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DrJawn t1_jebj3i2 wrote

Why is the Assault Weapon Ban at the forefront of the gun control debate when 90+% of child homicides are from handguns?

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MillionDollarSticky t1_jebmhvm wrote

Especially if only 3% of deaths involved a rifle.

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DrJawn t1_jebnkmg wrote

I mean I know the answer, I just wanna hear them say it. I would accept any of the following and maybe some others

  1. Assault weapons ban is an easy 'win' for the Democrats because it will never get passed but it can make it look like they tried

  2. People only care when affluent (especially white) kids get shot, no one cares about all the impoverished children killing each other with handguns

  3. The media (WaPo included) over-covers school shootings, which increases the issue due to giving fame to shooters and promoting copy cats. Since most people in the US who live outside of cities don't see the coverage about the thousands of dead kids from handguns, they just don't care.

  4. The average middle class American lives in an area where school shootings are more likely than handgun fueled gang violence and again, only care about issues that effect them and not their fellow Americans with the least support for their own success

  5. The crime epidemic in the cities is directly related to the failed War on Drugs and it's policy of mass incarceration but no one wants to end either because the government on both sides profits from this. Also, no one wants to fund schools or after-school programs to give these kids in a role-model-vacuum a positive course for their lives because it's easier and cheaper to ban assault weapons and let everyone think the problem is solved

  6. Elected officials think voters are stupid so they propose overly-generalized solutions to incredibly complex problems in order to pacify the masses

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GeorgeCrossPineTree t1_jeboqhn wrote

You're entire premise about the AWB being at the forefront of the discussion is bogus. There has been a tremendous push to strengthen background checks, enact red flag laws, limit magazine capacity, and so on.

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dogsledonice t1_jece1i5 wrote

Because rifles are increasingly used for mass attacks - 4 out of 5 of the worst mass shootings in the US involved rifles, including the worst (Las Vegas). Sandy Hook, Orlando. That kind of firepower is more difficult to counter - look at Uvalde. Or, again, Vegas -- not so easy to rack up huge casualty numbers with handguns (which are more common, so yeah - they're used more often).

https://www.statista.com/statistics/476409/mass-shootings-in-the-us-by-weapon-types-used/

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buzzothefuzzo t1_jed686t wrote

sure would've helped the effort to counter the attack in uvalde if the police actually you know... did their jobs... they have body armor, high powered, automatic guns, with standard capacity clips allowing them to hold more ammo than many US citizens can. why didn't they use them??

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dogsledonice t1_jedange wrote

Because they were facing military-style weaponry, which is my point

For all the "good guys with a gun" rhetoric you folks spout, they seem to disappear mighty fast when faced with a bad guy with a semi-auto

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triit t1_jeezix7 wrote

You obviously didn't see the body cam footage from Nashville...

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dogsledonice t1_jeftxi2 wrote

Oh? How is that germane to how the Uvalde police responded?

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DrJawn t1_jecruvw wrote

7% of gun deaths are rifles

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what_mustache t1_jef4llc wrote

That seems like a lot if you assume they aren't typically for suicide.

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DrJawn t1_jefgug7 wrote

Even less suicides are rifles. 53% of child gun deaths are suicides.

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dogsledonice t1_jed4z8y wrote

I mean, use whatever stats you want to imply what you want to imply.

"Gun deaths" will include suicides, of which there are very many. Does anyone use an AR for that? No. Do they use ARs in slaughtering innocents in schools, churches, malls, concerts, bars, etc.? Yep. And both figures are grotesquely high *when compared to any similar country* other that the U.S.

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