The Great ILX Gun Control Debate

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.

gbx you can rest assured that in the political arena I do not intend to, er, shoot myself in the foot in that manner

right, which rules out anyone that eats meat, p much

xp

wait, did he have an assault rifle? I thought it was just a "normal" rifle with military styling? he def had handguns, I know that. also I think they found the rifle in the car, not at the scene.

animal being killed for meat is no different than animal being killed for recreation, p much?

"you eat meat, you have no room to criticize hunting/fishing" is v facile

an animal killed by an industrial farming apparatus for cheese burgers is arguably worse, morally, than an animal killed while it was minding its business in its natural habitat, but I'm not sure this is the place for going down this particular rabbit hole

criticizing hunting/fishing from a moral perspective is a crappy way to convince anybody because even americans who don't own/like/want guns mostly don't care about gun control for the poor bambi reason and the ones who do hunt almost by definition are not going to be convinced.

i KNOW

if america can flip-flop on "horsemeat--OK to eat" then it's not impossible to turn the country around on hunting/fishing, or at least bring back horsemeat.

how can we NOT put the assault weapons ban back in place?

Which goes, once again, to the irrelevance of this kind of minutiae. The assault weapon ban disallowed collapsible stocks, flash hiders, bayonet lugs, etc. - and magazines with capacities greater than 10. None of those things, magazines potentially aside, matter at all. An AR-15 is no more or less dangerous because it has a pistol grip than, say, a M-14/M1A (civilian version of the US military rifle that preceded the M-16). The latter actually fires a larger round.

wait, did he have an assault rifle? I thought it was just a "normal" rifle with military styling?

lotta ppl proudly ignorant of the difference imo

But my understanding is that the AR-15 wasn't used in the school anyway.

In the former U.S. law, the legal term assault weapon included certain specific semi-automatic firearm models by name (e.g., Colt AR-15, TEC-9, non-select-fire AK-47s produced by three manufacturers, and Uzis) and other semi-automatic firearms because they possess a minimum set of cosmetic features from the following list of features:

Semi-automatic rifles able to accept detachable magazines and two or more of the following:

Folding or telescoping stock
Pistol grip
Bayonet mount
Flash suppressor, or threaded barrel designed to accommodate one
Grenade launcher (more precisely, a muzzle device that enables launching or firing rifle grenades, though this applies only to muzzle mounted grenade launchers and not those mounted externally).

Semi-automatic pistols with detachable magazines and two or more of the following:

Magazine that attaches outside the pistol grip
Threaded barrel to attach barrel extender, flash suppressor, handgrip, or suppressor
Barrel shroud that can be used as a hand-hold
Unloaded weight of 50 oz (1.4 kg) or more
A semi-automatic version of a fully automatic firearm.

Semi-automatic shotguns with two or more of the following:

Folding or telescoping stock
Pistol grip
Fixed capacity of more than 5 rounds
Detachable magazine.

I don't get up in arms about "assault rifle" and "assault weapon" - I think it's pretty clear that people mean military-styled semi-autos. The point they need to understand is that styling is pretty irrelevant.

Anyway an assault rifle, by definition, is capable of automatic fire. These have been highly restricted since 1934 and civilian production stopped completely in 1986. They're also pretty much never used in crimes.

Is there an I Love Paramilitary Operations thread

Anyway an assault rifle, by definition, is capable of automatic fire.

well not by the definition of the old law....

Assault weapon is defined by the various AWBs, as CAD quoted.

re: grenade launcher, grenades are destructive devices subject to the same 1934-era restrictions as machine guns, etc..

Assault rifle and assault weapon are two different things. Assault weapon bans dealt with pistols, shotguns and other things as well.

ok yes i see yr distinction

was it the assault weapons ban that everyone agreed was a total failure? i feel like the political capital needed to persistently improve gun control laws to the point where they need to be would be better spent on health care.

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.

thank you gbx... I mean, I'm all for taking the Bakunin "I will continue to be impossible as long as all others are possible" stance, but it is alienating to a degree when it's served up w/condescension (which is not what anybody is doing on this thread this time around afaict).

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 4:18 PM (2 hours ago)

don't know if anyone else has pointed this out but i just want to put this in my favorites tab or something to use the next time i or alfred or aero gets into it with iatee on the regular politics thread!

I think the existence of the far left on an issue strengthens the dems bargaining power it's just the far left simply doesnt exist w/ real voting power on many issues

and 'being really angry' doesn't make more people like you exist

unless you have angry sex

i'll post here what i posted in the Newtown thread:

Shouldn't this debate be a national referendum?

Today in Guthrie, OK a 3 year old got a hold of a gun and shot himself in the head. So after all the media bombardment regarding guns, someone didn't think to put their gun where a toddler couldn't get it.

Shouldn't this debate be a national referendum?

You want to make guns harder to get, work on it at the state level and in the courts.

state and local laws are kinda worthless when you can buy guns in a different state/district and bring them in

but Texas is so big

state and local laws are kinda worthless when you can buy guns in a different state/district and bring them in

I had to do a Ctrl-F to check to see if I still agree with what I've said in the past. Yup. I do.

me either