Yeah. A lot of it is convention of course. But where I work, Google Chat for individuals and small groups has sort of developed in general into a higher priority interrupt than email. e.g. are you joining this scheduled call?
On the other hand, the group chat for a broader team I'm in is more likely to be used for idle non-work-related chit chat.
And phone calls basically aren't used at all outside of scheduled meetings.
Over the last 10 years I have worked with 4 digits worth of people. Managers, sales people, engineers, family members, locals, Western foreigners, Arab foreigners, Asian foreigners. I can't remember a single communication where direct insertion of images was a desired feature. If at all images were in emails because the email clients interpreted adding attachments in image format as part of the emails content (gmail client for instance).
I'd argue that images in emails means that you haven't reached 2017 yet, where there are loads of better options to share images.
I'd argue, in turn, that your experience, regardless of how many people were involved, is divergent from the way in which email itself is moving in the broader market of users.
Images as links to something else, that require an additional step, are an inferior substitute to inline images. Here in 2017, it's possible to build an email that includes tables or screenshots or other rich media that exist as part of the email itself.
This is commonly viewed as a benefit. 20 years ago, I, too, was resistant to the idea that email should be something other than plain text, but I was wrong. That ship has saild. Email today is a rich document, and rich documents often include meaningful inline images that should be stored with the document.
Again, that YOU don't like this doesn't mean it's not useful or widely used by other people.
But where is this kind of email happening besides the spam box? The way you argue this should be common and hit me in the face every day no matter my resistance. What I see is that less and less fluff is added to emails. A lot of work emails don't even contain a footer anymore, less and less people actually use greeting formulas, in some regards the whole communication moved from emails to other media like social media (even at work, where it is just a inhouse FB clone instead of the original).
Can you name a few examples of such rich media emails you recently received or sent and to/from whom (categorywise, e.g. family member, colleague, customer, department type)?
Obviously, people use email in different ways. This thread seems to have attracted a large number of people who exist in a text-only email world, but nearly every email I send or receive includes at least some rich formatting, and it's very common for us to include inline images of screenshots or other graphics as part of these emails.
And we're not web designers. We make project management software.
So: for me, mostly work email, though I certainly get no small number of personal mails with photos attached.
Again, that YOUR experience with email doesn't include rich text or inline images outside your spam folder doesn't mean those features are valuable and useful to other people.
Sure they should. It depends on the tools available and the culture of the organization.
You don't get to dictate what features of email people should or shouldn't use.
Apple's Mail.app has a great feature that allows inline markup of images, which is a huge boon for interface discussions and tech support emails at my company.
The extra step and use of an external program is pretty inelegant, IMO, when there exist clients that will just show you the damn image in the mail window.
This is absolutely not true. Generally speaking, people whose experience leads them to think this are in weird isolated silos where highly technical folks are overrepresented.
> I would argue that for most people who actually still use email for communication with peers, images and attachments are an afterthought.
Are you actually convinced of that, or are you being inflammatory? Because, in 2017, it's hilariously far afield of most folks' email use patterns both at work and at home. Do you only ever communicate using text -- and plain text at that?
I work for a small software company - ie, full of nerds. We use screencaps marked up in email ALL THE TIME to communicate about changes and whatnot. Sure, I guess we could put it in a Word doc or HTML doc, but why bother when we can do it in the email client?
I was under the impression that most software houses and tech startups migrated to Slack or similar group messaging long ago, which offers much better handling of attachments and collaboration. Email is still heavily used in government, mostly on Exchange servers, and I can see attachments being a big thing there (I work for local government and that's our setup). In the home consumer world, it's nearly all iMessage/Hangouts/SMS/WhatsApp etc.
Again, these are my observations and perhaps my window isn't big enough.
I can only speak to my experience, but email is very very much a part of our world in our software company. It's WAY better than Slack or other IM/group chat tool for search and archiving later -- and, let's be honest, a WHOLE LOT of stuff gets decided in email, so that's pretty important.
