The right isn't happy about situations like Sandy Hook and Uvalde because they make their side look bad, rather than because children died. Kiddie deaths, and everyone else's at the hands of a Righteous 2A 'Murican, are simply the price they feel you must pay, on some level, for overly-interpreted 2A rights.
The right isn't happy about situations like Sandy Hook and Uvalde because they make their side look bad, rather than because children died. Kiddie deaths, and everyone else's at the hands of a Righteous 2A 'Murican, are simply the price they feel you must pay, on some level, for overly-interpreted 2A rights.
The right has *zero* claim to 'pro-life' values anymore. Not when they fight harder for fetal rights than they do those same fetuses to go to school in a few more years without their brains getting splattered by a Righteous 2A 'Murican.
Do they want to see it happen? No, but it's an inconvenient embarrassment, at most. So, no, I don't expect people who'd rather die on a hill defending the right of every nutbag in America, literally, to have a gun, to ponder whether perhaps not everyone should have, that owning a gun is also a *privilege* as well as a basic right, and that it should be taken away if you're not responsible enough for the privilege (like pre-existing violence problems and demonstrated mental disorders). They show zero respect for life, and when it's okay for one side to diss life, it becomes okay for everyone else. So the left, instead, ignores its sexual predators and pedos taking advantage of their movement and, like the Catholic Church, are earning their growing reputation as a safe space for pedoes.
Neither side cares about children's rights, they just differ on which right they'll defend - the right to life or the right to not be preyed upon by pervy men.
Every time one of these grisly mass shootings happens there is a run on gun stores and a lot of them end up completely depleted as the RKBA junkies stock up, certain that the slaughter is just a ruse to take away their guns.
They don’t need to hear it from Alex Jones, they don’t need to coordinate. It’s spontaneous.
The fanaticism around guns is wholly irrational and since so many on the right maintain a permanent state of rage it’s hard to imagine this not getting a lot worse.
I have told you directly that I respect your views and understand the difference in our backgrounds. I would absolutely love to have a conversation with you about this; I think there would be some raised voices but no insults and that in the end we would find our differences are not as broad as we thought.
If I have not said so before let me say it now in this forum: I do not consider you to be a fanatic. You have been in combat, I haven't; you grew up with guns; I did not.
I actually agree with much, if not most of that, but your first paragraph looks like projection based upon an erroneous belief that you can read minds.
Here's the thing about my spirit of what Steve wrote remark (moving away from partisanship). I am pro-2nd so the political left (sorry Chris, I struggle for a meaningful word) see me as conservative. I am pro-choice so the right sees me as a progressive. There is no logical reason for linking such issues according to partisan tribalism which leads to my disdain for such thinking.
My hill to die on was a reference to a question I often ask myself, "Where might that lead? Is it worth it?" I am in no way for every nutbag to have a firearm, but the devil is in the details in how we deal with that. I wish I knew of a workable path, but I'm not that wise and the people at both anti-gun and pro-gun extremes seem the least likely to have that wisdom.
Substack threads can be wicked confusing and I just made three attempts to see what I said that you disagree with in the first 'graph. I think it's the one about how Sandy Hook & Uvalde are the price one pays, in 2A nutbag minds, for 'preserving' 2A 'rights' which I'm putting in quotes because I'm quite sure the Founding Fathers were concerned with muskets, not assault weapons or whatever doesn't qualify as an assault weapon that's nevertheless used for mass assault.
I might be overly-broad-interpreting myself, but the crazies (not the conservative intelligentsia) seems to be pretty 'pro life' on the subject of abortion, but anti-life on the subject of *intelligent* gun laws (I've never been a 100% "ban all guns" type unless someone can dig up a letter to the editor I wrote in 1976 that I've totally forgotten about).
That, plus GA pushing an election with a guy even dumber than Trump into a *runoff election* (and I don't believe GA is a maverick state of stupid), a guy who can't control his dick and paid for at least two 'baby murders' (as they define it), incline me to say the Religious Reich has finally produced proof positive that they are not, in fact, 'pro-life'.
You both know that I think political partisanship is illogical and that I am both pro-2nd Amendment & pro-choice so I'll ignore your conflation of the two issues.
Specifically, the idea that pro-2nd Amendment people are just fine with school shootings is something that required great restraint in my reply. Here is the issue.
The Winchester Repeating Arms Company introduced the first semi-automatic rimfire and centerfire rifles designed especially for the civilian market in 1903 & 1905. The Winchester Model 1903 and Winchester Model 1905 operated on the principle of blowback in order to function semi-automatically.
The first semi-automatic rifle adopted and widely issued by a major military power (France) was the Fusil Automatique Modele 1917. This is a locked-breech, gas-operated action which is very similar in its mechanical principles to the future M1 Garand in the United States. Civilians had semi-automatic rifles before the military did.
