Biden is doing this to drive a wedge into Republicans. The gun nuts and the ones that don't care about guns will have differing opinions because now gun violence affects them directly. It's really smart.
Biden looks presidential. Trump has three choices:
Come out against AR-15s, for obvious reasons. This makes gun nuts less likely to vote for him.
Come out in favor of AR-15s. He looks insane to Republicans who don't care about guns.
Trump ignores the issue or waffles and looks unpresidential.
Number 3 is most likely. Of course the correct answer is number 4: propose a competing policy that is nuanced. But that's impossible for trump.
How many Republicans don't care about guns?
The ones that are republicans for tax purposes.
Is that enough to matter? And is this issue enough for them to change their vote, given the tax stuff? All the other shit Trump does certainly doesn’t matter.
The richest places in America are pretty solidly blue. A lot of rich people like good public schools and colleges, clean water, the arts, etc. and understand that taxes and charity are how those things are paid for.
Other rich people like gated communities and stopped reading books^1^ when someone stopped assigning them. They’re the Republican rich people.
^1^ Some will read a book about war or some shitty airport bookstore thing that’s 80% out-of-context quotes about how to be a leader.
Rich people don't give a fuck about public schools, lmao, they send their kids to private ones.
Private schools often suck. Rich people aren’t smarter. They just have more money. There’s plenty of districts where the best public high school is way better than whatever private schools exist. Half the private schools are for weird religious groups or kids who got expelled.
There’s almost always good public schools in cities. That’s why there’s always loopholes that allow rich people’s kids to go to them.
And in colleges, Harvard isn’t better than UC-Berkeley or the honors programs at most state flagship institutions. It’s just older. (There have been studies that compared students who got into an Ivy League school and ultimately chose a public flagship and the Ivy grads only did better in the first few years after graduation. But then the public flagship attendees caught up.)
I wonder how many of those hedge fund billionaires down on Wall Street are Democrats. I doubt that it’s many of them. Bankers? Nah. Media and Telcom? Not likely. They’re all based in NYC, the bluest of the blue cities.
They all like tax cuts and deregulation. Trump is the one who’s promising that, whereas Biden promised and already delivered more of both to them all.
I don’t have any desire to defend hedge fund or VC billionaires so I’ll concede the point. There’s a reason San Francisco has NIMBY policies and New York City can’t elect mayors for shit.
Yeah, because the people who own all of the businesses and real estate constantly battle those who work at the businesses and live in all that real estate, which just goes to show what a fucked up and unbalanced role money plays in our so-called democracy.
Lots of them. Do you know any Republicans? None of them care about issues that don't affect them and their families. Even other "conservative" issues. They are not driven by policy.
Only Republicans with guns care about guns. And only 50% of Republicans have guns.
They don't care about each other. Liberals care about what other liberals think. Stop thinking like someone who cares about policy.
I've had to explain this to a lot of people who naturally assume that any organization of people will be organized around some kind of shared values. Most of the time that's true, but not for Republicans.
Republicans are just a mish mash of obsessive single-issue voters, and by in large they just don't care about the other single issues that their fellow party members are going on about.
At the head of the Republican party it's people who want to minimize their tax burden, eliminate regulations on corporations, and cannibalize as much of the US government as they can into for-profit institutions. You could say that's three issues instead of one, but the overarching theme is to cater to personal greed, no matter the harm to society. These are the ones who are primarily pulling the strings in the party, at least historically.
Just below them is the military industrial complex and gun manufacturers who just want to sell guns no matter the harm to society. They like to rile up 2A fanatics with conspiracy theories that the government is out to steal all their guns so they'll be defenseless, paving the way for King Biden to ascend to his throne. The industry only cares about selling guns and the fanatics only care about having guns, and neither care about any kind of harm to society.
Then there's the radical Christians whose obsessions cover an eclectic mix of social reactionary positions and literal death cult worship (e.g. Christians who give absolute support to genocide in Palestine because they think Israel's conquest is a crucial step towards the rapture, which they believe is imminent). Broadly speaking the people in this group just want to hoist their religious doctrines onto everyone they can by any means available and no matter the harm it causes to society. They literally only care about "God's Kingdom" in the afterlife.
Then there's people who just lack any capacity for adaptation or learning. Their obsession is to feel like things are staying the same, or even reverting back to a past that they only know how to view through rose tinted glasses. They can't be bothered to comprehend the problems we're facing as a society or how the past was not the idyllic utopia that they mistakenly remember, nor can the old way of doing things sustain a growing and transforming society. These people just want to exist in comforting ignorance by feeling like they get to remain in familiar surroundings, no matter the harm to society.
There's really only one thing that truly unites them: Each one wants one specific thing no matter the harm to society, and that one specific thing that they each want IS HARMFUL to society. But they work well together because none of them care about the harm being caused by any of the others, and as long as they all tow the same line, each one gets what they want.
I've never met any Republicans that were pro-gun-bans. I really don't believe you'll be able to find a single one either.
This is dumb as fuck timing by Biden, but I'm sure he can't help himself because he's been super anti-gun for decades so it's probably just like a reflex at this point for him to to off about banning guns after a shooting.
Trump, for one
How many of them will stay home or change their vote because the head of the party they're still a part of despite all the gun nuts continues acting like a gun nut?
If Biden is trying to use guns as a wedge issue for Republicans, he's the person we saw at the debate all the time.
Gun control, especially banning the most popular and utilitarian platform, is a massive political loser. This is incredibly poor timing for a struggling campaign.
Trump ignores the issue or waffles and looks unpresidential.
and that is what's gonna get him. because up until now, he looked soooo presidential 😂
Any of those options will work fine for Trump. He doesn’t need to have policies, strategies, or responses to anything. His voters can’t remember it anyway. You think they remember that he banned bump stocks in the first place? He could promise to ban AR-15s one day, then criticize his own proposal the next day, and he’ll just get cheered by both sides. Voters are fucking stupid.
All that matters is that he keeps the steady supply of hateful buzzwords flowing. You can’t win chess against an opponent who’s playing hungry hungry hippos.
All of that wastes trump's time and makes him look unprofessional to swing voters. He can't win with just his fans. That's why he lost big time in 2020. The swing voters saw him failing to respond to an actual issue.
Correction: He lost big time because of mail-in votes. Trump in 2020 got the record high for votes for a Republican candidate at something like 67.2 million, which was just about a million votes less than what Obama got during his first election (which was a record-breaking turnout). Biden got around 80 million votes in 2020, breaking every voter turnout record ever.
Swing voters are still crucial because that's how Hillary lost despite having only 100,000 less votes than Obama did in his second election, but I feel like swing voters have probably more or less already made up their minds. If you don't see Trump for what he is already, the odds of his reaction here being the final straw seems unlikely. I think if people had better access to voting, we'd easily see a repeat of 2020 even if we were to vote right this minute.
Trump already said he'd take away everyones guns, no questions asked, years ago. No one that supported him even blinked. This means nothing to them.
I'm pretty sure the NRA had a heart attack when they heard that 🤣
That's just bullshit, he did not. He said the one stupid thing about ignoring due process for red flag law situations. This is pretty far and away from "everyone's guns"
You made me curious, thank you. The actual quote is "take the guns first, go through due process second."
Trump will go with number 5: "Did you know socialist immigrant windmills causing cancers kill more Americans than guns?"
He will do #2, and his base will cheer. Not a single person from that camp will think he's crazy.
This is the kind of Democrat logic that makes me cringe...
He can just say nothing. His position is already clear and he just selected a VP candidate who was pictured in social media with an AR15 recently, and openly suggested the ATF doesn't need to exist.
Biden is doing this to drive a wedge into Republicans. The gun nuts and the ones that don’t care about guns will have differing opinions because now gun violence affects them directly. It’s really smart.
Or... he just doesn't want to get shot himself. Just saying. not wanting to get shot is a powerful motivator...
Not that it's perhaps prudent. or you know, god forbid, actually a good fucking idea.
I guarantee that he will say that the attack wouldn't have happened if more of his followers had ar 15s there
Option 4: trump and the GOP in general still views his assassination attempt as the danger you have to live with to live in a “free nation”. It’s the cost of freedom. Something something “just because i got shot doesn’t mean taking everyone’s rights away is a good idea”
2 and 3 only matter if reality matters to you. Most people being trump don't care how insane things look, or if trump "looks presidential".
What you're arguing would make sense with logical voters. So of course it doesn't apply here. When have Republican voters marked 'D' or stayed home instead of voting for a pro-gun candidate!? It just doesn't happen.
And "wedge" issue?? Come on, Republican voters are either all-in on Trump or they reluctantly mark the 'R'...
Bernie had this right. Despite being pretty progressive, he wasn't for outlawing semiautomatic firearms because they were black and looked scary. He believed that the right to arms was justified. This "AR Ban" is a great way to lose a lot of independents, and even some hard D voters like myself. There are a lot of dems who carry, and a lot of them who own the very firearms he wants to ban.
I had a friend that said he only voted for Trump in 2016 cause he felt like he needed somebody to protect his rights to own a gun. This guy that “protected” host rights to own a fun also did massive amounts of damage to other people rights.
I wish Dems would quit talking about guns. It’s a mistake.
What do you need an ar for ?
Actually that is a good question. You don't need an AR-15 because there are non-AR semi-automatic rifles that will do exactly the same thing but aren't viewed as bad-ass. (BTW, auto-loading rifles have been around since 1883.) The AR-15 is a civilian semi-automatic and the basis of the M-16, so larpers can fulfill their G.I. Joe fantasies and a cuddle them when they are told to fear something by Fox.
The AR platform is also just useful in general, which is why it's become so popular.
Need? I don't but I wanted one so here we are. AR ban is stupid will only help conservatives in the election. I'm not against gun control legislation that will actually do good.
So when shit hits the fan I can "borrow" 5.56 ammo from the military.
That's quite a gun fantasy you have.
Can't run up a flight of stairs, but ready to take on the us military
How'd Afghanistan go?
Or Vietnam, or the Revolutionary War for that matter.
These idiots will take every gun you have right before Hitler v2 seizes power, it's wild.
Fighting fascists.
