Austria to tighten gun laws after recent school shooting. Applying for a gun license will require taking a serious psychological test. There will be a "cooling off phase" after ordering a weapon.
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Fortunately you (unless you are Austrian) have no voice in the matter.
Kinda yes but no? There's minimum standards for gun control in the EU and thus the "right to bear arms" countries (Austria, Czechia, Poland, Baltic states, Finland) regularly have work cut out for them when the framework gets tightened while the "may issue" and "don't issue" countries are perpetually in overcompliance.
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Soooo, we then just go back to handing guns to anyone?
Sorry, but with that attitude we can't improve anything. How about we just keep it a psychology test?
Do you think that the average person is a killer but the only thing that stops them are the tools they have available?
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For real, avoiding those areas they mentioned only does two things
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Shows that they fear getting shot or stabbed in those areas, which is directly counter to their attestation.
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Indicates they're probably super racist, because how do you tell what is or isn't a "gang area"?
Kids here are afraid to go to school (for good reason), and people like this refuse to consider ANY worthwhile fixes.
The data is entirely clear, gun regulations reduce gun violence. Full stop.
Kids here are afraid to go to school (for good reason),
Why? Who is abusing their kids by trying to convince them that they should be afraid of school?
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Kids here are afraid to go to school (for good reason),
Why? Who is abusing their kids by trying to convince them that they should be afraid of school?
They're afraid because people keep going to them and shooting kids indiscriminately. They have to do active shooter drills because it's such a common occurrence. They don't need convincing, it's obvious
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And get safer cars. The US has some kind of car arms race going on where you need a super large heavy car to be safe because the roads are full of big heavy cars... Resulting in much more deadly crashes for everyone. Besides most states driving test is a joke.
Cars are much safer than they used to be.
Over the shoulder seat belts, ABS, airbags, crumple zones, stability control, etc all help prevent accidents and he'll you walk away from any that still happen.
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Wow kneejerk pseudo-science enshrined into law because one person out of 10,000,000 used a gun to kill someone. Do you think if he had used a car instead you'd see a similar response? why or why not?
i started to respond but there are so many things wrong with your inane hypothetical i quit a couple paragraphs in. just fucking light up some neurons
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Cars are much safer than they used to be, so why get trucks and SUV instead as these are exempt from a number of car safety requirements (like crumple zones) in the US. They have a likelihood of causing fatal unjuries when they collide with other cars and pedestrians that is 8 times higher than the average sedan, according to a UK study. Due to their size, weight and bad visibility for obstacles close by, they are also much more likely to crash into stuff.
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They're afraid because people keep going to them and shooting kids indiscriminately. They have to do active shooter drills because it's such a common occurrence. They don't need convincing, it's obvious
Yikes. Normalizing exotic scenarios. My daughter is afraid of thunder, a much more logical and reasonable fear. Any kid that is afraid of going to school because maybe someone will be on the news is a victim of abuse. If you can't trust your fellow man, you can't be trusted to participate in society.
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i started to respond but there are so many things wrong with your inane hypothetical i quit a couple paragraphs in. just fucking light up some neurons
wrote on last edited by [email protected]i started to respond but there are so many things wrong with your inane hypothetical i quit a couple paragraphs in. just fucking light up some neurons
Yikes. It took you multiple paragraphs before you understood how goddamn reactionary the Austrian response is. And while you understand it's wrong, you refuse to accept it. Liberal to the core. Please do not vote again for everyone's sake.
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Cars are much safer than they used to be.
Over the shoulder seat belts, ABS, airbags, crumple zones, stability control, etc all help prevent accidents and he'll you walk away from any that still happen.
They are safe for car passengers, and a nightmare for everyone else on the street. High hoods with bad sight for drivers and awful impact profile for pedestrians, heavy cars which make low speed collisions much more deadly for everyone not protected by 3 tons of steel. Safety should be for everyone, not only car passengers.
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"serious psychology test"
Until someone from a different political party comes in and turns it into a "political party loyalty test"
That would take a majority vote, not only a single party change. Our system here in austria isn't perfect (like most of the world), but it is not the broken mess the US have.
Regardless, i'd say the move to stronger regulation is welcome here. The shooter had his guns legally, even tho he was deemed unfit for military service, which screams "regulatory hole to fix ASAP"
looks like there is broad support for making sure that whoever wants a gun to be stable enough to handle them without shooting up a school.
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The main issue I have with laws like these is... once the person who "needed to cool off" has the gun all they need is to get hot-headed again and this time there isn't a cool-off period for them to access it.
The psychology "test" is all fine and good, but a test doesn't tell you what an actual licensed psychologist can. Way too easy for someone to just lie on a test if they know what the "right" answers are. A lot more difficult to hide dangerous personality traits in front of another human being. Step it up one more notch to requiring a psychological evaluation.
The "Test" will probably be in line with a psych eval like we already have for our military, which will be enough for cases like this, because he was unfit to serve.
he was still able to get a gun licence, because in austria you are only blocked from getting a gun licence (for 15 years IIRC) if you refuse to serve in the military on ethical grounds and do civil service instead, and the data from the military evaluation is kept secret because of privacy laws.
