Help gun nuts describe their views

The BBQ Pit
1

Lumpy started a thread to understand the difference between rational-thinking Americans and crazed gun nuts, and was suprised to learn that the rational thinkers support the right of self-defense.

Perhaps you think the SDMB is a leftist board. I’ve debunked this before; here’s the TL;DR version:

On economic issues, the board has a very centrist consensus. Views from both the extreme left and extreme right are booed down. On military issues, we approve of air strikes against the terrorist group ISIS, but disapprove of putting American troops on the ground in a country like Saddam-era Iraq that had already been rendered harmless.

On social issues, we’re libertarian: Women should have choice over their own bodies; gays should have the liberty to marry; blacks should have free access to public accomodations. It’s not our fault if the Koch Brothers have preempted the word “libertarian” to translate as property rights, property rights, and property rights, and use as their prime example of “liberty” the liberty to shoot a black stealing toilet paper in a public restroom to wipe his ass.

But what about guns? Lumpy asked me what questions would be better to focus on the gun-debate divide. I’m not the best one to do it, since I’m not strongly pro-gun control. I was neutral on guns most of my life, but my position has changed recently. I still don’t care about gun control, and the issue wouldn’t make my Top 1000 List, but I do have one strong opinion: Many gun nuts tend to be sick confused cowards, so stupid that’s it unfortunate they have the rights to breed and to vote.

One Doper is afraid to travel overseas – he wouldn’t be able to carry his handgun. Another Doper needs a silencer since guns are loud when fired indoors. :confused: :eek: (Isn’t firing a gun indoors supposed to be quite rare? Less than once per lifetime if you’re lucky?)

So I’m hoping fellow Dopers will help me come up with questions to distinguish the views of rational-thinking Americans from the gun nuts. I know polls aren’t allowed in BBQ Pit, but we can design the questions here, then open the poll in IMHO.

We’ll start with a Yes/No question:
Question 1: Suppose that all the cops in your town are called away (e.g. to stalk Obama’s Boys as they conduct their Jade Helm operation against Texas). Civilians are asked to volunteer as cops for a day; you quickly volunteer since you already have a gun. You’re called on to investigate a youth brandishing a (possibly toy) weapon.

Yes or No: Do you race up right next to the kid to take him by surprise and immediately shoot to kill?

Let’s try a multiple-choice question.
Question 2. What are your views on the Second Amendment? Pick the response that comes closest.
(A) It’s similar to Leviticus 11:3. “You may eat any animal that has a divided hoof and that chews the cud.” Yes, my atheist and pagan friends tell me rabbit is delicious, but rabbits don’t have a divided hoof. It’s not mine to question why Jehovah doesn’t want me to eat it.
Similarly, the same Jehovah inspired the Constitution writers and encouraged us to have guns. It doesn’t matter why. If cops kill a hundred civilians every month, babies kill babies and family members mistakenly shoot each other in the dark, that’s just a price we happily pay for obeying Jehovah.
(B) Same as (A), but substitute “the ineffable wisdom of the Founding Fathers” for Jehovah. We Americans want and need our guns: think of Dodge City or Deadwood. (Nevermind the left-wing revisionists who insist that these Wild West towns enforced gun control!)
(C) Yeah, those Fathers seem pretty stupid by now, and I’m glad we gave the niggers back the extra 2/5 of their personhood, but those were different times. Unfortunately, guns are ingrained in our DNA by now. Since most of you are packing heat ready to shoot me if I brandish a lit cigarette or something, I’ve got to carry a gun in self-defence.
(D) People who think the Second Amendment describes a “God given right” aren’t very smart. Humans are fallible and conditions change. If guns are good, fine – debate them on their merits. Don’t just hide behind blither and blather that puts an 18th-century law on some special pedestal.

2

Some will call this hyperbolic, but it isn’t. I have elided a few steps.

The right of a restaurant owner to deny admission to anyone for any reason, including skin color, is the quintessential paragon of the usurped label “Libertarianism” in post-rational America. Now suppose a black sneaks in to a white-only restaurant, enters the restroom, and begins soiling the privately-owned toilet paper with his own shit.

