Useful Politico piece

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Some useful information in this piece from Politico
Politico Magazine said:
What Both Sides Don't Get About American Gun Culture
Amid the horrors of a mass shooting, it's easy to forget that guns are social glue—and gun control efforts that don't account for that will fail.


By AUSTIN SARAT and JONATHAN OBERT

August 04, 2019

Austin Sarat is Associate Provost and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence & Political Science. He is an editor (with Andrew Poe) of The Lives of Guns (Oxford University Press).

Jonathan Obert is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. He is an editor (with Andrew Poe) of The Lives of Guns (Oxford University Press).

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The two mass shootings this weekend have inflamed a gun-control debate that never seems to go away and never seems to get resolved.

In the span of less than 24 hours, El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, joined a morbid parade of American cities and towns—places such as Littleton, Colorado; Virginia Beach, Virginia; San Bernardino, California; Las Vegas; and Pittsburgh—as sites of tragic, mass shootings. In the not quite eight months of 2019, there have been seven such attacks. After each one, political leaders of all stripes send their thoughts and prayers to the families of the victims, and Democrats and Republicans offer radically different responses.


Democrats decry inaction on gun regulation. They blame the National Rifle Association and the gun lobby and claim, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put it Sunday morning, “The Republican Senate’s continued inaction dishonors our solemn duty to protect innocent men, women and children and end this epidemic once and for all.”

Republicans counter that gun laws aren't the problem and that mental illnesses lead to gun violence. In the immediate aftermath of mass killings, shooters frequently are branded social misfits. Thus people who know Patrick Crusius, the alleged perpetrator of the carnage in El Paso, described him as “quiet, antisocial and a bit ‘strange.’”

“Guns,” we are told, “don’t kill people. ... People kill people.”

High-mindedly, Americans see themselves as locked into a perpetual stalemate over the meaning and limits of the Constitution’s guarantee of a right to bear arms. Somewhat less high-mindedly, liberals see gun owners as captured by the NRA, and pro-gun conservatives feel anxious about the possibility of Washington bureaucrats stripping them of their capacity for self-defense.

But America's stalemate on guns runs deeper than that. It's also based on an important mistake that both sides make about guns themselves and their role in society.

The view of guns as neutral tools, a view shared by conservative defenders of gun rights as well as liberal advocates of gun regulation, misses a crucial fact about guns and gun ownership. It wrongly assumes that the distribution of guns and their presence in their owners' lives are a totally independent facts that don't shape the opportunities and choices of the people who use them.

But increasingly, research into the culture and political views of gun owners is painting a very different portrait. Gun owners' politics don't generally fall into lockstep with the NRA—but guns themselves are woven into people's lives in ways that go far beyond a tool. This suggests that the path to gun law reform won’t be as simple as liberals might hope or conservatives might fear.

One of the most authoritative and interesting surveys of the attitudes of gun owners was conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2017. That survey shows the vast majority of Americans who own guns are not members of the NRA and that most favor some form of gun control. However, most refrain from pushing for greater regulation of guns because they neither trust the government nor believe that it will protect them. They often resent the disdain for their way of life of the kind expressed by President Barack Obama when he suggested they “cling to guns or religion” as a way of expressing “antipathy to people who aren't like them … as a way to explain their frustrations." They see themselves as on their own in a dangerous world.

The sale, manufacture, distribution, purchase and production of guns, as well as the views of their owners, are, in part, responses to the perceived weakness of the government and the perceived need for constant vigilance and a concomitant interpersonal fear. As dangerous weapons, guns offer a form of direct power in a world where trust and civic belonging are in short supply. The Pew poll reported that 67 percent of gun owners said protection is a major reason they own a gun; 38 percent cited hunting, 30 percent listed sport shooting, and 13 percent listed gun collecting as major reasons.

But culturally, guns aren't just a reaction to anxieties. In a way gun control advocates rarely consider, but gun owners may find obvious, they're a meaningful social asset for their owners. In a fragmented society, guns connect people at a time when making connections is ever more difficult.

