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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25807 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 4, 2025

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There are three categories of people that nearly everyone agrees should not be allowed to own a firearm:

I think the biggest issue with guns isn't about trusting most other legal members of society but keeping them out of the dangerous hands to begin with. Shady dealers, private market sales, straw purchasing, theft, etc. These are all much easier to prevent in a society with few guns and strict controls then a society with guns everywhere.

And there's no simple easy way to tell the difference between a fine person and a dangerous person. A guy walking around in a balaclava holding a rifle near a politically charged demonstration might be perfectly safe and only intending on self-defense, or he could be planning a mass shooting. And sure that guy with severe road rage who screams and yells at other drivers on his daily commute might have some severe anger issues, but does that mean when he gets into a fight at the bar he'll start shooting? And maybe Joe Random is perfectly fine normally but when he gets drunk he turns irresponsible and shoots at his neighbor. And Johnny Schizo in his early stages just got brainfucked by chatgpt pretending to be a god and told to kill his family.

Determining who is responsible with them can be a difficult task, and restricting the pipelines is tough. One of the biggest sources of illegal guns is parked cars. I might trust you with a gun, but I don't trust the guy who just broke your car window in the middle of the night and stole your gun.

And that's much harder to solve, because even if you require people to store guns securely at all times are we gonna start arresting people because they forgot it in their car coming home from the range?

And Johnny Schizo in his early stages just got brainfucked by chatgpt pretending to be a god and told to kill his family.

You think psychosis is just for people like Johnny Schizo? No no no, the fun part about AI is that it doesn't need a diagnosed illness like schizophrenia to take hold. It just needs a vulnerability, and it is uniquely capable of creating or exploiting one in almost anyone - and getting better all the time. You're all in my world now.

One of the biggest sources of illegal guns is parked cars.

I'd be curious what fraction of guns left in parked cars are left their because their owners can't legally keep them on their person where they've parked --- bars (depending on state), private property that disallows carrying, etc. I'm not going to blindly use that to push for legalizing carry everywhere (honestly, probably not my preference), but the numbers would at least be interesting.

You need a carry permit to transport a gun in a car, at least in most places I'm aware of, unless the gun is unloaded and cases in the trunk or some other inaccessible area.

In Texas no you did not before constitutional carry- a car was reckoned as your personal property and the same rules for firearms applied as inside your own house.

Yeah I would not be surprised if laws against concealed carrying helped contribute to this issue! That being said, a cursory look in cars shows a surprising amount of firearms just sitting in plain view, not even under a seat or in the glovebox so I think a fair bit of that is irresponsible owners.

Shady dealers, private market sales, straw purchasing, theft, etc. These are all much easier to prevent in a society with few guns and strict controls then a society with guns everywhere.

Is this actually true? I fully accept that prohibition lowers the general public's ability to access the prohibited substance (e.g., alcohol prohibition actually lowered drinking significantly and permanently changed U.S. drinking culture), but is there any evidence that it significantly impacts illicit dealing in the prohibited/regulated substance?

Is this actually true?

Well

  1. From a common sense view, straw purchasing and theft of legal guns can't really happen if purchasing and legal guns don't exist.

  2. No way to prevent this says only nation where this regularly happens is a joke for a reason. Most other first world nations don't seem to have nearly as much gun violence, and they also have more restrictive laws.

Maybe it's worth the freedom (I think it is for most responsible gun owners) but it certainly seems true that less guns in general helps lead to less guns for criminals. Although as 3D printed firearms and the like become easier to do, we might see this equalizing as criminals might not have to steal to begin with.

No way to prevent this says only nation where this regularly happens is a joke for a reason. Most other first world nations don't seem to have nearly as much gun violence, and they also have more restrictive laws.

The obvious counter-examples being Canada and Switzerland, first world nations which have similar rates of gun ownership to the US but nowhere near as much gun violence, suggesting the problem is a cultural or demographic one rather than with guns in and of themselves.

The obvious counter-examples being Canada and Switzerland, first world nations which have similar rates of gun ownership to the US but nowhere near as much gun violence, suggesting the problem is a cultural or demographic one rather than with guns in and of themselves.

Private handgun ownership in Canada and Switzerland is not high. Essentially all the excess "gun deaths" (suicides and homicides) in the US are handgun deaths.

