The Great ILX Gun Control Debate

I took it to mean that the racist "bubba" bloc has a disproportionate influence on gun legislation, not that gun owners are, en masse, racist paranoiacs

the few gun owners i knew were probably liberals and probably not racists and probably didn't hate poor people but they were almost certainly crazy.

there's a big contingent of libertatrian gun enthusiasts, too. and don't forget the hunter thompson-like crazies. xp

ultimately the big reason to believe that there's hope for the future of gun control is not cause someone like milo is gonna change his mind but because the bloc he's in is going to be smaller as fewer and fewer people live in rural areas

https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/ket37/files/Gun-Ownership-and-Opinion-in-the-United-States.pdf

I forgot about roger a enjoying the smell of his guns as one reason it's ok to have them out on the streets

http://www.terrierman.com/kerryhunt.bmp

"Bagged me a liberal."

I'd like to think that banning handguns and making the acquisition of other guns (shotguns, hunting/target rifles) really, really difficult/onerous would do much to lower gun deaths of the day-to-day variety. if you're a shooter like milo, or a hunter, then who cares if you have to wait possibly months to get a gun---hunting season is limited to certain seasons, and target shooting is purely recreational.

nb this would do little to curb horrific mass shootings plotted well in advance, but statistically these aren't how most ppl are killed by guns. mass shootings with legally acquired weapons are a byproduct of our cultural fascination with the_gun (plus availability obv), and since we can neither ban or confiscate all guns everywhere (we srsly cannot do this, guys, for really obvious practical reasons), efforts should be made to figure out who spree killers are and how we, as a culture, produce them.

banning gun swaps and private gun sales would help, too, but id wager the latter would never fly for reasons that for some ppl are external to "gun control"

fact: I bought a cd-r from RA (before I knew of his uh views) and it came wrapped in lightly oiled gun paper

why not just make it easier for victims to sue and recover damages from everyone on the chain that provided the guns?

lawsuits aren't the answer, i think

enforced mass sterilization might be

dealers can pay into an insurance pool that will give payouts in the event a gun was sold to a sketchy buyer; private person-to-person sales could result in unlimited liability. this aligns industry interests with the public against irresponsible sales of weapons, giving them higher margins.

industry interests are irresponsible sales of weapons

the tobacco industry is fighting marijuana legalization -- imagine the gun industry fighting against assault weapons, non-dealer sales, and making guns generally more expensive.

where's al and Jesse on this one

the gun industry is not going to fight the gun industry

if one segment of the gun industry stands to make much more money as a result of fighting the other segment, why wouldn't they?

as an alternative to actual gun control? no, because that would be stupid.

if the idea is to actually limit gun deaths by limiting access to guns, then wouldn't it make more sense to...limit access to guns? introducing liability seems perverse to me, for some reason. I suppose it could have a chilling effect on gun sales (ppl wouldn't sell for fear of getting sued), but no one would go for it, it's nonsensical. what if a hunter got robbed, and then the stolen gun was used in a murder? would it make any sense to sue the hunter and the gun dealer for damages? what legal standard would you use? and how could that no then be applied to cars, bricks, household cleaners? even if you made exceptions for gun deaths only, at some point it would be unethical to prosecute incidental participants (trucking company that carried the cargo, landlord of the gun store, etc)

I get what you're going for, but it would just drive gun sales even further underground, IMO.

xp

When the debates over we can quietly pry the guns out of their cold dead hands and melt them down, problem solved.

great ILX gun control debate...
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for me to poop on

there are no segments in the gun industry, is the thing. virtually all the big companies that make hunting rifles also make AR-15s and handguns and so on

also "sketchy buyers" are impossible to identify at the point of sale, this is why we should have application processes. plus, the newtown shooter basically stole his guns from his mom. where does the liability fall there?

well your logic is 'with tricky changes to liability we can decrease the total amount of money spent on guns, and the gun industry wouldn't fight/notice that at exactly the same rate that they fight/notice limiting access to guns'

it's like yeah, if oil companies were liable for being sued for global warming, we could def be living in a world where their interests were better correlated w/ ours. but they're not gonna just 'not notice' that they're being set up like that and a lawsuit based solution isn't any easier or more practical than gas taxes or laws.

xp

and just on a practical level 'more lawsuits' is not something any american anywhere wants to hear as a solution

If a hunter got robbed and failed to report it stolen, i don't think it's unreasonable to make him liable.
if a car was sold to a dude who all through the test drive kept muttering how he was going to play GTA in real life and actually did it, I don't think it's unreasonable to make the dealer liable. If a gun store has a reputation for selling to just anyone, I don't think it's unreasonable to make the landlord liable. There's always been an ideal in law of what a "reasonable" person might do -- why should these instances be any different?

