What More Do They Want?

I’ve argued with several people that, say we agreed to give up our AR-15s and other semi-automatic rifles, the next time there was a public mass shooting, would they and all the other pro-gun control folks throw up their hands, “Well, you know, we tried. But we’ve done enough,” and eschew any further gun control? I don’t know anyone who believes that the case. They certainly know that’s not the case.

And proof positive, I give you the reaction to the YouTube shooting in California.

What more do you want in California, seriously? They have everything you could dream of federally and more. But it’s apparently not enough. That should tell you everything you need to know.

88 thoughts on “What More Do They Want?”

  1. What they want is obvious: to make guns blanket illegal and make gun ownership a crime punishable by execution without trial. They want us dead. ALL of us dead. Over 100 million dead. Door to door raids (done by other people), with the full force of the military with armor, tanks and planes. Public executions of gun owners and there families. The setting up of extermination camps to kill us and if need be the deployment of nuclear weapons on United States soil against United States citizens to kill us. They do not care they method or body count. Our extermination is what they want.

    I have said it before. If the left has to literally nuclear holocaust the country and kill over 1/3rd of the entire population there will cheer and celebrate. CNN and MSNBC will throw a celebration about how wonderful it all is. They hate us that much. To them the government is literally god and by extension them bringing about the apocalypse is a proper thing for there god government to take.

    1. Dude get off comments and get to a shrink. You’re nuts.

        1. Just because people on Twitter are telling you that they want you dead doesn’t mean anything like that is going to actually happen.

          1. I was mostly being sarcastic about that, but there’s some truth to it. The Internet is a sewer, and people will say all kinds of things. I deleted my Twitter presence because it was a sewer, on both sides.

            1. I certainly get that. Some of them don’t actually want us dead. But plenty wouldn’t be sad if we died, and is there really that big of a difference?

              They advocate for laws, that if taken to their logic end, would result in plenty of us dying. Some would celebrate it, some wouldn’t be sad, and few would actual say they didn’t want it.

      1. I think he is right. There is a level of rage at flyover country on the left. Guns are the only thing they hate more than pickups and country music.

    2. Weren’t you just giving me crap about being a debbie downer in a previous thread? That’s a pretty wild fantasy even by the standards of the most guntery of the gunternet.

      1. I was giving you a hard time last time. You here basically asked what they want from us. I answered: they want us to die. They want all of us dead. All of us. And no, I do not think that is the opinion of all progressive liberals or even liberals in general, or even the method, just the far left. But nowadays the far left IS the left. They eat there own if they are not leftist enough. I know that. You know that too. There is no debate with a group of people that would celebrate our brutal murders at the hand of the government. And nuking us all to kill over 1/3rd of the US population? I go to that extreme because if they truly get what they want and we tell them to go to hell I wouldn’t be surprised if people on the left start calling for it.

        After what happened at Sandy hook I remember an article that stuck out in my head. I’d have to try and find it again. They wanted obama to basically do a total ban of gun ownership, then seal the borders of a couple southern states and say ‘if you do not surrender all your guns by this date we will nuke you all to death’ and then do it and use it as an example to the other states. One of the occasion back then when the mask didn’t just slip but fell to the floor. That was a fringe lunatic but he cannot be the only one of that opinion.

        Would something like this ever happen? No. And I know that. No one would stand for it. Not even the democratic party itself even under it’s current makeup. Maybe MSNBC. I believe this is a leftist fantasy and you can give me crap for saying it but if you look at the current rhetoric it’s not outlandish to think they want us all killed. In fact they do, they post it all the time. And that is why people like that should NEVER be in power and they are the ones that should be ostracized from society. And that’s why we fight and vote.

        1. You can find all kinds of crazy shit on the Internet. Overall, I agree the trajectory is headed to a bad place, but it’s not there yet. Remember, that before the Civil War you had people on both sides of the slavery question moving to Kansas to have a shot at killing one another. John Brown was among those. People mouthing off to each other on the Internet doesn’t worry me. Something like bleeding Kansas very much would.

          1. We’re getting close to a “Bleeding Kansas” time period in this Country again, sooner rather than later.

            The Alexandria, Virginia Baseball Shooting, carried out by an outright, radical, leftwing, Bernie Sanders worshipping Communist was the foreshadowing event of a new “Bleeding Kansas” era coming to this Country, again.

  2. Maybe to not have my co-workers gunned down by random crazies would be good.

    Could also have done without the worry the next day having to go to work and hope security is tight enough to not have a repeat/copycat.

    Yeah having none of that would be great.

    Seems too easy for any random insane person to get a gun to kill people.

    (Mandatory licensing and training before you get your gun, and periodic refresher training and inspections would likely weed out those unstable enough to do something like this. Maybe?)

    You want your rights, I want to not be killed, whether I choose to own a firearm or not. Happy for you to have your guns, but I don’t want to be killed by them. The latter should not be my responsibility.

    1. How do you feel about involutsry commitment of the mentally ill? The problem is not about guns. The problem is with people who cannot control their impulses.

      1. Dunno. All I know is I’ve gotta go to work and hope there isn’t a repeat/copycat tomorrow. There probably won’t be, but I’ll tell you, I didn’t go looking for this.

        Why don’t *you* suggest some reasonable ways to keep guns out of the hands of those who can’t control their impulses?

