Newtown shooting and gun control

[aknowledgeableperson]

I've heard people try to argue that the Second Amendment is "absolute" -- well if that's true, it is literally the only Amendment that is

Much like abortion rights supporters who believe there should be no limitations on abortions. And abortion isn't even mentioned in the constitution.

Now how many abortion right supporters actually have that position? I believe that number would equate to the number who have the 2nd amendment absolute position. Let's not focus on the extreme but in the middle of the gun control issue.

[chingon]

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[phuqueue]

I've heard people try to argue that the Second Amendment is "absolute" -- well if that's true, it is literally the only Amendment that is

Much like abortion rights supporters who believe there should be no limitations on abortions. And abortion isn't even mentioned in the constitution.

Now how many abortion right supporters actually have that position? I believe that number would equate to the number who have the 2nd amendment absolute position. Let's not focus on the extreme but in the middle of the gun control issue.

I don't think I've ever met anybody who argued that there should be no limitations on abortions whatsoever, but I routinely run across people who insist that any attempt to limit the Second Amendment would be unconstitutional. This is obviously anecdotal, but at the same time I'm talking about people I directly interact with, not just people writing op-eds or blogging. When it comes to hot button right wing issues, "extreme" and "fringe" are not necessarily synonymous anymore.

[pash]

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[phuqueue]

I didn't mean to imply that there were no people who think there should be no limits on abortion (and now apparently it looks like in editing I deleted the sentence where I was explicit that I didn't mean that), just that I would be surprised if their numbers are anywhere close to equal to the numbers who believe there should be no limits on the Second Amendment, as akp asserted. Abortion is just a red herring in this thread anyway, but of course, we know that akp is wont to throw out red herrings so I probably shouldn't have responded to it in the first place.

[aknowledgeableperson]

Was not a red herring. Just a point that there is a mention of gun ownership in the constitution, abortion no mention. I don't think gun owners talk about "absolute" in that they accept background checks, no felon gun ownership, and other limits.

[phuqueue]

It's a red herring because it has nothing to do with gun control and is meant to divert attention from the actual topic at hand.

I don't think you can talk about "gun owners" as some monolithic whole, but yes, some of the gun owners I have talked to oppose any limits on gun ownership. Polls show the same: 80% of gun owners support banning people on terrorist watch lists from buying guns, which means 20% oppose or are on the fence about such a ban. In a country of over 300 million people, you obviously can't expect unanimity on anything, but if 87% support background checks on prospective gun purchasers, that still leaves many millions of people who don't support background checks. Using the poll you yourself posted earlier in the thread (the "latest" Gallup according to you, which was actually from October 2011), 34% of adults own at least one gun, which works out to approximately 80 million gun owners (according to 2010 Census figures for people over age 18). If 87% of them support background checks, that means over ten million gun owners don't. This is not a negligible figure.

That Chicago Tribune article that I linked above is from right after Aurora, so it doesn't account for any changes in attitude due to Sandy Hook. But a Reuters poll from last week shows 86% support for "expanded background checks" (across all Americans, it looks like, not just gun owners alone). There are a lot of people out there who don't even favor a step as simple as making sure we don't sell deadly weapons to known criminals. I doubt there are nearly as many who support the "right" to yank a viable fetus halfway out of the womb the day before its natural birth to kill it -- although even if there are, it really doesn't have anything to do with this thread anyway.

[KCMax]

Was not a red herring. Just a point that there is a mention of gun ownership in the constitution, abortion no mention. I don't think gun owners talk about "absolute" in that they accept background checks, no felon gun ownership, and other limits.

Then why do you think those policies have been so hard to enact while some abortion restrictions have been implemented in most states?

[KCMax]

5 people accidentally shot at gun rallies on Gun Appreciation Day

15 year old pastor's son shoots and kills parents and three siblings

A man shopping at JC Penny this weekend. This is freedom!

[aknowledgeableperson]

Was not a red herring. Just a point that there is a mention of gun ownership in the constitution, abortion no mention. I don't think gun owners talk about "absolute" in that they accept background checks, no felon gun ownership, and other limits.

Then why do you think those policies have been so hard to enact while some abortion restrictions have been implemented in most states?

For the most part those restrictions are in place, although not completely. What is a problem is that there is a loophole or two.

