Is it time to talk about guns?

I share the nice lady's sentiments, and don't consider them all that "radical" per se. The radicalism I object to is the "my way or the high way" kind, where people refuse to compromise or even associate with the impure. Radicalism aims at attacking problems at their roots, involving fundamental change and extreme departure from the status quo--which is fine and sometimes necessary, if we're sure it's the absolute right course and aren't surprised when others strongly object. Jesus was quite the radical in His own way. Gandhi's (and King's) satyagraha was also radical enough, but I think justified under the circumstances of entrenched injustice. But it required commitment to non-violence and civility as acknowledgements that nobody has the inside track on truth. Also I'm leery of radical purists, who think it's imperative to vote for the candidate who holds the same views as they do, even tho said candidate doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning and throwing away their vote helps to get some crypto-fascist elected. I tend to be more institutionalist--process oriented instead of results-oriented than most radicals--even though I admit our electoral institutions are badly flawed and in need of reform. Respect for the Constitution, in other words.

Fundamental to democracy is the principle that both sides agree to abide by the results of free elections, even though the other side may hold power for a while. Political sociologist S.M. Lipset, in his classic 1960 study Political Man, saw the U.S. as a model of stable democracy, and its secret being that we had no strong ideological differences making people view a victory of the other side as the end of the world. Those were the days! Radicalism tends to breed counter-radicalism, which is why I partly blame the radical left, with its language police and prissy political correctness, for the rise of the radical right, with its attacks on books, history, and sexual "deviants". IMHO, the radical right (nothin' "conservative" about it) is the greater danger to the American way of life.

 

I dont own a gun I do like the fact that if I wanted to own a gun I could, do I need a semi auto ar15 probably not do I need a desert eagle probably not,
most if not all that would commit grievous crimes against another human are mentally unstable how to prevent them from getting guns while allowing someone such as myself the opportunity to get whatever gun I desire whether I need it or not

 

Many more voters are purchasing firearms. reprinted from The WSJ

More than half of American voters say that they or someone in their household owns a gun, according to a poll by NBC News. That’s the highest level since its polls began asking in 1999. After progressives drove up firearm ownership with policies that are soft on violent crime, they can’t figure out why their gun-control ideas fail to pass.

The share of voters with a firearm in the household is 52%, up from 46% in 2019 and 42% in 2013. A partisan split is evident. Gun households now include 66% of Republicans, 45% of independents, and 41% of Democrats. This is no surprise, in part because rural areas tilt right, and that’s where hunting is a family event and bears might be prowling the woods.

Notable, though, is that the numbers are increasing the fastest on the left side of the aisle. In 2019, 64% of Republican voters reported that their household had a firearm, compared with 33% of Democrats. The figure for Republicans has risen two points over four years, compared with eight for Democrats.

Twenty-four percent of black voters were in gun households in 2019. Today it’s 41%, up 17 points. Over the same period, the number for white voters rose three points, to 56% from 53%. Could this increase in black ownership be related to self-defense concerns amid the runup in urban crime? The survey doesn’t delve into the reasons, but it’s a reasonable guess.

The NBC survey includes 1,000 registered voters, and the margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 points. But it fits other evidence, and the trend is hard to miss. The Second Amendment protects Americans who want to own firearms for self-defense, and lately millions more people have availed themselves of that right.

If politicians want to pass gun regulations, even red-flag laws that seek to bar firearms from people with mental-health issues, these are the voters they need to convince.

 

What could possibly go wrong?

 

Yes

 

One might search the news reports for Black Americians being threatened by right wing extremists. Perhaps it is fear driven by propaganda?

It it legitamate to arm onself due to retoric alone? Or, as those College Presidents testified: The retoric must cross over into physical action to be condemed.

Modern people do like to titilate themselves with a fear of The MAGA, almost like visiting a haunted house in an amusement park. Examples abound.

Perhaps there are more credible and proximate threats to residents of Blue Cities than far away farmers with guns.

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The attachment speaks about large confiscations of ghost guns from New Yorkers. These are un-registered weapons. A crime waiting to happen.

NYPD seizes 389 untraceable ghost guns, 710% up from 2019

 

The UK system works quite well.
With 7 years behind bars for carrying a gun, Criminals who know that they are likely to be stopped by police, rarely want to risk it.

