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

The movement is larger than eight people - and has opinions far more diverse than eight people.

Because "assault weapons" aren't a thing.

They have a clear purpose - they do not have a clear bill of actions. Their unified purpose is that they want gun violence to end (and by end they really mean 'be dramatically reduced'). Other than that, yes, they don't really have clear leaders - they just have 'loud voices'.

I love this idea that the stars of this whole movement, the people who kicked it off initially, who have lead it from the start, and who are constantly in the news making their demands clear are somehow not at all representative of the movement they started lol

You should love it because it's both true - and because it's true of many movements.

Assault Rifles are a thing, and have been effectively banned for over 30 years. You can still get them if you jump through a million hoops though, which is as it should be imo.

I have a real hard time believing that the majority, if not vast majority, of people Marching For Our Lives don't want some sort of assault weapon ban. Even if they don't explicitly say it I'm sure if you ask them they will say yes. The leaders of the movement want an assault weapons ban. The politicians who have come out supporting the march the most want an assault weapons ban. According to the first poll I pulled up the vast majority of Democrats and even 43% of Republicans want an assault weapons ban.

Could we maybe not pull an OWS/Gamergate and paint the entirety of a movement based on everything their "leader" say? The movement has a clear purpose: To stop regular occurrences of shootings. That's what can be said about everyone taking part in that march. But attributing every specific thing a "leader" says to the entirety of the movement? Unless they somehow unanimously voted for it, I don't think that's fair to do.

What they want is for the violence to stop. That's it. End of line. You can believe that because that's the truth. They are presently open to many solutions - so long as they make actual progress - because the thing driving the whole movement is that they feel the issue isn't being taken seriously and they're tired of not seeing things being put forward that seem to be doing anything that impacts their issue.

Maybe we can just agree to disagree (though I'm amazed this is an actual point of contention) on whether or not it's fair to say that the Stoneman-Douglas movement wants an AWB? Do you think an AWB is a good idea?

Why is my opinion relevant here while the opinion of said group is not yet settled in your mind? It isn't really up for debate: the movement has not settled on any one solution at this time.

An "AWB" would do nothing but harm legitimate gun owners. The last thing we need is another knee-jerk law with ridiculous definitions (see: california gun laws)

Because frankly you aren't going to convince me that they don't want an AWB, and I'm not going to convince you they do, so maybe we could talk about something else?

So there's no evidence I could present that could ever convince you - if I delivered a signed confession from all 8,000,000 or so supporters of this movement that they do not necessarily want an AWB so long as the gun violence ends you would still not be convinced? If so, no I don't particularly want to talk to you because it seems that you only want to talk about the facts as they exist in your head, rather than those in the world around us.

Yeah pretty much seeing as they're currently doing interviews and writing op-eds about the need for an assault weapons ban. Byee

I see, we've had a misunderstanding. When I said 'evil guns' I facetiously meant assault weapons- the ones that are frequently mischaracterized with emotional terms like 'high-powered', 'weapons of war', 'designed to kill', and other superfluous terms that ultimately are only describing a loose set of purely ergonomic features. I'm all for curbing the proliferation of firearms. I think further restriction on handguns wouldn't be a bad idea, and at the very least cracking down on straw purchase and unscrupulous FFLs, the #1 and #2 means respectively by which new firearms enter the black market. And as to seeking other solutions, I meant in the political sphere. We can talk all we want here on this forum, but all I'm seeing coming out of March For Our Lives is calls for assault weapon bans. Oh please, this is complete nonsense- have you ever shot a gun? A lack of assault weapons didn't stop the Virginia Tech shooter from killing 32 people. Ergonomics don't mean shit for a mass killer executing people at point-blank range. It's not a matter of overcoming ergonomic limitations with training, it simply does not matter in the context we're talking about.

If the leader is asking for things that the majority of them are not asking for, perhaps they shouldn't be the leaders of the movement. The whole point of a leader of a movement is to have a face to present the movement's purposes and desires.

That would be true if they had an agreed-upon leader.

Then maybe they should become more organized with an organized leader, instead of leaving the podium open for anyone to go up and claim to be in charge of the message.

I don't think anyone's claimed to be in charge of the group, only presenting the opinions of themselves and those around them. They do need more leadership, sure, but even that wouldn't do much presently until they first agree on what they want to do as a group about this other than build awareness. Presently, I'd expect that a lot of them still see it is an awareness rather than an activist group because they're still hoping that politicians will see their March and realize they exist and therefore finally do something substantial that helps to solve their issue.