In the military, assault is a verb. At least when I was on active duty there was nothing designated as an assault weapon. In the Vietnam war era, there was an assault accessory that could be attached to the side of the belt fed M-60 machinegun that could hold its 250-round linked belt of ammunition to keep it from dragging on the ground while on patrol where you might participate in an assault. On perimeters it was crew served and mounted on a tripod so that accessory was not needed. Instead, the assistant machine gunner had an extra barrel and an asbestos glove to change the barrel when it got too hot during heavy activity.
I gave you that background to point out that, I'll use the progressive word here, "assault weapon" is a "dog whistle" for semi-automatic firearms capable of rapid fire. I've seen assigning attempts at defining them as; look military, black, detachable magazines, muzzle breaks/flash suppressors, pistol grips, bayonet lugs and such. Things that have absolutely nothing to do with anything logically associated with mass shootings. The thing they want to eliminate is semi-automatic firearms but are afraid to say it because that's about 40% of the firearms in the US. A low percentage because of all the old firearms like a bolt-action deer rifle that anti-gunners have been known to call "sniper rifles" (need to ban those next) and pump shotguns which anti-gunners have been known to call "riot guns" (need to ban those too). Most of the firearms on sale today are semi-automatic. I think it disingenuous to try to pretend that it is not about a large-scale ban of the new firearms that people have purchased, rather than inheriting them from their grandfather.
That would just piss off a big chunk of America and cause a change in how the nutcases commit mass murder of which there are many ways. Some, like a Ryder truck full of fertilizer are even more spectacular.
All of that is to say that a politically acceptable action that would effectively reduce the number of such event is difficult. If you think that just giving the finger to such a large percentage of America and just banning the semis is OK, I could talk like you and say that you might just be OK with a very bloody civil war. Basically, when you claimed that 2nd-amendment people are fine with school shootings you spit in my eye with the demonization much discussed here. I will continue with my restrained reply.
That's why I said 'assault weapons', or whatever's used to assault people. Let me state again: I'm not anti 2A, I'm just against idiots with guns, defined as people too demonstrably stupid or violent to have them. However you want to define 'assault weapons', the ones that make it easy to kill lots of people in a very short period of time are the ones in dispute. Not *all* weapons Americans are allowed now are necessary, but I'm not getting into the semantics thing with you again. I watched Beau's videos you sent awhile back on guns and they were quite good and informative but let's please stop with the semantics. I think some guns should be kept out of civilian hands but I'm not for disarming the populace. Just the part of the populace that can't handle the responsibility, and that is usually the loudest voices against sane gun laws. Honestly, I'd drop the whole discussion about which guns if we could find a way to keep them out of idiots' hands. But the 2A set won't allow it, and apparently we have to do everything they tell us to do or they'll get violent--er.
While I don't think the gun nuts exactly *cheer* when there's a mass shooting, I *do* think they find it more of an embarrassment than something we need to do something about it. Like it or not, it's a partisan issue. They didn't like abortion so they finally got Roe overturned; but they look the other way when people are murdered every damn day in America, and often children too, and come up with *every excuse in the book* for why we can't do *anything* about the real problem, which is the (mostly) men with pre-existing violence and mental health problems (that everyone knows about) being allowed to have guns.
And somehow, saying the nutbags already committing mass murder are going to find new ways of committing mass murder sounds fairly unpersuasive, but only because I think they're going to do that anyway. Mostly, because no one has put the skids on their gun obsession for thirty years and now here we are, with one of the highest murder rate, perhaps even THE highest murder rate in the Western world.
Arguing that 'If we go after their guns there will be mass slaugher/civil war is exactly why the Middle East is such a shitshow. The terrorists are the real rulers because no one wants to be the victim of the next terrorist attack. Their weak-ass governments let them get away with it because *they* don't want to be the targets of their terrorism. No one has the balls or labia to come down hard on them. No one wants to be blamed for 'encouraging' the attacks to begin with. (Isn't pacifism of Hitler what contributed mightily to WWII?) The longer we *allow* terrorists to set the rules ("Do this or we'll do that") the sooner the US will come to resemble the 'shithole states' of the Middle East.
Unfortunately, the Democrats are too weak-ass to fight them, and the Republicans, of course, fully support them.
"we can't do *anything* about the real problem, which is the (mostly) men with pre-existing violence and mental health problems (that everyone knows about) being allowed to have guns."
Alas, were it only so. Yes certainly some of the shooters telegraph their intentions; Rittenhouse shot his mouth off about wanting to kill protesters and a friend caught his rant on video but the in-the-pocket judge ruled it inadmissible.
However. Thank back to all the times you've heard that the shooter was a mild and unassuming guy, kept to himself, last person one'd expect ... a lot of these shooters commit their first offense ever when one day something snaps and they go shoot up an elementary school. Red flag laws would mitigate, but they would not stop the mass killings.
On. The. Other. Hand. Australia in 1996 had the Port Arthur slaughter and, unburdened by a ridiculous Right To Keep and Bear Arms or an NRA, they banned assault rifles, or whatever you want to call the goddamn things, and in the 26 years since there have been no more of those events.
