First off, Red Dawn? For real? As much as I like Patrick Swaze, it’s silly to even mention a movie in this context.
Second of all, you didn’t actually dispute my statement about the definition of a slippery slope argument. There exists both fallacious and non-fallacious slippery slope arguments. And further, the tactic of opposing incremental restrictions is not one based merely on logical truisms - it’s one of tactics and strategy. We’ve had discussions on this board about this before. In that thread, RP stated: “When people invoke the slippery slope, they are almost never saying that some action will logically require another. They are just saying that the probability of the latter action is significantly increased.” From a discussion on slippery slopes from Prof. Volokh:
There is no distinction between federal or state when it comes to the individual. Does it matter to him that the person threatening them with prison if they do not surrender their property wears a badge from the FBI or from the sheriff? Your insistence on clinging to this meaningless distinction without a difference is unpersuasive.
And it’s a joke. Just because we engage in imbecilic security theater in one arena is no support to propagate the practice in other areas. And wasn’t it you who criticized this:
This is fantasy land. I might as well say that I support universal background checks, registration, and licensing as long as we also have a constitutional amendment saying that gun ownership is a suspect class and that no firearms, weapons, or accessories will ever be banned or restricted in the future and that all firearm laws will be in the future and retroactively subject to strict scrutiny with all levels of government to pay for attorney fees when they lose challenges based on the new amendment. If that happens, then sure I’d support registration. And I want a unicorn. Your proposal emboldens gun control advocates.
These are banned in CA. Suppressors are banned in many states.
Yes, I do not want prohibited persons to obtain firearms. I have no problem when firearms are taken from a prohibited person. You aren’t following the complaint. The issue is that gun control advocates engage in multi-pronged efforts. One of those is to expand the list of prohibited people. This is a backdoor way to limit those who can own firearms. So yes it’s obvious we don’t want prohibited people to have firearms - it’s in the name 'natch. But then the question becomes, who is a prohibited person, how is a new prohibited person determined, what process surrounds who can be designated a prohibited person, etc. If some bureaucrat has the ability to declare tomorrow that you are now a prohibited person, and you have little to no recourse to contest it, and the sheriff is at your door (from the state of course) to confiscate your weapons that you have dutifully registered, I think you’d be upset.
So fine - give me a constitutional amendment like I stated earlier, and then and only then would I consider any action supported by gun control advocates.
This applies to magazine restrictions, ammo restrictions, zoning restrictions, ivory bans, and all manner of incremental actions designed to impact gun ownership. These incremental efforts are what you seem either blind to, or are willing to accept because you think that gun control advocates will stop at some point. Maybe they will - but 100% of past experience does not support that idea.
You are not understanding. It’s not an argument - it’s a strategy. I’m not saying that the second must follow from the first - but it is better tactics to defend against the first reducing the possibility of the second.