17 Dead in Florida. GOP does nothing.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Just look at Vermont. It's proof gun laws themselves change little to nothing.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Just look at Vermont. It's proof gun laws themselves change little to nothing.

No, don't look at a tiny state and take an example from it.
Just look at the entire damn world- it's proof that gun laws DO have a huge effect. Seriously, mass shootings have become your national sport, the rest of us just don't have that.

I mean, something like a universal background check requirement and all that is sensible. Something like a ban on bump stocks and a ban on assault weapons is sensible. Those things aren't really relevant enough to the rural lifestyle that they ought to be kept legal, and even if they are, that it's worth the cost urban dwellers might pay for that.
But these laws don't actually change things as much as people think. If society itself doesn't operate on a common sense-run ethos, that can make gun control laws worthless. Laws and institutions only operate as effectively as the people allow them to - gun laws is just one more example of that.
The moral of the story is, one size doesn't fit all - and it's ridiculous to assume that is good for New York City in terms of gun policy, is also good for Wyoming or rural Minnesota. It doesn't work like that.
It would be pretty insulting to America's many tens of millions of rural people that they would have to endure New York City-style gun control. They don't live like New Yorkers. Why should they have to suffer from city-centric gun policy that doesn't take into account the living needs of rural voters?
Instead of trying to impose this on rural people, we should be trying to reduce the underlying causes of why people misuse guns. It's not mainly the guns themselves.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Assault weapons ought to be banned. The risks are just too much to justify the potential positives from keeping them legal.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Assault weapons ought to be banned. The risks are just too much to justify the potential positives from keeping them legal.

'Assault weapons' is a very unclear and imprecise term. ANY semi-automatic in the hands of a homicidal maniac is exremely dangerous. We need much better limits on access to firearms in general, not just some arbitrarially hyped subclass.

 (Do the hands of President Donald "The Grabber" Trump (R-Moscow) count as assault weapons?)

We need to avoid having gun regulations that prevent rural people from having access to guns that they constitutionally have the right to have, and need more than city dwellers. We also need to avoid casting the net so widely that people in the cities suffer. Just because a weapon could hypothetically be used by a homicidal maniac doesn't mean the solution is 'BAN IT! BAN IT! BAN IT!'. We need a more measured approach.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Semi-automatic rifles are no more dangerous than semi-automatic hand guns, they are more likely to jam and are less concealable.

For 9 years the deadliest mass shooting in modern history, Virginia Tech, was executed with the use of a 9mm handgun and a .22 handgun. Handguns were also exclusively used in Kileen, Texas (1991) 23 killed; Edmond, Oklahoma (1985) 15 killed; Binghamton, New York (2009) 14 killed; and Fort Hood (2009) 13 killed.

Banning semi- automatic rifles specifically doesn't make any sense.

Yes, shootings happen because of other guns too. But please explain to me why would anyone need a semi-automatic rifle? Yes, gun control should focus on other issues too, but semi-automatic rifles should definitely be banned. There's just no single legit reason to keeping them so available.

Hunting.

If you're going to ban rifles you might as well ban handguns too because they're equally efficient at mass killings. Las Vegas is the only incident I can think of where the use of rifles made a difference.

Haha

Anyone who hunts with a semi-automatic weapon is a loser. Seriously, how bad at hunting do you need to be to have a weapon that assists you in any way? If you need one of those to hunt, you shouldn't be allowed to go hunting because you're already probably a tremendous failure at it.

Please tell us what experience you have with hunting, especially for large game that can actually kill you if you aren't careful.
 

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

If the assualt weapons ban extended until 2007, 32 VTech students and faculty would still be dead. How about we focus on gun regulations that will actually stop mass gun violence instead? Restricting the movement of guns across state lines would actually help enforce gun laws in urban areas like Chicago and Baltimore.

Not to mention 'assault weapon' in general is a useless term

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban#Criteria_of_an_assault_weapon
Is this a good definition?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I don't have the answer to how to prevent these crises.  No one does.

The part in bold is complete nonsense. Mass shootings are an epidemiological phenomenon (gunshots = disease) that can be recognized and controlled through state legislation. It certainly has been in Australia and the UK, where copycat Columbine killings were starting to take hold in the late 1990s.

America has had a thing with guns since 1776. The relationship between the state and the individual is different here compared to the UK or Canada.