The Onion in one of their more unfunny routines regularly republishes this, with a few words changed:
And make no mistake: the slaughter is not overplayed for clicks, the death toll in the USA is greater than in some countries' civil wars.
The gun nuts only see the news of such events in one way: as manufactured Fake News to create pretexts to disarm the populace so they will be helpless in the face of some hallucinatory "left wing" takeover where their kids will be taken away for gender-transition surgery and the FBI will come for their steel-belted radials and their beer. See Jones, Alex who went on his rage show and screams that Sandy Hook never happened.
Nope. Not enough to disarm those who have already broadcast their derangement. America is a country where the MMPI has to be frequently recalibrated because the center of sane <—> insane keeps moving toward insane.
I heard about an American couple that emigrated to Holland and brought their guns; after a fw years they realized how stupidly they'd been thinking and came clean with the cops, fortunately to a captain of police who in his discretion decided not to prosecute them. But it took them several years to absorb the new outlook.
I borrowed a gun for three days once, I was handling a lot of money and lived in a bad neighborhood. I couldn't stand having it around. Every time I got mad it crossed my mind, and I have pretty good impulse control but still I needed to return it and take my chances.
There are other contributing factors, for sure, like the disintegrating social contract, the social media divide, and rise and lack of control over fake news, conspiracy theories, mis/disinformation, etc., and income inequality and the skyrocketing costs of living, both of which get short shrift in the public debate about mass shootings, and crime overall.
We know a lot more about public shooters than we did back when they really got started forty years ago (not including the U of TX sniper shooter 15 years prior, I consider that an outlier) and the earliest ones were most often motivated by workplace rage (the book Going Postal details this quite well). Now they're getting younger and crazier and the ability to assault people with repeating bullets guns (not getting into the terminology again or it will trigger someone's lengthy guns definitions). What we *do* know is they often broadcast their intentions and no one pays attention. And sometimes they do and the cops move in to nail someone with all the goods on him indicating he was, in fact, planning a mass attack.
No, I don't want to disarm the populace, and I don't believe the 'slippery slope' nonsense, or we would all have *no* rights* because the laws we need (against murder, crime, lying, driving while drunk, etc.) would have been used to strip us of everything.
The ones who are shrieking about a fascist nation and jack-booted thugs coming for their guns and terrified that libtards and n-words want to destroy their rights are the ones most worried about losing them if we had saner gun laws, while keeping the 2A intact.
In other words, anyone with a history of violence, esp domestic violence.
I saw that Onion article when it came out, and yeah, the bitter sarcasm is just as resonant today as it was eight years ago.
Since we *do* have gun laws in some places that are stricter than before, and the questions rise up in the wake of each shooting, "Why was this guy allowed to buy a gun? How did he slip through the cracks?" maybe we should pressure law enforcement to enforce laws they probably don't agree with, because they too support the 2A *a little too much* and also because cops have a huge problem with domestic violence (the subject of my last article). How about we start legally going after the people who aren't doing their jobs properly?
This is the first post I have read from you that I would say crosses the line. While the information on nomenclature is illuminating on its own it really has nothing to do with the topic, which is not firearm lore but firearm politics.
The RKBA fanatics are not indifferent to school shootings? That's like saying all Republicans acknowledge that Trump lost and admit that he lies every time he opens his mouth.
Every time a mass shooting is reported there is a run on gun stores, a lot of BS about the shooting report being a pretext to confiscate guns.
Yes, the banning of assault rifles would trigger a huge surge of rage and violence. Should we allow ourselves to be extorted into keeping the damned things legal until people are afraid to go to work? How many parents hear the phone ring during the day and wonder if this is the report that one of their children has just been blown in half by some disturbed teenager?
Really, and I insist you answer this, why does anyone need a semi-automatic or an automatic weapon? And, no, I am not interested in the difference between the two, a correction that is trotted out as a distraction and an attack on people who are tired of the slaughter, as being uninformed.
Correct me if I am wrong but your support of the 2A is for self-defense, correct? How does anything past a one-shot handgun have anything to do with that?
Yes there are other ways to kill people, but right now the proliferation of these massacre machines is out of control.
I am not spitting in your eye, I don't believe for a second that you are OK with classrooms an inch deep in blood. But when it comes to the line that says "at this point we have to consider no longer allowing preposterously overpowered firearms in the hands of mentally unstable people," you will not cross that line.
Just as with the "trans" crowd, to altogether too many people their guns are the very seat of identity. Who am I? Blah blah blah Second Amendment blah blah blah freedom blah blah blah more guns. Do you think this is acceptable? I don't.
As for the very bloody civil war, must we be held hostage to that? They're preparing for it anyway, stocking up on ammo and filling their ranks with experienced ex-military, and the longer we go without addressing the core of the problem, the bloodier it's going to be.
