Is it more difficult to bring something into the country across the border, or to transport an item between two states?
If it isn’t obvious to you that only banning something on the state level is SIGNIFICANTLY less effective than nationally, I can only assume you’ve never actually left the country.
The US has the right to bear arms enshrined in our constitution. I don’t need any justification beyond it is my right. Feel free to give away you personal rights in your own country, I could care less.
Gun control doesn’t work because criminals don’t pay attention to laws. The only people who will follow the law are the non-criminals.
Gun control doesn’t work because criminals don’t pay attention to laws
Of course they do. They make the same calculation you do when you decide to drive over the speed limit: how likely am I to get caught, how serious will it be if I get caught, do I really need to take this risk, etc. That's why some criminals only break the speed limit, other criminals only steal things from empty stores, other criminals inflate the value of their real estate holdings to get cheap loans, commit campaign fraud to hide an affair with a porn star, and then attempt to launch a coup to stay in power.
Let's look at how similar criminals might make a decision about using a gun as part of their crime in London vs. St. Louis.
London
St. Louis
How likely am I to be caught
Pretty likely, guns are rare. It would be a big risk to trust someone to get me a gun.
Guns are common, so pretty unlikely
How serious will it be if I get caught
Very serious, gun crimes are heavily punished
The gun won't make things worse
Do I really need to take this risk
No, the regular cops don't have guns, the civilians don't have guns, I don't need a gun
Of course I need a gun. Cops are heavily armed and twitchy, the public is heavily armed and twitchy. I can't succeed at this crime unless I'm heavily armed
Is the risk worth it
Doing the crime is worth it, doing the crime with a gun is too big of an additional risk.
If I'm going to do the crime, I have no choice but to use the biggest gun I can find
That is a nicely organized wall of text, you seem to have put a lot of effort into it. Too bad it is mostly opinion and isn’t true.
Merely possessing a firearm while committing a crime in St Louis is a class D felony and is punishable by up to 7 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Using a firearm in a criminal offense is also a class D felony and is punishable by up to 15 years in prison depending upon the criminal history of the defendant. In the US multiple crimes can stack the charges. So a defendant could be looking at a lifetime conviction.
Some very basic Googling would have revealed this to you. Most of this can be found under MO statute 571.
I’m not an expert on UK law but from some more basic googling it seems the laws range from 7 years for purchasing to life for the actual use of a firearm.
Once again laws don’t deter criminals, they just punish honest citizens.
Once again laws don’t deter criminals, they just punish honest citizens.
That's an idiotic point of view. There aren't "criminals" and "non-criminals". Virtually everybody is a criminal, it's just that most people only break minor laws, like running red lights, infringing copyrights, littering, etc. Those people don't break other laws because the risk vs. reward calculation doesn't work out for them.
Even a big criminal like Donald Trump who has broken dozens if not hundreds of laws isn't out shooting people because that's not the kind of crime he does.
There isn't some magic switch that turns someone from "honest citizen" to "criminal", it's a whole spectrum of law breaking. Even that old lady who goes to church every day probably goes faster than the speed limit, parks illegally, etc. For someone in the middle of the spectrum, say someone who cheats on their taxes, tries to scam old church-going ladies out of their money, etc. there are kinds of crimes they'll do, and other kinds of crimes they won't do.
Way at the criminal end of the spectrum, you have people who commit violent crimes. But, not every violent crime involves a gun. Muggers and carjackers don't always use guns because the extra punishment is a slight deterrent. So, the law deters them. However, since the US is a society of gun nuts, it doesn't offer as much of a deterrent as it would in some place like the UK or Japan.
No acknowledgement that your prior post had zero facts or even a basis in reality when it came to criminal law? No matter how many facts I just put out there you just want to move the goal posts and fall back to how you feel criminals calculate when to use guns or not.
Your feelings don’t constitute an argument I respect or wish to engage in further.
Yes, and I know you got the point because it's obvious how hard you're trying to pretend you didn't understand it. I know I got through to you, and I know that you understand the strength of my argument because you're working so hard to pretend you didn't see it. I know I convinced you, but you're afraid to admit it because you'll lose face.
You can keep pretending, but it's just not believable, sorry.
You're repeating bad NRA propaganda. There is zero evidence that gun control doesn't work, and a literal fuckton of evidence that it does.
So be brainwashed if you will, but there is literally no science at all to support your side, so you're essentially worse than a Flat Earther in this argument. Since they at least offer attempts at explaining their insanity. You don't, you just say something without having any actual evidence for it.
So in one incident, a shooter with a history of violence buys guns, keeps them for years, and then shoots up a mall. According to gun fetishists, gun laws would do nothing to prevent that incident. In another incident, a person with a history of violence buys guns, keeps them for years, and is arrested for owning guns he shouldn't have. Thus, there is no mass shooting incident.
I'm desperately trying to figure out what kind of incident will prove this point without requiring a friggin time machine.
You’re falling into a cognitive fallacy that many fanatic gun grabbers seem to exhibit. You assume a crime will be committed in the future based on owning an inanimate object.
Pro 2A enjoyers reject that fallacy. An inanimate object does not have agency. Agency is held by the individual. The individual should enjoy the benefits and responsibilities from the use of an object as well as the consequences of misuse that come with it. The group should not be punished for the crimes of a few.
Law abiding citizens that own guns are not criminals and we reject assertions that we are wrong for owning an object. The safest most law abiding segment of society are conceal and carry permit holders. Millions of us carry every day and do not break the law and do no harm to others.