 

Former Miss Bolivia arrested on gun-trafficking charges

Former Miss Bolivia arrested on gun-trafficking charges

 

Re-printed from The Wall Street Journal:

The $50 Device That Turns Handguns Into Automatic Weapons
Illegal Glock switches made on 3-D printers let pistols fire like machine guns, fueling killings in cities like Washington, D.C.

Sheriff’s Deputy Jeremy Malone’s life ended moments after he pulled over a car without license plates by a
Dollar General store in rural Mississippi last month.
The driver pulled out a pistol illegally modified with a small device known as a Glock switch, which made it capable of fully automatic gunfire, according to police.
Malone, a 44-year-old father of three, was killed instantly in a barrage of bullets.
Nearly a century after a federal crackdown on machine guns largely ended the use of automatic weapons by criminals, they are back on the rise thanks to Glock switches, an illegal modification that lets Glock-brand pistols fire continuously with one trigger pull.
Glock switches are about the size of a thumbnail, easy to install, and typically sell for between $50 and $100. Authorities have struggled to regulate them as they have exploded in popularity recently because they can be manufactured cheaply and quickly on 3-D printers. Previously, most Glock switches were imported to the U.S. from other countries.

“They’re easily made, they are non-traceable and the profit margin is so high,” said Jeff Boshek, special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Dallas field division.

A representative for Glock, maker of some of the bestselling handguns in the U.S., didn’t respond to requests for comment. Similar devices can make other pistols and AR-15-style rifles fire automatically, but those aren’t as commonly used in violent crimes.
Their growing use means even as the number of shootings in major cities is falling following a pandemic-era spike, each shooting is becoming potentially deadlier.

The problem is acute in Washington, D.C., where police say the growing number of Glock switches contributed to the city’s 274 homicides last year, the most since 1997. While the number of shootings was 9% above the average for the prior three years, the number resulting in death was 22% higher, Police Chief Pamela Smith said at a recent city council hearing.
Metropolitan Police Department officers recovered 195 Glock switches last year, up from 66 in 2021, Smith said.
Nationwide, alerts for automatic gunfire last year rose 97% from 2021 across 127 jurisdictions with gunshot detection technology, according to SoundThinking , the company behind the technology. SoundThinking, formerly known as ShotSpotter, said it received 9,683 alerts for automatic gunfire in those jurisdictions last year, with a total of 98,031 rounds fired.

“We haven’t seen this many machine guns used in crimes since Prohibition,” said Thomas Chittum, a senior vice president at SoundThinking who previously worked at ATF.

A 90-year-old prohibition

The federal government first imposed tight restrictions on machine guns in 1934 to crack down on Thompson submachine guns, known as “Tommy guns,” used by gangsters and bootleggers. Anyone wanting to buy one had to register it and pay a special tax.

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed a law banning the manufacturing of new machine guns for sale to civilians, as well as devices that modify weapons to fire automatically like the Glock switches. Machine guns made before 1986 have soared in value and are primarily owned by wealthy gun collectors, not violent criminals.
ATF officials in the Dallas-Fort Worth area seized 300 machine-gun conversion devices in 2023, most of them Glock switches, compared with 40 in 2021. In November, a Dallas officer was injured by a murder suspect firing at police with a fully automatic Glock.

One of the gunmen in a 2022 shootout in Sacramento, Calif., that killed six and wounded 12 fired more than two dozen rounds at rival gang members and into crowds spilling out of nightclubs with a Glock that was illegally modified to fire automatically, according to police. Glock handguns typically carry six to 17 rounds, but larger magazines can expand their capacity to 50 or more.

Homemade, illegal and deadly
Some of the biggest purveyors of Glock switches are individuals manufacturing them at home with 3-D printers, law-enforcement investigations have found.

Xavier Watson, a Fort Worth, Texas, man who pleaded guilty last year to illegal possession and transfer of machine guns, bragged to undercover federal agents that he could produce about 400 Glock switches and other machine-gun conversion devices a day with the two 3-D printers he owned, according to court documents. Watson sold the agent 10 switches for $600.

An attorney for Watson didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The proliferation of Glock switches has spurred Republican and Democratic state lawmakers to call for bans on them so offenders can be prosecuted in state court without having to involve federal law enforcement.

In Virginia, bills to ban the switches passed both chambers of the closely divided legislature this month with broad bipartisan support. Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin hasn’t said if he will sign the measure.

