Even in a country like the United Kingdom, which probably has the worse crime rates of any EU nation, the violent crime rate is lower than the United States.
*** There you go again, cross comparing flat crime rates with other countries. You can try to assume that every other variable (culture, societal structure, judicial system, mental health system, ethnic breakdown, education, economic health etc.) is identical, but you would be mistaken.
Yeah... and they didn't have semi-automatic assault weapons back then either. Maybe we should go back to those days...
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Good god, trying to debate you is like banging my head against a brick wall. Assault weapons make up a TINY portion of violent crime. A TINY portion. Instead of gobbling up everything Feinstein and Schumer concoct, try actually looking at the data for once.
No that's not true since the same Constitution calls that (waging war against the government) treason. The intent of the Second Amendment was to maintain a militia of armed people that could be called up to defend the country if needed.
*** That is absolutely true. Read the Federalist Papers, written by the same people who wrote the constitution. There really shouldn't even be a debate here.
3D printed/plastic/ceramic firearms would fall under the Undetectable Firearms Act, which is up for re-authorization this year. It is illegal to manufacture a firearm without some feature that can be detected by an airport metal detector, with the exception that you are a licensed manufacturer who is fabricating one for testing. As it is right now, you don't see very many plastic guns for them to be a threat.
*** There are no plastic guns because it structurally isn't sound. To contain the pressures and energy that a firearm produces when shooting, they need to be made primarily out of metal to handle that. Even Glocks, which caused a huge scare amongst the ignorant anti-gun crowd a few decades back are made mostly out of metal. In addition, I meant 3D printed standard-capacity magazines, which people are already making to day. Don't think that once the technology becomes more common that it won't be used. I hate to say it, but your "laws" won't stop criminals from breaking said law. Not sure why I need to explicitly say that...
A lot of that is because we have a gun lobby (the NRA) that is preventing us from producing meaningful legislation that would curb that. If straw sales were prohibited, the gun show loophole were closed, and the capability of tracing fireams were restored we could make some serious inroads towards reducing those types of crimes.
*** Your meaningful legislation is not meaningful at all. It's an arbitrary ban on cosmetic features that you don't understand. Just because you say it's "meaningful" or "sensible" doesn't make it so. There is plenty of crime data to point to the ineffectiveness of these "common sense" proposals. While you may be willing to hand your freedoms in for the illusion of safety, there are many people in this country who aren't.
Like I said before, virtually all firearms are initially obtained legally. The fact that we are not allowed to trace a firearm, record the transfer of the same nor perform background checks on private sales just exacerbates the issue. The truth of the matter is that thousands of deaths are being caused by firearms in states that have lax gun laws. In fact some of your highest incidents of gun deaths occur in states with the loosest gun laws.
*** Name one crime that has been prevented due to gun registration. If you want to justify the billions to do such a thing, as well as the legitimate worry that registration will lead to confiscation, then you better have damn good evidence that it will actually accomplish something.
That's just speculation. We will have to see how effective it will be in the future.
*** You don't need to wait. There is already plenty of historical data out there. The fact you willfully ignore or dismiss it is telling.
You do noting and you get a little more than one mass shooting with an assault weapon a week and who knows how many more school shootings (there was another yesterday). We should do something since that is what most people want. Have you looked at the polls lately?
*** Given the accuracy of polls in the past, why should I care about them again? Given the mass media misinformation campaign, it's no wonder that people are ignorant of the realities. This, of course, assumes the polls are accurate. Mass shootings are incredibly rare. They also don't need "assault weapons" to be effective. I will reiterate this - the most deadly mass killings in US history were NOT committed with firearms. As somebody who has studied chemistry, I can tell you that creating homemade explosives and weapons is MUCH easier than you think. In addition, some of the worst mass shootings weren't committed with "assault weapons" to begin with. Your false solution will do nothing but hurt law abiding citizens.