The big picture: From 1966 to 2019, 77% of mass shooters purchased at least some of the weapons used in the shootings legally, per data compiled by the National Institute of Justice, a research agency of the Department of Justice.
When implemented on a nation wide level, gun control works as surely as antibiotics work on infections. That's not up for debate. There is zero evidence against that assertion, and a metric fuckton to back it up.
To me, it's honestly downright sickening, arguing for the 2A, while all the science is against you and you live in country in which the LEADING cause of death for kids is gun violence. (And yes, 18-year olds are kids as well. Case in point, they can't even buy beer in the US.)
Gun control works as surely as antibiotics do. Go ahead, show me science that disagrees. Peer-reviewed science. Mine are from Oxford, Harvard and the DOJ. I'll be waiting.
Your fanaticism and dedication for gun grabbing is next level. Once again you have ignored and talked past the point I made that we as law abiding gun owners should not be punished for the actions of others.
This is exactly what I mean. You sincerely think using an extremely childish, loaded term like that, while refusing to address the actual science on the matter doesn't show everyone that I'm right, and you have literally no arguments, thereby proving my point that there is literally no scientific evidence to support your side of the argument. None. Zip. Nada. Zilch.
You're like a Flat Earther, an anti-vaxxer, a creationist or other some such deluded person. That's not an insult. It's just literally what "delusional" means. You can see the truth, you can understand it, but you refuse to believe it in favour of things that are completely imaginary.
Gun control works as surely as antibiotics do. No-one's coming to "grab your guns" if America instills actual, reasonable gun regulation.
I'm from Finland, we're in the top10 for gun ownership in the world, but there's practically no gun crime at all. There is, of course, but in the same sense that there is risk involved when you get your wisdom teeth removed. I'm from a rural area. I shot my first guns when I was 12. An officer's pistol from WWII (my great-grandfather's), a 12-gauge, a Finnish AK variant (RK62, the one the Israelis based their Galil receivers on, their first ones even being manufactured by Valmet). I had a lot of hunter friends growing up, and I literally slept* next to a gun rack. My dad was a hunter, and my older brother is as well. I then served my conscription for a year when I was 20, in the Finnish army, being an NCO. I love guns. They're fun as fuck.
They're also dangerous as fuck. Which is why you need good regulation. Finland has a problem with people fighting when drunk. Without proper gun control, a lot of those folks would be armed and the murder rate would skyrocket and the safety of the society would plummet. In the long run, that is.
And which is why I never had to be afraid of guns despite having driven a taxi since 2007. And having driven a lot of face tattooed bikers drunk as fuck screaming "we're about to go kill people."
I've hustled drugs more than a decade and never had to be afraid of someone having a gun.
That's why for instance one of my friends who can't handle his drink and always gets into fights only had a gun license for a year or two, before he got several charges for assaults and then it took a year or so for the cops to take his gun permits away. (No, not his guns, no-one was "grabbing his guns", he took them to the police himself, because not to do so would've meant not being law-abiding.)
I know black markets and criminals very well, and the most childish thing about your arguement is the fact that you're ignoring the laws of basic supply and demand. When you restrict legal markets, you affect black markets. Finding a gun here is extremely hard, and when you do find one, it's extremely expensive. You can get some starter pistols bored into .22's, but that's about it. And even those will costs hundreds and hundreds.
How many of the guns sold illegally in the US originated as legal weapons, hmm?
Oh, why did I even bother writing all this, as you won't want to actually discuss the issue. You'll just regurgitate the same bullshit NRA propaganda while ignoring reality. Pfff...
Saw a police shooting video recently where the suspect barricaded in a car with a hostage. Suspect returned fire (full auto).
After the police shot him and freed the hostage, they went to clear the gun. It was a full auto HK UMP, which civilians in the US cannot legally buy or possess in any practical scenario (yes I am aware a SOT could have one for LE demonstration but that's relatively rare and not what this was).
In other words full auto MGs are being used by criminals who have cartel connections. The cartels get them from Mexican or South/Central American police and military who either are corrupted and resell the weapons, or are overt criminals themselves.
US has created a clown world where middle class software engineers are being hassled by the feds over having a braced AR pistol. ATF has jailed people over a drawing on a flat piece of metal. Meanwhile criminal element are running around with full auto UMPs and illegally modified Glocks. It is the exact opposite of what should be happening.
It was a full auto HK UMP, which civilians in the US cannot legally buy or possess in any practical scenario (yes I am aware a SOT could have one for LE demonstration but that’s relatively rare and not what this was).
In other words
In other words... you had to make it clear that the weapon wasn't legal, and even then you had to admit that there were some scenarios where it might be legal.
Here's how that sentence would go in a sane countr:
"It was a gun, and not a hunting gun, so obviously illegal."
When civilians can legally own a whole variety of guns, including guns that look nearly identical to the ones that are illegal, it's a lot easier for people to get their hands on the illegal guns. England doesn't have this problem. Japan doesn't have this problem. Even Canada doesn't have this problem. It's not that there aren't criminals in those places, it's that gun control laws work.
You're not making the point you think you are. That fringe scenario I described has no statistical significance in terms of crime. It is a special subset of dealers that demonstrate weapons to police customers. I guarantee you England, Canada and Japan also have some process for this, and it doesn't impact their crime rates in any meaningful way either.