An officer in upstate New York shot and killed a teen fleeing while pointing a replica gun, police said Saturday.

  • shalafi@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Right with ya, until…

    if it were harder for the general public to get guns

    Is there anywhere harder to get a gun? Even pellet guns are illegal in NYC. You can be legal in one state, passing through to another state where you’re legal, and NY can take your ass to jail for a gun in the trunk.

    So. More laws might help?

    • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Laws aren’t, by themselves, an effective way to keep dangerous guns out of the hands of criminals, because it is really easy to (illegally) import guns from a place with lax gun laws into a place with strict gun laws. There’s also a problem with existing gun laws encountering enforcement problems from law enforcement agencies who refuse to enforce them or who don’t care enough about it.

      On top of that, there is a cultural problem where guns are associated with masculinity and being “cool”. That leads to way more people acquiring them than there really should be, and many of those people really shouldn’t be having them. That’s not something the law can fix.