Why We Can't Talk About Gun Control
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
I honestly do not understand how these things are comparable. A skillet is a tool for making food. It does not hurt or kill unless used incorrectly. A power saw is a tool for shaping useful objects. It does not hurt or kill unless used incorrectly. A gun is a tool for killing. Unless it is used incorrectly, it always destroys or hurts or kills.
Would you argue the same way about being allowed to carry mustard gas? Or smallpox? That the freedom to do so is worth more than the immense hurt it is guaranteed to bring on the world?
The U.S.' obsession with firearms is utterly beyond me (I am from Germany). Just my 2 cents.
Reason 1: "I like guns. They're fun." And that's basically the entire argument. They have a hobby, and they don't want to see that taken away from them. Sometimes it makes sense to take things away from people and sometimes it doesn't. Obviously, gun enthusiasts argue that it doesn't make sense.
Reason 2: "But the bad guys already have guns." This is actually where I am. I'd love to see new regulation and harsh penalties for violations, but it must start with criminals. Gun bans do effectively remove guns from a population and criminals would also be affected (see Australia, among other places), but I believe there would be an ugly transition period in America when the good citizens have all dutifully turned in their guns and the criminals hold on to their already illegally owned guns. I'd prefer a system that takes guns from criminals and heavily regulates (but allows) qualified citizens to own them.
And to address your other points, especially where it concerns rifles: I grew up with people who can only afford meat in their diet if they hunted it themselves. Not only is it fun, but it IS a tool. A hunting rifle costs only a few hundred dollars, but it can not only enhance social time with friends who hunt but it can also put food on the table. It's considerably less dangerous and more useful than smallpox or mustard gas, and it's not guaranteed to bring damage to people or their property.
Sorry, that's wrong to the point of absurdity. None of the guns I've owned have ever killed or hurt anyone, and I'm pretty sure I've always used them correctly.
"The U.S.' obsession with firearms is utterly beyond me"
The European obsession with government control is utterly beyond me. Governments with too much power have killed far more people than privately owned firearms ever have.
"(I am from Germany)."
Why might European governments be more restrictive? Are there any non-restrictive ones? Have there ever been? Where are they now? Might America be a different case, allowed to flourish under another set of rules?
I'm not saying you're wrong. You're not. Maybe I'm just encouraging civil discussion. Maybe I'm bored at work. Maybe both.
Sure thing. Him going off about "obsessions" and suggesting (none too subtly) that Europeans are somehow morally superior to Americans was totally non-antagonistic. Totally.
What's the goal? I'll admit I'm pretty new to this forum, but one of my favorite parts is the civility of discussion that I've seen in the comments.
http://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/...
On the one hand, we have a government and police that have proven themselves more than happy to merrily victimize and destroy the lives of people in the middle and lower classes with wild abandon. We have seen a security and surveillance apparatus far in excess of anything remotely reasonable turned upon its own citizens. We have seen gun control laws used to victimize minorities and immigrants, by removing their ability to defend themselves--from criminals created largely by the same socioeconomic factors.
On the other hand, we have a large number of firearms used in crimes (because why wouldn't you?) and in accidental deaths and in the statistically tiny mass shooting. People are scared of these weapons, mostly because they haven't grown up around them and because they only ever hear about them being used in crime (because that's what sells news).
The reason we can't talk about gun control is because both sides have problems which neither side wants to address.
With that comparison it's easy to both capture the gist of the cartoon, but also the ridiculousness of it. There is one abortion clinic in Mississippi and 10 in Texas. In the strictest of states there is far more than 10 gun stores.
But I write to object to your "two sides" viewpoint. You write:
> We have seen gun control laws used to victimize minorities and immigrants, by removing their ability to defend themselves
Certainly Regan and others introduced gun control legislation to make it hard for the Black Panthers to arm themselves. But you left out at least two factors. 1) easy access to guns means that police can justify a shooting Tamir Rice because the toy gun might be a real one, or Ricardo Diaz-Zeferino because "officers said they could not see one of Diaz Zeferino’s hands and believed he was going to reach for a weapon." 2) the co-existence of a weapon during some other crime can be used to "enhance" the penalty, even if the weapon wasn't used to commit the crime.