Why do you need the freedom of speech to write this comment?
Have you ever fired one before? They are way more accurate than a handgun. You could be 5ft away from someone with a handgun and still miss (especially in a high adrenaline situation). It's considerably more difficult to miss with an AR.
As an independent, I could care less about this sort of thing. I see it as virtue signaling to staunch democrats. It won't win him a single vote, since his entire platform has always been about being a super traditional Democrat.
We need new traditions, not rehashing of old, tired trades against things like specific types of guns and obesity.
The next would be assasin will be forced to use a weapon appropriate for distance killing. They would be more likely to succeed.
The failed Trump shooter used a rifle completely appropriate for the distance. He was just a "comically bad" shooter, according to acquaintances.
He wasn't against outlawing them because they looked scary implies that he was in favor of outlawing them because they looked scary.
I think you mean he was against outlawing them because they looked scary.
If you didn't reply within 14 seconds of me correcting my post, yeah. That's what I corrected it to.
ANSWER FOR YOUR 14 SECOND CRIMES
14 seconds in the dungeon seems only fair
He's not gonna do shit, he's just gonna continue to bark at one of the symptoms of the problem.
this right here folks. its a wedge issue and it doesnt solve the real problems
Holy deep fried frankenfuck will the Democrats NEVER LEARN?!?!?!?!
AFTER!
You talk about guns AFTER the election!
What in the actual pogostickingpopejohnpaul is he THINKING?!?!?
The optics are 1000% awful here.
Uvalde wasn't enough, but a potshot at the planet's most notorious living felon is?
Lose the election speed run any %
I’m 100% sure Dems are actively self sabotaging their re-election.
There is no way the entire party cannot read a fucking room. This has to be on purpose at this point.
P2025 will increase their stock portfolio value so they can dump it all and make millions.
Then add some more taxes on the middle class to pay for it.
They get more fundraising dollars when Trump's in power too. For the dems who are in states that'll never vote them out, they'll make a killing from a second Trump term and they're rich enough to be insulated from just about all his decisions that fuck the rest of us over.
To be fair there's large swaths of the party that want him to step down. It's his advisors and aligned leadership that insist on running him and these policies no matter what.
A though has just crossed my mind: what if the advisors want him to be there this way and wait till the last moment to say "you know what? Biden steps down [because of his health] and X runs in his place" so Democrat voters can say "we dodged the bullet".
That moment is now. And that's not really how politics usually works. It would be incredibly reckless to do such a thing.
I didn't say it wasn't reckless😁
lol, but political advisors are notoriously risk averse.
... If they see something as a risk.
Biden is simply the worst possible candidate, perhaps the only prominent Dem who can lose to Trump. And he’s determined to prove it.
He's trying to motivate the progressives. His campaign has finally figured out that progressives aren't turning out in the swing states. After over a year of warnings. This, the rent thing, (which progressives immediately identified as entirely too high and a gift to landlords everywhere), and the exponential increase in supposed policy lists. (Which like any gift horse, shouldn't be checked too thoroughly lest the corporate subsidies they hide shine through)
What we really need him to understand is the problem is Israel. Any of this would have worked a year ago. But many progressives are not willing to support the genocide in Israel just to buy themselves comfort.
Most of the progressives I know are moving toward gun ownership rather than away, out of despair
I know that, you know that, but he's so disconnected that he didn't get what would happen to his ratings when he quashed the most consequential strike action in my lifetime.
the left don't give fuck about gun control - the far left actively oppose it
its the center right, pearl clutching, NIMBY, yuppy liberals who use it for virtue signaling, but even they won't be budged on who they're going to vote for based on the lip service about guns
The center left/right is Biden's base too, they're already sure to show up. But I don't think it's accurate to say the Left, like progressives, don't care. They very much care, the ones further to the left want to arm up and the ones closer to the center want to ban guns. It's an interesting intersection to look at but it pretty much comes down to how threatened they do or do not feel.
Are you suggesting democrats will somehow fool voters into thinking they are agnostic about guns?
No, nor should they try, nor should they stick with their current seemingly nonsensical policy ideas about guns.
The "gun problem" as it stands is really more of a symptom of our mental health crisis, our ridiculously confrontational "news" cycle, and a number of other HUMAN factors that aren't going to be solved by banning a particular model of gun, though and no one seems to want to hear that.
Screeching "Ban the right's favorite model of toy" right before an election is beyond tone deaf, and an incredibly dumb move politically that won't do squat except mobilize the NRA voters to vote the other way, which we DO NOT NEED with democracy in this country at stake.
I can personally count multiple handfuls of coworkers and acquaintances who might have voted for him that will now vote trump or stay away from the polls over this.
Maybe Biden actually does plan to announce that he's not running in the 2024 general election. That way, this scores some political points with Democratic voters, but doesn't impact the election much.
Other than that, I don't really see how this makes sense politically. I dunno. Maybe his team has done some kind of analysis and is convinced that a particular demographic in the swing states that they're trying to win will like this or something, so it might be disadvantageous nationwide but a win locally.
Basically, they got some breathing room on the replacement thing because of Trump getting shot at. But I guarantee you behind the scenes the message is the polling numbers in PA come up or else.
If it's viable to run someone else, I'm pretty sure that it has to happen almost immediately, if it's going to happen. The primaries have already happened, so if someone gets run, it'd have to be the party picking them already, and there's very limited time to campaign.
The general election is November 5. It's currently July 17. That's three-and-a-half months in which someone would have to sell themselves to the public.
goes back to look at presidents who didn't run again
Johnson is not the only U.S. president who decided not to seek a second elected term. The others are James K. Polk, James Buchanan, Rutherford B. Hayes, Calvin Coolidge, and Harry S. Truman. (Theodore Roosevelt declined to run in 1908, after being elected president in 1904 and serving one term, but he again sought the office—and lost—as a third-party candidate in 1912.)
So looks like the closest equivalent would be LBJ and Truman, and they still did so at the end of March in the election year, with twice the amount of time remaining that's still left for 2024, and before the primaries.
Like, I don't think that it'd be realistic to wait and see what happens in the polls and then have someone run with even less time.
Oh yeah they aren't talking about waiting for long. That's why Biden is throwing progressive policies at the wall. 5% rent, AWB, SCOTUS reform...
And I thought there was a fourth. So I went to go look and the breaking news is he has Covid, right after saying he'd step aside if a major medical condition happened. So that's going to get spun into a thing.
You know I remember when I started studying politics and I was thankful we had nice campaigns instead of the drama laden ones you see in other countries. I think I even uttered it once and forgot to knock on wood. I'm sorry guys, I jinxed us.
So I went to go look and the breaking news is he has Covid, right after saying he’d step aside if a major medical condition happened.
Ah, you're right, news just coming out about it today.
Nah, I think I'll keep my shit and wait for the far right to move.
The fuckin scenario we are in I swear.
Far right: let's kill the left and do fascism.
Democrats: let's ban weapons right now while there's threats of violence against democrats.
Really?
Valid
Just wait for it, Dems are preparing to finally kill the filibuster just days before they lose to republicans in a landslide defeat due to running the worst possible candidate, simply because he promised the donors nothing would fundamentally change and actually delivered on it.
Afterwards, they’ll eat ice cream and blame the left for not voting hard enough.
Just as dumb as when Beto said it before his election...
It'll never pass, and he thinks saying it will get votes, but all it does is motivate idiots to vote trump, even tho he actually did an executive action to try and close a loophole.
It might not have stood, but it worked for a couple of years.
On its own its a dumb idea, but I do think another commenter had it on the money how this is more a ploy to catch trump with his pants down. Trump can either agree and piss off his pro gun base (and look like a coward given his previous statements), he can argue against it and seem like hes inviting more violence and alienate anyone in his base who thinks gun violence is bad. Or he can ignore it and look like hes a doddering old fool oblivious to whats happening around him.
alienate anyone in his base who thinks gun violence is bad
ie exactly nobody
to his base it would look strongbrave to ignore it with the most bigly beautiful thickskin
Banning guns is a losing policy for democrats. It only ever hurts them. I really wish they'd stop lighting political capital on fire with statements like this
I said this decades ago... if Dems dropped the gun shit and embraced safe shooting sports, they would win every damn election.
Gun rights are a MAJOR factor in why many people I personally know refuse to consider voting Democrat.
They will wax poetic all day about how much they detest Trump... but then end with, "At least he won't take away our guns."
Which is hilarious cuz trump said he would
I actually know a guy who plans on voting for Trump simply because "They can't drag me to the concentration camps if I have guns"
He doesn't think Biden wants to drag him off btw, he thinks Trump will... but it won't matter because he had guns..
The number of people I know who won't vote for them because of gun shit is too damn high. There are cheaper ways to solve gun violence anyway. Single issue voters are dumb, but democrats need to accept that they exist and this is the biggest single issue
We'd have universal healthcare and constitutional abortion rights if nothing else.
Rich people would lose a lot of money should that ever happen, so whenever things start to look even a little good, you bet your ass some idiot in the Dems is going to scream "hell yes we'll take your guns".
It seems like such a lazy non-solution. Essentially telling shooters "Hey, from now on, you can only use ALL THE OTHER GUNS" as if that solves something.
This is the problem. All banning the AR will do is drive the popularity of another platform up. There's a crapload of powerful semi-auto customizable platforms out there, it's just that the AR variant is the most popular. It's a stupid solution because it's no solution at all - and I don't mean that as a "not good enough so we should do nothing at all" thing, it's just a completely pointless solution.
Noooo you don't understand, banning pistol grips and front sight posts is totally effective! It totally didn't spawn an entire new segment of "compliant guns" that had the same level of lethality the last time we did it...
I'm not even sure the AR is the most popular. It may be the best seller in the US, but I'm pretty sure that the AK-47 is more popular globally, and there's absolutely no way that they will outlaw the AK-47 in the US since we manufacture them.
The AK is a global weapon for sure. My commentary deals with the popularity of US gun platforms because that's the country whose laws we're talking about. So the global popularity of the AK isn't really directly relevant.
