By the sane ones talking to the sane ones, and shutting out the loons – on both sides. Whether you can get past talking to doing, I dunno; but if the sane ones won’t engage in the necessary dialog, it cedes the discussion to the extremists, who drag it down to a mutually infuriating shouting match that does neither side any good.
What ETF said–she and I agreeing on the middle ground I proposed is what I’d call a good start. Now all we need is 300mil more to join us here.
There’s an equivalent problem on the gun-rights side of people who think any restriction whatsoever is a slippery slope regardless of intent. Both sides are right to be wary and excessively paranoid at the same time.
The problem is that with the gun-control side, reasonable gun control is always one more step into restriction than wherever we are.
There is no level at which they are satisfied. It becomes the death of a thousand slices if you try to compromise with them, because compromise means gun owners give an inch, and they ask for another inch. They use dishonest words like ‘common sense regulation’ so that they can say anyone who opposes them, even for legitimate reasons, is against ‘common sense’.
Show me where the ‘sane ones’ on the gun control side are, please. Because I have never seen an example of a gun-control proponent who didn’t have this endlessly moving point of compromise to which he or she believes the gun owner must bend to meet.
What’d you think of my licensing/training proposal above? I could easily argue myself as a sane gun control proponent and gun owner, given that I consider myself pro-gun but there are pro-gun people who’ve called me an anti-gun crusader after reading my proposal.
The last person based this on the idea that anything with a licensing exam was subject to the whim of the examiners–to this I say, why haven’t any angry teen-haters gone to work at the DMV and down-checked anyone under 18 on their road test regardless of their skill?
A very frequent complaint about CCW-licensing in may-issue states is that you have Sheriffs or Chiefs of Police who use their “discretion” to simply not issue any licenses. Or, worse yet IMO, they issue them only to their politically connected cronies.
Even here in PA, which is a shall-issue state, we have Sheriffs who make the process as inconvenient as possible and drag out a 15 minute procedure to the full limit of the 30 day period allowed for by law. The last time I needed a new permit, it was handled by a deputy sheriff in the main office, on a Saturday, and took only a couple minutes; I left with my new permit in hand. The previous time, I was a resident of one of the counties with an anti-gun sheriff. Permits were available only in an annex office, over a block from the main office, which was not clearly marked. Permits could only be applied for M-F during regular business hours. After application, one had to return 30 days later (M-F regular business hours) to pick up the permit. So, I had to take two days off from work, get jerked around and treated like a criminal by the staff, and drive 25 miles each way_twice_before I had my permit in hand.
We don’t need to wonder about hypothetical abuses under some new, more restrictive system. We already have abuses under the present system.
I diagree with it for many of the reasons that Scumpup brought up in his post. I don’t think that you can argue it is much like the DMV, since there are very few people who make a political crusade about being anti-car, and wanting to ban cars.
The proposal that you lay out is exactly the kind of tactic that anti-gun groups like the one formerly known as Handgun Control Inc, (now more cleverly disguised as The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence) have proposed in order to make it difficult or impossible for people to have firearms.
Whenever faced with a law that says ‘You must allow people to own firearms’ they respond with some sort of hoop-jumping restrictions that say ‘But we don’t have to make it easy!’
So, while you might argue that your proposal makes you a ‘sane gun control proponent’, I would argue that it is exactly the kind of proposal we would expect from the dishonest extremists. It is a page from their well-read playbook, including the dressing it up as ‘sane’. When you self-apply that label, you are poisoning the well by forcing anyone who disagrees with your stance to first overcome the hurdle of being the opposite of sane…
Speaking as a rather strident defender of gun rights, any time someone on the gun control side labels their restriction ‘sensible’, I hear alarm bells.
This is why I’d prefer it was handled by something like the DMV, with a nice rigid bureaucracy and rules and an ombudsman system.
Let’s be blunt: Are you calling me a liar? Are you saying my agreement with Zeriel is a mere mask for a burning desire to wrest all your guns from your sweaty palms?
Are you?
Which is back to my point that the poisoning the well is the biggest problem. Like I said, I’m a gun owner and a CCW holder, I’m on the gun rights side.
I’m hoping that the Heller decision will start enabling some people in the moderate pro-gun camp, where I put myself, to start proposing these types of compromises (and note I tag on the compromise to my proposal that re-legalizes full-auto and select-fire arms, admittedly with a fairly rigorous licensing program that will probably still end up cheaper than the acquisition of a grandfathered-in machine gun now) with some assurance that the Supreme Court will back them up when gun-control nuts start trying to push the envelope.
I am saying that you have used more than one of their pet tactics.
Suggest a licensing scheme that is heavily subjective and easy to use as a means for curtailing lawful firearm ownership.
Begin your argument by calling your plan ‘reasonable.’
Choose a compromise point that restricts the rights of gun owners further than they already are, with no particular demonstration of how this will do anything about crime.
Use inflammatory language, such as that referring to the hands of a gun owner as ‘sweaty’.
And my favorite, start the discussion with the conclusion that we actually need more gun laws has already been proven.
First you need to prove your conclusion that we need more firearms restrictions, or that we should bend in compromise, is actually true. You forget that this is a point that is also contested.
So, yes, you’re calling me a liar. Good to know that you’re one of the extremists not worth engaging with.