        Why is that my job? I’m just a working schmoe and not part of this whole gun thing.

        1. We have. Maybe you should search for them.

          But the other solution to stop random people shooting up places is to let those people shoot back. People tend to choose places they won’t be shot at for a reason…

        2. Let’s stop feeding this troll, it’s obvious that he’s either afraid of his own shadow or………….

        3. You’re irrational and emotional.

          I donned an EMS uniform for 18 years and voluntarily worked in the worst NYC neighborhoods –unarmed. I trekked unarmed into the worst of Alphabet City, the projects of East Harlem and all over the burnt out Bronx.

          You’re chances of dying from “gun violence” are slim to none. Insect stings and allergic reactions kill way more people than “gun violence”.

          All the graphs with breakdowns of categories for injuries *every year*, from every Trauma CME credit I had to earn for my rectification proved this.

          And as far as “us” suggesting some “reasonable” ways to keep guns out of the hands of those who can’t control their impulses, I’ll take you a wee bit more seriously if you can name *one* gun control group that has ever done even *one* review of a gun safe or gun lock. Or have reinforced the 4 safety rules. Name *one*.

          It’s never been about “gun safety” or “respecting 2A rights”. It has always been about control.

        4. He gave you a real solution. 64% of 2017 mass murderers had severe mental illness problems. This is why this problem went from nearly unknown in the 1960s to common today: the intentional destruction of our mental health system.

    2. So even the laws of Commiefornia aren’t enough for you? WTH.

      Your suggestions sounds like something on the path towards or even worse than New York City. Sounds to me that what you really want are gun-regulations so onerous that people are driven to give up their guns.

      In New York City only the rich and the powerful legally own guns anymore, a literal ‘one percenter’ oligarchy of rights. NYT “The Rich, The Famous, The Armed”

      https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/20/nyregion/20guns.html

      And guess what. Even with an enormous police force, even with draconian gun-control, people still get murdered in New York City. Even with guns.

      1. Listen you ass, I don’t want to get shot by some crazy when I go to work. That’s it. Why should this be my problem?

        You’ve got a problem with that, then get off your collective gun owning ass and take the lead in reducing gun deaths, whether it’s crazies or suicide or whatever.

        Stop making it everyone else’s problem. If people weren’t getting shot up there would be no anti gun movement.

        As to NYC, the per capita murder rate is lower than it was in 1945, making it one of the safest cities in the world. No kidding. You could have done a single search (which I just did) and found that right away. Making you a *lazy* ass as well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_New_York_City

        1. Its your problem because you are trying to take our rights, and everything that the anti-gunners demand to solve the “not get shot by some crazy when people go to work” issue didn’t solve it.

          WE don’t have a problem with it. We have solutions that will work. You just don’t like them. So yeah, its your problem.

          Oh, and maybe some of that “research” you did will find that gun crime is still rampant there, despite a pretty much blanket gun ban. Another “solution” that failed.

        2. Your unreasonable fears don’t give you the right to throw my ass in jail. Do you understand the stakes now? This is deadly serious and extremely personal business to me.

          You’ve got a greater chance of being killed by a cop than by some random mass shooter. Per capita murder rates have been declining for the last 27 years, and are only half as high as now as they were then.

          I’m perfectly happy to discuss reasonable solutions to persistent problems. But I refuse to be a scapegoat. I won’t play the part of the witch in some witch hunt.

        3. Listen you ass, I don’t want to get shot by some crazy when I go to work. That’s it. Why should this be my problem?

          Listen, fuckstick, neither do I. The reason it’s your problem is because assuring your personal safety is not my fucking job.

          You’ve got a problem with that, then get off your collective gun owning ass and take the lead in reducing gun deaths, whether it’s crazies or suicide or whatever

          We didn’t create the culture that produces mass shooters, and we aren’t in charge of the Democrat-controlled urban shitholes where most day-to-day gun violence occurs. Asswipes like you trying to lay moral responsibility for this situation at our doorstep is the purest projection.

          If people weren’t getting shot up there would be no anti gun movement.

          Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it.

    3. I don’t see how licensing and training would have had any effect. In her interactions with police, she was apparently able to convince them that she was fine. I doubt adding an extra hurdle or two where she had to act basically normal would be a blocker to her plan.

      Whatever initial requirements you want to impose, she would have complied with. Whatever continuing requirements you have in mind would be irrelevant, because she was not planning on surviving. She wasn’t a criminal or adjudicated mentally ill, so there was nothing to pop on the background check system. California already has the GVRO system, but it wasn’t used here, and I’m not sure her family even knew she had a gun. They DID know she was extremely angry with YouTube and informed the police about it when they reported her missing. As usual in these cases, the police shrugged off the warning. When they found her sleeping in her car in Google’s parking lot, they confirmed who she was, let her family know she was okay, and left it at that. The family emphasized again the vendetta against YouTube, but the police had done what they were going to do.

      You don’t want to be killed. Neither do any of us. But the policy prescriptions offered up after these events do nothing but make us more dependent on the people whose failures allowed those events to happen in the first place.

      1. Well then you figure out how to reduce gun deaths, whether it’s crazies or suicide or whatever. Or someone will do it for you. If people weren’t getting shot up, there would be no anti gun movement.

