I don’t care if you believe me or not. And maybe it’s an overreaction, but it’s really not my choice. Parenthood changes a person in totally unexpected ways.
The point wasn’t that I deserved a medal in empathy. Like I said, parenthood does its thing on you; it’s not something you can take credit for. The point was that there’s no alternate universe in which the political gains to be realized from the deaths of those kids would matter nearly as much to me as the deaths of those kids, and I deeply resent the implication that it could be otherwise. In meatspace, this would be step-outside-and-say-that territory.
This thread isn’t about political processes. It’s about remarks in GD that AFAIAC fell into step-outside-and-say-that territory, so I stepped into the Pit, because that’s where you take it here.
Maybe you think you’re in some other thread.
Thanks for the drive-by. Good riddance if you’re gone, but if you’re not, I suggest that in the future, you read enough of the OP to understand what the thread is about before doing your drive-by post.
Well, if you genuinely supported a ban on alcohol, I would at least accept that you are operating out of a rational (if paternalistic and misguided) concern for people’s well-being and generic public welfare, rather than either a) an irrational, emotional reaction to what are in reality incredibly rare and isolated events, or b) using gun control as a proxy for your dislike of Republicans and conservatives, and really just trying to exploit the emotional nature of gun deaths to score a political win against the other team.
Alcohol and guns cause roughly the same amount of harm to the public each year. Even accepting that the numbers are not exactly the same, guns surely get media and political coverage that is vastly disproportionate to the amount of harm they do compared to alcohol, which gets essentially zero media coverage and has pretty much no one lobbying for more restrictions (in fact, we have a ton of “liberals” arguing for more permissive drug laws and to expand the list of substances people are legally allowed to get high on, because for some reason alcohol isn’t enough to satisfy their need for recreational drug use). Why is this? I continue to believe it is because gun ownership and gun values are heavily associated with rural, conservative voters, and so people use it as a convenient political football, whereas alcohol use is not especially divided along party lines (in fact, many religious conservatives abstain from alcohol), and therefore not as easy a political target.
I really don’t give a shit about how you rationalize your dislike of guns and lack of similar conviction on alcohol. Fundamentally, it boils down to “Guns are bad and alcohol isn’t.” You’ll forgive me, I hope, if I object to your limiting what I view as a fundamental constitutional and societal right on that basis.
Drunk driving deaths are at a record low, down over 50% from when they started tracking them in 1982.
When you can point to a 50% reduction in annual firearm deaths, I promise I’ll stop thinking that they’re a safety problem.
You see, with every cause of (early) death besides firearms, there is a real effort behind reducing those deaths. Programs to increase the criminality of drunk driving, encourage seatbelt use, mandate air bags, restrict teen driving/drinking, encourage/legislate helmet use, increase safety features and procedures.
What is there for firearms that isn’t blasted by the pro-gun crowd?
I don’t dislike guns, actually. Grew up with them and own them. I’m also quite capable of disliking Republicans and conservatives directly— no proxy issue needed. And I’d say alcohol and guns are both pretty bad in terms of the harm they cause. Main difference being that (absent some form of medieval enema device) it’s pretty hard to kill someone with alcohol directly. You have to get drunk and then go find a tool-- a car or a baseball bat or, frequently, a gun. With guns, you skip the middleman. The medium is the massacre.
And I’m not sure how it is where you live, but here alcohol is pretty restricted. Sure you can buy all you want, but you can’t walk around drinking it in public. If guns were restricted the same way, you’d only be able to take them to a shooting range (unloaded, in your trunk) or fondle them in the privacy of your own home.
I really don’t care how much the reduction has been, that just proves they were an even bigger problem 30 years ago than they are now. What matters for setting policy today are the rates today.
Give me a break. None of those have anything to do with alcohol use, they are just general vehicle safety improvements or stricter penalties for crime. I don’t think the NRA would object if we imposed stricter penalties for murder.
The alcohol lobby would strongly object to any proposed stricter limitations on law-abiding alcohol use in an attempt to reduce alcohol-related crime, yet analogously, here we are, discussing stricter limitations on law-abiding gun ownership in an attempt to reduce gun-related crime. Why is that acceptable for guns but not for alcohol?
What would you say if I proposed that every car sold must be retrofitted with a breathalyzer interlock that would prevent a drunk driver from operating it (and must be used every 10 minutes or the car will shut off), at the owner’s expense? You’d probably say it was an intrusive, obnoxious and unjust imposition on law-abiding, responsible citizens who have never driven drunk and never will. What if we only required it of people who consume alcohol, e.g. you need a special license to consume alcohol and you can only get the license by purchasing such a device for your car. Both proposals would certainly save lives, and hey, if it saves a single life, it must be worth it, right?
