Okay, We're Definitely Not Going To Have *This* Argument

Welp, I’ve been foreshadowing a long conversation for a while now, and here it is. Not about race, not about politics, not about trans issues, but about guns.

In my article, America’s Mass Shooting Groundhog Day, I argued that everybody knows what to do to reduce America’s mass shooting problem. Or, at least, that even the most unimaginative person can think of something that would reduce America’s mass shooting problem.

Because every single developed nation in the world is modelling a system of gun control that results in vastly fewer mass shootings per capita.

Michael, a regular reader who I appreciate immensely and disagree with almost constantly, didn’t like the implications of that argument.

---

Michael:

The tragedy of America’s mass shooting Groundhog Day is that everybody knows how to end it.

Love you and your writing; didn’t love this piece. The idea that we all know the solution and refuse to enact it is ridiculous and most of your arguments are over-simplified, for example the idea that “a majority of Americans” support more gun control. Also that tweeted screenshot smearing Ted Cruz was I believe debunked as having been faked. Cruz has had plenty to say over the years and actually put forth real legislation, which had bipartisan support, to try and course-correct after Sandy Hook. It was filibustered by Democrats and died.

The simple truth is the left is fixated on gun bans and will accept nothing less, while the right recognizes that guns are an essential part of the right to self-defense and is reluctant to restrict their availability to law-abiding citizens. So we’re at an impasse, and have been for as long as I can remember. The right has lots of ideas about how to fix things but because they don’t involve banning guns the left doesn’t get on board and instead demonizes the right as actually wanting children to get shot, which is despicable and causes the right to entrench even more. Rinse and repeat.

---

---

Steve QJ:

The idea that we all know the solution and refuse to enact it is ridiculous

I'd genuinely love for you to explain to me why this is. Truly. I always appreciate your takes, especially when we disagree, but this is completely beyond me. I'm not even interested in blaming this on the Republicans. Note that I didn't make this a Left vs Right issue in the article. I did that on purpose.

It seems people who make the arguments you're making can't see past the idea that reducing the number of mass shooting in America is a worthy aim. Even if it doesn't end shootings completely. And yes, everybody does know how to do that. As I said, every single developed nation in the world is modelling a blueprint for how to do it.

You really want to end mass shootings? Copy Japan or the UK or many other countries and ban guns. Crime hasn't fallen to zero in these countries, obviously. Not even gun crime. But America has had more mass shootings so far in 2022 than Japan, the UK and China have had, combined, for what? The past 20 years? I wouldn't be surprised if it was since before records began.

You don't want to ban all guns? No problem. Take a leaf out of Australia's book and ban semi-automatic weapons. In fact, this already happened, right? The ban expired in 2004, right alongside, predictably enough, an explosion in mass shootings.

You don't want to ban semi-automatic weapons? First of all, why???!!! But fine. Do what Sweden does and institute more stringent background checks. Make people explain what they're using their guns for and make gun training mandatory. Introduce waiting periods before you take ownership of your gun.

I mean, Jesus, there was another shooting in Chattanooga yesterday, right? Yes, I think you know what to do. And yes, I think a majority of Americans support at least doing something! What I think you mean to say is that you don't know what to do to totally eradicate gun violence, which is impossible and unnecessary. Or you don't know how to do it in a way that won't upset anybody, which should be weighed against the upset caused by children being murdered in their schools in perpetuity.

Again, I'm not making this a partisan issue. You're right, both the Left and the Right have had opportunities to do more about this problem (although, it must be said, in the wake of these shootings, it's only people on the Right claiming that it's "too early" to be talking about gun legislation). I'm just sick of the claims that the solutions are some kind of impossible mystery.

p.s. Also, making it harder to get semi-automatic weapons is just a brain-dead obvious solution to the problem of mass shooting. As evidenced, and I can't over-labour this point, by every single developed nation in the world. So if the Right is resisting that solution, you need to make a good case for why they shouldn't be criticised for it.

p.p.s Thanks for the heads-up about the Ted Cruz tweets. I’ll remove that line.

---

Michael:

people who make the arguments you're making can't see past the idea that reducing the number of mass shooting in America is a worthy aim.

See that is part of my problem with your take here. You're a writer who almost always has a good understanding of both sides of an argument and that's why your articles are worth reading. This idea that conservatives (it really IS a left vs right issue, as most things are) don't want to reduce gun violence is ridiculous and paints conservatives as at best uncaring and at worst evil. It's wrongheaded.

