I found a disproportionate number of right wing yahoos in the archery community, too, but it’s definitely less noticeable in the WA Recurve shooters, maybe because they have to spend so much time practicing to stay competitive? Dunno.
I’d note that there are also lots of idiots at archery ranges, sometimes carelessly pointing a bow at full draw in the direction of people, but at least with archery you can tell at a distance the bow is both loaded and ready to loose, plus they only get one shot at a time. So it feels safer than when pistols, or even crossbows, are involved since those are much easier to carelessly point fully cocked in any direction since they don’t have to be actively held at full draw.
Ownership of a gun may not make you more likely to want to kill someone. But out of the whole population, there is always a certain percentage of people who want to kill someone at the slightest provocation.
Someone did not get out of your way on the highway (when there’s no reason they should have). Someone glanced at your girl. Someone else has a girl you wish you could get. Someone is driving a Prius. Someone did not let you cut in line in front of them at the grocery line. The employee at the grocery store asked you to wear a mask. The fast food worker only put the number of pickles on your burger that you paid for. Other kids at the school or workplace do not give you the respect you think you deserve. And that’s before we get into politics or race relations.
All of these things cause certain people to want to kill someone. Usually, the person is unarmed, so all they do is glare around or maybe scream and yell for a bit, then go away. Those times when they do have a gun, horrible consequences ensue. And now we have people suggesting that we ought to arm all these powder-kegs? That is just batshit crazy.
So, we’ll never see a cop shoot anyone in texas ever again because “I think they had a gun” Right?
Having a gun is entirely legal there now, right?
So, when a cop says that he thought someone have a gun, what do we tell the cop? That’s right! We tell the cop it doesn’t fucking matter. If you can’t handle being a cop and not shooting people for having guns, then you’re not cut out to be a cop in texas.
How many people have been targeted, arrested, and charged/convicted of a crime for possession of weapon even though no other crime has been committed? How many more have been stopped and searched upon the suspicion of possession? (I can get you stats from NYC Stop and Frisk from the ACLU.)
Almost everyone here agrees the police in this country are over policing, and constantly targeting POC. Most everyone agrees the Justice system isn’t actually blind, and the system is stacked up against the poor and has unequal outcomes based on race. Most everyone agrees our laws have been crafted to help achieve this outcome.
So when a law that actually de-criminalizes the very act a lot of cops start fishing for in traffic stops and other encounters, it is met with resistance because - anyone who has a gun must be a “bad guy”? Or has the potential to become one?
I have to concede these scenarios exist. But there is also a level of escalation between yelling and punching before someone starts to use deadly force with a knife or firearm. Part of this feels like projection - because I hear this scenario by so many people, “What if someone gets so mad and lose their temper and they have a gun and shoots someone?”
I have to concede that I am sure does happen. But when I look at break downs from for homicides in large cities, at least for ones where the assailant is known, most of the time the person knew their attacker. Just a random out of the blue murder with a stranger due to a fight or what ever is pretty rare.
So while I agree that “guns in a situation increase the chance for violent outcomes.”, I disagree to what degree that problem is. Again, there are 20 other states with CC on the books now. People like that cop fin Florida from that TSA video the other day weren’t even aware of such laws.
This honestly reminds me of the people who will post links to rapes and murders by undocumented immigrants after I tell them that they actually have a lower crime rate than the citizen population within the US. Yeah, they are right, some of them hurt people. I am not going to say we need to crack down harder on the border because a small minority are criminals. It’s a fear based argument taking real and tragic events and framing it that it is a natural progression to more violence if we don’t lock things down.
I don’t think most gun laws on the books do that. Licensing schemes might help. I’ve said in the past I could live with more stringent licensing (as long as it doesn’t price poor people out of ownership). And obviously complete bans I have to concede would reduce some numbers, but then you punished everyone to try to control the few. And those few will continue to try to circumvent the law.
But almost everything you else you suggested is feel good fluff that won’t actually make anyone safer.
What would make people safer is root cause mitigation. But curing social ills that lead to most gun deaths is a significantly larger task that takes time to see results.
So wait, are you admitting that the possession of a weapon is a specious pretense here, but still arguing that making it legal would make a difference? If it’s a pretext being done to target POC, wouldn’t it instantly be replaced by some other pretext?
Getting shot only hurts when it’s by someone you don’t know, I guess.
What is the benefit of carrying a firearm?. You haven’t established that. We already know this law in particular will be applied in a biased way in Texas. That will get worse, not better, much like Stand Your Ground laws.
You claimed there was a benefit to concealed carry. What is it, and do you have any data or evidence to back it up?
