The Virginia House of Delegates approved an assault weapons ban on a party line vote Friday.
Fairfax County Democratic Del. Dan Helmer’s bill would end the sale and transfer of assault firearms manufactured after July 1, 2024. It also prohibits the sale of certain large capacity magazines.
“This bill would stop the sale of weapons similar to those I and many of the other veterans carried in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Helmer said.
weapons similar to those I and many of the other veterans carried in Iraq and Afghanistan
And so what? Americans have always had equivalent, or better, rifles than the military. (I know nothing about the presenter, been told he’s rightwing, but there are no political opinions presented.)
So why is weapon choice suddenly a problem? We had AR-15s when I was a child in the 70s. If you would like a weapon that passes this ban, let me introduce the Ruger Mini-14.
FFS, we have a social problem, not a gun problem.
Liberals: “We want gun bans! Lotsa bans!”
Uh, that backfired over alcohol, drugs and abortion…
Liberals: “STFU! BANS!”
Our society is sick, and dems are fighting a losing battle and losing votes. FFS, these idiots could win every election if they would drop these ineffectual bans and get on board with helping us.
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Most Americans, myself included, don’t like giving up personal rights for “security.”
To draw a parallel that I figure you’ll agree with - far-right rhetoric is on the rise and I think we should do something about it. As much as I disagree with Nazi rhetoric, I absolutely don’t think the “solution” to this problem is banning pro-Nazi speech by law. We could easily point to Germany and say “well they had a massive issue with pro-Nazi speech. They banned it, no more Nazi rhetoric! It’s that easy!”
The root cause of far-right ideologies (or far-left for that matter) isn’t that free speech exists, it’s unhappy people radicalized by their living conditions and culture. Germans lived through a terrible economic depression after WWI, where a lot of people experienced homelessness and malnutrition. Fascism gave everyone a job and fewer people starved, plus they stood up militarily to countries that levied the economic sanctions which ruined their economy in the first place. From their point of view, fascism saved them. Fascism didn’t happen because the government allowed pro-fascism speech to occur, fascism happened because the horrible economic and world-status of Germany pushed people too far.
Have you thought about what the root cause is behind school shootings and other senseless killings? A cursory understanding of American gun rights and laws, and how they’ve changed overtime, proves that the existence of certain weapons platforms is absolutely not the root cause. My grandparents could have literally mail ordered full-auto machine guns to their front door, yet school shootings literally never happened. If public access to guns = school shootings, they would’ve been 100 times more frequent when your grandparents were kids.
Even if we poofed guns out of thin air, the people who would shoot children would still be around. This “solution” does nothing to treat them. It also does nothing to prevent others from becoming as jaded and sick in the head. The end result is still a bunch of radicalized, fucked up people who will lash out at society in other ways besides school shootings. Maybe when the start blowing up schools, stabbing kids, and running them over with huge F-150s, the DNC will start saying “Public access to fertilizer, pointy metal, and cars is the issue! No more fertilizer = no more school bombings! It’s that simple!”
You: American exceptionalism; " nah, if it worked ; we woulda already done it!"
Me: I’d rather fix the root cause issue that pushes people to murder children, instead slapping a bandaid over what is 100% a social issue. Maybe we should take real effort to stop climate change. Maybe we should better fund our schools and make college free. Maybe we should increase minimum wage so anyone who holds a job, regardless of what it is, can support themselves and their family. Maybe we should make medical care free. Maybe we should restructure our prisons so they focus on rehabilitation instead of cruel punishment and slave labor. Maybe then, our society wouldn’t breed people that murder children because they’re so upset and jaded after growing up with zero prospects of having a happy and fulfilling future.
But our politicians would lose power and money if they fixed these issues, so they’ll instead say that AR15s are what’s murdering babies and if you don’t support banning them, then you’re pro baby murder. And people like you will gobble it up.
Hand guns are where the actual violence is. This is theater.
The problem that I have is, “what is an assault style weapon?” because a ruger 10/22 looks like
, but if you put a scope on it and get the black version, it looks like 
. If you put a pistol grip on it and a larger magazine, it looks like 
, but it’s all the same gun. It does the same things. The shape of the magazine does not affect the gun in any way aside from more ammo. But you don’t have to get a banana clip to do that.To me, if the magazine is bigger than 5, and you can just hold the trigger, it should be illegal. Five rounds with five finger presses is all somone should ever need for hunting.
