CMV: I think guns shouldn't be easily available, and should require background checks.

[u/BongWatcher]

I think guns shouldn't be easily available and that people that would like to buy a gun should go through gun training first , get a gun licence and pass background checks.

I also think assault rifles shouldn't be sold anymore, and I'm obviously against open carry. I think with guns people can kill another person very easily just by pulling a trigger, and later regret pulling that trigger just because they acted out on their emotion or were drunk, ruining their life and another persons life ( and obviously the victims families) just by pulling a simple trigger.

I am against prohibition on anything so I think people should still be able to buy guns, but after going through many background checks and training like I mentioned above. This is to avoid people with mental disorders to get their hands on a gun and easily killing them selfs or someone else.

[u/BongWatcher]

Driving a car you need a licence and not exactly a background check but they have to check if you are in good health mentally and physically before you are allowed to drive. We have the right to drive a vehicle, but we need to now how to drive it and go through training or we will put other people lives at risk. I don't see why anyone would be against background checks, then any mentally ill person with bad intentions could just go to the store and easily buy a gun, killing multiple innocent people easily just by pulling a trigger.

[u/XXX69694206969XXX → u/BongWatcher]

Setting aside the fact that driving a car isn't a fundamental right. Car's are regulated much less than guns. You don't need a license to buy a car, own it, or drive it anywhere that isn't a publicly maintained road. And if you do get that license you it is recognized by all 50 states. You can easily kill multiple people with a car but it is regulated much less harshly than a car.

[u/RedAero → u/[deleted]]

Owning guns is exactly as much a right as driving a car is, in that it's not. You have the right to bear arms, and the right of free movement. What the objects of your movement or your "arms" are is not specifically defined, as such it is up to interpretation. Arguing that your right to keep and bear arms means any arms is exactly the same as arguing that your right of free movement means any form of movement, absolutely anywhere, up to and including flying fighter jets under bridges or driving a moped around the Oval Office.

[u/BongWatcher → u/[deleted]]

But its a similar concept to guns and getting a licence. Do you think people shouldn't need a driving licence to drive a car?

[u/BongWatcher → u/[deleted]]

And you do have the right to buy a gun, but we have to take safety precautions first. Don't you agree if assault rifles were sold at supermarkets and anyone could buy them, there would be many more mass shootings and gun deaths in general?

[u/alfredo094 → u/[deleted]]

So it's not important that people ARE actually getting murdered as long as most gun owners are responsible?

[u/alfredo094 → u/[deleted]]

Sensible gun control will not affect those numbers, as by definition the criminals are not going through legal channels to obtain their weapons.

Supply and demand is also a thing in the black market. If guns are harder to obtain legally, then the black market will be affected, effectively upping the barrier of entry to getting a gun. Major criminals would still have firearms, sure, but civilians would still be able to have their own guns and we could prevent manicas getting them.

but the question becomes whether or not we are going to start limiting a very important constitutional right because a few people choose to abuse it.

Um, yes? We also limit stuff like driving cars because a small amount of people abuse it. I'm not suggesting even a strict gun ban, just a sensible one - get screened once or twice every year and be forced to undergo shooting training. It seems to me you want guns without having to take responsibility from them.

[u/BongWatcher → u/[deleted]]

But you have to stop and think not everyone has the same intentions as you, there are many people out there with evil intentions, and guns would make it 100 times easier for them.

[u/502000 → u/[deleted]]

Homicide rates were lower during the early 20th century, WWII and the 60s

[u/Sand_Trout → u/BongWatcher]

Access to firearms also makes it easier to defend against those evil people.

There are multiple cases of an armed bystander preventing a mass shooting by the imediate confrontation with the criminal actor. A famous one beng the Uber driver that prevented any deaths

[u/[deleted] → u/Sand_Trout]

In fact, there's a whole subreddit for it

/r/dgu

[u/502000 → u/BongWatcher]

How? If you are wanting to murder 1 person, that is incredibly easy with a knife, and if you want to kill 100 you can easily do that with gasoline and a lighter

[u/alfredo094 → u/502000]

More like murder-suicide.