Seven states—including Mississippi, Alabama and Pennsylvania—are considering banning Glock switches and other similar devices, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun-control group. Another 21 states have such bans in place.

In Mississippi, Jackson Police Chief Joseph Wade said law-enforcement officials across the state support the proposal. Recent shootings in Jackson have involved a Glock and an AR-15 modified to shoot automatically, he said.

“That’s something you use in wartime or in a military setting, that’s not something you would use on a street,” he said. “It’s too much firepower.”

 

Glock says, "not our problem, we're in the business of shooting people"

 

PART 2.

 

It’s still in place, but the Glock switches being intercepted by ATF are mostly coming in illegally from China. Every article I’ve read about Glock switches references China.

You can still buy machine guns manufactured before 1986, but have to go through an extensive FBI background check (called a Form 1) and have $30,000 laying around to buy one. They’re not cheap and are mostly in the realm of collectors. It’s an entirely different process than the background check used to purchase semi-autos or revolvers and can take up to a year to get approved. When Obama said you can buy machine guns at Walmart without even showing ID….he was lying.

 

"Is it time to talk about mental health in the USA?" would be a better subject.

 

Problem is, of course, that the same archaic dudes that want unrestricted access to high carnage potential weapons don’t support mental health programs or public health programs in general.

 

And we know this how?

 

The fascination soon when end when one of those lumps of lead sticks in him. They don't half hurt.

 

Nothing is certain, not even that. But I think we know to a reasonable certainty Reasonable certainty Definition | Law Insider many of the pro-gun dudes who raise the issue are Retrumplicans, including legislators. Historically they've tended to be stingy on mental health. When a mass shooting occurs and Dems start talking about gun control, they'll say: That won't get at the root of the problem. We need more mental health." Then, when asked for money for more mental health, they'll say: "We nave more important things to spend taxpayers money on. Like tax cuts for the rich, or building the wall Mexico is supposed to pay for. Occasionally, some will put their money where their mouth is by joining with Dems in mental heath legislation like the Restoring Hope and Mental Well Being Act. (The twenty members of Congress voting against it were all Republican). But it's been intermittent: one step forward, two steps backward. The Mental Health Matters Act passed 220 to 205, with all 205 “no” votes coming from Republicans. Texas has the lowest rating for mental health services of all the states. Access to Care Data 2022 After the massacre at Uvalde, Texas' sixth mass shooting during Greg Abbott's tenure as governor, Abbott said that Texas needed more government action to bolster mental health care. But instead he approved a $211million decrease in funding for the agency administering mental health programs to support the state’s border program. So this would lead me to suspect that they're using mental health as a hypocritical dodge to take the heat off calls for gun reform.
Opinion | Why we can't just blame 'mental health' for mass shootings
https://truthout.org/articles/205-r...bill-to-expand-school-mental-health-services/
“The GOP Mental-Health Hypocrisy”: Obstructing The Law That Does More To Advance The Cause Since ‘You-Know-Who’ Became President
The GOP’s Interest in Mental Health Care Is a Familiar Deflection After a Mass Shooting – Mother Jones
The Great GOP Mental Health Hypocrisy
The problem with the GOP’s intermittent interest in mental health
What the GOP debate revealed about Republican health care hypocrisy
They Blame Mass Shootings on Mental Issues, but Killed Mental Health Coverage? |
GOP blaming mental illness for gun violence is counterproductive and cruel, say experts
Buzzworthy
ChrisWeigant.com » The GOP's Mental Health Hypocrisy
Republicans Are Blaming Mental Health for Shootings but They Won't Fund It
Trump and GOP hypocrisy on mental health and Medicaid
https://www.salon.com/2018/02/24/the-gops-mental-health-hypocrisy/
GOP cuts to proposed education budget include funding for student mental health

I'm skeptical that a shift of emphasis from sensible gun control to mental health would be the best solution because:
1. Mental health is far from an exact science.
2. Successful treatment usually depends on a cooperative subject or parents
3. Most of mass shooters were never diagnosed as mentally ill.
Will Supporting Mental Health Stop Gun Violence? Sadly, No.
https://www.keranews.org/news/2019-...myths-about-the-perpetrators-of-mass-shooting
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2014.302242
Still, expanded health services would probably be a good thing from a public health standpoint.
Lots of elected state and federal legislators and numerous gun nuts seem to be in dire need of them.