I just want to note here for those about to journey into this conversation, there’s a major hiccup that didn’t exist before. The Supreme Court placed an new expansive interpretation of the Second Amendment in the 2008 Heller case. This has significantly altered how the second amendment is read in the United States. So what may seem like “brain dead easy” things to do, likely cannot be done as they would be unconstitutional.
I say this because the question posed simply indicates “Present + Congress” which seems to imply, “which laws would you pass to fix gun control issues” and post-2008 that is no longer a thing. Any discussion needs to include at this point a conversation about the Supreme Court, the new understanding of the 2nd Amendment, and that the Justices currently on the bench will likely enforce their new expansive interpretation for their term on the court (which is a lifetime appointment).
We are now at a point that we cannot fix this issue without a Constitutional Amendment, a reorganization of the Supreme Court (packing, impeachment, etc), an incredibly careful tip-toe around this new understanding of the second amendment, and/or talking about the underlying issues that surround gun reform (economic and societal issues).
And we are seeing the consequences of Heller in things like 2022 Bruen which SCOTUS indicated that a “historic standard” should be applied to new gun regulation. This has lead to US v Rahimi where the Court of Appeals for 5th Circuit has removed the Federal protection that folks charged with domestic violence can still obtain a gun as “domestic violence” had no historical standard on which to base on. Which is an absolute astonishing level of logic there.
We are no longer at a phase where legislation alone along the strict lines of “just gun reform”, this new understanding of the second amendment has forever (or at least as long as those Justices sit the bench) altered how we can approach this issue. We cannot just simply say, “let us figure out ways to regulate gun ownership in itself” that is no longer allowed. We can approach the issue indirectly: how do we increase the cost of Interstate gun ownership, how do we regulate the the dissemination of ammunition, how do we address the various issues that draw people into violent crime, how do we address the issue of school shootings at an societal level. But we have been cut off from direct approaches that regulate guns themselves except in the most extreme cases and even then, advocates are continually being handed new tools by the Supreme Court to bring about new challenges for those.
Any meaningful debate about gun control needs to include the Supreme Court. Because given the current Court’s propensity to expand gun rights and the understanding of the second amendment, any law that might get introduced to fix the issue today, could and very likely would be overturned by the court. This has become a new chess piece in this game to be considered since 2008, prior yes this could have been a Congress and President issue alone, but post-2008, the Courts must be considered in the discussion. The Supreme Court too strongly embraces the new understanding of the second amendment to let any direct law be allowed to go unchallenged.
I wrote a big comment about this and deleted it. But I agree. Nothing will change without either a) different SCOTUS. or b) dramatic change in public opinion in rural states. I really think it would take an Amendment, which requires not just a majority in Congress, but a persistent majority of the population in a super-majority of states.
Oh, this is fun!
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Repeal the NFA of 1934.
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Repeal the GCA of 1968
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Pass laws preventing states and localities from passing laws more restrictive than federal laws in regards to gun control. Overturn the post-'86 FOPA ban.
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Place firearms under the purview of the CPSC in regards to user safety
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Amend the constitution to remove birthright citizenship
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Amend the constitution to grant 1st class citizenship only to people that elect to serve the gov’t where needed for a full four year term; a position might be civil or military, and is solely based on your abilities and gov’t need, but all people will be eligible to serve, and granted the opportunity to serve, even if it means that a position must be created specifically for them.
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-People shall be permitted to leave service at any time, regardless of whether or not they have completed their term of service. People may be thrown out of service (effectively court martialed) for refusing to perform, gross negligence, etc.
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-No people actively in service shall be permitted to vote or have any say in gov’t policy.
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-Amend the constitution such that only people that have served shall be eligible for any elected or appointed position within the gov’t, to vote, to write model legislation, to serve as judges, etc. (The majority of the gov’t would likely be comprised of people serving in order to gain citizenship.)
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Amend the constitution so that 2A rights will on exist for citizens (including people working as police!).
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Amend the constitution to only allow ranked-choice voting in all elections, federal, state, and local.
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Amend the constitution to eliminate qualified immunity.
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Revoke the citizenship of any person found guilty of committing a violent crime (battery, sexual assault, robbery, murder). Citizenship can only be regained by re-entering gov’t service.
ALL other civil rights will still exist for 2nd class citizens; free speech, press, religion, 5a rights, privacy, reproductive care, etc.
