Lots of shootings...

[bostjan]

That's the billion dollar question, isn't it?

Right. I think there's potentially little-or-no value in saying that a particular solution won't work, but offering no alternative idea. Maybe we've been trying to reason with people like @AMOS and getting nowhere, because logic has little value to them. I'd say, though, that, in the absence of a better idea, persistence might be the only hope.

 

[Adieu]

Btw, can somebody explain how assault rifles are legal... but large knives AREN'T?

Didn't the original right to bear arms most certainly include swords and daggers?

 

[Xaios]

Right. I think there's potentially little-or-no value in saying that a particular solution won't work, but offering no alternative idea. Maybe we've been trying to reason with people like @AMOS and getting nowhere, because logic has little value to them. I'd say, though, that, in the absence of a better idea, persistence might be the only hope.

"...nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces."

If Covid has taught us anything, it's that the typical American conservative doesn't give a damn about how their privilege might affect other people until it turns around and bites them or their family in the ass. We're long past the point of trying to constructively point out how gun legislation will lead to a safer society, because it always ends up circling back to "Mah freedumbs!!" The only way they're going to figure it out on their own is when the time finally comes that it hurts them personally, and even that's potentially a dubious assertion; after all, remember the phrase "he's hurting the wrong people"? Still aptly represents the Republican mindset, being willing to hurt themselves just so long as it hurts people they don't like too.

America really only has two choices at this point: 1) pass the legislation and deal with the fallout as it happens, whatever it might be, or 2) watch helplessly as it slowly bleeds out, but one absolute undeniable fact is that you won't be able to building a bridge between parties in order to make it happen, because one of those parties is always looking for an opportunity to blow up that bridge from their side, even if it kills them in the process.

 

[bostjan]

Btw, can somebody explain how assault rifles are legal... but large knives AREN'T?

Didn't the original right to bear arms most certainly include swords and daggers?

That's a can of worms to open.

There are no federal laws banning the ownership of large knives (such is not the case for switchblades and ballistic knives, though). State laws banning bowie knives often had racist motives. For example, most states in the deep south shortly after the American Civil War banned non-whites from owning large knives. As the slow process of pointing out that those laws were racist finally started bearing fruit, few of the laws were repealed, and most of them were simply reworded so as to include all races in the ban, and then the bans were simply not enforced on white people by the police.

Usually, whenever anyone was arrested for possessing a knife that wasn't a switchblade or otherwise spring-loaded has had the financial resources available to challenge the charges, the courts have ruled in their favour, setting the precedent that knives are legal to own, just not to use in crimes, but that hasn't stopped states and cities/town from banning them anyway.

Weirdly, in San Antonio, city law prohibits ownership of knives with blades less than 5.5", but Texas State law prohibits knives with blades greater than 5.5" in urban areas, so you are technically allowed to carry a knife that is exactly 5.5" - no more, no less.

 

[bostjan]

"...nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces."

If Covid has taught us anything, it's that the typical American conservative doesn't give a damn about how their privilege might affect other people until it turns around and bites them or their family in the ass. We're long past the point of trying to constructively point out how gun legislation will lead to a safer society, because it always ends up circling back to "Mah freedumbs!!" The only way they're going to figure it out on their own is when the time finally comes that it hurts them personally. After all, remember the phrase "he's hurting the wrong people"? Still aptly represents the Republican mindset, being willing to hurt themselves just so long as it hurts people they don't like too.

America really only has two choices at this point: 1) pass the legislation and deal with the fallout as it happens, whatever it might be, or 2) watch helplessly as it slowly bleeds out, but one absolute undeniable fact is that you won't be able to building a bridge between parties in order to make it happen, because one of those parties is always looking for an opportunity to blow up that bridge from their side, even if it kills them in the process.

Well, this being a constitutional democracy, you cannot pass the legislation, so option 1 isn't even on the table. Either you eliminate the democracy, or amend the Constitution such that it is clearer or just no longer has the provision to guarantee self defense. There's no option to simply "pass the legislation" that a minority of the voting legislators want, even if a majority of the actual people want it, and even if a supermajority of the people want it when the constitution is interpreted as banning it and there is not a supermajority of states that want it.

So your options are:
1. Fascism. Round up everyone who stands in your way and murder them in cold blood.
2. Revolution. Declare yourself supreme overlord and murder anyone who disagrees in cold blood.
3. Debate. Convince the shot callers in power that your idea is better.
4. Give up. Just forget it, because none of the above solutions are ever going to happen. People are just going to continue to be more violent and they are going to randomly kill each other until we are all dead from either being murdered by them or being obstructed until we die of old age.
5. Magic. Just convince yourself that reality is not what you observe, but whatever you want it to be. Convince yourself that everything is fine and that there is no gun violence, and go on living your life. If anyone tries to murder you in a mass shooting, just tell them "Pfaw, guns aren't real!"