The point in that was that semi-automatic firearms have been available for over one hundred years and civilians had them before our military and they were available for mail order with no government intervention. I think that there is more to the issue than the availability of semi-automatic firearms. There is complexity and while I understand that if you believe that guns are the root cause that that's where you'd focus first. They are an issue, but I don't see them as a root cause and as a practical matter I don't see them vanishing anytime soon.
A sales tactic. Interestingly there are now a large portion of gun buyers who are first time buyers who gave up being anti-gun as a matter of perceived practicality. I hope they get training, both in safety and the law.
The issue isn't limited to buying guns. Gun rights organizations are yammering (send money) about the anti-gun provisions in the abomination spending bill which people signed without reading (an impossible task). My objection to omnibus spending bills goes beyond senseless spending on things that won't walk on their own legs but enacting policy on such things, but that is another subject,
In truth, I think that there would be less violent resistance than is believed. Most people, like me, would turn them in. I know a fight I can't win or is not worth it when I see it.
Just as the gun industry promotes overblown fear of gun restrictions, the anti-gun groups promote hoplophobia to create true believers who will send money like the pro-gun groups do. I am not minimizing school shootings, but I think the fear about them is greater than justified. When people hear "mass shooting" they think of spectacular events like major school shootings or the Las Vegas shooting. The government sets a low bar for calling something a mass shooting and the large majority (bumping up the count) are local events like drug deals gone bad, gangs, etc. Promoting fear and hysteria are tools used by more than FOX.
I don't think in terms of only owning what we need. That would collapse the buy what we want economy. People would not have jobs or income in a world without self-sufficiency and I don't need to tell you where that leads. It's not a question I ask but what follows might be the answer you seek.
Self-defense is not huge in my list of priorities since the odds of being in a self-defense situation is small enough that I don't carry a gun every time I go out the door. At the same time, I see no higher personal priority than self-preservation and the defense of those we love so I certainly think people have a right to tools to effectively do that. I'm not talking about laws but nature.
Your thought that a single shot handgun is all you need for self-defense is actually a strong argument for semi-automatic firearms. One-shot stops are a "buy this gun" gun magazine fantasy. In all of the critical incident reports from the Phoenix PD that I've seen, they never shoot one round. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1137967663572659&ref=sharing
I suspect that I have a lower opinion of the Mr. Tacticals who think they need more crap than soldiers in a war zone than you have. They are mostly wannabes. Wannabe what they never were or wannabe what they once were. The thing is, they seem to me to be more about a weird form of cosplay than people who are actually going to go out and do something.
I probably support more measures than you imagine, but at the same time I have concerns about abuse of those things that you may not worry about. Red flag laws could address the nut jobs that shouldn't have access although there is a thriving stolen gun market for such people. But it can also be abused with false claims by vindictive people.
As I wrote, "assault weapon" is a political term used by people who are ignorant or disingenuous about the true object of their concern, semi-automatic firearms. I commend your honesty and candor. I just have a less sharp focus on tools than you although the complexity of my concerns doesn't make solving the problem any easier.
"A sales tactic. Interestingly there are now a large portion of gun buyers who are first time buyers who gave up being anti-gun as a matter of perceived practicality. I hope they get training"
Actually they don't need to advertise, as soon as the news comes out, they are deluged with customers.
Training? Highly unlikely. Most people facing a home invader are so shaken they probably couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. Hands shake, pulse hammers. Those on for example SWAT teams need to undergo biweekly desensitization so they can function in that kind of emergency' miss ONE such session and they can't go to the next emergency.
A lot of the Hairy Chested Administrator of Frontier Justice stuff is just conceit. Facing a threat to one's life takes more than conceit and most people aren't up to it.
Fear is one reason for semi-automatic firearms. People under stress, and life or death situations are stressful, tend to shoot with less accuracy than when not under stress, leading to firing multiple rounds.
As a Marine I was trained for 3-5 round bursts when selecting auto and machine gunners 5-7 round bursts. In real life a scared shitless combatant might just empty their magazine with one squeeze. Cops always shoot until the perp goes down.
When I had a job that required travel, I asked my wife if she wanted a gun where it was accessible to her. She said no, she would rely upon our dog. I taught her to shoot but she knows it's not in her to kill someone. Add people who wouldn't be able to use deadly force to your list of people who should not carry a gun since they are carrying it for an attacker in that case.
The right isn't happy about situations like Sandy Hook and Uvalde because they make their side look bad, rather than because children died. Kiddie deaths, and everyone else's at the hands of a Righteous 2A 'Murican, are simply the price they feel you must pay, on some level, for overly-interpreted 2A rights.
The right has *zero* claim to 'pro-life' values anymore. Not when they fight harder for fetal rights than they do those same fetuses to go to school in a few more years without their brains getting splattered by a Righteous 2A 'Murican.