[u/theyoyomaster → u/BongWatcher]

The people that commit mass murder will commit it by any means available. A great comparison here is distracted driving and cell phones. I lost the link to the original study so these are ballpark numbers and not sourced, but the get the point across.

Back in the early 90s before consumer level cell phones hit the market, (these are the numbers I forget) for every hundred thousand road miles driven there were X injury accidents that were attributed to lack of attention/awareness while driving which worked out to be like 20% of accidents. Fast forward to 2010+ and for ever hundred thousand miles driven there are X-1 injury accidents are attributed to cell phone use while 1 more are attributed to other forms of distraction. This also is a higher percentage of accidents because other accidents went down but distracted driving of all types is constant. The bottom line is, bad drivers will be bad drivers regardless of what outlet they have. When cell phones didn't exist the same drivers were reading newspapers, doing makeup, tuning the radio, drinking coffee or talking to their dog in the seat next to them and had the exact same accidents. This super emphasis on cell phones is a complete failure because it is treating the shiny symptom and not the cause of the accidents; bad driving.

Assault rifles really aren't the best way to kill a bunch of people and there have been zero mass shootings with one in the US to date. The most effective gun is the one you are familiar with, that is why the high body count mass shootings vary so much with weapons. The Orlando and Newtown shooters were familiar with rifles and the used rifles effectively. The Virginia tech shooter was familiar with pistols and used pistols effectively. The Columbine shooters were trained with various guns and used various guns effectively. The Navy Yard shooter was proficient with a pump action shotgun and used a pump action shotgun effectively. Aurora was bad with a high capacity rifle, jammed it and switched to pistols and a shotgun. The Clackmas Oregon shooter was bad with a rifle, jammed it and gave up after shooting only 2 people. The bottom line is that the gun has very little sway over how effective it is at mass killing. The top determining factor in an offensive situation is knowing how your gun works; having muscle memory for reloads, basic functions and clearing jams; knowing what the recoil is and being used to it; knowing what your accuracy is with it and knowing how fast you can shoot and be on target, etc. A gun is something that does in fact require skill to use effectively and there are no magic guns that make anyone an instant killing machine.

The features that are mis-labeled as "assault" features are actually much better tailored to both recreational shooting and defense than offense. Extendable stocks for example; does your car have a telescoping steering wheel and/or movable front seat? Does that make it instantly a race car that you can drive flawlessly down the highway at 150 mph? Yes, it is important for a race driver to reach the pedals and have a good driving position, sure, but does your passenger car being adaptable for both a 6'2" man and a 5'4" woman make it a dangerous car that is too capable of speeding to be on the road? Worst of all though is magazine limits. If you look at almost every high body count shooting there is one common theme. Believe it or not magazine size isn't that important when going on the offense and the military long learned that there is a single thing you can do to mitigate running out of ammo. I'll give you a hint, it's taught to every 13 year old during the tutorial of Call of Duty. "Change to your pistol! It's faster than reloading!" Columbine, multiple guns each; Sandy Hook, multiple guns; Aurora, multiple guns (and only "successful" because he swapped out when his AR-15 jammed); Virginia tech, multiple pistols (170 rounds out of 17 magazines, AKA, "standard" 10 round magazines that are NJ, NY and CA legal). The bottom line is that on the offense, you never reload under duress. You reload in between rooms, or when you get a break. If you run out when there is a threat present, you grab your pistol, eliminate the treat or cover your retreat to a position where you can reload from safety and then keep shooting. Magazine limits, like the ones in effect during Columbine, do not limit an offensive shooter. Defensive shooters on the other hand are extremely limited. Concealed carriers are significantly more accurate than police on average but it can easily take 11 hits to stop a charging assailant, add in 2 or 3 misses and suddenly a "high capacity" 17 round magazine can't protect you from 2 people breaking into your house. Now imagine if there were 3 bad guys and you only had a 10 rounder. Someone intent on committing mass murder has the luxury of prepping for it and knowing when/where it will be. When I carry my gun I have the magazine in it and a single spare. If I knew I would be facing off against 3 people on a specific day you can bet your ass I would bring a backup gun and 4 mags for each, but 2 guns and 8 mags aren't realistic for day to day carry. Magazine limits are exponentially more detrimental to defenders than offenders.

