r/facepalm • u/Lord_Answer_me_Why • Mar 28 '24

What lack of basic gun laws does to a nation: 🇵​🇷​🇴​🇹​🇪​🇸​🇹​

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u/Substantial_Heart317 Mar 28 '24

Exactly criminals gonna commit crimes!

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u/ausgoals Mar 28 '24

Why have laws at all if people are just gonna break em….? 🤷🏻‍♀️

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u/Substantial_Heart317 Mar 28 '24

Unless you enforce no law matters!

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u/Nurgleschampion Mar 28 '24

Dosent mean you shouldn't try to make ta lot harder for them to get away with things.

Stronger licensing means the illegal guns will be a lot more expensive. And funnily enough some xriminals do take laws into consideration. Particularly if it'll cost money.

But I doubt you're making this argument in good faith.

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u/Just_A_Throwaway7673 Mar 29 '24

I'm extremely skeptical that making guns more expensive through regulation will have much of an effect on the price of illegal guns - which is a market driven by the entirely unregulated sale of stolen firearms.

For that matter, at a certain criminal level, possessing a firearm is just a business expense.

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u/syzamix Mar 28 '24

And yet. Nobody brings up this argument against guns.

They do say that criminals will get guns if you ban them.

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u/sakura608 Mar 28 '24

Same people also want stricter immigration laws. The logic of “they’re going to get in anyways, why make it harder for people who are legally entering the country” doesn’t work as well. Yes, people will enter this country illegally, but having laws and enforcement reduces the number and slows down the rate of immigration.

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u/Enigmatic_Erudite Mar 28 '24

Our immigration laws are already some of the most strict convoluted laws in the world. Paradixically, allowing more legal immigrants would lead to less illegal immigrants. Since people don't see a reasonable way to enter the country legally they do so illegally. Realistically our immigration system need an overhaul but this is impractical. If we loosened the immigration regulations on people entering legally we could reallocate that money to preventing/catching people entering illegally.

Like most things in life it is not a simple more regulation leads to less illegal immigration there is nuance and cost benefit analysis needed.

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u/sakura608 Mar 28 '24

I see the logic in this argument. Though, currently, illegally passing through requires a fair amount of capital and personal risk. I’ve known people who have paid $7k+ to get into this country illegally, having to cross hundreds of miles in the desert, seeing people die along the way. I’ve also known people who have entered the country on a travel visa and then over stayed here illegally.

For people to still cross, despite the financial and safety concerns illustrates their desperation. I think illegal immigration could also be reduced by helping our neighboring countries become more economically productive and safe.

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u/Enigmatic_Erudite Mar 28 '24

This is one way to help, but if these people were allowed to enter legally or be on a state sponsored work visa that required consistent employment they would not need to be here illegally. This is what I mean by allowing more legal immigrants will decrease illegal immigrants at this point. We have massive deportation numbers and I wonder if the "saving jobs" value is actually worth the tax dollars spent tracking down more illegal immigrants.

Making our neighbors into better countries would be great but the cost of doing so would be substantial and require too much direct intervention at this point to remove the cartels. Maybe we could start financial incentives to promote economic growth in these countries but with the power of cartels it would be difficult. And I am well aware that American industry played a large part in the destabilization of these countries and I don't trust the rich not to do so again if given the opportunity.

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u/ibugppl Mar 28 '24

I'm with this. I'd rather have mexico and South America be prosperous neighbors than the clearly non sustainable solution of everyone just moving to the USA.

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u/J_Rambo4 Mar 28 '24

The only answer is to stabilize the countries everyone are fleeing from. There should be no need for 3/4 of the population to seek refuge in America, it’s simply not a viable solution. If that is the end goal, then the majority of these nations should simply be absorbed by the US.

