Well if one side only ever pushes in one direction and the other side only ever "compromises" to keep from being pushed too far, eventually the one side has everything they want (total gun control) and the other side has nothing.
I'd like to see some compromise in the other direction too. Like "Ok, we'll relax CCP regulations or 'assault weapons' regulations so that normal citizens can have them, but in return we need to ramp up background checks in X and Y ways". That's how compromise should work, but instead with gun control it's very one-sided compromise.
I think you'll find that both sides in this particular debate see the other in that way. At times it seems like the pro-gun folks will take nothing less than civilian access to the nuclear launch codes, and that any restriction or hindrance of access to any weapon is an attempt to overthrow the rule of law.
It turns out the loudest (read: most visible) people on both sides of any given debate are the least likely to compromise.
A reasonable thing would be to almost totally restrict pistols, but the Constitution hasn't been amended on the matter since the days when a rifled barrel on a long gun was cutting edge technology, so we have people walking around with highly dangerous concealable weapons.
I mean, I wouldn't want to face someone wielding a machete anymore than I'd want to face someone wielding a bag of revolvers, but at least with the machete they are going to have to physically work quite a bit to kill each person they want to kill.
When the constitution was written, repeating rifles existed. Lewis and Clark took one on their famous expedition.[0] Owning cannons was legal, and people did. During the American Civil War, wealthy men outfitted their own company of men and led them. American history has some crazy stuff in it. Private ship owners acting as privateers, for instance. My (lawyer) wife dearly wants a "letter of marque"[1] ever since she found out what they are in maritime law class.
> but at least with the machete they are going to have to physically work quite a bit to kill each person they want to kill.
Without meaning to be glib, this is exactly the reason I would not recommend a machete to my grandmother for personal defense, but I would recommend her a Ruger LCR, or a Smith & Wesson M&P.
The fact that she is physically disadvantaged against almost anyone would do her harm is a use case that the firearm solves quite nicely.
Hence the old saying "God Created Men and Sam Colt Made Them Equal!".
My approaching-70 year old father will be retiring to the middle of nowhere, along with his wife. What's he going to do if someone breaks in - fight them? He's an old man with COPD. Call the police? They're an hour away. But with a good dog to alert him to intruders, and a good gun he can reach for? He can protect himself against anyone, no matter how much of a physical advantage they might have.
Undermining your grandmother's ability to defend herself is worth it if the policy that does so statistically reduces violence (or even statistically reduces the consequences of violence).
Perhaps an attempt to ask you to zoom out and see some perspective. You just told someone that you're totally okay expecting someone's family to be unable to defend themselves from an attacker.
But, if you were just blasting an opinion out there rather than attempting to have a discussion - why are you here again? - fine. Can't argue with an opinion, even if it comes off as completely insensitive and tone-deaf.
People project their gun attitudes onto their grandma's that have never been attacked anyway and demand that we live in a less safe society because of it.
My mom was pretty unnerved when her house got broken into (she was there, asleep, didn't wake up, wasn't attacked). She wouldn't be any better off with a gun because she isn't prepared to use it. Effective restrictions on guns would be a 100% win for her.
So do I lack perspective? Or have I maybe come to different, reasonable conclusions and am sick of people making absurd emotional arguments about how guns make people safer?
Effective restrictions on guns would be a 100% win for her
"Effective restrictions on guns" don't exist in the same way that "effective restrictions on drugs" don't exist.
So no, your conclusion is not "reasonable". It is completely unrealistic and runs contrary to the most basic laws, not to mention the culture of the country.
I'm much more interested in realistic solutions that don't involve trampling on basic rights and removing the ability of people to defend themselves from an assailant. If you expect such discussion to be not emotionally loaded, your conclusion is unrealistic twice over.
I initiated my comments in this thread by proposing to change the basic laws (or at least, acknowledging that they are a big factor).
And it isn't that I expect such a discussion to not be emotionally loaded, I'm just going to reject assertions that only one sort of emotional loading is warranted.
I agree it will take a long time to impose effective restrictions on guns in the US, we should get started as soon as possible. I think looking at Britain and Australia make it clear enough that gun restrictions do make a difference (even if their more generous social welfare systems tend to lead to lower general levels of criminal violence to begin with).