There's less of a political hurdle to basically streamline a legal process -- does any legislation actually need to be involved?

yes

I'm wondering how the NRA can be that powerful, lobbies shouldn't be that influent in the first place.

nb this would do little to curb horrific mass shootings plotted well in advance, but statistically these aren't how most ppl are killed by guns. mass shootings with legally acquired weapons are a byproduct of our cultural fascination with the_gun (plus availability obv), and since we can neither ban or confiscate all guns everywhere (we srsly cannot do this, guys, for really obvious practical reasons), efforts should be made to figure out who spree killers are and how we, as a culture, produce them.

sorry i'm already like a broken record on the other thread with this, but have you checked out the Australian experience with mass shootings pre- and post 1996?

http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/12/6/365.full

"if oil companies were liable for being sued for global warming, we could def be living in a world where their interests were better correlated w/ ours"
let's start with making them fully liable for oil spills, and we can build on the insurance pool to cover other externalities.

if you're a shooter like milo, or a hunter,

I like how killing animals (primarily) for fun is nowhere near the top of the list of why guns are shitty.

let's start with making them fully liable for oil spills, and we can build on the insurance pool to cover other externalities.

I'm not opposed to this kinda thinking but I'm opposed to the idea that it's an easier or more political viable path than any other

politically

Shooting birds is pretty lame and cowardly. Why not just go around kicking kittens or something?

"does any legislation actually need to be involved?"
"yes"

like what, though? can't you bring suits against companies already? have they already put legislative barriers in place making it harder to sue them that require additional legislation to make it easier?

the main reason I think it's easier to go this route is that there are powerful parties (like say the insurance industry) that stand to make a lot of money in looking after the public's interest.

and not that this should come as a surprise to anyone, but the whole BAN ALL GUNS stance, aside from being practically impossible, might only serve to alienate liberal gun owners who would otherwise endorse very strict gun control measures.

I'm cool with no more handguns (which is a stance I haven't always held, see up thread iirc), and arduous application/licensing processes, and basically anything that makes acquiring a gun a pain in the ass. I'm also fine with marginalizing "gun culture." but I think if you approach the gun debate with outright banning and confiscation as the only acceptable outcome, you are, in a small way, as deluded and kinda wrong as strict drug prohibitionists. and maybe that's alright with you, I dunno.

few people need to kill animals to survive, but some (vanishingly few) do, and they live really far away from everyone else, and I think it's okay that that's possible in today's America. but we do actually need to control certain animal populations, and that's a function largely served by amateur hunters who pay for the privilege. the other alternative is ecological degradation, or paying specially certified people to do the job. I'll take the amateurs, and their money, thanks. ppl don't need to plink rounds at the firing range, but I don't care if they do. as a hobby, it seems as weird to me as any other weird hobby. I have plenty of my own.

if we're going to have a National Conversation about gun control (or abortion or taxes or whatever), then I think we need to be reasonable about it. we simply cannot round up 300M firearms in a country this vast without imposing a pretty fearsome police apparatus. we could, however, ban handgun sales, and destroy those that remain as they turn up. etc.

it's a bummer to me that some of the ppl that are all "now is exactly the time to talk about this issue!" are also the least willing to engage in any kind of discussion of gun ownership that isn't predicated on the idea that gun ownership is anything other than creepy and weird. it's like "discussing" the fiscal cliff with a tea partier or boehner or something, it's anything but a discussion.

xp collardio that AUS thing kinda buttresses my point, in a way? the law didn't ban GUNS, it banned guns that shoot real fast and are better suited to shooting people than anything else. and it made it real hard to any other kind of gun. I've already stated that I'm fine with that kind of policy. and again, 700k in a land of 12m is a different thing than 300m in a land of 360m.

I like how killing animals (primarily) for fun is nowhere near the top of the list of why guns are shitty.

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Saturday, December 15, 2012 2:55 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't particularly like that you seem unwilling to have any honest engagement with an issue that sorely needs addressing

I get it, you think hunting purely for sport is icky and gross---I'd tend to agree with you, personally. But I'm not ~reviled~ by people I know that go duck hunting a couple times a year, anymore than I am by people that eat a McDonald's cheeseburger a couple times a year.

like what, though? can't you bring suits against companies already? have they already put legislative barriers in place making it harder to sue them that require additional legislation to make it easier?

you can already already bring a suit against the landlord of a building that sold the gun to someone illegally...you would just lose the suit because they did not break any law.

gbx, the 'banning and confiscating' left needs to exist to serve the purpose that the wacko bloc does to the right-wing. 'we need to be reasonable' ignores the fact that the left has been entirely too reasonable on this particular issue.

ok i misunderstood your point then, gbx.