But what gets to the gun owners I know is that they consider themselves law abiding citizens (and they are) and many of the restrictions gun control advocates want to implement are seen as punishing them for the actions of individuals who are criminal and/or have mental health issues (to put it simply). Add that to the fact that one can infer that there is a constitutional right to gun ownership and you get the result that gun control restrictions are hard to come by. It takes not only political will but very strong political support of public officials to get restrictions in place.

As a side note, consider that even law enforcement officials are not united into one voice on this issue.

[chaglang]

Reread Scalia's majority Heller opinion. There's a constitutional right to own guns, but not all guns. He basically carved out a niche for handguns and left everything else out in the cold. In fact, that decision outlined what the WH would and would not try to do with this legislation. The scraps the WH cobbled together are the things that Scalia couldn't or wouldn't make a case for defending.

What I would say to your gun owning friends is that they're not being punished for the actions of criminals or (in a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of cases) the mentally ill. What they are being punished for is defending/supporting/sustaining a system that allows those people easy access to firearms. I'm sincerely glad that they're responsible gun owners. But as gun rights advocates (insofar as you describe them), they're behaving irresponsibly.

[knucklehead]

The standard should be what is best for society as a whole.

Balancing that requires a sense of the inevitiable outcomes of policy.

Once a decision is made on the basic policy, it requires mitigation measures to manage undesirable outcomes of the choosen policy.

The basic policy is in place by concensus, the US is not going to outlaw handguns and hunting rifles.

The mitigation measures are currently being refined.

The gun manufacturers don't like the mitigation measures, and they have mounted a public relations campaign through there mouthpiece the NRA and a lobbying campaign in congress. They correctly recognize that congress is throughly corrupt. It is a classic example of concentrated interests versus the broad intersets of society as a whole (diffused interests). Concentrated interests win a lot of those fights, because they have a lot at stake in a single issue and are willing to bribe congressmen, while the diffussued interests never really gets organized in any sustained way. As with most public interest issue campaigns, the public relations efforts and lobbying efforts are interrelated. The PR efforts provide the cover for the corrupt politicans to accept the bribes. In other words, the PR campaign provides plausible deniability so the policitians don't have to admit that their motivation is corruption. Plus the PR effort gins up votes for the politicians that take the bribes, mitigating the adverse consequencies of corruption from the perspective of the congressmen. But all of that is pretty much standard operating procedure in our political system.

The facinating part of all of this is the emotional obsession some males have with guns. That is the really interesting feature of the issue. By examining this seemlingly irrational behavior, one hopes to gain insights that can be useful in examing other behavior patterns.

[aknowledgeableperson]

The facinating part of all of this is the emotional obsession some males have with guns. That is the really interesting feature of the issue. By examining this seemlingly irrational behavior, one hopes to gain insights that can be useful in examing other behavior patterns.

Don't forget the movie Full Metal Jacket.

[Highlander]

I'm sincerely glad that they're responsible gun owners. But as gun rights advocates (insofar as you describe them), they're behaving irresponsibly.

Responsible gun owner is a very temporal term -- kind of like "law abiding citizen". Every criminal and murderer is a law abiding citizen until they break the law. But even the most longstanding and enduring responsible gun owners die and the guns revert to a potentially irresponsible gun owner, or they get burglarized with the same result, or become mentally ill or emotionally unstable with the same result, or they sell the gun with the same result; guns purchased by people with good intentions just tend to find their way into circulation to the point that society is saturated with guns and they are available to anyone, absolutely anyone, that wants one. Can't buy one at Walmart - the black market and/or the countless gun shows offer an easy alternative to legal purchases (the latter claims to be entirely above board - I've read otherwise).

[mean]

I think the point is to restrict the ability to fire high quantities of ammunition in a short time since that has pretty much no public policy benefit (as opposed to rifles for hunting and non-automatic handguns for protection of the home) and poses a high level of danger in the case of mass shootings.