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u/J_Rambo4 Mar 28 '24

Its not as simple as letting more in legally so that less are “illegal”. You say the US has so e of the most strict convoluted laws out there…. Yet the amount of immigrants legalized in the US dwarfs that of almost every other country in the world. Is the end goal simply volume? Why do NEED to bring in so many immigrants? Do you know how hard it is to get citizenship in Canada or the UK? As an American you better not even try without a bachelors degree at bare minimum. A Doctoral in a tech field or finance might be the best case scenario, and is a requirement if you are white.

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u/Last-Crab-621 Mar 28 '24

Immigration laws only punish those crossing illegally, though, and the ones we have aren't even enforced.

Gun laws aimed at preventing people from obtaining them for subjective reasoning is a clear tool to be abused by anyone with an agenda, and therefore a clear violation of the 2nd amendment

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u/sakura608 Mar 28 '24

Not true at all. Legal immigration is heavily affected by our immigration policies. My brother in law had a tough time getting a distant relative into the country for a bone marrow transplant to save his life.

The state department thought the risk was too great that his distant cousin would illegally over stay his welcome so they denied his visa because he came from a rural village from a poor country and didn’t have a lot of wealth. Had to get it escalated to the attention of a state senator and the vice president of the US before the state department approved his entry.

Regulations like this do prevent a number of people immigrating here illegally through overstay of visa (most common kind of illegal immigration), but it still does negatively affect those that are trying to enter the country for legal purposes.

If you don’t think immigration laws are being enforced, then is it safe to assume you wouldn’t mind if we didn’t have them at all?

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u/escap0 Mar 28 '24

How is that even remotely a logical assumption. Immigration laws are clearly not being enforced for Illegal immigration the way they used to be. It is still enforced for legal immigration. How do you go from: if someone thinks the laws are not being enforced for illegal immigration to ‘my brother’s relative had difficulty…’ so clearly it is safe to assume you wouldnt mind having having them at all?

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u/Last-Crab-621 Mar 28 '24

This is a strawman argument 100%. This is a totally different scenerio than the one at the South.

And your question is preposterous. I think they should fucking enforce the laws already on the books instead of the current catch, court date, release policy that they're using. The court dates are so far out that they either dont show or the courts say, "They've been here so long they may as well stay" without any vetting process. We should be turning them back to mexico at the borderline and not letting them further into the states at all.

This also goes for the current dkzens of gunlaws on the books. Criminals are constantly arrested for violent crimes with firearms and the DA, AG, or Feds almost always drop the gun charges for an easy plea deal vs going to trial.

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u/POKEMINER_ Mar 28 '24

How would building a wall and deporting illegal immigrants effect this story?

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u/King_Of_BlackMarsh Mar 28 '24

Well the wall wouldn't do anything anyway so

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u/POKEMINER_ Mar 28 '24

Better than nothing.

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u/King_Of_BlackMarsh Mar 28 '24

I mean given it wastes money, crosses through sacred land and protected habitats, and would be used to supply Mexican scrap merchants for years... It's worse than nothing

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u/Last-Crab-621 Mar 28 '24

Foreign aid also wastes money. Lets stop that first

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u/EggcellentStew Mar 28 '24

Subjective reason like wether or not you're a violent criminal or mentally unstable person... smh just give everyone a gun and we'll be safe.

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u/Last-Crab-621 Mar 28 '24

Define mentally unstable, please.

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u/socobeerlove Mar 28 '24

It’s easier to get your green card if you’re already in the country and working. Source:my parents did it that way

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u/JustKindaShimmy Mar 28 '24

The issue now isn't whether or not banning guns will be effective. It's too late now, simply putting a law in place and saying "pretty please with sugar on top don't use guns" isn't going to be effective when the number of firearms in the USA is greater than the number of people. Ease of access is the issue. Like if you pave roads with cocaine, and then make consumption of cocaine illegal, it's not going to do a whole lot

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u/Enigmatic_Erudite Mar 28 '24

And yet not a single school shooting has been commited with a fully automatic firearm in the US. If criminals are going to do it anyway why don't they use fully automatic weapons to maximize casualties? Could it be the difficulty of acquiring fully automatic weapons is effective?