With a distributed team, it's even moreso. Plus, since we're distributed, the idea of email-as-document (with rich formatting and inline images) is just that much more normal.
I use emacs, but exclusively for orgmode. I thought about mutt years ago, and realized I get and receive too much mail with rich content for that to work.
How does an emacs window, even with mu4e, represent emails with meaningful formatting, inline graphics, etc? I'm guessing by launching an external viewer, but even that would slow me down quite a bit.
For basic formatting (bold text, headings, lists, links, etc etc), Emacs can render using its built in web browser. The "richer" it is, the more screwy the formatting gets. Usually you can at least read the emails.
You can easily pipe an email to your web browser of choice. This works fine but isn't exactly what you want to be doing all the time.
For my work, I am mostly dealing with plain text and attachments. The rich stuff is usually the email I care less about anyway. I don't think I'd want to use mu4e if I was dealing with rich content often. You can do it but it definitely slows you down.
This is good advice. I grew up hunting and shooting, but in adulthood have come to agree that reasonable gun control is really something we have to do. However, the gun vs. anti-gun divide in the US is as pure a split as exists on any policy position. Few on one side know or understand the thinking or positions of any on the other.
People who don't shoot often don't know even the most basic things, like what differentiates a rifle from a shotgun, or what happens when a modern pistol runs out of bullets. They don't get the vast difference between a .22 and a 9mm on any level (size of projectile, powder load, etc.). And they certainly don't understand why pursuing something like a quote-unquote assault weapon ban is legislatively and logically difficult.
I believe this pure split you refer to is the fault of the gun control advocates. In the mind of the 2nd amendment folks every compromise they have made has led to that being the new normal to build the next compromise, thus sliding down the slope. Both political parties would do well to soften their purity tests.
> In the mind of the 2nd amendment folks every compromise they have made has led to that being the new normal to build the next compromise, thus sliding down the slope.
Given that this is exactly the strategy of the opposing actors, I can see why 2nd amendment advocates take this stance.
If you look at basically any other country where there's still a debate open on this topic, you'll note that it is indeed a slippery slope. Here in Canada, the RCMP (equiv. FBI) can arbitrarily reclassify any firearm and demand that it be confiscated and destroyed (not sold). For example, the other year they reclassified the Ruger 10/22 (IIRC the most popular target shooting rifle in Canada) as a "restricted weapon", requiring an RPAL instead of a PAL.
Funny thing about the Restricted Possession and Acquisition License is that if you have one, you forfeit your chartered protection against unwarranted search and seizure. The government can literally search your home and take your things at any time for any reason without providing justification to a court or record. In fact, they often do.
Let's say the nice lady down the way purchased a 10/22 to do target shooting, and didn't get the memo from the RCMP (10+ years later). Now, she either contravenes the law (most long guns still do not require registration, just license) and lives in fear that the authorities might find that she has a 10/22; or she finds an RFSC to get her RPAL, and the RCMP decides arbitrarily that she should be allowed to have an RPAL (because they have no obligation to issue one, even if they have no reason not to), and now she has no protection against search and seizure in her home.
I might also add that firearms laws in California are basically the same as they are in Canada in many practical senses, except the classification and search and seizure stuff (which would be even more obviously unconstitutional). Most of the firearms used in crimes here in Canada are smuggled or illegally manufactured. Nonetheless, Californians kill each other far more regularly. It's almost as though the argument for gun control is thin and questionable, and the only way to prop it up is through deliberate dishonesty or accidental ignorance.
So are gun ownership rates and the types of weapons owned in California similar to that in Canada as well then? If they are, ok you might have a point, although I'm not quite sure what you think the reason for the difference in outcome in Canada and California might be.
As far as criminal access to firearms is concerned, it's close to the same. Civilian ownership is lower than California, but not to the extent you might think. Though people who are otherwise law-abiding often do purchase firearms illegally in Canada, especially if you poll the people in prison for possession.
