Heavens to Betsy!
Ahh yes, complaining about the Pit while using it to it’s fullest.
What’s with the rectal suckage?
Pottymouth!
Given all that, there will still be plenty that are motivated to turn and and vote for the Republicans.
Strawman here, as we are not saying that it should be a singular focus, we are saying it should not be ignored.
And yes, there is the belief that addressing the problems faced by the voters is a good way to get them to support you at the polls.
Can you get that if you only run on the ideas that you are told are good politics, then you really are just seeking power for the sake of seeking power, rather than actually doing anything for your voters with it?
No matter how the 2022 elections turns out, there will be not be an agreement or clear reason as to why the results are what they are. How many are still relitigating the 2016 election. Even with a time machine, you’d not be able to say anything “for certain.”
But I could use some lotto numbers if you are going anyway.
It will never be a politically good time, and there will always be people like you saying that we should just wait, wait for the right moment, a moment that will never come.
Meanwhile, people are being injured and killed by gun violence.
You act as if the things Mr. Beef is concerned about are not the things that we should focus on to the exclusion of everything else!
If only I there was a Phil Ochs song that addresses this very problem…
No. You’re discounting the entire possibility that you can actually implement policies without making them a wedge issue an election. If you actually wanted to pass gun control, your best bet would be to shut up about it during elections and then just do it after you’re elected. Because if running on that issue makes it so that you don’t get elected, you can’t implement your policies anyway, and now what have you accomplished?
You need to accept that there are some times that society isn’t going to move on an issue, and you’re not going to move them by forcing it. So yep, American culture might dictate that we’re going to have gun violence even if you manage to pass your legislation, which is unlikely. You can either keep fighting that battle over and over and losing every other battle in the meantime because you’re focusing all your energy there, or you can just accept that you’re not going to change it much and focus on the things you can change.
There’s no way you’re going to completely ban gun ownership in the US and conduct house to house sweeps to locate all the guns, obviously. So gun violence is still going to be present. Maybe you start chipping away it with small legislation - maybe you reduce it 5 or 10%. Hell, let’s be wildly optimistic and say you reduce it by a third. But there are still going to be mass shootings. There are still going to be criminal on criminal shootings. People are still going to commit suicide on guns. You’re still going to be saying “we have to do something!” the next time someone goes on a mass shooting even after you’ve passed your “common sense” laws.
You are basically risking giving up to fascism on every other issue - civil rights, economic inequality, climate change - to, at the very best, maybe reduce gun violence 10%. It’s not a good political strategy and it’s not even utilitarian. It is far from the best thing you could do for the world with that political power. It is actually probably the worst utilitarian decisions you could make - not only is running on that issue likely to lose the election, losing the election is going to complete the republican coup and permanently entrench them in power (just like the Wisconsin legislature, for example) and then they’re going to implement an incredible amount of regressive policies that will do far more damage than gun violence could. But even if you do manage to win the election and pass your policies, you’re not going to move the needle significantly. Universal background checks isn’t going to stop school shootings, some bullshit “shoulder thing that goes up” ban isn’t going to stop school shootings - no “common sense gun control” measure is going to significant move the needle.
It’s emotionally driven. A massacre of kids in a gruesome way really stirs the emotions and compels you to want to do something even if it’s bad political strategy, even if in practice you are unlikely to actually make much progress on it, and even if you give up lots of more important things that you might have actually been able to meaningfully impact to do it.
No, I’m not. You are the one claiming that it has to be a wedge issue.
Ah, lie to the voters. Excellent strategy.
Right, and most Americans want better gun controls. It’s not the Democrats pushing society, it’s Democrats doing what society is demanding of it.
If your advice is to give up anytime things get hard, then I’ll take my chances that there is some work in our future.
I’ll settle for seeing a few less strawmen.
Ah, we don’t have a silver bullet to magically fix the problem, so there’s no point in even acknowledging it.
Those are hard too, and cost Democrats votes. Sure you don’t want to just throw the towel in on them as well?
So, do nothing. Got it.
Well, everything is to some extent. Why do you care whether we fall into fascism, as you seem very concerned? Sounds like an “emotional issue” to me.
I have long been on record on this board that I’m against all gun violence, not just mass shootings and school shootings. So all your hand wringing about my emotional state is a useless waste of everyone’s time.
[Moderating]
“I hope someone you know gets shot,” is a bit much, even for the Pit. Let’s steer clear of wishes of explicit harm against other posters or their families.
No warning issued.
[/Moderating]
Some of them won’t. Just as there are single issue Republican voters that vote R largely on the basis of gun rights, there are portions of the Democratic base that would be furious if gun control was dropped. How large of a portion is hard to say, but IMHO the Dem base has definitely been more willing to splinter and vote third party (Nader et al) or simply stand on principle and refuse to vote at all. The progressive-pragmatist split is real and it does represent something of a Catch-22. We see the same arguments over “identity politics” for example - ’ “identity politics” is a losing issue that loses MOR votes’ vs ‘I won’t vote for a party that doesn’t fight for the rights of the oppressed’.
The Pubs actually spin every Democratic initiative as being bad for EVERYONE, not just their cult. And the trouble is that they’re effective at it. And they’re effective at making up Democratic initiatives that don’t actually exist, too (death panels, anyone?).
[Moderating]
Let’s leave off board drama off this board, please. If you’re concerned about what someone is doing on a another message board, go yell at them over there about it.
No warning issued here, either.
[/Moderating]
Focusing on gun control issues has historically been a loser for the democrats.
