The history of how gun control came to become such a sharp and reliable wedge issue is well worth understanding. It's a relatively recent thing.
Something I've found worth thinking when I hear that, to paraphrase a random sentiment you might hear, "Democrats need to understand that people need to feel secure, that's why gun control matters" is this: who is telling these people that they should be scared?
> who is telling these people that they should be scared?
Life in general? If you have an idea that this country is safe, then great! But the reality is it’s not, not for many. And to take someone’s method of defense because you can’t see a reason why doesn’t do well for relations. And as the sibling post here said, the left hasn’t tried to understand guns enough to enact gun control that doesn’t sound laughable.
Again, this comes back to an underlying message people are being sold. Two, actually. The first is "It is reasonable to expect to need to defend yourself with lethal force, and a gun is a reasonable tool for doing so." The second is "Feeling the need to defend yourself such that it is a day-to-day concern is a reasonable social position."
People will vote on fear before they'll vote on the abject failure of social policy that creates situations where that fear might be justified. That's just how humans are wired: we're not rational. It shouldn't be a matter of taking someone's means of defense, it's trying to address why they feel they need it in the first place. But even then, guns just aren't a particularly good investment if what you want to do is successfully defend yourself from crime. The stats just don't bear it out. So again, who is telling people that they should have one? Who does it suit for large amounts of people to believe that this specific form of mitigation makes sense?
Unfortunately, gun control is such a hot-button issue that it's actually outside the Overton window for an entire political faction. If you bring it up at all, even if you're talking about meta-issues like this, the conversation tends to shut down instantly. This is why the response is always "the Dems need to understand" not "the Republicans need to propose." The fear it represents, and the self-image that any conversation around it challenges, are so fundamental that attempting to approach it from any direction is seen as a personal attack. Again, this is not accidental; it is worth understanding when and how this happened, and who was involved in it.
Well the other side of the second amendment, and one the left shuts down when it's brought up, is protection from government. Then there's the idea of militia's. Both of these are also reasons for people to have the "scary black rifles" in their house, and a central idea to the 2A. So add these to the questions: "Is it reasonable to believe the US may need a militia", "Is it reasonable to force citizen to provide this militia", "Will the US gov ever violate human rights such that the citizens of the US would have to defend themselves against this gov".
Then lets also consider that when you talk about self defense, and the possible loss of life, should we be forced to play the "just enough" game with defensive force? Who exactly likes gambling with their life?
To the first questions, you do have a point, those are questions that are worth asking. And it all hinges on "which government?", "is the militia well-regulated?", "is it feasible to constitute a modern militia such that it could realistically resist modern state forces?" and so on. Randomly scattering black guns into people's bedroom wardrobes does not a militia make, so if a militia is what we want, what are the processes we need to go through in addition to providing the tools to make sure that such an organisation could be effective if it was needed? What would the command structure look like? Training? Membership eligibility? And not incidentally, how does it avoid being classed as a terrorist organisation from the moment it breaks cover, rather than a constitutionally relevant political body? All that's in the mix. And that's a reasonable set of questions to pose. I don't have the answers to many of them, but critically, that's not how the second amendment is politically framed today. The prevailing interpretation of the second amendment is in support of individual rights, not collective. And again, that is an intentional framing created by specific people for a specific purpose.
> Then lets also consider that when you talk about self defense, and the possible loss of life, should we be forced to play the "just enough" game with defensive force? Who exactly likes gambling with their life?
That's exactly the situation in most of the West. It's just not normal to have to expect to be both in a life-threatening situation, and for the correct response on your part be to kill someone. That's a social and governmental failure right there.
> Randomly scattering black guns into people's bedroom wardrobes does not a militia make
Actually it does, and in some countries this is required by law. Here is the definition of militia: "An army composed of ordinary citizens rather than professional soldiers."
This is a last resort army, and in fact every able body citizen able to take up arms is already a "member".
And what will training do? If you train someone crazy who wants to kill people, this doesn't take their desire to kill people away does it? Dems keep leaning on that training as if it's a silver bullet but in reality it will do nothing. The democratic politicians holding, how come they've never been seen at a range if training is so important? This sounds like the dems saying everybody but them needs some training again. Not likely to get traction.
> organisation
organization
> That's exactly the situation in most of the West. It's just not normal to have to expect to be both in a life-threatening situation, and for the correct response on your part be to kill someone. That's a social and governmental failure right there.
What west? The US? or the Western US? This is pure opinion. It may not be normal for you, but every California politician has a conceal carry permit. Some 500k lawyers do as well. It very much is normal, just not for you.
One serious look at Feinstein and other's proposed legislation is enough to convince every gun owner I know that Democrats don't know the first thing about guns.
We need reform, not absurd threats to ban AR-15's while keeping Mini-14's. Not arbitrary tax stamps and wait times for suppressors and short barrel rifles.
I personally haven't seen gun control legislation proposed in America that isn't totally laughable. It's a deep-rooted thorn in the foot of progressive American politics.
And the underlying problem is that gun owners are populous enough that this objection is a serious political blockage. Why do so many Americans own guns? Who is telling them that this is reasonable, desirable, necessary? In most developed countries, gun control is a political footnote. Why is it different in the US?
In the context of self-defense... yes? It's just not a very good return on investment.
> I disagree. Guns are tools. Guns are toys.
