this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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Locked cockpit doors are also practical obstacles, numbnuts.
"Futility" is pass/fail thinking. We absofuckinglutely keep most prisoners from getting most things they want. If your standard is literally nobody and never ever ever, yeah no shit that won't work. But I feel no need to defend the assertion that most people in prison are left wanting.
Don't talk to me about systems if you think 99% success equals failure.
You want magic.
The only reason it's sooo easy for "criminals" to pull guns from behind their ears is the comical abundance of firearms. Where the fuck do you think the black market comes from? There's no secret factory churning out bad-guy-specific firearms. Burglars find guns lying around, muggers take guns from victims, straw buyers look like "good people" - and there's more guns than humans in America. There's a gun and a half per person. How the everloving fuck are you "for reducing the number of guns criminals have," if not by reducing the number of guns available?
I didn't address 'what if carjackers thought randos were armed' because what happens is, they shoot you first.
Most illegal guns today are stolen or straw purchased, because that's the easiest and cheapest way of getting them and it requires very little transport.
Let's assume you made civilian gun ownership totally illegal. The math changes- they get a bit more expensive, they get shipped in from overseas along with the drugs. Or they get made locally- a gun isn't that hard to make in any decent machine shop. Certainly easier than making drugs. And unlike the drug lab, the machine shop has a legitimate 'day shift' use so it doesn't have to hide in a basement.
But you yourself said there's 1.5 guns for every person. That doesn't go away overnight you know. Even if you could get support for broad spectrum civilian disarmament, the criminals won't give up their guns and they'll just start importing or making more.
If you want to stop crime, of any kind, you have to stop the root causes. Stopping drunk driving by banning alcohol didn't work in the 1920s. Stopping gun violence by banning guns won't work today. You need to go deeper- look at where most gun violence comes from (gangs and drugs), and address that. It means education, jobs, a war on poverty, and it costs a hell of a lot more than just signing a law. But it would actually improve our society.
Or effectively prevent them, or reliably prosecute them, or-- what, suddenly you understand game theory? When it's convenient?
This is stupid. We can make things harder, and they happen less. Some obstacles work better, some goals are worth more effort, whatever. You don't get to pull this motte-and-bailey horseshit. You went from declaring all self-proclaimed criminals will always always always get all the guns they want, to acknowledging that cost / complexity / time / consequences prevents a ton of access that would happen if there were no obstacles, to sort of mumbling and hand-waving that changes won't change anything because imports and stockpiles and Jesus Christ have you ever seen a foreign country?
Even the solution you treat as a worst-case extreme is wrong. Almost nobody wants to ban all guns. That is a right-wing ghost story. But buyback programs, registration, and serial-number tracking can reduce guns available to the black market, and chase down the pathways guns take to get there, without stopping any particular ammosexual from collecting greasy toys.
Perhaps nobody overtly wants to ban all guns in the sense of making all guns illegal. There's always a 'reasonable' proposal. But it overall feels like a roll back strategy, like the US tried to roll back communism in the cold war- pick at the edges until there's none left.
A buyback program IS a ban by the way- it's just confiscation with compensation. 'You can't own XYZ anymore so we will confiscate it from you, but we'll give you some money.
The real issue though is that guns aren't hard to make and therefore the black market effect will be minimal. Look at illicit marijuana (pre-legalization) as an example. Lots of it was grown in Mexico then smuggled in. Then hydroponic/airponic tech got better and cheaper and instead it was grown in attics and basements closer to where it would be sold. So now the drugs smuggled in are drugs that require lab processing like cocaine or heroin. But if (hypothetically saying there was no legalization) you made home-grow setups illegal, that wouldn't stop anyone from doing it anyway.
Same is true with guns. For under $500 you can buy a device that turns a half-machined block of metal into the main part of an AR15 rifle. For $5k-$10k you can buy a CNC machine that will turn a solid billet of metal into most parts of a gun. And unlike a drug lab, unlike even a basement marijuana grow op, all these devices can be presented as 'legitimate use' with very little prep- just clear the gun CNC file out of the machine and that's it. Way easier than marijuana (which takes weeks to mature and then must be harvested and packaged). So you could do this in a legitimate front business with a 'night shift' crew.
So I argue even if you greatly restrict civilian firearm ownership, the real criminals who commit the majority of gun homicides and gun crimes will have unimpeded access to guns. The same gangs that right now trade in stolen or straw purchased guns, will instead trade in imported or home-machined guns.
Pot will grow in any wet ditch, and we still stop a lot of people from doing it.
You're not listening. We're right back at the start: you're arguing something can, theoretically, sometimes happen, so there's NO DIFFERENCE WHATSOEVER versus making it trivial. Nevermind the countries where violent gangs having a gun is noteworthy, versus the ridiculous abundance in the US making law enforcement assume every rando might be packing. Nevermind that simple registration and licensing would let us disarm "real criminals" of their illicit firearms, whenever the fuck we discover possession, instead of having to wait until they use them on someone. You want to hand-wave thousands of dollars in industrial equipment, to say wildly different circumstances must stay exactly how things work now, because you think crime is magic and change is impossible.
Making something harder makes it happen less.
It's not fucking complicated.
If your only metric is "never," no shit you'll fail. Thankfully that would be stupid. Less is enough.