I am not persuaded by motivated reasoning. I read the same news and hear the same media reports, yet form my own conclusions. Historically low crime statistics are irrelevant when specific crimes and accidental deaths are preventable.
In 2016, over 100 children killed themselves or other family members after finding unsecured weapons. The NRA has fought legislation mandating safety locks and secure gun storage.
The shooter worked as a security guard with a carry permit and access to guns. We also learned of domestic abuse; his former wife reported regular beatings. The NRA has fought legislation that would confiscate weapons owned by domestic abusers. Shall we ignore this point?
The shooter armed himself with an AR-15 assault rifle — the same weapon used in the Sandy Hook and San Bernardino shootings. A law banning sales of this weapon expired years ago. Yet Congressional Republicans blocked reinstatement of this law. Does cognitive bias blind us?
Furthermore, the NRA lobbied Congressional Republicans to defund research by the CDC on causes of gun deaths in America.
Finally, here is one more point buried beneath the media noise: CNN reported an arrest in West Hollywood, California, during a gay parade. Police found an arsenal of weapons including an assault rifle and pipe bombs.
Anti-gay messaging and anti-Muslim rhetoric conspire to up the ante on hate speech. Dead bodies and grieving families are not numbers. They deserve more than deceptive, self-serving soundbites and decades of legislative obstruction.
If I'm not mistaken, the infamous "assault weapons ban" did not ban that model rifle unless it was made offshore. The stores were filled with them all during the ban. I have photographic proof and yet I lost an old friend by proving to her the ban was a fraud. Hey, better to keep the faith than the truth, right? Is this going to happen to me once again? I hope not.
ReplyDeleteOf course the term Assault weapon has no standard definition, the legal one was basically anything with a detachable magazine and a pistol grip. That covers many many weapons with no military connection. It's a term, like most Democratic terminology regarding weapons chosen to be scary and not informative. The real danger associated with "military style" weapons is of course the magazine capacity. You can get up to 100 round drum magazines for the AR-15 clones. This is what we need to address, but as much as we can say the NRA is against the numbers, so are we, if I can still use the word we, since I'm about to divorce myself from all things Democratic - and for cause.
We simply may not talk about how background checks are not as effective as we pretend they are, that an autoloading pistol is just as deadly and more so than an "assault weapon" or any other aspect of canonical approaches like registration. Hell we can't even bring up the fact that our murder rate figures are off by more than half, as suicides and accidents are included. We can't mention a 30+ year decline in murders, a steady decline in gun ownership. We can't discuss the failure of all the "bloodbath" predictions we've had and are still listening to. Somehow everything has to be part of a slippery slope fallacy or it won't be discussed. Remember the furor at the bill trying to allow open carry in Florida? It failed of course - that bloodbath think again, but can we discuss the 33 other states that allow it and the lack of correlation in murder rates?
If we want to put certain equipment into the "destructive weapons" category along with silencers, short barrels, grenades and automatic weapons, let's do it, but we have to be honest about it. I think 90 or 100 round drum magazines need to be banned, but certainly we can't expect them to disappear. We can't expect people of criminal intent to throw them away. We can't expect any more success than we have with rigorous background checks and registration. They are only partial protection. Hillary is screaming about the need for permits to take a shotgun out of the house. So amusing, since taking one, load or otherwise into a night club is illegal even with a permit to carry. It will cost her the election as will all the rhetoric about "weapons of war" because not everyone is so passionately blind to think for one thing, that it's actually true and one more thing not to realize that the second amendment specifically names weapons of war as a reason not to infringe the right to keep and bear arms for military purposes.
And of course there's the unalterable fact that Hillary just threw the election to Trump who has been claiming she's going to trash the Second amendment. That's just what her outbursts did today. Lets see how well we do with gun control under Herr Drumpf.
When 90% of the electorate, and 70% of rank and file NRA members, support reason gun control, it is hard to see this as a losing issue for Hilllery. The public is fed up with the carnage, which can strike anywhere, anytime.
ReplyDeleteHard to tell at this point, but the anti-Hillary-the-gun-grabber rhetoric certainly is heating up. But the problem is what it has been for a long time. The vague rhetoric about "sensible" and the belief that laws just make problems stop. You can see the weakness as concerns background checks and even if we completely ban anything thta looks like a military weapon and outlaw magazines with more than 6 rounds they're not going to go away as millions and millions and millions of them exist.
