California cannot ban gun owners from having detachable magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, a federal judge ruled Friday.
The decision from U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez won’t take effect immediately. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, has already filed a notice to appeal the ruling. The ban is likely to remain in effect while the case is still pending.
This is the second time Benitez has struck down California’s law banning certain types of magazines. The first time he struck it down — way back in 2017 — an appeals court ended up reversing his decision.
It’s relevant to the question of what would happen in the event of a gun ban.
At this stage, anyone with sufficient desire to do so can manufacture an effective and reliable firearm using readily available tools at home, using no purpose built firearm components. Magazines are dead simple in comparison.
No it’s not, it’s a bullshit excuse to do nothing.
Overwhelmingly, criminals, abusers and domestic terrorists are using legally purchased firearms to kill innocent people. Of the minority remaining that are using illegal firearms, they were stolen from somewhere and those people should be held accountable.
Those are the people “gun grabbers” are trying to disarm and those are the people the pro-gun community is protecting, while somehow thinking they’re the good guys.
“Oh but what about 3D printed guns and bombs and cars? They’ll just use them instead” doesn’t matter. They’re not using 3D printed guns any more than they’re using giant clown hammers.
And do you know what we’ll do if they start? We’ll address it.
Much like we have addressed it, since it doesn’t take 25 years to do when there isn’t a well funded death cult blocking us every step of the way.
If your goal is to feel good about Doing Something then you are right. If the goal is to meaningfully reduce violence without curtailing the rights of law abiding citizens, you are dead wrong. The only effective way to go about this is to logically look at what the effect of a law would be.
First of all, you are mistaken here. Guns used by criminal groups are most often straw purchases, which are very much illegal.
More importantly, looking at the problematic people and just banning whatever they have in their hands has a long history of failing to make any meaningful impact on crime.
As an example, let’s examine the long list of weapons banned in CA after the legislature associated them with “gang activity”. Martial arts tools like nunchucks, which have no practical use outside training, were banned, despite the fact that it should have been patently obvious that banning nunchucks would do zero to stop actual criminal activity.
Another example is prohibition. People saw the “immoral element” consuming alcohol and saw alcohol prohibition as a panacea. It’s well known that prohibition had wide sweeping negative effects at this point.
You have to predict the holistic effects of the law, long term, to see if it will have a positive impact.
… it kinda does
It’s not just a “what if” question, either. Even prior to the advent of readily available 3d printing, criminals in Brazil and elsewhere had developed a network of facilities manufacturing black market open bolt sub machine guns based on the Luty designs. Restricting legal guns had little long term benefit in Brazil at stopping crime with firearms.
It has only gotten easier to make them at home as time goes on. No manufacturing facilities needed.
Okay, so if it’s not a bullshit excuse to do nothing, what has the pro-gun community done to address the issue of gun violence over the last 25 years?
Oh look, they’ve done nothing. In fact, they’ve done worse than nothing because they’ve actually made it easier to enable criminals, abusive partners and domestic terrorists to arm themselves on a whim.
But despite this, they continue to insist they they and they alone have the answers and what a susprise, the answer is once again “don’t change anything”.
Okay, so you’re openly admitting that the current laws are a failure, but you’re also staunchly opposed to anyone fixing them. If your goal was to arm criminals and people who hit their wives, how would your actions differ from what you’re already doing?
You’re not going to allow straw purchases to be stopped, despite them being borderline non-existent in comparable countries. You’re not going to allow the gun show loop holes to be closed, despite them being openly acknowledged ways of buying guns without a background check. You’re definitely not going to support mandatory safe storage to punish dildos who leave handguns in gloveboxes, because those dildos are your friends.
Yet more bullshit. “Oh look at this stupid ban or this thing law that didn’t work”. If those laws done work, go out and buy an RPG. Get a box of grenades without the appropriate license. Hell, pick yourself up a truck full of ANFO, I’ll cover the cost.
But you can’t, because it turns out banning precision engineered weaponry is actually easy as fuck.
Is that your excuse for 25 years of the “good guys with guns” accomplishing absolutely nothing except lining the pockets of Republicans and lobby groups? You’re still looking at the holistic, long term effects of the laws that just happen to be the most personally convient to you.
And should we use the same dogshit, pro-gun logic for all laws? It’s illegal to fuck kids, but people fuck kids anyway, so by pro-gun logic it should be legal to fuck kids after a 2 day waiting period.
It’s illegal to drive while intoxicated, but that’s probably super inconvenient for some people so by pro-gun logic it should be allowed as long as their on their way to or from a gun show.
It’s illegal to kill people, but… Oh nevermind, judging by the murder fantasies on most pro-gun platforms, they’d be throbbing at the idea of those laws getting changed.
Oh well you’ll be all set without your guns then. If any authoritarian dictatorships come along, all the pro-gun people who promised to protect us from it (but wouldn’t even wear masks in a pandemic) can just grab a $200 PLA printer from AliExpress and print themselves off a machine gun.
Right after they finish enthusiastically voting for them and losing 130lbs of course.
I mean, have you asked yourself why? There was once a time that gun control wasn’t a partisan issue and those with knowledge of guns openly supported new restrictions. Gun advocacy groups were actively involved in helping to write the legislation.
What changed? The thing that changed is that those who were afraid of any and all guns fought tooth and nail to prevent the laws that didn’t work from being walked back. The gun owners were called names and accused of heinous things for having a different opinion. The result has been that restrictions continually get tighter, even when they clearly are not doing anything to help the situation. After a century of this, the knee jerk response is to try to prevent any and all gun control.
Look at your posts here. You have called me names and are assuming a whole lot of things about my views based on a few comments. I have done far more to advocate for liberal causes at a grassroots level than 99% of the people on here. I wager this includes yourself.
I have been a part of political activism for everything from ending marijuana prohibition to seeing the end of bans on gay marriage. I advocated for BLM and mask restrictions during the pandemic. I have ended up on the front page of the news chained to city hall in defense of liberal causes. You see that I disagree with you one one small thing and just start spewing hate.
In order for this to work we need actual meaningful discourse from both sides, and realistically both pro and anti gun people fail miserably at this because of how far things have devolved.
I think the first step in building mutual trust on this issue would be to accept some lessening of restrictions on the laws that don’t work. Take suppressors off of the NFA list, for example. Stop calling for an assault weapons ban when we previously had one and the FBI’s analysis showed it had zero meaningful impact. Maybe then we can actually talk to each other in a cooperative manner to make progress.
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See, this is exactly the issue with America today. Someone disagrees with you on something with nuance and that immediately means they’re a “bad person”
Uhh huh. How’s that working out?
Annndddd here’s the truth. SHOCKER that there’s no cooperation here isn’t it?!
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