 

[SCJR]

I tend to fall on the side of guns have been around a very long time but a lot of these problems surrounding them are more contemporary. Is it cliche? Yes. Unscientific in its scope? Probably.

But it's a common sense notion. I think it's a fair question to ask the question: Why now? You could probably raise some significant points that apply to the modern societal mental health condition and also the actual firearms industry. Truth on both sides of the fence.

But something has obviously changed because to let those not from the U.S. that seem to have all of the answers regarding this situation know, it was not always like this. Even 12-15 years ago in high school this was not a thought on anyone's mind. It was basically just Columbine and the VT shooting that primarily lived in the cultural zeitgeist.

But of course that's just my perspective. I've had a great upper-middle class upbringing and never had to worry about barring my windows or dealing with a lot of the crime in a lot of the areas where having the right to personal protection means something a LOT different to somebody who does deal with those things.

Edit: Something else the American population deals with is an armed police force and an armed criminal population. Many arguments for reducing gun violence are compelling but become less so when the police have guns, the criminals have guns, and the general public is expected to defend their homes with what, a baseball bat?

 

[Randy]

Weirdly, in San Antonio, city law prohibits ownership of knives with blades less than 5.5", but Texas State law prohibits knives with blades greater than 5.5" in urban areas, so you are technically allowed to carry a knife that is exactly 5.5" - no more, no less.

Texas is home to some REALLY weird laws.

 

[Xaios]

Well, this being a constitutional democracy, you cannot pass the legislation, so option 1 isn't even on the table. Either you eliminate the democracy, or amend the Constitution such that it is clearer or just no longer has the provision to guarantee self defense. There's no option to simply "pass the legislation" that a minority of the voting legislators want, even if a majority of the actual people want it, and even if a supermajority of the people want it when the constitution is interpreted as banning it and there is not a supermajority of states that want it.

I should have been more clear, but you also kinda jumped the gun. In the instance where I said "pass the legislation", I was making that statement under the pretense that the governing party would be in the position to do so legally, not based on the current deadlock.

 

[bostjan]

Texas is home to some REALLY weird laws.

Sec. 48.02. PROHIBITION OF THE PURCHASE AND SALE OF HUMAN ORGANS. (a) In this section, "human organ" means the human kidney, liver, heart, lung, pancreas, eye, bone, skin, or any other human organ or tissue, but does not include hair or blood, blood components (including plasma), blood derivatives, or blood reagents. The term does not include human fetal tissue as defined by Section 48.03.
(b) A person commits an offense if he or she knowingly or intentionally offers to buy, offers to sell, acquires, receives, sells, or otherwise transfers any human organ for valuable consideration.
(c) It is an exception to the application of this section that the valuable consideration is: (1) a fee paid to a physician or to other medical personnel for services rendered in the usual course of medical practice or a fee paid for hospital or other clinical services; (2) reimbursement of legal or medical expenses incurred for the benefit of the ultimate receiver of the organ; or (3) reimbursement of expenses of travel, housing, and lost wages incurred by the donor of a human organ in connection with the donation of the organ.
(d) A violation of this section is a Class A misdemeanor.

Huh?

Pat, I'd like to buy an "I", please. [enter SWAT team]

I should have been more clear, but you also kinda jumped the gun. In the instance where I said "pass the legislation", I was making that statement under the pretense that the governing party would be in the position to do so legally, not based on the current deadlock.

But that's the sticking point - they aren't in the position to do so and have no path to get to that point.

 

[Xaios]

But that's the sticking point - they aren't in the position to do so and have no path to get to that point.

Then the second choice of "watch helplessly as it slowly bleeds out" wins by default.

Hate to be callous, but what else is there really to say? The pro-gun lobby is going to fight tooth and nail to maintain the status quo of gun ownership which results in an endless parade of death and despair, and the opposition seems congenitally incapable of stopping them. Sorry to be a downer, but we've been over this ad nauseam. Retreading the same territory over, and over, and over isn't going to help.

Perhaps America really is so far gone that the only way out really is for the carnage to escalate to the point that that enough people eventually come to their senses when their loved ones are murdered by the violence that they themselves wrought.

Sorry guys, I guess you've already lost.

 

[bostjan]

Picking on the Second Amendment for a moment:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

History time. Precursor to this, proposed to Congress by James Madison:

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country.

