General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I am sincerely perplexed by the "it's not an assault rifle" meme... [View all]Igel
(35,282 posts)Easier to ban them by list or by physical attributes.
When you ban functions, you really want to outlaw acts and activities. We tried that. Didn't work as we wanted. Then we tried it in a self-deceiving way--banning actions under guise of banning objects--because we couldn't get everybody to ban all the objects we wanted banned.
Not surprisingly, the only people we deceived were ourselves.
You can ban using guns for a certain purpose. Make murder illegal.
You can ban guns. "Anything firing a projectile using these modalities and this structure is outlawed."
What's hard to do is ban the use of an object for a given purpose. "Screwdrivers are okay, murder isn't. There are still murders, so what we'll do is ban those specific screwdrivers used for murder."