Well sure, but the reason I brought it up is that I'm not entirely certain that the AK or M-16 aren't more owned in the US than the AR. AR has only been standard issue for the military since after I got out in 2004. I would wager there are far more AKs and M-16s in private hands than ARs
The M-16 and AR-15 are the same gun barring the full auto mechanism. Armalite originally made the AR-15, sold it to Colt, who pitched it to the military, and when it was adopted, was designated the M-16. (Simplified history) So while it may not have been standard issue as the AR, it’s been around for a very long time. Obviously it’s changed up a little over time as manufacturing has changed hands, but I’m not sure if it’s worth debating what’s in private hands other than how they’re designated when they’re essentially variants of the same gun.
Gotcha, they didn't exactly go into the manufacturing history in boot when they trained us on how to use the thing, and I have had exactly 0 reasons to touch a firearm since boot.
You'd be wrong. The AR platform is the civilian version of the M-16/M-4. And the flat-top carbine length version of the M16A4, called the M4, was standard issue for infantry units being deployed since at least 1999. They were increasingly being sold to civilians in semi-auto only configurations right up to the 1994 Assault weapons ban that named them specifically. That just resulted in a bunch of AR platforms with different names that narrowly skirted the rules of the ban, called "Compliant ARs". After 2004, when the ban expired, sales of AR's seem to take off because now they can sell freely under the AR name that got a ton of publicity. And now in 2024 they're going to start selling the AR platform in Sig's new 6.8mm flavor. To be fair the Spear itself is different enough it some people may not considerate it an Armalite platform. Other would argue it's an AR-16 platform.
Technically, the AR was around before the M-16.
The M-16 is the military version of the rifle, not the other way around.
This is an issue that Biden has consistently refused to understand to be a political loser well before any suggestion of a decline. He's consistently vocal on it in a way that would suggest he genuinely believes it to be a winning position.
In reality, it's practically impossible to do and mostly serves to energize the right and alienate voters in states he actually needs to win. It'd literally be better politically to say nothing on the topic, but he insists on pouring fuel on the "they want to ban our guns" fire.
I have been, on the whole, positive about Biden, but this is a massive blindspot he's held for a long time.
I can think of literally no better reason to keep ARs legal than the events of last week.
Yes, this is the exact intention of the second amendment. Armed resistance against tyrannical government. If the rise of fascism in America isn’t the time to use it, it’s meaningless.
The founding fathers envisioned state militias that would rival the power of the federal army and keep it in check. That ship has sailed, so it already lost a lot of its bite, but any power it still has can only be justified for that purpose
in b4 /pol mods delete this for "inciting violence".
Everyone gets a free scope and 100 hours of shooting lessons with purchase.
Scopes aren't versatile enough for the AR platform. Free LVPO with purchase and 100 hours of training.
Ok, but can you throw in an M203 and a leaf sight? Maybe a box of 40mm HEDP? Indirect fire is a real game-changer.
1 in 5 Americans score adequately high enough in their spacial reasoning to qualify for an M32 or M320 credit. The M203 will only be available on surplus legacy rifle systems via lottery.
Seeing how 2A it almost took down a fascist it's getting hard to argue against it.
If you think arming yourself because there are organized fascists in the country is a similar argument to fascists wanting guns to do fascism you're a fascist and nothing less.
this is not going to get anyone excited about voting for him, but it will galvanize the opposition and push swing voters into staying home on election day at the very least
He IS trying to lose.
The Democrats don't WANT to defeat the Republicans because they NEED their favorite excuse in order to get away with the fuckery they like to pull all the time, all their insider trading and industrial kickbacks especially. Whenever you criticize them, they point at the GOP and say "oh so you'd rather THEM?"
Ironically, electing Democrats fucks up their plans.
Shows you how the independents and left aren't strictly anitgun. Was such a huge blunder on his part and the person asking him gave him repeated chances to walk it back and clarify it to not mean what he said, and he still insisted on total ban.
That fucking horrible assassination attempt would have happened with or without the AR, this is just another knee-jerk emotional reaction, and it could NOT come at a worse time (pre-election). We're fucked.
Handguns used in ~2/3 of all gun murders in the U.S.: I sleep
AR-15 used in one assassination attempt of geriatric running for president in 2024: REAL SHIT
It's also the most common rifle in the US, which is why it keeps showing up in various shootings that get media attention. They're not super great rifles for any application, but they're good for just about anything and designed to be modular so you can swap parts around if you need to.
That probably cost him a few votes, since he is now openly one of those gun grabbers who hates the 2nd amendment that the GOP claims all Dems are as a scare tactic.
An AR-15 semi-automatic rifle or variant has reportedly been used in multiple mass shootings in recent years, including the Sandy Hook, San Bernadino and Las Vegas shootings.
I think here is the real problem with ARs
The FBI collects data on “active shooter incidents,” which it defines as “one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area.” Using the FBI’s definition, 103 people – excluding the shooters – died in such incidents in 2021.
In 2020, the most recent year for which the FBI has published data, handguns were involved in 59% of the 13,620 U.S. gun murders and non-negligent manslaughters for which data is available. Rifles – the category that includes guns sometimes referred to as “assault weapons” – were involved in 3% of firearm murders. Shotguns were involved in 1%. The remainder of gun homicides and non-negligent manslaughters (36%) involved other kinds of firearms or those classified as “type not stated.”
103 deaths in mass shootings vs. 13,620 gun murders means that the odds of you dying in a mass shooting are less then 1%. AR's and attempts at bans thereof are meaningless feel-good legislation that doesn't fix anything. They aren't magic murder guns with homing bullets, they're just popular guns because they're perfectly adequate for what they do. Ban them and dudes will just use a different rifle.... or multiple handguns.
Completely for gun control, but the needless focus on AR-15's when all the stats say it's fucking dumb to do so annoys the shit out of me and reeks of taking advantage of the stupid who say shit like, "Why not shoot them in the arm???". There are so many FAR better things Dems could push for. Modernize the ATF's database. Plug gunshow loopholes federally rather then the hodgepodge of states we have now, put extreme risk/domestic violence laws on the books, tackle ghost guns before they become a larger issue. The list goes on, and on, and on.
Thank you. Agreed.
Most car accidents involve at least one Toyota Camry. Does that mean Camrys are bad? No, it just means there are a lot of them.
Nooo, let’s not. We’re gonna need those pretty soon from the looks of it.
Anyone looking to ban weapons must not believe Jan 6th was a genuine insurrection.
Why, oh why, would you disarm the people and give the state a monopoly on violence when that state is teetering on the edge of fascism.
Serious questions how would guns have prevented the insurrection?
I think they mean you want to have guns AFTER the insurrection.
But then, what good are AR-15s against Abrams and F35s?
An F-35 can't stand on a street corner and enforce martial law. This argument falls apart when you look at any armed resistance fighting oppression.
Did America not just lose a forever war against a bunch of dudes in the desert with AKs and homemade bombs?
Russia is finding out that even those planes and tanks are obsolete compared to cheap drones. At this point any laws we make won't matter at all in Civil War II.
But then, what good are AR-15s against Abrams and F35s?
Heres the thing about civil war. You don't need to fight the f35. You live where the pilot, and his family lives. Theres a reason civil war is a last resort and it's not because it's unwinnable, it's because there's not much justification for the steps you have to take, so the ends better be damn well justified. To think American is some how immune to how civil conflicts work is fantasy.
This is a fucking retarded take and I vote Democrat. Jesus.
I want you to imagine the following scenario:
The RIAA: "Internet file sharing of mp3s is eating into our profits. Government, we want you to ban the Rio Volt SP250 mp3 player."
The Government: "Yes, banning only that specific make and model of mp3 player and none of the rest of Rio's product catalog, or any mp3 players manufactured by any other brand, will completely and permanently address this scourge of copyright infringement. Consider it done."
That's you! That's how DUMB you sound!
--GLaDOS.
Here's what happens when you ban a firearm by name: manufacturers change some extremely minor detail, change the model number, and keep selling it. The Tec-9 open bolt machine pistol was used in a few school shootings in the 90's, most prominently the Columbine massacre. California banned the gun by name in state law. The manufacturer responded by moving the sling ring from one side of the gun to the other and calling it the Tec-DC9, with "DC" standing for "Designed for California."
It's not an engineering problem. Banning individual makes and models is how you solve (or at least end) an engineering problem. This is a culture problem.
This does nothing to motivate the left and everything to motivate the right....
Biden, are you TRYING to lose?
I thought this was one of Sanders' biggest advantages a few election cycles back: he never presented himself as a "gun-grabber," but rather acknowledged the legitimate uses while also acknowledging the problems with gun violence. Agree with him or not, gun control is one of those divisive issues that bogs down progress because it's so contested. I can't pretend to understand what any of these 342 million batshit crazy fellow Americans are thinking anymore, but I imagine you would have a lot more success avoiding the 49%/51% issues, no matter how important, and pushing policy in areas where there is a tiny bit more consensus among the populace.
At this point he should just read Project 2025 aloud.... No joke, my grandpa was considering voting for Trump till he realized The Donald was coming for his playboys.
Non-consentually "grabbing pussy" himself while his party is telling us we can't look at some consensually in a magazine or on the web.
Why are these old stogies so determined to fuck up the world when the vast majority of them will be lying alone in an overgrown cemetery plot in 10-20 years because even their kids don't want to visit them?
"Charles Whitman killed seventeen individuals and wounded at least thirty-one others over the course of thirteen hours before he was killed on the observation deck of the UT Tower on August 1, 1966.[72]"
...Does Pres. Biden really think that the assassination attempt would have gone less well if Crooks had been using a Ruger American bolt action rifle chambered in 6.5CM? Does he really think that?
Let's be super-clear here, and AR-15 uses an intermediate cartridge. Most bolt action hunting rifles are going to use full-power cartridges, cartridges that have a longer range, may have a flatter trajectory, have less wind drift, and have a helluva lot more power when they hit their target. A center mass hit with an AR-15 at 150y is going to be bad; a center mass hit with a .308 or 6.5CM at 150y is going to be the end of someone's world. Bear in mind that many hunters do not consider a .225/5.56x45mm bullet to be ethical for deer hunting because it's lower power, while there's very broad agreement that 6.5CM and .308 are just dandy.