        1. Sure, but it wouldn’t please anyone in the anti-gun lobby to hear my solutions.

          Step 1: Address the eroding support systems of middle age and older suburban and rural white men. According to suicide statistics, older white men are the demographic most likely to complete a suicide, and the preferred method is firearms. Significantly reduce suicidality in this group and you would have a large impact on suicides, gun suicides, and gun deaths (since two thirds of those are suicides).

          Step 2: Get serious about crime in the black community. And by serious, I mean get down to talking about underlying social factors. The black community used to have more intact families than whites, but now fatherless is rampant. Let’s get down to how to solve the issues that cause violence to rage within that community, where half of homicides take place.

          Step 3: Seriously re-examine our approach to mental health, especially involuntary commitment. While that’s something that can be horribly abused, the pendulum has swung much too far the other way. Now people languish without proper treatment, care, and supervision, then when something happens, people say “oh, we always knew that guy was unstable!” GVROs are inherently flawed because they are too gun focused (as usual for an idea from the anti-gun lobby). If someone is that dangerous, why is it okay to leave them out in the world with access to large trucks (used to kill over 80 people in one incident in France) or knives (the preferred murder weapon in London), or all the other non-gun methods of mayhem out there?

          That’s a start. Back of the envelope calculations, if those efforts had 10% effectiveness, it would save 4,000 lives.

          1. I would also add: no matter what we do, people will *always* slip through the cracks. Sometimes those cracks will even be widened by State adjustments to policy…however, I can’t help but notice that when someone insane decides to shoot up some people, he’s just sane enough to maintain just enough of a veneer of “normalcy” that no amount of mental help is going to catch them.

            Which is why we need a fourth step: to recognize the right of anyone who can legally carry a gun, to carry that gun in public places. End gun-free zones. All they do is disarm the good people, preventing them from shooting back at someone who has gone off the rails.

            1. While ending gun-free zones is a useful step (I carry when I teach), there are still situations where this will not work. Every step towards a solution (a real solution, not making the gunhaters feel morally superior) needs to be pursued.

              1. Agreed. Ending GFZs has to be a part of the solution, not the only solution of course. It needs to be packaged with a bunch of other solutions.

        2. Reduce “gun deaths”….

          I’m completely sick of this “gun deaths” horse manure. Criminal homicides are undesirable regardless of the method. I never take anyone seriously who mouths this “gun deaths” stupidity.

      2. You don’t want to be killed. Neither do any of us. But the policy prescriptions offered up after these events do nothing but make us more dependent on the people whose failures allowed those events to happen in the first place.

        Its funny how many of the other site, like this random dude, really think we don't care about the deaths, or we aren't working toward reducing them.

        They are wrong of course. We all care, terribly. We just have differently solutions.

    4. Britain had essentially all those things in place when Dunblane happened. Which was the event that lead to Parliament banning all handguns in Great Britain.

    5. (Mandatory licensing and training before you get your gun, and periodic refresher training and inspections would likely weed out those unstable enough to do something like this. Maybe?)

      Tell you what, champ. You volunteer to subject some right of yours, some right that you value, to an onerous licensing/training/inspection regime, and then you’ll have some currency to demand limits on my rights.

      Until then? Go piss up a rope.

    6. How does “training” stop “insane”?

      “Inspections”? Be specific? Inspecting what, for what?

      “Training and licensing” keeps being brought up, like “collect underpants”, but nobody can connect them with the “profit” step of “stops crazies from being murderous but doesn’t just disarm everyone” without a big “???”

      What’s the “???” sauce here?

      (Reference.)

    7. I am also some “random dude” who works at a tech company in California. But you know what? I know the actual gun laws in California.

      Before you start spouting out of your rear pie hole, you should realize what gun laws there are in California.

      Specifically:
      – Need to pass a safety test to get a Firearms Owners License to buy a gun
      – You must renew this license every three years with another safety test
      – Need to demonstrate in front of a licensed FFL how your gun properly works before FFL can legally let you leave the store with that gun
      – Universal background checks for all gun purchases, no exceptions for private sales (therefore, no “gun show loophole”)
      – 10 day waiting period on ALL gun purchases, no exceptions even for existing gun owners
      – All guns must be registered, even for newly incoming California residents with out-of-state firearms.
      – Gun restraining orders can be placed by family or local law enforcement

      So basically we already have the mandatory licensing and mandatory safety test, with mandatory re licensing every few years.

      And yes, from NBC news, this lady LEGALLY bought her gun.

      Everything you asked for in your ignorant suggestion list is already required by California law. Again, like Sebastian asked, what more do you f***ing want?

  3. Even before the Youtube shooting, there were bills moving in the California legislature to further tighten the screws of gun-control.

    One proposal that I have my eye on is an expansion of the California ban on so-called “assault weapons”, which will change the current one-feature definition into a ban on all centerfire semi-auto rifles with a detachable magazine.

    There is never enough to slake the thirst of the anti-gun vampires. They always want more.

    1. Reduce gun deaths, whether crazies or suicide or whatever and the anti gun movement goes away. As it stands more people per year get killed with guns than in car accidents.

      If you leave doing this to others, then you are abdicating your moral leadership, and the calls to regulate guns get worse. Fix it and you look like heroes and it goes away.

      1. Perhaps you should look at why countries like the Czech Republic and Switzerland, New Zealand, France, and most of Europe allow their citizens to own the same type of firearms we can own in the US…

        and not have any mass shooting problems whatsoever.

