this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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East Tennessee's Tim Burchett, a Republican, said he believes that aliens must have the technological capacity to "turn us into a charcoal briquette".

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[–] Arn_Thor@lemmy.fmhy.ml 10 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I knew I’d heard that name before:

On March 28, 2023, Burchett responded to the Covenant School shooting, where three 9-year-old students and three staff members were killed in Nashville, by telling reporters: "It's a horrible, horrible situation, and we're not going to fix it. Criminals are gonna be criminals. And my daddy fought in the second world war, fought in the Pacific, fought the Japanese, and he told me, he said, 'Buddy,' he said, 'if somebody wants to take you out, and doesn't mind losing their life, there's not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it.'" Burchett also said he sees no "real role" for Congress in reducing gun violence, other than to "mess things up".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Burchett

[–] RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

I mean, he's kinda right though. If someone is set on committing a crime, they're going to do it. Whether they get the weapon legally or not, they're still going to commit that crime. The only way to truly stop crime is to stop people from having free will, which is impossible.

That's not to say there should be zero protections. But take gun control in the US for example, there already are gun control laws, California being the strictest. And there are still crimes committed with firearms every single day. Even if you somehow (by actual magic because it would be actually impossible) banned sales of guns and confiscated every firearm the ATF knew existed, there are still so many firearms already in the black market, or smuggled across borders, or even 3D printed, that the criminal will still have access to firearms, conceivably forever.

I mean, look at fireworks. Most cities in California have banned fireworks, but every 4th of July the night sky lights up like a rave party. Or hacking groups that constantly cyberattack literally anything they can, just because they can. If people want to do something, it doesn't really matter how much red tape you throw at them, theyre still going to do that thing.

[–] Arn_Thor@lemmy.fmhy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

The California example doesn’t quite work, because you can effortlessly bring a gun in from a neighboring state. So the legislation is much less effective than a national law would be.

Moreover, so much gun violence has proved to be opportunistic. Someone goes into a rage and because a gun is conveniently at hand, they can do an awful lot of damage. If a gun killing had to be premeditated and planned, as in many other countries, it’s a significant obstacle to such crimes.

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