If weapon restrictions were equivalent to that of, say, Norway (which also has 'statistically tiny mass shooting', but definitely not non-existent), then there would be less justification for police killings of suspects, and less ability to apply even more charges.
I'm totally willing to talk about the wholesale use of gun control similar to what's in Norway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Norway . I don't see anything I want to avoid addressing. Therefore your statement makes no sense to me.
Norway's rules are reasonable--for them--but again I am hesitant given the history of abuse of authority we have in the United States.
It's been shown in the last fifteen years that mandatory firearms registration (of a sort similar to Norway's here) may result directly in confiscation of private and legal firearms:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_government_respon...
It was not long ago that we've seen the effective use of an impromptu militia to maintain order: http://articles.latimes.com/1992-05-02/news/mn-1281_1_police...
In any case, you have attempted to distinguish between "behavior of police" and "problem with guns". This is impossible, as everything to do with police response is an issue with the "behavior of police", including their response to an often armed citizenry. You can only use your argument by begging the question, and assuming that these entangled issues are easily separated.
Your best example, which you say is "not long ago", is at 23 years old almost a generation ago. Your justification is even weaker than mine! You argue that an 'impromptu militia' has (occasionally) helped protect property during civil unrest and therefore must be preserved. Yes, and probably somewhere a pistol butt was used to break the window of a car and rescue a baby that was trapped inside, so we have to make sure everyone has a pistol handy during hot weather.
Your example with the Katrina response is equally tenuous. That appears to have been an illegal order by the local police, which then lied to the courts about their actions.
Census records were used to round up Japanese during WWII. Do we therefore stop taking a census? Police have also illegally misused driving license information and similar records (see http://www.copwatch.org/databaseabuse.html ). Do we therefore stop tracking those records? The answer to those rhetorical questions is "no". You haven't explained why this example of illegal police use of the records is meaningful, other than to say that no records should be kept, for fear of abuse.
But all of this is besides the point. You said "The reason we can't talk about gun control is because both sides have problems which neither side wants to address.", but I still say that your characterization of the two sides is 1) limited, because there are more than two sides, 2) incorrect, or at least highly selective about the issues, and 3) hasn't pointed out the issues that someone like me, who is for much more restrictive gun control, isn't willing to address.
No, but maybe we should stop asking people questions about their ethnicity. The census was intended to apportion legislative seats. Nothing else. There's no reason or constitutional justification for any of the other questions that they ask.
The whole issue in the united states is hopeless until the current supreme court and older voters die off.
Do you make fun of people who use vim or whatever too? A tool is a tool is a tool. Classy argument, though!
A lot of the reason we have this problem is folks like you and legislators not really articulating the difference between, say, assault rifles (which you put in quotes here for some reason which is not obvious) and "assault weapons" (quoted properly, as seen in reporting).
An assault rifle fires an intermediate rifle round, has a detachable external magazine, and select fire. If a rifle doesn't have those three things, it isn't an assault rifle. Since very few rifles available in the US have select fire (unless you've purchased one with tax stamp or whatever), this means that politicians and lobbyists have fallen back on the "assault weapon" definition, which is really just anything that looks scary and vaguely military.
Handguns are only usable for killing human beings--that is absolutely true. They are preferable to long arms (rifles, shotguns, etc.) in self-defense situations inside, say, a house. They are somewhat countered by knives up close--hence, police 15-foot rules. The problem people have when banning or regulating handguns is that, unlike with the evil puppy-killing assault weapons, every handgun that isn't a flintlock basically looks and works the same. So, they haven't been able to slowly whittle off types of munitions as has been tried with rifles.
The point about assault rifles is that it's deranged that the Supreme court sees fit to allow states to ban what are essentially light weight rifles with various doodads and decorations. Weird considering riffles of all types aren't much of a public hazard. Then turns around and rules that states can't ban handguns. Despite which because they can be easily concealed and are often used for street crime are a public hazard. (Absolutely no question).
I think--and this is without reading the relevant rulings, so take it as a wild-ass guess--that while regulating the rifles is one thing, outright banning an entire class of weapon fails to make sense. That'd be my guess.
The article is talking about how a pro-gun person that wrote a column in Guns & Ammo in favor of regulations to require gun training was fired by the magazine (ha). That's not really a side to which there's an other, or at least not the one you're portraying.