My acquaintance, Danny from Texas, is proud to live in Texas because of its anti-crime pro-gun laws. The example he gave was someone stealing a broken-down TV set; Danny was proud that he had the right to shoot the thief even after the thief left his property. He even described what he’d do: Bring the guy down with shots to his center-of-mass, then approach for a final head shot.

Danny insisted that he’d do this no matter how broken and worthless the TV set was. It seemed fair to extrapolate to toilet paper.

I’m sure most SDMB gun nuts are not as stupid as Danny. I encourage them to come up with their own answer to Question 2. But please try to be a little more intelligent than the usual screed which translates as “The Second Amendment is the Second Amendment because it’s the Second Amentment. Duh!”

3

Wow, that’s one poisoned well there. I’m really not sure exactly what you’re trying to accomplish here with such over-the-top loaded questions. What’s with the false dichotomy of rational Americans and gun nuts? Yes, both extremes are quite loud with their obnoxious rhetoric, but it seems to me that the vast majority of Americans lie somewhere in between.

Using myself as an example, I’m a strong supporter of gun rights, and I live in a state (Virginia) where I have easy access to guns and to carry one pretty much wherever I go; yet, I do not own a gun, nor do I have a desire to own one in the immediate future. I am not the least bit frightened to be aware that a significant fraction of the people I pass on a daily basis are carrying. In general, I see guns as just another piece of property, and just like any other piece of property, as long as it’s responsibly owned, I don’t really care.

That all said, I think the idea that “the second amendment says so” is silly. Yes, I think it’s indisputable that it supports gun rights, but it’s no different than saying that the first amendment grants freedom of speech, so I must go around sharing my opinion with everyone around me just because I have that right. That something is my right doesn’t make it a good idea, but at the same time, we must exercise our rights to ensure that we keep them; it’s a delicate balance. I’m bothered when I see people carrying in a way that they know causes alarm and draws negative attention to gun ownership, like when I read stories about citizens marching down the street with rifles on their backs. Similarly, I’ve had conversations with friends that carry basically everywhere about situations where they may want to think about their motivations in carrying at certain times and in certain places. And that, personally, if I felt like I needed to carry on a daily basis, rather than because I wanted to, then it was a sign that I probably needed to move to a safer neighborhood.

In short, that something is a right isn’t enough reason to do so, but at the same time, I also think that any restrictions on rights need to be thoroughly defended, and generally, most restrictions on gun rights, though well intentioned, don’t seem to be well thought out, and largely motivated by fear and ignorance. Just as in a debate, the onus is on the one making the claim to provide evidence for it, if we truly believe in liberty, I feel the onus is on the person who claims we’d be better off without a given right to back it up. This is why I’m pro gun, but it’s also why I’m pro marriage equality, pro marijuana legalization, pro choice, etc.

There’s a ton of rhetoric around this issue, and it’s muddied by people on both sides, but we really need to stop being so being reactionary to various shootings, comparing the US to other countries in ways that aren’t comparable, or even comparing states that aren’t comparable, and stop looking at guns themselves as good or evil or right vs privilege or whatever. In my view, a lot of the things that come up about guns, they’re an easy scapegoat, and perhaps a potential band-aid fix, but ultimately, we can’t just keep ignoring the root causes, like socioeconomic issues, mental health, etc.

4

“Do you believe that the Second Amendment says that, if the Second Amendment is repealed, when They come for your guns, you get to shoot Them?” See: Defense of freedom vs. a tyrannical state.

5

Except for the “poisoned well” paragraph, it sounds like you and I are in agreement!

I do read about babies killing babies, off-duty cops shooting their daughter accidentally, and red-necks parading around with assault rifles, and feel that maybe … just maybe … American’s fascination with the gun has gone too far. The fact that a significant portion of American voters treat gun rights as the number one issue would be amusing for its stupidity if it didn’t lead to poor electoral results.

And what do you think about the Tamir Rice shooting, etc., Blaster Master? I guess you’re not afraid to travel overseas, since you don’t carry inside USA.