The basic disconnect we have here, and I suspect much of it may be UK vs USA perspective, is that banning guns is a non-starter. America has always had guns and always will. We are a fierce people who took our own country by force and fought many wars over it in the past 200 years. Guns have always been part of our culture. They facilitate our God-given right to self-defense, they make it possible for us to create militias if we ever need to, and they keep our own government at bay when it acts like it wants to get tyrannical. Every time a left-leaning politician in this country gets elected and starts talking about taking away our guns, gun sales and NRA memberships skyrocket. We have iconic lines like "You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands" and "come and take it." People take this stuff seriously. Guns assure us of our freedom, and we like that.

So there is not adequate political will to ban guns outright, and there never will be. Even if there were, there are far more guns in this country than human beings. Something like 420 million guns to 330 million people. Even if you were to somehow ban them, there isn't a snowball's chance in Hell you'd ever confiscate them all, or even a fraction of them.

Banning semi-automatic firearms is more or less the same as trying to ban all firearms. The vast majority of guns sold anymore are semi-automatics. Try and tell people they are only allowed to own revolvers and bolt-action rifles. Another non-starter.

Yet for the left, these arguments are the only ones that seem to be valid. They lob them out all day every day, never consider other arguments, and won't stop pushing these non-starter ones. If you have a real non-starter argument, the proper thing to do is throw it in the trash and come up with new arguments. But they don't do that and treat conservative approaches as ineffective so we get nowhere.

Taking away guns from people infringes on their constitutional right to hold one. All rights come with responsibilities, and some regulation, but taking away a person's right - any of their rights, not just for guns - is a big deal and needs to be properly justified and agreed to by the society. For example, convicted felons are not allowed to vote or own firearms, among other things. On the Free Speech front, you have the right to it generally but you can't incite a riot or threaten someone directly.

It is this understanding that any talk of taking away guns from law-abiding people is an infringement on their rights and needs to be justified that the left cannot get their minds around and will not abide. I trust that YOU can.

I think it also makes sense that if you're talking about enacting laws as a result of an event, such as a mass shooting like Uvalde, you should have to connect the law we need to the event and demonstrate how it could have prevented it, besides remembering that you still have a high bar to clear with regard to your law's effect on others who abide the law and are entitled to have their weapons.

Background checks are a fine idea. We already have them, with very few exceptions. If you want to buy a gun you have to fill out a federal form and submit it with a fee, then wait 10 days for the check to be completed before the gun store will allow you to take your gun home. In the Uvalde example, the shooter did this and passed his background check. He had a pretty violent childhood, so how nobody reported any of his antics to law enforcement for them to take action and start creating a paper trail for his background check, who knows.

"Red flag" laws are another proposal that is getting some traction. Some states have them, and they're not a terrible idea but they would have to be done with heavy safeguards against abuse or no one on the right will support them. But the shooter in Buffalo last month reportedly should have shown up in their Red Flag law and didn't. So again we have an enforcement problem.

And on that enforcement issue, we saw in Parkland, FL years ago, and again in Uvalde, it appears as more news and corrections keep coming out, that the police completely and utterly botched the response to this kid shooting up the place. Just look at the timeline; look at the videos of cops tasering parents who yelled at them to "go in" instead of standing around waiting for the SWAT team. Is it any wonder people don't believe police should be the only ones allowed to carry weapons?

This is the lengthiest reply I've ever written but it's an important topic and to be honest you're the only center-left guy I can think of who might, just might, be able to meet me halfway and have a productive conversation on it.

---

Steve QJ:

This idea that conservatives (it really IS a left vs right issue, as most things are) don't want to reduce gun violence is ridiculous and paints conservatives as at best uncaring and at worst evil.

No. I'm not saying this! I think the number of people who don't want to reduce gun violence is small enough that we can ignore them.

The question is, what are you willing to do, what are you willing to sacrifice, in order to reduce gun violence?

And this is where the problem lies. The more extreme gun advocates are unwilling to even allow for background checks that can't be easily bypassed with loopholes (as you point out, current background checks don't seem to be doing the job), or legislation that would prevent people on terrorist watch lists from buying guns. They're against waiting periods or training requirements. They're against tighter regulations and licensing. It's not about banning guns. I agree with you that banning guns is a non-starter. But the question is, what are they actually willing to do??? Because vague allusions to mental health and video games aren't cutting it.

As I said, the only problem that is unique to America is the access to guns. Not mental health issues, not video games, not violent movies. Guns. The resistance to acknowledging this incredibly simple fact is directly leading to dead Americans.

