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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 17, 2024

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Gun Control can just do another Las Vegas, if you're of the paranoid mindset.

Even if they can get another law passed, it doesn't matter much if a huge proportion of the gun-owning population already owns bump-stocks and are not inclined to give them up. It's the same thing we saw with the assault weapons ban under Clinton; before, autoloading rifles were somewhat marginal in the culture, and a lot of gun owners weren't interested in them. By the time the ban expired, the AR-15 was America's Rifle, and adoption absolutely exploded as soon as the ban came down. They'll never get another bite at that apple.

I'd expect the same pattern to play out for bump stocks. Back when the ban was being debated, I wrote a post arguing that maybe bump stocks weren't actually something we should defend all that hard, and that maybe, just this once, we should possibly consider that the proposed restrictions might be reasonable. given what has happened since then, I will never make nor accept an argument like that ever again, and I think my experience generalizes.