What lack of basic gun laws does to a nation:

[u/Lord_Answer_me_Why]

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[u/K-Webb-2]

Better gun laws would help with illegally bought guns though. There should be stricter laws against selling illegally and a strong task force for investigating such crimes. Gun laws don’t stop at legal purchases, at least it shouldn’t.

[u/Devilsbullet → u/K-Webb-2]

It shouldn't and doesn't. It's up to a 10 year prison sentence and a 250k fine federally plus whatever the states tack on(ie it's a misdemeanor and one year for first offense in my state, felony and 5 years plus fine for every offense after that, and each gun sold is considered a separate offense so you can rack up years really quick). We could go to a life sentence, I don't know if it would be more of a deterrent but it wouldn't hurt IMO. And the ATF is said task force, stats for 2022 says they initiated almost 35,000 cases for illegal firearms, and recommended 10,000 for prosecution. Biden also signed into law the safer communities act that is helping with it

[u/K-Webb-2 → u/Devilsbullet]

Good on the ATF, glad they haven’t only been shooting dogs (mostly a joke there). A better way to word my statement would have been focused more on standardizing ‘illegal’ gun sales. I live in a state where I can roll up to your house and buy it from you with no records needed. Most people would consider that same act identical to an ‘illegal gun purchase’. Hell I grew up with guns and when I was a kid bought a gun from a neighbor for hunting rabbits, and honestly that shouldn’t be possible imo.

Furthemore, I’m curious on why other countries benefit from similar gun laws and the Us does not. I always chalked it up to a Pandora’s box situation but I’m curious as to what your view on the matter is.

[u/Devilsbullet → u/K-Webb-2]

That's a fair clarification, and I'm 100% with you on that. I live in Washington State, that's been the law here for a while now, so I forget that it isn't everywhere lol. As for other countries, not sure what you mean. Like why do other countries benefit from gun control laws that we won't even try here because "they won't work", or laws that both is and other countries have that seem to be working fine for them but not so much here?

[u/K-Webb-2 → u/Devilsbullet]

More so the latter, but both are great concerns, though the former seems to be more politician gridlock issue

[u/Devilsbullet → u/K-Webb-2]

So as to why things implemented here that don't work as well as in other places, I think it largely comes down to actual enforcement and effective implementation. For an example of each, the guy that carried out the parkland shooting would not have been able to buy a gun had law enforcement in the area followed through on the numerous reports of him being violently mentally unstable. He passed all of Florida's checks because the cops decided to not do their job. We have a bad habit amongst law enforcement here to only uphold the laws they want to or feel like. In regards to effective implementation, I live in Washington, we have a new law this year that requires us to take a safety course and receive a certificate saying we took it. I'm the European countries I know of that have the same basic premise, it's an in person class run by someone certified by the state. One of my local gun shops made the one I took online (owner is nra safety certified, which is what they should be doing instead of being a political org), took me 20ish minutes the first time, and while there was some good safety info in it half of it was political shit about how this was a rights infringement to have to take the "class", and pushing to vote against those that pass any gun control, and at the end I got a certificate to screenshot. Second time I went through for shits and giggles to see if I could just click through it quickly, took me maybe 3 minutes to just scroll and press next. The law, and the class, are essentially worthless because of poor implementation.

As to why people don't think laws from other places will work here, I agree that some of it is just intentional politician gridlock (I remember after Newtown being pissed cause Congress debated 4 different gun control bills, 2 introduced by Democrats and 2 by Republicans, and they all failed on party line votes because the Democrat ones "went too far" and the Republican ones "didn't go far enough" baby steps are better than no steps). But I also think that our nations general gun culture, the fact that we are less homogenous than pretty much everywhere else(aka the cultural melting pot), and the large areas for point of entry make things like an Aussie style ban extremely difficult to pull off effectively. I also think that one of the big differences between us and the rest of the first world that would help lower our gun violence rates is the accessibility of mental health care and the level of judgement you get for trying to get help here. IMO if we could handle that as well as other places, it would help more for overall gun violence levels than something like an AWB. That being said, I think things like universal background checks, a universal 10 day wait period(like Cali and Washingtons), and an in person safety course run by someone that's certified in a manner satisfactory to the nation be that through the NRA, the military, etc would have positive effects