Let me make sure I've got this straight- The most vocal members of the movement are calling for assault weapon bans, the people with the ability to actually translate the movement's impetus into policy are proposing assault weapon bans, the news agencies and commentators reporting on it are talking about how it may result in assault weapon bans, there are images of posters from the movement calling for assault weapon bans, but despite all that it's not fair to say the movement is calling for assault weapon bans because we can't poll every individual in the rally and the leaders aren't 'official'?

You've got it straight, yeah, because it's not the movement itself calling for those things - rather, the people who have attracted spotlight attention are. They're influential, of course, but they don't really 'represent' the group. Additionally, the core message of the group hasn't changed in spite of those statements being made, showing that despite those statements the group is still mainly focused on 'we want gun violence to end' rather than 'we need an AWB'.

I don't know how this relates to the actual letter of the law, but when I worked in healthcare we were able to report people to police if they presented a threat to themselves or others (though nobody ever said anything to police if they were just suicidal), so I think privacy law already allows what they're asking for tbh

If 40 police visits and 2 FBI tips weren't enough to stop this man, mental health records wouldn't have done shit. The police were literally there over two dozen times, the FBI was explicitly informed of his intentions to kill. If that's not enough for them to act, nothing is!

TBH I don't think it's wrong to say 'mentally ill people shoot up schools' from the perspective that the overwhelming majority of school shooters are people who have some kind of mental problem that should have been recognized and addressed. It's been a recurring theme that school shooters have shown glaring warning signs that should have been acted upon, but were ignored. But that said it's wrong to twist that into saying that anyone with mental issues, be it depression or any other fairly commonplace mental illness, is a potential school shooting risk. Like you said, most mentally ill people are harmless. Frankly, I'd say most people will deal with some form of mental illness at some point in their lives- it's a normal thing that shouldn't be further stigmatized. All the same, we can't deny the role that mental illness and a lack of proper understanding and treatment plays in driving people with manageable illness to kill themselves in a blaze of infamy. People who are having mental problems should be recognized and treated before they carry out acts of violence, but at the same time people who are having mental problems shouldn't be stigmatized as potential mass shooters. It's a difficult balancing act and I don't have a good answer for how that ought to work in policy.

Laws are only as effective as the people enforcing them, so I think an obvious problem with this particular shooting was apathy of law enforcement. More laws, especially ones banning guns, won't change that.

BS. Most of the people there wanted to ban guns. Absolutely no-one can say that they are not coming for them any more, because they absolutely are.

This is what I keep trying to convey. SKEEA's mindset is exactly the problem when you have even part of your movement calling for major gun legislation. They have immediately eroded his trust or concern for the movement. It isn't even an unjustified response. Now how are you going to get bipartisan support for any sort of progress? Gun control is fucking cancerous to progress. I'm NOT suggesting that it is inherently gun control that is the problem, I'm saying that people's past experiences with gun control and the way it has been enacted has made people wary of allowing any further gun control under the guise of "compromise." You push for gun legislation and you sink your platform immediately and accomplish nothing. You never get to step two where you fix the problem because you sank your boat with the first run and the five to ten year delay on solutions doesn't play well with the people demanding immediate solutions. An immediate solution for kids being shot in schools. Which statistically isn't a problem. You have things like Everytown that make it seem like a problem with some fun fuckery. http://time.com/5168272/how-many-school-shootings/ This article actually does a remarkably decent job of explaining how they are playing with those statistics. You hear "school" and "shooting" and folks lose the ability to think critically. I could start listing the ridiculous things that are more likely to kill you than a school shooting, like that you are 34 times more likely to die by falling out of a tree or 52 times more likely to die from constipation or 500 times as likely to suffocate or die falling from your bed, but honestly that rabbit hole gets real sad real fast.

Yeah, no gun owner ever uses the word "assault weapon" or "assault rifle". https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1THyrLA0g34/VBrX6S7HxbI/AAAAAAABHCw/wrOY_KURtrQ/s1600/CompleteARs.jpg http://weaponsman.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/FARC-3-1986-1024x805.jpg Well, they sure did 30 years ago. As of 1994, assault weapons were defined as "semiautomatic firearms with a large magazine of ammunition that were designed and configured for rapid fire and combat use." But we can keep playing semantic word games while children bleed out in their classrooms, this is fine.

Assault rifles are a thing. Assault weapons are not. An assault rifle is a hybrid between a submachine gun and a battle rifle. It makes a battle rifle, which is traditionally too long and unwieldy for decent close quarters combat, and lightens it as well as shrinking its cartridge while granting it full or burst fire modes. This makes it into a rifle which is capable of filling the role of an SMG when assaulting positions. Lose the burst or the full auto? Now it is just an underpowered semiautomatic rifle. The select fire stuff is literally THE defining feature of an assault rifle.