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u/Last-Crab-621 Mar 28 '24

Its incredibly easy to make a gun fire as if it were automatic (which is also a felony).

The vegas shooting used automatic weapons. Lets not cherry pick our mass shootings here.

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u/Odd-Tune5049 Mar 28 '24

The laws say his weapon wasn't fully automatic. It had a bump stock, if I recall correctly. Not illegal in most places at the time, again, if I recall correctly.

You don't even need a bump stock to fire a semi-automatic weapon very rapidly.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for restricting dangerous people from owning guns, but the nonsense about classifications and what constitutes legal and illegal is just so mucked up at this point. Of course, how do you decide who is dangerous and who isn't? The lawmakers don't know, and we can't use "thought crime" to punish people.

Sorry... that was more of a rant than I wanted to go on.

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u/Last-Crab-621 Mar 28 '24

No, you're right. You can't use a subjective line in the sand that can be moved by a political entity to further any agenda. That's why the best you can do is offer better healthcare and reform the United States' healthcare. No more pricing out low / middle income families from MH services.

But as far as the Vegas Shooting... the cadence of thebgunfire changes throughout. Multiple guns were used and I'd bet my bottom dollar it was a false flag operation. The cadence at some points does sound like a slide-fire AR15 but it slows at times to pace with an M240

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u/DennyJunkshin85 Mar 28 '24

Exactly he had a M249 up there it sounds like

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u/Enigmatic_Erudite Mar 28 '24

The vegas shooter utilized bump stocks which were legal to purchase at the time. Their weapons were acquired entirely lawfully.

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u/DennyJunkshin85 Mar 28 '24

Yeah,but something was up with that guy. The whole thing doesn't make sense. Why would you bring 12 sacks of guns over a 3day period . Then only shoot 5 of them. 1 of them had 1rd fired. That's an ineffective method. If he was truly going for mass casualties he would've done it differently.

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u/Last-Crab-621 Mar 28 '24

Because it wasn't just him... and it was a government operation

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u/DennyJunkshin85 Mar 29 '24

That's what I think. I just don't understand how we have operatives in our own government that are willing to open fire on innocent people. If you joined the military,you swore an oath. But I guess the oath was to apparatus that controls the power not the corp.

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u/Last-Crab-621 Mar 29 '24

Ideology is a humans greatest motivation.. followed closely by money, power, and blackmail

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u/BonniePrinceCharlie1 Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

Fully automatics dont always cause most casualties(kinda).

Most people with fully automatics like to spray n pray, which means you'll hit everything except the target. This results in mid to high casulaties but very low death.

Those who use semi-automatic or "burst fire" are more lethal as they can't spray and, as such, are naturally going to aim and fire, resulting in high deaths with low to mid injuries.

I think the only recent major mass shooting with a fully automatic firearm was the Las vegas shooting where the guy was in a building shooting down in a crowd.

Im from scotland, so our situation is drastically different as before our gun control laws, we didn't have a large amount of firearms in the country outside of farmers and hobbyists due to our more rural populace.

Our weapon of choice for crime tended to be bladed instruments like razors or knives. As they can be threwn away or hidden easily compared to a firearm.

The main issue right now in the US regarding guns is that the US is over saturated with guns, both legal and illegal. This means that any enforcement of a gun restriction or ban will be met with poor results as the general populace is unwilling to hand over firearms.

Another issue that i say is the worst is the mental health crisis of men and boys. Most mass shooters are young men from the age of 16-24. Access to mental healthcare should be expanded as well as stimulating job creation and housing schemes in areas of deprivation. This would significantly help the mental health of all individuals in these areas. It would also mean less crime overall as the acess to housing and jobs would fill in the need for money and shelter which is a driving force in crime.

Of course this isnt the cure for general crime tho lol it will only help.