Guns are restricted in pretty much the same way in most places. I can’t carry in public without a license.
The problem of a free society, of course, is that criminals are willing to violate those restrictions, whether they relate to guns or alcohol, and therefore they only affect citizens who respect the law in the first place.
Then your argument makes no sense at all. If you think Dianne Feinstein is anti-gun because she wants there to be fewer gun murders, why do you think she would have been anything other than utterly horrified to hear about the Newtown shooting? She’s only anti-gun because she wants fewer dead people. If there were no gun crime at all, but still just as many guns floating around, Feinstein wouldn’t be pushing for gun control. Banning guns is not an end in and of itself.
Similarly for Bush, Cheney, and the rest of that bunch. The main left wing criticism of their reaction to 9/11 is the way they used it to justify things that were unrelated to 9/11, like the invasion of Iraq. That’s where the “secret agenda” stuff comes into this conversation - if Dick Cheney viewed 9/11 as an excuse to make a land-grab in the Iraqi oil fields, one can see how he would be thrilled at 9/11 happening. If Dick Cheney instead honestly viewed 9/11 as the end result of an insufficiently aggressive foreign policy, he wouldn’t be thrilled at 9/11, he’d be horrified at seeing something he felt was avoidable come to pass, and the invasion of Iraq would, therefore, be an attempt to prevent it from happening again.
Since there’s already been one poster who utterly failed to grasp the context of what I was saying (Hi, Dogzilla!), let me make it clear that I don’t think that Cheney really believed that there was any sort of rational connection between 9/11 and the Iraqi war, and that his support for the war was based more out of venality and personal advantage than any genuine concern for the safety of Americans.
I’m not posting here because I’m anti-gun, I’m posting here because I’m anti-idiotic-argument. I’m largely okay with the current level of gun control in this country, and am glad that the AWB (which was just more useless security theater) had been defeated.
It’s being re-examined right now. The only thing off the table is the Assault Weapons Ban, and so what? It didn’t do anything before. Universal background checks will almost certainly pass, magazine capacity laws may pass (though I doubt it), and many states are taking measures on their own hook.
Well, that’s what ALREADY HAPPENED. Remember MADD? I certainly remember when they came along, and they made a difference. Lower legal blood alcohol levels, cops actually taking drunk driving seriously (they didn’t used to), designated drivers (a phrase that’s only been widely used in just the past 25-30 years), even beer commercials urging you to drink responsibly, etc.
Similarly with driving generally, where the fatalities are way lower than they were 40-50 years ago, despite 100 million more people now, and many millions more miles driven. I remember when air bags were ridiculed as a wild idea of the liberal nanny state. But things have changed.
There have been a few waves of this with guns during my lifetime, but less has been accomplished because of the pushback, and indeed if there’s been a slippery slope, it’s been running the other way. Hundreds of laws have been passed in the past couple of decades, expanding gun rights.
I don’t think the post reads the way you present it. You make it sound like Senorbeef is accusing Feinstein of secretly hoping something like Newton would happen so she could push forward her agenda. I think he is accusing Feinstein and company of trying to take advantage of the hysteria caused by Newton to get something they have always wanted but couldn’t get done the day before newton.
…and cast into the Outer Darkness. Let his name be removed from all the steles, the monuments, and the pylons… Let no one again speak the name of…that guy.
I think it would help if he clarified what he meant.
Senorbeef, you do feel like Feinstein et al are, on some level, glad that Newtown happened? Do you think they would opt not to undo it if they had a time machine, because it has been useful in moving their agenda forward?
No, I don’t think that went through her head, as I don’t assume someone who wants to pass legislation she believes will keep people from dying would ever be happy about people dying. And even if it did, I would think she’d immediately dismiss it. Your claim is that this was her primary motivation. Stop moving the goalposts.
Cheney’s a bit of a different beast. I hope* he did not act on it, but I’m nearly certain the thought went through his head. I don’t think even the most diehard Republican could deny that Cheney is both ambitious and ruthless, even if they think he’s a net force for good instead of evil.
*For the sake of argument, I will not post how much stock I put in that hope.
Of course some people that are anti-gun are reasonable. But there’s not question that the pro-gun side has far more ignorance and hysteria than the pro-gun side. It’s not even close.