So yeah, it's simply not possible to be "both-sided" on this. I freely admit that I don't understand the "my cold dead hands" side of the pro-gun argument. But that's because it doesn't align with reality.

Guns assure you freedom from whom? The US government? You think a rag-tag militia of Boogaloo Boys is going to overthrow the US military if things go sideways? This was likely naive in 1776. But now? It's laughable. Guns are a way for people to feel like badasses and pretend that they're going to defend their "land and their woman" when the apocalypse comes. And fine. I'm not one to deny people their fantasies. But the reality is, the person most likely to be shot by a gun is the owner or a member of their family.

If there were more people talking about enhanced background checks and red flag laws, there would be a lot fewer people talking about banning guns. This is the dynamic that's missing. Sensible people want to see concrete efforts to do something. If those efforts work, the people arguing to ban guns will have less grounds to do so. But when mass shootings are increasing, alongside a rise in violent ideology and mental health issues, saying "but I'm a law abiding gun owner so why should anything change for me?" is just not good enough.

The best thing gun advocates could do to stop this "ban guns" talk, is push for measures that make it harder for people to commit mass shootings. To actually demonstrate that they want to reduce gun violence instead of getting indignant at the the observation that they don't behave as if they do.

---

Michael:

Why is it a given that I myself have to sacrifice something in order to reduce gun violence? My gun is not a threat to anyone not breaking into my home. Changing security configurations and hardening schools doesn’t require any change to gun laws and doesn’t infringe on anyone’s rights. Allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons on school grounds doesn’t, either. There are plenty of other ideas like this.

You talk again about background checks but we have them and they haven’t stopped mass shootings. Sometimes the shooter doesn’t have any kind of criminal record so I don’t know how you “enhance” a background check to catch him anyway. In another past shooting (Parkland?) as I recall, the shooter had a criminal record in the Army but that never got reported to the feds so he passed his background check. In that case the existing background check should have worked but didn’t. As far as terrorist watch lists, that’s problematic because there are no safeguards against abuse; no due process and no recourse. The government puts you on that list for whatever reason and too bad for you. You can’t fly now. You want to extend that to mean they come and take any guns, too? Good luck with that. The ACLU has a page excoriating that system due to abuse.

Guns absolutely protect our freedoms. President Biden is fond of repeating his adage that to take on the government you need tanks and F-15s. Besides making a good case for private ownership of tanks and fighter jets, he’s simply wrong. We just ended a 20-year war in Afghanistan against goatherders and drug runners, and gained nothing for it. A decade ago a rancher held off the feds for some months when they came to get his cattle to stop grazing on federal land with just his men and their rifles. And in this COVID pandemic, places like Australia that had publicly given up their guns got manhandled in the streets by police when they tried not to comply with curfews and lockdowns. That didn’t happen here. I could go on.

When you say “sensible people want to see concrete efforts to do something,” that may be true but it’s too simplistic. Do what, exactly? Pitch me something that would make a difference. Remember that “ban guns” is off the table and remember that Americans recognize a God-given right to own firearms, and that limiting or suspending that right is a BIG deal. I think the actions I mentioned earlier are sensible and easy to implement, but every idea has its critics. The idea of letting teachers carry concealed weapons to me is a no-brainer but you will find tons of people who would fight that tooth and nail. Hardening schools is a must. If we can send Ukraine $70 billion and send the states so much COVID relief money that they can’t spend it all, we can afford to hire security guards for schools and/or require people to enter and exit through a single door or gate.

I should also point out that school shootings like this are a miniscule portion of overall gun violence in America. Suicides and gang violence are I think the bulk of them, followed by homicides. All of the people committing these crimes are - well, breaking the law. So more laws don’t seem like the answer.

Also worth pointing out is that by one estimate privately-owned guns PREVENT a half-million to a million shootings every year in this country, either by the owner defending him or herself from an attacker, or simply by brandishing it and causing a would-be attacker to leave them alone. Women, in particular, should want guns available to them to avoid dangerous encounters with much stronger men.

Fixing the gun violence problem is not the responsibility of just gun owners, it’s on all of us. Guns are just a tool that violent criminals use to carry out their evil. The real question in my mind is, where did all these evil people come from? We’ve had free access to guns for 200 years but these crazy shootings only started happening a couple decades ago. Why is that? The problems are deeper than anyone is willing to dig, imho.

---

Steve QJ:

Why is it a given that I myself have to sacrifice something in order to reduce gun violence?

Because people are dying Michael. Another mass shooting today in Tulsa yesterday, right? When do you start to admit there's a real problem? It's so unbelievably surreal having this conversation. Gun legislation is necessary. This will necessarily affect people who own guns.

