Cry moar.
I can’t imagine they would have a problem with that.
Your misreading of my posts doesn’t make me look like an idiot.
Well, I don’t know how outraged I’d be, but I’m not outraged by this either. I’d probably have the same reaction: rolling my eyes, and thinking “this is really what they consider important?” Just because you want me to say that I’d think PP was acting awesomely doesn’t mean that I did. I will grant that “sarcasm” was the wrong word, but that’s a fairly common misuse of it and the rest of my post was clear. I guess I meant “kind of, yeah” as hyperbolic understatement
Sure, but lots of law-and-policy changes are supposedly steps on the slippery slope, and yet Massachusetts has failed to legalize pedophilia and it doesn’t seem like people are all about the bestiality there, either. The police are not confiscating guns, outlawing them, or even being heavy-handed about the buyback program. I just don’t think the slope is there, and you aren’t really convincing me, or other people, otherwise.
Clearly not. I said that I think the government should be involved in projects that are in the public good, that aren’t profitable for private industry, and that aren’t adequately covered by charity. Gun buybacks clearly fall under my parameters of acceptable government involvement, since they’re taking guns that, legally, gun dealers can’t accept as well as ones that no one wants. I recognize that those parameters are part of why I consider myself a liberal, and that’s explains why I don’t have a problem with government involvement. It doesn’t mean they have to get involved, and please tell me where I said that. I only said it’s reasonable that they would. If charities or private dealers want to get involved, then the government doesn’t need to. However, there’s obviously a gap there or people wouldn’t use the program at all.
And what is the moral right? Do you think countries with strict gun control laws are immoral? And is any gun restriction immoral? Because, frankly, I don’t want to outlaw guns. They are still necessary to hunt, and there are still places where you can get eaten by a bear, so guns are good there, too. I’m even okay with low-caliber handguns. No problem there. But I am not convinced that any of my fellow citizens need the sort of guns they usually send into war zones. For me, there is definitely an upper limit to how much people should be armed. People aren’t allowed to have nukes, or predator drones, or fully-armed tanks.
…And that’s where the analogy falls apart. Abortion is a health care matter. Guns aren’t.
Damn right I would, but that wasn’t what we were talking about before. If the police were handing out gift cards to get people to promise to never, ever, ever touch a firearm again, then the NRA would have a point. But that’s not what’s happening.
I’m not pro-choice simply because Roe v. Wade exists and people want it not to, but instead for many reasons involving health issues, privacy, and a person’s right to say what happens to their body. If we woke up tomorrow in a magical world where women only became pregnant when they wanted to, nothing ever went wrong during the pregnancy, and everyone took care of and supported one another, then abortion wouldn’t be necessary and we could ban it always. Abortion isn’t sacred, but it is vital for a whole bunch of reasons I’m not getting into now. What’s so special about guns besides that they’re legal and there’s debate on how legal they should be?
The study they cite is 2010. The gallup poll I cited showed a spike in ownership since then, particularly among democrats and easterners.
No it doesn’t. It shows a spike in sales.
Wrong. Here you go, again.
Coward? No, as a “anti-gun (but gun owning) idiot” I think anyone who thinks a fire extinguisher gives them an advantage over fire doesn’t even rise to the level of idiot.
From Living Room To [del]Inferno[/del] Fire That Can’t Be Put Out With Almost All Household Fire Extinguishers In Under [del]2[/del] ~1 Minute
The only advantage you can have over a fire is knowing how quickly a fire goes from fightable with an extinguisher to only fightable by trained professionals.
This is why all my fire extinguisher mountings have been directly by exits and not near the places that fires are likely to start. I know sometimes the best thing you can do with a fire extinguisher is shed its weight so you can run out the door faster.
Most gun owners don’t possess a harnessed killer instinct, a hardened heart, most criminals do. Owning a firearm does not give you an advantage. It barely puts you on equal terms with a criminal even if your killer instincts are clean and strong and you don’t hesitate at the moment of truth.
See all the threads where folks think a shotgun in Condition Three is adequate because “the sound of racking a shotgun” is enough to end a combat situation (in fact that noise is much more likely to reveal your position than scare bad guy. Robbers that really don’t want to be robbing an occupied are just as likely to scared off by hearing any sound indicating that the house is occupied as they by racking a shotgun). If your weapon isn’t in Condition Two, One, or Zero then your “killer instincts” are not clean and strong. See the GD thread where Sgt. Dennis Tueller’s hard learned knowledge that in certain situations bringing a knife to a “gun fight” is completely reasonable is dismissed.
Moreover most folks don’t spend their lives at anything more than Condition White, especially when they’re at home, armed house invaders and street criminals are far more likely to be in Condition Orange or Red when you encounter them. It’s very common advice that when you’re not somewhere you consider safe, outdoors say, you should always be in Condition Yellow, but how many folks actually always do that? Bad guys tend to avoid folks who appear in Condition Yellow and they really don’t like to telegraph their intentions. Muggers don’t work at 7+ yards they work at ~1 yard.
