The Great ILX Gun Control Debate

We outnumber the super gun nuts by more than 95 to 1.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/09/19/just-three-percent-of-adults-own-half-of-americas-guns/

it is the politicians who fear angering the gun nuts

well they're always going around standing in front of cameras and microphones in public

I have a modest proposal to combat gun violence and the NRA. And it, erm, involves Muslims. :-)
My new @theintercept column:https://t.co/NwsO2OKS8M pic.twitter.com/kCDVxMcICj

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) February 17, 2018

these sorts of ideas ceased being provocative (or, apparently, effectual) not long after huey newton made these same points 50 years ago, and furthermore it's fucking reckless and stupid. so many people die from guns in this country because...there are so many guns in this country. mass shootings of the sort that make the news are a tiny fraction of overall gun deaths. encouraging more people to own guns is unlikely to cause any conservatives to change their minds on whether gun ownership should be legal, but it is certain to lead to more people dying. stop

tbf I don't think saying 'stop' has much of a track record either

actually has a pretty great track record

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-JGbSrCd2o

though to be fair i'm not sure blackway and helena ever got legislation of any sort passed

use of the phrase "a modest proposal" in any other context than the actual Jonathan Swift essay is always a guarantee that something will be terrible, there are no exceptions

can someone reboot America pls

teens got these gun nuts shook

I'm willing to grant that "common sense" gun laws might not have any real effect on murder/gun violence rate (not saying I actually believe they won't), but can we just give some a try?? That's the part that maddens me. The upside is less people meeting violent deaths and all the associated mental trauma; the downside is it's slightly more difficult to obtain killing machines. How can a rational person conclude that the upside isn't worth the downside?

according to the research common sense laws do have an effect, the states w the strictest laws tend to have the least gun violence, but also we need to think bigger

we need to think about how less gun violence will put police out of jobs

thoughts like that

fire police, train them to be gun melters who turn them into cool metalworks

all police are sculptors now

What truly distinguishes the NRA is simple: it has a lot of people who are deeply involved and vote accordingly. Lobbying is just one of the NRA’s faces; it’s also a community organization that attracts people through service provision. Every year, 1 million people receive NRA firearms training. And the organization continues to expand its services. Last year it introduced a program that provides not only concealed carry training, but concealed carry insurance (covering up to a million dollars in legal costs associated with “self-defense shootings”), a hotline for incident reporting, complementary coverage for the policyholder’s spouse, and a subscription to NRA Carry Guard Magazine. What’s more, as political scientist Hahrie Han and others have noted, many of these services give members an opportunity to deepen their involvement and become leaders. Did you enjoy the firearms training you received? Well, the NRA can certify you to join the 125,000 training instructors in its network.

The result of all this is that the NRA boasts 5 million dues-paying members — who fund roughly half of the organization’s $337 million annual budget — and close to 15 million Americans who identify as NRA members even if they don’t pay dues. The organization’s services and leadership opportunities coalesce into something more: a group identity that mobilizes both actual members and the millions of others who think of themselves as the kind of person who belongs to the NRA.

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/02/national-rifle-association-members-florida-school-shooting

fire police, train them to be gun melters who turn them into cool metalworks

― NBA YoungBoy named Rocky Raccoon (m bison), Tuesday, February 20, 2018 6:08 PM (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://i.imgur.com/E3sCnd8.png

The organization’s services and leadership opportunities coalesce into something more: a group identity that mobilizes both actual members and the millions of others who think of themselves as the kind of person who belongs to the NRA.

― Simon H., Tuesday, February 20, 2018 6:25 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

members and those who have an nra sticker on their vehicle

was unaware they had that many dues-paying members, jesus fuck

~thread

Here are a few thoughts on the role that liberal fatalism on gun politics plays in our country's failure to stop the killing.

— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) February 17, 2018

I'll keep hitting this point over and over and over: one of the short-term lines of attack needs to be about trying to convince gun owners that the NRA is an extremist organization. Sure, the majority could probably care less and are maybe even thrilled, but it's all about chipping away, just like the people who are currently turning their back on the GOP in disgust.

I hope the gun nuts love their children too

narrator: they don't

good thread lag∞n.

one of the short-term lines of attack needs to be about trying to convince gun owners that the NRA is an extremist organization.