It's like seatbelt laws. When was it? 1984 that mandatory seat belt laws were introduced? These saved countless lives, yet when they were introduced, there were protests. "I'm a safe driver, why should I have to wear a seatbelt." But you can't pass a law that says only reckless drivers have to wear seatbelts. So everybody is affected. And now that the laws are in place, now that this little slice of common sense has been normalised, it seems crazy to us that anybody was ever against this brain-dead obvious legislation.

Why did the mass shootings only start happening a couple of decades ago? Well, as I said, partly because the assault weapons ban expired. I already linked you to data showing the spike in mass shootings after 2004. Then there's the number and cost of these guns. Technology improves, prices go down, and it gets easier and easier to commit mass shootings.

I'm not even going to address the "school shootings are a minuscule proportion..." Seriously Michael, I think you're a smart, decent guy, but this is just f**king ghoulish. Do you have children? Think about somebody saying this to you if your child was one of the victims. Again, you get indignant at the suggestion (not by me by the way) that Republicans don't care about mass shootings, but think about what you're actually saying here. What exactly is the acceptable number of children massacred in their schools to prevent you from being personally inconvenienced? Put a figure on it. A percentage.

I mean, if the solutions are things like red flag laws and tighter background checks and waiting periods and closing the gun show loophole, you probably won't even be inconvenienced! I presume you already own your guns.

And I don't know what scenario are you imagining where a man tries to attack a woman and she has time to draw and aim her weapon. I used to teach women's self defence. This is pure fantasy. If you're being attacked, they're almost certainly too close for you to draw a gun before you even know what's happening. And by the way, how many women do you think are hiding semi-automatic rifles in their purses? Also, you're going to have to back up that "one estimate." This sounds an awful lot like extremely weak confirmation bias.

The question of where the evil people came from is fine. But solving the mystery of human evil is, I think you'll agree, harder than solving the mystery of how a single human being can kill 60 people in 60 seconds. It's not that people aren't willing to dig deeper, it's that you're desperately trying to ignore an answer that's right on the surface. That's what's so frustrating. It's like talking about the problem food wastage and food distribution in the context of famine and having somebody ask, "well, why aren't scientists figuring out a way for humans to live without food?"

---

Michael:

Gun legislation is necessary.

Again, what legislation, specifically, would have prevented the Uvalde or any of the other shootings? If you want to make the case that more laws would have helped, you have to provide some kind of linkage. You haven't. We already agreed that banning guns is a non-starter. We also agree that gun violence is bad, and we should do whatever we can to prevent it. As a gun owner I'm open to solutions that infringe on my rights, but as I've said this is a high price so the result better be well worth it. Nobody can provide this; instead we just get more ranting about "do something" and demonizing people like me who, God forbid, wish to not be punished for not doing anything wrong.

Seat belt laws, and helmet laws, are stupid beyond belief. Most states now have the former but plenty still don't have the latter, thank goodness. The reason they're stupid is because they protect no one except the driver, who is an adult and should be allowed to make his or her own decisions. Laws like these are an example of what we call the "nanny state," basically Big Gov acting like it's your mother. But I digress.

The Assault Weapons Ban expired in 2004 because it was ineffective. It was ineffective for lots of reasons, such as the fact that relatively little gun violence is done using rifles, and "assault weapons" are a subset of rifles so even less would have been committed with them. The definitions they used for "assault weapons" were made by people who didn't know anything about guns and amounted to basically cosmetic differences between rifles that were black and looked scary, and rifles that were wood-grain and looked normal. The reality is that defining a rifle as an "assault weapon" really does amount to that: What it looks like, because functionally it isn't different in most respects to most other rifles. So sure, you can ban an AR-15 and other rifles that look like it, but how does that accomplish anything? You're not banning other rifles that do the exact same thing but don't look like military rifles. And banning all rifles, or all semi-automatic rifles, is a non-starter.

My point about school shootings wasn't to minimize their importance or tragedy. It was just to point out that these are extreme outlier events; you don't make policy based on outliers. You don't make public policy based on emotions. You do it based on a careful look at the facts and the big picture. I've already said we should be hardening schools, that's a no-brainer. I don't see anybody on the left saying "well okay we can let teachers carry guns on school grounds," so this "you won't budge" stuff goes both ways. At least THAT proposal has a direct connection to being able to prevent a school shooting.

