What gun control advocates can learn from abolitionists who helped end slavery
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Re: What gun control advocates can learn from abolitionists who helped end slavery
#2would slavery have ended without the Civil War? It seems unlikely.
Now can we pass substantive gun measures that will reduce gun violence in America without having another Civil War? Probably... But I doubt some of the gun advocates would give up any of their arms willingly.
Re: What gun control advocates can learn from abolitionists who helped end slavery
#3would slavery have ended without the Civil War? It seems unlikely. Now can we pass substantive gun measures that will reduce gun violence in America without having another Civil War? Probably... But I doubt some of the gun advocates would give up any of their arms willingly.
Most people (including gun owners) in the US support closing loopholes and increasing background checks. I believe it's over 70% of all Americans.
The reason those things haven't passed is because of powerful lobbying by the NRA.
I don't think any mainstream politician has proposed taking guns away from legal, non-convict gun owners.
Re: What gun control advocates can learn from abolitionists who helped end slavery
#4It fascinates me that anyone smart enough to be in tech seems to think banning a type of weapon solves any evil.
Re: What gun control advocates can learn from abolitionists who helped end slavery
#5would slavery have ended without the Civil War? It seems unlikely. Now can we pass substantive gun measures that will reduce gun violence in America without having another Civil War? Probably... But I doubt some of the gun advocates would give up any of their arms willingly.
Most people (including gun owners) in the US support closing loopholes and increasing background checks. I believe it's over 70% of all Americans. The reason those things haven't passed is because of powerful lobbying by the NRA. I don't think any mainstream politician has proposed taking guns away from legal, non-convict gun owners.
Not in so many words--but then again, there is a lot of dog-whistling going on, intentionally or not.
I really hate to link to some of these, but Red State does a decent summation of the "loopholes" as they apply to the executive actions took in January of this year ( http://www.redstate.com/absentee/2016/01/05/obamas-executive... ).
It's not just the adoption of simple measures, though. There is a lot of resistance to wider-spread bans that are kinda just waiting in the wings ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_Trade_Treaty ) to remove the self-determination and ability to self-arm. Sure, a lot of kooks are the ones resisting, but there are legitimate concerns there. Those bans are made possible by slow harmonizing measures, as weapons are restricted bit by bit by bit.
The basic problem in all of this is that the lies have been pervasive on both sides, and have been egregiously so in the case of proponents of gun-control measures. The phrase "assault weapon" was adopted literally to ban weapons that looked scary or military irrespective of their functional abilities. The phrase "commonsense measures" is specifically done to make a massive erosion of freedoms seem noncontroversial.
The entire posturing of gun control has been to either fear-monger or to smear as ignorant people who appreciate the value of retaining their right to self-defense and to do with their property what they will.
EDIT:
Loathe as I am to mention them, Breitbart has a useful quote showing exactly the mainstream politician talking about seizing weapons:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/10/16/hillary-c...
Washington Post had an interesting bit here as well: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/08/why-s...
Re: What gun control advocates can learn from abolitionists who helped end slavery
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people (including gun owners) in the US support closing loopholes and increasing background checks. I believe it's over 70% of all Americans. The reason those things haven't passed is because of powerful lobbying by the NRA. I don't think any mainstream politician has proposed taking guns away from legal, non-convict gun owners.
Not in so many words--but then again, there is a lot of dog-whistling going on, intentionally or not. I really hate to link to some of these, but Red State does a decent summation of the "loopholes" as they apply to the executive actions took in January of this year ( http://www.redstate.com/absentee/2016/01/05/obamas-executive... ). It's not just the adoption of simple measures, though. There is a lot of resistance…
"I really hate to link to some of these"
"Loathe as I am to mention them,"
You know, just don't do that if you really dislike those publications so much.
"The entire posturing of gun control has been to either fear-monger or to smear"
No fear mongering is required. Simple data mongering is enough
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/13/health/mass-shootings-in-ameri...
Re: What gun control advocates can learn from abolitionists who helped end slavery
#7It fascinates me that anyone smart enough to be in tech seems to think banning a type of weapon solves any evil.
Yeah... especially when there's absolutely no precedent for such bans solving exactly such problems in other countries.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/world/australia/australia-...
Re: What gun control advocates can learn from abolitionists who helped end slavery
#8would slavery have ended without the Civil War? It seems unlikely. Now can we pass substantive gun measures that will reduce gun violence in America without having another Civil War? Probably... But I doubt some of the gun advocates would give up any of their arms willingly.
Most people (including gun owners) in the US support closing loopholes and increasing background checks. I believe it's over 70% of all Americans. The reason those things haven't passed is because of powerful lobbying by the NRA. I don't think any mainstream politician has proposed taking guns away from legal, non-convict gun owners.
Here's a video of Senator Feinstein talking about confiscating weapons from legal owners: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCRKv-szJlo
How many times has President Obama -- whom I voted for, mind you -- suggested following either the Australian or British examples? E.g., where Australia and Britain confiscated weapons from legal owners.
In both NYC and CA, several small-scale confiscations have occurred.
Here's a new law, passed by the Senate in California, that will require legal owners of standard-capacity magazines to surrender, sell, or destroy their legally-owned property: http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?...
That list goes on. And outside of outright confiscation, the gun-control crowd pushes nothing but more limits, more bans, and more asinine rules, all of which only serve to harass gun owners in exchange for zero measurable improvements in public safety (see the final report on the last Federal Assault Weapons Ban for more details on how utterly ineffective it was).
Like the State of California requiring a technology that is impossible under our current understanding of materials engineering in every new model of pistol sold. The result? No new models of pistols can be sold in California, and if a manufacturer updates an older model (say, to correct a safety flaw), then that pistol becomes banned, too.
If you want to know why gun owners -- and the NRA -- aren't budging an inch, the reason is simple:
Gun owners do not trust gun-control advocates, because gun-control advocates have repeatedly acted in bad faith.
Re: What gun control advocates can learn from abolitionists who helped end slavery
#9It fascinates me that anyone smart enough to be in tech seems to think banning a type of weapon solves any evil.
Yeah... especially when there's absolutely no precedent for such bans solving exactly such problems in other countries. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/world/australia/australia-...
Re: What gun control advocates can learn from abolitionists who helped end slavery
#10It fascinates me that anyone smart enough to be in tech seems to think banning a type of weapon solves any evil.
Yeah... especially when there's absolutely no precedent for such bans solving exactly such problems in other countries. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/world/australia/australia-...
United Kingdom: The UK enacted its handgun ban in 1996. From 1990 until the ban was enacted, the homicide rate fluctuated between 10.9 and 13 homicides per million. After the ban was enacted, homicides trended up until they reached a peak of 18.0 in 2003. Since 2003, which incidentally was about the time the British government flooded the country with 20,000 more cops, the homicide rate has fallen to 11.1 in 2010. In other words, the 15-year experiment in a handgun ban has achieved absolutely nothing.
Ireland: Ireland banned firearms in 1972. Ireland’s homicide rate was fairly static going all the way back to 1945. In that period, it fluctuated between 0.1 and 0.6 per 100,000 people. Immediately after the ban, the murder rate shot up to 1.6 per 100,000 people in 1975. It then dropped back down to 0.4. It has trended up, reaching 1.4 in 2007.
Australia: Australia enacted its gun ban in 1996. Murders have basically run flat, seeing only a small spike after the ban and then returning almost immediately to preban numbers. It is currently trending down, but is within the fluctuations exhibited in other nations.