Also, calling for banning guns in an election year where you're already behind? When gun bans tend to galvanize Republicans and get them out to the polls? Incredibly dumb. Unbelievably dumb.
He wouldn't have been able to get 8 shots off. Of course he missed but still.
Edit: I have not been able to confirm the number of shots taken. I will update this with a source if I find something.
I think he only got like 2 shots off. The others you heard were secret service returning fire.
Is this a real thing or speculation? Genuinely wondering.
Of all the reasons to ban a gun, trumps little knicked ear is low on my list
If anything I think that warmed me up to the concept of not banning them.
I mean, fine. But the recent attempt didn’t make the AR-15 look especially dangerous.
Time to force registration of guns. Time to force psych evals for gun owners. I own two guns. One is a SKS I bought in 1990. Although considered a assault rifle it is nothing more than a semi automatic hunting rifle. I would gladly submit to what I propose in order to ensure that some broken soul doesn't have access to a weapon. Anyone who is against accountability in this matter is probably a danger.
The SKS has the same size standard mags as an AR-15 and can do everything else the AR-15 can, but with a more powerful round.
How is it "just a semi automatic hunting rifle" if the AR-15 isn't?
(Boost for Lemmy went fucky wucky so I reposted this comment)
Sounds like a great way for conservatives to make sure their victims don't get guns. They'll go back to pretending to be concerned for trans people and stuff. Remember when women were forced into psych wards for being "disobedient"? I bet it'd basically be the same type of labelling anyone going against the fascist agenda as mental illness.
I'm all for it in the progressive parts of the country (like Massachussetts) where minorities (including lgbt) probably wouldn't be targetted like that by the government. But in the regressive states like Mississippi, or Louisiana, or West Virginia, or Florida, or Texas... no thanks, I don't want to have my house raided when overlord Trump becomes supreme leader and the state decides I don't deserve human rights unless I convert to Christianity (the right kind of Christianity though obviously, the wrong kind will get you dragged out into the street and shot)
I think it just boils down to "gun control requires the government to enforce it especially fairly and in good faith" which I do NOT trust a conservative government to do. One shitty election, and suddenly leftists or minorities can't get guns and all my gun data next to my address and SSN is conveniently accessible to fascists, along with the statistics bought from corporations saying I'm a filthy socialist
I live in Canada. We had mandatory gun registration passed in 2001. From that point on, the Conservatives used every opportunity they could to scrap the registry and finally succeeded in 2012. Since then, the reintroduction of a gun registry has been off the table.
Canada has nowhere even close to a gun culture the way the US does. The main opponents of gun registration here were hunters and farmers, a much smaller portion of the population than in the US (which also includes substantial gun enthusiast, militia, and survivalist cultures).
So what does all this mean? Gun registration laws are laughably unrealistic in the US. There is absolutely no way you will ever get a gun registry to stick as long as the Republicans have any chance whatsoever of winning an election.
Sounds like a great way for conservatives to make sure their victims don't get guns. They'll go back to pretending to be concerned for trans people and stuff. Remember when women were forced into psych wards for being "disobedient"? I bet it'd basically be the same type of labelling anyone going against the fascist agenda as mental illness.
I'm all for it in the progressive parts of the country (like Massachussetts) where minorities (including lgbt) probably wouldn't be targetted like that by the government. But in the regressive states like Mississippi, or Louisiana, or West Virginia, or Florida, or Texas... no thanks, I don't want to have my house raided when overlord Trump becomes supreme leader and the state decides I don't deserve human rights unless I convert to Christianity (the right kind of Christianity though obviously, the wrong kind will get you dragged out into the street and shot)
I think it just boils down to "gun control requires the government to enforce it especially fairly and in good faith" which I do NOT trust a conservative government to do. One shitty election, and suddenly leftists or minorities can't get guns and all my gun data next to my address and SSN is conveniently accessible to fascists, along with the statistics bought from corporations saying I'm a filthy socialist
To me it sounds like a good way for malfunctioning republicans to get identified. Its what they fear most. The idea that everyone will know they are sociopaths, psychopaths or have plain old NPD. When you hear someone say they don't believe in therapy you know they are afraid of being exposed.
Are you suggesting that we do it to expose peoples' medical information to the public..? Or am I misinterpreting this
I think them being openly Republican lets everyone know well enough that they lack empathy/humanity. It's on people (well, more like our education system to teach people) to recognize that, WITHOUT violating basic privacy rights. Plus, knowing the publics' ableism and perception of mental disorders, people will probably start suggesting that ASD, ADHD, etc. should disqualify you from having a gun if the laws aren't just listing out arbitrary diagnoses.
Personally, I currently live in a very red part of Georgia (not for much longer though) and I'm pretty queer and have ADHD and stuff, so I'd rather not let the government even know what guns I own. When the state or federal government becomes social democratic, I'll be completely fine with it
What an idiot. Does he not realize talking about banning guns is the number one way to motivate right wingers? The US is NOT going to ban guns especially with the current Supreme Court. This is an example of his old team running old plays that haven't been successful since the 90s. He needs to go before he causes any more damage to his party.
AR-15 is also one of my favourite rifle.
Right wingers are already at 100% motivation and have been for years. It's the left that needs motivating.
If you think that then you have no idea what would come with the threat of a national gun ban. The right might be fired up but with a possible ban not one of them would miss voting day. Also, there are enough left wingers who are against banning guns to irrevocably damage the party.
My point is there is no reason to even talk about this hot button issue. It's not at the top of almost any left voters list right now so it won't motivate anyone on that side. It was such a careless misstep that should have been completely avoidable. Talk about it After the election.
Let's pick a candidate who can do better.
It's Pete coming for yo guns energy. Please drop the guns dems for the love of your country.
Time to ban roofs.
Unrelated fact. One of the earliest laws ever written states that if you build a house, and the roof collapses on the home owner killing them, you will be put to death.
Biden speed-running losing the election.
At this point all Trump has to do is pretend this didn't phase him, then not say anything too stupid and I'm sure Biden will do his best to just hand it over.
Guessing you dont like the Supreme Court reforms he just announced either?
Do I like, or the general public? I hate Trump more than Biden if that's essentially what you're trying to question. And yes we do need supreme court.
But will the general public give a shit or even know about this plans? Doubt it. Trump getting shot at is much more attention grabbing.
all Trump has to do is [...] not say anything too stupid
I take it you're new to trump
You say that, but Trump has been doing just that lately.
Bro why? I'd vote for a fucking shoe over him at this point, unfortunately it's between sundowners and down syndrome. These guys want to destroy everything this country was founded on and developed over the years and banning a gun is where you go?!
At this point it's intentional sabotage. No one fucking wants this. It won't change anything. Just leave it the fuck alone and start doing something for the lower and middle classes to secure your goddamn votes. Or just let the conservatives use your stupidity as a stepping stone to steal your voters by fulfilling their fear mongering.
The optics on this are abysmal. I get that he's trying to be consistent with party ideology any time there is a shooting where someone dies, but we've got an election in 4 months and talking about banning guns of any kind gets conservatives motivated to turn out.
“Fun” fact: those kids would be old enough to vote this year, had they not been gunned down.
Not sure this will make a difference for the election. At this point, I suspect that support for gun control/rights is petty well understood and priced into support for the candidates. No one expects Biden to veto gun control legislation and no one expects Trump to sign it. Granted, Trump can be a bit of a wild card sometimes (see: bump stocks reclassification).
That said, this is likely a very hollow promise. Such legislation is almost certainly a dead bill in Congress. And even if it somehow passed, it's likely not going to make it past the current Supreme Court.
At best, this is just empty rhetoric.
But that's the official state rifle of the school shooter!
Buddy, if you don't want to be President again just step down and let someone else run.
Meh. Our soldiers are trained on these. They are familiar. Why ban the weapon people know how to properly use and maintain?
If I want to snipe someone, I'm using a high powered hunting rifle like a .308 or 7mm.
I have so many questions
I have exactly one. Is Biden trying to lose?
It make sense that if corporations control both parties, and Boden has done good work for workers rights, they'd hamstring the "not-super-evil" party and push for the other party.. It's a conspiracy theory but billionaires want Trump since he promises tax cuts, relief, and loopholes. For the rich.
Most labor friendly president in US history = protecting rail corporations from a stike?
Standards are low.
There's been a union "surge" in the south directly because of Boden policies
Yeah, I gotta say that making the election a referendum on Trump personally seems a whole lot more likely to be successful than making it a referendum on the federal AWB. That wasn't a political success story for the Democrats.
But, I dunno. Maybe his team has some kind of angle, like they're trying to move some critical demographic that they think that they can influence.
EDIT: I gotta say that aside from the question of whether it's a good policy or whether it's a good move politically, every time it sounds like a ban is proposed, it sets off a massive wave of firearms sales, so I'd guess that firearms vendors are going to have a good time.
Biden is doing this to drive a wedge into Republicans. The gun nuts and the ones that don't care about guns will have differing opinions because now gun violence affects them directly. It's really smart.
Biden looks presidential. Trump has three choices:
Come out against AR-15s, for obvious reasons. This makes gun nuts less likely to vote for him.
Come out in favor of AR-15s. He looks insane to Republicans who don't care about guns.
Trump ignores the issue or waffles and looks unpresidential.
Number 3 is most likely. Of course the correct answer is number 4: propose a competing policy that is nuanced. But that's impossible for trump.
How many Republicans don't care about guns?
The ones that are republicans for tax purposes.
Is that enough to matter? And is this issue enough for them to change their vote, given the tax stuff? All the other shit Trump does certainly doesn’t matter.
The richest places in America are pretty solidly blue. A lot of rich people like good public schools and colleges, clean water, the arts, etc. and understand that taxes and charity are how those things are paid for.
Other rich people like gated communities and stopped reading books^1^ when someone stopped assigning them. They’re the Republican rich people.
^1^ Some will read a book about war or some shitty airport bookstore thing that’s 80% out-of-context quotes about how to be a leader.
Rich people don't give a fuck about public schools, lmao, they send their kids to private ones.
