It's Gotta Be Something Else

Perhaps we could save twice that if we got universal healthcare. Investing in infrastructure to move away from car culture would do even better. Where is the active Futurist lemmy group?

Unfortunately, Democrats (see: CA, WA) have been straight up banning guns instead of focusing on safe ownership.

Regardless of your political affiliation, you should be very concerned about the federal government using official state militias (Nat Guard) against the states and questioning straight gun bans.

The federal government should step in for state overreach, and the state government should step in for federal overreach. If the federal government is co-opting the state militia (and while some states have non-National Guard militias, some don’t), what’s the purpose of the second amendment?

There should be extra concern by now that Trump wants to "recruit external people to assist law enforcement" ...
Effectually he's raising his own separate militia so he can put them in action anywhere he wants and not be limited by the law where the Military/National Guard can not be used on American soil.
- The law isn’t exactly stopping him now
I used to oppose private weapon ownership over the time i have come to see that it is indeed an important tool to defend against totalitarian takeovers.
It is by no means a sufficient tool by itself, and people can manage to overcome a totalitarian government without in some historical examples, but often this meant a lot of bloodshed and ultimately gaining weapons through overrunning police/military sites or defecting army units.
Don't wanna be a conspiracy theorist, wouldn't it be a genious idea to split the oligarchy party into seemingly two distinct parties, with one side arming racist hillbillies and using propaganda to control them, the other disarming minorities and anyone left-of-center. Gun control is propaganda.
"Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary"
-Karl Marx
What’s safe ownership and how can Democrats advance it legislatively?
- Fuck the Democrats, they don't do what's good for the country. Why the Hell isn't Trump being impeached again and again and again?
  Safe ownership should not be a partisan issue.
  I got downvoted elsewhere for suggestions.
  Essentially, don't outright ban guns but make it really hard to own one.
  Option 1) Restrict 5.56 and other non-common hunting rounds: 1a) If you want to shoot recreationally? The ammo must be bought and used at the range. Any unused ammo must be returned to the range. Up to the range whether or not to keep a "cache" for members so that they're not wasting too many rounds 1b) The individual state distributes those rounds and keeps records.
  Option 2) Random safety checks 2a) The state enforcement may show up at your house at any time. You are required to rreport to the state when you will be gone for extended periods of time. If you didn't previously file out of the country, you are allowed a small amount of missed calls. The state shall verify that your ammo is stored separately from your firearms and are properly locked. If not, any firearm not safely stored is confisticated. 2b) Every serial number must have a name associated and in a database with your name and address. You must report when the guns move and they must be with you at your primary residence except when you are on vacation. This is also subject to random checks. If you are found to violate this, any firearms not following this will be removed. Yes, I am outlawing storage lockers.
Sources for gun bans passing?
- https://www.atg.wa.gov/firearms
  I legally own and possess one or more firearms that I cannot sell or buy more of in Washington State due to changes in the law in the past five years. They “grandfather” you when they write these laws because they know it causes less uproar when they blatantly violate the Constitution. Which means all those guns are still around.
  I vote Democrat because I’m not a Nazi but sometimes they make it hard, like when over half of ALL gun deaths in the US are from suicide (sOuRCe: gunviolencearchive.org) and all they can come up with is ban, ban, ban, and they just don’t give a shit that all those people wanted to die and maybe we should be trying to help people want to be alive.
  Meanwhile, suicide by gun doesn’t require an assault rifle or a standard capacity magazine to accomplish. They don’t care about that, either, even though it literally accounts for most gun deaths.
- Off the top of my head:
  https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=9.41.390
Unfortunately, Democrats (see: CA, WA) have been straight up banning guns instead of focusing on safe ownership.
https://theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1848971668/
- Because most gun owners don't want to be on a list. And they should absolutely be tracked. Even if the only way to get ammunition is at a range, where you have to leave all unshot ammunition at the range, or from the state directly.
- HB1240 from 2023:
  https://legiscan.com/WA/text/HB1240/id/2794878

But they need their guns in case a fascist government takes over and becomes a police state threatening to take away their rights and liberties.

Waitaminute...

