When I said that in this thread I was rebuked. More evidence that side just doesn’t get it.
This one seems to get it. I like her back pedaling: https://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/story/36587/20180711/ny21-secret-video-captures-cobb-statement-on-assault-weapons
She doesn’t get it, she’s just a liar. She lies by omission while campaigning.
To be fair, this is part of the failure of social media, where content is culled for you personally and you only see content that will likely generate income and click throughs.
Both sides are taking past each other, and I know that at least my relatives who voted for Trump with reservations because of this. But PBS did cover the subject.
Who know’s what the tailored message is, but I would also say that my relatives did see through her general ignorance on the actual subject. Which isn’t that different from our normal human reactions and biases.
I want to be clear, I am not pro-gun, but when someone invokes ‘assault weapons’ is is blatantly clear that a person is working off of fear and not knowledge, or trying to leverage the fear of others.
What seems to just be missed by people who share most of my personal political beliefs that ‘assault weapons’ is just aesthetics. While the AR15 is popular, any law that effectively outlawed it for it’s function would be effectively a ban on a broad class of firearms that most people without exposure would think as “sporting” rifles.
It seriously invokes the same twinge for this voter block as when someone someone denies global warming or says ‘all lives matter’
Both sides ignore that the majority of “gun violence” in cities is directly related to the drug trade or other black market activities as these individuals have no access to the legal system and thus resort to implementing their own.
Coal Miners in PA or other strongly Trump loyal groups have far more in common with the urban poor than they thing. Limited opportunities, education paths etc…
The middle and working classes should be united in their needs and would be extremely powerful. But when a candidate ‘claims’ to not want to ban guns then resorts to anti-intellectual groupings and suggests a ban based on looks or a broad group that is effectively a ban it makes their credibility go down. Really it is probably ignorance, as we are all far more ignorant about topics than than we will ever be experts, but it is one way where ignorance or maybe dogwistles are red lights on the other side.
I get bored of these debates because neither side will actually have a real conversation and dont’ participate. But if you don’t think gun control was a large factor it may be useful to spend some time, because it may be cultural blindness.
It was a big factor, and the current calls for gun control will most definitely increase the conservative turnout in the mid-terms, which is a bummer for most of my pet causes.
To be clear, I personally think firearms are a net negative on society, but they are very basic technology and without massive confiscation plans this is just something that we will pay for history on.
The UK’s 1689 Bill of Rights, permitted ownership “as allowed by law”; unfortunately for this cause our national and state constitutions call it a right. So while confiscation and destruction was easier to pass during the Anglo-Irish War in the UK, we would have to have to get 2/3s of the states agree to change that at the national level.
As confiscation is a huge concern for that voting block it is tone deaf to say you don’t support it then hold them up as a model. In 1997 a letter was sent to every holder of licensed pistol from the local police, detailing when and where their registered weapons were to be surrendered without compensation.
It may be helpful for people on the left to think how their message is viewed in that context.
The NRA isn’t just powerful because of money, but because most of their money is from their 6,000,000 members. 90% of the NRAs donations are from people who gave less than $200 in a single year. It is a real stretch to think that voting block has no impact.
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That is so far from the political front line of the gun control battle in the US it’s not even funny. I thought the thread was going to be about a 5-4 conservative majority on the USSC.
Maybe someplace where the body politic already favored gun laws like say those in the UK 3D printing could (eventually) be relevant to gun control, don’t see how it would be in the US without a radical change in the electorate’s views. -
That might be a minor issue with people making primitive 3D guns with $2k machines…when they could just buy a workable gun for a few $100. I know, the machine cost could be spread across various guns and other things, but still guns and at home ‘additive manufacturing’ is a curiosity and will remain so. Additive manufacturing in general (including commercial scale) is not a curiosity, with overwhelming upside compared to oddball downside like this example.
It’s really hard to buy any “Trump was elected because of GUN CONTROL!” claims when the dude was elected by such a hair-thin margin. Sure, if democrats had been pro-gun he probably would have lost. Or if democrats were anti-gay. Or anti-immigration. Or anti-environment. Or, or, or, or…
A good SLS metal printer (Selective laser sintering) IS getting alot cheaper, I believe we are down to around $25K for a small “hobbyist” model.