In part because of their danger and allure and in part because they're the center of a sporting culture with deep American roots, guns draw adherents together in contexts like expos, gun ranges, and online chatrooms. At the recreational level, participants can indulge in hobbyist debate and discussion; on a political and cultural level, they can also forge a shared commitment to armed citizenship.
 

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It's interesting but IMHO most of it does not apply to me personally. I do value my guns for hunting but the article underplayed the enjoyment of shooting (E.G. target shooting). I personally am a long time martial artist and I view my handguns in particular as part of my weapons collection, similar to swords, that I want to train and be proficient with.

It looks like a 'shot in the dark' by a survey wonk that themselves do not understand gun ownership.

I do however, agree with the gist of the article that both sides do not understand one another and also I do not see any avenue of compromise with the other side on this topic and that this stems, in part, from a lack of trust. The other part of that is that I think we have already gone too far with respect to firearms related regulation (E.G. suppressors, national reciprocity, etc).

Politico itself is a source I would not trust.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politico

I think this portion of the article shows the influence of the mainstream media:

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repeated later in the survey:

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further in we get to this:

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And then we have some definitions that are left out of this otherwise excruciatingly detailed survey:

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However, other sources show doubt on what can be defined as mentally ill with respect to gun ownership:

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https://www.npr.org/2017/02/02/5131...ma-rule-restricting-gun-sales-to-mentally-ill

AND

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https://www.disabledveterans.org/2016/02/22/veterans-fear-va-gun-rights-policy/

With regard to the no-fly list, that is an administrative process which is under the executive branch. If that will be used to restrict 2A rights then IMHO it must be a judicial process.

And back to the OP:

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It's interesting but IMHO most of it does not apply to me personally. I do value my guns for hunting but the article underplayed the enjoyment of shooting (E.G. target shooting)......

I do however, agree with the gist of the article that both sides do not understand one another and also I do not see any avenue of compromise with the other side on this topic and that this stems, in part, from a lack of trust.

Well I'm surprised, but the author essentially has me pegged. I sometimes, in my weakness, think that some form of gun control would be good, but because I don't trust the government and politicians, I would never suggest it out loud, nor would I ever support it. I've no use for bump stocks, but I opposed their ban simply because liberals will take advantage of this precedent and exploit the chink in the armor.

I do understand the other side. These folks implicitly trust the government and disguise their real goal which is total civilian disarmament for the sake of absolute governmental control of the populous.
 
Well according to Gallup consistently 1% of Americans think that guns are the most important problem.
The way Gallup does their polling that 1% is probably rounded up.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx

This is why the dems lost in 2016 and will probably lose again in 2020. The dems focus on stuff near the bottom of that list from like 2010 to 2016, trump tacked the top of the list.
If you watched the debates the dems are promising to go right back to the bottom of the list for most things, aside from immigration and healthcare. which they all promised open boarders aside from biden. That's a non wining strategy because it appears that at least 3/4 of Americans are not in favor of open boarders.
And on healthcare they promise universal health care that most people don't want or don't want to pay for.
 
Well I'm surprised, but the author essentially has me pegged. I sometimes, in my weakness, think that some form of gun control would be good, but because I don't trust the government and politicians, I would never suggest it out loud, nor would I ever support it. I've no use for bump stocks, but I opposed their ban simply because liberals will take advantage of this precedent and exploit the chink in the armor.

I do understand the other side. These folks implicitly trust the government and disguise their real goal which is total civilian disarmament for the sake of absolute governmental control of the populous.
Got plety of gun control. Enforce the laws we have now before making more.
 
I do understand the other side. These folks implicitly trust the government and disguise their real goal which is total civilian disarmament for the sake of absolute governmental control of the populous.

Yeppers, I understand them too I comment on their predecessors in my signature line.
 
Hilariously, even the authors (whose hearts are largely in the right place) lump "semi-automatic weapons" in with the stuff that is the acceptable, this-far-no-further step. It's amazing how pervasive the misunderstanding is on this point. I reckon 85% of the public, and probably at least half of the people who publish stuff about gun control, have no idea that every cop carries a semi-automatic gun in his/her holster. That semi-automatic pistols have been ubiquitous since the turn of the last century. That semi-auto rifles and shotguns didn't follow far behind in terms of popular adoption.