        1. Well the “gun movement” would be better or figuring that out than clinging to the craziness raised by the first commenter on the thread or demonizing those who disagree.

          Get a good plan to reduce the gun death rate, and get some results. Defuse the fight over gun ownership by rendering the primary complaint moot.

          1. That’s simply not true.

            There’s been a massive reduction in the gun death rate in the last couple decades.

            https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/03/weve-had-a-massive-decline-in-gun-violence-in-the-united-states-heres-why/?utm_term=.02edd739d922

            There has been a slight increase in the last couple years. But it is still well below the high of the early 90’s
            https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gun-death-rate-rises-for-second-year-in-a-row/

            So…. No there HAVE been results. And the gun control movement is still peddling the same demands and restrictions.

            1. That’s not entirely true. Back in the 90s they switched from pushing handgun bans to pushing bans on semi-automatic rifles.

              1. Good point, my mistake.

                Still, it’s not like the gun control movement saw the decrease in gun deaths and said “our work here is done!”

                Nor did it result in them “defusing” the issue.

                Now gun /rights/ advocates did use this to try to defuse the issue. And there’s a question of how effective it is.

                As there are people who don’t know about the drop in violent crime. (Though some dude, does know given he cited it in another thread)

          2. Oh and this is interesting.

            https://www.pagunblog.com/2018/03/30/by-all-means-keep-running-on-this/#comment-426759
            “”
            This is what you guys get for putting all your eggs in one political/idological basket. There is literally no one on your blog arguing seriously with you so you drift farther towards the fringe. People are way less violent than they used to be as a whole in this country (look it up), so a better pitch for you is law, order, responsibility, and leave all the weird ass “lefties are the devil” bullshit to the tabloids where it belongs.
            “”

            Here’s the funny thing.
            He has a valid point about making Guns a Right-Wing culture war issue. I mean /Sebastian/ has been a huge advocate of the risks of alienation by going down that path. And the importance of trying to cultivate a greater gun rights support in the Democratic party (and having them not go like they did in Vermont).

            But… I’m more interested in that at 9:49 pm this fellow was going on about how violence in the US has been going /down/ nationwide.

            Where at 10:16 pm he then implies the gun death rate is increasing.

            Also keep in mind that this fellow’s key fear is being a victim of workplace violence. Even though he was earlier pointing out (correctly) that overall violence is down…

          3. Craziness? Demonizing those who disagree? You should be more concerned about a sitting Governor of a State who declares the “NRA is a terrorist organization”, than some random dude blowing off steam to some random blog.

            https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/connecticut-governor-nra-is-a-terrorist-organization

            You should be more concerned when CNN cheerleads national gun-control leaders who proclaim the NRA are child murderers.

            https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/02/19/florida-shooting-survivor-emma-gonzalez-nra-gun-control-intv-newday.cnn

            You should be more concerned when Saturday Night Live yuks it up by equating peaceful gun-owners to cockroaches.

            https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/snl-arming-good-roaches-with-barkley_us_5a9b9de0e4b0479c02533c2d

            1. Everyone one of those slanderous, libelous, disparaging, and defamatory verbal attacks against the 95-135 Million Gunowners of America are political dogwhistles, declaring gunowners to be political dissidents that must be violently and forcefully purged from society.

              Whispers of actual fascism, communism, stalinism, and maoism.

      2. As it stands more people per year get killed with guns than in car accidents.

        No, there are not.

        If you leave doing this to others, then you are abdicating your moral leadership, and the calls to regulate guns get worse. Fix it and you look like heroes and it goes away.

        We aren’t leaving it to others, others just don’t like our solutions. Besides, we don’t care about “gun deaths” per say (which have remained flat for decades). We care about all deaths and more importantly all crime.

      3. Nice catch-22 you presented.

        Reduce “gun deaths” and “the anti-gun movement goes away”? Oh, if only that were true.

        Because “gun deaths” have been reduced. The murder rate today is only half what is was 27 years ago, despite the parallel flood of new guns into the hands of the public. Yet the cries for ever stricter gun-control never cease.

      4. Nope, more by cars than with guns.

        And let’s not conflate “suicides” with “murders”, okay?

        If most “gun deaths”* were murders, we’d care a lot more about “gun deaths”.

        But that’s why it’s “gun deaths”, not “murders”. Because without suicides the numbers are half as large, and that’s not scary and bad enough.

  4. Overall “Some random dude who works at a certain tech company” has a point, people /want/ a solution.

    Especially those who are in fear (we can put aside how rational that fear is).

    And this shows that for a certain segment that doesn’t know guns, doesn’t know the current legal status quo, doesn’t even really know what the Gun Control Movement is proposing, doesn’t even really now the trends in violent crime or the likelihood of workplace violence….

    They want a solution.

    And they see that the Gun Control Advocates are /saying/ that they have a solution.

    Meanwhile the Gun Rights people are being all scary (it’s ignored that their worries about a total ban are true… heck “Some random dude who works at a certain tech company” tacitly /admits/ that the gun control advocates will push pretty damn far) and worse the Gun Rights advocates aren’t giving easy solutions.

    Telling someone “Yeah, people such, and determined loons /will/ find a way to murder people. Especially in a country that already has hundreds of millions of guns, toxins by the tub at hardware stores, or gallons of flammables at any corner gas station.”