If one has a desire to, I doubt it would take more than a few days for one to purchase a handgun illegally.
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 believe this pure split you refer to is the fault of the gun control advocates.
In my experience it's been the other way around. I'm a gun owner and gun control advocate; a seemingly impossible combination in the eyes of most gun rights advocates.
When I've said to other gun owners in the past that common sense regulations make sense, not only have I been told that opinion means I don't deserve the guns I legally own now, it also means that if I were in danger and a gun owner was around who could stop it they should let me die because I'm not on really on their side.
That's right -- gun owners should not help me in a life or death situation because I think there should be some limits to gun ownership, despite being an owner myself who would also be subject to those limitations.
I think the very phrase you pointed out is a big part of the problem: "common sense regulation". This seems to be designed to slip past any rational discussion. If you can say that something is "just common sense", then you've excused yourself from needing to provide the logical foundation for your argument.
You're not off to a good start in a debate when your opening salvo includes the phrase "politicized weasel-wording". I'm not a politician. I'm a gun owner who thinks it's okay for there to be some restrictions on gun ownership that I would also have to abide by because I genuinely believe it would make things safer.
Think for a second about why you chose those words instead of simply asking, "what do you consider to be 'common sense regulations'?" Are you subconsciously (or perhaps intentionally) trying to antagonize me by being pre-emptively dismissive of whatever I have to say next? That's usually the case in these discussions, in my experience, and if so, there's no point in continuing at all, because you've already made up your mind to disagree with whatever I have to say.
But in case I'm reading too far into that remark, I will share what I consider to be "common sense regulations":
I think a permitting process should be required for all gun ownership that involves a thorough background investigation. That's for all firearms -- long guns, pistols, all of them. You should need to present this permit when making all further firearm and ammunition transactions, including private party transfer and at gun shows.
Usually the immediate rebuttal to this is "well the Constitution says I have a right to guns!" Setting aside the semantics of the second amendment and our interpretation of what the authors meant by it, the end result of this proposed permitting process is not actually much different from the way things are setup today. Currently if you're a convicted felon you can't own a gun. The only difference is that for things like rifles and shotguns, law enforcement today doesn't know you own one since there is no permitting or registration process. The only difference is that instead of taking away the gun when you're a felon caught with one, you just aren't able to get it in the first place.
The next rebuttal is that now the government has a list of gun owners with this system that they'll use for whatever nefarious purposes you can imagine, but you're a fool if you think they don't already have this information. Your identity is sent to NICS currently when you buy a gun, and there's no way they aren't logging this information already. The only difference under my plan is that this registration would be more transparent, and you get an ID card proving you're fit to own a firearm.
And hell, we're all tech minded people here. There's no reason why this whole system can't anonymized in a blockchain or something like that.
Private party transfer and gun shows would be a bit trickier to regulate, but if the plan is universal among all states, then you can simply say that if you are the registered owner of a gun and it's used in a crime, even if you didn't fire the gun, unless you processed the transfer you're personally liable.
And really, that's all I mean by "common sense regulations". As I said, I'm a gun owner and I would be happy to live with this system. That is, knowing that everyone else is subject to it as well. The problem is that such a plan would need to be instituted nationwide, otherwise it's pointless since you can just drive to another state and bypass the whole thing. In the minds of most gun control advocates registration = loss of freedom, as opposed to the minor inconvenience it would be for law abiding citizens, so I doubt it would ever be possible.
> The next rebuttal is that now the government has a list of gun owners with this system that they'll use for whatever nefarious purposes you can imagine, but you're a fool if you think they don't already have this information
I'm Czech ("the Texas of EU", with ~3% of population having a carry permit) and finally a gun owner after EU's decisively not common-sense latest round of gun control regulations (proving, by the way, the fear of ever-sliding next round "compromise", to be a very real one).