Informed by the Massachusetts Bill of Rights:

The people have a right to keep and to bear arms for the common defence. And as, in time of peace, armies are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be maintained without the consent of the legislature; and the military power shall always be held in an exact subordination to the civil authority and be governed by it.

It's clear, historically, that the purpose of the 2A has to do with militias, i.e. the National Guard. The idea here is that the Army is only supposed to exist in times of war, and, otherwise, the nation should be defended by the National Guards, which are commanded ultimately by the state governments rather than the federal government. This is a balance to federal power as well as a preventative measure from war mongering. After the American Civil War, with the consolidation of federal power and the realization that states would potentially go to war with each other over policy, this whole idea sort of became scrapped.

But, as with most everything to do with the American Civil War, revisionists re-imagined the amendment to mean something else.

There may very well have been some push to intentionally make the language of the actual Constitutional law vague so as to include the interpretation of self-defense, but if you actually read it, that's not what it explicitly says. If it was kept vague about this, then it's clear that it was made to leave the door open for further interpretation. But there is no sane interpretation that means that private citizens can arm themselves with whatever they want and that the government can do nothing about it. Even with the most generous interpretation, the idea is that people should be allowed to have weapons in their homes to protect their collective rights from foreign or domestic governments. It doesn't mean you grab your weapons and march around the town square during peace time. In fact, doing so would be contrary to the entire point of the law.

Switzerland, until very very recently, had a similar idea, but not taken to a weird direction post-Civil War. People there were trained to do a particular military job upon reaching adulthood, and then were basically on-call to serve the military for life. So maybe you were trained to be a heavy machine gun operator. You'd get a heavy machine gun, be trained on how to operate it, and then you have to keep that sucker ready to operate in case your country is ever invaded. They used to get sealed boxes of ammo, too. I guess now the idea is that you'd head over to some secret weapons and ammo cache to pick up your minute-men style military gear, rather than keeping a giant chain-fed automatic weapon in the attic.

Anyway, the NRA has absolutely misinterpreted the 2A to mean whatever serves their purpose and they throw away the entire original meaning of it. The way they see it, 2A guarantees that everyone should be allowed to waltz around with an AR-15. And honestly, interpreting the 2A historically, it probably does mean that civilians should get AR-15-type weapons, or, at least weapons that serve that exact purpose, but those weapons should stay locked up in a gun cabinet and the people who receive them should be trained and certified before issue. Then the weapon isn't even really yours, necessarily, it's society's weapon and society is trusting you to use it, if necessary. This whole model sounds crazy, because in modern society, it is. We don't rely on small social groups like villages anymore, as we did in the 18th century.

The NRA has probably done more damage to whatever ideals they generally were trying to protect than any other organization, simply by taking things ridiculously far. Most gun owners are responsible. Some are not. I think that, no matter how careful we are about who gets guns and who doesn't, there will be irresponsible gun owners. But the fact that this thread even exists is proof that the number of irresponsible gun owners has reach epidemic proportions. We all take a step back and say "holy shit! something needs to be done about this!" and the far right says "hmm, naw, everything looks good here."

And, this being an echo-chamber, we might get the feeling that the average American wants stricter gun control. That might have been true in the past, but the trend is surprising. So likely, nothing will happen.

 

[possumkiller]

So maybe they should just do like in Texas and when a shooting happens somewhere just tear down the whole building afterward. Sooner or later there won't be any schools left to shoot up.

 

[bostjan]

The flood gates are now open.

The Supreme Court of the US just issued their ruling on NYSRPA v Bruen and ruled that concealed carry is a Constitutional right. States that do not allow concealed carry, like New Jersey and California must be scrambling right now. And virtually every state that requires a permit needs to be bracing for lawsuits. With a conservative court, it shouldn't be a big surprise, but the opinions are worded with stronger language than I think was anticipated:

The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not 'a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees. We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need.

 

[Choop]

The flood gates are now open.

The Supreme Court of the US just issued their ruling on NYSRPA v Bruen and ruled that concealed carry is a Constitutional right. States that do not allow concealed carry, like New Jersey and California must be scrambling right now. And virtually every state that requires a permit needs to be bracing for lawsuits. With a conservative court, it shouldn't be a big surprise, but the opinions are worded with stronger language than I think was anticipated:

Is it definitely in favor of concealed carry, or at least just open carry? Just wondering, that quote doesn't differentiate. That said, KY has been a "constitutional carry" state for a little while now, no longer requiring a permit to conceal carry and I think it's a horrible idea haha. Not necessarily bad that people have the right to carry, but the permit course has some very insightful gun safety and gun law information that would be beneficial to everybody. Having a gun is one thing, but the laws surrounding guns are situational and can vary from state to state as well. Is America actually testing out the "if everybody had a gun..." scenario in like a real life beta test?