But the authors are onto something about the role of guns in gun-people's lives. One of the best parts of my life is shooting USPSA matches with my friends. That activity has connected me with many, many people of nearly every age, ethnicity, education and socioeconomic level, sexual orientation, etc. It has supplied the greatest influx of diversity to my social connections of anything since I left the public schools.

When people say they want to take away semi-automatic guns, they are telling me they want to take away a lot of my friendships. I do not like that.
 
I reckon 85% of the public, and probably at least half of the people who publish stuff about gun control, have no idea that every cop carries a semi-automatic gun in his/her holster.
Semiautomatic rifles with removable large-capacity magazines are in a category by themselves. Such guns are as effective (arguably, more effective) as machine guns. Let's be honest about this. But my personal view is that their effectiveness is the very reason civilians should have them. This puts the population on an equal footing with the authorities -- which is the reason why we have the 2nd Amendment in the first place. The possibility that such guns can be misused is a price we pay for freedom. The great fallacy is that life can be lived 100% free from danger.
 
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Alex', I don't think there is any reason to think that homicide rates would budge an inch if we banned semi-auto rifles. I don't think we must, much less should, concede that there is some tradeoff between the particular freedom of owning a "military style" semi-auto rifle and actual safety. There are simply too many substitute goods (arson, truck attacks to name two relatively recent examples in other countries) if the intent is simply to kill a lot of people indiscriminately and without concern for escaping detection/apprehension/conviction.

Let me assure you that we'd lose 85/15 among the general populace if the question were posed about whether the existence or number of mass murders were worth trading off for some additional civilian capacity to resist a tyrannical government. You may think that trade is worth making, but the VAST majority of people don't. It's a good thing we don't need to win that argument because, as I said above, it's silly to think we could move the needle on number of homicides by banning a subset of guns. We could perhaps change some of the deaths from death-by-penetrative-trauma to death-by-immolation or death-by-crushing-trauma.
 
I don't think there is any reason to think that homicide rates would budge an inch if we banned semi-auto rifles.

The FBI Uniform Crime Report shows that if you banned all rifles that the homicide rate would NOT "budge an inch" because rifles are used in fewer homicides than hands and feet or clubs or knives.
 
Alex', I don't think there is any reason to think that homicide rates would budge an inch if we banned semi-auto rifles. I don't think we must, much less should, concede that there is some tradeoff between the particular freedom of owning a "military style" semi-auto rifle and actual safety. There are simply too many substitute goods (arson, truck attacks to name two relatively recent examples in other countries) if the intent is simply to kill a lot of people indiscriminately and without concern for escaping detection/apprehension/conviction.
I agree completely that murder rates would not budge if we banned semiauto rifles. Heck, they wouldn't budge if we banned all guns. The reason is that banning something is not the same as actually removing it from society. There are just too many guns in the U.S. to effectively ban. There will always be more than enough to satisfy all the criminal needs. The criminals won't even have to go to the alternate means you suggest.

On the other hand, the crime rate in general would go up if we attempted to ban guns. That's because millions of hitherto law-abiding people would be instantly turned into felons, and some percentage of these newly-minted felons might just decide that if they're to be labeled felons, they might as well act like felons. That's exactly why the crime rate increased under Prohibition.
Let me assure you that we'd lose 85/15 among the general populace if the question were posed about whether the existence or number of mass murders were worth trading off for some additional civilian capacity to resist a tyrannical government.
So we don't pose the question in that way. It's the unspoken truth, however. Liberty trumps safety, or you end up in the concentration camps.
 
Right, and there are plenty of good substitutes.

How hard would it be for a minivan to be loaded up with several 5-gallon cans of gasoline as well as several 20 lb. bottles of propane? When crashed into whatever, sparks ignite the gasoline which then ignites the propane.
Childishly simple.
 
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