I have mixed feelings about such registries.
On one hand, that's what we have here, and it works reasonably well - and gun owners are mostly content with well-balanced legislation that is neither too permissive nor too restrictive.
On the other hand, the risk of such registries is not theoretical for Czechs. In 1939, when Germany invaded [what remained of] the country, one of the first things they did was to confiscate all legally owned weapons — which was only made possible by the registry, and significantly impaired armed resistance. Lesson learned, and practiced decades after the war ended: hidden illegal arms are better than legal ones.
By the way, on the subject of the rest of your comment: everybody needs a permit here and we're fine with the system. Unlike in most of the rest of the EU, you have a legal right for a conceal carry permit, provided that you meet the legal requirements that I think amount to a background check in US: no recent (or, if serious, ever) crime record, no recent relevant misdemeanor (basically DUI or getting into fights, i.e. just the kind of irresponsible person you don't want to have a gun), no relevant medical problems (basically impairing judgment or motor skills). And you have to pass an exam, akin to driver's license, that tests for your knowledge of the law and practical ability to safely handle firearms and hit a target.
You need a permit for every gun too, with paperwork involved in any sort of sale, but the permit is automatic, just bureaucracy (except for firearms with restricted sale in EU, most notably full-auto; the you need to demonstrate a need and may or may not be granted a permit).
Thanks for sketching out the proposed policies in more detail! That's a lot more productive.
Now, to tackle them in reverse order:
> as opposed to the minor inconvenience it would be for law abiding citizens, so I doubt it would ever be possible.
There is no concrete benefit for law-abiding citizens above the system we already have in place here. Like, it's not immediately obvious that the proposed changes clearly make things better (unlike, say, requiring seatbelts in cars).
> you can simply say that if you are the registered owner of a gun and it's used in a crime, even if you didn't fire the gun, unless you processed the transfer you're personally liable.
If you want to make the argument that "gun owners need to keep better track of their guns"...it's their property, so that should be their choice. We don't require people to know exactly where their car is, or to know where their bicycle is, or where their axes are (even though all of those could and are used to wound others).
> Private party transfer and gun shows would be a bit trickier to regulate
Again, it's unclear that there is good reason or precedent for regulating the transfer of property here.
> you're a fool if you think they don't already have this information.
One could make the same argument about requiring people to cc the NSA on every email they make to people outside the continental US: just because it's happening doesn't mean we should set legislative precedent.
> Currently if you're a convicted felon you can't own a gun.
There has been a lot of work in the last few years to try and restore that right, actually. This makes sense given the arbitrary enforcement of non-violent felonies.
It's hardly assumed that felons (given our current judicial system) have any moral obligation to be unarmed.
> You should need to present this permit when making all further firearm and ammunition transactions, including private party transfer and at gun shows.
Why, exactly? What is the purpose of this?
What benefit or supposed safety do we get from having this?
And if the benefits are so great, shouldn't we just make this near-mandatory training during schooling, as we do with driving?
> We don't require people to know exactly where their car is, or to know where their bicycle is, or where their axes are (even though all of those could and are used to wound others).
Comeon that's a terrible false equivalence and I am sure you know it. I can possibly use just a blunt pencil to kill someone, but a gun makes it orders of magnitude easier (even if the intent was not to kill).
If false equivalence are acceptable, let me throw you another one. Why throw hissy fits about nations that have or are building nuclear arms capability. As a third party it is legit to feel unsafe unless you have skin in the game, unless you have demonstrated to some satisfaction that you can handle the capability responsibly. But NPTs are no way as nuanced as that, even hypothetical capability is enough to legitimize a hissy fit and worse: crippling sanctions.
I think its fair trade, if you are not willing to take liability of not being able to secure your gun, you don't get to keep it. If it gets stolen etc, its fine if you alert law enforcement within an actionable window. If something bad is done with your gun you have to convince a judge that you took all reasonable precautions.