    And comments of “Yeah, the police already intervened and here’s the limits of what they can do.”… can turn off the “I want to not feel scared!” folks.

    Education is one of our biggest tools. Because the Gun Control Advocates /depend/ on ignorance.

    Ignorance also breeds fear.

    That said, tone is a key thing. Especially, with those who can be convinced.

    I’ll admit my reply to the fellow was probably a bit too skeptical.

    One thing to keep in mind is that there are people who don’t /want/ to learn.

    If you hear refrains of “I’m not a gun person, I just want to feel safe.”, “Why should I have to come up with ideas?”, “You’re the gun person, reducing this is you responsibility.”

    All /suggest/ someone who doesn’t /want/ to learn more, doesn’t want to spend the time to learn about a complicated and thorny subject. One where even /if/ the gun control advocates get what they want (As in California) bad things can still happen.

    They want to outsource the issue. They want /someone else/ to deal with it.

    Similar to how some folks don’t want to consider their personal role in emergency response (disaster, injury, attack).

    1. We don’t offer easy solutions because they don’t exist. If there were easy solutions, they would have been implemented a long time ago and the problem wouldn’t exist.

      The “gun problem” in the US is primarily composed of three problems, none of them actually gun related. First is suicides. If Suicide magically disappeared tomorrow, two thirds of gun-related deaths would go with it. The second is criminal culture. The vast majority of homicides are committed by people with other criminal records, against people with criminal records. That would be another 60% of the remainder or more. The third is by far the lowest number, but it causes the high profile cases. Mental health treatment needs to taken seriously, and we have to take people seriously when they make reports that friends and acquaintances are becoming violent. There were multiple opportunities for intervention in Parkland, and involuntary commitment would have been better for the kids at the school AND the killer. But the emphasis was on not intervening so kids didn’t get bad records. Well, he’s got a pretty bad record now, and that’s the least of it.

      1. Indeed.

        It’s the broccoli versus ice-cream argument. Do you want the answer that’s true but difficult or the one that’s wrong but easy?

        My point was more to explore the power of ignorance and our methods for dealing with folks who are ignorant of the issue but reachable.

        The more I read of “Some random dude who works at a certain tech company” (especially how he’ll switch between Violence is going down and Violence is going up!) suggests that he’s more than just some guy that doesn’t know guns but wants solutions.

        But it was a useful thing to explore.

        1. Yeah, too many typical deceptive anti-gun talking points littered his writing.

          “gun deaths”? “more people killed by guns than by cars”? That kind of nonsense may fool the gullible and the ignorant, but it doesn’t fly here.

          1. I got that stuff from the 538 series on gun deaths. Not an anti gun person per se, but I’m more than a little fed up with the stupid politicization when I read blogs like this. I don’t go looking for anti gun blogs, as I want to hear perspective from people who know guns well. However look again at the first comment. There is no place whatsoever in any reasonable discussion for that crazy crap.

            The Jack gets my point. When I was growing up, guns weren’t politicized this way, nor associated with “the right”. That is hugely unhelpful and probably getting in your way. You spend all of your time and legislative dollars on your rights. And that’s been very effective. Any sort of harm reduction ends up being either a bunch of talk with no muscle behind it, or “slippery slope! Slippery slope!”

            Dents your credibility pretty well among people who aren’t gun people. And there will always be a lot of people who aren’t. Make it non threatening to those people, and all this struggle stuff goes away.

            Haul out the first commenter, or Ted Nugent for that matter, and you’re back to square one.

            I have to get ready to go through my police cordon to get to the office. Catch you later.

            1. I think you’re far, /far/ too optimistic about “all the struggle stuff going away”.

              That said, you are quite correct that the wrong tone is extremely counterproductive and having bomb-throwing spokespeople does turn off people that need to be persuaded.

              A big problem is that there /is/ a slippery slope. One only has to look at how states with bad gun control laws, tent to get /more/ gun control over time.

              Heck, RIGHT NOW we’re talking in thread about a shooting that happened in California that is being used to demand more gun control /in California/.

              What I find a bit amusing is that this is being argued on a blog that has been, rightly, sounding the warning of this issue for a long time, given Sebastian’s own stance.

              (There’s also the Asymmetrical nature of this. as the Gun control advocates can be as angry and hateful as they want, they can organize with the explicitly Left-Wing organizations that have nothing do do with guns, and all of /that/ is downplayed. That said, just because /they/ do it, doesn’t mean that we Gun Rights advocates should. But it does give the feeling that it’s a mug’s game. Course given the funding differences…

              I mean the Gun Control movement has also done a lot to make this a Left-Right Issue)

              1. The proximate cause of our current situation was the slaughtering of the blue dog Democrats in the 2010 elections, and NRA’s membership having a royal freakout that NRA typically endorsed Harry Reid and convincing the organization to come up with a pretext for yanking his endorsement. After that, the Dems ditched the blue dog strategy and re-embraced gun control as a centerpiece in their culture war strategy.

                There’s always a need in politics to coalition. My issue with NRA is that they are going beyond that, and inserting themselves into issues that are strongly identified with the right. I’d also like to see Ted Nugent off the Board, but I get the difficulties in that when members elect the Board, and people with name recognition are always top vote getters.

                1. I’d say the real root of the current division, the increasing partisanship when it comes to gun-control, goes back even further, back to 1994.