I get that, and I respect that the intention is noble; I just feel like it ignores a reality that is very obvious to anyone who has spent significant time around guns, and that is that the difference in practical rate-of-fire between an AR-15 with a 50 round mag and a double action .38 special revolver is not nearly as significant as many people seem to assume. It's true that if you're just pulling the trigger as fast as you can with zero regard for what you're trying to hit, the AR will put more lead in the air, but that's not what these shooters appear to do. They don't seem to be just rapid-firing as fast as possible, they're trying to kill people, and I maintain that a guy with said revolver and a pocket full of speedloaders would be able to kill a very similar number of people in a very similar timeframe to a guy with an AR. I do concede that the AR shooter will have an advantage, and it is certainly possible that this legislation could save some lives. It won't stop mass shootings, but it could possibly keep a couple people in a hypothetical given incident from being shot. I'm not sure that a guy killing 22 people instead of 24 is a great improvement, but I guess it's something.

I dunno. I'm really rather torn. Of course I understand that we have (and have had, for a very long time) a serious problem with gun violence in this country, and I would love to see that problem solved. I don't think this will solve it. I would like very much to be wrong.

[phuqueue]

It's not about "solving" gun violence, which is probably impossible, but about reducing it. This also doesn't have to be the last word on the subject, but you have to start somewhere. There's a great deal of antagonism among special interests like the NRA and among many politicians toward greater gun control. If you never take a single step, the status quo never changes. Put down some restrictions now, whatever you can get, and you eventually establish a new normal in which any and all restrictions are not per se "invalid." Then you can eventually move on from there to place yet more and more restrictions, until you get somewhere where you're making a genuine difference. Unless there's an alternative solution that can both accommodate gun proliferation and still reduce gun violence -- aside from the assumption, which clearly hasn't held up, that criminals will be "afraid" that their intended victims might be armed, nobody has proposed such a solution, or even seems to care much whether one exists at all -- this gradual, step-by-step process is the only way to bring about real change. It's basically a slippery slope argument, except in this case sliding down the slope would be the best course of action.

I would also say, in your hypothetical scenario in which 22 people die instead of 24, that saving two more lives is ipso facto a "great improvement," which becomes clear when you consider them as actual human lives rather than faceless numbers. In any other context, including in the context of an actual mass shooting, we would never be indifferent toward the lives of those we could save just on account of the rest that we couldn't.

[mean]

Put down some restrictions now, whatever you can get, and you eventually establish a new normal in which any and all restrictions are not per se "invalid." Then you can eventually move on from there to place yet more and more restrictions, until you get somewhere where you're making a genuine difference.

I appreciate your explicitness, which is not something we're going to get from the legislators because, of course, they understand that this is precisely what the pro-gun crowd is afraid of, and why the NRA and such continually reject any and all measures. To admit that this was the goal would be a non-starter. Of course, I don't think it is necessarily the goal of everyone supporting the gun control legislation. I'm sure there are many who believe that restrictions on high capacity magazines and "assault rifles" will go a long way to solving the problem; it is that notion I'm extremely skeptical of. It will require far more onerous restrictions--the slippery slope you describe--gun buybacks, mandatory turn-in programs, onerous sales restrictions, and ultimately the obliteration of the second amendment, which is exactly what I said earlier. I don't think the slippery slope you describe is necessarily the best way to go about it in the long term. I'd rather see the second amendment repealed, and let us deal with whatever fallout comes of it and move on, rather than doing this slow, decades long Band-Aid peel with the inevitable court challenges, electoral fallout, etc.. In part this is because there are a not insignificant number of people who feel that at some point along this slope, the legislation becomes actual tyranny, and that they are not only justified but in fact compelled to eradicate it. Better to deal with them all at once rather than piecemeal, each time we reach a particular point along the slope that someone finally feels like they can no longer tolerate it. I guess that's not realpolitik, though.

[chaglang]

In part this is because there are a not insignificant number of people who feel that at some point along this slope, the legislation becomes actual tyranny, and that they are not only justified but in fact compelled to eradicate it.

Eradicate it how, exactly?

Where the pro-gun folks lose credibility is in making this kind of slippery slope argument, where any whiff of a regulation is always the first step to being rounded up by The Government and shot. I don't know for sure, but I'd bet that kind of talk freaks a lot of people out - and not in the anti-government way the NRA would prefer them to be freaked out. It makes gun owners look like extremists, or at the very least supportive of extremist positions. It's taking a fairly well accepted concept in America - the right to some kind of gun ownership - and defending it so zealously and inflexibly that it marginalizes the concept. It also reframes gun contol positions into a with us/against us dichotomy where one either accepts the 2nd Amendment inviolate, or is the enemy. I could easily see a situation where these apacolyptic arguments actually accelerate the general acceptance of firearms restrictions.