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Beethoven being born in Germany and Hitler being born in Austria was one of those trivia facts I learned as a 12 year old — or thereabouts; I forget how old I was — that made me question everything. I was obviously, by definition, uneducated at that age but I had just sort of lumped “classical music=Vienna” and “Hitler=Germany.”
It’s obviously an odd fact to blow a kid’s mind and there were many more such moments to come but, for some reason, that factoid was a very effective one on my journey to realizing I didn’t know shit. (A journey I’m still on, even on things I have a degree in or worked on. Nothing teaches you how much you don’t know like learning enough to realize you haven’t even scratched the surface.)
Technically speaking Beethoven was born in Austria. Austrian Netherlands that is (current day Belgium), owned by the Habsburgs.
Or even more generally, he was born in the Holy Roman Empire of Germanic Nations (today Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, parts of France, parts of Poland, Austria, Czechia, Germany) and died in the Austrian Empire.
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Do you think that the average person is a killer but the only thing that stops them are the tools they have available?
Should we every single person this planet access to nuclear weapons? Mutually Assured Destruction has kept us save from nuclear war thus far. Clearly this applies not just on the state but on the individual level as well.
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Cars are much safer than they used to be, so why get trucks and SUV instead as these are exempt from a number of car safety requirements (like crumple zones) in the US. They have a likelihood of causing fatal unjuries when they collide with other cars and pedestrians that is 8 times higher than the average sedan, according to a UK study. Due to their size, weight and bad visibility for obstacles close by, they are also much more likely to crash into stuff.
I mean, I would love North America as a whole not need to rely on cars as much as we do now. This involves building walkable neighborhoods and investment in public transit. But the car lobby is not going to let that happen. Same with the gun lobby in the US.
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i started to respond but there are so many things wrong with your inane hypothetical i quit a couple paragraphs in. just fucking light up some neurons
Yikes. It took you multiple paragraphs before you understood how goddamn reactionary the Austrian response is. And while you understand it's wrong, you refuse to accept it. Liberal to the core. Please do not vote again for everyone's sake.
YOU are what's wrong with America, and the world.
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I mean, I would love North America as a whole not need to rely on cars as much as we do now. This involves building walkable neighborhoods and investment in public transit. But the car lobby is not going to let that happen. Same with the gun lobby in the US.
It can be done. Europe as a whole was on its way to become as car centric as the US back in the 1960's. People seriously revolted against that, most strongly in the Netherlands which is why it has such nice bike infrastructure.
We got gun laws because after WW2 Europe was full of guns, they were everywhere and it was untenable. So we got our shit together and did something about it.
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The main issue I have with laws like these is... once the person who "needed to cool off" has the gun all they need is to get hot-headed again and this time there isn't a cool-off period for them to access it.
The psychology "test" is all fine and good, but a test doesn't tell you what an actual licensed psychologist can. Way too easy for someone to just lie on a test if they know what the "right" answers are. A lot more difficult to hide dangerous personality traits in front of another human being. Step it up one more notch to requiring a psychological evaluation.
I mean I guess it's a better system then just being able to walk into a random store and just buy a gun.
In my country we have a pretty strict gun control you need have not committed any crimes and be able to get a document from the government saying so, you'll also need the following;- be part of a gun club, which itself has a cool down period of several months and they can refuse you for whatever reason they see fit
- have a minimum amount of shooting days per year
- have to participate in the yearly contest for one of the different disciplines possible at the club
- have to be a continuous member of previously mentioned club at least one year before you can even apply for your first licence
- your first licence can only be in a single .22 weapon, this weapons will be registered to you as a person and your place of residence
- your gun and ammo needs to be in separate safe's, also the gun may not be stored in a loaded state
- after you have the weapon you will be checked at random and you need to be able to show the weapon at the visiting police officer immediately, or if you cannot show it at the local police station within a few days after the visit. if they visit they will check if your safe('s) are properly mounted to wall/floor
- have to extend your licence yearly
- if you fail the checks or violate any laws you will lose your license and you will need to either store your weapon(s) at a registered location or sell them, evidence of both will need to be shared with the police. you can apply for a new licence after one year of probation
- the maximum amount of weapons you can have registered at any time is 5
Firearms are either considered a part of sport (hence the clubs) of for hunting which has their own subset of rules. You can never have any full automatic firearms, those are considered for military use only.
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It can be done. Europe as a whole was on its way to become as car centric as the US back in the 1960's. People seriously revolted against that, most strongly in the Netherlands which is why it has such nice bike infrastructure.
We got gun laws because after WW2 Europe was full of guns, they were everywhere and it was untenable. So we got our shit together and did something about it.
That's good information. It does sound like the backlash happened before large scale car friendly infrastructure got too ingrained. That's likely an easier pivot earlier on. And curious if guns were as fetishized culturally as it is in the US?
I still think industry financial interests are still the biggest roadblock to any meaningful change. In the US especially, where profit comes before well being, almost all of the time.
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No the guns weren't as fetishized. On the other hand in the first half of the 20th century large bits of Europe had been occupied by the Germans twice. The idea that you wanted to be armed in case of a foreign invasion happening was a lot stronger, and more well founded, than the wettest dream of a 2nd amendement lover. Lots of people had been in the armed resistance and a lot of those who had not wished they had had the opportunity.
