I approve of this strategy.
Pretty much, yeah. pic.twitter.com/eN4iDJZsFj
— Vics Summers ⫩ (@VicsSummers) August 4, 2019
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I approve of this strategy.
Pretty much, yeah. pic.twitter.com/eN4iDJZsFj
— Vics Summers ⫩ (@VicsSummers) August 4, 2019
Yes.
I’d say to take it one step further. Considering how the majority of women who visit a Planned Parenthood and are of child bearing age, are not going there for anything abortion related but get harassed by protesters anyways, why not expand it to the neighboring businesses for the state’s gun store? You want your city/county/whatever to have the one state’s gun shop? Want your local businesses (hotels, stores, restaurants, etc.) to get harassed for the possibility of serving someone who might be there solely to buy a gun while you’re at it? Do you still want your local businesses to be affected by that one state gun shop, while the rest of us try to shut down that one state gun shop anyways?
Why only young men?
And why are the gun shops for profit (presumably)?
The first is perhaps a rhetorical analogy with abortion providers, albeit neither age nor gender is relevant for guns.
The second is important: Guns are sold for profit. Eliminate that. It not only improves the analogy, it also eliminates one of the driving forces.
I read somewhere “Thou Shalt Not Kill”…
if we’re fantasizing, why not just scrap the 2nd amendment. The original idea was that standing armies were a tool of authoritarianism so we need a distributed militia that worked well (older English: “well regulated”). But we’ve long abandoned those ideas, love our standing army and don’t have any distributed militia.
While I slept, there was another mass shooting in Dayton and yet another one in Chicago. 9+ and 7+ dead reported so far, respectively.
This is terrorism. Favoring unrestricted gun ownership is stochastic terrorism. There is no other way to rationally see this.
Food festivals, shopping centers, theaters, synagogues and churches, yoga studios, banks, elementary schools, middle schools, colleges, high schools, concerts, parks… US citizens cannot go anywhere without risking being murdered by men who are just perpetually pissed, mostly that women won’t have sex with them or that brown people exist.
Why is it that the only thing exceptional about America is that we constantly refuse to solve an epidemic that has an easy fix?
“Pro-Life” my fat ass.
Dems really need to focus on
And they can only purchase one bullet at a time, each one registered and must be accounted for when it was used.
???
Dunno what happened there…
Anyway, Dems really need to focus on taking back the Senate.
More than 1,200 children in US killed by guns in the last year:
blf @3:
Because young men are overwhelmingly the culprits in mass shootings. And making men uncomfortable is a key way to initiate social change.
Also, it mirrors nicely with the way young women are treated regarding abortion.
@ 6 kome
Because there is no easy fix. Banning firearms will not stop the proliferation of guns in the hands of right-wing terrorists nor the associated violence any more than banning opiates stopped the drug trade.
What needs to change is the acceptance of the sub-culture or ecosystem or whatever y0u want to call it that promotes white supremacy, gun-fondling, insularism, and all the rest of the social diseases that promote or condone the violence. The attack on the violence must be from the grass-roots up, and that will take generations to get the US down to where other countries with plenty of guns around are at (but who don’t have the sub-culture in such large doses).
Trying to repeal the 2nd may be a good way to get the movement going. Right now, what movement there is is too focussed on the weapons and not enough on the belief systems and behaviours.
Banning the more lethal types of firearms may mitigate (but, if you check on mass killings worldwide, you will find that massmurderers will find a way – machetes, buses, light aircraft . . .). It can’t hurt.
Nothing much can be done, though, until you get rid of those POS’s in the white house. As long as there is acceptance of the violence at that level, little can be accomplished. And America probably has to get rid of the gun-fondlers on SCOTUS too.
I propose the following as legislation before Congress.
The Second Amendment Repair Act1. The right of the people to keep and bear arms in a well-regulated militia shall not be infringed.
2. Well-regulated militias shall not arm those under adult age, nor arm those found guilty of treason as defined by the Constitution.
