• jordanlund@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    We can’t do what Australia did. 2nd Amendment aside (and that alone is a huge blocker), we have a much larger population and a much larger inventory.

    Australia confiscated 650,000 guns on a population at the time of around 18 million people. Even that was only 20% of the guns in the country.

    https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9212725/australia-buyback

    The United States has a population over 330 million with over 400 million guns.

    20% of 400 million would be 80 million guns. To take those off the street, we would have to run the equivalent of the Australian program 123 times.

    Logistically, it’s impossible. Even without the 2nd amendment we don’t have the capacity to do it. There’s no way to collect and dispose of them.

    • Lobotomie@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Who says this has to be done in a day? Have gun drop off places which keeps lists, destroy the guns (weld the muzzle or drill in a hole both can be done in 2minutes for a single gun) and then sell them to scrapyards. People have time until the end of 2024.

      • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        The Australian plan did take a year, October 1996 to September 1997, and all they got was 650,000 guns which was 20%.

        Americans first, have no obligation to give up their guns thanks to the 2nd Amendment and second, aren’t as likely to give up their guns.

        You aren’t getting 80 million (20%) even in a year, and again, we don’t have the capacity to collect and dispose of them.

        80 million / 50 (yeah, I know, it won’t be an even distribution, but let’s work the math roughly) 1.6 million per state / 12 months = 133,333 a month per state.

        The Australian plan took 12 months to collect 650,000. So the US would need to meet that in about 5 states in one month.

        The most successful gun buyback in US history collected 4,200 guns across 4 buybacks.

        https://www.hcp1.net/GunBuyback

        The Australian plan cannot work here.

        • User_4272894@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          I mean, you’re throwing out a lot of numbers claiming it is impossible, but we have logistics and resources that Australia didn’t in 1996. If Amazon can deliver 7.7 billion packages a year, and the US can count 150 million votes in a week during election season, we can figure out how to break down 400 million guns over a month, a year, or a decade. It doesn’t have to happen overnight. The “Australian plan” doesn’t have to work here, but getting guns off the street somehow does.

          • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            I guarantee you don’t want a private company like Amazon handling gun confiscation, public policy should not be up to private companies to enforce. Might as well ask people to drop off their guns at the local WalMart and ask untrained staff to deal with them. No good will come from it.

            Elections are a different deal because all you’re processing is bits of paper and data, you aren’t running the risk of, you know, explosive ordinance.

            Even if we had the logistics, which we don’t, there’s still the 2nd amendment to contend with. We can’t force people to give up their guns, that’s a right the Australians didn’t have.

            Repealing the 2nd Amendment can be done, but it starts with 290 votes in the House. You did watch the struggle it took to get the 217 they needed to elect their own leader, right?

            • User_4272894@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              I didn’t suggest Amazon run the process. I just meant “logistics infrastructure exists on a scale unimaginable in 1996”. 600 million COVID doses given out in the US might have been a better comparison. Or 7.2 billion packages by USPS in 2022. There are 708k cops in the US. That’s 2 guns recovered per cop per month to have it done in 90 days.

              There is literally no argument in the world where “the logistics make it impossible” is a reasonable claim.

              Likewise, “we’ll never get 290 votes” is a lazy and cowardly claim. Yes, it’ll be hard. Yes, it’ll be a fight. Yes, we’ll have some minds that will be impossible to change. But your apparent argument in defense of gun rights seems to be “aww, jeez, it seems pretty tricky” which is truly mind boggling to me.

              • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                It’s not that it will be hard, it’s that this is the same body that took 22 days to build a simple majority to decide who their own leader is. 290 is out of reach.

                That same speaker, BTW, has already said he won’t allow gun issues to come to the floor.

                The Republicans will not vote for it, which is the majority. Some Democrats won’t vote for it either. It’s a dead issue.

    • blackn1ght@feddit.uk
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      11 months ago

      You guys put people on the moon in the 60s. You sure as hell can sort this out with enough will power and time. But instead all you offer are excuses.

      • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        We haven’t been to the moon since 1972 and don’t even have our own shuttle program anymore. Our bridges and roads are falling apart, we have absolutely no plan for climate change, and this ass-hat is speaker of the House of Representatives:

        https://www.cbsnews.com/news/speaker-mike-johnson-legislation-house-agenda/

        But here’s the crux of the problem that folks outside the US don’t get:

        The right to own a gun is guaranteed in our founding document. It doesn’t matter if you agree it should be or not, it’s there and it’s been upheld by the Supreme Court multiple times.

        We could amend the Constitution again… but doing so starts in the House and takes 290 votes.

        They took 22 days to get a simple 217 vote majority to decide who their own Speaker would be, there’s no WAY they get 290 votes on removing the 2nd Amendment.

        But let’s say some miracle happens and we get 290, now it goes to the Senate where we need 67 votes. Same problem, the Senate is incapacitated by a minority who require 60 votes to do ANYTHING and that hasn’t been attainable.

        But lets say some billionaire swoops in and pays off enough people to get 67…

        Now it goes to the states for ratification and we need 38 states for it to become an amendment.

        Look at 2020 as a guide - Biden won 25 states + Washington D.C., Trump won 25 states.

        You would need all 25 Biden states to ratify + 13 Trump states. For every Biden state you lose, you need +1 Trump state.

        Take a look at the Trump states and count up 13 willing to give up their gun rights…

    • Woht24@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I’m actually mostly on your side, I think the US is too far gone. If you took peoples guns off them in the US, I genuinely think there would be a or several small civil wars.

      Further a lot of people would just refuse, hide their guns etc.

      If the US actually tried to do what Australia did I think you’d actually see a drop in shootings etc but it would take 50-70 years to actually get through the majority of weapons ‘on the street’.

      But to say it’s logistically impossible is absolutely and completely wrong. It’s culturally near impossible.

      P.s. I’m Australian and our shooting crimes are going up, pistol numbers are going up too and we have the worst self defence laws. I wish I could have a loaded Glock and the right to shoot an intruder in my home honestly.