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- cross-posted to:
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New polling shows national Republicans and Iowa Republican caucusgoers were more interested in “law and order” than battling “woke” schools, media and corporations.
New polling shows national Republicans and Iowa Republican caucusgoers were more interested in “law and order” than battling “woke” schools, media and corporations.
With many/most modern rifles available with a detachable magazine, ammo capacity isn’t a property directly linked to the weapon itself in any sort of concrete way. So with that caveat, how would you propose classifying weapons based on that property when it isn’t intrinsically linked to the weapon?
Further, how would you define “powerful”?
Even a small caliber like a 22 is perfectly capable of killing. A 9mm is a fairly low power round and is likely one of the rounds responsible for more human deaths than any other in criminal killings thanks to its widespread popularity. On the other hand, most big game hunting calibers are far more powerful than the rounds most associated with gun violence.
I’m not against addressing gun violence, and in fact I feel it’s an area in urgent need of attention…
…but as a gun owner and shooting sports enthusiast who is familiar with guns, it’s an area where I feel both sides of the issue argue past one another, one side with their blinders up based on dogma and partisan vitriol underlying their position…and the other side just as partisan…and wanting to make a bunch of laws with little understanding of the subject matter and no regard for any of the potential impacts of their proposed legislation.
I regularly get into debates with my (overwhelmingly liberal) friend group on this subject and I try to stay calm, rational, and open minded to show I’m not just coming from the standard position on the right of “don’t do anything about gun violence, end of story”…so my position is basically: I’m willing to consider any proposed legislation that fulfills three criteria… First, the proposed law must not create a precedent of infringing on constitutional rights without due process… Second, the proposed legislation must not make a criminal out of anyone who’s currently a law abiding individual in compliance with all laws, who does nothing differently after the law passes…and third, the proposed legislation must be such that it could have been reasonably been expected to significantly reduce or eliminate recent acts of gun violence had it been in effect previously.
If you can come up with a law that checks all those boxes, by all means, I’m interested!
But too often, the laws I hear discussed fail to fall into line with all of those conditions…and other than loophole-closing and background check laws, I have yet to hear any sort of a ban suggestion that does all three.
Wouldn’t any new law about firearm sale, ownership, or use do this by definition? If it doesn’t change any legal things into illegal things, it isn’t doing anything at all. What kind of law can you imagine that would pass this part of your test?
Not necessarily.
But even if that were the case, just make it non-retroactive.
Other conditions aside for a moment, let’s say you want to ban all guns with polymer frames.
You could fulfill that specific condition with the provision that all poly frames currently out there are legal to own, use, and sell, but no more retail sales from manufacturers will be permitted.
Again, this is a nonsense hypothetical that wouldn’t make sense (then again lots of actual proposals aren’t much more realistic), but such a provision would ensure that everyone out there who’s already bought one of these guns wouldn’t be in a situation where they need to surrender or register their legal purchase now that it’s been illegal, or risk felony charges because they didn’t do so.
More to the point, many of these laws seem designed to create criminals where no criminals currently exist, as opposed to preventing crimes from happening.
It’s like trying to cut down on petty theft by requiring everyone to register all belongings, and then inspecting people’s homes and charging them with theft for everything in their home they didn’t register…then pointing to all those arrests as proof of the law’s success.
Not just the two sides are arguing past each other, they are arguing from wildly different viewpoints. So many urban and suburbanites argue very heavily for gun legislation and much more rural people argue against it. One side view guns solely as a weapon used against people and the other as a tool to hunt, kill nuisance animals on farmland, or protect crops/livestock.
The first isn’t familiar with firearms and frequently don’t want to get into the minutia because of their viewpoint as guns being solely weapons.
I’m all for reasonable gun laws, but I believe there are more important underlying issues that lead to many of these mass shootings that we as a society can address. The gun is a tool used because it is easy to get and use. But if we placed restrictions that made it harder other tools would be used to carry out the mayhem and destruction these people strive for.
Maybe it’s naive and idealistic to think we can address the societal issues that lead people to committing these atrocities rather than just make it harder for them to get the tool they use.