[mean]

Eradicate it how, exactly?

With the infamous "second amendment remedies" of course.

"If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government..." --- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #28.

There are many people who feel that they have not only a right, but an obligation, to kill "tyrants" who would disarm and subjugate them. I'm not one of those people, as I'm not persuaded that "gun control" is tantamount to tyranny, but I do sympathize with them, and frankly, I'm not entirely convinced they're completely wrong. Which is not to say I think said amendment secures one's right to shoot a congressman for pissing you off (which is what I'm afraid we might see), but certainly to defend oneself against illegitimate aggression or subjugation from any government, foreign or domestic. I can't say with any specificity where the line should be drawn between legitimate and illegitimate "aggression" though. It's far too complex an issue, and, I suspect, can usually only be determined after the fact.

I would say, by way of example, that in hindsight Randy Weaver had a right to defend himself and his family against the illegitimate aggression and illegal Rules of Engagement used in the raid on his home in 1992 by the FBI, ATF, and USMS. Or that, in many instances (Wounded Knee comes to mind), Native Americans had the right to defend themselves against illegitimate aggression and, arguably, attempted genocide. Or, leaving the US for a moment, that Jews in Nazi Germany had a fundamental (if not legally recognized in their country) human right to defend themselves against the illegitimate aggression of the Reich, and homosexuals in Uganda have a fundamental (again, if not legally recognized in their country) human right to defend themselves against aggression from a state that targets them, and may soon implement the death penalty, for their sexual orientation.

Of course I don't think I'm likely to be a target of government subjugation, but I can't argue that I don't have a right to defend myself if I ever am. So I sympathize with the gun nut position that just because I can't see it coming doesn't mean it won't come, and the only way to ensure one can defend oneself if it does is to be armed.

Where the pro-gun folks lose credibility is in making this kind of slippery slope argument, where any whiff of a regulation is always the first step to being rounded up by The Government and shot.

Heh. Ok, I'm going to go out on a limb here, but can we at least agree that it is, sometimes? I mean, you could ask the Jews and Native Americans I mentioned, but they all got rounded up and shot.

Of course I don't think that's part of the plan or whatever, and I feel kind of dirty even making some of these points because they sound absurdly paranoid when you're surrounded by relative wealth and comfort, and the possibility of tyranny, aggression, and subjugation seems so laughably remote. Hell, I think it is, in fact, laughably remote, at least in the foreseeable future, and particularly for me, personally, as a politically mainstream white dude. I'm not so sure tyranny, aggression, and subjugation is quite so laughably remote for others, though. I could see scenarios where Muslims or "terrorists" or "Militias" could be targeted with illegitimate aggression in this country. It wouldn't be the first time that groups have been done wrong by the government. Native Americans obviously got screwed. Japanese-Americans and "Communist sympathizers" come to mind, too, although fortunately for whatever damage was done to them, at least they didn't get killed.

I don't know for sure, but I'd bet that kind of talk freaks a lot of people out - and not in the anti-government way the NRA would prefer them to be freaked out. It makes gun owners look like extremists, or at the very least supportive of extremist positions. It's taking a fairly well accepted concept in America - the right to some kind of gun ownership - and defending it so zealously and inflexibly that it marginalizes the concept. It also reframes gun contol positions into a with us/against us dichotomy where one either accepts the 2nd Amendment inviolate, or is the enemy. I could easily see a situation where these apacolyptic arguments actually accelerate the general acceptance of firearms restrictions.

You may be right. I don't know, but I certainly don't get the sense that a majority of Americans understand, or possibly even care to understand, where the gun nut crowd is coming from. I happen to. While I don't agree with them on everything, and I certainly think a lot of the rhetoric is appalling, I do feel like they have a fair amount of legitimate arguments to make which are largely drowned out by the likes of Wayne LaPierre. Frankly, I feel like both sides are talking past each other, the NRA side more emphatically, stubbornly, and occasionally offensively than the other.

[lock+load]

Does anyone really believe that their solitary soul and a stockpile of guns is enough to out maneuver and overpower a determined US government? You only have two hands to be shooting with at one time.