It’s far more likely most folks will switch from Condition White to Condition Black when confronted, and extremely few folks do, or can, train to switch from Condition Black to Condition Red.
Some “anti-gun idiots” seem to have a much better grasp of the realities and limitations firearms than some “anti-gun experts” do.
CMC
What exactly have I misread? Seems to me the problem is more likely your lack of clarity. Either that or you are weaseling.
Well that’s basically the same reaction you said you would have to a hypothetical birth control buyback: "I don’t think I’d actually do much more than roll my eyes at a BC buyback program. "
And yet somehow you think the NRA’s conduct is different. So your position doesn’t make much sense.
Lol, I have no idea what this means.
So you are abandoning your blanket claim that slippery slope arguments are always dumb?
Well do you agree that many gun bans in the United States have started as much less extreme measures?
I’m skeptical of the claim that the police would be taking guns that gun dealers cannot legally accept. What provision of the law is involved? As far as no one wants goes, that’s obviously not true since the gift cards here were privately funded.
Absolutely 100%.
No, not in my opinion.
Why does that matter? (Besides your desire to engage in special pleading, of course.)
I’m not sure I understand your point. In the hypothetical I proposed, there would be nothing to stop a girl who went through with her pregnancy (and received the gift card) from getting an abortion in the future.
And if we woke up in a magical world tomorrow where nobody ever invaded anyone’s home; abused people; attacked them randomly or otherwise terrorized them, then guns would not be necessary either.
I do think I’m seeing some commonalities. I’m obviously no lawyer, so I’m not able to phrase the commonalities in legal language, and I may be way off base. That said:
- In all the cases, I think there’s a presumption that if you show a need for the particular government service and you demonstrate that you’ll use it responsibly, the default is that you’ll get the government service.
- In all the cases, what the government is asking you to give up is a major and/or permanent surrender: a loyalty oath, hoi polloi coming on your property forever, taking a public position you may not believe in, etc.
- In all the cases, the government service is so major that if you forgo the service it’s a severe setback for you: you can’t drive in a state, your kids might not eat, you can’t build your house the way you want to, etc.
Compare that to the buyback:
- There’s no presumption that the government will facilitate your getting a gift card from a local business.
- The government isn’t asking you to give up anything permanent: it’s fairly trivial to purchase a new gun.
- Not only is the government service completely minor, you could get a better service if you went with a private individual. $20 for a working gun is not a fair exchange, it’s a minor token of appreciation.
Good thoughts.
I think what you’ll find is that there are three possible variables here, and you hit on all three: (1) the importance of the benefit; (2) the importance of the waiver; and (3) the connection between the benefit and the waiver. If there’s an answer, by logical necessity it falls somewhere in that mix.
You didn’t quite characterize the third factor as I have, but I think it’s what you’d find animating your sense of that distinction. Specifically, conditions become more questionable when they are attached to less-related programs, especially programs that previously were offered to the general public without particular conditions. That factor is called germaneness, and is the only one really discussed at any length by the Supreme Court.
In the gun-buyback context, germaneness makes for a very strong argument for the state. Undoubtedly, without the ability to offer that condition, the program would not exist. Contrast that with, say, the requirement of going to church in order to receive welfare benefits.
Germaneness only gets you so far. Is it obvious to you that conditioning a permit to build an add-on that blocks beach viewing on an agreement to permit beach access is non-germane (as the Court found)? Once you get outside a program designed for the sole purpose of obtaining the waiver, it gets murky. Moreover, it isn’t clear at all why germaneness should matter constitutionally. After all, the worst examples we could come up with of improper waiver-seeking behavior would all be programs designed specifically for that end (bribing people not to protest or vote, etc.)
There are similar problems with using the first two variables. It becomes a little ad hoc to call this benefit “major” (the right to build an add-on to your second home?) but not that one (the right to receive money to help your poor clients as a doctor).
The bottom line is that this would be an unlikely case for the Court to find the doctrine applies, but since we have no firm theoretical foundation for it, you can’t really say the argument would be frivolous. Courts have certainly surprised people before. Few people thought it was impermissible to condition parole on waiver of home Fourth Amendment rights, but some courts have so found, for example.
Sigh. My original quote was
The “kind of, yeah” was meant as “well, fuck yeah, I would”. I didn’t weasel. I’ve consistently stated that Planned Parenthood would be overreacting to a BC buyback program if they went all sue-happy over it.
And? I did later realize that there are benefits to a prescription buyback program, but as a way to coerce women to stop using birth control, I think it’s ineffective to the point of irrelevancy.