This is a complex topic, but yes, there can be situations where lying to the voters is both moral and utilitarian. It’s not in accordance with the highest ideals of governance, and I wouldn’t rely on doing it, but if your agenda is actually to pass gun control at all costs, and you know running on gun control is a losing issue, then sure. As a strategy, it makes more sense than losing the election and not getting a chance to implement it.
But I’m not saying you have to lie about it. Parties get to choose which issues they’re going to push in the election, how they want to frame the election and what they want to make it about. Not every issue in the agenda is made into an important issue during elections.
Gun deaths are not an existential crisis to the US. We could increase gun deaths by a factor of 10 or 100 and still function as a society. The fascist coup, however, really is an existential threat to any sort of pretense of democracy in the US, and global warming is an existential threat to all of human civilization. There are more important things than gun control, things that can also be less divisive than gun control. Focusing on the issues that are the most divisive is just crippling your chance of being elected and doing any good with any of your policies.
Edit: Woops, accidentally posted too soon. To continue:
It’s not a straw man, I’m saying that any legislation you pass is just going to be a tweak to the current rules. Magically making guns disappear is not seriously on the table, and reducing school shootings by 10% or whatever is not seriously going to even change the perception people have about it. So your big win, if you spend all your political capital on it, isn’t even a gun ban or a massive change in gun policy - it’s a tweak that might result in a minor reduction in violence. You’re choosing to do the hard thing and risk losing the election - that’s your cost - and your payoff, even if you succeed, is pretty minor. It’s fulfilling the urge to Do Something more than it is actually accomplishing much.
I believe those issues are vote getters, not vote losers. There are not nearly as many pro-fascist, pro-inequality, pro-climate dems and independents as there are pro gun ones. And I think it inspires less motivation on the part of the opponents to solve, say, income inequality than does gun control. “They’re coming for your guns!” is one of the most motivating thoughts to a lot of people. “They’re coming for a modest amount of your boss’ money so you can have some more!” is harder to get angry about. And yes, I know, they’ll spin it differently, but people don’t have the same emotional reaction to opposing those other issues like they do for gun control.
You have a limited amount of political capital. Spending it on an issue that is not a crisis (it’s not even outside the historical norms), where the payoff even if you succeed is modest, when there are other issues that truly are existential crisis is anti-utilitarian.
This is too stupid to dignify with a response and is seriously making me consider you a bad faith actor.
Hey, cool, good for you. How do you weight a minor reduction in gun violence against maintaining US democracy or making progress on climate change? Because political capital is not infinite, and you have to be pragmatic about it. Is - optimistically - something like a 10% reduction in gun deaths worth not doing anything on health care/income inequality/global warming/etc. Where those changes would do more good for more people?
I’m afraid the Republicans are going to claim it anyway, even if not a single Democrat mentions it.
Buttery mails! Locker up!
I’d love to hear about all of the elections that @SenorBeef has won. Or barring that, why someone who knows everything like he does decided to let the country slide downhill anyway. I guess he’s teaching all us lessor beings a lesson?
I love all of these ‘enlightened centrists’ who push the same solution over and over again.
Global Warming? Pander to scared white Republicans.
Gun violence? Pander to scared white Republicans.
Racial inequality? Pander to scared white Republicans.
Immigration? Pander to scared white Republicans.
LGBTQ discrimination? Pander to scared white Republicans.
Income inequality? Pander to scared white Republicans.
And so and so on.
lol, are you calling me an enlightened centrist? I’m the furthest thing on this board from an enlightened centrist.
Also, none of what you say is remotely true. I’m not saying to stay away from most of those issues, and I’m certainly not saying to pander to scared white republicans. Your reading comprehension is pretty shit, because I’m, if anything, overly verbose about exactly what my positions are.
I learned the hard way that it is literally impossible to discuss guns here at the Dope. No matter how reasoned the OP, no matter how polite the first few comments, gun fetishists will pour into the thread in what is essentially a DoS attack, the polite folks leave and take their politeness elsewhere, and pretty quickly the thread comes to look like the Orc-hatching pit from The Hobbit movie. Any topic about guns is allowed by the Mods to be shut down by a Horde of Orcs, without consequences.
The last thread I started on the topic was first DoS’ed, then shut down bu a Mod when i asked participants to please stick to the subject and maintain a calm and productive debate. So the thread got shut down because, the Mod said, the OP is not allowed to dictate the kind of responses their post gets. (If memory serves, the Mod was a gun fan.)
So yeah, literally impossible.
My reply to that argument is usually something along the lines of:
You’re correct, if we magically banned guns today, there would absolutely still be people with guns and people killed with guns because the government couldn’t possibly sweep up all the guns. However, I’m of the opinion that, should guns be banned right now, the current stockpile of privately owned guns (legally or otherwise) will start to dwindle over time. Suddenly the cost of a black market gun will increase and will continue to increase as guns are harder to come by (same for ammo). A gun will be something people don’t want to show off (or use) since it could make them a target for someone that wants to steal it.
After a few years (maybe longer since they’ll be no gun ranges to practice at and people aren’t going to play with them in their backyard) and the guns will need some maintenance/repairs. Repair parts won’t exist in the regular marketplace and black market parts will dry up soon as well. Sure, you’ll be able to get them overseas and a few people will be able to make them at home, but overall, they’ll just get harder and harder to come by and more and more expensive.
So, it might not stop violence today, but what happens 10 or 20 or 100 years after the ban?
This process could likely be accelerated by very stiff penalties for possession of a gun (or repair parts or ammo) as well as government sponsored, no questions asked, buyback programs.
So, no, it’s not going to stop gun violence today, but overtime, I think it will.
Well to be fair you tend to create really fucking stupid threads, so I can’t blame any mods for trying to get you to post less.