Comment by krapp
3 hours ago
Australia doesn't have the Second Amendment.
In the US, any gun legislation that could possibly be effective at eliminating gun violence would also by definition be unconstitutional, since there is no way to prevent gun violence to any significant degree without infringing on the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
And a Constitutional amendment to repeal or change the 2A is existentially impossible as it would require the cooperation of Southern states and would threaten the billion dollar gun lobby.
Nor does the UK, nor most of the 190+ countries about the globe.
This is tangential to whether gun policy can work or not.
> In the US, any gun legislation that could possibly be effective at eliminating gun violence would also by definition be unconstitutional,
And yet many US states already have gun legislation ... and arguably more regulations and fiddly shit than Australia does.
What the US lacks is the ability to have clean, simple, uniform gun laws across all states AND uniform _enforcement_ of such laws.
>What the US lacks is the ability to have clean, simple, uniform gun laws across all states AND uniform _enforcement_ of such laws.
Yes. that is what would be unconstitutional. States can have their own gun laws but the Federal government is restrained by the Second Amendment. Mostly it has to abuse the Commerce Clause to justify its ability to regulate guns as interstate commerce.
So, it's a failure of the US ability to implement policy, not a failure of enacted policy to be able to make a difference.
Luckily, it's an Ammedment that is subject to interpretation, change, and/or removal.
Recall that US history has examples of Ammendments being both added and removed, that recently the Federalists saw fruit of a 30 year long campaign to stack the judicial pipeline, and the US landed on the moon.
The country is capable of difficult things, it's a matter of finding the will and making the grind.