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this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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The whole Guns thing
Keeping your gun accessible when driving your car. Needing or wanting to open carry when you go shopping. Needing to pose with your family all holding powerful guns for a Christmas photo. I don’t get it.
Most of America doesn't do it, just the people who are afraid of violence - which also happens to the same people who would quickly resort to violence. At this point, seeing a person wearing a gun is the same as seeing warning colors on other species like insects. If you see it, turn and go the other way. There is literally nothing worth the inconvenience of dealing with those people. (And hospitals don't allow open carry so matters of life and death can be attend to without worry.)
A modern analog I like is to high grade digital encryption.
Terrorists and criminals use it, and governments want to ban it. But that doesn't actually mean it should be banned, or that people who oppose a ban are terrorists or criminals.
Totally, except regulating encryption makes much more sense because of al those encryption-violence deaths that happen daily in the US. All those kids with easy access to encryption going to school and encrypting their classmates, the policemen not intervening because they are afraid to get encrypted by the kids armed with military grade AES-512 routines.
It is a modern analog, but with its limits - all this stuff doesn’t happen in countries where encryption is much more regulated and you can’t buy encryption routines in malls.
Your comment comes off as shallow and dismissive. I'd be happy to discuss this further, but not under those conditions.
I thought @draghetta made a good point in way that wasn't particularly shallow or dismissive. Not trying to stir hostility here, just throwing in my 2 currency subunits.
To clarify, I disagree because you're both missing my point, which is to explain and help people understand, and not an argument put forward in justification of anything.
Responding to an attempt to help bridge a gap of understanding by sarcastically dismissing any value in the analogy without even attempting to understand why it's being offered is, to me, a dismissive and shallow thing to do.
I disagree.
What a shallow and dismissive thing to say
What would you suggest?
Addressing any of the points being made to you would be a great start. The first comment that you called shallow was a pretty good summary of why people support strict gun control, even if it was said sarcastically.
Their point is that there are accidental and intentional, even mass, shootings. I don't dispute this. I'm not even against reasonable gun control laws.
But this was supposed to be a discussion about understanding an American perspective. Not sarcastically deriding any attempt to do so.
So then it wasn't shallow and dismissive at all, you just didn't appreciate the delivery. The points they made were perfectly valid and, ironically, calling them shallow and dismissing was itself shallow and dismissive. It just seems more like you used a bad analogy but can't take the criticism.
Except this isn't a debate on gun control.
I'm so confused... you responded to a comment about guns and made an analogy for gun control.
If you want to understand why it's so hard to pass strong gun laws in the USA, then reasoning by analogy to the contemporary issue of strong crypto may prove helpful.
Ffs, it was joke..
Hence, "shallow and dismissive".
That's not a great analogy though... you would have to add that, even though most people use it responsibly, banning digital encryption would cause a very dramatic reduction in harm caused by the people that don't use it responsibly.
Furthermore digital encryption actually serves an inherent purpose so banning it would also cause some harm to society simultaneously. On the other hand, civilian gun ownership serves no inherent purpose so society wouldn't be harmed by banning it, and we would only lose the risk.
But but but what if they get fascists in power! What if a bunch of goons attempt a coup!
Your gun will help a lot against the military...
Yeah, but it's way harder to kill someone accidentally (or in a fit of rage) with high grade digital encryption than with a firearm.
Guns are the only reliable way to deal with tyrants. And while its not everytime, look at what happens to disarmed populations usually.
Also gun control started as and still is racist.
You had a tyrant that tried to overthrow a legitimate election through violence.
Where were all gun nuts then? Those who weren’t attempting said coup, that is. Doesn’t sound reliable to me.
As for what happens to disarmed populations, most of Europe has gun control laws that would make any American have a heart attack, and yet here we are, no dictators to be seen up to GMT+3. Do say, what is it that happens to disarmed populations? What is happening to us that I somehow didn’t notice?
And gun control being racist.. I’m sorry, what? This right here, this is the thing I’ll never understand about Americans. Everything is racist. You can’t talk about anything, somebody will play the “racist” card before you can get any deeper than slogans. Absolutely every single thing turns out to be a race issue. Sure, you guys had very big issues with racism until very recently (learning about sundown towns for me was a huge WTF moment) and it’s very hard to deal with a past so ugly - but still, maybe not everything is about race.
In America, gun control started as a way to disarm black people. Worked out well when the Klan wanted to lynch someone. Thats what was racist about it.
Sounds like the usual American retcon.. you have a race obsession now so everything all the time was about race. A bit like Marx, who was obsessed with class struggle so literally every single event in history was actually a class struggle.
Also if you search online you’ll find plenty of articles they say they gun control is perceived as a racial issue, because gun control damages the rights of whites - with similarly flimsy arguments and mental gymnastics.
It’s almost as if it’s all bullshit.
Then why did the NRA start to get more "senesable gun control and not all gun owners are trustworthy" after the black panthers started to carry guns in the open
King George is the funny answer.
The Taliban insurgency is a much more recent one.
The viet cong fought the USA and won.
The IRA fought well.
I can keep going, but its easier to just link a wiki page. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_revolutions_and_rebellions
That rascally rabbit isn’t a tyrant just because he keeps tricking you. I know you’re traumatized but he doesn’t actually have power over you. It’s all in your head.
I don't know about the racism thing, but I doubt it. As far as the other thing, it doesn't have to be a choice between no guns or no restrictions. In the UK we have a ban on handguns and some hoops you have to jump through to own a rifle. Nothing too onerous I believe (though I've never tried to own a gun.)
I'm not afraid of our government becoming tyrannical. If it did, though, and guns are really the only reliable way to deal with them (I'm not convinced but anyway) then we still have plenty going around.
If youre in the UK, what did the IRA use to fight the British in the Troubles?
The ones that won, they used diplomacy. The armed conflict only ruined and made peoples lives miserable. Here's a doc you can listen to first hand accounts from members of the IRA. https://www.pbs.org/show/once-upon-time-northern-ireland/
Not disagreeing with you, but - you’ll have to admit, it’s a lot easier to have diplomatic talks when your side has a credible threat behind it. Do you think the Brits would have listened if the IRA had just done peaceful sit-ins?
Bombs mostly and they were always illegal.
What about it? Going to go bang, explosions are fun. Shooting people bad. What else did you want to know?
-signed Bleeding heart lefty with a gun
American lefty, which means you'd be at best centre right in any country with a healthcare system.
Why do you say that?
Oh I didn't mean you specifically, it's just a general comment on how policies of the European centre right parties are labelled in the American media. The Overton window is shifted to the left in Europe.
I was surprised to find out that abortion pre Rove versus Wade decision in the United States abortion was much more accessible than it was in the European Union.
Generally shifted to the left the overton window but not always.
For example, abortion.
Fair point.
I'm not familiar with RvW, but I'd suspect that in Europe it's largely member state competency, and the more religious societies might have stricter rules. I know Poland is very prohibitive, and so was Ireland until very recently when a highly publicised human tragedy turned people against the rigid rules of the Church.
The short version is that USA was more left than all EU members states on abortion -
Sadly that WAS true. However I live in California and it still is true.
Left here in California AKA me is actually left for the European Union too. That's why your original comment struck me as weird it's because for me and my state which is bigger than many European countries in both size and economic might is as left as the European Union.
I do not believe the overton window shift applies to California only the USA