Given the massive number of people that have been wounded in car accidents of all sorts, and in terror attacks using machetes and cars recently, I would venture that it is not, in fact, a false equivalency.
If public opinion continues to move in that direction then sure, regulation will get stricter. That's the way it should be. Europeans are largely happy with their higher level of gun control. Imagine if 100 years ago some Englishman proposed to make pistols easily obtainable for the rest of time- would that be fair to the current batch of Britons who wouldn't approve of that policy? And nobody is promising "if you agree to this restriction then we won't push gun control any farther." It's always "we think this restriction makes sense and we'll see where it goes from here."
By the way, this is the story of every regulated industry as it starts to fall under the specter of regulation. Everyone says "Who are you to tell me what I can do? Where will it end?" The answer is that laws will stop changing when public opinion stops changing.
I'm sure that those getting rich at the teat of Carnegie, Rockefeller, et al were none too pleased about increasing antitrust regulation in their era. It went against everything they had built their empires upon. That's too bad. It had to be done to address an urgent threat to American way of life. Gun control advocates see mass shootings in the news and see such a threat.
The ACLU tends to be pretty good. I'd argue that per-dollar, they're probably more effective than the NRA, since they focus on direct court battles (and do so smartly) than lobbying.
Yes,they are, but with the NRA, politicians are scared to pass any restrictions on gun limitations, effectively stopping it before it starts. With the ACLU, politicians are quick to erode our other rights and only compromise after a long fight leaving us with fewer rights. Over time, our rights are fewer and fewer. I always ask myself what would a WWI vet think of our current state of rights?
I think the ACLU does a great job, but they aren't as effective as the NRA.
But don't they pretty consistently pass on Second Amendment cases? I know they argue that it's a collective right, not an individual one, but I'm not making a moral or legal claim. All that seems relevant is "the ACLU does not litigate cases to expand legal gun ownership".
So now it's chicken-and-egg. Is the ACLU better than the NRA, but uninterested? Or are their different tactics and results a product of the different topics they deal with?
Oh I was just highlighting them as staunch advocates for the 1st and 4th amendments. If one is looking for a staunch advocate of all those rights, I'd suggest the Libertarian Party but they haven't been able to gain that much traction in elections and consequently haven't been as effective as they could be, IMO.
edit: as an aside, I'm big on the second amendment but stopped contributing to the NRA precisely because, among other things, they're clearly not big fans of other civil liberties. Their magazines contain (or used to, anyway) a lot of bias against anyone who didn't support a heavily militarized police force, or was against torture for suspected terrorists, etc. It also wasn't clear to me how all the money they solicited was being tracked for efficacy.
Yep, agreed on all counts. I was mostly just curious about whether the NRA is worse than it needs to be, or whether 2nd Amendment issues are so warped and conflicted in the US that any group entering that space will become something ugly.
The ACLU has a great record on 1 and 4, as do several of the groups they work with. "Restore the Fourth" is fantastic, and you can guess which amendment they care about.
The NRA is strange and uncomfortable to a lot of people, I think. I share your complaint, but they have strong stances on so many different issues that I've met people who object to them for half a dozen different reasons.
2nd Amendment issues are that warped and conflicted.
When this country was founded, there were no police. Our adversarial justice system was you deciding you were wronged, going and swearing out a warrant in front of a magistrate, and then executing said warrant with the aid of whatever bruisers you could muster. Generally clubs would be preferable to pistols, and there was no chance of using a musket. Also, while there was not an explicit prohibition on maintaining a standing army, the time limit on military appropriations was intended to limit military spending to war-time.
To some degree this changed in 1812, when the far-more-numerous American militia failed to contest the burning of the nation's capital. To some degree it changed in 1847 when Samuel Colt became a successful revolver manufacturer. But to whatever degree this nation has changed its ideas about firearms, these have not been reflected in law, and we've been papering over the situation for the last century at least.
