We can't solve this problem because we're all talking about highly theoretical and utopian solutions that don't account for actually existing realities.
The left says "no guns". The right says "more guns".
The US constitution says "the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Yes, there's a preface about a well regulated militia, and yes, people were using muskets when it was written, but the Supreme Court has ruled that this confers an individual right to possess modern firearms.
And the Supreme Court is even more right-wing now, and likely to force blue states to loosen their gun laws to look more like red states.
So maybe we'd have a more productive conversation if we talked about what's possible in the actually existing United States instead of dreaming about Australia's successes, because there's zero probability that we'll be able to learn from Australia.
I doubt that even with our previous level of gun ownership we would have had the same outcome either. We have a social healthcare system that at least provides some level of mental health support and our cultural relationship with guns didn’t fetishise them as implements of power. While this may have eventually changed with greater cultural homogenisation to American content via the internet, I’m unconvinced that it would have ever been the same as we see in America today.
The school shooting problem is very very American and i suspect it has a lot to do with cultural contagion brought on by the 24hr news media circus whipping everyone into obsession every time there’s a tragedy.
I've fired a gun on three occasions (I was an Army Cadet, I quite enjoyed the experience) and have handled realistic replicas (backstage on set of a theater show). In both settings they're treated as risky objects. You are handed the gun, you use it, and then you hand it back to be locked up.
My grandfather is the only person in my family I know who ever owned a gun. He used to keep it in the cupboard under the stairs. He handed it in to police to be destroyed long ago - he felt that he didn't need it, and that the most likely outcome of keeping it was an accident that he would regret.
Personally, I'm very happy to live without guns around. If I do want to shoot, I would be able to comply with the regulations in my state fairly easily. It's a bit of paperwork but no worse than, e.g. acquiring powerful lasers, or being allowed to enter an aerodrome for flight training.
Australia still has plenty of legal guns around. And it's clearly still a problem with illegal guns. Not as big a problem as the US, but still a big problem.
"But the latest crackdown did little to shift attention from the body count: in the past 18 months, 13 men have been shot dead in a western Sydney turf war and there is no end to the bloodshed in sight."
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/may/23/more-...
Definitely- the most recent mass shooting committed by an Australian national didn't even occur on Australian soil, but in Christchurch, NZ.
>our cultural relationship with guns didn’t fetishise them as implements of power
As opposed to the US, whose cultural relationship with school shooters sees them made Person of the Year by a popular nationwide magazine. Their media reports stories of "Could [popular movie] result in mass shootings?" throughout the time it was in the theaters to the point you'd wonder if it was actually part of a marketing campaign.
Not actively promoting this particular kind of crime or the people who commit it would indeed be a good start to eliminating it but why do that when there's money and political hay to be made over it?
But it’s not the same as American news. For one thing American news is weirdly musical… like why the hell does all American news come with a subtle soundtrack trying to obviously steer my emotional reaction to what I’m seeing? Other places add music too in plenty of places often for the same reasons but it’s not the same level… American news basically has a soundtrack going almost all the time, it’s excessive and blatantly an attempt to manipulate the viewers emotions.
Hint: it's what 92-96% of the US public consistently agrees with. Background checks without loopholes, for instance.
Background checks are standard procedure. I'm not sure what "loopholes" you are referring to. Usually this refers to private party sales. Do you want private party sales banned?
(I’ll give you my personal opinion: we can’t because of structural flaws in the US political system, and the problem is impossible to fix.)
I don't know about that. I know plenty of people on the left that have gun 'obsessions'. I think it's just culturally unacceptable for them to talk about it. Here in Eastern Massachusetts, pretty much everybody (who doesn't tout their minority right-wing victim status on the back window of their pickup truck) will tell you they are anti-gun; but if you feel them out carefully, a good number of them will quietly admit they own guns and enjoy shooting. There are many, many hidden gun collections here.
The left actually says "more background checks", though there are an unreasonable group that goes for absolutely no guns.
There's also the questions about what to do with aftermarket triggers that allow for burst-firing or even fully-automatic firing, which are legal right now (and were used in the Las Vegas mass shooting attack). Banning certain items (ex: large-capacity magazines, trigger-mods, bump-stocks and the like) would still be an improvement.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/12/26/2018-27...
https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/2021/12/bump-stock-ban-heading-...
Bump-stocks remain a public political issue, likely heading to the Supreme Court.
Oh, also? Has anyone actually been fired by the federal government? A cursory search shows 1800 people are on unpaid leave, but they haven’t been terminated. 1800 people out of an estimated 320k employees.
Weird.
How much of "the left" is actually about no guns, versus having a few hoops that you have to jump through first, à la (e.g.) Massachusetts:
* https://www.vox.com/2018/11/13/17658028/massachusetts-gun-co...
Compared to: "Only in Texas: Lubbock jeweler offers free gun with engagement ring purchase":
* https://www.dallasnews.com/news/texas/2016/10/25/only-in-tex...
Own a musket for home defense, since that's what the founding fathers intended. Four ruffians break into my house. "What the devil?" As I grab my powdered wig and Kentucky rifle. Blow a golf ball sized hole through the first man, he's dead on the spot. Draw my pistol on the second man, miss him entirely because it's smoothbore and nails the neighbors dog. I have to resort to the cannon mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with grape shot, "Tally ho lads" the grape shot shreds two men in the blast, the sound and extra shrapnel set off car alarms. Fix bayonet and charge the last terrified rapscallion. He Bleeds out waiting on the police to arrive since triangular bayonet wounds are impossible to stitch up. Just as the founding fathers intended.
I wish you hadn’t made your quip about the left saying “no guns”, because it isn’t important at all to your central point, which is that structural issues in the US prevent meaningful progress on gun control regardless of whether it’s good policy or the majority of people want it.
But you have like five people responding to that “left no guns” thing specifically, instead of to your real point, which is absolutely correct and the heart of the issue.