- Increase marginal income tax rates to 99% on all income over 250M
- Institute a wealth tax on all wealth controlled (not “owned”) of >$500M; for tax purposes, assets in a blind trust would still be controlled, real estate holdings controlled through a majority interest in a corporation would be considered controlled, etc.
- Restructure corporate taxes; have a claw-back period of 25 years for companies that elect to move headquarters outside of the US.
- Eliminate and ban all public funding for any private educational institution.
- Eliminate property taxes as the method of funding schools; fund schools on a national level, with locality-adjusted per-student funding to ensure that all schools–regardless of location–were receiving comparable funding
- Ban all flat and strict percentage taxes (e.g., sales taxes, VAT, etc.), or the use of fee for gov’t services; use income/wealth taxes and treasury bills only for all gov’t funding (e.g., eliminate all regressive taxes)
- Reform criminal justice to focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment
- Base fines on income/wealth; more wealth = higher fines (e.g., a millionaire could get a speeding ticket costing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, while a minimum wage worker would get a fine of perhaps $50 for an otherwise identical offense)
- National single-payer health care
- Give HUD the ability to override local zoning to place high-density housing where needed.
- Require the IRS to confiscate assets from and shutter religious institutions that engage in direct politicking (e.g., endorsing any candidate, political issue, etc.).
Etc.
I don’t believe in gun control per se.
I find the word 2nd class citizen distasteful, but agree with a lot of it. You mostly had me at abolish NFA and GCA
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I’d announce that gun laws wouldn’t be pursued any further, but also require all gun crimes to be pursued.
I’d take all those gun votes to push all my other policies for the next 8 years.
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Ownership comes with requirements for safe and proper storage to which only you have access.
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Weapon and ammunition that aren’t on a person has to be stored separately.
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The anovebtwo rules aren’t enforced/checked. But it’s still a legal requirement, so if someone uses your gun or ammunition for a crime, you will be considered an accomplice. Either intentionally or due to gross negligence.
…it’s not a fix, but having responsible gun owners is a start.
On point 3, what if someone stole it from say your safe?
If someone uses and angle grinder in your living room for half an hour without interference, then you were probably far away and will have no problem proving so. Report it so that the gun is registered as stolen. If the same gun shows up in a separate crime, you better hope it wasn’t your neighbor or some other relatively close relation.
Most safes are not that good. If you study lock picking you can break most combination locks quickly (looking at fingerprints will often narrow down the possible numbers to try to 30 seconds to break in).
You’ve only got to watch some Lock Picking Lawyer videos to see how so many gun safes can be opened in literal seconds with ease.
Consumers have no way of knowing if their safe is actually safe.
Then don’t get a gun, what can I say?
I would add requirement that for #1 it should be locked (could be biometric lock) but I would remove #2. Having requirement for two separate locked storages reduces probability of people following it at all, and adds significant time if you need to get loaded gun quickly for self defense.
SCOTUS would absolutely strike down a federal requirement for separate storage.
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Tax the rich and/or defund military or police just enough to pay for decent healthcare and mental health services in this country. Can’t have responsible citizens if you’re driving them to the brink of insanity- these conditions are intentional so the state can turn the mentally ill into free labor in prisons and maintain a military force against the people at large.
Just reinstate the assault rifle ban.
That’s it. That’s the entirety of what I would do.
In the spirit of the constitution, the right to bear arms will be to form a well regulated militia. Meaning gun licensing comes with mandatory military service.
SCOTUS ruled on the “is the Second Amendment an individual or collective right” issue in Heller. Prior to that point, there’d been a lot of ink spilled over the phrasing prior to that point – and found that it was an individual right, that the Second Amendment didn’t restrict it to use in the context of a militia.
Also, aside from that, even had it been a collective right, it’s worth pointing out that “militia” in the language of the time was more expansive than, say, the modern-day National Guard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militia_(United_States)
The militia of the United States, as defined by the U.S. Congress, has changed over time. During colonial America, all able-bodied men of a certain age range were members of the militia, depending on each colony’s rule. Individual towns formed local independent militias for their own defense. The year before the U.S. Constitution was ratified, The Federalist Papers detailed the Founding Fathers’ paramount vision of the militia in 1787. The new Constitution empowered Congress to “organize, arm, and discipline” this national military force, leaving significant control in the hands of each state government.
