Quote:
Originally Posted by ResAlien
That line of thinking is a part of the problem. It’s a defeatist attitude that any change must take decades and be incremental. The only reason that’s “true” is to protect the political careers of those in office. Meaningful gun control could be had tomorrow but no public servant is willing to risk their career for the greater public good. The rest of this culture argument is just noise. Australia is a perfect example, their gun culture was just as deeply ingrained as America and they managed to figure it out in about six weeks.
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Everyone uses Australia as an example, but there are no analogies to be had with Australia and the USA (or anywhere else for that matter). Again, there are 300 million guns in circulation in the USA. The Australian buyback program was, first, provided for in Australia's constitution, and second, only resulted in 660,000 guns being taken out of circulation. That wouldn't even make a difference. They budgeted $500 million for it, by the way - about $554 million in today's US dollars. Now multiply that by
four hundred fifty four to get to your 300 million guns. Anyone have 227 billion dollars lying around to accomplish this buyback? What worked in Australia won't work in the USA.
I'm not defeatist, and I'm not remotely suggesting that nothing be done. I'm saying that there actually needs to be a long-term plan if there's going to be any meaningful change, whereas the attitude from people like you seems to be "just
do stuff". Well, no, that's not helpful. A sober assessment of the problem is needed to produce solutions that will a) make the biggest impact, b) for the lowest political cost (because there's going to need to be more of these changes in the future), c) that can actually get done given the political realities of the country.
Your "no, we can fix everything overnight right now if everyone just does it this way" is hilariously naive and not a serious approach to the problem.