RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:But Good Citizens In Canada Don't Need Guns, Right ? 1&2- You claimed that "
it's not a gun issue it's a culture issue: Americans have had guns in their country since the beginning and the issues Americans have today were not present in the decades following WW2". I showed you how the NRA's radicalization in the 1970s began to erode common sense gun laws that had kept violence under control since the 1930s, and that that coincides pretty perfectly with the rise in gun violence. If find that very coherent and to the point. The US's gun culture changed in the 1970s to become more radical. It has been accompanied by an increase in gun violence that is unparalleled anywhere else in the developed world.
The gun culture has changed. People used to have hunting rifles. Now they have AR-15s with expanded magazines. Tell me which of those weapons makes it easier to shoot large groups of people and make trained police officers with body armour cower in fear in a hallway while kids bleed to death? My knowledge of semi-automatic may be poor, but it's good enough to know that guns are becoming more accurate and more powerful, and therefore deadlier.
3- So wait. In the same sentence you claim my gun control points are irrelevant because they weren't passed to address mass shootings and you then point out that mass shootings only became an issue in the last decades, precisely when those laws were repealed? Really? Can't you connect the dots?
4- You can't cherry pick an incident to claim assault bans don't work. Adam Lanza may not have used weapons included in the ban, but 74% of mass shooters acquired their guns legally. If anything, Adam Lanza shows the ban should have been even more comprehensive. You also conveniently forget that from 2000 to 2003 (before the end of the assault weapons ban) there were on average 4 school shootings per year for a total of 11 deaths. From 2004 to 2007 there were on average 5 school shootings per year for a total of 55 deaths. Don't tell me the assault weapons ban wasn't working.
5- My point was to show that the NRA has become radical because it has been paid by the gun industry. It is a corrupt entity more interested in lining its pockets than protecting the American people or the 2nd Amendment which calls for a "well-regulated" militia. The NRA wields incredible political power, and its corruption has lead the US straight into a gun violence epidemic by removing common sense gun laws. I can accept that US culture means a comprehensive gun ban is unrealistic. But the US population overwhelmingly supports background checks and red flag laws, and only the NRA stands in the way of common sense.
NPCexe wrote: Your rebuttal is incoherent and strays off from the main point, which was a refusal by the left to prosecute gun crimes. I'll keep it brief out of respect for ENB board: 1. American household gun ownership has not increased over the years, it has generally stayed between 35-42% every decade. The increase in gun purchases are largely done by avid gun owners, which boosts the per capita rating but doesn't mean the majority of households have a gun. Therefore the culture of gun ownership has not changed. 2. Your knowledge of the term semi automatic is poor because your sources don't want you to know what the term means. The vast majority of guns in the states are semi automatic AND, (expanded magazines or not) it makes no difference to a 2 second reload time. The issue has nothing to do with semi automatic weapons or expandable magazines. 3. Your gun control legislation points are not relevant because they tried to address other issues such as terrorism/politics and were not passed in response to mass shootings (which again was not an issue until the last few decades). 4. Assault weapons ban does nothing for gun crime, because mass shooters like Adam Lanza used weapons NOT included in the ban (even the now-leftist media conglomerates admitted this at the time but I guess your programming doesn't allow you to remember that far back). Lanza used a bushmaster AR-15, a sig sauer and a glock, none of which were on your precious list of banned assault weapons. 5. Your attempts to show that the NRA is corrupt has no bearing here, and in fact I don't even care for any type of lobbyists so they can all go to hell. The Republicans, and especially the Democrats, do not care about gun related crime whatsoever, and this Hegelian dialectic has been playing over the decades back and forth and still people are so biased that they pick a side and scream at the other. Nobody cares to take a step back and see the bigger picture here.
yggdrasill wrote: Americans have had guns, yes. But not as many as today, and they didn't have semi-automatic weapons with expanded magazines. Until the 70s, the NRA lobbied in favor of and co-authored gun control legislation. The NRA helped Roosevelt pass the 1934 National Firearms Act and the 1938 Gun Control Act. It's president at the time, Karl T. Frederick, testified before Congress that "I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.” In the 60s, when Oswald killed JFK with a rifle purchased through an NRA mail-order advertisement, the NRA vice-president agreed that mail-order sales should be banned. The NRA again supported Reagan's California Mulford Act in 1967 (imagine, Ronald Reagan passed gun control legislation! Fox doesn't tell you that now do they). But in the 70s, that changed. The NRA became the corrupt, extremist group we know today.
In 1994, US Congress managed to pass an assault weapons ban. Unfortunately it had a sunset clause, meaning it was allowed to expire 10 years later. Mass shootings have been on the rise ever since, exponentially so.
It's not a culture issue. It's a gun lobby issue. The reason this didn't happen after WWII is that the NRA hadn't radicalized yet.
NPCexe wrote: Tell that to the leftist DAs in Philly and LA. They refuse to prosecute gun crimes and sends repeat shooters back on the streets. Furthermore it's not a gun issue it's a culture issue: Americans have had guns in their country since the beginning and the issues Americans have today were not present in the decades following WW2
yggdrasill wrote: No. They don't.
Owning a gun puts your household at higher risk of gun violence from domestic violence, suicide, or accident. The vast majority of mass shooters (77%) purchased their guns legally. The vast majority of mass shooters started off as "good" citizens. You want to give them guns? You want firearms to be the leading cause of death for Canadian children? That's your dream?
The cops need to do their jobs and prevent illegal guns from crossing the border. They need to do their jobs and break up street gangs.
Good citizens don't need guns. They need a more effective police.
FiddyFiddyOddzz wrote:
Niagara police homicide detectives investigate after 3 shot in St. Catherines.
https://globalnews.ca/news/8914886/st-catherines-shooting-niagara-police-lake-street/