🔫 Firearms: Everything you wanted to know (and the opportunity to ask if you don't)

[MikeTheBard]

@Otherbrother

I find that comment pretty damn condescending. I’m all for consulting with experts for well-written, technical legislation, but how much chemistry do you think a lawmaker needs to know before advocating for restrictions on the availability of dynamite?

Well, frankly, that’s what I’m talking about with the difference between broad versus narrow legislation:

A lawmaker doesn’t need to know much of anything to pass a good effective law that says “you need a license to purchase any explosive, except fireworks already defined in statute X”. That’s a simple guideline that anyone can write, and anyone can understand well enough to enforce.

They do, however, need a requisite amount of knowledge to pass a law that specifies how many grams of which compounds are to be classified as what type of explosive, and which type of fuse is or is not allowed to be used with each. Those are technical definitions and conditions- they can’t be written without technical knowledge, and they can be challenged by anyone with a greater knowledge than the lawmaker who wrote them. To write that type of law, yes, the lawmaker needs some knowledge of chemistry.

If someone comes out and says “I don’t think civilians should be allowed to own firearms at all”, I can respect that. If they want to require training, or licensing, or background checks, or mental health evaluations, that’s fine- I can get behind that, because everybody should be able to sit down and come to a consensus about what a background check is, regardless of whether they know a .22 from a bazooka. It’s when people start talking about rate of fire and magazine capacity out of context, or use the terms “semi-auto” and “machine gun” interchangeably, that I’m just like “no, no, you have no idea what you’re talking about and are just making shit worse”.

@Otherbrother

I want to hear the logic behind how you, personally, make that distinction.

I think that citizens should have the ability to pacify their government, not the other way around. There are two parts to that: Better armed, trained, and invested civilians (think the Swiss model), and a smaller, weaker standing military.

I was going to elaborate on that, but this has me seeing red and I’m not sure I can speak rationally. I don’t want to sound like I’m advocating shooting cops or open rebellion, but ask yourself what’s the difference between this:

and this:

In one of these situations, the police can do whatever they want and know they won’t face any repercussions. In the other one, they know that if they allow the situation to escalate, they may be among the casualties. In only one of those scenarios do they have any incentive to seek a peaceful solution.

Seriously- Go to that first link. That’s not police protection. That’s an occupying army. That’s happening right now on American soil.

I believe that you and I and anyone else should physically have the ability to make that not happen.