Private schools often suck. Rich people aren’t smarter. They just have more money. There’s plenty of districts where the best public high school is way better than whatever private schools exist. Half the private schools are for weird religious groups or kids who got expelled.
There’s almost always good public schools in cities. That’s why there’s always loopholes that allow rich people’s kids to go to them.
And in colleges, Harvard isn’t better than UC-Berkeley or the honors programs at most state flagship institutions. It’s just older. (There have been studies that compared students who got into an Ivy League school and ultimately chose a public flagship and the Ivy grads only did better in the first few years after graduation. But then the public flagship attendees caught up.)
I wonder how many of those hedge fund billionaires down on Wall Street are Democrats. I doubt that it’s many of them. Bankers? Nah. Media and Telcom? Not likely. They’re all based in NYC, the bluest of the blue cities.
They all like tax cuts and deregulation. Trump is the one who’s promising that, whereas Biden promised and already delivered more of both to them all.
I don’t have any desire to defend hedge fund or VC billionaires so I’ll concede the point. There’s a reason San Francisco has NIMBY policies and New York City can’t elect mayors for shit.
Yeah, because the people who own all of the businesses and real estate constantly battle those who work at the businesses and live in all that real estate, which just goes to show what a fucked up and unbalanced role money plays in our so-called democracy.
EVERY group is big enough to matter. Reminder that the last two elections were determined by around 10,000 votes.
Those republicans already know he's fucking crazy and they don't give a fuck what his stance is on guns.
And the ones that are Republicans to fuck over everyone but the rich. They'd definitely prefer "poor folk" didn't have guns at all.
Lots of them. Do you know any Republicans? None of them care about issues that don't affect them and their families. Even other "conservative" issues. They are not driven by policy.
Only Republicans with guns care about guns. And only 50% of Republicans have guns.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own-guns.aspx
They don't care about each other. Liberals care about what other liberals think. Stop thinking like someone who cares about policy.
I've had to explain this to a lot of people who naturally assume that any organization of people will be organized around some kind of shared values. Most of the time that's true, but not for Republicans.
Republicans are just a mish mash of obsessive single-issue voters, and by in large they just don't care about the other single issues that their fellow party members are going on about.
At the head of the Republican party it's people who want to minimize their tax burden, eliminate regulations on corporations, and cannibalize as much of the US government as they can into for-profit institutions. You could say that's three issues instead of one, but the overarching theme is to cater to personal greed, no matter the harm to society. These are the ones who are primarily pulling the strings in the party, at least historically.
Just below them is the military industrial complex and gun manufacturers who just want to sell guns no matter the harm to society. They like to rile up 2A fanatics with conspiracy theories that the government is out to steal all their guns so they'll be defenseless, paving the way for King Biden to ascend to his throne. The industry only cares about selling guns and the fanatics only care about having guns, and neither care about any kind of harm to society.
Then there's the radical Christians whose obsessions cover an eclectic mix of social reactionary positions and literal death cult worship (e.g. Christians who give absolute support to genocide in Palestine because they think Israel's conquest is a crucial step towards the rapture, which they believe is imminent). Broadly speaking the people in this group just want to hoist their religious doctrines onto everyone they can by any means available and no matter the harm it causes to society. They literally only care about "God's Kingdom" in the afterlife.
Then there's people who just lack any capacity for adaptation or learning. Their obsession is to feel like things are staying the same, or even reverting back to a past that they only know how to view through rose tinted glasses. They can't be bothered to comprehend the problems we're facing as a society or how the past was not the idyllic utopia that they mistakenly remember, nor can the old way of doing things sustain a growing and transforming society. These people just want to exist in comforting ignorance by feeling like they get to remain in familiar surroundings, no matter the harm to society.
There's really only one thing that truly unites them: Each one wants one specific thing no matter the harm to society, and that one specific thing that they each want IS HARMFUL to society. But they work well together because none of them care about the harm being caused by any of the others, and as long as they all tow the same line, each one gets what they want.
I've never met any Republicans that were pro-gun-bans. I really don't believe you'll be able to find a single one either.
This is dumb as fuck timing by Biden, but I'm sure he can't help himself because he's been super anti-gun for decades so it's probably just like a reflex at this point for him to to off about banning guns after a shooting.
Trump, for one
How many of them will stay home or change their vote because the head of the party they're still a part of despite all the gun nuts continues acting like a gun nut?
If Biden is trying to use guns as a wedge issue for Republicans, he's the person we saw at the debate all the time.
Not a lot but every wedge is probably worth it
Gun control, especially banning the most popular and utilitarian platform, is a massive political loser. This is incredibly poor timing for a struggling campaign.
and that is what's gonna get him. because up until now, he looked soooo presidential 😂
Any of those options will work fine for Trump. He doesn’t need to have policies, strategies, or responses to anything. His voters can’t remember it anyway. You think they remember that he banned bump stocks in the first place? He could promise to ban AR-15s one day, then criticize his own proposal the next day, and he’ll just get cheered by both sides. Voters are fucking stupid.
All that matters is that he keeps the steady supply of hateful buzzwords flowing. You can’t win chess against an opponent who’s playing hungry hungry hippos.
All of that wastes trump's time and makes him look unprofessional to swing voters. He can't win with just his fans. That's why he lost big time in 2020. The swing voters saw him failing to respond to an actual issue.
Correction: He lost big time because of mail-in votes. Trump in 2020 got the record high for votes for a Republican candidate at something like 67.2 million, which was just about a million votes less than what Obama got during his first election (which was a record-breaking turnout). Biden got around 80 million votes in 2020, breaking every voter turnout record ever.
Swing voters are still crucial because that's how Hillary lost despite having only 100,000 less votes than Obama did in his second election, but I feel like swing voters have probably more or less already made up their minds. If you don't see Trump for what he is already, the odds of his reaction here being the final straw seems unlikely. I think if people had better access to voting, we'd easily see a repeat of 2020 even if we were to vote right this minute.
Trump already said he'd take away everyones guns, no questions asked, years ago. No one that supported him even blinked. This means nothing to them.
I'm pretty sure the NRA had a heart attack when they heard that 🤣
That's just bullshit, he did not. He said the one stupid thing about ignoring due process for red flag law situations. This is pretty far and away from "everyone's guns"
You made me curious, thank you. The actual quote is "take the guns first, go through due process second."
Trump will go with number 5: "Did you know socialist immigrant windmills causing cancers kill more Americans than guns?"
He will do #2, and his base will cheer. Not a single person from that camp will think he's crazy.
This is the kind of Democrat logic that makes me cringe...
He can just say nothing. His position is already clear and he just selected a VP candidate who was pictured in social media with an AR15 recently, and openly suggested the ATF doesn't need to exist.
Or... he just doesn't want to get shot himself. Just saying. not wanting to get shot is a powerful motivator...
Not that it's perhaps prudent. or you know, god forbid, actually a good fucking idea.
I guarantee that he will say that the attack wouldn't have happened if more of his followers had ar 15s there
Option 4: trump and the GOP in general still views his assassination attempt as the danger you have to live with to live in a “free nation”. It’s the cost of freedom. Something something “just because i got shot doesn’t mean taking everyone’s rights away is a good idea”
Growing up in texas, this is a very common view.
2 and 3 only matter if reality matters to you. Most people being trump don't care how insane things look, or if trump "looks presidential".
What you're arguing would make sense with logical voters. So of course it doesn't apply here. When have Republican voters marked 'D' or stayed home instead of voting for a pro-gun candidate!? It just doesn't happen.
And "wedge" issue?? Come on, Republican voters are either all-in on Trump or they reluctantly mark the 'R'...
Bernie had this right. Despite being pretty progressive, he wasn't for outlawing semiautomatic firearms because they were black and looked scary. He believed that the right to arms was justified. This "AR Ban" is a great way to lose a lot of independents, and even some hard D voters like myself. There are a lot of dems who carry, and a lot of them who own the very firearms he wants to ban.
I had a friend that said he only voted for Trump in 2016 cause he felt like he needed somebody to protect his rights to own a gun. This guy that “protected” host rights to own a fun also did massive amounts of damage to other people rights.
I wish Dems would quit talking about guns. It’s a mistake.
What do you need an ar for ?
Actually that is a good question. You don't need an AR-15 because there are non-AR semi-automatic rifles that will do exactly the same thing but aren't viewed as bad-ass. (BTW, auto-loading rifles have been around since 1883.) The AR-15 is a civilian semi-automatic and the basis of the M-16, so larpers can fulfill their G.I. Joe fantasies and a cuddle them when they are told to fear something by Fox.
The AR platform is also just useful in general, which is why it's become so popular.
Need? I don't but I wanted one so here we are. AR ban is stupid will only help conservatives in the election. I'm not against gun control legislation that will actually do good.
So when shit hits the fan I can "borrow" 5.56 ammo from the military.
That's quite a gun fantasy you have.
Can't run up a flight of stairs, but ready to take on the us military
How'd Afghanistan go?
Or Vietnam, or the Revolutionary War for that matter.
These idiots will take every gun you have right before Hitler v2 seizes power, it's wild.
Fighting fascists.
Why do you need the freedom of speech to write this comment?
Have you ever fired one before? They are way more accurate than a handgun. You could be 5ft away from someone with a handgun and still miss (especially in a high adrenaline situation). It's considerably more difficult to miss with an AR.
The AR isnt special. So why are they going after ARs specifically?
As an independent, I could care less about this sort of thing. I see it as virtue signaling to staunch democrats. It won't win him a single vote, since his entire platform has always been about being a super traditional Democrat.
We need new traditions, not rehashing of old, tired trades against things like specific types of guns and obesity.
The next would be assasin will be forced to use a weapon appropriate for distance killing. They would be more likely to succeed.
The failed Trump shooter used a rifle completely appropriate for the distance. He was just a "comically bad" shooter, according to acquaintances.
He wasn't against outlawing them because they looked scary implies that he was in favor of outlawing them because they looked scary.
I think you mean he was against outlawing them because they looked scary.
If you didn't reply within 14 seconds of me correcting my post, yeah. That's what I corrected it to.
