# Would you make this compromise? To unite country.) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 23, 2017, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-make-this-compromise-to-unite-country/777951 "2017-01-23T18:24:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-make-this-compromise-to-unite-country/777951/41 "2017-01-24T06:34:47Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > :dubious: You’ve slid from state legislators to municipal governance, and that’s not what I asked you. Where is there a Democratic side of a **state** legislature that, according to you, would be willing to impose similarly draconian bans at the state level? It was in the sentence immediately prior to the portion of my post that you snipped: “I (and many other gun owners) thought the NY SAFE Act was draconian.” ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-make-this-compromise-to-unite-country/777951/42 "2017-01-24T06:40:51Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > It was in the sentence immediately prior to the portion of my post that you snipped: “I (and many other gun owners) thought the NY SAFE Act was draconian.” 😕 The NY SAFE Act, whatever one may think of its necessity or effectiveness, doesn’t come anywhere near to banning all private gun ownership. It makes gun owners jump through more hoops to get and keep guns, but nowhere does it endorse the notion that guns in general are a bad thing and nobody ought to be having one ever. In other words, the NY SAFE Act doesn’t get within orders of magnitude as close to a total gun ban as the Ohio anti-abortion law, with its total prohibition of all abortions after six weeks barring specific medical exemption by a doctor, gets to a total ban on abortion. Attempting to portray the two as comparable is ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-make-this-compromise-to-unite-country/777951/43 "2017-01-24T06:47:15Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > 😕 The NY SAFE Act, whatever one may think of its necessity or effectiveness, doesn’t come anywhere near to banning all private gun ownership. It makes gun owners jump through more hoops to get and keep guns, but nowhere does it endorse the notion that guns in general are a bad thing and nobody ought to be having one ever. > > In other words, the NY SAFE Act doesn’t get within orders of magnitude as close to a total gun ban as the Ohio anti-abortion law, with its total prohibition of all abortions after six weeks barring specific medical exemption by a doctor, gets to a total ban on abortion. Attempting to portray the two as comparable is ridiculous. Really? What % of abortions would have been affected by Ohio’s post-6-week-excepting-medical-emergencies ban? What % of guns were affected by NY’s SAFE law? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-make-this-compromise-to-unite-country/777951/44 "2017-01-24T07:19:08Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > Really? What % of abortions would have been affected by Ohio’s post-6-week-excepting-medical-emergencies ban? What % of guns were affected by NY’s SAFE law? What do you mean, “affected”? This is about how close legislation gets to a **total ban** , not some comparison of lesser “effects”. AFAICT, the SAFE Act banned **some** types of guns and magazines and toughened up background checks and penalties for felons. **Nothing about it was in any way intended to ban all guns entirely. And, I repeat, you can’t find any Democratic party platform that in any way supports the aim of banning all guns entirely.** The 6-week abortion ban, on the other hand, makes abortion illegal at just about the same time (4 to 7 weeks after conception) that most pregnant women are first discovering their pregnancy. So it would make a high proportion of abortions illegal. **And it is inspired by a standard Republican platform plank that explicitly calls for banning all abortions entirely.** Face it, **HD** , if you are pro-choice and Republican, then your party is leading you up the garden path. The GOP wants to restrict women’s access to abortion as severely as possible, and nothing about that is realistically comparable to the Democratic Party position on gun control. **No significant group of Democrats whatsoever is calling for any kind of total gun ban. Large and powerful groups of Republicans, on the other hand, are calling with increasing vehemence for a total abortion ban.** ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-make-this-compromise-to-unite-country/777951/45 "2017-01-24T07:44:55Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > What do you mean, “affected”? This is about how close legislation gets to a **total ban** , not some comparison of lesser “effects”. In clarifying “affected”, let’s just focus on guns and magazines that it bans. The [NY Daily News](Law enforcement experts have estimated there could be nearly 1 million assault-style weapons in circulation across the state) reported that “Law enforcement experts have estimated there could be nearly 1 million assault-style weapons in circulation across the state”. I’m not sure if two-feature vs one-feature tests for assault-weapon bans is getting too technical for you, but you might think of them like roughly the equivalent of banning abortions after 20 weeks or banning them after 6 weeks. Sure, neither one bans _all_ guns, just like Ohio’s law doesn’t ban _all_ abortions, but they certainly pose a severe obstacle to one’s full enjoyment of the right in question (abortion / RKBA). > [@Kimstu](#): > > **Nothing about it was in any way intended to ban all guns entirely.