this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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Oh god fucking forbid we engage in the hard process of incremental policy based on changing circumstances. Cry me a goddamn river.
This isn't a slippery slope. The argument to ban some classes of guns has to meet strict constitutional scrutiny, not just a rational basis. You have to successfully argue the harm justifies a limit on the right. Something our system is -- or at least was -- equipped to do. But nowadays, maybe it genuinely isn't, with the way conservatives have spread like cancer through the court system and legislatures to fill it with stubborn no-compromise 2A rights nonsense that refuses to engage in any reform.
It is a factual reality that guns have become better machines over time. They've become cheaper, more available, and more dangerous. You bring up a 1900s machine gun as if this is an example of some incredibly dangerous weapon? It goddamn isn't.
A 1900s machine gun is hardly any threat at all to modern civil society. It is large, stationary, and obvious. It is not reliable. It is not easy to use, contrary to your characterization. You cannot sneak it into a shopping mall. You cannot conceal or open carry it while out on errands. It'd be a pretty major effort to even reliably mount it in good working order to a vehicle. A modern "sport" semi-automatic rifle or even handgun offers a bigger threat than one of those things.
What an utterly ridiculous argument you make, saying there were no school shootings in the 1900s when there were likely no guns CAPABLE of that kind of thing at the time, and certainly none in regular circulation.
I did not write off anyone who takes a pro-gun position as a 'gun nut'. You cannot "respectfully" mischaracterize what I wrote in such a disingenuous way. I wrote off anyone who takes a no-compromise position as one. Want to have lots of guns in society? Do what the Swiss do. Extensive and continuing training and licensing. Universal registration. Strict rules about safe handling. And couple it all with major poverty interventions, public education, and healthcare to get rid of violence and desperation at the source. Most progressives are down for that. But instead, the gun nuts try to do the literal opposite by passing things like Constitutional Carry.
Please read my post again. I didn't make a pro-gun argument. I explained why pro-gun people don't want to 'compromise'. There's a big difference between the two.
Short version- they feel they've 'compromised' many times already and each time they give something up and get nothing back, so why should they keep playing that game?
Imagine if it was the first amendment rather than the second. Would you 'compromise'?
'Last year the compromise was we can still post anything we want online, but we need a free speech license. This year the compromise is we can still post anything we want, but we can only criticize the government in special contained free speech websites that don't show up in Google.' You'd be like the character in the comic, flipping the table and saying 'I don't want another compromise that takes away more rights, I want REAL free speech back!'.
If you step back from the confident belief that you are 100% correct and reasonable about this (or any issue really), and try to understand the other person's point of view, you'll be able to make much better arguments for your own POV. But that requires NOT writing off anyone who doesn't partially share your POV as a 'nut' (which is EXACTLY what you did when you say anyone not willing to 'compromise' by instituting your list of gun regulations is a 'nut').
This is simply incorrect.
Semi-auto firearms were available starting in 1902.
One of the most popular semi-auto pistols of all time is the M1911. It fires a .45 caliber bullet, and the design of the bullet and the gun have not majorly changed since they were invented in 1911. 1911s are very popular today still and are sold by many manufacturers.
And if you go even earlier, Thomas Jefferson owned a Girardoni Air Rifle- that was a weapon that fired a half-inch metal ball and was quite lethal at 150 yards. It wasn't semi-auto but it could fire 20 shots in fairly rapid succession (about the same as a modern bolt action rifle).
Point is-- it's not accurate to say mass shootings didn't happen in the early 1900s because suitable weapons weren't available. Such weapons WERE available, and if anything, easier to buy than they are today.
Until the [Hughes Amendment of 1986](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_Owners_Protection_Act#:~:text=Hughes%20(D%2DN.,specifically%20to%20amend%2018%20U.S.C.) you could buy your own machinegun (full-auto rapid fire). In 1986 such firearms were banned. So why not more mass shootings before the ban?
And have the >50% of states that done this turned into bloodbaths with shootouts from every fender bender?
We DO compromise on the first amendment. That's what is so utterly depraved about this no-compromise position on the second that you are defending so vigorously. And yes, I assert absolutely that you are defending the position. Don't fall back to "I'm just playing devil's advocate" or any version of "I'm just asking questions" concerning trolling. You are defending the position right now.
There are tons of kinds of speech we declare unprotected because they are harmful. Defamation. Fraud. Hate speech. Harassment. Obscenity. It's a complex process with lots of tests and case law and has been going on for ages. There are judges and lawyers that specialize entirely in the legal world of free speech. This is the hard work of governance. The hard work you are too terrified to engage in because of some remote and absurd possibility that it may one day go not just too far, but all the way too far.
