Public Safety: Guns and Driverless Cars

[Mazer]

Originally Posted by malvachat

Most people(well in my circle) in Britain find it so hard to understand this gun thing.
It just doesn't compute at all.
I respect people points of view on most things but this is one subject I can't.
Being allowed to possess guns yes.WITH PROPER CHECKS
But Military assault weapons.
Come on that's just stupid.

Many gun-owning Americans support this point of view. Incidentally, so does federal law. An assault rifle (this term has a precise definition in law) is not available to the average American since it qualifies as a machine gun, and machine guns have been heavily restricted for three decades. The term you used—assault weapon—is harder to pin down in legal terms. It is essentially any semi-automatic rifle with certain cosmetic features which make it no deadlier than a simple hunting rifle. There are military assault rifles but, respectfully malva, a 'military assault weapon' is not a thing.

I agree that proper checks are necessary. We may disagree what a proper check is, and as we've recently learned, even proper checks fail to catch everybody. Sadly, the Texas shooter this week had passed a background check despite his disqualifying history of violent crime. And the Las Vegas shooter passed every background check as well because he had no criminal past to speak of. After a month we still don't know his motive. Perhaps a psychological evaluation would have somehow indicated his intentions, but to me, requiring a psych-eval for gun buyers with no marks against them would be improper. For the government to limit a basic human right requires a damn good reason, and the remote possibility that any one gun might be used to commit a crime isn't a good enough reason, given the vast majority of guns are never aimed at people (that's rule #1 of gun safety, after all).

By the way, I'm not proud of what I said to albed, but I'm glad you got a kick out of it.