Hold on a minute there. I said you have used tactics in this thread that are common to those groups that state they want ‘reasonable restrictions’ and in reality seek to ban firearms (Brady Campaign).
You have outright called me an extremist.
One of those actions is acceptable debating, and one is not.
Well hell, it ain’t complicated; set theory is something any kid understands on this level. I was just using big words to mock such a blatant sophistry as suggesting that there’s anything interesting or relevant about the idea that cops protect society, not individuals.
Society is the set. Individuals are members of that set. That’s all there is to it.
Yes, yes, yawn, yes: police are not obligated to protect specific members of that set. They’re obligated to work to protect the set as a whole. That’s because their protection of the set isn’t perfect, never has been, never will be. This is not interesting for this discussion, not relevant for this discussion.
What DOES happen is that, as police protection of a given set (read: society) becomes more perfect, individuals tend to feel less threatened by their neighbors and therefore tend to engage in fewer behaviors intended to protect themselves. Part of this means that they tend not to feel the need to arm themselves. At the same time, part of this means that they tend not to feel the need to build a reputation as a badass, overreacting to small slights in order to prevent serious predation. The two tendencies don’t always go together, but they are often correlated.
It was astonishing and irritating me to read people suggesting that the fact that police aren’t obligated to protect specific individuals in any way undermines this basic idea.
Daniel
Ah, excellent! We can count on your assistance in the pit bull discussion threads then?
You can count on mine. Pit Bulls, raised properly, are snugglebuns. With biiig goofy happy smiles.
ETF: You see, what we have here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it… well, he gets it. I don’t like it any more than you men.
Yep. Sometimes one just has to concede that any further efforts are doomed to futility, and walk away in search of those who don’t automatically tune one out.
Thanks for the explanation, LHOD, that was quite clear.
I didn’t say he wasn’t right, ETF.
I said what we have here is failure to communicate.
I don’t particularly challenge the idea that many of the members of {“badass”} are also members of {gunowner}. I wouldn’t necessarily even disagree that the size of {“badass”} is similar in size to the intersect of {“badass”} and {gunowner}. The trouble is that {“badass”}<<{gunowner}.
It’s kind of like saying gay men are often flamboyant because the only men who you realize are gay are the flamboyant variety. Problem: inconspicuous gay men are assumed to be straight.
Then again, I could be wrong. Maybe granny does pack heat to the SafeWay because it makes her feel like a badass.
How is a basic skills test “heavily subjective”? Pass a multiple choice quiz, demonstrate (using a spec standard) that you can safely store and operate the class of firearm you are licensing (15min test max for rifles, maybe 30min for pistols), pay your $30 (in line with driver’s licenses), done. No human judgement beyond “does this performance line up with the legal specs for the test?”
For that matter, there is very little subjective about the classes of weapons I describe. Long rifles/shotguns vs. handguns vs. military burstfire/select-fire/full-auto arms is about as basic a classification as you can get.
How is adding a right to own heavier arms in exchange for a test, specifically described as “like a drivers license or motorcycle license test”, an unreasonable restriction? We are adding a small restriction and restoring a large right (that is, the right to own and manufacture military-grade personal arms, with non-onerous testing/fees–described as like a CDL, which in PA can be as little as a (admittedly fairly stringent) skills test, road test, and $100 extra fees every four years.) that has been nonexistent since the 1930s.
Who said this had anything to do with crime? I’m far more concerned with safety of children resident in the homes of gun owners and the reduction of firearms accidents–I’m not stupid enough to think criminals care one whit about any law one enacts, but I am smart enough to know that a decent range training session is something many firearms owners will never need. For people who choose to hunt, at least in my state, I’m not even adding anything–the state already has a mandatory 3-day hunting course if you want to use your long arms on anything other than clays or paper.
Because firearms are dangerous and people are stupid, and society has a reasonable interest in removing as many stupid people from the pool of owners-of-dangerous-things as possible.
Basically, you’re knee-jerking, from my POV. My view is simple–guns are worthy of respect because they are dangerous. They are potentially very dangerous to many classes of people who the government has an interest in protecting, specifically the children and dependents of gun owners. At the same time, it’s not only in our best interests as a nation to have a populace by and large familiar with guns, but it’s in the interests of the intent of the 2nd Amendment to restore access to military-grade arms in civilian hands on a large scale. In addition, the plethora of state laws on firearms make gun ownership a hodgepodge for anyone traveling with a weapon or moving from state to state, and leaving the decisions on things like CCWs and whatnot in the hands of a single person, especially someone who’s in a political place like a county sheriff, is a big risk as Scumpup’s testimony shows.
Therefore, it seems to me that harmonized Federal-level gun laws (which include a modicum of knowledge/skills testing and registration as a compromise position to the moderate gun control types who can be swayed to our side) that are structured to make gun licensing based on objective qualifications and judged by people who are employees drawing a paycheck and who can be fired are a significant step forward for the majority of Americans in terms of gun rights, especially if that Federal-level law includes the repeal of the automatic weapons ban and any other firearm-specific ban, which is a no-shit dealbreaking precondition to me accepting my own plan.
I half-think she believes that I’m a closet anti-gun nut too, to be honest. Oh, well, I’ve said my piece and I got one moderate gun-control type to agree with me, even with the “unban assault weapons and full-auto” clause in there. That’s a small victory, and small victories win wars if you get enough of 'em together.