** And nothing about the Ohio law was in any way intended to ban all abortions entirely. > [@Kimstu](#): > > The 6-week abortion ban, on the other hand, makes abortion illegal at just about the same time (4 to 7 weeks after conception) that most pregnant women are first discovering their pregnancy. So it would make a high proportion of abortions illegal. How high of a proportion? [Planned Parenthood](https://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/5113/9611/5527/Abortion_After_first_trimester.pdf) says " The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 66 percent of legal abortions occur within the first eight weeks of gestation". I admittedly don’t know all the details of how “eight weeks of gestation” compares to “detectable heartbeat”, so maybe you could help me out here. Is “a high proportion” referring to one third of all abortions? Half? Two-thirds? Do you know of better stats on when abortions occur, perhaps with weekly breakdowns? ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-make-this-compromise-to-unite-country/777951/46 "2017-01-24T08:37:02Z")
**Kimstu** , Respectfully, I feel like you’re moving the goal posts all over the place on me, and it’s getting wearisome. My original claim was that “Conservatives feel roughly about gun rights like liberals do about abortion or gay rights” and that both sides “try to push the limit of restriction right up to the edge of what the courts will allow”. I didn’t limit it to party platforms, or make my claim just about elected officials or legislatures. I didn’t say that they were passing absolute bans, but when pressed I offered you examples like Chicago and Washington DC. I dug into the numbers enough to uncover that Ohio’s abortion law might only be banning as little as 1/3 of abortions, and New York’s SAFE Act banned maybe 1 million firearms currently owned in NY. We talked about 6-week bans vs 20-week bans and one-test bans vs two-test bans. Given the way the discussion has ranged, can’t you see the fundamental truth in my original claim? One side wants to take away some of the other’s apples, while the other side wants to take away some of the first’s oranges. Whether those percentages are 40% or 55%, I’d still call it “roughly” the same: both sides want to take away the other’s fruit. Both sides suspect the other of having a complete ban as their ultimate goal. Both are stymied in achieving that by the current legal precedent, which coincidentally, both sides feel was imposed on them with little legal merit. Can’t you agree to my original claim, perhaps with an emphasis on “roughly” and we can leave it at that? ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-make-this-compromise-to-unite-country/777951/47 "2017-01-24T14:43:36Z")
Moved at OP request from Great Debates to IMHO. [/ moderating] ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-make-this-compromise-to-unite-country/777951/48 "2017-01-24T15:11:25Z")
I think I might be even more confused now!😃 Let me see if I got this straight; abortion, protection of gays, ssm, _shouldn’t_ be reversible without a constitutional amendment. Until then states can’t abolish such things. But, in reality, a stacked court _could_ reinterpret/revisit those decisions and overturn them. (Colour me shocked anyone believes this _isn’t_ coming!) But each state would still be able to embrace those things if they so choose? So, how is it okey dokey for blue states, under such circumstance, to embrace those things, but it was beyond the pale to have allowed the red states to embrace the opposite? Could have allowing them to opt out have avoided the rise of Don? And the kinda toxic environment that came with that? I get that it would be wonderful if everyone could agree. But it has been decades and abortion ( among other highly contested issues ), still divides you so deeply and it’s been exploited into the mess you have now. Was it worth that? Surely it’s better that there are some places you can access abortion, than none? Right? ---
**Author:** ![rbroome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/838e76/32.png) [@rbroome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rbroome)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-make-this-compromise-to-unite-country/777951/49 "2017-01-24T15:40:57Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > If _Roe_ were overturned, states would still be free to make abortion legal. It would be exactly what you are proposing in your OP. > > Abortion was already legal in many states prior to _Roe_, and the trend was towards liberalization at the state level. Certain states would keep it illegal, but most would not. Given the unbending desire of the anti-abortion side to pass laws and rules that impact everyone, including people in other countries (the Mexican rule that Trump just re-instated), I don’t think for a moment that the anti-abortion activists are going to just say, fine it is up to each state. Some local federal judge in Texas is going to issue a national injunction just as soon as he thinks the supreme court will let him. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-make-this-compromise-to-unite-country/777951/50 "2017-01-24T16:02:14Z")
The USA is one of the most united countries in the world. About half the world’s nations have either a credible secessionist movement going on, or a mainstream intolerance for cultural minorities, or serious regional disparity in distribution of wealth. America is in an enviable position with respect to all of those. No state in the US is conspicuously economically depressed, cultural diversity has been the norm since the get-go, and secessionism is relegated to the droll level of flat-earthism. America just has a media that rewards belly-achers, that’s all. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-make-this-compromise-to-unite-country/777951.md?page=2)