> The overwhelming majority of firearm use is safe and recreational.
Right, so that's the other half of gun owners, who don't say they have a gun for self-protection, which wasn't the context of this thread. That's fine, though.
> Gun ownership is not correlated with gun violence[1].
I mean, it clearly is. You get less gun violence in countries where there are fewer gun owners. That's trivially true. And you'll have to forgive my cynicism, but I can't take wikipedia seriously as a reference on this topic. It's too well-funded a concern for that page not to be pulled in every direction under the sun.
> The problem with guns isn't that there are a lot of them. The problem is that they are, in very rare cases, used to do serious harm.
The CDC says 39,740 firearm deaths in 2018. Four or five weeks of COVID, at that rate. Whether that counts as "very rare" is subjective, I suppose. That's the cheap bit, though: because the US seems to have a congenital inability to prevent people from going bankrupt over medical bills, you've also got to factor in the same again (to a tolerable approximation) in hospitalisations, according to the NIH.
At some point you've got to look at that situation and think "Is the fun of making things go pop worth it?"
It's not just the direct harm. In supporting a culture that normalises making things go pop for fun, you get an extensive infrastructure that also benefits people who end up being a serious problem. Yes, that includes school shootings which, yes, are rare, but they're also fairly unique to the US in scale and regularity. Saying "they're rare" doesn't absolve anyone of the need to question why that is, or what can be done to make them less lethal. They make headlines - or used to; they're frequent enough now that they're less news-worthy, which in itself points to a really deep issue - out of proportion to the number of people directly affected because of the combination of the innocence of youth and the extremity of the violence, but now all the schools need to have active-shooter drills because, as a society, the behaviour of the US shows us that it prefers making things go pop to making kids safe.
Look at gun deaths per 100000 in MX. Guns are very controlled in that country, you can only own a 22LR or a 38 revolver. Gun deaths are still right on par with the US. And of those quoted 39k deaths, 13k of the were homicide, with suicide taking the majority.
> At some point you've got to look at that situation and think "Is the fun of making things go pop worth it?"
So again, you are taking your opinion and projecting it onto others. You may think removing guns solves gun crimes. Mexico stands blatantly against that. You may think violence stops when guns disappear, then you see knife and other brutal attacks. You are stating you don't need them, so nobody else does. The second you the victim of some violent crime, or lose a family member you'll change your tune, as you see tons of democrats doing now.
Guns are notoriously out of control in Mexico. That's part of their problem. But it's interesting that you would pick a country with a long-running inter-cartel drug war, rampant police corruption, extremely weak enforcement, and less than a quarter the average household income as somehow directly being comparable to the US. The more remarkable question we should be asking is, with all that going on, how on earth is the US struggling to do any better than Mexico?
Try that comparison with literally any of the other G7 nations.
> You may think removing guns solves gun crimes. Mexico stands blatantly against that.
No, what Mexico shows is that gun control legislation is pointless if you can't enforce it. I'm not arguing that gun control legislation alone is some panacea; that would be absurd. It needs to have teeth.
> You may think violence stops when guns disappear, then you see knife and other brutal attacks.
Yep. That's a reasonable tradeoff. Apart from anything else, it means the police can de-escalate themselves from assuming that they might get shot during any encounter to assuming that if they don't get close enough to get stabbed, they're less likely to be in immediate danger. That's a good thing.
> The second you the victim of some violent crime, or lose a family member you'll change your tune
It seems reasonable to you that your position requires me to undergo an experience so traumatic as to prevent rational thought? Think I'll pass.
How did it get this way? There's laws in place to prevent it. Buying an AR in MX is impossible. How do they get in the country? They should be stopped at the border. Just like hard drugs should be stopped when coming across the US border. Proof that even import controls don't work. We're also in the age of 3d printing and home fabrication. Guns are not going to disappear from criminals hands, only law abiding citizens.
> But it's interesting that you would pick a country with a long-running inter-cartel drug war, rampant police corruption, extremely weak enforcement, and less than a quarter the average household income as somehow directly being comparable to the US.
So two questions here, how did it get corrupt in the first place? What has stopped corruption in the US? If the Mexican citizens wish to end this corruption, how can they? I'm going to disregard the poverty claim because it's just senseless to imply poor people are violent.
> The more remarkable question we should be asking is, with all that going on, how on earth is the US struggling to do any better than Mexico?
Great question! Perhaps violence is just as out of control here as in Mexico?
> No, what Mexico shows is that gun control legislation is pointless if you can't enforce it. I'm not arguing that gun control legislation alone is some panacea; that would be absurd. It needs to have teeth.
What does the legislation having "teeth" entail?
> Apart from anything else, it means the police can de-escalate themselves from assuming that they might get shot during any encounter to assuming that if they don't get close enough to get stabbed, they're less likely to be in immediate danger. That's a good thing.
So then if the police are overly violent, or if they were to take control, then what? Wasn't a majority of the left just rioting over police being too violent? You want to throw your trust entirely into the hope that they are sane?
> It seems reasonable to you that your position requires me to undergo an experience so traumatic as to prevent rational thought? Think I'll pass.
How is the desire to defend one's self irrational? This just seems like pure opinion, and slightly scary. Again, for those in immediate danger how do they defend themselves? You clearly lack experience in any traumatic event, and are now running around saying that because of your lack of experience, nobody should be able to defend themselves with firearms. Really?