ReplyDeleteI do think the Islamic connection has much to do with this and there is a worldwide pattern of exactly this behavior. If he was attending to case the joint, or if he was battling a personal struggle with homosexuality, it doesn't matter. He has had enough of a connection with radical Islamists to have givien him an outlet for his turmoil and rage.
Frankly I don't see this as a problem that gun control will solve and particularly not the kind of gun control the public will tolerate. Our worst acts of terrorism have involved other means. The results would have been horrible if he'd used a bomb and I'm sure you've noticces how often that happens elsewhere. Remember, France has no 2nd amendment and most guns are illegal in private hands. Laws don't stop wars or rebellions and people out to kill don't care about permits or waiting periods or bans nor can most of those laws be enforced in time to prevent mayhem. The reason I get so upset when there's any incident is that any rational discussion is drowned out by people waving the tattered old flags, yelling the same old things almost as though it were a magic formula. It's not a simple problem and if there is a solution at all to a crazy world it won't be a single or simple one.
It doesn't help that so much of the rhetoric is based on ignorance and in many cases deliberate and inflamatory lies. Every word, every description is chosen for maximum fear and so much effort is put into making episodic events look like a clear inexorable trend. Both sides are wildly hyperbolic and largely dishonest because they feel they're at war and anything is justified.
I stick by my prediction that this will haunt Clinton because Trump will not let it go. He'll twist this into more proof that "hillary wants to overturn the 2nd amendment" as though a president can do that. The Republicans are happy and gun sales are, quite predictably, at record levels.
Has anyone noticed how differently Europeans react to this sort of event which has been happening for quite a while? They've concentrated on interdiction and surveillance because there's little more in the way of gun control that can be done and still they have suffered far, far more than we have. But of course we feel special and that we should be immune to the world's problems. Bottom line, panic, rage and inflammatory speeches are not helping us. But that's America, cooler heads never prevail and they're certainly never heard of the screams about "weapons of war" etc. etc.
ReplyDeleteIf you are being shot at, it would be logical to call it an assault rifle. You ARE being assaulted after all. But this endless argument over semantics is what stops us time and again from having any kind of meaningful and helpful conversation about gun law reforms. Obviously the way we do things now is not working, we need a better plan and better follow through. Laws can only be tested if they are being enforced.
ReplyDeleteLogical, but there's a technical difference between assault rifles and assault weapons. The U.S. Army defines assault rifles as "short, compact, selective-fire weapons that fire a cartridge intermediate in power between submachine gun and rifle cartridges.
ReplyDeleteIt must be an individual weapon
It must be capable of selective fire
It must have an intermediate-power cartridge: more power than a pistol but less than a standard rifle or battle rifle
Its ammunition must be supplied from a detachable box magazine
And it should have an effective range of at least 300 yards
Rifles that meet most of these criteria, but not all, are technically not assault rifles, despite frequently being called such. Thus Select-fire M2 Carbines are not assault rifles; their effective range is only 200 yards.
Select-fire rifles such as the FN FAL battle rifle are not assault rifles; they fire full-powered rifle cartridges.
Semi-automatic-only rifles like variants of the Colt AR-15 are not assault rifles; they do not have select-fire capabilities.
Semi-auto rifles with fixed magazines like the SKS are not assault rifles; they do not have detachable box magazines and are not capable of automatic fire.
During the "assault rifle ban" that people want to resurrect, things like folding stocks, pistol grips, flash suppressors and other details were added, but the ban mostly banned foreign made weapons and the only effect was to benefit US manufacturers and drive up prices. No shortages of these weapons or their magazines were observed.
Anyway, I have wasted time and bandwidth repeating these official definitions, it seems that facts only enrage people, facts don't matter and nobody will face those facts. We're doomed to another bill that will make people satisfied but will not make anything better. I have to conclude that 99% of the rhetoric is just emotional reasoning and canned taliing points from anti-gun factions. The few that accept the facts will immediately return to raving about weapons of war and machine guns and super-duper high velocity, cop-killing, armor piercing bullets.
Reason goes away, truth doesn't matter and the bullshit never dies.