A surge of illegal homemade machine guns has helped fuel gun violence in the US
Communities around the U.S. have seen shootings carried out with weapons converted to fully automatic in recent years, fueled by a staggering increase in small pieces of metal or plastic made with a 3D printer or ordered online. Laws against machine guns date back to the bloody violence of Prohibition-era gangsters. But the proliferation of devices known by nicknames such as Glock switches, auto sears and chips has allowed people to transform legal semi-automatic weapons into even more dangerous guns, helping fuel gun violence, police and federal authorities said.
The (ATF) reported a 570% increase in the number of conversion devices collected by police departments between 2017 and 2021, the most recent data available.
The devices that can convert legal semi-automatic weapons can be made on a 3D printer in about 35 minutes or ordered from overseas online for less than $30. They’re also quick to install.
“It takes two or three seconds to put in some of these devices into a firearm to make that firearm into a machine gun instantly,” Dettelbach said.
That's actually an excellent analogy. Here, we have the river overflowing its banks, and you're busy trying to find the water main. Can't hurt to shut off the water main, eh? Every little bit helps?
Simpleton.
So instead you sit down, get on lemmy to show your deep knowledge of river banks through hundreds of words while thr rest of the house gets wasted.
All while your neighbours, the ivilised world, is fine and is trying to convince you to close that fuclimg mains and check your pipes.
But no, you sit there doing nothing to fix the problem and try to convince everyone it's the river banks.. and calling them simpletons!
The rest of the civilized world has universal fucking healthcare. The rest of the civilized world has sensible welfare policies. The rest of the civilized world has far less income and wealth disparity.
The rest of the "uncivilized" world, that shares our privatized approach to healthcare, that shares our lack of poverty controls, that shares are obscene degree of economic disparity, but has adopted European-style gun control also has far higher rates of violent crime, gun crime, homicide, and gun homicide than even the US.
You're looking at the carp swimming in my refrigerator. You're wondering how you're going to get him crammed back in the faucet he came out, and looking at me like I'm the idiot for suggesting that it might just be the river rather than a plumbing problem.
Don't get me wrong, you need to sort that shit too. Universal care etc.
But I'm still here scratching my head with the rest of the neighbourhood that hasn't been affected by this mysterious river. And remember it's just your kitchen flooded at the moment. You sure you don't want to shut off the water mains?
We are concerned, we have this theory that your gun problem might be caused by, you know, guns.
That's pretty much what I'm getting at: you don't even know the river exists, let alone the fact that there are people living near it. You just assume that the US is living in a mountaintop commune, because you and everyone you actually know lives in one.
We aren't.
The only nation in the Americas that actually qualifies for your little club is Canada. The rest of North, Central, and South America is living in a dank river valley.
Of course, of course you guys are special. Want to go check your water mains now or continue this rant that no one can understand you?
Gonna go with simpleton, final answer.
LOL fine, me and the other neighbours at some point will stop worrying and telling you you have a leaking pipe, and will start laughing at you calling us simpletons while your kitchen floods and you do nothing