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The Biden Gun Plan

arthwollipot

Observer of Phenomena, Pronouns: he/him
arthwollipot
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Mods, please move to Politics if you deem it more appropriate.

Biden turns to limited executive actions on gun control with Congress at a standstill

President Joe Biden on Thursday harnessed the powers of the presidency to advance a half-dozen executive actions on gun control, but they fall far short of the ambitious goals he outlined as a presidential candidate as the real fight still looms on Capitol Hill.

The executive actions are aimed at taking certain guns out of the hands of criminals and pouring resources into community violence prevention, and a senior administration official cautioned that Thursday's announcement is just an initial set of actions that the new President is taking.

But their limited scope once again underscores Biden's broader challenge as he faces an evenly split US Senate, which he challenged in his remarks from the White House Rose Garden.
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The actions as far as I am aware are:

  • a crackdown on self-assembled "ghost guns"
  • a rule change to classify pistols with stabilising braces as short-barreled rifles
  • promises to provide more data on firearms trafficking
  • Investing in community violence intervention programs

This is a limited set of actions (Biden's full plan to address gun violence is still on his website), but my question to Americans is this: Is this announcement likely to affect you greatly?
 
The first two don't matter much in terms of the vast majority of gun violence. The third is potentially useful. The fourth is about as close to the real heart of the gun problem as any major politician is likely to get.
 
What proportion of gun violence occurs with ghost guns or stabilised pistols, do you think? Not asking for actual percentages but just your general impression.
 
My general impression is right there in my previous post. Coming up with a cromulent term for the inverse of "vast majority" is left as an exercise for the reader.
 
The ghost gun thing is kind of a unique problem to address, as the ghost guns basically came into being as a way to get around other regulations, a loophole more or less.

Some states already have functional regulation of such things that can address the great majority of such guns, those with parts that pretty well only exist to be made into guns and that are marketed/advertised as being for guns and that come with clear instructions as to how to finish the milling and assembly. Won't help with the really simple homemade guns, but can pretty well ensure that anyone without a $10k workshop is not going to build a reliable semi-auto detachable magazine rifle without at least getting a background check done or at least without spending a very long time to just make one such rifle from scratch. It ain't perfect, but it helps.

It is pretty limited, but that's to be expected. The strong majorities of Americans favor much stronger regulation of guns, but a very, very strongly committed and motivated minority opposes most further regulation with religious intensity.
 
Personally: No. I refuse to own any sort of gun due to periods of profound depression.

Society-wise: this is little in and of itself - the simple truth is that the vast majority of murders, last I checked, were done using relatively inexpensive handguns, in the hands of young men who have little to lose aside from "respect" for backing down from a fight. I vaguely remember suicides being the same devices, but I can't be too certain of this. As much as Americans fear the AR15-toting Enraged White ManTM, most of the actually dying and killing is done by specific segments of the grossly underserved. Boutique weapons like "ghost guns", 3D printed doohickies, and the like are a theoretical threat, they remain only that.

Also, quiet as kept, executive orders are a very poor substitute for legislation, but with one of two parties having no interest in legislating anything, and a paranoid group of fetishists, that's likely cut off.
 
The only thing he can do that makes sense is push for better data gathering and transparency of the same.
 
I think suicides are sort of irrelevant to the gun debate.

Japan has very strict gun laws and gun related violence is practically non-existant here.

Which country do you think has a higher rate of suicides though? America, which is overflowing with guns, or Japan, which has practically none?

So I just don't think that suicide should be mentioned in a discussion about gun violence and what to do about it. Turns out there are other ways to kill oneself.
 
Puppycow said:
I think suicides are sort of irrelevant to the gun debate.

Japan has very strict gun laws and gun related violence is practically non-existant here.

Which country do you think has a higher rate of suicides though? America, which is overflowing with guns, or Japan, which has practically none?

So I just don't think that suicide should be mentioned in a discussion about gun violence and what to do about it. Turns out there are other ways to kill oneself.
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Japan has a long tradition of honourable suicide, while America does not. I don't think the two places are comparable. Furthermore it is long-known and studied that suicide by gun is more often completed than any other method. Furtherfurthermore, it is also long-known and studied that availability of a gun makes spur-of-the-moment suicide much more likely. Other methods give a person a chance to reconsider, which reduces the overall suicide rate.

I would argue that for the goal of suicide prevention, guns have to be considered a factor, and therefore suicide should be a factor in the gun debate.

But I didn't intend to argue in this thread but to elicit the experiences of others and therefore further my own understanding. So I'm sorry for that.
 
Mental Health is what pro-gun people keep on harping about as the main problem.
And people with mental problems overwhelmingly kill themselves with guns, not others.
The only way to build a bridge, IMO, between the 2nd ammenders and the mainstream is to show that their core constituency is the one most at risk when gun sales are not better regulated, and if it's not possible to temporarily take away a person's weapons if they display suicidal tendencies.
 
Mental health treatment is certainly a part of the problem, not just in America but everywhere. In fact, it intersects with a host of social issues, including homelessness and poverty, police violence, and welfare.

But the topic here isn't the mental health plan, it's the gun plan.
 
I'm not sure how much gun crime currently involves self assembled guns.

But then again I appreciate laws that attempt to be proactive rather than reactive. If someone had said in 1998 or so "Why would we need consumer protections for internet commerce? People mostly buy things in stores" that may have aged like milk.

I keep hearing from gun rights advocates that one reason gun laws are useless is that criminals will simply 3d print theirs if they become hard to buy in other ways.

I'm a little dubious about how that can be effectively policed, but I don't see any downsides unless trying to crack down is super expensive and ineffective.
 
Hold very little hope the dude will actually achieve anything gun wise, when probably his most relevant point seems to fall on death ears. Or at least ears that seem they don't give a ***, which is telling.

President Biden on Thursday decried the epidemic of gun violence in America as an "international embarrassment" as he rolled out a series of executive actions intended to address the issue.
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arthwollipot said:
What proportion of gun violence occurs with ghost guns or stabilised pistols, do you think? Not asking for actual percentages but just your general impression.
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Almost none. Factory made pistols are still readily available on the black market pretty much everywhere in the country and are much preferable to 3d printed or completed 80% gun kits, and rifles, including pistol-brace rifles, are very rarely used in crime at all, with the notable exception of rampage shootings in which rifles are very commonly used but only make up a very small portion of gun deaths.
 
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