I don’t know shit about guns nor do I care for them, but that is just my general feeling. It’s the mag size and the speed it can be discharged at that matters.
Gonna need at least 15 rounds for a self-defense oriented pistol, and 30 for a home defense rifle.
This is the classic problem with democracy “I don’t know anything about this topic but I definitely have opinions anyway.” And look, I get it, and I don’t have a solution to this democratic problem. There’s no good test for reasonable expertise so we can’t be excluding people from having opinions in areas based on knowledge. Furthermore, if you feel strongly that an issue affects you, how well educated do you really need to be before your opinion becomes valid?
Gonna need at least 15 rounds for a self-defense oriented pistol, and 30 for a home defense rifle.
Yea, I don’t buy it. I’m saying I don’t know much about guns because I don’t want any in my house, but given what people “claim” they need guns for (hunting / defense) 5 bullets should be plenty.
WTF do you need 30 rounds for? Are you fighting an army? My guess is that any burglar is running away after the first shot, you’re not going to be in an action movie 30 minute shoot out.
This is the problem with 2a people, they have these fantasies of what is “needed” that’s completely detached from reality and just serves to provide guns to maniacs that can go on shooting rampages.
There are multiple reasons you need a small handful of bullets for self defense:
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You don’t want to have to count rounds during the most stressful situation in your life. You should be focused on other tasks besides worrying about round count and reloading.
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Bullets are the fastest and most reliable way to disable someone, yes, but they’re not instant like in the movies. Unless you get a head shot (usually not advised) or hit their spine (a bit of luck) they don’t have to stop fighting for a decent amount of time. You need multiple hits until they give up or are forced to.
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You use up bullets way faster than you think. Your scenario where a 30 round magazine is appropriate (to you) would average one shot per minute. A typical self defense shooting is averaging multiple shots per second.
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Smart home invaders bring buddies.
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If they knew you only had five shots, couldn’t they just count your shots and then come after you?
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Do you really want to have to deal with a potentially deadly encounter with “enough” preparation, or would you like to have way more than enough?
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Self-defense pistols require higher mag capacity for 2 reasons.
One reason is because the goal of shooting an attacker isn’t to kill him from blood loss in 40 minutes. It’s to stop him from killing you in 5 seconds, meaning it generally requires multiple hits to physically stop them.
And the bigger reason is because precise shooting under stress is really, really difficult. In a 2-way shooting scenario with 5 rounds the most likely outcome is you miss all 5 shots. You carry 12-15 rounds in the mag not so you can shoot someone 12 times - you do it so you have 12 chances to hit.
It’s also one of the reasons you don’t hear about people with concealed firearms taking out mass shooters very often. Anyone with a lick of training knows they’re going to miss most of their shots and that they’re more likely to shoot an innocent bystander than the shooter.
and you can just hold the trigger, it should be illegal
Good news, full auto and burst fire have been illegal for decades.
Bump stocks, which would bounce the trigger back against your finger causing it to fire effectively like a full auto despite being semi, were banned by trump of all people.
Good news, full auto and burst fire have been illegal for decades.
The pro-gun community does not support this ban
Bump stocks, which would bounce the trigger back against your finger causing it to fire effectively like a full auto despite being semi, were banned by trump of all people.
The pro-gun community fought this for years, despite claiming they were “just a range toy” even after their role in the deadliest mass shooting America had ever seen.
So let’s not pretend the pro-gun community are reasonable people making reasonable concessions.
The pro-gun community opposes this because the intent of 2A was always to protect the ownership of militarily-useful arms.
The gov’t already has the right to raise and provide arms for an army, as part of article 1 of the constitution; claiming that 2A protects the gov’t’s right to arm itself, when it was already granted that right earlier in the constitution, is laughable. Militias were groups of armed citizens, separate from the army, and they were often expected–and legally obligated in some cases–to provide their own arms in serviceable condition, and to train themselves in their use.