I already have my guns, but here in Communist California I have to now do a background check every time I go to buy AMMO. Every time. That includes paying a fee. It's ridiculous. But hey, I'll take one for the team if you think that law helps reduce gun violence (I don't). I'm open to debating "red flag" laws too, which I could envision potentially preventing a shooting. As far as "tighter background checks," I don't know what that means. All 50 states have them, not sure how they could be improved. The "gun show loophole" is just a way to make it more difficult for private sellers - people who don't normally sell guns, maybe for collectibles - to sell their guns, and would also include sales in the family, so if you wanted to sell your gun to your son, you'd be prevented from doing so, probably would have to sell it to a firearms dealer and they would then sell it to your son. Again, what would this accomplish? Would it prevent gun violence? Doubtful. Would it wildly inconvenience the buyer and seller? Definitely. Should we do it? If it would shut the left up about it then it wouldn't bother me. But again it would likely be pointless.

Women protect themselves with guns ALL. THE. TIME. Could be on the street, could be in their home. Guy tries to break down the front door, is greeted by the lady homeowner wielding a gun who kills him on the spot. This does happen. You don't hear about it much because the media is left-leaning and hates guns so it doesn't fit their narrative. The study I mentioned was commissioned by the Obama White House in 2013. https://doi.org/10.17226/18319. I downloaded it, it's really fascinating. I was wrong, the estimate was 500K to 3 million, not 1 million. They talk about it on page 15.

I agree the question of where the evil people are coming from is a hard thing to work out. It's a multitude of societal pressures that are taboo to discuss, like the presence of fathers in the home; the absence of drugs; church attendance; community involvement; mental health care; etc. But THESE are the real culprits. These people who shoot up public places are lunatics and always have acted out in ways that should have alerted people to pay attention to them but didn't. Semi-automatic firearms, on the other hand, have been around for over 100 years, make up a large percentage of the 420 million guns in circulation in America, and are here to stay, so we ought to fix the hard things and prepare better to prevent shootings as best we can.

---

Steve QJ:

We already agreed that banning guns is a non-starter. We also agree that gun violence is bad, and we should do whatever we can to prevent it.

No, I don't think we've agreed this at all. Certainly not the "doing whatever we can to prevent it" part. In fact, that's the core of our disagreement here. Because there is not a single device that I own, that I wouldn't happily have be more inconvenient to own, if it meant saving people's lives. Especially children's lives.

Rights aren't given by God. "Thou shalt own a gun" isn't one of the Ten Commandments. God isn't sitting on a cloud seething because there aren't enough gun owners in America. Rights are about balancing individual freedoms with the wellbeing of society. Not God.

A very simple piece of legislation that would have prevented the Uvalde shooting? Raise the minimum age for a semi-automatic weapon to 21. Now, I know you'll object because the next shooter might be 22 or whatever. But this is the point. And it's the reason why gun advocates so consistently prevent common sense, reasonable attempts to reduce tragedies like these. There is no law that will prevent all mass shootings. Not even banning all guns. But simple changes would have prevented this one.

The problem isn't that America has mass shootings, it's that it has so many of them that if I asked you to tell me about the mass shooting that happened last week, you'd have to ask me which one.

Gun laws, seat-belt laws, helmet laws, they are necessary because a) people are surprisingly stupid surprisingly often, and b) because no, it's not just the individual who is affected. What if the driver doesn't make their children wear a seatbelt and their kids die in an accident? What if only the driver dies and leaves the kids orphaned? That's taxpayer money for foster care, that's a higher likelihood of crime and mental illness in those children's futures, and most simply of all, that's easily preventible human tragedy.

The assault weapons ban was effective enough to prevent a significant number of mass shootings. Unless you think the rise that followed it was just a coincidence. Tell me, do you think there would be more or less casualties if machine guns weren't as heavily regulated as they are? More destructive weapons cause more destruction. Don’t you agree?

That said, I agree that the current state of gun classification is a mess. Short barrels and fore-grips and classifying every scary looking gun as an "assault rifle" just muddies the waters. The key issue, in my opinion should be rate of fire. If you want to own a gun that can fire 60 rounds per minute, you should need to jump through some major hoops to get it. You should need to justify why you want it. And you should be required to prove that you can (and do) use and maintain and store it safely. And you should be legally liable for any harm it does so you're invested in keeping it secure. No problem for a responsible gun owner, right?

The question of whether schools should be "hardened" or society should be "softened" is a tough one. Not because the answer isn't crystal clear to me, and again, to every other developed nation in the world, but because if I try to put myself in the mindset of somebody who values maintaining gun access above all else, I see that it's not a totally insane position.