They who have guns want the police state.
It's all the lefties who haven't listened to Marx who don't have guns.

Liberals using a mental health crisis and late stage capitalism to be like:

Hey @miss_demeanour@lemmy.dbzer0.com, you forgot to include:

Fatal automobile accidents
Bullying
Child abuse
Food poisoning
Diseases
Cops
Stress
Work-place accidents
Indoctrination
Knives
Ropes
Parks
Toilets
Sinks
Lockers
Bleach
Floor Degreaser
Printers
Flags
[You can add more by replying to 🧵]

Accidental drowning is one of the main causes of death for children.
More children ages 1-4 die from drowning than any other cause of death.
Drowning is the second leading cause of unintentional injury death for children ages 5-14.
Every year in the United States there are over 4,000 unintentional drowning deaths. (An average of 4,345 unintentional drowning deaths occurred each year from 2018–2021)
- I hate that you have to specify “unintentional”
chatgpt (seriously why)
dolphin rape
being a billionaire with a submarine
being a ceo
falls
falling boulders (I know of at least one that happened.)
tripping over your oxygen cable.

Nah, I'd rather not be toothless when fascists knock on my door to take my family to a camp because I protest and help LGBTQ people with gun safety and survival training.

I don't understand how you people think asking politely to MAGA or racists or fascists for your right to exist is the to go about this. This is how we are here in the first place; they don't respect you and prefer you to be incapable of fighting back

I've gotten to this point too. One thing that frustrates me to no end is the liberal commentators I hear "pointing" to things. Admitting that fascist policies are taking over. Admitting we don't have any rights anymore.
But none of them have the balls to actually say what the only means of resistance is now.
Hell, they don't have to even say it directly. But they should be screaming about what DOESN'T work.
The time for non violent protests and voting are at an end in terms of their effectiveness. The purpose of non violent protests and supporting left wing candidates now is not hoping those will "bring us back". We are not going back peacefully. The purpose of them is to bring about organization and class conciseness.
Maybe it's what "libs" need to hear to try to get them out doing something. Maybe they aren't ready for reality. But I just don't think we can afford people thinking that the system that existed before can be restored. And it shouldn't be restored. It's the system that got us here.
Faux News: "Terrorist with mental issues shot dead in their home after pointing weapon at officers."

Are there stats for kids killed by these monstrous pick ups? Dodge Ram, hummers etc

I don't know about lifted pickups in general, but the NHTSA recorded that there were 39,345 traffic fatalities in the US in 2024. So OP's chart is missing a few lines.
Traffic Deaths: 39,345 (in 2024)
Killed By Police: 1,365 (recorded in 2024)
Medical Malpractice Deaths: 250,000 (estimated annual)
Preventable Deaths due to Illness: 44,000 (lowerbound annual estimate)
Malnutrition Deaths: 6,762 (in 2022)
So, yeah. Our politicians, capitalist overlords, and a fucked up for-profit medical system are killing us all either by inches or just outright, at the rate of a combined hundreds of thousands per year. But ermahgerd, gunz!!!

If only gun safety legistlation wasn't invariably gun ban legislation. No thanks Democrats, I'm trying to actually survive fascism, not do everything in my power to be completely defenseless against it.