                  There were plenty of pro-gun Democrats back then in Congress. Including perhaps most importantly of all, the Speaker of the House of Representatives Tom Foley.

                  And when push came to shove, those supposedly pro-gun Democrats choose Party over their own pro-gun voters, especially Tom Foley. And boy did they pay the consequences for that in the next election.

                  I’d say the hollowing out of the Democratic Party, and the important switch of State level elective offices in Southern States from solid-Democratic to solid-Republican also had much to do with how hotly the gun-control issue has burned since the 1990’s and the Clinton push for gun-control.

                  1. You’re 10,000% correct. Sebastian seems to forget that had the Democrat Party maintained control of both the House and Senate after 2010, combined witn the Tuscon, Arizona Shooting of Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords, an Assault Weapons and High Capacity Magazines Ban, banning all semiautomatic, centerfire rifles, shotguns, and pistols that could accept detachable magazines, would’ve been passed by Congress, and signed by Obama.

                    In September of 2010, Ironically, Obama, Biden, and Eric Holder wanted Congress and the Senate to take up an Assault Weapons and High Capacity Magazines Ban, that Autumn. The NRA’s Grassroots Membership knew that Harry Reid would’ve pulled a “Tom Foley”, and gone along with Obama, Biden, Holder, and Pelosi in passing an AWB. Thankfully, the 2010 Tea Party Wave took back the House, and killed off any gun-ban push.

                    As you correctly pointed out, it would’ve been a rehash of 1994 when the Reagan Democrats, led by Tom Foley, fell in line with Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Janet Reno, and Eric Holder in passing the 1994 AWB.

                    1. Reid never brought an Assault Weapons Ban to the floor because he had Dems to protect on the issue, including himself. That all changed after 2010.

            2. I got that stuff from the 538 series on gun deaths. Not an anti gun person per se, but I’m more than a little fed up with the stupid politicization when I read blogs like this. I don’t go looking for anti gun blogs, as I want to hear perspective from people who know guns well. However look again at the first comment. There is no place whatsoever in any reasonable discussion for that crazy crap.

              First, always check more than one source.

              Second, guns are inherently political, so not sure why you are fed up with that. We are happy to give our perspective, but you need to actually listen.

              Third, I don’t see anything wrong with the first point. We have been in this fight for decades. We’ve seen what people say, and we understand what it means when they advocate for certain laws. Note that he is posting this on a blog for gun owners, not on HuffPo (which I can agree that type of talk isn’t helpful). But he is still right.

              The Jack gets my point. When I was growing up, guns weren’t politicized this way, nor associated with “the right”. That is hugely unhelpful and probably getting in your way. You spend all of your time and legislative dollars on your rights. And that’s been very effective. Any sort of harm reduction ends up being either a bunch of talk with no muscle behind it, or “slippery slope! Slippery slope!”

              How old are you? 150 years? Guns were always politicized in this way. But I agree they weren’t always associated with the right. But it hasn’t helped that pretty much only hard left Dems oppose gun rights. We are of course willing to listen to proposals, but we have a high line to cross when it comes to infringing our rights. First, any law just shouldn’t. Second, any law should actually be effective at what it is proposed to solve. That why it ends up being just a bunch of talk- because we understand the proposals wouldn’t actually solve any problem. Third, we are absolutely fearful of the slippery slope. Because as I said, we’ve been in this fight for decades. We know that its not “just this one law and that’s it!”. Its always more and more and more and more. Just look at California. They have all the laws currently demanded by gun controllers, and yet its STILL being used to push for more. Can’t you understand that worry?

              Dents your credibility pretty well among people who aren’t gun people. And there will always be a lot of people who aren’t. Make it non threatening to those people, and all this struggle stuff goes away.

              Again, this is a blog for gun owners. Our discussions with people like you are completely different. Not every gun owner of course, and plenty of us have a knee jerk reaction because we’ve been attacked so much (which you should take to explain Brad’s comments to you).

              Haul out the first commenter, or Ted Nugent for that matter, and you’re back to square one.

              Many of don’t like Ted for the same reasons you don’t. I didn’t vote for him on the board, but because he riles people up, he keeps getting elected. I suspect that it won’t be long for him on the board.

            3. I challenge you, Random Dude, on your assertion that gun control would go away under any circumstance. Can you name one place where it has? We’ve already discussed California. It certainly didn’t go away in the UK or Australia either. After Australia confiscated and destroyed a third of their firearms, the people replaced them with compliant guns yet Rebecca Peters called that a huge problem. Wait, I thought that’s what they wanted?

              Read this article and tell me you still think gun control would ever go away. They even state that “gun deaths” (a deeply flawed metric anyway) has been going down and they wave it off like it must be wrong and demand more gun control all the same.

              http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-12/gun-ownership-on-the-rise/3662504

            4. Dents your credibility pretty well among people who aren’t gun people. And there will always be a lot of people who aren’t. Make it non threatening to those people, and all this struggle stuff goes away.

              Kid, I’ve spent half my life trying, over and over and over again, to the point of exhaustion, to explain to Muggles why things like “assault weapons bans” are the opposite of solutions to a problem — that long guns are used in a vanishingly small number of crimes anyway, and that trying to draw distinctions between “good” semi-auto rifles and “evil” semi-auto rifles is a fool’s errand because they are functionally identical. That they use the same ammunition, they fire at the same rate, and they are exactly as lethal and/or useful. That the only difference between them is that the “evil” semi-auto rifles have a bunch of ergonomic/UX enhancements like folding stocks, pistol grips, barrel shrouds, and flash hiders.