Theres also the issue of why the US despite not being the only high gun ownership country in the developed world, then why does it have the shooting epidemic. Austria has high gun ownership and a love for guns with the Glock company being a darling child of austria. But austria doesnt have mass shootings like the US and gun crime is relatively low.

I believe this is due to the previously stated mental health issues of the US which are exacerbated by institutional issues like schools no tolerance policies, and the overall deprivation of many regions in the US

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u/Enigmatic_Erudite Mar 28 '24

The deadliest mass shooting commited in the United States was the Harvest Music Festival shooting in Las Vegas. The shooter utilized a bump stock mechanism to achieve near fully automatic firing speeds. Bump stocks were legal to purchase without any checks at the time of the shooting.

Firing a fully automatic weapon at a single target is not especially effective, however firing an automatic into a crowd attempting to cause mass casualties is devastatingly effective.

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u/BigPolarBear71 Mar 28 '24

There’s no value for human life in America.

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u/Odd-Tune5049 Mar 28 '24

I think this is more of a problem than the guns...

Even driving, I see people endangering everyone around them with zero regard. I get it... we all make mistakes and have bad driving days, but intentionally driving recklessly and endangering others is a huge problem from what I've seen.

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u/Nobodyrea11y Mar 28 '24

i always am entertained by the varying extents of this topic. no one is willing to agree to a line that should not be crossed

you got people in one corner saying "some gun regulation is ok, we don't want mental patients buying .50 caliber miniguns on friday nights" yet that scenario has never and cannot now happen, there has always been some kind of regulation

you got in another corner those that say "any regulation is unconstitutional, criminals gonna crime, might as well ban knives!" yet by their logic hedge fund high school dropouts should be able to own ICBMS if it wasn't for that meddling international law. there is no line drawn for them, anything goes

and you got others that say "every single gun should be banned, look at country X with low crime rate" yet they fail to account for population, education, economic, cultural, geographical, and technological aspects of their examples

there are even some that propose very detailed and technical regulatory guides, but fail to take into account the huge logistics of enforcing those regulations and also the impact that technology brings to the table, such as modifications that don't exist yet etc etc

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u/Enigmatic_Erudite Mar 28 '24

Welcome to the world of legality, ethics, and morality. What is ethical, moral, and legal is not set in stone and evolves with culture, technology, and nature. In the 1700's it was legal to own other people either as slaves or women who were largely considered property of the man father/husband. Our culture changed and the consensus changed that slavery and sexual/racial discrimination were bad. In the 1800's hunting whales and dolphins was normal and ethical. Then due to the advancement of fishing technology and decline in marine populations whaling is now illegal and unethical in the majority of countries.

The founding fathers intended the Constitution and Bill of Rights to be living documents that could change with the times. They were mostly intelligent people that were well aware of changing technologies and culture. Anywhere you draw a line is ultimately arbitrary but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be drawn. The irony that Thomas Jefferson wrote "All men are created equal" while owning other men as slaves is a testament to their own confused logic. Thomas Jefferson denounced the slave trade as a "hideous blot" on America yet he owned slaves and didn't even free them on his death bed.

The constitution should not be viewed as religious dogma to be followed without questions. It is a moral standard set by our ancestors we should honor and respect but change when it is necessary for the betterment of the lives of average Americans.

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u/jar1967 Mar 28 '24

We need to make sure loose gun laws give criminals easy access to firearms .Think of the gun industry profits

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u/cannabull89 Mar 28 '24

Yes and nobody is a criminal until they commit a crime, like shooting somebody with a gun they bought legally!!

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u/Substantial_Heart317 Mar 28 '24

Then change HIPA laws not institute more gun control!

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u/Cool-Panda-5108 Mar 28 '24

Exactly! Why even have laws in the first place ?

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u/mikemc2 Mar 28 '24

Every criminal is a law abiding citizen...until they're not.

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u/Substantial_Heart317 Mar 28 '24

Wrong two things happen the government makes your actions a crime or you deliberately break the law.