But guns.... are bad.
So your mind is changed now, right?
- And then everyone clapped?
Private sales don't require a background check in most states. NICS is not available to private sellers. It is a crime to knowingly sell to a felon or otherwise prohibited person. But if they don't tell you, and the FBI refuses to let you check, you aren't committing a crime.
We need private access to NICS. Buyers should be able to conduct a check on themselves, and provide sellers with the means to verify that check. With the means for private sellers to know their buyer's status (without reliance on FFL dealers or other commercial entities), private sellers can be immediately prosecuted: "I didn't know" is no longer exculpatory.
Unfortunately, every proposal for such a measure is quickly shut down by Democrats.
Democrats want "Universal" background checks, which are completely absurd: If cars had "Universal" checks, you'd need to go to the DMV before you could drive your buddy's car home from a bar. Their regular efforts to promote UBCs while shutting down private access to NICS tells me their intention isn't public safety, but harassment of gun owners.
You realize that if the fascists come to your door a gun won't save your life. Hell it's the fascist who are going to come for your guns. People have said the Democrats are going to do it for decades and there are still more guns than people in the US. The fascists will have dozens of rifles, an armoured personnel carrier, and dozens more personnel, ready and willing to be deployed once they get into a fire fight. They will have professional training whereas you will have Call Of Duty.
- Have you ever actually encountered a gun owner who was under the impression that they'd be able to fend off a military force with their single rifle?
  Like seriously, think for a moment. Be honest with yourself. Have you ever actually derailed someone with that stupid fucking question?
- Shrugs I'd rather choose to fight and die than piss myself in a corner crying about how hard it is.
- You raise a valid point.
  The solution to the problem you describe is through exercise of Article I, section 8, clauses 15 and 16. Congress could and should mandate additional training on those people described in 10 USC 246, for the specific purpose of recognizing and engaging fascist "insurrection".
  The several states have similar powers, and could act independently from Congress to do the same.
  The solution to the problem you describe is certainly not "lay down arms in the face of the enemy".

Pickup trucks - aka cars without visibility of their surroundings

But..but ... but they need those guns just in case a weirdo tries to take over the government.
Or if a pants shitting reality TV 'star' goes full revenge mode when he becomes president.
Or if a child rapist, who is also a Russian asset, but who's also the best friend to a proven and convicted human trafficking paedo blackmailer strolls in and overtakes the Whitehouse and takes his KKK mask off and hops in to being a full on fascist dictator!

If any of the above ever happened you'll be glad that the Gravy Seals™ had all those guns to stop it all.
Not that the above could ever happen. Imagine that, imagine if one of those things ever happened? Wow, Impossible!! Just impossible.
...hey, wait a minute!!!!

6400 kids (10-24) successfully kill themselves every year in the US, and 2 MILLION attempt to

https://www.childrenshospitals.org/content/behavioral-health/summary/the-state-of-pediatric-suicide

I suspect a conservative might believe that the "gay lifestyle" kills people through AIDS, and probably believe trans people are groomed and their suicides are a result of that, so they might view LGBTQ+ rights as leading to deaths, if I had to guess

Yeah. And they probably view guns as a way of protecting children, too.
I see a lot of posts that just completely don't understand the conservative mindset at all, and imagine that explaining things to them like one would explain things to a leftist is going to work. There's just too much inferential distance for memes like this. Sigh :/
- you get it exactly, this kind of meme, if anything, works against our political goals, by re-affirming conservatives in their mindset and alienating them by failing to provide a rhetorical "bridge" that allows them to see things differently
  like you say, expecting them to respond as though they already agree with you (and as if you can just shame them into agreement) is entirely the wrong approach

What's killing our children?

A slave economy that stresses everyone and drives them to hopelessness. A carefully engineered school to prison pipeline. A broken culture that encourages anyone with the slightest bit of authority to mercilessly persecute those below them while ignoring any crimes committed by those above.

We have had guns for hundreds of years, guns aren't the problem ... hopelessness and aiming them at the wrong people is.

https://everytownresearch.org/report/gun-violence-in-america/

Hmm, what could it be?

Your telling me the country with more guns has more gun deaths, wow impossible to predict.
This is statistically meaningless, you want to look at the violent crime rate overall, the murder rate overall, etc.
Like I can guarantee Minnesota has more freezing deaths than Texas. That doesn't say anything about if freezing deaths are a major issue or not. We need a statistical analysis of total murder rate not raw numbers
- You're saying the US doesn't have a higher homicide rate than other high-income countries?

10 a day? Holy shit!

It's an extremely round number for a post with no attributed source.
- in 2022 it was 2,526, so closer to 7 per day.
  We really only see reporting on it when it's a school and white children are involved. Things that make you go "Hmnn."
  https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2024/guns-remain-leading-cause-of-death-for-children-and-teens
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2024/guns-remain-leading-cause-of-death-for-children-and-teens
I don't know 2024 rates but in 2022 it was about 7 per day.
What makes us blind to these numbers is that black children are 18 times more likely to be a victim of gun violence. Inner-city gang violence and relics of segregation are still with us, and the media doesn't report it as an issue because it's just "expected" that there are black kids shooting each other in cities. That way we don't have to do anything.
I mean, who else is gonna fill our for-profit prisons? Gotta have a hopeless segment of the population!