              I also explain to them the reality that gun controllers have been harping on “assault weapons” for two decades in order to exploit public ignorance about firearms. I explain that these people want you to not understand the difference between rifles that actually are machine-guns and rifles that merely look like machine-guns, because once you do understand the difference you might start asking awkward questions like, “Wait a second, Senator Feinstein, how the fuck does a pistol grip make a semi-auto rifle ‘spray bullets’ like you keep saying?”

              My reward for my troubles is to be accused of “gunsplaining” in the pages of the Washington Post, to be told by blue-state governors that a national sporting federation and civil rights advocacy group representing me and five million other Americans is actually a “terrorist organzation”, and to have people like you try to lay moral responsibility for crimes that I did not commit, and in fact deplore, at my doorstep.

              But tell me again how Shawn, and Ted Nugent, are the problem here.

            5. “But I’m more than a little fed up with the stupid politicization when I read blogs like this. I don’t go looking for anti gun blogs, as I want to hear perspective from people who know guns well.”

              Ok, you get mad props for this. That’s a kind of research most people don’t do anymore.

              As for your other point, Sebastian had this really good article about two years back about how dangerous it is for gun rights to be entrapped by the Republican party. If gun rights were a bipartisan issue, then we could get both parties competing for our vote. But since we only have one party courting us, the Republicans can do the bare minimum to preserve gun rights and still get our votes because they’re better than the other guy.

              “Any sort of harm reduction ends up being either a bunch of talk with no muscle behind it, or “slippery slope! Slippery slope!””

              Well, I could explain why the slippery slope exists, but I think that would be a waste of your time. So let’s talk about harm reduction.

              Gun violence and gun deaths are actually a bunch of unrelated issues lumped together because of the presence of a gun. Most murders are a criminal issue, most suicides are a mental health issue, and most mass shootings are a slightly different mental health issue. In the case of the recent shooting at your workplace, I would call it a failed mass shooting stemming from mental issues, but I won’t know for sure until the police finish investigating.

              What could have been done to to reduce the harm? Well, California has a ten day waiting period on buying guns, even with private sales. Anyone buying a handgun must pass a safe handling demonstration. And California allows family members to ask a judge to confiscate a person’s firearms via an Extreme Risk Protection Order. Had the family done so, and if the police had searched the shooter’s vehicle, she wouldn’t have been able to shoot up YouTube headquarters. I think California already had the tools it needed to stop this woman.

              In the long run, I would like to see better awareness and treatment of mental illness, better enforcement of our nation’s laws, an end to the drug war and a reduction in poverty. Large parts of America are already as safe as Europe. These changes will take care of the other parts.

                1. Thanks. Hope Mr. Volokh doesn’t mind me paraphrasing him whenever this subject comes up.

                2. Bah! I just addressed the Slippery Slope argument!

                  Sigh. I’ll go read (or likely reread) Eugene’s argument, to see how much I got right…

                  Ok, I just downloaded the paper. I’m pretty much sure I haven’t read it (I think I just read Eugene’s blogposts on the subject), and I take comfort in that it addresses Slippery Slope in general, and not just for gun rights — whereas mine addresses the Slippery Slope as applied to gun rights…

            6. As others have pointed out before, when it comes to gun laws, the “slippery slope” is real. In 1976, the anti-gun lobby tried and failed to ban handguns in Massachusetts. One of the conclusions reached by the efforts to do so was that Americans needed to be introduced gradually to the idea that we should ban guns.

              So, in 1994, the anti-gun lobby pushed to ban “assault rifles” — the idea being, if they could get Americans used to the idea of banning guns hardly used in crime, based on their features (so that it they wouldn’t necessarily even be banning those rifles in their entirety), they’d be able to expand the ban to include more and more different types of guns.

              Well, it didn’t work: it just made pro-gun people angry, and it made a lot of people who sat on the fence (like Sebastian) sit up and take notice. Up to that point, the AR-15 was an obscure rifle that no one was really interested in — but a lot of Americans bought it out of spite — and continued to buy it, because they discovered that it’s actually a nifty little rifle.

              But the anti-gun lobby is undeterred. They are *still* looking for ways to destroy gun culture, and for ways to ban guns. They look forward to gun massacres, because they think they can gin up support for new gun laws (never minding that every law they support would have little to no effect on the events they say they are trying to prevent, or on crime in general — the proposals only affect the law-abiding).

              “Slippery slope” is not a fallacy if there’s a clear path from point A to point B, particularly if there’s an active contingent working diligently to push the stone down the hill. “Slippery slope” is also only a fallacy if there’s a clear barrier to getting to point B — and with the elimination of gun rights, there’s no clear point where the number of gun deaths is acceptable, and there’s no more need for removing guns from the hands of peaceable citizens.

              1. I’m in the process of reading Eugene Volokh’s paper about slippery slopes. One thing that caught my attention: the assumption that “Policy A” leading to “Policy B” is a good one.

                Where “Policy A” is “Banning assault rifles”, I’m not even convinced it’s a good one. How would banning barrel shrouds, pistol grips, flash suppressors, and bayonet lugs on rifles keep the rifle from being used in a crime? When was the last time a mass murder event at a school was done with bayonets? When was the last gang bayonet charge? (My guess is that it happened in Chicago…)

                Combine this with the blatantly stated goal that the purpose of the ban is to get Americans used to gun bans in general, and it becomes very unappealing to gun rights advocates.