Ah, I see. You have problems keeping track of what we’re talking about.
Things that are potentially beneficial, but also silly if they are meant as a way to coerce people into certain behavior: gun buyback programs, birth control buyback programs.
Things that are worth rolling your eyes over: the NRA massively overreacting to above program, Planned Parenthood massively overreacting to above program.
Nope. Events follow other events. That does not mean that an innocuous action that does not do a good job of furthering an aim is step one in furthering an aim. Similarly, just because the majority is sometimes right, or bad people sometimes do have beliefs which are wrong, does not mean that argumentum ad populum or ad hominem attacks are suddenly valid argumentation techniques.
Irrelevant. See above.
So the stuff talked about above where the police check serial numbers to make sure the guns weren’t stolen or where they accepted broken guns suddenly doesn’t exist? And it doesn’t matter if gift cards were privately funded. Safeway or whoever doesn’t want the guns. They were just engaging in a charity act.
Yeah, we’re never going to agree at all on this matter. However, I cannot believe that you are being rational about this matter if you can’t see the difference between a medical procedure that saves lives and gun ownership.
I can’t believe that you are really arguing in good faith here.
Okay, we have a girl who decides to have an abortion. I’m not sure if you mean that she’d have to go to the abortion buyback center, or if Officer Friendly is hanging out at her school or the local Planned Parenthood. If it’s the former, well, the only people they’d be getting would be those who either weren’t planning on getting an abortion anyway or those who are going to lie to get the money. Kids cost a hell of a lot more than any amount offered during a buyback program. Unless the abortion buyback program in this instance offers a serious chunk of cash, it’s irrelevant. Most women aren’t actually stupid and are able to do math. If a serious chunk of cash was offered, then it’s still a woman’s choice whether to go there or not. There are problems with groups in desperate straits taking this offer that they wouldn’t otherwise because they need the money that badly. As I’ve consistently stated with every hypothetical we’ve thrown out, I do think we should consider and help those people out at such buyback programs (grandma shouldn’t be turning in her heart meds for groceries this week, either, nor should the family who need their hunting rifle to eat). That’s a larger issue, though, and more of an aside to what we’re talking about.
If the officer was actually going up to pregnant women and offering this gift card, we would have an argument for coercion. This isn’t happening in the gun buyback programs. What’s happening in them is more like the scenario above.
I’d like to see a serious study on the number of times guns have saved someone versus killed an innocent person. The ones mentioned already are problematic, as has already been discussed. Self-reporting on this issue is really sketchy and subject to interpretation. For instance, George Zimmerman feels he acted in self-defense. I think that the shooting was an overreaction to a situation he caused in the first place by aggressively stalking Trayvon Martin and putting Martin in a very bad situation. Zimmerman thinks it was self-defense, I think he escalated the situation into murder. Obviously, people feel it reasonable to argue both ways.
You also ignored the bit where I don’t want to outlaw all guns, but merely think we need more controls on who has them and we need to rethink how much firepower we’re willing to let the average citizen have. So, really, your self-defense study would also have so show me that the higher-powered guns are somehow necessary and more effective than a low-caliber handgun.
OK, here’s one that is pretty close to a real situation:
A private donor offers gift cards to crack addicts on the condition that they get themselves sterilized. The donor will pay for the surgery and enlists cops to hand out flyers witht he offer to the crack addicts they arrest.
Acceptable?
Legal?
Might the argument be made that not a small amount of crackheads aren’t in their right minds and cannot sign off on such an operation?
Consider the standards I suggested above:
- Is the government service (i.e., facilitating the receipt of gift cards) one to which people are by default entitled? No, so it’s okay on this grounds.
- Is the right people are giving up major or permanent? Absolutely, so it fails on these grounds.
- Is the service so major that failure to receive it will have major implications? It’s unclear in your scenario whether this is true. If the gift card is for housing for a year, then it’s absolutely major. If it’s for a free Happy Meal, then it’s not so major.
The failure along the second ground is pretty important.
I was just reading about the sterilization charity earlier today. It is super-icky. First, sterilization is permanent. Second, they’re getting people who are obviously not in a rational state of mind to make that permanent decision. Third, there is a really horrible, and awfully recent, history of sterilization “undesirables” in this country. I don’t mind quite as much them handing out long-term, but not permanent, birth control options, like Implanon or IUDs, although to do it responsibly they’d need to also offer removal services and medical help for any complications afterwards. I don’t think that’s really the best way of dealing with drug addicts, but it can be beneficial to the participants and it’s not permanent.
Cops handing out the flyers takes this into very bad territory, at least with the permanent sterilization. But, again, the gun buy-back programs aren’t forcing people to give up guns forever. No one has to sign a contract promising to never purchase firearms again, and participants aren’t placed on a “can not buy” list. If that were the case, the NRA would have a point.