3. States have the right to enforce additional regulation of their militias.
Commentary by the author:
Compare clause 1 of SARA to the original 2nd Amendment:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Alas, poor Amendment! The sentence lies there, broken into four fragments, as if someone had dropped it on the floor. My critique of the 2nd Amendment is both literary and political; for its shattered incoherence is due to an unresolved political dispute. Washington insisted on good regulation of Jefferson’s popular militias; his objection was jammed on as a subordinate clause given top billing.
Clause 1 of SARA fixes the grammar of the 2nd Amendment. It’s a single coherent clause; that prevents partisans from exaggerating one clause and ignoring another. The original had well-regulation as an explanation for the need for the right to bear arms; here well-regulation is part of the right itself. This makes explicit the necessary link between rights (arms) and responsibilities (well-regulated). Clause 1 is as much about gun control as about gun rights.
This re-emphasis on regulation empowers clause 2. No children in arms, nor traitors; that’s necessary. If the militia is well-regulated, then it may not arm children or adolescents, who are not well-regulated people; and if the militia is of the state, then it may not arm those levying war upon the states. I choose these two regulations for the sake of clarity. Age is on public record; and treason is defined in the Constitution. (Article 3, section 3.)
Clause 3 establishes that militias belong to the states, which they may regulate as they see fit, as a matter of state’s rights.
This proposal is very conservative, in the non-Orwellian sense of the word ‘conservative’. It makes few changes in the original text, beyond rewriting it for clarity. This rewriting explicitly mandates both gun rights and gun control. Such rewriting is necessary because of the 2nd Amendment’s fragmented condition.
Since DC vs Heller in 2008, we have been living with a partial reading of the shattered 2nd Amendment, one that ignores the first two fragments and fetishizes the next two. So due to Scalia’s judicial activism, for over a decade the 2nd Amendment has been half-repealed, to malign effect now self-evident.
I propose that we repair it, and reinstate it, whole.
“…grass-roots…”
This hasn’t gotten a lot of traction on YouTube. Not sure why, but it works for me:
It strikes me that your vaunted Second Amendment is self-negating.
A well-regulated militia is demonstrably not necessary for the security of a free state. Ergo, the US has no right to keep or bear arms. That conditional assures us as much.
Regulation and legal sanction are good starts. But I keep having to point out that they are not the be-all and end-all of stopping this American gun disease from killing again. No, for that you will need a radical cultural and economic reform, taking away both the gun culture that has infected your society (and getting rid of the racism would be nice too) and, crucially, the inequality, poverty, anxiety and uncertainty that have led to the social breakdown that alienates people in this way. A society with some measure of cohesiveness, shared values, stability and sense of belonging among its members does not have this problem. There are obvious social and economic forces working to isolate, alienate and disillusion Americans, especially young men, and those need addressing too.
The “right to life” does not appear to interest anyone except fetuses.
@12
The solution to our epidemic gun violence is easy, as evidenced by how radically effective various measures are implemented around the world. The solution to conservatives in power is more difficult.
OK, so I had to take classes, pass a test, and go through a probationary period in order to drive a car, but just about any yahoo can own what is essentially a military spec weapon. They just have to wait a couple of days. (Don’t get me wrong, I’d guess the waiting period does reduce the number of suicides and “crimes of passion”, but it doesn’t do shit for those of us at schools, the mall, or out clubbing on a Saturday night). Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t military and police recruits have to undergo and pass background checks, psychiatric evaluations and somewhat extensive training before they’re issued firearms? It seems to me that the government already takes care that these weapons don’t fall into the wrong hands, only that that concern isn’t extended to the public.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGc5h1yWHQ
for anyone pretending the 2d amendment established a right to private gun ownership, that right actually dates all the way back to 2008, when justice scalia invented it out of whole cloth in the DC v. Heller decision.
in other words, the constitutional right to gun ownership postdates the right to abortion.