ANSWER FOR YOUR 14 SECOND CRIMES
14 seconds in the dungeon seems only fair
He's not gonna do shit, he's just gonna continue to bark at one of the symptoms of the problem.
this right here folks. its a wedge issue and it doesnt solve the real problems
Holy deep fried frankenfuck will the Democrats NEVER LEARN?!?!?!?!
AFTER!
You talk about guns AFTER the election!
What in the actual pogostickingpopejohnpaul is he THINKING?!?!?
The optics are 1000% awful here.
Uvalde wasn't enough, but a potshot at the planet's most notorious living felon is?
Lose the election speed run any %
I’m 100% sure Dems are actively self sabotaging their re-election.
There is no way the entire party cannot read a fucking room. This has to be on purpose at this point.
P2025 will increase their stock portfolio value so they can dump it all and make millions.
Then add some more taxes on the middle class to pay for it.
They get more fundraising dollars when Trump's in power too. For the dems who are in states that'll never vote them out, they'll make a killing from a second Trump term and they're rich enough to be insulated from just about all his decisions that fuck the rest of us over.
To be fair there's large swaths of the party that want him to step down. It's his advisors and aligned leadership that insist on running him and these policies no matter what.
A though has just crossed my mind: what if the advisors want him to be there this way and wait till the last moment to say "you know what? Biden steps down [because of his health] and X runs in his place" so Democrat voters can say "we dodged the bullet".
That moment is now. And that's not really how politics usually works. It would be incredibly reckless to do such a thing.
I didn't say it wasn't reckless😁
lol, but political advisors are notoriously risk averse.
... If they see something as a risk.
Biden is simply the worst possible candidate, perhaps the only prominent Dem who can lose to Trump. And he’s determined to prove it.
He's trying to motivate the progressives. His campaign has finally figured out that progressives aren't turning out in the swing states. After over a year of warnings. This, the rent thing, (which progressives immediately identified as entirely too high and a gift to landlords everywhere), and the exponential increase in supposed policy lists. (Which like any gift horse, shouldn't be checked too thoroughly lest the corporate subsidies they hide shine through)
What we really need him to understand is the problem is Israel. Any of this would have worked a year ago. But many progressives are not willing to support the genocide in Israel just to buy themselves comfort.
Most of the progressives I know are moving toward gun ownership rather than away, out of despair
I know that, you know that, but he's so disconnected that he didn't get what would happen to his ratings when he quashed the most consequential strike action in my lifetime.
the left don't give fuck about gun control - the far left actively oppose it
its the center right, pearl clutching, NIMBY, yuppy liberals who use it for virtue signaling, but even they won't be budged on who they're going to vote for based on the lip service about guns
The center left/right is Biden's base too, they're already sure to show up. But I don't think it's accurate to say the Left, like progressives, don't care. They very much care, the ones further to the left want to arm up and the ones closer to the center want to ban guns. It's an interesting intersection to look at but it pretty much comes down to how threatened they do or do not feel.
Are you suggesting democrats will somehow fool voters into thinking they are agnostic about guns?
No, nor should they try, nor should they stick with their current seemingly nonsensical policy ideas about guns.
The "gun problem" as it stands is really more of a symptom of our mental health crisis, our ridiculously confrontational "news" cycle, and a number of other HUMAN factors that aren't going to be solved by banning a particular model of gun, though and no one seems to want to hear that.
Screeching "Ban the right's favorite model of toy" right before an election is beyond tone deaf, and an incredibly dumb move politically that won't do squat except mobilize the NRA voters to vote the other way, which we DO NOT NEED with democracy in this country at stake.
I can personally count multiple handfuls of coworkers and acquaintances who might have voted for him that will now vote trump or stay away from the polls over this.
Maybe Biden actually does plan to announce that he's not running in the 2024 general election. That way, this scores some political points with Democratic voters, but doesn't impact the election much.
Other than that, I don't really see how this makes sense politically. I dunno. Maybe his team has done some kind of analysis and is convinced that a particular demographic in the swing states that they're trying to win will like this or something, so it might be disadvantageous nationwide but a win locally.
Basically, they got some breathing room on the replacement thing because of Trump getting shot at. But I guarantee you behind the scenes the message is the polling numbers in PA come up or else.
If it's viable to run someone else, I'm pretty sure that it has to happen almost immediately, if it's going to happen. The primaries have already happened, so if someone gets run, it'd have to be the party picking them already, and there's very limited time to campaign.
The general election is November 5. It's currently July 17. That's three-and-a-half months in which someone would have to sell themselves to the public.
goes back to look at presidents who didn't run again
https://www.britannica.com/story/have-any-us-presidents-decided-not-to-run-for-a-second-term
LBJ did it prior to the primaries, at the end of March of the election year.
Polk apparently promised in his initial campaign that he would only serve one term, so it was known long in advance.
Buchanan promised in his inaugural speech that he would serve only one term, so it was known almost as far in advance.
Hayes apparently also pledged not to run for re-election.
Coolidge apparently announced the summer prior to the election year, so over a year prior to the general election.
Truman did it at the end of March of the election year. So relatively-close, but still with seven months to go.
Teddy Roosevelt apparently announced after being elected the first time that he would not seek a second term.
So looks like the closest equivalent would be LBJ and Truman, and they still did so at the end of March in the election year, with twice the amount of time remaining that's still left for 2024, and before the primaries.
Like, I don't think that it'd be realistic to wait and see what happens in the polls and then have someone run with even less time.
Oh yeah they aren't talking about waiting for long. That's why Biden is throwing progressive policies at the wall. 5% rent, AWB, SCOTUS reform...
And I thought there was a fourth. So I went to go look and the breaking news is he has Covid, right after saying he'd step aside if a major medical condition happened. So that's going to get spun into a thing.
You know I remember when I started studying politics and I was thankful we had nice campaigns instead of the drama laden ones you see in other countries. I think I even uttered it once and forgot to knock on wood. I'm sorry guys, I jinxed us.
Ah, you're right, news just coming out about it today.
Nah, I think I'll keep my shit and wait for the far right to move.
The fuckin scenario we are in I swear.
Far right: let's kill the left and do fascism.
Democrats: let's ban weapons right now while there's threats of violence against democrats.
Really?
Valid
Just wait for it, Dems are preparing to finally kill the filibuster just days before they lose to republicans in a landslide defeat due to running the worst possible candidate, simply because he promised the donors nothing would fundamentally change and actually delivered on it.
Afterwards, they’ll eat ice cream and blame the left for not voting hard enough.
Just as dumb as when Beto said it before his election...
It'll never pass, and he thinks saying it will get votes, but all it does is motivate idiots to vote trump, even tho he actually did an executive action to try and close a loophole.
It might not have stood, but it worked for a couple of years.
On its own its a dumb idea, but I do think another commenter had it on the money how this is more a ploy to catch trump with his pants down. Trump can either agree and piss off his pro gun base (and look like a coward given his previous statements), he can argue against it and seem like hes inviting more violence and alienate anyone in his base who thinks gun violence is bad. Or he can ignore it and look like hes a doddering old fool oblivious to whats happening around him.
ie exactly nobody
to his base it would look strongbrave to ignore it with the most bigly beautiful thickskin
Banning guns is a losing policy for democrats. It only ever hurts them. I really wish they'd stop lighting political capital on fire with statements like this
I said this decades ago... if Dems dropped the gun shit and embraced safe shooting sports, they would win every damn election.
Gun rights are a MAJOR factor in why many people I personally know refuse to consider voting Democrat.
They will wax poetic all day about how much they detest Trump... but then end with, "At least he won't take away our guns."
Which is hilarious cuz trump said he would
I actually know a guy who plans on voting for Trump simply because "They can't drag me to the concentration camps if I have guns"
He doesn't think Biden wants to drag him off btw, he thinks Trump will... but it won't matter because he had guns..
The number of people I know who won't vote for them because of gun shit is too damn high. There are cheaper ways to solve gun violence anyway. Single issue voters are dumb, but democrats need to accept that they exist and this is the biggest single issue
We'd have universal healthcare and constitutional abortion rights if nothing else.
Rich people would lose a lot of money should that ever happen, so whenever things start to look even a little good, you bet your ass some idiot in the Dems is going to scream "hell yes we'll take your guns".
It seems like such a lazy non-solution. Essentially telling shooters "Hey, from now on, you can only use ALL THE OTHER GUNS" as if that solves something.
This is the problem. All banning the AR will do is drive the popularity of another platform up. There's a crapload of powerful semi-auto customizable platforms out there, it's just that the AR variant is the most popular. It's a stupid solution because it's no solution at all - and I don't mean that as a "not good enough so we should do nothing at all" thing, it's just a completely pointless solution.
Noooo you don't understand, banning pistol grips and front sight posts is totally effective! It totally didn't spawn an entire new segment of "compliant guns" that had the same level of lethality the last time we did it...
I'm not even sure the AR is the most popular. It may be the best seller in the US, but I'm pretty sure that the AK-47 is more popular globally, and there's absolutely no way that they will outlaw the AK-47 in the US since we manufacture them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47
The AK is a global weapon for sure. My commentary deals with the popularity of US gun platforms because that's the country whose laws we're talking about. So the global popularity of the AK isn't really directly relevant.
Well sure, but the reason I brought it up is that I'm not entirely certain that the AK or M-16 aren't more owned in the US than the AR. AR has only been standard issue for the military since after I got out in 2004. I would wager there are far more AKs and M-16s in private hands than ARs
The M-16 and AR-15 are the same gun barring the full auto mechanism. Armalite originally made the AR-15, sold it to Colt, who pitched it to the military, and when it was adopted, was designated the M-16. (Simplified history) So while it may not have been standard issue as the AR, it’s been around for a very long time. Obviously it’s changed up a little over time as manufacturing has changed hands, but I’m not sure if it’s worth debating what’s in private hands other than how they’re designated when they’re essentially variants of the same gun.
Gotcha, they didn't exactly go into the manufacturing history in boot when they trained us on how to use the thing, and I have had exactly 0 reasons to touch a firearm since boot.
