this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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Politics
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Interesting article. I don't think the linguistic argument used in the OPED is going to sway anyone to support gun control.
I think a lot of the efforts to implement gun control ignore the nature of the US. The country is large and in some areas people can not rely on quick police response or if the police can respond quickly, they can't be trusted to act in good faith.
We certainly need some gun control to prevent those who are mentally ill or previously convicted of violent crimes from owning guns. Even processes for these, if put in place, must be appealable to ensure universal fair treatment. Additionally mandatory wait times would be great as well.
I think bans of X gun because it's scary are non sensical because those bans are not going to win over any gun rights advocates to create a national consensus.
The large majority of gun owners never commit a violent crime and should not be told to give them up because of the actions of a few.
The gun control debate is the best thing to happen to the Republican Party since the election of Lincoln. It has singlehandedly ensured that the Democratic Party will never achieve practical dominance, funneling literally millions of single-issue voters into the GOP's arms. If American progressives were capable of seeing farther than the ends of their own noses, they would push to drop it from the Democratic platform. Two reasons for that:
We'll rid our society of guns the same day we go back to the way things were before AI. In other words, when we find out how to put things back inside Pandora's box: it's never going to happen. Besides, the brief window in time where it was possible ended the very instant it became possible to manufacture guns at home on a prosumer-grade CNC machine and a 3D printer. You can't un-fuck that goat.
People who have universal medical/vision/dental/mental health care, a social safety net, and a job that pays a fair wage generally don't care anywhere near as much about shooting people as desperate/poor/sick people do. It's idiotic to treat a sickness by ignoring the disease and treating the symptoms, it's like clearing your basement of black mold by putting a coat of paint over it. There's no way in hell I'll support disarming the working class, and certainly not when they're getting constantly fucked the way they are now.
Do you really see a large number of gun-control-centered liberals talking about getting guns out of the "inner city" or away from "urban youth," though? Because what I've observed is most of the people who are concerned about gun control are trying to get guns out of the hands of largely young white men who shoot up schools, churches, grocery stores etc. I can't recall the last time I heard someone who identified as left of center complain about "violence in Chicago" — that beat is exclusively on the right.
It doesn't matter who they claim the impetus is for their proposals, because too many of the orgs and platforms they use (e.g. Giffords, Everytown) are run by people who very openly say they believe no one should own guns.
Biden is constantly talking about an assault weapons ban, but if you actually look at his platform, it has expanded that definition to essentially be all semiauto rifles, and is copied directly from Waters' and Fienstein's own bills they reintroduce every year.
Progressives don't realize that their anti-gun rhetoric is being shaped and championed by a bunch of rich neolib politicians (like "I bought my way into a presidential campaign" Bloomberg, who runs Everytown) who want only the state to have guns.