So allow me to get meta for a moment here. Do you want to be right, or do you want to change people's minds?
Ignore the fact that we see this on two different levels and don't even agree on first principles for a moment. Let's just talk about the pure practicality and rhetoric involved.
From a purely objective standpoint, a great many people in this country believe in the 2nd amendment as written.
There is no legislative solution that doesn't involve their consent. As much as you'd like to drag them over kicking and screaming, you can't. Our legislative system has safeguards in mind to prevent minority opinions from being imposed on the rest of the country. You're talking a 2/3 majority in both houses of Congress, or a constitutional convention involving 2/3 of states, to amend the constitution.
Please realize this. It's important. There's your goal which even I can agree is admirable, and then there's talk of realistic ways of achieving it, which is a much more interesting conversation, and one you sadly don't seem to want to have.
So that said - why the tone-deaf posturing? Do your comments here advance your goal of reducing gun violence in any way?
Or rather, do they confirm every stereotype of anti-gun people ever cooked up?
Do you realize your earlier conversation could be run verbatim by the freakin' NRA as an example of what they fight against, generating more support for the exact opposite of what you hope to accomplish?
The NRA represents 5 to 10 million lost causes, nothing like the insurmountable constitutional blocker you propose. I agree that there are many more people that have associated their personal identity with the 2nd amendment than that, I'm not sure they constitute a majority of the country.
The way I see it, step one is getting to a place where emotional appeals about grandma needing a force equalizer are dismissed more quickly than points about statistics showing that guns overall enhance violence. So experimental comments that turn some people off? Meh.
The NRA represents a lot more people than you think, even on this board. I've never been a member but reading your comments reminds me that I ought to purchase a membership and donate today.
My grandfather, father, mother, and myself have all used a handgun in self defense before. I would posit that I am existing to type this because of personal firearm ownership. Whenever I see comments like yours I empathize and remind myself that you are good natured but that you lack the background and context to realize why someone might reasonably want or need to arm themselves. Most of my friends here in California are like that, and they have no idea how nice and safe their environment and upbringing was in the pricy coastal cities and university towns of the West Coast. Some of us are from rougher places. Having lived in many different environments with different threat levels I understand the genesis of both viewpoints, but I know which one I'd consider right.
Our criminal neighbor tried to bash my father's head in with a tire iron on the front lawn - before you counter that we wouldn't need firearms to defend ourselves with if there weren't firearms out there in the first place.
For what it's worth I've mostly lived in moderately poor communities in the Midwest. Not grindingly poor, but not on the right side of various median measures.
Somehow I haven't been in any situations where a gun seemed like it would have helped (and there aren't such stories flying around my extended family either).
Yes, but then this brings up the intent behind the 2nd amendment - to ensure an armed popular militia to defend against corruption of concentrated power. The citizens arms need to actually be effective in such circumstances.
As for 'highly dangerous concealed weapons' - you were probably more likely to encounter this on a day-to-day basis at the time of the constitution being written than even in the most heavily gunned state with low-barrier carry laws.
If you are updating constructions, this also means that the context is important; in the constitutional times people were responsible for defending themselves primarily - if that assumption can/should/has been changed, where then is that change legally codified?
I'm also not real sure what your point is. I said I wouldn't want to face someone wielding a machete anymore than. I was acknowledging that a malicious person can be plenty dangerous with weapons that basically can't be restricted (a machete can be improvised much more easily than a repeating firearm or ammunition for said firearm).
No, saplings don't run away. But sometimes people don't either, especially when they're getting ready to shoot.
We agree that both machetes and guns are dangerous. But I'm arguing that a machete can be more dangerous than a handgun, in the hands of a trained attacker.
I was quibbling with the "physically work quite a bit" aspect of your comment.
My workplace provided "active shooter training" in which a police officer demonstrated a potential way for a group of unarmed people to disarm a person with a gun. When one of my coworkers asked "What if they have a knife?" the officer replied with something to the effect of "There's no good way to disarm them without getting your hands cut up, I'd much rather face an assailant with a gun than a knife."
I'd like to see some compromise in the other direction too. Like "Ok, we'll relax CCP regulations or 'assault weapons' regulations so that normal citizens can have them, but in return we need to ramp up background checks in X and Y ways". That's how compromise should work, but instead with gun control it's very one-sided compromise.