If you look at the time, there were originally higher hopes for using the militia as a military unit. In the War of 1812, militia units performed pretty badly in an expeditionary force, like when invading Canada.
On the other hand, they did pretty well in some other contexts, like the Battle of New Orleans, when defending against a British attempt to cut off the Mississippi.
In practice, there’s been extremely limited situations where the militia has had to be used in a military context since then; the US has almost without exception been able to fight its wars abroad, using the regular military.
In World War I, Germany attempted to convince Mexico to invade the US. Mexico’s military considered it, and decided against it; one cited factor was that the civilian population was heavily armed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_Telegram
Mexican President Venustiano Carranza assigned a military commission to assess the feasibility of the Mexican takeover of their former territories contemplated by Germany. The generals concluded that such a war was unwinnable for the following reasons:
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Mexico was in the midst of a civil war, and Carranza’s position was far from secure. (Carranza himself was later assassinated in 1920.) Picking a fight with the United States would have prompted the U.S. to support one of his rivals.
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The United States was far stronger militarily than Mexico was. Even if Mexico’s military forces had been completely united and loyal to a single government, no serious scenario existed under which it could have invaded and won a war against the United States. Indeed, much of Mexico’s military hardware of 1917 reflected only modest upgrades since the Mexican-American War 70 years before, which the U.S. had won.
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The German government’s promises of “generous financial support” were very unreliable. It had already informed Carranza in June 1916 that it could not provide the necessary gold needed to stock a completely independent Mexican national bank. Even if Mexico received financial support, it would still need to purchase arms, ammunition, and other needed war supplies from the ABC nations (Argentina, Brazil, and Chile), which would strain relations with them, as explained below.
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Even if by some chance Mexico had the military means to win a conflict against the United States and to reclaim the territories in question, it would have had severe difficulty conquering and pacifying a large English-speaking population which had long enjoyed self-government and was better supplied with arms than were most other civilian populations.
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Other foreign relations were at stake. The ABC nations had organized the Niagara Falls peace conference in 1914 to avoid a full-scale war between the United States and Mexico over the United States occupation of Veracruz. Mexico entering a war against the United States would strain relations with those nations.
So you could maybe make some argument for a deterrent effect, but in general, the US hasn’t really had to actively use the militia against external forces in a long time.
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Without revamping the US to the extent that others are suggesting (like education, free mental & physical healthcare, better benefits even UBI… which tackle the root causes and issues), and more of a “4 years, gotta get it done, gotta make it stick” style legislation…
Require insurance and licencing for firearms, same as cars.
Different levels and uses of firearms require different licnences and insurances.
Licences gives the government some check.
Insurance will essentially enforce it.
No sale/transfer/ownership without valid insurance&licence.Yeah Lemmy does have a tendency for the answer to be “completely overhaul society”
But I think you’re absolutely right, .22 bolt action rifles, break action shotguns and .38 revolvers should not be treated like High capacity .45 semi automatics and AR-15s.
Id also say that every gun should have a $1000 bond attatched that is refunded fully when the gun is legally sold or proven as destroyed putting the onus back onto owners to not have their shit stolen.
That’s not enough support to be able to handle the gun control question. The supreme court is the real key. In theory it should be possible to pass sane gun control laws but over the years the supreme court has bent itself into pretzels trying to interpret any random yahoo with an AR-15 as being a “well-regulated militia.”
How about this: This is magic land where you have mind control to make the Supreme Court do your bidding. What do you do then?
Gun control wouldn’t be my top priority in that case, but when I got around to it I’d put a ton of restrictions on interstate commerce related to guns and removing laws that may be preventing states from passing regulations on them. I’d be using my mind control to force the Supreme Court to interpret “well-regulated militia” in a sane way, so those states will then be able to put the brakes on if they want.
I don’t think there’s a lot that the American federal government can do to directly ban most kinds of firearms, based on how their constitution is set up, but stopping the large scale flow of guns (and ammo) into states that don’t want them should go a long way to curbing the problem for them.
If you’re outside the US, I think you can be forgiven not understanding how implausible it is to imagine controlling our state borders in a way that would allow for enforcement of this plan.
I live in CA, I would bet Nevada would have much looser regulations on guns. I believe it would be impossible to stop even 1% of illicit trafficking across just the border between CA and NV.
So although I understand the principles under which you’re trying to approach this, pragmatically what you have described is pretty much a non-starter.