SLS is the tech used to do this
With a good SLS unit you can easily make each of the parts and assemble a perfectly working gun as easily as you could reassemble any production gun.
3d printed plastic guns are no big deal, cheaper more effective methods of making a gun requiring little skill are out there. You would literally be better off machining parts from a block of good solid plastic than trying to 3d print one. I could build a simple and durable steel single shot pistol in an afternoon at the local makerspace with about $20 in materials. Might take 3 minutes to reload and wont look anything like a production gun but would easily kill.
In the current political alignment the Democrats, not in general but candidates in key states and districts in Congress, do have to be relatively pro gun, or else the Democrats can’t win a majority in Congress. Relatively quite pro-gun at least compared to the kind of strict national gun control that would make 3D printing of guns a serious enforcement issue. It wasn’t a clerical oversight that the Democrats did essentially nothing on national gun control with the majority in Obama’s first two years. ‘Too busy with other things’ is a excuse. There aren’t anywhere near the votes in plausible Democratic-majority houses of Congress for national gun control strict enough to drive people to make 3D printing guns as a serious thing. And anyway if there were those votes there’d be votes to make that illegal also, just home machine shops to make regular metal guns.
Trump is a non-sequitur to this discussion.
There are a lot more gun owners and NRA members in reliable voting blocks then those other groups. The fact that it was a narrow victory shows that by alienating one of the largest citizen funded special interest groups is important.
Or are you saying that the NRA doesn’t have political power, or that their voter guides don’t influence their base which is also more reliable to vote than the general population.
Because I am confused why it couldn’t be an issue for the election, but somehow this citizen group (which I do not personally support but envy their ability to elicit action) is not one of the most influential groups in the country?
Because everything I can find doesn’t support that idea and I am not alone in my beliefs that they are powerful.
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/388517-bernie-sanders-nra-to-blame-for-lack-of-action-on-gun-control
“It’s a three-letter word. It’s the NRA,” Sanders said. “And it’s Trump and the Republicans who don’t have the guts to stand up to these people and that’s pretty pathetic."
Given how the NRA has been shown to be in bed with russia, I’m not at all convinced that the democrats could ever be pro-gun enough for them. Not that I agree you have to be in bed with the NRA to get elected president. Unless I imagined Obama…
In any case, even if we imagined that the democrats were to take some kind of hardline gun-grabbing stance (and then used ‘accio guns’ to carry out their wishes), I am not of the opinion that every single gun owner would promptly turn to 3D printing to home-make replacements, just because I don’t think the technology isn’t there yet to make a reliable weapon that way. It’s easy enough (unlike metalworking tools), but the products are inferior and you can’t make things like bullets that way.
This could change - with a proper star trek replicator that could manufacture metal and gunpowder and juicy medium-rare steak dinners, of course everyone, their prepubescent child, and their incarcerated brother will be making guns to play with. Guns for everyone! It’ll be awesome! Absolutely no possible badness could possible come of this. But it’s not happening today, or tomorrow.
It occurs to me that one brand of gun owner won’t prosper under the new “free guns for all” world order: collectors. To a person who considers guns a collectible I imagine that a 3D printed gun would be boring.
Do you really think that the $2,500 from ~50 Russian nationals in dues and subscriptions will really impact an organization that had spent over $35 million?
They need to fix their funding policies to be compliant with Federal law, but this isn’t going to make the millions of people who are citizens change their minds?
The responsible leaders will step down, and the org will move on or another org will grow in it’s place. The FEC complaints aren’t targeted at the millions of citizens who they influence and the members will most likely shrug it off as some bad actors. It is just human nature to apply moral failings to groups we don’t identify with while making excuses for those we do.
It is probably a better bet to help groups like the ACLU who are on the other side, they just grew to a significant fraction of the size of the NRA after the last election, and while they will still irk everyone by focusing on rights and not ideology they are at least in the running.
I’ll just say that I consider this NRA stuff to the boring part of this discussion and honestly regret answering it, or the general claim that ONLY guns mattered to the outcome of the election, even as much as I have.