I know several people who live largely on the meat they take from hunting. I'm not willing to pull the trigger on Bambi but it would be hard to argue they're more careless or amoral than anyone who lives on farmed meat - up to and including the most hippie grass-fed organic free range pasture-raised stuff on the market.

lulz at the "bloc I'm in" getting smaller. I'm pretty sure libertarian socialist gun owners who held their nose and voted for Obama (because fuck Mitt Romney) is a rather small 'bloc' to start with.

i'm multi-tasking, which takes a toll on nuance, evidently. xp

yes 'libertarian socialists' are a small bloc

w/r/t landlord, could you argue money laundering? sounds more criminal than civil though. If there's no force preventing a landlord from profiting from illegal activities on his property, then I really ought to get into the landlord business.

I've made one post to this thread, don't know how that constitutes be unwilling to have an honest engagement. You have a pattern of getting on a high horse on virtually every "serious discussion" thread.
Do they eat those ducks? If so, it's still a bit perverted to me but not as much as purely for "sport".
I get that populations need to be managed, but I'd rather it be done by amateur bow hunters than amateur riflemen. It's not the act as much as the motivation that I find disturbing. I highly doubt dudes are gearing up for the weekend, stoked about managing animal populations.

and the fact that a non-creepy culture of gun ownership exists in the Midwest simply cannot be ignored. sure, maybe you personally think its creepy that someone would shoot an animal, but I know tons of progressive types that are grossed out by hunting but just kinda shrug and say "takes all sorts" because, you know, they live and work and are related to these hunters. fishing is, at a fundamental level, the same thing as shooting deer, but most ppl don't bag on fishermen for being blood thirsty weirdos. and, that, I'd wager, is because a) fish are weird aliens and b) fisherppl don't use guns. which is to say: bringing up animal welfare or the perverse thrill of the hunt or w/e is a bit of a strawman when we're talking about a public safety issue, and totally counterproductive.

a lot of ppl like hunting because they get to sit in a deer blind and bullshit with their friends/family, just like they enjoy sitting in an icehouse and "fishing". an animal that was full of life still gets aced in the end, and if that bums you out, then I don't blame you. but your feelings about killing-animals-as-practice are irrelevant to a discussion of killing-people-as-horrible-reality, inasmuch as it alienates one segment of the gun owning population whose thoughts on curbing gun violence (and environmental conservation) could likely accord with yours

xp ok GD w/e

xp gbx, the 'banning and confiscating' left needs to exist to serve the purpose that the wacko bloc does to the right-wing. 'we need to be reasonable' ignores the fact that the left has been entirely too reasonable on this particular issue.

― iatee, Saturday, December 15, 2012 3:18 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

totally agree with this, fwiw

fwiw my friends were heavily into fishing at one point and I thought it was a shitty way thing to do for recreation

i love to fish, personally. i learned it from my dad and have passed on to my kidsters. it gets me out into beautiful places, focuses the mind on interesting problems of hydrodynamics, entomology, etc... i have no reason to think that people who love hunting don't have similar reasons for loving it. i feel sadness every time i kill a fish, and couldn't handle it if a mammal was involved, but i'm not going to get self-righteous about it. much more disturbed by the whole animal food industry concentration camp situation...

i do think you have to be able to acknowledge the meaning of these things to many people. i don't think you have to agree with it, or subscribe to the social costs implicated, but to deny the genuine meaning of it, or reduce that meaning to crypto-fascism, racism, psychopathology, cowardice, or whatever, is to pretty much not even know what this phenomenon is that you're dealing with. acknowledge the genuine meaning, and then be as vehement as you want in opposing it nonetheless.

but your feelings about killing-animals-as-practice are irrelevant to a discussion of killing-people-as-horrible-reality, inasmuch as it alienates one segment of the gun owning population whose thoughts on curbing gun violence (and environmental conservation) could likely accord with yours

Well duh. I was musing on the fact that guns are so shitty that one shitty aspect of them needs to be more or less ignored to tackle the even more shitty aspects.

fwiw my impression of all the pro-gun people i've known is that they really really like firing and owning guns and latch onto any argument that rationalizes their continued ability to do so ie it's not much to do about anything larger (constitutional rights, ability to oppose tyranny etc) than them wanting to be able to do a favored hobby

― hope this helps (Granny Dainger), Sunday, January 9, 2011 3:54 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is old, but is germane i think (esp given yr xp): if you want to engage the people that want to be able to do a favored hobby (which is a whole lot of gun owners), it might be a good idea not to paint them as icky Bambi slayers, at least in the political arena (tho by all means continue to say so here)

'but you are killing animals' is only a moral argument that works with people who believe that killing animals is morally wrong

whereas 'your hobby allows more people to die' is a moral argument that can be used in any context

i have plenty of relatives who immediately started freaking out on 'don't ban guns' shit. of course they're all hunters. and I don't begrudge people their normal rifles. but seriously, how can we NOT put the assault weapons ban back in place? this mother legally purchased all this shit and took her boys target shooting. good going mom. no one should own these types of weapons.