There is a lot of truth in this. As much as I would love to melt down every gun in the nation, it is far more important to wrest the House away from Paul Ryan and the Senate away from Mitch McConnell. More lives are going to be lost due to the destruction of the ACA and the gutting of the EPA than my firearms. Guns may be a nice shiny object, but we can’t beat ourselves with them.
You know what, righties? You can call me a gun-grabber. I wanna grab your guns, and you can tell your friends I said that.
Now, I don’t want to take all your guns. I’m reasonable. I understand that there can be a legitimate purpose for civilian ownership of guns in this day and age. Some people like to hunt. Some people like target-shooting. Some people live in the country and have animals they need to protect from varmints, or are worried that they can’t rely on law enforcement to reach them in time if the worst happens. I’m OK with that.
Here’s the thing; the Second Amendment guarantees you a right to bear arms. That doesn’t mean you have an unconditional right to own any weapon ever conceived of by man. We’ve banned classes of weapons in the past. You can’t own a sawed-off shotgun. You can’t own a machine gun (unless you go through all the hurdles). You can’t walk into a store and buy a Gatling gun, or a howitzer, or an Abrams tank.
Handguns and semi-automatic rifles are not tools which one can legitimately claim to need for hunting, or recreation, or home defense. They are custom-designed for one purpose only; the killing of human beings as quickly and efficiently as possible. You can’t hunt with a Saturday night special or an assault rifle. The only reason to have one of these is if you want to kill a human - and that’s not a power that a civilian needs to have.
You want a shotgun? Fine. You want a bolt-action rifle? Fine. You want a weapon of war? No thank you.
Why not? If the shoe fits…
We don’t give them a pass. We also don’t elect them to high office, unlike the Republicans.
Well, we do what we must because we can, for the good of all of us (except the ones who are dead).
I was actually thinking about part of that last night. As part of sweetening the pot I (with my unilateral authority to negotiate on behalf of all gun control advocates) am more than willing to offer rescinding all fees associated with registering and buying firearms (obviously, private fees imposed by the gun dealer are not part of that), as ability to pay a $200 tax stamp does not have anything to do with the ability to use these weapons responsibly.
As far as the Roberti-Roos bill, that was a state bill, and a state that I don’t live in, so I don’t have authority to negotiate on their behalf, but I will say that it did grandfather all the stuff you currently have, just required paperwork to transfer it, which I would keep as a requirement for anything not on the “unrestricted” list.
It is a problem that guns need to be defined by cosmetic features, rather than function, as it allows people to get around any restrictions by simply changing a cosmetic feature to achieve the function of a gun that was restricted.
That’s why I think it is easier to define what is on the unrestricted list, the things that you can buy unless you have a specific and legal ineligibility to have a firearm, than to define the restricted lists.
But, as far as what is an assault weapon? That’s a good question, as any cosmetic definition I could make can be easily sidestepped by a cosmetic change. Note the beltway sniper used a Bushmaster XM-15, which is supposedly different from the AR-15, which was banned at the time, but I don’t really see what the difference is. My personal definition of an assault weapon is something I would carry with me when I am going to attack someone else, and want to be able to kill lots of people. It’s kinda like porn, hard to define, but you know it when you see it. Maybe we take all new guns down to the range, and then classify them based on the amount of drool produced by the observers.
Even when the political capital was there, with the AWB in '94, they still did a poor job of implementing it. We need an actual plan in order to get people to back it.
Private schools are not immune from shootings.
I agree that that was the political situation, and still is to some extent, but that is changing. People are getting fed up with this, they don’t want to send their kids to school to be slaughtered. Any parent that puts their kid on the bus, and the thought even flits through their mind that this may be the last time that they see them, that they may have just sent them off to be killed, is going to get behind gun control. If that’s not enough, any kid that has had to participate in an active shooter drill will never vote for someone endorsed by the NRA.
And they will vote. The youth vote is ignored, because they are not reliable voters. But, that’s because they don’t care all that much and are confused about what their politics are, vs their parents vs their community and peers. Well, now they do care, and they are galvanized, and every year, more of them will be able to vote, and vote they will. Last time the youth vote was organized was when we were sending them off to die in Vietnam. They are going to get organized over being sent off to die at school.
The dems don’t have single issue voters on gun control like the conservatives do. On not only this board, but all across, we are told that they will not vote for someone who has any chance of impacting anything about their guns. They already don’t trust democrats, and will not vote for them even if they have an ‘A’ from the NRA. No matter the economic or social policies offered, they will only vote for those who will ensure that there is nothing put between them and their desire to acquire more guns.
They are breeding single issue voters on gun control, though. They will ignore all the other economic and social policies, just as the single issue gun voters on the right do. They will not care about anything except restricting access to guns. That’s pretty much just as unhealthy as being a single issue pro-gun voter, as it’s pretty unhealthy to be a single issue voter on more or less anything, but that will be a growing demographic that can be courted by the democrats.
While I agree that it is quite unlikely for the US to commit a complete self genocide, you do have to admit, that it’s not that impractical. there are more guns than there are people, so it could be arranged.
The two go hand in hand. The same people that want to do all the damages you are worried about also want to increase availability of guns. It’s not even a matter of walking and chewing gum, as it is the same fight, just on another front.
What you mean is, “listen to the single issue voters.”
Seen on Twitter:
He doesn’t need me anymore! How will I go on?