Where the NRA fits into this is to demand protection and expansion of the individual right to bear arms without any consideration whatsoever of the original context of the second amendment. I don't necessarily object to their viewpoint, but their myopia on the subject does make it rather difficult to discuss. Generally I think the way this goes is, ["Founder's intentions", "individual right to bear arms", "standing army"] : pick any two.
To me they were one of the first examples I picked up on of how bad the Republican vs. Democrat divide is getting in America. They'll use principles to argue a certain stance, but then tear those exact principles to pieces when used to argue a different stance. If it's an issue I haven't looked at before and I don't know who proposed it, I would have no way of knowing where party loyalists would fall on an issue because it all seems so inconsistent compared to the values they claim to believe in.
"In striking down Washington D.C.'s handgun ban by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court's decision in D.C. v. Heller held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms, whether or not associated with a state militia. The ACLU disagrees with the Supreme Court's conclusion about the nature of the right protected by the Second Amendment. However, particular federal or state laws on licensing, registration, prohibition, or other regulation of the manufacture, shipment, sale, purchase or possession of guns may raise civil liberties questions."
Yeah, that's what I was thinking of with individual versus collective rights. The final sentence is a nice acknowledgement of the collective right, but as far as I can tell the (national) ACLU has never taken a rights-expanding stance on a specific gun issue. (Some state orgs may have.)
In practice, they don't advocate for Second Amendment protection. That's not necessarily a bad thing, I think it would destroy their effectiveness elsewhere without achieving much, but their acknowledgement of the right hasn't involved them actually getting involved with legal cases so far.
Is that statement about "in the mind of the 2nd Amendment folks" in any way even sort of incorrect? It's almost a rule that regulation always increases.
I don't think it's a thing we can blame one side or the other for.
In the last 2-3 generations, the US has experienced a pretty huge shift from rural to urban. The difference in life experience between those two environments is pretty stark.
Someone whose family has always (let's say 2-3 generations) lived in, say, rural or suburban Mississippi is going to have exposure to and basic knowledge of firearms. Someone whose family has always lived in LA, or New York, or Chicago, probably won't.
As with many things, group A has little interest in the lives of group B, and vice versa, and so you get enormous gulfs of understanding. Firearms isn't the only one.
It's sad that wanting background checks is seen as anti-gun.
The Conservatives think that HRC was going to their house and take all their guns. That wasn't her position at all.
I agree that everyone should familiarize themselves with guns but for practical self defense purposes a shotgun and a rifle are not that different. A shotgun only spreads about 8inches at a self defense range ( 10m or so ).
If the range is longer than that it's more a skirmish that Self Defense.
.22LR is the most common caliber in homicides. I'd rather have a 9mm, but the best gun is the one you can access when you need it.
I personally don't see it as anti-gun, but I do see it as anti-civil liberties. It is for the same reasons I oppose voter ID, or any other hoops at discouraging the opportunity to exercise the right to vote that I oppose universal background checks.
As background checks discourage the opportunity to exercise a civil right, I believe it should be viewed with the same degree of judicial scrutiny that voting should be.
An imposition of fees or taxes on the right disenfranchises the poor, just as a poll tax does. An imposition of mandatory registration or waiting periods is an imposition of delayed exercise of the right, and I believe Martin Luther King, Jr. had the right of it when he proclaimed that "A right delayed is a right denied". The imposition of any sort of vetting or background checking process seems to me to be a violation of the presumption of innocence, which in turn diminishes the effectiveness of the first and fourth amendments, and seems ripe for opening the door towards warrantless searches, stop and frisk, etc.
I personally could give two shits about guns, but because I'm a fan of the rights we're afforded as American citizens, I respect the second amendment. Failing to do so diminishes all of the other rights, as they're all subject to high-water mark interpretations of judicial scrutiny, and the lower the bar goes for bypassing scrutiny on one right, the bar is lowered for all our rights.