You'd be wrong. The AR platform is the civilian version of the M-16/M-4. And the flat-top carbine length version of the M16A4, called the M4, was standard issue for infantry units being deployed since at least 1999. They were increasingly being sold to civilians in semi-auto only configurations right up to the 1994 Assault weapons ban that named them specifically. That just resulted in a bunch of AR platforms with different names that narrowly skirted the rules of the ban, called "Compliant ARs". After 2004, when the ban expired, sales of AR's seem to take off because now they can sell freely under the AR name that got a ton of publicity. And now in 2024 they're going to start selling the AR platform in Sig's new 6.8mm flavor. To be fair the Spear itself is different enough it some people may not considerate it an Armalite platform. Other would argue it's an AR-16 platform.
Technically, the AR was around before the M-16.
The M-16 is the military version of the rifle, not the other way around.
This is an issue that Biden has consistently refused to understand to be a political loser well before any suggestion of a decline. He's consistently vocal on it in a way that would suggest he genuinely believes it to be a winning position.
In reality, it's practically impossible to do and mostly serves to energize the right and alienate voters in states he actually needs to win. It'd literally be better politically to say nothing on the topic, but he insists on pouring fuel on the "they want to ban our guns" fire.
I have been, on the whole, positive about Biden, but this is a massive blindspot he's held for a long time.
This is like begging for Republicans to start making up conspiracies about how the Democrats set this all up to take away their gun rights.
Uhh... They've been making those up for decades.
I can think of literally no better reason to keep ARs legal than the events of last week.
Yes, this is the exact intention of the second amendment. Armed resistance against tyrannical government. If the rise of fascism in America isn’t the time to use it, it’s meaningless.
The founding fathers envisioned state militias that would rival the power of the federal army and keep it in check. That ship has sailed, so it already lost a lot of its bite, but any power it still has can only be justified for that purpose
in b4 /pol mods delete this for "inciting violence".
Everyone gets a free scope and 100 hours of shooting lessons with purchase.
Scopes aren't versatile enough for the AR platform. Free LVPO with purchase and 100 hours of training.
Ok, but can you throw in an M203 and a leaf sight? Maybe a box of 40mm HEDP? Indirect fire is a real game-changer.
1 in 5 Americans score adequately high enough in their spacial reasoning to qualify for an M32 or M320 credit. The M203 will only be available on surplus legacy rifle systems via lottery.
I'll give up my guns after the christo-facists give up theirs, not before.
Add the cops to that list for me. Any disarming of citizens while the cops still get more military gear is just class war pretending to be progress.
I'm not disarming, period. Fuck that noise.
Braindead take, is Biden gonna come to my rescue when some christofascist militia has me on my knees in front of a ditch?
Sounds like a similar argument to how christofascists justify owning military weapons. It's very disturbing from a European point of view.
The countries with nukes get permanent seats on the UN Security Council.
Maybe once the US has been around for a few more centuries it'll be different. in the meantime, if the crazies are armed you should be too.
Unarmed protest will not stop putin
Seeing how 2A it almost took down a fascist it's getting hard to argue against it.
If you think arming yourself because there are organized fascists in the country is a similar argument to fascists wanting guns to do fascism you're a fascist and nothing less.
The cops will bring the rope.
Source: George floydd protests
Is this what your life is like?
Soon to be "our". And not just in America, unfortunately.
FUCK
its like he's trying to lose
this is not going to get anyone excited about voting for him, but it will galvanize the opposition and push swing voters into staying home on election day at the very least
He IS trying to lose.
The Democrats don't WANT to defeat the Republicans because they NEED their favorite excuse in order to get away with the fuckery they like to pull all the time, all their insider trading and industrial kickbacks especially. Whenever you criticize them, they point at the GOP and say "oh so you'd rather THEM?"
Ironically, electing Democrats fucks up their plans.
I dunno, it didn't work out so well for Beto.
Sad things is, if the people who voted for Biden in Texas had voted for Beto, Beto would have won Texas in a landslide.
Texas gubernatorial race: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Texas_gubernatorial_election
• 4,437,099 for piss baby
• 3,553,656 votes for Beto
Presidential election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election_in_Texas
• 5,259,126 for Biden
Shows you how the independents and left aren't strictly anitgun. Was such a huge blunder on his part and the person asking him gave him repeated chances to walk it back and clarify it to not mean what he said, and he still insisted on total ban.
Oh don't I know it, preaching to the choir here.
That fucking horrible assassination attempt would have happened with or without the AR, this is just another knee-jerk emotional reaction, and it could NOT come at a worse time (pre-election). We're fucked.
Handguns used in ~2/3 of all gun murders in the U.S.: I sleep
AR-15 used in one assassination attempt of geriatric running for president in 2024: REAL SHIT
It's also the most common rifle in the US, which is why it keeps showing up in various shootings that get media attention. They're not super great rifles for any application, but they're good for just about anything and designed to be modular so you can swap parts around if you need to.
That probably cost him a few votes, since he is now openly one of those gun grabbers who hates the 2nd amendment that the GOP claims all Dems are as a scare tactic.
An AR-15 semi-automatic rifle or variant has reportedly been used in multiple mass shootings in recent years, including the Sandy Hook, San Bernadino and Las Vegas shootings. I think here is the real problem with ARs
Okay? That doesn't change the numbers though.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/
103 deaths in mass shootings vs. 13,620 gun murders means that the odds of you dying in a mass shooting are less then 1%. AR's and attempts at bans thereof are meaningless feel-good legislation that doesn't fix anything. They aren't magic murder guns with homing bullets, they're just popular guns because they're perfectly adequate for what they do. Ban them and dudes will just use a different rifle.... or multiple handguns.
Completely for gun control, but the needless focus on AR-15's when all the stats say it's fucking dumb to do so annoys the shit out of me and reeks of taking advantage of the stupid who say shit like, "Why not shoot them in the arm???". There are so many FAR better things Dems could push for. Modernize the ATF's database. Plug gunshow loopholes federally rather then the hodgepodge of states we have now, put extreme risk/domestic violence laws on the books, tackle ghost guns before they become a larger issue. The list goes on, and on, and on.
Thank you. Agreed.
Most car accidents involve at least one Toyota Camry. Does that mean Camrys are bad? No, it just means there are a lot of them.
Nooo, let’s not. We’re gonna need those pretty soon from the looks of it.
Anyone looking to ban weapons must not believe Jan 6th was a genuine insurrection.
Why, oh why, would you disarm the people and give the state a monopoly on violence when that state is teetering on the edge of fascism.
Serious questions how would guns have prevented the insurrection?
I think they mean you want to have guns AFTER the insurrection.
But then, what good are AR-15s against Abrams and F35s?
An F-35 can't stand on a street corner and enforce martial law. This argument falls apart when you look at any armed resistance fighting oppression.
Did America not just lose a forever war against a bunch of dudes in the desert with AKs and homemade bombs?
Russia is finding out that even those planes and tanks are obsolete compared to cheap drones. At this point any laws we make won't matter at all in Civil War II.
Heres the thing about civil war. You don't need to fight the f35. You live where the pilot, and his family lives. Theres a reason civil war is a last resort and it's not because it's unwinnable, it's because there's not much justification for the steps you have to take, so the ends better be damn well justified. To think American is some how immune to how civil conflicts work is fantasy.
This is a fucking retarded take and I vote Democrat. Jesus.
I want you to imagine the following scenario:
The RIAA: "Internet file sharing of mp3s is eating into our profits. Government, we want you to ban the Rio Volt SP250 mp3 player."
The Government: "Yes, banning only that specific make and model of mp3 player and none of the rest of Rio's product catalog, or any mp3 players manufactured by any other brand, will completely and permanently address this scourge of copyright infringement. Consider it done."
--GLaDOS.
Here's what happens when you ban a firearm by name: manufacturers change some extremely minor detail, change the model number, and keep selling it. The Tec-9 open bolt machine pistol was used in a few school shootings in the 90's, most prominently the Columbine massacre. California banned the gun by name in state law. The manufacturer responded by moving the sling ring from one side of the gun to the other and calling it the Tec-DC9, with "DC" standing for "Designed for California."
It's not an engineering problem. Banning individual makes and models is how you solve (or at least end) an engineering problem. This is a culture problem.
This does nothing to motivate the left and everything to motivate the right....
Biden, are you TRYING to lose?
I thought this was one of Sanders' biggest advantages a few election cycles back: he never presented himself as a "gun-grabber," but rather acknowledged the legitimate uses while also acknowledging the problems with gun violence. Agree with him or not, gun control is one of those divisive issues that bogs down progress because it's so contested. I can't pretend to understand what any of these 342 million batshit crazy fellow Americans are thinking anymore, but I imagine you would have a lot more success avoiding the 49%/51% issues, no matter how important, and pushing policy in areas where there is a tiny bit more consensus among the populace.
At this point he should just read Project 2025 aloud.... No joke, my grandpa was considering voting for Trump till he realized The Donald was coming for his playboys.
Non-consentually "grabbing pussy" himself while his party is telling us we can't look at some consensually in a magazine or on the web.
Why are these old stogies so determined to fuck up the world when the vast majority of them will be lying alone in an overgrown cemetery plot in 10-20 years because even their kids don't want to visit them?
Fucking typical.
Something comes close to removing a problem created by the conservatives and the Democrats want to take it away!
The type of rifle isn't the problem here. If the shooter had used something better it's likely Trump wouldn't have survived.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_tower_shooting
"Charles Whitman killed seventeen individuals and wounded at least thirty-one others over the course of thirteen hours before he was killed on the observation deck of the UT Tower on August 1, 1966.[72]"
And of course, infamously:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_John_F._Kennedy
With the Texas tower shooter it was the shooter himself the difference. He was a Marine sharpshooter. Oswald was also a former Marine.
These guys were extensively trained.
The only way this is possible is by rewriting the Constitution. FDR was the last president willing to, and that definitely didn't happen.
Biden doesn't have Constitution rewriting level support.
Eh, the constitution is already ignored on this point plenty, since there's lots of 'arms' that have been restricted. Why not ignore it some more?
Biden tries to throw a sure thing, again.
...Does Pres. Biden really think that the assassination attempt would have gone less well if Crooks had been using a Ruger American bolt action rifle chambered in 6.5CM? Does he really think that?