 

[bostjan]

Is it definitely in favor of concealed carry, or at least just open carry? Just wondering, that quote doesn't differentiate. That said, KY has been a "constitutional carry" state for a little while now, no longer requiring a permit to conceal carry and I think it's a horrible idea haha. Not necessarily bad that people have the right to carry, but the permit course has some very insightful gun safety and gun law information that would be beneficial to everybody. Having a gun is one thing, but the laws surrounding guns are situational and can vary from state to state as well. Is America actually testing out the "if everybody had a gun..." scenario in like a real life beta test?

The context is that the quote was from the written majority opinion on the case that was over a guy being rejected for a concealed carry permit in New York. The guy's reason for wanting to conceal a weapon was that New York is a dangerous place, but New York law states that, to get a CCW, you need to state a specific reason that makes your needs special.

So, this reads, to the political right, that you don't need a reason to conceal a weapon. There is already quite a bit of chatter all over the web about how this is going to gut gun control laws. I don't think it'll quite do that, but it sure does make it seem unlikely that there will be much fast-tracking of new gun control laws.

For the record, I'm in VT, where concealed carry does not require any permit. I do personally think that the public would be safer if everyone left their guns at home, and I also think that there are a lot of idiots with guns out there who are a threat to other people, and I believe that there is empirical evidence to support that. I don't think that taking away people's guns is the answer (see my other posts here), but I think that this particular Supreme Court ruling is going to set us back, merely because it's poorly worded and coming up at just the perfectly wrong time.

 

[profwoot]

So Alito says abortion isn't protected because it wasn't in British common law, but now says that the constitution requires allowance of concealed carry. It's almost like he's not actually making good faith efforts to interpret the law!

 

[odibrom]

You guys are screwed big time, the zombiecalipse is near..

 

[Choop]

The context is that the quote was from the written majority opinion on the case that was over a guy being rejected for a concealed carry permit in New York. The guy's reason for wanting to conceal a weapon was that New York is a dangerous place, but New York law states that, to get a CCW, you need to state a specific reason that makes your needs special.

So, this reads, to the political right, that you don't need a reason to conceal a weapon. There is already quite a bit of chatter all over the web about how this is going to gut gun control laws. I don't think it'll quite do that, but it sure does make it seem unlikely that there will be much fast-tracking of new gun control laws.

For the record, I'm in VT, where concealed carry does not require any permit. I do personally think that the public would be safer if everyone left their guns at home, and I also think that there are a lot of idiots with guns out there who are a threat to other people, and I believe that there is empirical evidence to support that. I don't think that taking away people's guns is the answer (see my other posts here), but I think that this particular Supreme Court ruling is going to set us back, merely because it's poorly worded and coming up at just the perfectly wrong time.

Ohhh I see now. Thanks for clarifying -- I'm at work and can't read too deeply into this stuff right this minute.

 

[tedtan]

The flood gates are now open.

The Supreme Court of the US just issued their ruling on NYSRPA v Bruen and ruled that concealed carry is a Constitutional right. States that do not allow concealed carry, like New Jersey and California must be scrambling right now. And virtually every state that requires a permit needs to be bracing for lawsuits. With a conservative court, it shouldn't be a big surprise, but the opinions are worded with stronger language than I think was anticipated:

That’s not my read.

My interpretation is that 1) the Supreme Court has ruled that people have a right to carry guns outside their homes, and 2) that the New York law requiring the citizen to provide a specific need for a carry permit is overreaching. I don’t find either of those to be a negative in and of themselves, nor do I think that this specific ruling prevents gun control measures on the whole.

What looks to be an issue is that the Court is going back to the original language and intent, and the original context in which it was passed into law, and applying that literally to modern cases in modern contexts. This could be an issue on multiple fronts.

 

[bostjan]

That’s not my read.

My interpretation is that 1) the Supreme Court has ruled that people have a right to carry guns outside their homes, and 2) that the New York law requiring the citizen to provide a specific need for a carry permit is overreaching. I don’t find either of those to be a negative in and of themselves, nor do I think that this specific ruling prevents gun control measures on the whole.

What looks to be an issue is that the Court is going back to the original language and intent, and the original context in which it was passed into law, and applying that literally to modern cases in modern contexts. This could be an issue on multiple fronts.

Not sure where we disagree here. I noticed you omitted "concealed." Is that the disagreement? Or in how I am observing people's reaction?