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naraburns  nihil supernum  18d ago (text post)   26901 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.

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Gun control is donzo. There will never be meaningful, effective gun control legislation ever again, and what controls exist are probably going away over the next decade or so.

Federal Executive: Trump's first term included him saying "take the guns first, and do due process later" and the ATF continuing to be the ATF.

States and Federal Courts of Appeal: Whatever the fuck they want.

SCOTUS: Issued Bruen, then ignored violations of Bruen.

Even in the absence of new federal gun control statutes, why should we expect gun control to significantly decrease? (With regards to your reply to Hieronymus, "legal gun owners" want to remain, you know, legal, and DIY tech is established FAFO territory controlled by the fuzz, not the populace.)

I am curious to hear your reasons for this. My state seems to be moving dramatically (and for me, quite disappointingly) in the other direction.

Three reasons.

First, DIY tech is constantly improving, and it's already well past the point where guns can in fact be controlled. Gun control is a dead letter simply from a practical perspective. Crime is a major political concern and likely will be for some time, and in that time the Gun Culture will continue killing it on outreach to the youth.

Second, the Gun Culture will not accept new legislation, will not comply with it if passed, and is actively and aggressively eroding the existing laws. The AR15 has been thoroughly normalized. SBRs are completely normalized. Automatic weapons are effectively normalized, both in legal and illegal versions; I'm given to understand that you can 3d-print glock switches for example. What you're going to see is the legal full auto giving cover to the illegal, until outright defiance is completely normalized and any enforcement effort becomes a moot point. I'm hopeful similar things will happen with more significant weapons as well.

Third, technological developments are almost certainly going to moot the whole question within the decade. What people will be worrying about won't be guns.

The last item is a problem though. There is no recognized 2nd amendment right to murder drones, or even anti-murder-drone-drones or drone-jammers. That last will get you an FCC raid worse than any ATF dog-shoot competition.

If things take longer than a few more years to kick off, the 2nd amendment people will be using "bows and arrows against the lightning." The longer you wait the worse it gets, unless you happen to have a high tech weapons lab and global microelectronics manufacturing chain in your compound.

Yes, as if the good ol boys with some AR15s are a match for a wave of a literal million drones mass produced by some obsequious US ally for cheap and imported by the Pentagon.

Elites have been dreaming of technology that would make boots on the ground obsolete since the invention of artillery. Maybe one day it will happen, but hasn't happened yet.

Boots on the ground will never be useless, but they already are useless on their own, rather than as the base of an integrated weapons system.

There will still be human soldiers walking around, but anyone who tries to fight real ones without their own cloud of support weapons will be quickly incinerated.

Yeah, I wondered about gun control. I think gun rights is an issue that will see a lot of movement from non-white voters and women as well.

I never really got the anti-gun stance...like the cat's out of the bag: guns are everywhere and no one is suicidal enough to try and get them back. In this scenario, the person with no firearms or weapons training is basically a sheep waiting to be shorn. Everyone would be far better off with some, even minimal exposure to guns if for no other reason than knowing how to not kill themselves.

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