Half a million #MarchForOurLives protesters rally in Washington DC - Polidicks

I bet Russia likes this

Really? Not the ones who keep making appeals to emotion rather than coming to logical conclusions? "But think of the children!" has never been a good argument.

"NO EFFECT" is not what the reports from that time conclude. Both sides in the gun debate are selectively citing from a series of studies that concluded with a 2004 study led by Christopher S. Koper, “An Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003.” That report was the final of three studies of the ban, which was enacted in 1994 as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. The final report concluded the ban’s success in reducing crimes committed with banned guns was “mixed.” Gun crimes involving assault weapons declined. However, that decline was “offset throughout at least the late 1990s by steady or rising use of other guns equipped with [large-capacity magazines].” Where did you get these numbers from? Gun Violence Archive

What?

Maybe if you didn't sound like such an insufferable dick that tells half a million people, some of whom may have recently lost loved ones to fuck off, more people would listen to you.

They're certainly enjoying watching the left leaning and right leaning spheres of the US fighting. But gun control itself wouldn't mean dick to them. Division is a key part of their global strategy after all, if a solution to this gun control issue is found and some unity is brought about their fun is over.

And maybe if these half a million people proposed something sensible more people would listen to them

Maybe if someone had proposed something sensible they wouldn't have to go to extremes to get people to listen to them.

Exactly so why havent they? the majority of gun owners arent going to fight against laws that would actually make sense, the problem is they've never proposed anything sensible its always "it looks scary so ban it"

The majority of gun owners are not the ones they're convincing and attempting to get to move.

By outright banning millions of law-abiding citizens from owning them because of the actions of a few hundred in a country of 330 million people.. gotcha

So basically as long as it doesn't affect you, you don't even care whether or not this legislation eventually comes to pass?

Quote where I have stated that. This is part of the problem, right here.

Gun laws in the UK and other countries outside of the US generally only allow gun licenses in the case of animal control and for a few other practical purposes. When they do it's under strict a gatekeeping process and is only temporary as far as I'm aware. So yeah, anything laxer than that is pretty much just for guns as a hobby (which doesn't deserve ridicule, but as I say, aren't worth all the gun crime) or militias (which absolutely deserve ridicule).

I never said you called for an outright ban, but the people you are defending have

Oh, they have a unified bloc opinion? Quote it.

What if I were to answer that with a blunt 'yes'?

Assault weapon bans statistically, factually do not do anything to curb gun violence and only alienate gun voters as they clutch their guns like pearls. Do stuff that's evidence based, Assault Weapon Bans only appeal to suburban white soccer moms in banning spooky things and do not actually help prevent shootings.

Then you're a horrible person who is a baby and is making the country less safe over these emotional baby kids who know nothing and are crazed and refuse to listen 'to reason'.

IDK man, Australian gun laws may have prevented 16 mass shootings

Going through that site that Firgof linked is interesting. I'm looking at incidents involving teenagers - and all of the ones I've seen on the first page are all tied back to robberies, drugs, or gangs (usually it seems to be a combination of them). Maybe the issue does have deeper roots than guns, maybe we should be looking to help our citizens out of poverty, increasing the social safety net, not making people feel helpless and prevent them from falling into a life of crime in the first place. Like I'm sorry, but I honestly believe the issues in this country are caused by things deeper than guns. Poverty is an absolute travesty and the fact that both parties seem to be dead in the water in enacting any meaningful change in helping people out of it is astonishing. Poverty is easily the biggest issue facing this country. Everything else stems from it. Issues with that study were pointed in in the Polidicks thread. It was sloppy science.

That's fine, but they're not talking about anything but gun violence. They're not asking for a fix for all of society's ills. They're asking for an end to gun violence.

There's a livestream going on youtube if anyone want's to subject themselves to that. Fair warning, comments and chat are shitting on everyone. link

The fact of the matter is you're not going to end gun violence now. It's going to take actual time, and its going to require actually helping out soceiety's disadvantaged.

They're not going to accept anything but measures that attempt to address the issue immediately. "We'll fix the economy" will never satisfy them.

The UK gun restrictions aren't anywhere near as restrictive as people in the US are led to believe. You can have almost any rifle you want in almost any calibre you want so long as the action is manual (lever, bolt, etc.). Semi-auto and pump action rifles are restricted to .22 rimfire. So long as the rifle has a barrel length of 30cm and a total length of 60cm minimum it's classified as a rifle. Handguns are totally banned barring black powder, muzzle loading or certain revolvers. Blank firing pistols have special exemptions for starter pistols and the likes. Long barrelled pistols and revolvers generally fall into the rifle laws above, but almost always restricted to .22 max. Shotguns are quite unregulated. You can own almost anything so long as you have the right certificate. The most basic restricts you to a single, double or triple barrelled shotgun with a maximum fixed magazine capacity of 2 (+1 in the chamber), and the magazine cannot be removable. This restriction is lessened up with the correct certificate. You really don't need to have a practical reason for owning guns over here. You can quite readily apply for certification for sporting purposes. The only real things you can't apply for are defence purposes. Applying for a license just requires the police to be able to verify you're not a public threat, and depending on any jail time you've done you can be prohibited from owning firearms temporarily or permanently. You need to have a face to face interview when getting your certificate, have your family doctor sign off to say you're of good mental health, have two people as references of good character (two years of knowing you minimum mind), and an inspection of your place of storage to ensure the guns won't just walk off on their own. Each certificate lasts 5 years. I still fully fight for gun control in general, because our system appears to have worked just fine. People can still buy and own guns as long as they follow very simple rules and get re-certified every 5 years to ensure they haven't been going crazy enough to be a potential threat.

A general gun registration and license for semi-automatic weapons that is lenient so that average joe can obtain one without a hitch, restrictions on handguns that will make them more difficult to acquire (these constitute the majority of gun violence in the US, you don't hear about handguns because it's mostly involved in urban gang violence and other crimes as opposed to mass shootings), gun buyback programs to reduce the sheer amount of weapon in this country, unbanning of attachments that are banned for basically no reason (silencers, etc) as a bone to the gun nuts, strengthening background checks.These are various policies that would actually be effective in curbing America's gun violence.

I hope you'll forgive me for trusting actual analysts more than a random Facepunch user.

Yep. But getting politicians to actually hold to the promise of doing any of those presently is tough because the NRA would be absolutely against all of those and more than willing to fund the opponents of whichever politician decides to go with that.

Do you have an actual rebuttal to what he said? What they did is absolutely sloppy. It doesn't account for anything beyond "we had this many in the period prior to the ban, and after that we didn't, thus the null hypothesis is most likely false. It does not take into account any other factors which may have influenced that, such as ones catbarf point out. >Without a 22-year randomized controlled trial assigning only parts of a national population to live under the National Firearms Agreement, establishing a definitive causal connection between this legislation and the 22-year absence of mass firearm homicides is not possible. However, a standard rare events model provides strong evidence against the hypothesis that this prolonged absence simply reflects a continuation of a preexisting pattern of rare events. Blindly trusting academics is, quite frankly, stupid. Academics misinterpret things all the time, and are prone to doing sloppy research - they're human just like everyone else. But that's the beauty of it too, you're free to disagree when things haven't been done as well as they should have, or you think an interpretation is off.