Virginia House approves assault weapons ban
nbcwashington.com
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.
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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.
Liberals: Ok, let's fund mental healthcare or a social safety net to solve that social problem.
The same people complaining about this law: REE!! Communism, socialism, trans pedophiles in bathrooms...
Don't give me that shit.
I lived in Chicago for over a decade. Chicago has been a Democratic supermajority city, in a Democratic supermajority state for something like 100 years. Under Democratic mayors and aldermen, community mental health and resources were slashed. (I know this because my therapist had been community mental health working with people that were chronically homeless until his position was eliminated by budget cuts.) To social safety nets have been consistently cut, while cops get more and more funding. Public housing? Good fucking luck, there was a 15 year wait when I was living there. The city is still deeply racially divided from the 1960s or so, when redlining was legally eliminated (but lemme tell you, legally ended or not, it's still very, very real).
If Dems really wanted these things in fact, and not in theory, they could have them in Illinois, in New York, in Massachusetts, in New Jersey, in California, in Hawai'i. But they don't. Instead they want gun ban band-aids that fix none of the problems that cause the violence in the first place.
Well it sure as fuck isn't conservatives trying to fund those things. There's a reason I said liberals and not elected Democrats but I guess basic reading comprehension wasn't a priority for your screed. So take that self righteous indignation and shove it up your ass.
Liberals are Dems in the US. But keep insisting that they aren't, and see how far that gets you. Progressive and DemSoc candidates sure aren't getting any traction, because it turns out that the people that tend to support that simply don't vote in significant enough numbers to make a difference.
Gun violence: a co-location of guns and violence.
We can get rid of the violence without getting rid of the guns. (Guns have different effects on violence depending on how you ask the question, by the way.)
Anyway, policies I support that would reduce gun violence that have nothing to do with guns:
*Medicare for all
*Walkable towns of all sizes
*Ban right to work
*Increase in convenient public hang out spaces
*After school group therapy
*$20 minimum wage
*Ban single family housing zoning
*Ban single use residential zoning
*Night sky safe lighting
*Sugar tax
*End corn subsidies
*Mixed agriculture subsidies
*The world's fastest bullet train network
*Ban gas and oil (with change-over subsidies)
*Require biodegradable packaging
*Prosecute wage theft
*Narrow police responsibilities and hand off functions to other groups (E.G. social workers and traffic-specific ticketters)
*Ban bail
*Ban shit tons of stuff surrounding probation/parole
*Ban charging inmates or their families for anything
*Ban civil asset forfeiture
*Rehabilitative prison
*Provide school lunch
*Free college
*House the homeless
*Fund public defenders at the same rate as prosecutors
*Tighter noise pollution laws
*Probably other stuff
The Mini-14 is not a good rifle. Accuracy and reliability are both very poor compared to a bone-stock AR-15; typically you're looking at about 4-5MOA on a Mini-15. Many of the parts are MIM, are are more likely to fail or be out of tolerance than forged and milled parts.
As far as saying that American citizens have access to better arms than the US military... No. Yes, a civilians AR-15 can be better than what the military buys, and civilians usually take better care of their firearms, and don't beat them to shit. But TBH, the AR-15 is one of the best all-purpose mid-sized cartridge rifles out there. Other rifles may be better in some ways, but an AR-15 has very, very good balance between cost, reliability, durability, accuracy, power, range, and weight. Sure, my AR-10 in 6.5 Creedmoor has more power, much better range, and is sub-MOA, buuuuuut ammunition weighs 2x as much and costs 4x as much, my rifle is 1.5x heavier, is 12" longer than a standard M4, and barrel life is about 1500-2000 rounds before it's worn out. (Also, typical infantry firefight ranges are <300y, and often much close than that in urban environments; a long range rifle isn't helpful there.) As far as hunting goes, 5.56x45mm in heavier weight bullets is quite adequate for varmint and mid-sized game at typical hunting ranges.
As far as armaments beyond rifles, American civilians don't have legal access to most of the things that win conventional wars. I can't buy modern artillery shells, or guided missiles. Small arms alone aren't going to win a conventional full-scale battle. OTOH, small arms and IEDs can make occupation impossibly expensive for an invader.
That said - yeah, Lucas Botkin is a far-right christian nationalist homo/transphobic shitbag. T-Rex Arms make great holsters, which sucks, since I'm not ever going to send any money to them for any reason. You have to take a lot of his shooting advice with a handful of salt, because he's not personally that good of a shooter. If you want good advice about how to shoot well, look specifically at people that compete; if a person is telling you how to shoot, but isn't willing to test their own skills on the clock and against other people, odds are that they're full of shit.
And yea - all of the violence is a social issue, and we should be trying to fix those, not banning shit. And by social issue, I don't mean some kind of personal responsibility nonsense, or this garbage idea that we need more harsh deterrents and prisons, more cops, etc.; I mean that we need to stop treating people like they're trash.
hahahaha
This is a fact. The military just gets better toys than rifles alone.
Then when you're all done fixing those social problems, you can have your guns back.
If you don't like idea, jump in your time machine and fuck off back to the 70s.
with that attitude, let's do the same for automotives. Back to horse and buggy everyone, too many drunk and crazy aggressive drivers, too many needless deaths. Guess we should just ban em all!
Oh you mean the things we are constantly adjusting legislation for to reduce the risk to the public?
Fortunately, the alcohol lobby isn't donating millions of dollars to Republicans to make sure DUI laws never happen.
Cool, now lets do speech, religion, unreasonable search and seizure, right to remain silent, drinking, and voting. Until every single person out of 350M people in the US can use those rights in a way that is deemed socially acceptable, they should be completely eliminated.
We have deemed the way they use those rights to be socially acceptable.
It's theater. They want to seem as if they're doing something about the problem, so they pass laws that sure do seem like they're relevant if you pay zero attention, in the hope the public is appeased. How appeased the public actually is, I have no idea.
Yeah they're plenty appeased. They see the constant mass shootings in America and say "thank fuck we don't live there". When their laws do fail, they're scrutinized by the public and the press. They demand to know how it happened and what is being done to stop it happening again. They demand accountability for anyone who dropped the ball.
It's measurably more effective than starting a gun worshiping cult and threatening children who survived school shootings.
If we're talking theatre though, remind us again now many tyrants America has overthrown? How is the crime rate going? How are rights going for women and minorities under the most pro-gun candidates?