I think this is already mostly the case - gun ownership declines every year (down to like 35% of the population), it's rapidly reaching a point where the only people who own support the far right OR only own guns because they support the far right.

It’s never been the NRA’s dole that has set it apart among lobbying groups. It’s the NRA’s raw organizational power to topple incumbents it doesn’t like in Republican primaries. A successful movement will need to break that power or break the Republican party entirely. https://t.co/wl93UQ5ah9

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) February 21, 2018

basically what that Jacobin piece says

Either goal is laudable

i think the actions of the Florida GOP are legitimately a negative for the party. The way right-wingers are scrambling to actively question the motives of children who were actually targeted by a mass murderer shows how desperate they are, tbh. it's pretty disgusting and i don't think it's working. the left has to maintain the full court press, even though the vote yesterday seemed to be an effort to shut it down.

The #1 Trending Video on YouTube Right Now Suggests That a Student From the Parkland Shooting Is a Crisis Actor*

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mb5p4y/youtube-david-hogg-parkland-shooting-conspiracy-theory

*the video's been taken down since.

oh good taken down guess that ends that

why does YouTube censor free speech like that

correct me if I'm wrong but the very concept of a "crisis actor" is a fiction is it not?

in that I don't think there's ever been a such thing identified, correct.

that phrase makes me want to both kill and die, appropriately enough

It's hard not to conclude that YouTube has no real problem with this kind of stuff as I believe they could afford to hire a couple people whose sole job is to watch the trending videos

Heck of a moment. pic.twitter.com/H89wXsvdeM

— Alex Fitzpatrick (@AlexJamesFitz) February 22, 2018

they're degenerating in their conspiracy theories. voter fraud, rarely happens. crisis actors, never happens. next theory will the violate the arrow of time or some shit. oh wait that already happened with birtherism huh.

if Trump dies they'll ask "where's the death certificate??!!"

Friend has a warehouse job with a firearms distributor, they had a panic run on high capacity magazines today - even with a GOP Congress, President and Trump taking the weakest possible stance on bump stocks, the industry can still prime the paranoia pump.

fwiw i went out to my hometown in rural GA yesterday to visit my brother (he lives in Auburn, i went to school in Dacula). i was pretty sad to notice a gun store literally right across the street from the high school, with a led sign advertising ".22 ammo unlimited". thankfully my school experience was incident free although we did have a kid suspended for bringing in a toy Star Trek phaser and flashing it off in class. don't be shocked but there is a giant yellow billboard down the road that says "JESUS: COMING SOON" and has been up for at least 25 years.

also i went to elementary school down the road (on "High Hope Road" to be exact) and my school was right across the street from a prison. several times we had lockdowns due to escapes. this was late 80s though...

https://i.imgur.com/sHTTE04.jpg

something i read earlier today (in a review of andreas malm's book on global warming/capitalism) seems appropriate here:

...He takes his title from Walter Benjamin's essay "On the Concept of History" - the angel of history watches catastrophe pile wreckage upon wreckage, longing to "make whole what has been smashed" but powerless before the storm we call "progress." In the section before this, Benjamin writes:

"The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the 'state of emergency' in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that accords with this insight. Then we will clearly see that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency, and this will improve our position in the struggle against fascism."

Benjamin's disdain for a conception of history that allows its adherents to be astonished that barbarism is "still" possible in our clearly enlightened present suffuses Malm's book, as does Adorno's recognition that real progress, in such a world, means "simply the prevention and avoidance of total catastrophe." This progress will not be secured without a struggle.

America is like a bizarro world (everything that's absurd is made to seem reasonable) collapsing into the real world. One would expect emigration numbers to soar, but I don't know if that's true?

Walter Benjamin always otm

Huh. TIL that that Laurie Anderson lyric came from Walter Benjamin.

She said: What is history?
And he said: History is an angel being blown backwards into the future
He said: History is a pile of debris
And the angel wants to go back and fix things
To repair the things that have been broken
But there is a storm blowing from Paradise
And the storm keeps blowing the angel backwards into the future
And this storm, this storm is called Progress

it's in a Mekons song as well, a vivid and timely image

https://img0.etsystatic.com/215/0/5307484/il_570xN.1382626868_ke9l.jpg

benjamin was inspired by this paul klee painting fwiw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U11SE9eqfSU

the abyss is close to home...

my only tattoo