But I find it really hard to believe you don't see that having armed guards patrolling schools doesn't create an ideal environment for children. I also think the solution of "MOAR GUNZ!" runs into obvious trouble when you think about all the places where mass shootings can occur. Should there be armed guards at shopping malls? At cinemas? In churches? You reach a point where you need to "harden" every space in public life because shootings can take place anywhere. And that's before you've even mentioned the expense as far as training and equipment.

Thanks for the link to the study. But to be clear, estimates range from 108k to 3 million. An error range that large tells me that the data is close to meaningless. It also acknowledges that it's not clear whether defensive use of guns actually prevents injury to the gun-wielding victim when considering the different types of crime involved. So while I still very strongly suspect that you're wrong about women defending themselves with guns "ALL. THE. TIME." I'm prepared to be proven wrong. But capital letters aren't going to do it. If you don't have any data, you're just guessing. And given what we saw at Uvalde recently, with highly trained, well-equipped police officers afraid to tackle a single mass shooter, I don't believe an untrained woman or man is likely to turn into Dirty Harry in a crisis situation.

As I said, I have many years of experience in martial arts. I've seen how most untrained people go to pieces when the threat is just a few kicks and punches. Even in the safe, controlled environment of a class.

---

Michael:

Rights aren't given by God. "Thou shalt own a gun" isn't one of the Ten Commandments.

Rights DO come from God, absolutely. The Declaration of Independence points out that government doesn't give us our rights, it just affirms the ones we already got from God. I have the right to defend myself from attack, including owning a gun. Government also doesn't grant me the right to speak freely, that's given to me by God by virtue of my humanity.

You raise a popular idea for a bill in raising the minimum age to buy a rifle to 21. It would have prevented the Uvalde shooting, and others. It's true that when the next shooters turn out to be 22, people will just say "well we should raise it to 23" or something. There's no limiting principle. Could it help? Maybe.

The bigger problem with that idea is that what you're really talking about doing is raising the age of legal adulthood. Either you're an adult when you're 18 or you're not. We can change that to 21 but then we have to examine all the other laws related to the same issue: Raise the voting age to 21? Raise the age you can enter a legal contract to 21? Raise the age to enter the military or be drafted to 21? All of these and more are part of the same question of "when is a person an adult?" And guess what? Democrats won't go near those questions, so nothing gets done.

If fully-automatic weapons weren't as heavily regulated as they are, sure I could see more damage being done. But as you've already admitted, classifying guns based on how scary they look is not effective, yet that's how the anti-gun lobby has tried to do it (and is still trying). You can say "rate of fire" but again, if an AR-15 is functionally the same as another semi-automatic rifle, what's the point? You can't outlaw all rifles and it's pointless to target just the scary ones.

Any semi-automatic firearm you will be able to fire pretty quickly. Heck, even a revolver you can fire pretty quickly. The only limiting factor is magazine size and maybe the speed of swapping them out. California has tried to do this by limiting "high capacity" magazines and forcing AR owners to use a key to swap out the magazine. I don't own an AR but my brother-in-law does and he showed me this.

The problem is that these kinds of legal tactics - limiting how many bullets can fit into a magazine; making it harder to change out an empty magazine; requiring background checks on bullets; limiting a person's ability to carry outside of his home; and many other such laws - are not really going to stop crime because the only people following those rules are responsible gun owners who just want the guns for self-defense and for sport shooting or hunting. Those rules get in MY way but they're not going to get into a criminal's way, and in fact might put me in jeopardy because when that a gang of guys breaks into my house I will be at a disadvantage.

I think schools should be hardened, for sure. I don't necessarily think there need to be armed guards wandering around; but a single entry door or gate would be simple to work out. Now, the Uvalde shooter scaled an 8-foot high fence and went in through a back door that was open. Then again, he was also outside taking pot shots at random people and firing his gun into the sky for several minutes before he climbed the fence, too. And all that was after crashing his car into a ditch. Cops were called, but didn't show up for 14 minutes, even knowing there was a guy shooting a gun outside a school. The problem in Uvalde was not gun laws, it was a failure of police to act.

You do reach a point where you need to harden every space in public life. Yes. But the simplest way to do that is to stop trying to discourage people from carrying in public, either openly or concealed. And encourage ongoing training. The dumbest thing you could do is declare a place - like a school - as a "gun-free zone." That is basically an invitation for a bad guy to come over there and have his way. If you're a deranged bad guy and you want to go to a supermarket or a church or a school and shoot it up, and you think there might be some people there who are armed, you are absolutely going to think twice before going to that place. You will instead most likely go somewhere else that is less likely to have such people.

