When will it be the time?

@booinflipflops2 Most Americans believe in background checks. They just make sense. As far as banning one kind of weapon leading to others, we had an assault weapon ban in the 1990s and early 2000s, and it worked fine and was effective. There is no reason we shouldn't do one now.

@booinflipflops2 the government wants to control your actions about guns. The gun is not the problem, it is the person holding the gun

@turbineman40 Boom! Somebody gets it!!!

@booinflipflops2 Actually the bigger obstacle is the NRA which even though even their own membership support background checks and safety training they lobby against it because the corporate memberships from arms manufacturers are the only members that actually matter. Everyone else is just an income stream.

As for this slippery slope that has never been demonstrated anywhere in the developed world with basic regulation.

Basically all right wing arguments on regulation tend to be disproven by reality. The NRA has been claiming the government will seize your guns any day now since the late 60s. Eventually you have to question the prophet who predicts the end of the world every 5 minutes and it never happens.

That being said I think just talking about regulation ignores the toxic uniquely American gun culture and the cultural sickness that drives people to do this. In Canada we have similar gun ownership per capita and my Dad said living in Colorado for 4 years was the first time he saw a culture who thought solving personal disputes with bullets was acceptable.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow Again, we go back to the problem of the people holding the gun. Myself and most every responsible gun owner I know, knows that there are much better ways of handling disputes than with violence/bullets.... that would definitely be more of a last resort. I haven’t been to Colorado in over 20 years, but I’ve always thought they were a state that really supported gun control.

@windinhishair The problem is, research indicates there's almost no appreciable difference when background checks are instituted. Those who know they're allowed to own a gun know where to buy one. Those who aren't also know where to go. And the success rate of mental health screening is almost nill (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1047279718306161). Among a group of mass shooters, half the offenders had a history of mental illness or mental health treatment but that less than 5 percent had gun‐disqualifying mental health records.

So background check bills are what we call legislation without teeth. The lack of a background check doesn't cause a shooting. The type of ammunition doesn't cause a shooting. Bump stocks, hoodies, types of music an the number of bystanders walking around with concealed weapons doesn't cause shootings. Gun do; it doesn't matter who's holding them.

We regulate cutlery, milk, weed killer, nightgowns, lamp cords. No ever said let's gather up all the guns and melt them down. We said, what about a firearm makes it exempt from licensing, registration, training and regulation? You can have every one of those things and still have freedom to bear arms (which, incidentally aren't just guns).

@booinflipflops2 The government has already restricted all the good weapons, anyway. And that’s a good thing, because people are morons.

@booinflipflops2 I don't disagree but the "gun grabbing" slippery slope argument is an NRA fundraising tactic and nothing more.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow It's rarely been the case with any other leading regulation. That's an oft-repeated argument that's never been borne out.

@Graylight It has made the NRA a pile of money over the years though. So in that respect it was a useful logical fallacy.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow So true.