Do they want to see it happen? No, but it's an inconvenient embarrassment, at most. So, no, I don't expect people who'd rather die on a hill defending the right of every nutbag in America, literally, to have a gun, to ponder whether perhaps not everyone should have, that owning a gun is also a *privilege* as well as a basic right, and that it should be taken away if you're not responsible enough for the privilege (like pre-existing violence problems and demonstrated mental disorders). They show zero respect for life, and when it's okay for one side to diss life, it becomes okay for everyone else. So the left, instead, ignores its sexual predators and pedos taking advantage of their movement and, like the Catholic Church, are earning their growing reputation as a safe space for pedoes.
Neither side cares about children's rights, they just differ on which right they'll defend - the right to life or the right to not be preyed upon by pervy men.
Every time one of these grisly mass shootings happens there is a run on gun stores and a lot of them end up completely depleted as the RKBA junkies stock up, certain that the slaughter is just a ruse to take away their guns.
They don’t need to hear it from Alex Jones, they don’t need to coordinate. It’s spontaneous.
The fanaticism around guns is wholly irrational and since so many on the right maintain a permanent state of rage it’s hard to imagine this not getting a lot worse.
While I am pro-right to bear arms, I am not a fanatic and hope that you don't see me as one. One size does not fit all.
I have told you directly that I respect your views and understand the difference in our backgrounds. I would absolutely love to have a conversation with you about this; I think there would be some raised voices but no insults and that in the end we would find our differences are not as broad as we thought.
If I have not said so before let me say it now in this forum: I do not consider you to be a fanatic. You have been in combat, I haven't; you grew up with guns; I did not.
We cool?
Absolutely cool. I would love to sit at a table with you and converse where it is lies awkward than the internet.
I actually agree with much, if not most of that, but your first paragraph looks like projection based upon an erroneous belief that you can read minds.
Here's the thing about my spirit of what Steve wrote remark (moving away from partisanship). I am pro-2nd so the political left (sorry Chris, I struggle for a meaningful word) see me as conservative. I am pro-choice so the right sees me as a progressive. There is no logical reason for linking such issues according to partisan tribalism which leads to my disdain for such thinking.
My hill to die on was a reference to a question I often ask myself, "Where might that lead? Is it worth it?" I am in no way for every nutbag to have a firearm, but the devil is in the details in how we deal with that. I wish I knew of a workable path, but I'm not that wise and the people at both anti-gun and pro-gun extremes seem the least likely to have that wisdom.
Substack threads can be wicked confusing and I just made three attempts to see what I said that you disagree with in the first 'graph. I think it's the one about how Sandy Hook & Uvalde are the price one pays, in 2A nutbag minds, for 'preserving' 2A 'rights' which I'm putting in quotes because I'm quite sure the Founding Fathers were concerned with muskets, not assault weapons or whatever doesn't qualify as an assault weapon that's nevertheless used for mass assault.
I might be overly-broad-interpreting myself, but the crazies (not the conservative intelligentsia) seems to be pretty 'pro life' on the subject of abortion, but anti-life on the subject of *intelligent* gun laws (I've never been a 100% "ban all guns" type unless someone can dig up a letter to the editor I wrote in 1976 that I've totally forgotten about).
That, plus GA pushing an election with a guy even dumber than Trump into a *runoff election* (and I don't believe GA is a maverick state of stupid), a guy who can't control his dick and paid for at least two 'baby murders' (as they define it), incline me to say the Religious Reich has finally produced proof positive that they are not, in fact, 'pro-life'.
You both know that I think political partisanship is illogical and that I am both pro-2nd Amendment & pro-choice so I'll ignore your conflation of the two issues.
Specifically, the idea that pro-2nd Amendment people are just fine with school shootings is something that required great restraint in my reply. Here is the issue.
The Winchester Repeating Arms Company introduced the first semi-automatic rimfire and centerfire rifles designed especially for the civilian market in 1903 & 1905. The Winchester Model 1903 and Winchester Model 1905 operated on the principle of blowback in order to function semi-automatically.
The first semi-automatic rifle adopted and widely issued by a major military power (France) was the Fusil Automatique Modele 1917. This is a locked-breech, gas-operated action which is very similar in its mechanical principles to the future M1 Garand in the United States. Civilians had semi-automatic rifles before the military did.
In the military, assault is a verb. At least when I was on active duty there was nothing designated as an assault weapon. In the Vietnam war era, there was an assault accessory that could be attached to the side of the belt fed M-60 machinegun that could hold its 250-round linked belt of ammunition to keep it from dragging on the ground while on patrol where you might participate in an assault. On perimeters it was crew served and mounted on a tripod so that accessory was not needed. Instead, the assistant machine gunner had an extra barrel and an asbestos glove to change the barrel when it got too hot during heavy activity.