Meanwhile, Stross has a modest proposal (in two parts):
Meanwhile, NdGT seems to have decided he had too many followers on Twitter:
Intransitive@8, your suggestion is very close what happens in Japan. If you go through all the extensive hoops required in Japan to get a rifle or shotgun license you’re required to keep a logbook of your ammunition use. Each shot has to be accounted for.
I’ve seen a few interviews today with pundits and politicians such as Rob Portman and have begun to see their point. It really is past time that we start to take mental health seriously in this nation. I suggest starting with the legislators that vote against or block even the most basic, common sense gun restrictions and regulations.
Didn’t /don’t the Swiss have something similar as well?
One point that is often overlooked in these discussions is that a significant number of people who oppose any form of gun control believe the reason people need to have military grade weapons is so they can stage another civil war if the government tries taxing them to provide health care to poor people. So yes, it really is terrorism. Just not in a way that’s totally appreciated. It’s preparing for violent civil war if progressives ever actually do acquire political power.
And within their paradigm that only makes sense. If you favor suppressing democracy with things like voter suppression and the electoral college, then why wouldn’t you go the next step and just simply cancel an election result you disagree with by violent revolution?
And one thing that scares me is that even if reasonable gun control passed, there are already a hell of a lot of high grade weapons out there, and their owners will not meekly turn them in just because the law now requires them too. Actually trying to take those guns out of circulation just might actually start a civil war.
@thirdmill , just ran across this interesting article on that subject:
Charles J. Dunlap Jr., Revolt of the Masses: Armed Civilians and the Insurrectionary Theory of the Second Amendment, 62 Tennessee Law Review 643-677 (1995). https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/faculty_scholarship/2537/
@Ragutis here’s the Wikipedia entry for Swiss gun laws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_regulation_in_Switzerland
@12, what we need is to change our societal embracement of violence as a means to resolve a problem.
@15, we need no militia? Per US statute, the militia comes in two parts, the disorganized, erm, unorganized militia and the organized militia.
The unorganized militia (I’m always tempted to just stick with disorganized, largely due to the ammosexual class of firearm owner) are military age males and females in the organized militia.
The organized militia being the National Guard.
Now, who was fighting alongside our tiny army in 1812? The militia, who had a long tradition of having their asses handed to them. End result, the White House and Library of Congress was burned.
Doing away with the second amendment removes the authorization for the National Guard, which has finally been brought up to 21st century competence.
Similarly, restricting ammunition won’t pass muster, do you have to register words for a prayer, letter to the editor or general speech?
But, there is a tool available to address this mess we’re in. Semiautomatic firearms that are derived from selective military service rifles (full automatic or three round burst) should go into a new class of the National Firearms Act, putting them beneath fully automatic weapons and alongside suppressors/silencers (silencers don’t make a firearm report disappear, save for very light rounds, they disguise some of the report, making the source of fire harder to locate).
Making something like an AR15 equal with its fully automatic cousin would only tempt people to purchase the machine gun model instead. Putting it on par with a suppressor would be more than adequate to ensure those with less than pillar of the community reputation and sterling character wouldn’t get their lunch hooks on what essentially is a weapon of war.
And while we’re doing that, put the weapon magazines under the NFA as well. The Dayton shooter had one of those ridiculous 100 round drum units and alas, it didn’t jam like they usually do.*
*I wouldn’t accept a 100 round drum magazine as a gift. I have a few 5 round magazines, a couple of 10 round magazines (both, mostly for states that won’t allow 20 or 30 round magazines and the 5 round also doubles for when I’m zeroing my target rifle), the rest are 20 round and 30 round magazines, for when I compete against others, at times against the military, for prize, firing essentially military firing tables, in precision marksmanship competitions against round targets.
I refuse to fire at human outline shaped targets, had my fill of that during the war and was damned glad to retire.
8Chan has lost their host!
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/08/04/8-chan-third-mass-shooting-2019-linked-webs-darkest-reaches/1917135001/