Edit: Note that I am not saying there’s some pragmatic way to do this. You laid out a theoretically solid approach, the reality just makes this particular attempt seem pretty unviable.
I didn’t say it’d work great. I’m talking about what’s legally possible to do.
The US federal government is in many ways prevented from doing the right things by the details of its constitution. Even when the Supreme Court is genuinely following it, there’s a bunch of stuff in there that lets individual states do crazy stupid things that the federal government can’t really stop. So even given the powers that OP has given me in this scenario there’s some big limits to what can be done. If he was to give me the ability to amend the constitution or control the state governments I’d be able to do a lot more.
Alternately, you could get the states to ratify a constitutional amendment. That would bypass the Supreme Court. Though getting 38 states to agree on an amendment related to gun rights is a fantasy in the first place.
Muzzle-loading, bayoneted smoothbore rifles are okay.
Heavy restrictions on anything else.
A WELL REGULATED MILITIA
1: That doesn’t mean what you think it means
2: That’s an explanatory clause that doesn’t change the actual meaning of the amendment
Reject modernity, return to minutemen
With a Constitutional amendment, like you’re supposed to.
Licenses, tax stamps, storage requirements & any other scheme you come up with is & will be ruled Unconstitutional until you can amend the 2nd.
I swear, some of you have never even walked past a US civics class.
While I agree with you, I think that the basic reason that things don’t go that way is that advocates of dramatically stronger restrictions on firearms know that they don’t have the three-quarters of states necessary to do a new amendment, so the only way for them to get restrictions is to try to push through laws and hope that they don’t get ruled by SCOTUS to be a violation of the Second Amendment.
Not endorsing it, just saying that there’s a reason that you don’t have serious efforts to repeal the Second Amendment or the like.
Something that starts from a drivers licensing model
- age limitations
- limitations based on previous history of unsafe behavior
- required education
- required demonstration of safe gun handling/storage skills and knowledge of applicable laws
- different levels of license endorsement, e.g., licensed for 1 gun, 2-5 guns, or 6+ guns, types/sizes of guns,
- license based on conditions in which they can be used, aka, easier to get a license limited to hunting with a shotgun than concealed carrying a pistol
- background check for any and all sales or transfers of ownership between anyone not in a parent/child/sibling relationship
- remove barriers to suing gun sellers who don’t abide by sales/background check rules when the buyer ends up using the gun to hurt people. Maybe even go so far as to define their level of liability
- remove barriers to suing people who don’t properly store their guns, and lead to gun access by someone who uses it to cause harm, and again, maybe defining some default level of liability
- requirement for gun owners to carry liability insurance
- halt sales of guns from US to known cartels under the bullshit guise of anti-terrorism/anti-drug ops
- funded auditing program at the federal level designed to monitor chain of gun manufacturers to dealers to customers to ensure compliance with licensing requirements
Now the question of how to do all this in a way that wouldn’t get shut down as federal overreach into issues that should be managed by states… Oh, yeah, interstate commerce. Gun control is a more logical application for the interstate commerce clause than how Republicans are prepping to use it for women running from one state to another for abortion access.
Yeah I’d say this is a really sensible start. Outright banning them right out of the gate probably isn’t gonna fly in the US, but his is a good start.
Yeah I often point at driver’s licenses when gun stuff comes up. Way more people need to drive than need a gun, but getting a license to drive a car is pretty tightly regulated.
If cars had been a thing when the bill of rights was written, we might have an amendment that read like “travel being necessary for the well being of the state, the right to drive vehicles shall not be infringed”. We’d then have absolutely pants on head stupid rules around cars. No licensing, no testing, no safety regulations. People would be driving tanks around. Cars would pollute even more. And people would frenzy themselves up with “but it’s my right!!!”
Getting a gun requires background checks. Buying ammo requires an ID for age verification. You can bypass the system, but that applies to cars too.
Summed up sovereign citizens pretty clearly there.
Yeah, but even with all that regulation we still have stupidly giant SUVs killing kids.
There wasn’t a federal law passed that increased the drinking age to 21. Instead, a law was passed that would reduce the annual highway budget by 10% for any state that didn’t increase the drinking age themselves.
Biggest one of mine:
Mandatory, standardized securing of the guns. Basic gun safe strength, ability to mount to studs in walls. Mode of entry doesn’t matter…mechanical cypher, biometric, whatever, so long as the lock isn’t easily defeated.