The way to effectively curtail violence without curtailing rights is to change the circumstances that lead to violence. Yes, you can cut out lung cancer, and even possibly do a lung transplant, but it’s far, far easier to prevent lung cancer by not smoking than it is to cure it after you’ve been smoking for 50 years. Same with violence; look at the factors that lead people to pick up and use a gun illegally, then work to prevent those, and you’ll have a greater net effect.
The pro-gun community opposes this because the intent of 2A was always to protect the ownership of militarily-useful arms.
Isn’t it cool how the intent of the amendment happens to align exactly with what the pro-gun community wants, which in turn aligns exactly with what is most profitable to the gun lobby?
It’s a good thing it does too, otherwise you’d have to say things like “I want to play with a full auto and I think the consequences will happen to people I don’t care about”.
Militias were groups of armed citizens, separate from the army, and they were often expected–and legally obligated in some cases–to provide their own arms in serviceable condition, and to train themselves in their use.
So do the gun laws in America mandate that a gun is kept in serviceable condition and it’s owner is trained in how to use it? Or have we shrugged off “intent” before the second paragraph?
The way to effectively curtail violence without curtailing rights is to change the circumstances that lead to violence
And while you spend the next 100 years doing that, the best way to minimize the amount of violence those people can inflict is to not sell them semi-automatic weapons after token checks that routinely fail.
I hate to break it to you, but gun control isn’t about stopping all violence forever and never has been. It’s about turning a murder into a black eye.
The fact that you slipped so effortlessly into that straw man makes it clear that you let pro-gun groups tell you what gun control is and then never thought critically about it.
So do the gun laws in America mandate that a gun is kept in serviceable condition and it’s owner is trained in how to use it? Or have we shrugged off “intent” before the second paragraph?
I would fully support laws that required people to train in the arms that they choose to own, and provided the ammunition and expertise as part of income taxes that everyone is supposed to pay. I think that would be great. Heck, let’s bring back marksmanship to schools; there used to be rifle teams in high schools, and I think that we should bring that back along with archery. We are a country that’s heavily armed, but often sorely lacking in the skill to use those arms, and we should fix that to bring the people more in-line with the intent of the 2A.
Yes, ownership is a right, but that right also carries responsibilities. Guns aren’t magic talismans that protect you simply by having one.
The fact that you slipped so effortlessly into that straw man
This isn’t a straw man; I’m steel manning your argument. Your best claim is that you would give that right back once all violence had been eliminated. But that’s an impossibility; even countries that have exceptionally low murder rates, with or without firearms, continually attempt to exert greater control over ownership of the tools of violence whatever those tools are. I’m acquainted with people that live in Finland, a country that has a murder rate that would be the envy of any politician in the US, but each murder committed with a firearm–legally owned or not–sees calls for more and more restrictions on the ownership of arms. What is a murder rate that you would consider to be acceptable such that you wouldn’t attempt to restrict the ownership of firearms of any kind by individuals?
What are the odds a court deems this unconstitutional?
I’d argue that you could ban anything that you don’t have to manually pack gunpowder into.
That’s what was available when the constitution was penned.
You don’t even need to ban the guns. Just ban bullets.
That’s a bad precedent to set. There are certainly reasons why this can be upheld, but saying that anything new is by default banned unless explicitly allowed is the opposite of what it states in the constitution.
That would allow for decisions like the freedom of speech doesn’t exist on the internet because the internet didn’t exist when the constitution was penned.
I wonder what database is in place that would allow them to determine what weapons were made after that date. It seems there would be a lot room for getting around that aside from just buying used.
When a firearm is manufactured by a licensed individual or company, it is logged into a book or database. When a firearms retailer receives a firearm, they log it into a book or database. When that firearm is sold, it is logged into a book or database. That is federal law.
Some manufacturers include the date of manufacture with paperwork, but that may only be month and year.
To my knowledge, there is no way for an FFL(licensed firearm retailer) to know a precise date of manufacture without inquiring with the manufacturer if it is not provided with the documents that are supplied.
The law is poorly written, so the real-world effect would be no new sales of specified firearms after the effective date. How restricting the sale of new firearms and not all firearms of the type that they want to restrict does anything is outside of my understanding.
Registeries have been ruled unconstitutional. So thats their shitty workaround.