And again, these guys are deranged. They have all kinds of mental issues, they have almost always been acting out violently for years prior, should have (and in some cases did) had contact with police already, before they ever went on a killing spree. We have a society in 2022 that is more insane in every way than in 1950. I don't think that's a coincidence. Nobody talks seriously about dealing with any of our societal problems, which are the real root cause here. The guns are just the tool of choice for these nuts to act out. If we're not going to deal with those societal problems (and it's clear that we are not) then the next thing is to prepare better for when people act out violently. To me that's just common sense.

---

Steve QJ:

Rights DO come from God, absolutely.

Okay, we're definitely not going to have this argument😅 Suffice it to say, the Declaration of Independence isn't proof of Gods existence. Never mind that rights come from God. It is a document, written by men, with the word "God" in it. Again, if the basis for your argument is the belief that God is sitting on a cloud demanding that Americans have all the semi-automatics they want, this conversation will get very absurd very quickly.

Yes, there's no limiting principle for any age-restrictions. That's just the way it is. Sadly, we can't do any better as human beings. In some states the age of consent is 16, in others 18, in others it depends on various strange exceptions. There is no magical age where everybody becomes mature enough to consent to sex. But we still have an age of consent, because picking a line in the sand is better than not picking one. Personally, I think a pretty good rule of thumb is, if you're not responsible enough to buy alcohol, you're not responsible enough to buy a semi-automatic weapon.

I'm glad you brought up the military. The military enforces gun controls that are vastly more stringent than anything we've discussed so far. If civilians were held to the same standards as the marines when it came to gun training, skill maintenance and storage, we wouldn't be having this conversation. I'll let this former rifle/pistol coach for the marine corps make the case. Please do watch it, it's illuminating.

Yeah, you're right, I said rate of fire, but wrapped up in that is obviously magazine size, It was in my head but I didn't express it. If a gun can fire 50 rounds a second but the magazine only holds 5 rounds, then we don't have the same problem. So yes, I should have been clearer, magazine size + rate of fire is the issue.

I think the real issue here is that you're hung up on this idea of "a gang of guys" breaking into your home, all armed to the teeth presumably, and you John Wick-ing your way out of the situation. How many times has this happened in your life so far? You want to have unrestricted access to guns, based on an almost laughably unrealistic hypothetical. And so you're resistant to tackling the very real problem of unhinged people getting the same access and using it to murder innocent people.

When somebody proposes something that will make that situation a little better, even it doesn't fix it completely, you are tempted to dismiss it because it might put you "at a disadvantage" in your hypothetical situation. And you'd rather avoid that than avoid the deaths of people you don't know, because it's hard to see them as real people when they have no connection to you.

But here's the reality:

You will almost certainly never have a "gang of guys" break into your home with or without guns (I certainly hope you don't). If you do, they will almost certainly shoot you first. If anybody gets shot with your gun, statistically speaking, it's most likely to be you or a member of your household.

Yes, these guys are deranged. You'll get absolutely no argument from me there. But what are you suggesting? That people who have contact with the police for violent crimes are denied access to guns? If so, I'm completely on board with that! Sounds like a great idea.

---

Michael:

I've seen the video of the alleged Marine Gun Instructor before, I don't think he makes any relevant points. The Marine Corps is not everyday civilian life, it's a completely different environment.

Obviously if a gang of guys had broken into my home and started a firefight with me we wouldn't be having this conversation. But it's ridiculous to dismiss the point; just because it hasn't happened to me doesn't mean it hasn't happened to others or that it couldn't happen to me. I live in a fairly good area, but I'm blessed that way. Millions don't. Many of them are women. Bad guys break into homes every day in this country, and often they are armed. There are countless stories of women, who would now be dead but for their ownership of a firearm, shooting a guy or guys who try to break into their homes. When you argue for banning or limiting guns, all you're doing is hindering those women homeowners, not the guys breaking into the home. That's the whole point.

Defensive uses of guns (either firing or even just brandishing) don't make the news the way mass shootings do, but they happen far more frequently. Here is an interesting piece thinking through why that is: https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/09/22/there_are_far_more_defensive_gun_uses_than_murders_in_america_heres_why_you_rarely_hear_of_them_794461.html

School shootings and mass shootings are extremely rare. They get a ton of airplay when they happen, but the reality is that statistically speaking any school child has as much chance of being killed by a gun in school as he/she does from being struck by lightning: About one in 10 million, according to John Tierney here: https://www.city-journal.org/school-shootings-horrific-but-statistically-rare His point is that drownings are WAY more of a problem than shootings, but nowhere near the news coverage. Mass shootings are overblown.

