Tuesday 23 August 2022

Guns in America

I had never heard of gun buyback events until I read about it during one of my idle news scrollings. So, you live in the US, could do with a little money top up; what to do? Swap one your old guns for $150, that's what.

The queue of cars was long, the drivers waving every kind of gun about. Not that I would know the difference between a hacksaw and a handgun but even I could see that these were dangerous weapons.

Drivers were being interviewed, the common denominator was that none of them saw any harm in them or their possession. From handguns to assault rifles, they were fine with all of them.

The comment which brought me up short was: "I like guns, if I counted them I'd say I have about thirty back home. To me guns mean freedom. We have freedom in America and we don't let anyone take that away from us. In fact, what I'm probably going to do is turn this one in, get my $150 and buy one for my son whose birthday is coming up. He wants one for his birthday." The boy, no more than maybe 11 or 12 years old, was sitting right next to him, sheepishly staring out of the window straight ahead.

One old fellow trotted out the usual explanation: "Guns don't kill people, it's people who kill people. Guns are good. Bad guys are bad guys."

Only one middle aged woman in the whole of that long chain of cars seemed to be neutral, neither for nor against. I have this gun - she showed the camera a small handgun - I have never used it and never will; I don't need it. But I need $150." 

In the UK the police have the occasional "handing-in knives-event.  But you don't get paid;  here, carrying a knife is illegal, - unless you can prove it is carried for a good reason -  and the access the public have to guns is very tightly controlled by law.  There is less gun crime in the UK than anywhere else in the world.



23 comments:

  1. I live in America and hate the gun culture that has exploded in the past 10-15 years. Plenty of widows, mother and grandparents take guns to those buy back program to get them out of the house because they don't feel safe with them and they don't want them making their way back in the streets. If the show you saw didn't program show you those kinds of interviews in the mix then it was bias reporting, in my opinion. Even if money were their only motive for selling gun back then that's still one less gun off the street anyway. Temporarily. The gun lobby is our main problem because they are buying our lawmakers.

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  2. I agree. So easy to find quotes to fit your needs. All of these are ancient, much repeated, gun loving comments. I too hate the gun manufacturers buy out of GOP legislators. I live in a state with strict gun control laws, and literally know total, only a couple of hunters with hunting weapons. They hunt for food.

    Britain does not have the least gun crime. It's one of the good countries yes, , true but Japan is more so. Better not to believe all you see presented as fact. I doubt if a government permitting uncontrolled sewage discharge into unprotected ocean waters is in any position to seize the high ground on civilian safety.

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  3. I don't like guns either. And we have a horrific violence problem here in America. There are many examples of this. Sadly, the guns are only one part of it.

    But keep this in mind.

    The Second Ammendment of the US Constitution is about us protecting ourselves from a tyrannical government. That's why we have the right (responsibility maybe) to bear arms.

    It 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.

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    1. Actually that's not why 2A came about. There was no standing army and the states were called to muster defenders who had to provide their own weapon and the only weapon at the time was a musket that people had to provide food for themselves and families. The only tyrannical government that the brand new country needed protection from was England or perhaps the First Nations. The other main reason was to get the slave states on board who already had their slave hunting militias and wanted a guarantee that they would be able to keep their militias and continue to hunt down runaway slaves. Now that we have a standing army the country no longer needs states to call up a militia to help protect the US. This whole 2A was intended to protect us from our own government is a bullshit NRA talking point to create fear and sell more guns. You can't remove the 2A from the time and reason in which it was created and plonk it down in modern times and say this is what the founding fathers intended. Because this is not what they intended. Had the US been created as a dictatorship or authoritarian regime then yeah, I could see the need but then a dictatorship would never have written the 2A. The FF intended the government to answer to the will of the people. 'Don't like it, vote and change it', not 'don't like it, rise up in arms against it.'

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    2. They saw what tyrannical governments had done throughout history. Don't kid yourself that they weren't concerned about it happening here.

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    3. I see Sandi's response above. It would be easier to convince her of the existence of the Tooth Fairy. It is no coincidence that, if you look at her blog, she is a right-wing, proselytizing, Christian whack job, who conducts her life based on words from an ancient text written by Bronze Age peasants. And in the United States people like this are actually elected.

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    4. 2A has been deliberately misinterpreted by the gun lobby who want to sell guns. It's all about their profits. The right to bear arms the founders intended would refer today to every state's National Guard.

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  4. It didn't used to be this way. Americans had rifles for hunting, those that hunt. Some people had handguns but mostly just those that worked in sketchy areas or were in the habit of transporting money. Growing up my dad had a shotgun and a rifle I think, and a pair of revolvers, wild west style that were more like collector's items but none of those were ever used except the shotgun which he would take down to the deserted beach occasionally and we would shoot skeet. They stayed in a locked gun cabinet. I remember growing up in Texas most pickup trucks had a gun rack in front of the rear windshield and people had their hunting rifles. Nobody thought much about it. There was none of the gun violence we have now, people weren't carrying them into stores. Eventually a national gun law was passed that you couldn't open carry like that. The NRA changed all that with their guns are the solution to all your problems attitude. They are directly responsible for the gun culture and violence here now. I hate that 'guns don't kill people, people kill people' bullshit. Yeah, they do and they kill them with guns and if that person didn't have a gun, they wouldn't be killing people.