      2. Really good summation of the problem!

        The media has done a poor job of communicating this of course. Most people don’t realize that gun crime per capita has gone down in the last 20 years, nor that overall crime per capita has also gone down.

        And of course, they see these shootings in places they go, or their family and friends go, and demand solutions. I don’t blame them, but an emotion argument isn’t going to get a good solution.

  5. You can never make a deal with the Left on guns or anything else because they never honor their commitments and always treat any gains as the stepping stone for their next proposal. We will never be safe in the same country with people like the troll above.

    1. The fundamental issue is the nature of politics. You can’t ever easily guarantee a lasting compromise. Even with court protections, you can’t just rest on your laurels. See the abortion debate for an example. I can tell you individually where I’d find better things to do with my time. But that’s not going to stop other people from pushing.

      The problem is that we have many examples of what happens when states manage to pass laws that have the effect of reducing levels of gun ownership and number of gun owners. Those states get worse over time, because they’ve successfully destroyed the political constituency that supports gun rights.

      1. Regarding the Court issue, we in the 2nd Amendment/Gun Owner Community have ourselves to blame for the current situation we are in, particularly how we celebrated the Heller and McDonald Decisions, believing that the anti-gunners would give up. That attitude gave us 8 years of Maobama, and 6 years of a Democrat Party controlled Senate to pack the Lower-Courts with leftwing activist, subversive judges whom have been hollowing out the Heller and McDonald Decisions ever since.

        Also, Justice Scalia did the typical Republican thing of “comprising” with the Left; he wrote in his Majority Opinion of the Heller Ruling that “reasonable” gun regulations like banning “dangerous and unusual weapons” was Constitutional. That means when a crackpot communist Democrat like Elizabeth Warren calls your “hunting rifle” a “sniper rifle” or your pump-action shotgun a “room/street sweeper”, they’ll cite them as “dangerous and unusual” weapons, so a crackpot communist Democrat Judge can uphold those bans as “acts of public safety, keeping weapons of war of the streets”.

        Trump has been phenomenal in appointing very Conservative Judges (his SCOTUS Nominee List are all judges whom ruled against Assault Weapons Bans on lower Courts), whom are the types to throw out and stomp out Assault Weapons Bans. I hate to be cruel, but I’m hoping that Justices Ginsburg and Breyer keel-over soon, preferably before 2020, so Trump can flip those seats. Also, I’d live it if Kennedy retired this summer, because he’s a traitor to the Country if he doesn’t, and we need to at least ensure that the GOP retains the US Senate Majority so Trump can flip 3 to 4 of the lower Federal Appeals Courts that have openings to be ideologically flipped back to the Conservative side.

      2. The Constitution was supposed to be a lasting compromise but the left doesn’t honor it.

  6. You can no longer allow them to keep chipping away at our civil rights. Take a stand with bump stocks because your ar15’s are next.

    Please take action on the bump stock ban- The BATFE cannot publish / add a new ruling without responding to all comments pertaining to that ruling. Everyone should comment to the ATF –

    https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=ATF-2018-0002-0001

    The previously proposed ruling to ban “green tip” ammo had little more than 80,000 comments and the ATF gave up.

    Go to the website and read the proposed rule, they will be able to ban anything in the future that previously was legal without compensation.

    Remember these were sold a legal accessories for years, and formal legal rulings were issued on numerous designs by the ATF that these were in fact legal accessories.The manufacturers and buyers were given a written declaration that these items were in fact legal and complied with the law and that they did not require any form of serialization or background check – legally they were nothing more than a piece of plastic.

    Now they are going to retroactively declare owners of this plastic a felon and if you refuse to turn in your device they will arrest you, possibly shoot you and imprison you for no less than 10 years per offense. after having told you that it was completely lawful to own, possess and sell without any restrictions.

    This decision ” will not ” and “does not” limit itself to just “bump stocks”

    You can comment more than once, pick out a proposed rule section and comment on it, then go back another day and comment on another section. you can just comment that you disagree with it. . You can keep commenting thru June 27th, 2018

    Happy commenting

    1. Either the NRA was in on it or was just plain stupid on strategy. Like the line from Casino…

  7. London murder rate is now worse than New York. And they have everything AND knife laws that outlaw the pocket knife my kids carry camping.

    But its not enough!

    1. The UK is a powder-keg. I’ve been following alternative media regarding the social tensions going on over there pertaining to the Immigration Issue.

      Outside of London, Britain has pretty much had it with mass-Islamic immigration into their Country.

  8. What this “Random-tech-worker-dude” doesn’t know about (most people don’t) is that the Supreme Court has ruled NUMEROUS times the police/government have NO responsibility to protect ANYONE from attack. ANYWHERE. That is why we have the 2nd Amendment, to assure that we retain the ability to protect OURSELVES, and to restrain tyranny of government. YOU are responsible for your OWN PROTECTION. Don’t give up the tools needed for the job. DON’T TRY TO TAKE MINE! You won’t like the results… Demanding that the police confiscate guns so we are all equally unprotected is just going to get you lumped in with the .gov goons. Grow a pair, and stop demanding someone else do YOUR job.

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