:sob, moan:
A blog is not a cite. And Mother Jones is so far from a neutral, rational cite that it’s beyond Pluto.
You don’t? What about Kamala Harris in California?
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/374057-kamala-harris-we-cant-live-in-us-with-any-level-of-pride-when-our-babies-are
Kamala Harris? That’s your example of a “crazy loudmouth”?
Curious what it is in that article that she said that you consider crazy? Saying that she supports the 2nd amendment but says that “we have to have smart gun safety laws.”. What is crazy about that?
Here’s my take on the grubby* political calculations:
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Any election that’s not a Presidential election is largely about getting your base to turn out and vote. Forget the low-information median voter until 2020.
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Will a strong Democratic stand on gun control get more Dems to vote? I firmly believe it will. People will vote if they feel their politicians are actually going to DO SOMETHING about the issues they care about. A lot of Dems care about gun control.
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Will a strong Democratic stand on gun control get more Republicans to vote? Not by very much, IMHO. People who feel their Second Amendment rights are under attack, always feel their 2A rights are under attack. They’re reliable voters in all seasons.
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Will a significant number of pro-gun but otherwise Dem voters switch sides or stay home if the Dems make a big deal about gun control?
I doubt it. Much as I respect SenorBeef as a poster, and much as I agree that there’s no inherent conflict between taking an expansive view of the Second Amendment and taking the Dem side of practically any other issue, there’s been a great sorting-out of the two parties on political issues. Even when it’s not about ideological coherence: it should be a lot more possible than it is to be a pro-choice Republican or a pro-life Democrat, but politicians of both of those types are getting squeezed out. And the same with pro-gun Dems and pro-gun-control Republicans. (There’s some obvious (to me, at least) reasons why that’s so, and I’ll try to come back to that later if the work day permits. But I think we can all see that it’s been happening.) And in the wake of those politicians gradually disappearing, there are fewer voters in those zones as well.
Summing up, I think Dems have a lot more to gain than lose in 2018 by going big on gun control.
- Using this term facetiously. First, I believe that politics can be an honorable art. And second, politicians in particular have to ask themselves if this is the hill that’s worth dying on, given all the other things they want to accomplish. I may disagree with septimus’ conclusion, but politicians do have to take these factors into account. It was a question that deserved to be raised.
Can you explain what that has to do with anything?
The idea of ‘nutpicking’ is pretty straightforward, and would be regardless of where it came from. You can find partisans on the Internet for any crazy far-left or far-right idea, even if it’s way beyond what any Dem or GOP politician or public figure would support.
Finding the random nut on the Web who supports Position X which is ‘beyond Pluto’ as one might say, and using that as evidence that some of your ideological adversaries take Position X - that’s nutpicking. It’s not quite the same as a straw man, but very little daylight in between.
Sure, there’s someone out there who takes that position, but it doesn’t mean shit, because there’s someone out there who takes any position. What matters is things like, do a lot of people on the other side take that position? Do prominent figures in the other party take that position?
If they don’t, but some rando does, using the rando as an example of what the other side believes and supports, is nutpicking.
Just because Kevin Drum of Mother Jones came up with the name, doesn’t magically make the concept invalid. Here endeth the lesson.
I love the disingenuous of the NRA in blaming everything possible but guns for the shootings. As if Cruz could’ve walked in with a machete and killed 17 people before he had the beat shit out of him.
That’s what the establishment always says. They used to say that about segregation, civil rights, votes for women…
If you don’t even try you WILL lose.
If you try you MIGHT win.
Public opinion has a way of shifting quickly, when the public is forced to reconsider its preconceptions. Gay marriage went from a ridiculous idea to mainstream in just a few years that way. We already see from the new Quinnipiac poll that the tipping point may already have been reached on gun control.
Ah, the Chinese Bowling Ball Torture.
You are in NO position to provide lessons.
That being said, if the poster wanted to argue that something was an example of the “weak-man fallacy”, he could of quoted a neutral, unbiased source. Instead, he went straight to a blog on Mother Jones.:rolleyes:
Another poster seemingly relishes in posting links to Daily Kos, and then makes silly jokes about “cooties” and “shields up”.
If either of them have a legitimate point, they should be able to come up with better sources.
That’s hysteria, pure and simple.
No it’s not. We just had a massacre at a high school. Those students are all somebody’s babies. Sandy Hook were all people’s babies.
You need better examples for your bothsidesdoit gotcha ya attempt. This is very weak sauce and entirely unconvincing except for perhaps those on the same extreme political side as you appear to be.
It was prolly this part:
Totally cray-cray amirite?
:rolleyes:
:dubious:
ETA: Hey, I was right! That is the part that he thinks is crazy!
:rolleyes:
Well, there isn’t. But:
Three of the ten worst mass shootings in U.S. history have been in the past five months.
The Las Vegas massacre was on October 1, 2017.
The Texas church massacre was on November 5, 2017.
And now the Parkland school massacre on February 14, 2018.
And that’s been on top of the fact that it’s been less than two years since the Orlando massacre, just over two since the San Bernardino massacre, and less than three since the Charleston church shooting.
Maybe it’s just a fluke, but it sure seems like the pace is picking up.
Even if you think it’s not a problem on the scale of [insert bigger problem here], maybe we ought to nip it in the bud before the massacres become even more of a regular occurrence.
Me, I’m joining the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Anti-Massacree Movement.