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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30422 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023

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I don’t know why gun rights advocates don’t just admit that yes, if all guns were confiscated and a very strict licensing regime was put in place gun homicides would likely drop substantially.

Because the way politics works in the US, all the nuances and caveats you listed (and which are a key part of your overall point) would go completely unheard by people. We live in the country of the soundbite (not that we are necessarily unique in this, of course). The instant gun rights advocates said "I admit that if all guns were confiscated, murder rates would go down", every single gun control proponent would be writing editorials that said "even gun rights advocates admit gun control works". They would run campaign ads that go "Senator so-and-so admits gun control works (insert sound clip here). Yet he voted down these measures every time, blah blah he is the devil vote for me instead." In short, it would be a complete disaster for gun rights and for the careers of those who advance them. The latter outcome is probably the bigger of the two, of course, since politicians are pretty much the most self-serving creatures in existence. But even people honestly considering the cause of gun rights would have some concern about the former outcome.

It's kind of like when Scott Alexander writes an essay about some controversial topic or other. Every single time, he includes a million lines trying to say "yes, if you take this one sentence out of context it sounds bad but that's not what I'm saying and you fail at reading comprehension if you think that". Every single time, there's at least one person who is unscrupulous enough to take that sentence out of context and use it to demonize him. And every single time, Scott is caught off-guard because he made the mistake of believing he was dealing with people who are acting in good faith. Or at least until he stopped writing about controversial topics (which is probably the right call for him).

So yeah, that's why gun rights advocates don't do what you're suggesting. I'm not saying that's praiseworthy of them, or even that it's merely acceptable in a "I don't like it but I understand" kind of way. Just that's why. The gun rights people are playing politics, and politics is full of flat-out evil people who will twist your words into a weapon against you the instant they can. So they prioritize not giving those people ammunition.

I guess short-term it's the right strategy, but it makes pro-gun people sound like lunatics when they deny that getting rid of the guns would reduce murder. It's not quite as bad as the people who insist that those racial crime statistics don't mean what you think they mean, but it's the same kind of politically-convenient reality denial. If you don't have an affirmative case for why gun rights are more valuable than X dead kids per year, I hate to tell you, but you're going to lose.

I guess short-term it's the right strategy, but it makes pro-gun people sound like lunatics when they deny that getting rid of the guns would reduce murder.

I respectfully disagree. As a gun nut, it's the only strategy. I'll admit it "privately" on here and that's pretty much it.

There is no room for compromise, reasonableness, or mercy with the gun control lobby. If you could guarantee me that a licensing and insurance regime would remain static for the lifetime of the republic I could build you a great framework that would vastly reduce gun violence.

But we have to deal in the real here. We already have a fucking constitutional amendment that says, in no uncertain terms, civvies get to keep the guns. And now we have to do this bullshit arguing about what a militia is with a bunch of hateful, statistically illiterate idiots. This is the strongest possible enshrinement of a fundamental right that you can get! And still, it's constantly under bad faith attacks.

Nah. No way, no how.

If you don't have an affirmative case for why gun rights are more valuable than X dead kids per year, I hate to tell you, but you're going to lose.

The affirmative case is obvious: X dead kids per year is a small price to pay for the impediment to tyranny an armed populace offers. How many kids will the next totalitarian state kill for ideological reasons? It's going to be more than die by the happenstance of gun crime.

I guess short-term it's the right strategy, but it makes pro-gun people sound like lunatics when they deny that getting rid of the guns would reduce murder.

and yet this strategy had led to more gun rights being regained throughout the US than before when honesty-bot and cooperate-bot had hollowed out those rights over sixty or so years

If you don't have an affirmative case for why gun rights are more valuable than X dead kids per year, I hate to tell you, but you're going to lose.

allowing that framing of the discourse in such a way means gunrights have already lost which is why they've wholly abandoned the strategy you apparently think is the right one

should the gunrights/self-defense advocates given the honesty-bot and cooperate-bot strategy another 60 years to see if it would eventually work in the "long term"?

If you don't have an affirmative case for why gun rights are more valuable than X dead kids per year, I hate to tell you, but you're going to lose.

Progressives have zero affirmative case for why their policies permitting violent vagrants to kill people are more valuable than X stabbing victims per year; they have yet to lose.

First they reinvented original sin as white privilege, and the selling of indulgences as buying sustainable / environmental / electric. Now they’ve reinvented the mortification of the flesh.

I find this both scary and amusing. Maybe I’m just up too late, too tired.

This is amusing. It seems to be like some kind of zombie Christianity or something. Yes, secular humanism is Christianity with the serial numbers filed off, but this is an interesting thing indeed.

You're not wrong, but... have you looked at the US lately? We are the very epitome of short-term thinkers. Corporations routinely burn down long-term profits for next-quarter profits, voters flip-flop between candidates in the two parties because they are pissed off at the current one... but don't bother to remember that they're voting in the party they were pissed off at 4 years prior. People cripple themselves with debt and make their life awful in the long run because they really want something right now. We are a nation of short-term thinkers. It should hardly be surprising that extends to politics as well.

it makes pro-gun people sound like lunatics when they deny that getting rid of the guns would reduce murder.

Why is our hypothetical anti-gun person trying to get a pro-gun person to admit something that has no practical relevance to the debate? I don’t think the pro-gun person assuming that his interloper is just sound-bite hunting is very crazy.

Saying something like “assume a magical fairy takes all guns out of private ownership in the US, would murders go down?” seems a lot fairer, because you’re making it clear “I’m saying something kind of silly to establish if you’re debating in good faith”.

But if you say “do you admit if there were no guns in the US then there would be fewer murders?”, I don’t think it’s surprising if the pro-gun guy assumes ill-intent.

it makes pro-gun people sound like lunatics when they deny that getting rid of the guns would reduce murder

The proposition here was that getting rid of the guns would reduce gun murder, not murder in general.

If you don't have an affirmative case for why gun rights are more valuable than X dead kids per year, I hate to tell you, but you're going to lose.

If it's framed that way, gun rights have already lost.

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