But you seem to be deliberately ignoring all this even while accusing me of being close-minded. You pretend that the reason we do not have any movement on gun reform is that reasonable, thoughtful pro-gun people are concerned about the slippery slope we may go down. That isn't the reason. Reasonable and thoughtful people engage. They don't pass the Dickey amendment. The reality is that it's the unreasonable, head-empty conservatives that lead the no-compromise 2A position (and justify it with an entirely revisionist version of history that reinterprets the second to be some insane defense of the right to rebellion -- an idea that does not pass even a common sense sniff test).
I already told you all the things we can do that do not impact most people's ability to buy, own, and use guns. The gun reform policies that nearly everyone supports, but that have zero traction because of the no-compromise gun crowd that has a stranglehold over conservative politics. I want training and licensing, universal registration and background checks, widespread mental healthcare, and poverty intervention. I want to see that immediately. But I also want the pro-gun people to admit that banning some weapons is totally reasonable instead of pretending it's the first step to absolute authoritarianism. I want honest efforts at progressive policies instead of disingenuous, stupid arguments about slippery slopes.
I wrote out a whole reply to your various points (which I'll send if you want) but one thing in your post caught my eye as the most vital and important...
I'm fairly pro-gun (if you hadn't figured that out already). I also DESPERATELY want widespread mental healthcare and poverty intervention. I want to see these things IMMEDIATELY and in great quantity. As in, let's pass a bill today and start this vitally important work tomorrow. This to me is vital to the health of the nation that I love, because the nation is made up of its people and too many of those people are poor and suffering. I don't think it is (or should be) the American way to just sit and laugh at our fellow countrymen and women and let them suffer while we live the high life.
We disagree on everything else, but I think we agree on this. So why don't we set aside arguing over the things we disagree on, and focus on implementing the things we DO agree would benefit our nation?
And that was the meat of my original point. When it comes to guns, I suspect you and I are fairly opposite. But I suspect that when it comes to taking care of our fellow humans, you and I are not so different.
Yet the political machines on both sides have us at each others' throats over gun rights vs gun control, while they push for their own power. What we (people on both sides of the aisle) SHOULD be doing is TALKING to each other, figuring out what we agree on, and focusing on getting THAT done.
But top of just about everyone's list is end corruption in Washington, so there's a vested interest in making sure we keep fighting each other rather than working together. And right now that interest is winning.
If you could push a button to make a deal, that was 'you give up further pushes for gun control, but in exchange we get universal mental health care and poverty intervention', would you push that button?
FWIW, in the opposite- 'would you codify gun regulations as they currently are, but in exchange get universal mental health care and poverty intervention' I'd push that button in a heartbeat.
Anyone who comes into politics with an absolute no-compromise position is the enemy of progress. They've substituted politics with religion and religion has no place in governance.
If "pro-gun" people came to the table and agreed on the kinds of laws that would be effective to prevent death and have minimal on the ability to own and have guns - the things that have overwhelming public support like universal registration and background checks - it'd be passed right away. But they don't. They get real cagey then make up disingenuous horseshit arguments about how this is a slippery slope that surely ends with an authoritarian state where you have no right to self-defense which is a moronic idiotic stupid dumb thing to believe. They refused to come to the table because saving lives and making a better society isn't a conservative goal.
Because guess what? I'm not anti-gun. At least not in my politics, though probably in my personal life. It's the consequences of a society flooded with guns with minimal regulations and safety nets causing widespread panic and death that I'm against. But when the pro gun people don't come to the table on more difficult-to-pass policies, the progressives are going to go for low-hanging fruit solutions like a somewhat capricious assault weapons ban that they can at least pass in that moment thanks to some national tragedy of the week cowing enough no compromisers.
The next time you say that both sides are in any way equally guilty here do me a favor and retire to a hermitage on a mountain for the rest of your life. That's a bald-faced disingenuous argument. There's only one "side". There's only one group treating this like a team sport where you have to root for the home team. And that side is the people who believe in no compromise. It's the conservatives. There is no competing side. Everyone else is engaging in honest debate on issues and trying to make the world better through small changes. Everyone else is taking things one step at a time and is prepared to make small mistakes -- and reverse them -- along the way to making a brighter world. The only people who refuse to do this are conservatives because the objective of conservatism is not policy it's tribalism.
Your enlightened centrism enables bad actors to act badly.
So no, I absolutely fucking wouldn't push a button that takes away our ability to make rational policy. I won't push a button that gives conservatives everything they want in this moment especially because conservatives won't honor that in the future. I won't push a button that forces us into a no-compromise position. And anyone who would is the enemy of progress. Is the enemy of the entire human race.