I ranted primarily to ridicule those who treat the Second Amendment as the Word of God. You call it “silly”; I’d go farther.

6

The quote in the OP from Gatopescado is from a poll designed to separate the “pro-gun” and “anti-gun” groups. It failed in that over 75% voted in favor of gun rights, even the self-professed “anti-gun” people. I think it exposed a fundamental misunderstanding between the two sides.

The issue is who has the right to regulate gun ownership. On the one side, we have people who think the 2[sup]nd[/sup] Amendment says that only the individual has the right to regulate whether they can own a gun; the other side thinks that the government has the right to regulate gun ownership. Of course there’s a few outliers who think guns should be completely banned.

The question is whether gun ownership should be a Constitutional right or a statuary right. The specific poll didn’t separate the two so the results were very heavily skewed to wards having gun rights, thus combining the two positions into one group.

Perhaps it would be better to focus on the regulatory aspects of guns with your new questions:
Å] Should guns be registered?
ı] Should training be required before obtaining a gun?
Ç] Should well-regulated State Militias be allowed to own nuclear weapons?
Î] Should open-carry be outlawed.

These are just examples of fairly straight forward questions that are specifically designed to expose the dichotomy of opinions.

7

This is the worst OP I’ve seen on the SDMB in a long time.

8

Did anyone else read thread title as

“Help! Gun nuts describe their views!”

9

'base, you’re so goddam hot when you’re being crotchety.

10

He’s pretty much all crotch.

11

Who is the “we” of which you speak? Sounds to me like you are describing your own views.

As I’ve said many times before, if we define “left and right” on a European scale, this board is probably pretty centrist. On a US scale, not so much. But that assumes a one dimensional model can adequately explain something as complex as political philosophy. I don’t believe it can, and so any such model is bound to make inaccurate predictions.

As for the issue of guns, it would help if you linked to the thread in question and briefly described what the actual issue is. It’s easy to get lost in the noise.

12

God bless the USA.

You can pry my dozens of firearms and thousands of rounds of ammo from my cold, dead hands, except liberals are too cowardly and weak to do so. So keep whining and moping around on the internet, because you will never succeed.

Gun grabbers have lost legislatively, you’ve lost in the courts, you’ve lost in the court of public opinion, and you’ve obviously lost in any physical confrontation. Your efforts are absolutely futile, and you will never live in an America with fewer firearms than we have today. You have utterly failed at your objectives in every possible way.

Molon Labe.

13

There are some really effective treatments for testosterone poisoning these days.

14

Actually he has the opposite problem. If he had sufficient levels of natural testosterone, he wouldn’t be desperately trying to augment with guns and bluster. “Look at how manly I am” isn’t something you hear from people who actually are.

15

Ooh, here’s a good poll question.

“Do GUN GRABBERS exist?”

16

Is Construct for real? I haven’t been on here that much lately, but I feel like every post I see of his is Poe’s Law in action.

17

Are commie-bastard GUN GRABBERS overrunning the country?

18

“GUN GRABBERS: huge threat to America, or the hugest threat to America?”

19

I agree that the OP of this thread is a mess, and doesn’t address the issue.

The original thread is here. The thread was intended to find differences between pro and anti gun Dopers. However, the poll questions were designed in a way that virtually everyone, pro and anti gun, answered them the same way. The OP then asked if there were a way to formulate better questions, and this thread is one response.

My questions would be:

  • Do you think that the current gun culture in the U.S. (general beliefs about guns and their role in our society) is fine, or would you like to see an active effort to change this culture?

  • Regardless of the potential for success, would you like to see the Second Amendment repealed?

I think there is also room for a poll on the right to self-defense that more specifically addresses the question of when it’s O.K. to use deadly force:

  • When you or someone else is in imminent danger of being killed?
  • When you fear that you might be in such danger, but are not certain (i.e., there’s an intruder in your house, or you see someone on the street brandishing a weapon)?
  • When there is a threat to your property?
  • When you are in danger, but have the ability to safely retreat?
20

Guns don’t have nuts, I do, so I don’t need a gun. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t get one, but I don’t need it to replace something else I also have.