I read this idea everywhere and have no experience to assess if it makes sense or not.

However, I only know guns are machines and every machine without proper care and maintenance fails rather quickly. So, people with experience, how hard is to keep a gun working? Is it something you do yourself or you take it to the "mechanic" as a car? Are replacement parts needed frequently?

Have you got a link to the school mass-stabbings in Europe?

Gang violence is not the same as a mass-school killing.

A firearm gives another degree of separation from the killer to the victims. It makes such a crime easier to carry out.

It needs proper maintenance, AFAIK.

First of all, it needs to be well-oiled all the time or it will rust quickly.

At least, that's what they told us back in basic training in Germany. Don't know if it's true or if it was just to keep us occupied ;-)


As the supply keeps coming, there's probably little need to do that right now. But once the supply gets scarce enough, people will learn how to maintain their guns. Just like Cubans learned how to keep the 1950s cars running ;-)

Well I think it’s time to stop talking about Gun Control and to start talking avout Gun Safety. Beginning with the things that a majority of US citizens favour. For example requiring gun safety courses ; keep all guns in a locked place ; background checks for all gun sales.

The US governments may be the largest purchasers of guns. Why don’t they require safety features that only allow the owner (or owner designated people) to use the weapon. And seek features to retrofit existing government guns. Once these become common place many gun owners are likely to upgrade their weapons for their own safety.

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Very good idea. But will likely go the same way as sex-ed in the US.

"No, we can't tell kids about guns - they might end up knowing how to use one!"

Who said it's the same thing? I was talking about random attacks and stabbings not gang violence. (I think you've heard of some too...)

The idea was that you have to also address the underlying causes. You'll ban guns and they'll buy them from the black market or use other means to an end.

Just curious, as I mentioned zero experience with guns.

It's just that the 300 million guns number is dropped frequently without ever discussing how many of them effectively work.

Of course, if there's a will there's a way. However, regulations for driving, piloting a plane, drinking or prescription drugs are there. Never heard someone saying drug laws are useless, lots of drugs out there anyway.

That's not true.

As an example, look what happened after the Scottish school shooting in 1996.
Stricter gun controls were brought in.

Gun crime rates have dropped considerably.

Four gun murders in the UK so far this year.
17,000 in the U.S.

That's why you are wrong.

Firearms are not particularly high tech and easy to maintain. My grandfather used to keep a his WWII pistol and it still works now.

And no, there is no will. At least not in the "representatives" and senators.

As for the number of guns: it seems they are not evenly distributed.

The number of people in the US that do not own a single gun is AFAIK larger than it may seem.

Regulations exist, yes. But enforcing them is at times very difficult.

As I said in the other thread: we will see what distributing assault-riffles to every able Ukrainian in the course of the Russian invasion will or will not do to the weapons-situation in Europe.

Our civilization may just not be made to last...

First of all, what do you mean addressing the underlying issue? Out of the top of my head, in the US we've had mass killings with assault rifles by white supremacists, ant-gay/lesbian "activists", depressed students and outright crazy people. Each of these groups has different "underlying" issues which will take generations, if ever, to fix.

Secondly, there's a substantial difference between being able to walk in Walmart and buy an assault rifle vs. finding one on the black market.

Third, you keep on making parallels between random stabbings in Europe and mass shootings in the US. These are fundamentally different as a knife will never ever be as lethal as an assault rifle, this is common sense. Equally important, it doesn't tend to produce the same amount of fear, panic and societal disturbance as it's almost always a surprise when it happens in Europe, but the assault rifle shootings in the US are a matter of "where and when will be the next one"

Who is saying ban guns? A few common sense rules on training, licensing, safe storage would work wonders. Anyone notice that the last two massacres were preformed by 18 year olds? They can’t legally buy a beer, but they can buy a semi-automatic weapon. WTF?

My opinion may not be popular, and it does run counter to my feelings about the issue. Here goes nothing:

I think the problem is only partly related to the easy availability of guns. It's probably more strongly correlated to a cultural aspect of the US today, including the country's current relationship with guns, the over-patriotism and romantization of public patriotic displays, the exultation of the military, and America's overall love affair with violence in general (in popular culture, such as pop music, film, video games, etc). I feel that violence (not limited to gun violence) has somehow infiltrated people's psyche to a point where it's become commonplace and normal, while in other industrialized countries it's an abhorrent occurrence.

Underneath it all, the 20th century has solidified an ideal of Americanism and monoculturalism, which is at the heart of the 2020's political tension to define what is tomorrow's real American culture: progressive and inclusive, or christian, small-town, traditional.

Don't get me wrong: I'd fully support banning all sorts of weapons. I can't imagine why a private individual would ever need a weapon designed to kill. I think that while a ban works in more normal countries, I don't think it would make a huge dent in gun-related deaths in the US.

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The internet makes it easy to be a jerk and forget the person we're talking to is a human. It also makes us see messages from awful people and assume they come from normal peers.

It's Friday, so I guess it's OK to quote Žižek

I'd agree with you on that and the mix of culture with the ready availability of guns has proved to be a lethal cocktail.


Compared with the recent school shooting, there was much, much greater uproar in the U.S. when Janet Jackson bared a nipple on stage at the Super Bowl.

There's something deeply rotten in a society when a woman's bare flesh is considered more abhorrent than the slaughter of nineteen young children.

Enlighten me, happy to read of this smart chap whose opinion I seem to share.

A pathetic excuse for doing nothing. Every state born of a revolution started out with a citizenry armed to the teeth and yet the managed to remove the guns out of their society.

But that implied the willingness of the people to submit themselves to that new state, to ceed control.
People were willing to make that trade because they had been convinced (or strongly hoped) that the situation would improve.

Maybe I'm mistaken - but my view is that exactly the opposite is happening, at least in the US.

Certain "petty crimes" are on the rise in the US (larcenies, vandalism), in certain parts of the US at least - and the resulting reporting on these problems (exaggerated or not) causes more people to think about "protecting themselves and their kids".

Biden has a point when he says that the constitution didn't envision anybody to walk into a gun-store on their 18th birthday and buy a military-style assault rifle.

But the founding-fathers of the constitution also didn't envision a US that was - in parts - as densely populated as it is now.

And the people who will give up their weapons are mostly not the ones to cause today's problems.

It was a nerd joke. The smart chap is someone who you can bet will always be like this:

The 300 + million guns is really a nothing number. These are all locked in my gun safe back in the US now. There are 3 people that hunt in my family of 4. The gun safe right now has 25 guns in it. I do not have any of the AR style weapons that are used in practically every mass shooting.