Not on that guy’s side, but he didn’t strictly say that we shouldn’t have those laws.

He said that if you’re siteing a case where we did have those laws and a bad thing happened as an example for why we need laws like that in place to stop the bad thing from happening, it falls a little flat.

Not that the idea of having laws like that is bad, but citing individual cases is flawed, as no amount of regulatory structure will ever prevent 100% of cases.

To frame it a different way, I could argue that there’s literally no country on earth with strong enough gun laws, because there’s no country with zero gun deaths. I could argue that we need random searches of people homes to try and find guns, or imprisoning people who talk about guns, because the current laws clearly aren’t good enough because people are still getting shot. Doesn’t matter if it was only 1 incident in the past 30yrs. Still happened, so we need stricter laws.

That’s obviously an absurd level of hyperbole, and I want to reiterate that I’m all for regulation on firearms. Just wanted to point out that the core argument here is unideal.

Imagine applying that logic to anything else:

“He would have been murdered regardless of what laws were in place. There’s no reason to change the penalty for murder! The 10c fine already ensures that only criminals will murder other people.”

“The city already has a firefighter, and the city block still burned down! What’s the point in adding more firefighters if we already have a firefighter and we still get major fires?”

…

The kids got the guns illegally because it’s incredibly easy to get illegal guns in the US. The biggest reason for that is that it’s so incredibly easy to get legal guns too. In places like Japan or England where it’s hard to get legal guns, it’s extremely hard to get illegal guns, so the criminals tend not to use illegal guns.

If “would have done so regardless” were true, there should be no difference in gun crime in the UK vs the US. But, they’re not. It’s not because the US has far more of a problem with mental illness or something, it’s because the tool designed for killing is harder to get.

Well, in MY state random stops ARE illegal. Thanks Oregon! Frankly, I’m surprised more states haven’t done that.

https://romanolawpc.com/oregon-dui-checkpoints/

There are things that CAN be done, you just have to start with rejecting the idea of “hurrr durrr take all the guns” because that can’t be done due to the 2nd amendment.

In THIS case, we know the two kids already had priors for car burglaries.

So #1) You find out who legally owned those guns, then you charge them with improper storage and/or failure to report a stolen weapon.

#2) When kids are arrested for a crime like burglary, you search their homes to make sure weapons weren’t anything that were burgled.

FTA:

“Both teens have prior arrests for car burglaries.”

Seems likely they stole the guns from cars, so maybe make it illegal to keep your gun in your car?

Hard to say until the gun origins are traced back, but they weren’t legally purchased by or for the kids.

“Well regulated militia” didn’t mean the same thing back then.

Well regulated = well armed and equipped.
Militia = general public who could be called up at a moments notice for public defense.

See:

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/554/570/

“The prefatory clause comports with the Court’s interpretation of the operative clause. The “militia” comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense.”

So:

“A well armed and equipped public, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

FTA:

“Both teens have prior arrests for car burglaries.”

So, yeah, apparently so… probably where they got the guns.

USA is not the only country with civilian gun ownership and carry being legal.

So with such crime stats it should be your first thought that the problem is narrower (EDIT: and more USA-specific) than people having guns.

Unless you’ve already made up your mind and now just want to somehow nail facts to it.

That Jordan Lund is too stupid to insult

The solution is to examine how these guns got out of the legal system and into the illegal system.

The 2nd Amendment isn’t going anywhere so you can take that pipedream off the table barring 290 votes in the House, 67 votes in the Senate, and ratification from 38 states.

So what CAN we do?

Well…

#1) Hold gun owners accountable for storing a gun in something like a car that can be easily be broken into or stolen.

#2) When kids are arrested for something like burglary, you search their homes for weapons.

True, but that’s not going to happen as long as the 2nd Amendment is in place and there are close to 1/2 a billion guns in the country.

I’ve seen estimates of 475 million+ guns in a country of 330 million+ people, so, yeah. Tons of guns and not enough people taking securing them seriously.

These kids being car burglars makes perfect sense too… here’s a stat from my city:

https://katu.com/news/local/car-gun-thefts-increase-portland-police-say

"Kapp said nearly half of stolen gun reports from that last 15 months were firearms stolen from personal vehicles.

“That’s 47% of guns are stolen because they were stored in a vehicle; either the vehicle was broken into or the vehicle is stolen with a gun inside. That is a huge number,” said Kapp.

Kapp said gun owners should also have documentation, like serial numbers, in secure, safe spaces."

You would think by now that people would know “Don’t leave ANYTHING of value in your car!” but apparently not!