u/logicalpretzels

As a Leftist Socialist (formerly Progressive Liberal), I’m in very much agreement with Dems on human rights like LGBTQ rights, funding social programs and welfare, and preserving democracy. Every politician I’ve ever voted for was a Democrat. I also do support stricter gun control, ie: universal background checks, waiting periods, safe storage requirements, and mandatory safety training. Guns should be harder to get; they’re dangerous weapons after all.

However, one thing that has never made sense to me is the near ubiquitous push among Dems to ban “assault weapons”. Under these bans “assault weapons” are always defined as firearms with features like:

-Collapsable stocks

-Pistol grips

-Muzzle attachments such as suppressors

-Barrel shrouds (so a floating handguard?)

-Vertical fore end grips

These features do not make guns any more lethal than guns which don’t have them. They are ergonomic and practicality features for the most part. How on Earth would banning away these features on guns reduce gun violence?

More importantly, gun violence is not a result of AR-15s being available to regular people. Gun violence is a result of material conditions in the US that foster a culture of desperation and violence. These are systemic and sociopolitical issues, such as:

-Poor economic opportunity

-Poor access to healthcare (especially mental healthcare)

-Toxic masculinity

-Toxic individualism

-Social alienation (largely due to car centric infrastructure)

-Far right ideology

-The racist failure of the Drug War (which created the industry monopoly of the Cartels and, more granularly, local street gangs)

Banning “assault weapons” does not address any of these things, therefore it cannot reduce gun violence.

Even moreover, these AWBs do not remove “assault weapons” from society. All these bills do is ban their sale and transfer after a specific date. Therefore all these types of firearms already owned are just grandfathered in, and even artificially boosted in sales in the lead up to becoming illegal to buy (VA guns sales are through the roof right now).

There’s no gun registry in the US; we don’t know who owns what gun. In a country with more guns than people, that means there’s no feasible way to actually take away these guns from the population and remove them from circulation. So the millions of “assault weapons” out there just get grandfathered in, and stay in our homes and on our streets.

So we haven’t reduced gun violence, and we haven’t removed these weapons from society. So what’s the point?

The only thing these bills seem to actually accomplish is ceding political ground to the Fascist Republicans by alienating lawful gun owners.

Why on Earth would we support this ineffective, impossible to enforce, and politically suicidal policy?