I gave you that background to point out that, I'll use the progressive word here, "assault weapon" is a "dog whistle" for semi-automatic firearms capable of rapid fire. I've seen assigning attempts at defining them as; look military, black, detachable magazines, muzzle breaks/flash suppressors, pistol grips, bayonet lugs and such. Things that have absolutely nothing to do with anything logically associated with mass shootings. The thing they want to eliminate is semi-automatic firearms but are afraid to say it because that's about 40% of the firearms in the US. A low percentage because of all the old firearms like a bolt-action deer rifle that anti-gunners have been known to call "sniper rifles" (need to ban those next) and pump shotguns which anti-gunners have been known to call "riot guns" (need to ban those too). Most of the firearms on sale today are semi-automatic. I think it disingenuous to try to pretend that it is not about a large-scale ban of the new firearms that people have purchased, rather than inheriting them from their grandfather.
That would just piss off a big chunk of America and cause a change in how the nutcases commit mass murder of which there are many ways. Some, like a Ryder truck full of fertilizer are even more spectacular.
All of that is to say that a politically acceptable action that would effectively reduce the number of such event is difficult. If you think that just giving the finger to such a large percentage of America and just banning the semis is OK, I could talk like you and say that you might just be OK with a very bloody civil war. Basically, when you claimed that 2nd-amendment people are fine with school shootings you spit in my eye with the demonization much discussed here. I will continue with my restrained reply.
That's why I said 'assault weapons', or whatever's used to assault people. Let me state again: I'm not anti 2A, I'm just against idiots with guns, defined as people too demonstrably stupid or violent to have them. However you want to define 'assault weapons', the ones that make it easy to kill lots of people in a very short period of time are the ones in dispute. Not *all* weapons Americans are allowed now are necessary, but I'm not getting into the semantics thing with you again. I watched Beau's videos you sent awhile back on guns and they were quite good and informative but let's please stop with the semantics. I think some guns should be kept out of civilian hands but I'm not for disarming the populace. Just the part of the populace that can't handle the responsibility, and that is usually the loudest voices against sane gun laws. Honestly, I'd drop the whole discussion about which guns if we could find a way to keep them out of idiots' hands. But the 2A set won't allow it, and apparently we have to do everything they tell us to do or they'll get violent--er.
While I don't think the gun nuts exactly *cheer* when there's a mass shooting, I *do* think they find it more of an embarrassment than something we need to do something about it. Like it or not, it's a partisan issue. They didn't like abortion so they finally got Roe overturned; but they look the other way when people are murdered every damn day in America, and often children too, and come up with *every excuse in the book* for why we can't do *anything* about the real problem, which is the (mostly) men with pre-existing violence and mental health problems (that everyone knows about) being allowed to have guns.
And somehow, saying the nutbags already committing mass murder are going to find new ways of committing mass murder sounds fairly unpersuasive, but only because I think they're going to do that anyway. Mostly, because no one has put the skids on their gun obsession for thirty years and now here we are, with one of the highest murder rate, perhaps even THE highest murder rate in the Western world.
Arguing that 'If we go after their guns there will be mass slaugher/civil war is exactly why the Middle East is such a shitshow. The terrorists are the real rulers because no one wants to be the victim of the next terrorist attack. Their weak-ass governments let them get away with it because *they* don't want to be the targets of their terrorism. No one has the balls or labia to come down hard on them. No one wants to be blamed for 'encouraging' the attacks to begin with. (Isn't pacifism of Hitler what contributed mightily to WWII?) The longer we *allow* terrorists to set the rules ("Do this or we'll do that") the sooner the US will come to resemble the 'shithole states' of the Middle East.
Unfortunately, the Democrats are too weak-ass to fight them, and the Republicans, of course, fully support them.
"we can't do *anything* about the real problem, which is the (mostly) men with pre-existing violence and mental health problems (that everyone knows about) being allowed to have guns."
Alas, were it only so. Yes certainly some of the shooters telegraph their intentions; Rittenhouse shot his mouth off about wanting to kill protesters and a friend caught his rant on video but the in-the-pocket judge ruled it inadmissible.
However. Thank back to all the times you've heard that the shooter was a mild and unassuming guy, kept to himself, last person one'd expect ... a lot of these shooters commit their first offense ever when one day something snaps and they go shoot up an elementary school. Red flag laws would mitigate, but they would not stop the mass killings.
On. The. Other. Hand. Australia in 1996 had the Port Arthur slaughter and, unburdened by a ridiculous Right To Keep and Bear Arms or an NRA, they banned assault rifles, or whatever you want to call the goddamn things, and in the 26 years since there have been no more of those events.
The Onion in one of their more unfunny routines regularly republishes this, with a few words changed:
https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1819576527
And make no mistake: the slaughter is not overplayed for clicks, the death toll in the USA is greater than in some countries' civil wars.
The gun nuts only see the news of such events in one way: as manufactured Fake News to create pretexts to disarm the populace so they will be helpless in the face of some hallucinatory "left wing" takeover where their kids will be taken away for gender-transition surgery and the FBI will come for their steel-belted radials and their beer. See Jones, Alex who went on his rage show and screams that Sandy Hook never happened.
Nope. Not enough to disarm those who have already broadcast their derangement. America is a country where the MMPI has to be frequently recalibrated because the center of sane <—> insane keeps moving toward insane.