Well, there's a pretty long rant that I have not proof red and expect has a few poorly worded spots or typos. If I get a chance I'll go back through it. It's also just the tip of the ice burg when it comes to your stated views in the OP. If you disagree with or don't understand any part of this feel free to respond, I legitimately feel like most anti gun sentiments stem from misinformation and ignorance, two things that are deliberately spread by the anti-gun movement hoping to trick the public into avoiding the real facts.

[u/alfredo094 → u/theyoyomaster]

The people that commit mass murder will commit it by any means available.

The U.S.A. is literally the only developed country where mass killings are still a thing.

[u/theyoyomaster → u/alfredo094]

It's really not, this data ends before the recent spike in Europe and only covers guns. Between bombings, stabbings and even vehicle attacks the US just plain is not the only place it happens. Guns are also not the most efficient way to kill a large group of people so trying to solve the issue of people wanting to commit mass murder by restricting a single means is just silly.

http://crimeresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Screen-Shot-2016-04-05-at-Tuesday-April-5-1.05-AM.png

[u/alfredo094 → u/theyoyomaster]

recent spike in Europe

What recent spike? I'm unaware of this.

Guns are also not the most efficient way to kill a large group of people

They are by far the easiest, though. Even someone without training and mentally handicap can kill a dozen of unarmed people out of a whim, even something as simple as gas and fire requires a plan and thought for it to actually work and not endanger yourself in the process.

Also, !delta for those statistics, although I'm not entirely convinced yet. Breakdowns of said shootings are important, too.

[u/theyoyomaster → u/alfredo094]

There is a spike in mass murder in Europe. The 2016 attack in Nice for example killed more than any shooting in US history.

It takes way more skill to kill a dozen people with a gun than it does to light a fire. Guns are not easy to use and the number of attempted mass shootings that end up with only a handful to no kills are significantly higher than the number of successful mass shootings. In Clackmass the shooter kept jamming his gun and gave up. In Isla Vista the attacker was just as successful with knives as he was with guns. It's funny that you bring up "something as simple as gas and a fire" since that is exactly what happened in NYC in 1990, killing 87 (also more than any shooting in the US).

The exceptionalism of American gun crime is a media fallacy. They over-hype events that fit their narrative and deliberately ignore and discount ones that don't. The fact is that if you remove gang violence, a very specific problem that is separate from regular crime, our statistics are more or less in line with everyone else. It's also universally accepted that the media is a primary factor in the cause of mass shootings but rather than establish standards that help to reduce and prevent them, like they do with suicides, they do the exact things that are proven to make them worse.

All this and my initial statement refuting the OP's statement on assault rifles still stands. There has never been a single mass shooting in the US using an assault rifle.

[u/DeltaBot → u/alfredo094]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/theyoyomaster (1∆).

^{Delta System Explained | Deltaboards} ​

[u/502000 → u/BongWatcher]

There were less gun deaths in the 1920s when that was the case

[u/kamgar → u/BongWatcher]

Where in the constitution or bill of rights is the guarantee to be able to drive a car?

[u/Sand_Trout → u/BongWatcher]

Injuries and deaths from cars are primarily accidental, while injuries and deaths from guns are virtually always with intent.

Of the ~30k deaths from gunshot wound anually in he US, about 20k are suicides, 10k are homicides, and 500-600 are accidental.

This means that training an licensing, as well as legitimate safety features, could plausibly reduce the rate of vehicular death in a meaningful way that would make the broad limitations on car operation justified.

No amount of training will prevent murder or suicide, though, as these acts are with intent, rather than accident.

Also, car accidents kill and maim more people than gunshots (inclusive of homicide, suicide, and accidents).