If you extrapolate from FBI data, 90%+ of gun deaths come from handguns. Banning handguns is a hopeless endeavor - there are two Supreme Court cases from 2008 and 2010 that effectively cement handgun ownership as a constitutional right.

You could try a couple pages out of the California playbook with the handgun roster and ammo background checks to make getting them and using them kind of a pain in the ass.

I honestly don’t know what you do otherwise to make dent otherwise.

Bad timing for this meme. I do not trust the cops, esepcially not now. Correct course of action is to disband the police and create well-regulated militias (regulated by the people themselves, not the state). I see you're from dbzer0, you should know that cops aren't to be trusted.

Also: Dems really need to drop the gun issue if they hope to win an election, going "Beto O' Rourke" every election isn't helping.

Context: The moment where Democrats lost Texas Gubernatorial Election: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QR4mNrW0AlE

Correct course of action is to disband the police and create well-regulated militias (regulated by the people themselves, not the state).
The vast majority of people in smaller, more rural areas are 100% happy with what's going on.
What you're suggesting would mean that any time you'd drive through a new municipality/town/village, you'd have to learn a new set of rules and laws. You'd end up with "legal" lynchings in some smaller communities. It would be absolute chaos.

AI 1

Lack of access to proper mental health care: too many

Because those issues are about protecting the status quo power structure, not about protecting kids.

Here's what I've often wondered: why, when the Constitution clearly indicates that bearing of arms is in the context of a" well-regulated militia", is it not permissible, under the Constitution, to regulate firearms? Do the second amendment types have any kind of argument about this? It just seems to me that within the context of the amendment itself, it's clearly implied that regulation will be necessary and will exist. Is there something that I'm missing?

Yes. The text of the 2nd amendment is contested and several states passed different punctuation, which changes the meaning.
The most favorable version for individual gun ownership reads:
A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.
The placement of the comma there makes the well regulated militia part an introductory clause, which explains the purpose of the second part protecting individual gun ownership.
That combined with the historical context that anyone called into miltia service was expected to provide their own gun is the justification for individual gun ownership being a protected right.
The more common text passed by congress is more ambiguous because it introduces an explanatory clause as part of the introductory clause, but you can still read it that way, which the supreme court currently has.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
If you cared at all you'd actually read up on the context and interpretation of the 2nd amendment.
- Or, and stick with me, here, maybe I'm asking the question in hopes I can discuss it with someone that has already read up on it and find out that way? Maybe I can learn some viewpoints of others in this thread that might illuminate the answer more quickly and succinctly. What is the point of communicating with others if I can't seek information through it?

Well, that latest mass shooting in the media was done by a trans person, yea? And Trump's busy deploying National Guard units to most blue states in an authoritarian/fascist push....

So I imagine, that the left may have a chance of getting gun control on the agenda this time. Though it may not look like how they want it to. It'd be gun control to deny lgbtq+ and blue voters guns.

3600....so far.

Sadly, no they do not.

There is no consequence for supporting accountability-free gun purchases and ownership, even after Uvalde, where all of the politicians involved were re-elected.

Welcome to the comments: Here you’ll find

various reasons it’s important Americans have guns (yet to see that armed resistance)
discussion about out all the other stuff killing American kids
at the bottom relevant stats from other countries without widespread firearm ownership

IDF: 36000

I thought it was way more
- probably...

In Japan there was zero child deaths by guns. They have a little less than half the population of the US but none of the gun deaths.

3000 people died one time in 2001 and the US government used the fear and rage to wage war and commit war crimes in multiple countries including those that had nothing to do with the attack for the next 20 years.

3000 children die at least every two years in the US and there's not enough fear and rage to wage war on the fucking NRA.

kinda makes you wish the gun manufacturers and their lobbyists were a bunch of brown skinned people, that shit would've been shut down pretty damn quick huh.