Let's be super-clear here, and AR-15 uses an intermediate cartridge. Most bolt action hunting rifles are going to use full-power cartridges, cartridges that have a longer range, may have a flatter trajectory, have less wind drift, and have a helluva lot more power when they hit their target. A center mass hit with an AR-15 at 150y is going to be bad; a center mass hit with a .308 or 6.5CM at 150y is going to be the end of someone's world. Bear in mind that many hunters do not consider a .225/5.56x45mm bullet to be ethical for deer hunting because it's lower power, while there's very broad agreement that 6.5CM and .308 are just dandy.
Also, calling for banning guns in an election year where you're already behind? When gun bans tend to galvanize Republicans and get them out to the polls? Incredibly dumb. Unbelievably dumb.
He wouldn't have been able to get 8 shots off. Of course he missed but still.
Edit: I have not been able to confirm the number of shots taken. I will update this with a source if I find something.
I think he only got like 2 shots off. The others you heard were secret service returning fire.
Is this a real thing or speculation? Genuinely wondering.
Of all the reasons to ban a gun, trumps little knicked ear is low on my list
If anything I think that warmed me up to the concept of not banning them.
I mean, fine. But the recent attempt didn’t make the AR-15 look especially dangerous.
Time to force registration of guns. Time to force psych evals for gun owners. I own two guns. One is a SKS I bought in 1990. Although considered a assault rifle it is nothing more than a semi automatic hunting rifle. I would gladly submit to what I propose in order to ensure that some broken soul doesn't have access to a weapon. Anyone who is against accountability in this matter is probably a danger.
The SKS has the same size standard mags as an AR-15 and can do everything else the AR-15 can, but with a more powerful round.
How is it "just a semi automatic hunting rifle" if the AR-15 isn't?
(Boost for Lemmy went fucky wucky so I reposted this comment)
Sounds like a great way for conservatives to make sure their victims don't get guns. They'll go back to pretending to be concerned for trans people and stuff. Remember when women were forced into psych wards for being "disobedient"? I bet it'd basically be the same type of labelling anyone going against the fascist agenda as mental illness.
I'm all for it in the progressive parts of the country (like Massachussetts) where minorities (including lgbt) probably wouldn't be targetted like that by the government. But in the regressive states like Mississippi, or Louisiana, or West Virginia, or Florida, or Texas... no thanks, I don't want to have my house raided when overlord Trump becomes supreme leader and the state decides I don't deserve human rights unless I convert to Christianity (the right kind of Christianity though obviously, the wrong kind will get you dragged out into the street and shot)
I think it just boils down to "gun control requires the government to enforce it especially fairly and in good faith" which I do NOT trust a conservative government to do. One shitty election, and suddenly leftists or minorities can't get guns and all my gun data next to my address and SSN is conveniently accessible to fascists, along with the statistics bought from corporations saying I'm a filthy socialist
I live in Canada. We had mandatory gun registration passed in 2001. From that point on, the Conservatives used every opportunity they could to scrap the registry and finally succeeded in 2012. Since then, the reintroduction of a gun registry has been off the table.
Canada has nowhere even close to a gun culture the way the US does. The main opponents of gun registration here were hunters and farmers, a much smaller portion of the population than in the US (which also includes substantial gun enthusiast, militia, and survivalist cultures).
So what does all this mean? Gun registration laws are laughably unrealistic in the US. There is absolutely no way you will ever get a gun registry to stick as long as the Republicans have any chance whatsoever of winning an election.
Sounds like a great way for conservatives to make sure their victims don't get guns. They'll go back to pretending to be concerned for trans people and stuff. Remember when women were forced into psych wards for being "disobedient"? I bet it'd basically be the same type of labelling anyone going against the fascist agenda as mental illness.
I'm all for it in the progressive parts of the country (like Massachussetts) where minorities (including lgbt) probably wouldn't be targetted like that by the government. But in the regressive states like Mississippi, or Louisiana, or West Virginia, or Florida, or Texas... no thanks, I don't want to have my house raided when overlord Trump becomes supreme leader and the state decides I don't deserve human rights unless I convert to Christianity (the right kind of Christianity though obviously, the wrong kind will get you dragged out into the street and shot)
I think it just boils down to "gun control requires the government to enforce it especially fairly and in good faith" which I do NOT trust a conservative government to do. One shitty election, and suddenly leftists or minorities can't get guns and all my gun data next to my address and SSN is conveniently accessible to fascists, along with the statistics bought from corporations saying I'm a filthy socialist
To me it sounds like a good way for malfunctioning republicans to get identified. Its what they fear most. The idea that everyone will know they are sociopaths, psychopaths or have plain old NPD. When you hear someone say they don't believe in therapy you know they are afraid of being exposed.
Are you suggesting that we do it to expose peoples' medical information to the public..? Or am I misinterpreting this
I think them being openly Republican lets everyone know well enough that they lack empathy/humanity. It's on people (well, more like our education system to teach people) to recognize that, WITHOUT violating basic privacy rights. Plus, knowing the publics' ableism and perception of mental disorders, people will probably start suggesting that ASD, ADHD, etc. should disqualify you from having a gun if the laws aren't just listing out arbitrary diagnoses.
Personally, I currently live in a very red part of Georgia (not for much longer though) and I'm pretty queer and have ADHD and stuff, so I'd rather not let the government even know what guns I own. When the state or federal government becomes social democratic, I'll be completely fine with it
Marx warned against this. without armed workers the dismantling of the state machine will be much harder.
Let's ban assassination too, that will show 'em!
What an idiot. Does he not realize talking about banning guns is the number one way to motivate right wingers? The US is NOT going to ban guns especially with the current Supreme Court. This is an example of his old team running old plays that haven't been successful since the 90s. He needs to go before he causes any more damage to his party.
AR-15 is also one of my favourite rifle.
Right wingers are already at 100% motivation and have been for years. It's the left that needs motivating.
If you think that then you have no idea what would come with the threat of a national gun ban. The right might be fired up but with a possible ban not one of them would miss voting day. Also, there are enough left wingers who are against banning guns to irrevocably damage the party. My point is there is no reason to even talk about this hot button issue. It's not at the top of almost any left voters list right now so it won't motivate anyone on that side. It was such a careless misstep that should have been completely avoidable. Talk about it After the election. Let's pick a candidate who can do better.
It's Pete coming for yo guns energy. Please drop the guns dems for the love of your country.
Time to ban roofs.
Unrelated fact. One of the earliest laws ever written states that if you build a house, and the roof collapses on the home owner killing them, you will be put to death.
Biden speed-running losing the election.
At this point all Trump has to do is pretend this didn't phase him, then not say anything too stupid and I'm sure Biden will do his best to just hand it over.
Guessing you dont like the Supreme Court reforms he just announced either?
Do I like, or the general public? I hate Trump more than Biden if that's essentially what you're trying to question. And yes we do need supreme court.
But will the general public give a shit or even know about this plans? Doubt it. Trump getting shot at is much more attention grabbing.
I take it you're new to trump
You say that, but Trump has been doing just that lately.
Bro why? I'd vote for a fucking shoe over him at this point, unfortunately it's between sundowners and down syndrome. These guys want to destroy everything this country was founded on and developed over the years and banning a gun is where you go?!
At this point it's intentional sabotage. No one fucking wants this. It won't change anything. Just leave it the fuck alone and start doing something for the lower and middle classes to secure your goddamn votes. Or just let the conservatives use your stupidity as a stepping stone to steal your voters by fulfilling their fear mongering.
The optics on this are abysmal. I get that he's trying to be consistent with party ideology any time there is a shooting where someone dies, but we've got an election in 4 months and talking about banning guns of any kind gets conservatives motivated to turn out.
Sandy Hook
“Fun” fact: those kids would be old enough to vote this year, had they not been gunned down.
Not sure this will make a difference for the election. At this point, I suspect that support for gun control/rights is petty well understood and priced into support for the candidates. No one expects Biden to veto gun control legislation and no one expects Trump to sign it. Granted, Trump can be a bit of a wild card sometimes (see: bump stocks reclassification).
That said, this is likely a very hollow promise. Such legislation is almost certainly a dead bill in Congress. And even if it somehow passed, it's likely not going to make it past the current Supreme Court.
At best, this is just empty rhetoric.
But that's the official state rifle of the school shooter!
Now is the time?
He thinks that because someone took a shot at trump with one, its a good time.
Biden has forgotten the whole point of 2a.
Like honestly, hes trying to throw the election at this point.
Will republicans vote in favor of protecting their candidate? Or their base's blood lust? This is a great time for Biden to put them in a hard place.
The answer is simply they will hate it if Biden does it but not care if Trump does.
They will vote republican no matter what. Logic doesn't apply so forking them doesn't work.
Buddy, if you don't want to be President again just step down and let someone else run.
Meh. Our soldiers are trained on these. They are familiar. Why ban the weapon people know how to properly use and maintain?
If I want to snipe someone, I'm using a high powered hunting rifle like a .308 or 7mm.
I have so many questions
I have exactly one. Is Biden trying to lose?
It make sense that if corporations control both parties, and Boden has done good work for workers rights, they'd hamstring the "not-super-evil" party and push for the other party.. It's a conspiracy theory but billionaires want Trump since he promises tax cuts, relief, and loopholes. For the rich.
Most labor friendly president in US history = protecting rail corporations from a stike?
Standards are low.
There's been a union "surge" in the south directly because of Boden policies
Yeah, I gotta say that making the election a referendum on Trump personally seems a whole lot more likely to be successful than making it a referendum on the federal AWB. That wasn't a political success story for the Democrats.
But, I dunno. Maybe his team has some kind of angle, like they're trying to move some critical demographic that they think that they can influence.
EDIT: I gotta say that aside from the question of whether it's a good policy or whether it's a good move politically, every time it sounds like a ban is proposed, it sets off a massive wave of firearms sales, so I'd guess that firearms vendors are going to have a good time.
At least he is sticking up for Vice President Trump
Why? If I were in the politician killing business I’d be using an AXSR, not an AR. It’s just the wrong tool for the job.