On Wednesday evening, a rifle-toting gunman murdered 18 people and wounded at least 13 more in Lewiston, Maine, when he opened fire at two separate locations—a bowling alley, followed by a bar. A manhunt is still underway for 40-year-old suspect Robert Card, a trained firearms instructor with the U.S. Army Reserve who, just this summer, spent two weeks in a mental hospital after reporting that he was hearing voices and threatening to shoot up a military base.
While the other late-night talk show hosts stuck to poking fun at new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson on Thursday night, Stephen Colbert took his rebuke of the Louisiana congressman to a whole other level.
“Now, we know the arguments,” Colbert said of the do-nothing response politicians generally have to tragedies such as this. “Some people are going to say this is a mental health issue. Others are going to say it’s a gun issue. But there’s no reason it can’t be both.”
Oh God the only time fascists start wanting to be a grammar Nazi.
It’s semi automatic weapons. Just because you can switch out one pin to make it full auto means nothing.
It’s a magazine not a clip!
Just like every word in the world, they’re all made up and become defined by the culture using them.
If I say assault weapons and you understand what I mean, then the word is fine.
Once you get into the legal areas, absolutely everything needs to be defined. Under assault weapon it’ll start listing every type and parameter with strict definitions of what they mean. They like to pretend that’s not part of the bill though lol.
However, there are farm rifles that have been semi-automatic for many decades, such as the mini-14. Also my Ruger 10/22 is an auto loading semi-automatic rifle.
Neither of these would be considered an assault rifle as they do not have a pistol grip.
I think that we should just allow these types of weapons under a owner’s permit, and then make sure that people take a basic training course, mental health and background checks, and make them liable for any harm that may cause through their ownership or negligence with these weapons.
I should also make it way harder to get a concealed weapons permit and restrict pistols more than rifles as most gun shootings are with pistols.
This is similar how Austria approaches gun ownership which in some ways is more lax than the US (they allow suppressors for instance).
Unfortunately rational discourse around gun laws in this country just simply does not happen. People are not motivated for change around these laws if they’re not motivated by emotional response.
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Yep it’s been proven time and time again that the vast majority of all Americans, republican voters included, want gun legislation.
Unfortunately every elected Republican feels beholden to their fascist base. Most of the elected are the fascist too. However so many of voters are single issue and want to stick their head in the sand to keep their 401k from dropping lmfao. It’s right fucked to everyone who sees it but they pretend like they aren’t enabling their shitbag cohorts.
The problem is that the “assault weapon” wording makes it easier for pro gun to dismiss you. The US has a lot of people obsessed with guns. I’d love if the US could just ban guns entirely, but reality is that we’d have to at least start with reasonable baby steps and cannot give them any easy way to get out. By using the “assault weapon” wording, you’re just making it easier for them to dismiss gun legislation cause they’ll claim “it’s too vague” (even if it’s not).
It’s unfortunate that wording has to matter so much, especially in colloquial usage, but it’s such an uphill battle to get even the slightest gun restrictions in place, so we sadly do need to be perfect. And yeah, it’s stupid. It’s dumb that the US can be like it is and people will still defend their guns to the death. But we have to account for that if we want to make anything better.
If they’re dismissive, they would never support it anyway. Don’t cater to people who won’t support you no matter what you do.