Can we lose the "politicizing a tragedy" talking point?
You make laws about drunk driving when people are being killed by drunk drivers. You make laws regulating banking after bankers screw up the economy. You make laws about guns when people have been killed by guns. This isn't politicizing a tragedy, it's reacting to it. Especially since many of the things we'd need to prevent future tragedies are things we've needed for a long time, it simply takes a tragedy for a lot of people to realize it.
I apologize for the length of this OP in advance.
What I personally think would prevent or at least heavily mitigate future incidents of this nature are four things:
1) An outright ban on manufacture of high capacity magazines. I'm defining "high capacity" as "more than five bullets". (I'd say seven for a handgun.) If you need more than six shots (5+1 in the chamber) to kill an animal, you need a bigger bullet, a smaller animal, or to be a better shot. Yes, we're all aware high capacity magazines are prone to jamming, and we don't really care. "Might not kill as many people as you'd like all in one go" is not a reasonable restriction. We wouldn't want someone selling a crate of fragmentation grenades even if we knew every third one was a dud and we don't want people selling 30 or 50 (100?! Yeesh.) shot magazines even if they're going to jam halfway through.
2) A law requiring all future magazines and all future guns (Including handguns) be manufactured with screws holding the magazine in place that are the *only* thing holding it in place. This would eliminate the ability to change magazines rapidly, increasing the likelihood of a shooter being mobbed and relieved of his weapon by the crowd he's shooting at. It would also prevent people buying pre-ban magazines to use in new guns. Any possession of a device to bypass or convert away from this should be a felony. (AKA No more guns at all for that person.) Sale or mass manufacture (Intent to sell) of a conversion device should be automatic prison time.
3) Require a license for all owners and registration for all firearms. Yes, I mean rifles. And shotguns. And muzzle loaders. Even the blunderbuss I have on my wall that would probably blow up in your face (If I even knew what to load it with. Black powder? Smokeless powder? Talcum powder? I'm not even sure it's a real gun.) should be registered. The guvvmint isn't going to come took yer gunz. It's going to be such an uphill battle getting reasonable restrictions passed that no one has to worry about a blanket ban, I promise.
With 1 & 2 we could prevent a person doing large amounts of damage with a single gun, with #3 we could make sure they couldn't use multiple guns to inflict damage, or at least make it infinitely more difficult. With a license requirement for all firearms, the cops have a perfectly good reason to mosey up and ask a guy why he looks like he's ready to take on a zombie apocalypse when no one had bothered to tell them it had started or at least ask why he thinks he needs sixty pounds of firepower to walk down the sidewalk.
4) A free federal gun safety program that's required before the owner's license can be issued, and required every X (I'd suggest three) years to maintain the license. Can't be bothered to show up? Goodbye guns! This is just plain in the public's best interest and always has been. Think of it as a first step in weeding out irresponsible owners.
I suggest these because I think these are things that would help, could actually make it into law, and would actually be enforceable. It doesn't ban things that look scary. It bans things that allow you to kill a shitload of people in a short amount of time. None of these violate the 2nd amendment in any way. The majority of gun owners won't oppose these. The NRA will, but fuck those guys. They don't speak for liberal or moderate gun owners and never have. They speak for crazy right wingers, but fuck the crazy right wingers too.
While it's almost impossible to do anything about the guns and magazines that were manufactured before the ban, normal attrition would take care of those over time. (Losses, damage, wear and tear, house fires, thefts that lead to seizure, people losing them for not complying with licensing requirements, etc) Within a year or two they would cost more than the average person would be able to drop on them. It would be hard to buy a gun and three thirty round clips to shoot something up if the gun was more than $15000 and the clips were $1000 each.
As popular as the idea is on here, I don't think a ban on semi-automatic weapons is possible, and I don't think it would help as much as people think it would. With practice a person can fire a bolt action almost as fast as a semi-automatic. That's why I suggest limiting the magazine size. Practice will only go so far when you have to manually open the chamber, shove a round in, close the chamber, then pull the trigger. It's tough to do at the best of times, and damned near impossible when the adrenaline is pumping.
In the interest of full disclosure: I own firearms. By DU standards I'm probably a bunker dwelling gun nut. By real world standards I'm a leebral gun hater. As a gun owner I'd rather be part of the effort to prevent tragedies than demand my non-existent and useless right to own high capacity magazines or to swap magazines effortlessly. I would have no problem complying with any of these, especially if it might prevent another massacre.
= new reply since forum marked as read