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  5. What breaks my heart in this whole wild west gun-culture country is the massacre of children (every single effing day) and innocent bystanders. The stats are staggering. We only hear about the "big ones" like Sandy Hook. Trigger happy,\ citizens, in thrall to the NRA who throw multi-millions at the politicians for what started out as muskets and evolved to AK47s etc - weapons of war on its own citizens. It is staggering in its complicity and greed.
    XO
    WWW

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  6. As far as I know, we've got strict weapon regulations and yet there are killings every week. We call that "lack of governance". Democracy and Governance have become a farce. The two don't get hand in hand, and it seems the situation is irreversible.

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  7. In 1996 we had a mass shooting here in Australia. Following it there was a mass, and mandatory gun buy back. And while we have had deaths to gun violence since, we have not had another mass shooting. For which I am grateful.

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  8. Wish we had gun by back near me. I have an old, non working pistol I'd love to get money for. The NRA has a stranglehold on politicians so I see no real chance of change here. Their belief is that EVERYONE should be armed. Wild west here we come.

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  9. Hi Friko - I have no comment, other than I wish people wouldn't kill others. Take care - Hilary

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  10. The NRA in the US has a big hold on the Republican Party through lots of money, of course. It’ll never change here, unfortunately, as it’s always profit over people.

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  11. America has a gun culture perpetuated by the NRA, and I do not understand these people. Makes me sad to see the rampant crime.

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  12. I salute the UK on their gun deaths and rules. Here.... don't start me. Guns have become political and the Freedumb movement forgets that when the second amendment came along, guns were a lot different. It takes awhile to load and shoot a musket and kill someone and seconds to kill many with assault weapons which are legal to own. In Michigan where I live, parents bought their child a gun and he went and killed four of his fellow high school students. In what is considered a landmark case, both the parents and the son are on trial for murder and/or accessory. And I hope they nail all of them. The NRA (National Rifle Association) has a huge hold on the right-wing politicos in terms of donations and I wonder if it can ever change? Only with a very big change in Congressional representatives and Senators. It's yet another (of many) reasons I am often disheartened and embarrassed to be an American.

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  13. I will keep mine just a bit longer...once I call for help it will arrive in 20 minute to an hour:)

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  14. Guns have a way of getting in to the hands of the wrong people in the US. Gun violence is a huge problem. It seems to easy to get a gun in the US. Our laws need to change. England's strong weapon laws are impressive. I have relatives in England and am told any weapon kept must be locked in a box secured to the floor. Knife violence is not common in the US.

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  15. The gun culture in the USA makes me shake my head. And there is no logical discourse with gunowners. I'm glad we have more gun laws in Canada, but many of the shooting crimes here (far, far fewer than in the US) are due to illegal guns coming across the border. The NRA seems to have a stranglehold on the politicians.

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  16. It baffles me that gun owners in the US are able to justify it by citing the 2nd amendment. Different time, different reason.

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  17. I'd love to know how many of the guns being turned in are stolen. I have absolutely no problem with gun ownership, but I have a great problem with the lax enforcement of laws already on the books.

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  18. If we have gun ownership being allowed, at the very least there should be laws, and they should be enforced, limiting the types of guns sold, such as those used in war, for example AK-47's and the clips allowing rapid fire of multiple shots. Gun shows should have to follow all the existing laws and rules required of all commercial gun sales. Now we have "ghost guns" with which to contend -- people buy the parts, put them together and they have no serial number so can't be traced. I think they have recently or will pass a law these ghost gun parts must all be treated as if they are guns and will be required to have serial numbers since officials haven't been able to outlaw the sale of these parts. Disgustingly, gun ownership has been so politicized with the money that goes with it complicating the matter.

    I understand the prevailing attitude that existed when I was young held by those who lived during an agrarian society that had evolved into an industrial one. Responsible gun-owners used them on their farms, also hunting an abundance of some wild animals to supplement a family's food occurred for example. Even some city dwellers hunted for food so had guns just as many city and country people went fishing for the same reason. I was introduced to guns from just such a person when my mother married a second time. He taught me to shoot when I was a pre-teen, but first I had to learn all the safety rules, how to clean and care for the rifle and shotgun. It was the same with my learning to drive a car though, fortunately, he wasn't as rigid about my learning all the specifics of a car's mechanics. I never went hunting with a gun, did have occasion to use a gun on a creature that would have killed our chickens during the years we lived in the country, raising them and selling them and their eggs to local businesses. I've never used or had a gun after we moved back to town in another state.

    This is an over simplification of what has happened as there was always misuse of guns from when they were invented. Gun ownership escalated in numbers, increasingly went out of control, as society changed, attitudes toward hunting which some had done strictly for pleasure (responsible people like us never did) has now become unacceptable. There simply is no excuse for not reining in the rampant abuse of gun ownership in the U.S. The times have changed.

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