I agree this doesn't answer the question of "Why don't other countries with large-scale private long gun ownership see more media-friendly spree killings?" But if you care about body count, the reason why US gun culture is more lethal than Canadian or Swiss gun culture is the type of gun.

I'd say it's also the legal restrictions where you can't have them in public - can't be transporting them in a vehicle unless they're unloaded/locked/stored - definitely can't carry them on your person outside of wilderness areas or a gun range.

The downstream cultural effect of these laws is that most Canadians don't see or think about firearms. They only come up in conversation related to sporting uses (hunting, range shooting). They're just not much of a cultural thing.

Eh, most gun deaths are either suicides in the privacy of a home, or lowlifes shooting each other for some gang related reason. The crime of passion of someone carrying a gun is pretty rare.

The article from the BBC has an obvious slant, but the laws in Switzerland seem to be tight and getting tighter. Notably people don't get any bullets with their guns:

In 2006, the champion Swiss skier Corrinne Rey-Bellet and her brother were murdered by Corinne's estranged husband, who shot them with his old militia rifle before killing himself.

Since that incident, gun laws concerning army weapons have tightened. Although it is still possible for a former soldier to buy his firearm after he finishes military service, he must provide a justification for keeping the weapon and apply for a permit.

When I meet Mathias, a PhD student and serving officer, at his apartment in a snowy suburb of Zurich, I realise the rules have got stricter than I imagined. Mathias keeps his army pistol in the guest room of his home, in a desk drawer hidden under the printer paper. It is a condition of the interview that I don't give his surname or hint at his address.

"I do as the army advises and I keep the barrel separately from my pistol," he explains seriously. "I keep the barrel in the basement so if anyone breaks into my apartment and finds the gun, it's useless to them."

He shakes out the gun holster. "And we don't get bullets any more," he adds. "The Army doesn't give ammunition now - it's all kept in a central arsenal." This measure was introduced by Switzerland's Federal Council in 2007.

Mathias carefully puts away his pistol and shakes his head firmly when I ask him if he feels safer having a gun at home, explaining that even if he had ammunition, he would not be allowed to use it against an intruder.

"The gun is not given to me to protect me or my family," he says. "I have been given this gun by my country to serve my country - and for me it is an honour to take care of it. I think it is a good thing for the state to give this responsibility to people."

I think Swiss gun ownership is referring to privately held guns, not state militia armories.

I was under the impression that the vast majority of the guns were bought after military service, skewing the stats. Now you prompted me to re-look, I see that this is not necessarily true.

They also do sell ammo, you just can't get it from the army apparently.

https://old.reddit.com/r/EuropeGuns/comments/185bamo/swiss_gun_laws_copy_pasta_format/ is supposedly vetted by a real Swiss guy and seems somewhat interesting without being blatant political fodder:

Many on the pro-gun side seems to think everyone has a gun at home, while many on the gun control side thinks ammunition is heavily regulated.

If you had Swiss gun laws introduced today in the US, both the pro-gun and the gun-control side would be outraged tomorrow, for various reasons.

Fair point.

I would naively expect it to help, if only by making charging and sentencing easier.

Oregon tried that decriminalization experiment with drug possession. But it was hideously confounded by fentanyl, and I didn’t find any studies from the recriminalization last year.

Maybe there’s something in gang violence stats? Police have a longstanding interest in disarming gangs. It should be possible to tell whether changes in general gun policy, or even in enforcement, actually reduce gang shootings.

I might trust you with a gun, but I don't trust the guy who just broke your car window in the middle of the night and stole your gun.

And that's much harder to solve, because even if you require people to store guns securely at all times are we gonna start arresting people because they forgot it in their car coming home from the range?

Someone breaking into a car to steal a gun is likely a prohibited possessor. Sending prohibited possessors caught with a firearm to prison for long stretches is one solution. It is probably one of the most straightforward solutions given the frequency that someone committing a crime with a firearm has prior criminal convictions and has been caught with a gun before. Given the general anti-firearm position of the DNC, it seems like a no-brainer policy position to support, but of course they cannot because of reasons.

Cracking down on straw purchasing is like this too, IIRC- democrats refuse to do it even if it’s doable, likely to work, and a major issue with gun crime.

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