I heard about an American couple that emigrated to Holland and brought their guns; after a fw years they realized how stupidly they'd been thinking and came clean with the cops, fortunately to a captain of police who in his discretion decided not to prosecute them. But it took them several years to absorb the new outlook.
I borrowed a gun for three days once, I was handling a lot of money and lived in a bad neighborhood. I couldn't stand having it around. Every time I got mad it crossed my mind, and I have pretty good impulse control but still I needed to return it and take my chances.
There are other contributing factors, for sure, like the disintegrating social contract, the social media divide, and rise and lack of control over fake news, conspiracy theories, mis/disinformation, etc., and income inequality and the skyrocketing costs of living, both of which get short shrift in the public debate about mass shootings, and crime overall.
We know a lot more about public shooters than we did back when they really got started forty years ago (not including the U of TX sniper shooter 15 years prior, I consider that an outlier) and the earliest ones were most often motivated by workplace rage (the book Going Postal details this quite well). Now they're getting younger and crazier and the ability to assault people with repeating bullets guns (not getting into the terminology again or it will trigger someone's lengthy guns definitions). What we *do* know is they often broadcast their intentions and no one pays attention. And sometimes they do and the cops move in to nail someone with all the goods on him indicating he was, in fact, planning a mass attack.
No, I don't want to disarm the populace, and I don't believe the 'slippery slope' nonsense, or we would all have *no* rights* because the laws we need (against murder, crime, lying, driving while drunk, etc.) would have been used to strip us of everything.
The ones who are shrieking about a fascist nation and jack-booted thugs coming for their guns and terrified that libtards and n-words want to destroy their rights are the ones most worried about losing them if we had saner gun laws, while keeping the 2A intact.
In other words, anyone with a history of violence, esp domestic violence.
I saw that Onion article when it came out, and yeah, the bitter sarcasm is just as resonant today as it was eight years ago.
Since we *do* have gun laws in some places that are stricter than before, and the questions rise up in the wake of each shooting, "Why was this guy allowed to buy a gun? How did he slip through the cracks?" maybe we should pressure law enforcement to enforce laws they probably don't agree with, because they too support the 2A *a little too much* and also because cops have a huge problem with domestic violence (the subject of my last article). How about we start legally going after the people who aren't doing their jobs properly?
This is the first post I have read from you that I would say crosses the line. While the information on nomenclature is illuminating on its own it really has nothing to do with the topic, which is not firearm lore but firearm politics.
The RKBA fanatics are not indifferent to school shootings? That's like saying all Republicans acknowledge that Trump lost and admit that he lies every time he opens his mouth.
Every time a mass shooting is reported there is a run on gun stores, a lot of BS about the shooting report being a pretext to confiscate guns.
Yes, the banning of assault rifles would trigger a huge surge of rage and violence. Should we allow ourselves to be extorted into keeping the damned things legal until people are afraid to go to work? How many parents hear the phone ring during the day and wonder if this is the report that one of their children has just been blown in half by some disturbed teenager?
Really, and I insist you answer this, why does anyone need a semi-automatic or an automatic weapon? And, no, I am not interested in the difference between the two, a correction that is trotted out as a distraction and an attack on people who are tired of the slaughter, as being uninformed.
Correct me if I am wrong but your support of the 2A is for self-defense, correct? How does anything past a one-shot handgun have anything to do with that?
Yes there are other ways to kill people, but right now the proliferation of these massacre machines is out of control.
I am not spitting in your eye, I don't believe for a second that you are OK with classrooms an inch deep in blood. But when it comes to the line that says "at this point we have to consider no longer allowing preposterously overpowered firearms in the hands of mentally unstable people," you will not cross that line.
Just as with the "trans" crowd, to altogether too many people their guns are the very seat of identity. Who am I? Blah blah blah Second Amendment blah blah blah freedom blah blah blah more guns. Do you think this is acceptable? I don't.
As for the very bloody civil war, must we be held hostage to that? They're preparing for it anyway, stocking up on ammo and filling their ranks with experienced ex-military, and the longer we go without addressing the core of the problem, the bloodier it's going to be.
And the core of the problem is guns.
As you know, I can hold contrary views, or at least acknowledge truth in them.
"𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘯 𝘯𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘶𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘪𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘰 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘱𝘪𝘤, 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘮 𝘭𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘮 𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘴."
The point in that was that semi-automatic firearms have been available for over one hundred years and civilians had them before our military and they were available for mail order with no government intervention. I think that there is more to the issue than the availability of semi-automatic firearms. There is complexity and while I understand that if you believe that guns are the root cause that that's where you'd focus first. They are an issue, but I don't see them as a root cause and as a practical matter I don't see them vanishing anytime soon.
"𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘢 𝘮𝘢𝘴𝘴 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘳𝘶𝘯 𝘰𝘯 𝘨𝘶𝘯 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘴, 𝘢 𝘭𝘰𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘉𝘚 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘧𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘨𝘶𝘯𝘴."
