politics

"Wait, on the East side of town with the mass shooter shooting up the school or on the West side of town where the shooter is shooting at a place of worship? You need to be specific."

You forgot abortion bans.

I keep saying, America doesn't have a gun problem, America has a culture problem. And our culture is very, very ill.

Love this passage from Discworld about a new idiot taking over the "cops" in that world. (And if someone accuses the author, Terry Pratchett, of conservative thinking, imma choke on my beer). 😆

Swing, though, started in the wrong place. He didn't look around, and watch and learn, and then say, 'This is how people are, how do we deal with it?' No, he sat and thought: This is how the people ought to be, how do we change them?' And that was a good enough thought for a priest but not for a copper, because Swing's patient, pedantic way of operating had turned policing on its head.

There had been that Weapons Law, for a start. Weapons were involved in so many crimes that, Swing reasoned, reducing the number of weapons had to reduce the crime rate.

Vimes wondered if he'd sat up in bed in the middle of the night and hugged himself when he'd dreamed that one up. Confiscate all weapons, and crime would go down. It made sense. It would have worked, too, if only there had been enough coppers - say, three per citizen.

Amazingly, quite a few weapons were handed in. The flaw, though, was one that had somehow managed to escape Swing, and it was this: criminals don't obey the law. It's more or less a requirement for the job. They had no particular interest in making the streets safer for anyone except themselves. And they couldn't believe what was happening. It was like Hogswatch every day.

Some citizens took the not unreasonable view that something had gone a bit askew if only naughty people were carrying arms. And they got arrested in large numbers. The average copper, when he's been kicked in the nadgers once too often and has reason to believe that his bosses don't much care, has an understandable tendency to prefer to arrest those people who won't instantly try to stab him, especially if they act a bit snotty and wear more expensive clothes than he personally can afford. The rate of arrests shot right up, and Swing had been very pleased about that.

the whole world knows buddy

Many countries have guns and I tell you the big secret: it is not about the numbers, it is about reducing a certain types and the number of people waving them around

No one needs an “assault” rifle to “defend” themselves on a daily basis. A hunting rifle is for useful in hunting area, no one needs one in the car when they are sending their kids to school. If that is the case, you are at war and you should just migrate

Having semi/automatic weapons around is just going to arm that person at a bad day to do lot of damage. And fuel a civilian arm race which only benefits the weapon companies