In that case, your position still doesn’t make any sense. You would feel that Planned Parenthood’s hypothetical conduct was outrageous and pit-worthy. And yet at the same time you maintain that “I don’t know how outraged I’d be, but I’m not outraged by this either.”
Lol, your position seems to change radically from post to post.
And it doesn’t mean that it isn’t either.
You are weaseling again. Before your position is that slippery slope arguments are always dumb. Now, your position is that they are not always correct.
Irrelevant to your new set of goal posts.
I don’t know if it exists or not. Your claim is that in “gun buyback program” in which the police are involved, the police would be taking guns that gun dealers cannot legally accept. Please cite the provision of law which backs up your claim. If you want to abandon your claim, please say so explicitly rather than weaseling.
Probably not, if you refuse to either (1) describe the underlying rationale for the distinction you draw; or (2) admit that you are simply engaged in special pleading.
You asserted that “Abortion is a health care matter. Guns aren’t.”
Fine, by why should rights related to “health care matters” be treated differently from rights involving non-health care matters? There are plenty of important rights which have nothing to do with health care. The right to vote; the right to be free from unreasonable searches; the right not to be enslaved; and so on.
Why should rights related to “health care matters” be treated differently from other rights?
I am asking you this question so that I can understand your position.
Probably because you don’t really understand your own position, let alone anyone else’s.
The latter.
Then let’s assume it’s a serious chunk of cash. Enough money that it will change the minds of a significant number of people. Since there are in fact charities which offer girls stuff to forgo abortions, I can state with confidence that $1000 is more than enough to change a lot of minds.
Feel free to go out and do the research, it makes no difference to my argument.
This issue is irrelevant. The question is whether the NRA’s conduct is outrageous and pit-worthy.
Actually, your other conversation notwithstanding, this is almost certainly going to make the situation disanalogous. A key piece of this gun buyback is that the amount of money offered is nominal, more of a “thanks for turning the gun in!” than a fair value offer. Someone who needs the money is going to sell their gun elsewhere: the gun turn-in gets you a terrible value for the gun.
If you make the cash offering a “serious chunk of cash,” then you venture into the realm of compulsion. This is the reason that health studies are careful not to offer too much money to volunteers, by the way: you risk human rights abuses if you offer so much money that poor people feel compelled to enter the study.
brazil84, I’ve tried to reasonably argue with you, but you misrepresent what I say and (willfully?) misunderstand it to support your contention that I’m the one who weasels, shifts goalposts, and doesn’t have a solid grip on the argument. This is getting ten kinds of ridiculous.
I am not required by law to be outraged by either things that are outrageous or things that I think are pit-worthy. Outraged and outrageous may share a root, but it is current common practice to use the latter in a way that doesn’t require the user to feel the former. I mean “outrageous” as “I am really surprised that they would do this, and I think it’s beyond stupid”, which is perfectly clear to anyone with a middle school reading level.
They are dumb because they are incorrect. They’re a logical fallacy. Logical fallacies are arguments that don’t make logical sense and that are often wrong. They are dumb.
What new set of goal posts? That I used a different word that still gets the gist of my argument across?
Can’t find a specific article about Arizona’s program accepting illegal guns, but it’s a well-known goal of buyback programs to get illegal guns off the streets.
Gun Buy Back Program Takes 98 More Illegal Guns Off Nassau Streets This Weekend
It’s also been discussed in this very thread that these programs generally take illegal weapons as well as legal ones. Unless gun dealers are allowed to accept illegal weapons, then there’s nothing wrong with what I’m saying.
Health care is an integral part of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. A sawed-off shotgun isn’t, not anymore. And I didn’t say that health care was the only important right, for crying out loud. That’s you reading way too much into my words. Moreover, you are comparing coercing people into not having abortions with giving people the option of getting rid of guns they don’t want anymore. Apples and oranges.
Cute coming from someone who has so much trouble with basic reading comprehension.
**Left Hand of Dorkness ** answered this nicely. So if it’s a nominal chunk of change, then it’s irrelevant, just like with gun buybacks. And I think I’ve already touched on the issue of compulsion by talking about how we need to consider those in dire straits and help them so they won’t be compelled to do whatever thing.
If there are charities that offer girls enough money to be tempting to forgo abortions, then that is gross and wrong. I’ll even go out on a limb and say it’s even more gross and wrong than offering fair market value or more for guns at buyback programs, since having a kid is a lifelong commitment, while the buyback program would still allow you to use that money for a new, shinier gun. That’s where we start losing the analogy again, by the way. The consequences of not having an abortion or of undergoing sterilization are more long-reaching than those of selling one gun to the police.
But why do I bother? You misread statements or just flat-out misrepresent them, and you are completely incapable of dealing with nuance. Some people just can’t be helped.