Convicted felons are typically disallowed from owning a firearm forever (https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-someone-possess-gun-after-criminal-conviction.html), this already is law and has been since forever. Nobody has an issue with this, it makes sense. Gun owners support it. Where we get into disagreements are some of the proposals that anti-gun advocates make, such as "red flag" laws and taking away guns from people on no-fly lists, etc. But these are reasoned arguments worthy of debate.

You and I are not going to solve the gun debate right now, and that's completely okay with me. I just wish that people who come at contentious issues like this from different angles can at the very least understand each others' positions. I do appreciate your willingness to have a dialogue in good faith.

---

“School shootings and mass shootings are extremely rare. They get a ton of airplay when they happen, but the reality is that statistically speaking any school child has as much chance of being killed by a gun in school as he/she does from being struck by lightning”

I don’t address this point in my reply below, but just thought I’d mention that according to the CDC, there were 444 lightning strike deaths in the United States between 2006 and 2021.

In 2021 alone, there were 705 mass shooting deaths. Not to mention the 2830 wounded.

---

Steve QJ:

There are countless stories of women, who would now be dead but for their ownership of a firearm, shooting a guy or guys who try to break into their homes.

You keep saying this, but thus far, haven't provided a shred of evidence for it. What percentage of home invasions go down this way? I'd take your point if this were based in fact. I'm just not convinced at all that it is.

And he's not an "alleged" Marine corps instructor😅. After his video went viral, he's been invited onto news programs to talk in further detail. He's legit. Yes, the marine corps is a completely different environment to civilian life. That's the point. It's an environment full of highly-trained, carefully vetted people who are highly unlikely to be drunk around their weapons or handle them irresponsibly, yet they are still required to demonstrate skill and discipline consistently. Most importantly, they are held responsible for any harm caused by their weapon if they don't follow the rules. Why do you think any random idiot should be held to a lower standard?

The article on defensive gun use is interesting. In 2/3 of the author's own examples, innocent bystanders were killed before the "good guy with a gun" stepped in. And if the majority of defensive uses are just the victim showing their gun, why are high capacity or high rate of fire guns necessary? We've agreed that getting rid of guns completely is a non-starter. But I don't see how this makes a case for particularly dangerous guns.

When you say that school/mass shootings are rare, what exactly do you mean? There have been 27 school (not mass, school), shootings in the US this year. Is that rare? Compared to what? The 0 school shootings that have taken place in the rest of the developed world? The thousands of other shooting deaths that have taken place in America this year (for which tighter gun control is still relevant)?

By most reasonable standards, a tragedy happening 27 times in less than 6 months is not rare. And again, we haven't even touched on mass shootings. But if you want to campaign against drownings, I'm with you. Put up fences around dangerous bodies of water, teach kids to swim, more life preservers, whatever it takes. I suspect you'd meet very little resistance. The resistance to gun control is the frustrating thing here.

I didn't realise that people convicted of misdemeanour domestic violence were prohibited from owning guns. I think the definition could do with being expanded beyond specifically intimate partner violence, but that's great. That's exactly the kind of common sense that I think most people want. I'm not trying to penalise responsible gun owners, I'm sure most people aren't. They just want to see more than the hand-waving and shoulder-shrugging that so often follows tragedies like these.

Thanks a lot for the conversation Michael, it was educational. As you say, it would be so helpful if good-faith conversations about issues like these were more common.

---

There are so many emotional, hot-button issues nowadays. Partly because there’s so much bad information out there, partly because, to paraphrase Thomas Sowell, we keep confusing feeling for thinking, and partly because there are very rarely simple answers to complex problems.

There’s no simple way to end mass shootings. There’s no simple way to rid humanity of mental illness. There’s no simple way to abolish evil.

But there are ways to make bad situations better. And they all involve taking a hard, unclouded look at reality. They all involve considering perspectives other than our own. They all involve compromise and sacrifice.

As nice as it would be, debates are hardly ever solved in one sitting. Even one very long sitting. But getting into the details is important. Especially if there isn’t a gun to your head.

---

p.s. Feedback on conversations of this length please. There are two factors I try to consider when it comes to conversation length; the number of replies, and the length of the replies. On complex issues, especially when we’re arguing about legislation or statistics, the individual replies tend to get pretty long.

They definitely won’t become the norm here, but are they useful? Overwhelming? A nice change of pace? Boring? Let me know your thoughts.