I don't EVER suggest no compromise. I don't EVER suggest that nothing should ever change (and I agree that is anti-progress). I suggest that ignoring a previous compromise is disingenuous. I say that it's valid to say 'we compromised last year, we're living the compromise today, why should I compromise again if I get nothing in return?' And I suggest we should focus on doing what we agree on, rather than fighting over what we don't.
So here's a compromise I (as a pro-gun person) would agree to.
You get universal background checks. Every permanent gun transfer between people requires one. Per existing law, these checks can never be used to build a database. The government must provide the check for free (right now it costs about $50 to do the check at a gun store). And there's an exemption for temporary transfers between known people, and transfers between family members (IE, I can lend my buddy a rifle for a hunting trip without 'transferring' it to him and then back to me), and father can pass guns down to son without paperwork).
In exchange, gun owners get national reciprocity. That means if they get a carry permit from their home state, that permit is valid in all other states, just like a drivers license. They must comply with all applicable laws of the state they visit, for example magazine size limits and where it's permissible to carry.
That IMHO is a real compromise. You get something, I get something. What you get has a few limits from what I want, what I get has a few limits from what you want.
What do you think? Would you take that?
So basically, your position is that you have to get something. The fact that a given piece of policy is designed to reduce crime and save lives and does you no harm isn't good enough, it ALSO need to materially benefit you specifically.
Sadly, we'll never be able to negotiate on terms like that. I view the field of policymaking as pointing towards a better future. You see it as a way to win at team sports. Good thing I am not a politician because that kind of compromising I view as heinous.
What you're proposing doesn't worry me at all. The guns already walk across state lines however they please. It would change nothing, saying a license in one state is valid in another -- so long as that license was honestly issued with training and care and the guns identifiable and registered. So sure, I'd take that deal, but you don't get to have that be the end of it because work still needs to be done.
Fortunately, there is a political party full of politicians willing to make those kinds of compromises for better policy. They're the Democrats. They'll compromise anything and everything to move an inch forward. So vote for them, they're who you want.
And this is the core of the pro/anti debate, right here.
I accept that gun control proposals are intended to reduce crime and save lives. I accept that anti-gun people generally have the best intentions, they want to save lives (I do too).
I (along with most pro-gun people) just don't believe that gun control laws will have a significant effect on reducing gun crime or overall making our society safer.
Also, let's talk about Democrats. I feel I have some authority to speak on this subject as I am personally registered as a Democrat, and I come from a very blue state (Connecticut). I identify as liberal-libertarian- I think the married gay couple should have AR15s to defend themselves, their adopted children, and their legal marijuana farm from criminals, secure in the knowledge that universal health care will be there for them if they get hurt. I suspect we'd agree on a great many ways the GOP is utterly failing our nation.
But one thing that infuriates me about the left these days is an inability to even consider the possibility that we are wrong about anything. There's the Left side, the Correct side, and the wrong side. And if you don't support most of the liberal agenda you're the so called deplorables and fuck you.
I'll give a perfect example- the AR-15 rifle. There's a big push to ban AR15s and similar rifles.
But consider FBI expanded homicide table 8. About 300-400 people each year are killed by rifles, that includes both 'assault' rifles and other rifles like hunting rifles.
To put that in perspective, about 300-350 people per year get struck by lightning. Getting struck by lightning is so rare we make jokes about it.
In comparison, every year about 800 people (mostly children) die from being tangled in their own bedsheets. And about 180,000 people per year in the US die of obesity-related issues.
So WHY are we burning tons of political capital and alienating all gun owners to ban something that is statistically not a serious threat to our society? If we put half that much effort into fighting obesity, we'd save 10x as many lives.
I am on the correct "side" of this. Because my position is that we should pursue solutions instead of refusing to do so. My position is we should study what works well elsewhere in the world and try to adapt those lessons here. My position is that we should make changes and observe results. And after we see results, roll things back or make further changes. That is the correct position.
And I'm also still correct about my original point: we already ban lots of categories of weapons as we judged to be too harmful. And very nearly no one considers that an unjust violation of rights. This more recent idea that no further boundaries should ever be tolerated no matter what is based on revisionism and sophistry.
"It might not work so we must do nothing" is and always has been a stupid position. One conservatives love to disingenuously invoke to resist any kind of progress. It's an argument backed up only by the idea that every single slope is too slippery to dare trod and so we're better off starving to death on top of the mountain.
You seem to think we're having a debate about what specific gun policies we should have. That's not the debate I'm here for. The debate I'm here for is that the entire pro-gun movement has allowed itself to be captured by no-compromise gun-nut lunatics.
And you very much have not convinced me you aren't one of them. You fall into their techniques and pitfalls multiple times here while trying to present reasonable and I think I've called you out on it every time. That pattern has repeated itself too much and I don't want any part of it anymore.
Now Lord give me strength to resist engaging with you on the zombie stat or "obesity-related issues".