A sales tactic. Interestingly there are now a large portion of gun buyers who are first time buyers who gave up being anti-gun as a matter of perceived practicality. I hope they get training, both in safety and the law.
The issue isn't limited to buying guns. Gun rights organizations are yammering (send money) about the anti-gun provisions in the abomination spending bill which people signed without reading (an impossible task). My objection to omnibus spending bills goes beyond senseless spending on things that won't walk on their own legs but enacting policy on such things, but that is another subject,
"𝘠𝘦𝘴, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘢𝘶𝘭𝘵 𝘳𝘪𝘧𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘨𝘦𝘳 𝘢 𝘩𝘶𝘨𝘦 𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘨𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘷𝘪𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦. 𝘚𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘸𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘬𝘦𝘦𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘢𝘮𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘢𝘭 𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘭 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘧𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘨𝘰 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬? 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘥𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘯 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘣𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘧 𝘣𝘺 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘣𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘦𝘦𝘯𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘳?"
In truth, I think that there would be less violent resistance than is believed. Most people, like me, would turn them in. I know a fight I can't win or is not worth it when I see it.
Just as the gun industry promotes overblown fear of gun restrictions, the anti-gun groups promote hoplophobia to create true believers who will send money like the pro-gun groups do. I am not minimizing school shootings, but I think the fear about them is greater than justified. When people hear "mass shooting" they think of spectacular events like major school shootings or the Las Vegas shooting. The government sets a low bar for calling something a mass shooting and the large majority (bumping up the count) are local events like drug deals gone bad, gangs, etc. Promoting fear and hysteria are tools used by more than FOX.
"𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘐 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘸𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴, 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘢 𝘴𝘦𝘮𝘪-𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘰𝘳 𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘸𝘦𝘢𝘱𝘰𝘯?"
I don't think in terms of only owning what we need. That would collapse the buy what we want economy. People would not have jobs or income in a world without self-sufficiency and I don't need to tell you where that leads. It's not a question I ask but what follows might be the answer you seek.
"𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘮𝘦 𝘪𝘧 𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘸𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 2𝘈 𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧-𝘥𝘦𝘧𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦, 𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵? 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘢 𝘰𝘯𝘦-𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘨𝘶𝘯 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘰 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵?"
Self-defense is not huge in my list of priorities since the odds of being in a self-defense situation is small enough that I don't carry a gun every time I go out the door. At the same time, I see no higher personal priority than self-preservation and the defense of those we love so I certainly think people have a right to tools to effectively do that. I'm not talking about laws but nature.
Your thought that a single shot handgun is all you need for self-defense is actually a strong argument for semi-automatic firearms. One-shot stops are a "buy this gun" gun magazine fantasy. In all of the critical incident reports from the Phoenix PD that I've seen, they never shoot one round. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1137967663572659&ref=sharing
"𝘠𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘬𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘢𝘤𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘭."
I suspect that I have a lower opinion of the Mr. Tacticals who think they need more crap than soldiers in a war zone than you have. They are mostly wannabes. Wannabe what they never were or wannabe what they once were. The thing is, they seem to me to be more about a weird form of cosplay than people who are actually going to go out and do something.
I probably support more measures than you imagine, but at the same time I have concerns about abuse of those things that you may not worry about. Red flag laws could address the nut jobs that shouldn't have access although there is a thriving stolen gun market for such people. But it can also be abused with false claims by vindictive people.
As I wrote, "assault weapon" is a political term used by people who are ignorant or disingenuous about the true object of their concern, semi-automatic firearms. I commend your honesty and candor. I just have a less sharp focus on tools than you although the complexity of my concerns doesn't make solving the problem any easier.
"A sales tactic. Interestingly there are now a large portion of gun buyers who are first time buyers who gave up being anti-gun as a matter of perceived practicality. I hope they get training"
Actually they don't need to advertise, as soon as the news comes out, they are deluged with customers.
Training? Highly unlikely. Most people facing a home invader are so shaken they probably couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. Hands shake, pulse hammers. Those on for example SWAT teams need to undergo biweekly desensitization so they can function in that kind of emergency' miss ONE such session and they can't go to the next emergency.
A lot of the Hairy Chested Administrator of Frontier Justice stuff is just conceit. Facing a threat to one's life takes more than conceit and most people aren't up to it.
Fear is one reason for semi-automatic firearms. People under stress, and life or death situations are stressful, tend to shoot with less accuracy than when not under stress, leading to firing multiple rounds.
As a Marine I was trained for 3-5 round bursts when selecting auto and machine gunners 5-7 round bursts. In real life a scared shitless combatant might just empty their magazine with one squeeze. Cops always shoot until the perp goes down.
When I had a job that required travel, I asked my wife if she wanted a gun where it was accessible to her. She said no, she would rely upon our dog. I taught her to shoot but she knows it's not in her to kill someone. Add people who wouldn't be able to use deadly force to your list of people who should not carry a gun since they are carrying it for an attacker in that case.