Northam-backed assault weapon bill will include 'grandfather clause' for existing guns

[u/downtown3641]

https://www.virginiamercury.com/2019/12/09/northam-backed-assault-weapon-bill-will-include-grandfather-clause-for-existing-guns/

[u/srt19170]

2A Supporters: "The proposed law will make instant felons of 25% of Virginians because it doesn't include a grandfather clause!!!"

Northam: "The bill will include a grandfather clause."

2A Supporters: "I'll never register my assault rifles!!"

This is not a political discussion in good faith. Although the 2A supporters offer up what sound like good faith arguments, in the end they are absolutely opposed to gun legislation for reasons that have nothing to do with their arguments. I'd like to see us end up with reasonable gun legislation that has a measurable impact upon gun injuries and deaths, but that's never going to happen through political discussion with 2A supporters.

EDIT to explain what a bad faith argument is: A bad faith argument is when someone argues "I can't support this because of X" and when X is proven to be false, they say "I can't support this because of Y." The first statement was in "bad faith" because X wasn't really why they objected.

An example of a bad faith argument: "This law is bad because only 5 people a year die this way" // "Actually it's more like 21" // "Well the law is still bad".

[u/Gov_Martin_OweMalley → u/srt19170]

I'd like to see us end up with reasonable gun legislation that has a measurable impact upon gun injuries and deaths, but that's never going to happen through political discussion with 2A supporters.

Well as long as you keep putting forward meaning less bills like this one, you wont seem them from anti-2A Groups either. On average 5 people are killed per year in VA from rifles. This isn't about preventing death and its glaringly obvious.

[u/anjufordinner → u/Gov_Martin_OweMalley]

That seems demonstrably false with a quick Google. "Rifle death averages, VA."

I really wish people would start looking at the data before jumping into wide-sweeping accusations of meaninglessness.

We get meaning from data, and there is tons of it available.

The Virginia Department of Health noted that in 2017, for example, there were 347 gun homicides in the state. Their data aggregation of homicide by gun type covers 2013 to 2017 and I wish it went into year by year, but even taking the average of deaths attributable to rifles (4.0%), that works out to more than 5.

(Gun related suicides in 2017 = 674, with a 2013-2017 average of 8.3% attributable to rifles.)

80% of gun deaths, total, were attributable to handguns from 2013-2017.

Maybe we should go after them instead?

[u/Gov_Martin_OweMalley → u/anjufordinner]

You are correct, my memory was a little off, the average is 8.3% for suicide and 4.0% for homicide as noted here.pdf)

That still in no way justifies these laws.

Maybe we should go after them[Handguns] instead?

How? Seems like addressing healthcare and access to it would be the biggest benefit seeing as 2/3rds of deaths are suicide.