Same with carrying in a vehicle. Bolt it down.
If people can afford thousands of dollars worth of guns they can certainly afford a decent safe.
Edit:
1st, do 3 things:
- get the evidence, and make it indellibly-obvious.
Toddlers killed by guns, 3-5yo killed, do every age-group, and make it obvious.
Ttbomk, that isn’t possible, in the US, because the gun cult ( not gun lobby: when destruction-of-lives-of-children is irrelevant in protecting guns’ dominion, it’s a cult ) got collecting-statistics blocked, years/decades ago.
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discover the right questions.
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Keep rural & city segregated, as the issues are not identical.
Fools pretend that cities & rural are identical contexts, and they absolutely are not.
Rural need to be able to deal with rabid wildlife, sometimes.
A friend told me that a rabid fox tried killing the tractor he was operating for awhile. The farmer who’d hired him handed him a gun & showed him how to use it to kill such a thing.
Once you’ve got that set of things going, then you begin working up an Issue Diagram for the issue, based on actual information, not on ideology/prejudice.
I wouldn’t address it, honestly I think a better way to handle the issue is to fix our education & healthcare systems and stiffen up penalties for unsecured firearms some.
I think that would solve the vast majority of the problem, and there would no longer be sufficient reason to bother.
Plus there are so so many guns already in the US. People sort of forget the US gun culture when talking about passing gun ban similarly done by other countries. We have more guns than people just in civilian possession that you can’t forcibly take away, and countless more in gun shops and factories you’d have to buy up and compensate. The bill would likely be unfathomably expensive, while pissing everyone off, and will be immediately undone by the next president.
Medicare for all. Do away with the private healthcare system.
Free mental health services.
Student debt forgiveness.
Create programs to lift people out of poverty.
Work to abolish systemic issues that impact the low income, minorities, lgbtq, and other traditionally marginalized communities.
Create an amendment codifying the right to abortions.
Protect women’s healthcare.
Remove protections for social media and tech companies that amplify hate speech. Even if I don’t like it, the Nazis get free speech protections, but that doesn’t mean companies get to facilitate and amplify it’s reach.
Create gun training programs that hopefully can teach people that guns are not a solution to your problems; guns are a last resort to protect human life. Not property, only life.
Comprehensive police reform. Reallocate funds and responsibility away from officers so that they can focus on dealing with actual crime.
Remove civil asset fortfiture.
And so much more. I figure if we can get rid of a lot of the underlying causes that make people feel like they don’t have a choice but commit violent crimes then gun violence should decrease.
This is the real solution. Removing guns mostly pushes people to use different tools for crimes. The best way to prevent crime (including gun crime) is to remove the pressures causing them to commit crimes in the first place. The added bonus is that you’re going to improve people’s lives instead of taking away property and hobbies
Thanks. Feel free to vote for me in city council.
You can go through my post history, my biggest issue surrounding guns is that they are seen as a valid solution to solving conflicts rather than a last resort. I don’t really know if there is an easy solution to this, as our culture seems to reinforce rhetoric like “fuck around and find out.”
I think I’m on the autism spectrum, so I may not quite understand many people’s reactions. But guns and gun violence is an emotional response that we need to disassociate from conflict resolution.
I’d also reform the news media as a whole. Prevent the consolidation of media conglomerates like Sinclair. I’d remove protections from Fox where they say their “news” is actually “entertainment” so we can hold them accountable for the misrepresentation of situations. While there is no objective “truth,” that doesn’t mean there isn’t blatant misinformation happening. In my humble opinion, news has trended away from reporting the facts and even the most objective story has editorial bias applies. We need to be cautious of media that creates an “us vs them” mentality. There are enough actual issues that we don’t need to foster some manufactured outrage at a group perceived to be the Boogeyman.
If we remove the overarching fear in everyday life, fewer people would react in violent manners to non-violent situations and altercations.
I would be careful though, as I don’t trust state run news. I’d spend a significant amount of time to find ways to have more independent news organizations. Regulations would need to be built to protect from blatant misinformation or fear mongering. Honestly, I don’t know how to do this in a way that wouldn’t lay a foundation for censoring dissenting opinions, but I’d work with whomever I could find that would help me do so.
I don’t have an answer for everything, but I’d honestly be wary of any politician that said they did.
