses 'intermediate' caliber cartidges"
"Assault Rifle" came first, and "Assault Weapon" came after, intentionally trying to conflate the two.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapon#Distinction_from_assault_rifles
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@mauve @ariadne @demize That isn't really a feature of any particular WEAPON (at least not ones available to civilians; certainly sustained-fire weapons exist for the military) -- it's something you can modify certain weapons to DO. And crucially, you can modify just about ANY modern weapon to do at least some things that make it easier to lay down a lot of direct fire, given the right third-party equipment or a convenient machine shop. There's absolutely no "assault rifle" category that can be coherently defined.
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@mauve @ariadne @adrienne the gun community here is, mostly, pretty much just about taking your guns to the range
given how heavily regulated it already was, that's basically all you could do; so it's really just a bunch of mostly-conservative people who go shoot things in controlled environments
hunting is its own thing entirely that has a lot of overlap, but it's also not getting hit as much; most of what the government is banning are things that were already restricted
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@ariadne @adrienne @mauve No one tries to ban handguns in the US because the Supreme Court decision in Heller in 2008 made it clear that handguns are "quintessential" defense weapons, and were protected by the second amendment - trying to ban them is seen as so clearly unconstitutional that they don't try anymore.
scary-looking guns are less protected.
@mauve @ariadne Black Panthers are the context of US gun control https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act
@mauve @ariadne Canada has a fairly high per-capita rate of gun ownership, though! (It's just mostly long guns, rather than handguns.)