Take that twisted and victim-blaming bullshit somewhere else. I’m not buying. It’s offensive and disgusting. If that’s how low you have to stoop, there’s no point engaging with you at all.
Oh but if some one you know gets angry and shoots you then it’s your fault and that doesn’t count. We can only think about gun violence from strangers as significant.
i, for one, am not trying to debate you. im trying to point out how you are wrong - both for your sake and for others who are reading these threads.
there’s more than enough evidence to show we need to do this “fluff”. all i or anyone can do is point this stuff out. ultimately, you’re the only one who can take that in, digest it, honestly think about it, and decide to change your mind.
debate isn’t part of that process. it’s a protection mechanism to parry those ideas away so they can’t take root.
america has a serious gun problem. full stop. things have to change. i hope at some point you let the facts of the situation sink in and come to support that change.
These laws that are supposedly meant to “protect” the second amendment are ultimately unnecessary and aimed only at riling up the base who seem to really believe that Black people and liberals are out to get them. That’s it.
yeah, that’s definitely the larger ( and more on topic ) analysis.
holding power in the texas legislature means holding the keys to national voting ( not to mention the texas economy )
beyond biden winning nationally, beto and biden did way better in texas than they expected i think. and these recent bills are them trying to hold on for dear life. hyper targeted on a very small slice of voters
Probably. But just like with drug decriminalization, people aren’t going to jail for mere possession. Searching/stopping/pulling over someone because they are “suspicious” will continue to happen unless that now longer becomes something they are allowed to do. But with decriminalization, if someone is found with a weapon or drugs, and not committing some other crime, they aren’t going to jail. That is the difference.
The point is I wouldn’t take relatively rare events as a reason for tougher laws/more crack downs.
You will have to ask the people who were caught carrying what was previously illegal why they do so. Most likely the reason is for self defense. Most people who went to get a license either did so as a point to exercise rights, and/or for self defense. The possibility of agency if something goes wrong is the benefit.
I said: “But I am generally of the mind that those exceptions I can live with, because of how the vast majority of people benefit from the right or privilege.” I wasn’t referring the benefit of carrying, but the benefit of the right/ability to do so. Even if there is no benefit from carrying, the benefit from the right or having carrying decriminalized exists. The benefit to not have the law used as a way to strip your civil liberties and incarcerate you for possession and used as an excuse to police.
So as I said in the first post on this thread, great, let’s add drug decriminalization to it. Aside from maybe some aspects of cannabis, there aren’t a lot of actual benefits of illicit drug use. That doesn’t mean I don’t think drug use and possession shouldn’t be decriminalized. Cracking down on people carrying drugs has done nothing to solve drug use or abuse or related crime. It has just been a reason for more and more authoritarian actions.
Christ. I just have to give up on analogies, because people refuse to see any similarities.
Fine.
I understand the want to “do something” to reduce deaths. I am telling you that from your list above, “supporting licensing, insurance, restriction of rapid fire guns and gun technology, capacity limits, where and how guns may be kept, etc.” possibly licensing would help curb straw purchases, and safe storage might reduce accidents. The rest of it will have little to no change on the ability to commit most gun crimes, nor address the root cause of gun deaths. Unless the restrictions you mention mean banning huge categories of guns where you have basically only single shot firearms left. (Something I have been told most people don’t want to do - “No one wants to ban your guns.”) Then I concede that would have some affect.
This isn’t isn’t poo-pooing your position out of hand, though I am sure it feels that way. It is because I can address each suggestion and tell you why most gun deaths wouldn’t be affected.
For all of the examples of scenarios gone wrong people have given me, why is a scenario where people aren’t harassed and arrested not of the ones thought of? Of course it won’t END it, but it will end the LEGAL pretense of it.
According to Rob’s commentary, some cops are “uneasy” about this. Gee, I wonder why? It’s not like between that and if they pass their weed decriminalization bill they just passed in the Texas House they will have just removed two of the main things cops are constantly on a hunt for and use as a reason to harass people.
It really depends on what you shoot. Olympic style recurve? Relatively few. Compound target, more, but still not that bad. Compound/hunting… well…
And the dangerous yahoos really depend on the range you go to. There’s an outdoor public range near me that you couldn’t pay me to go to because there’s no range supervision, and the people can do some really dumb stuff. The place I shoot now is pretty tightly controlled either by staff, or the other people there, so I rarely see anything questionable.
They are more likely to be killed by their own gun than be “saved” by it.
No, just the insulting, offensive ones.
You really do have that one backwards. They don’t stop people, usually POC, because they might have guns or drugs. They stop them because they are POC. If they don’t have drugs or guns to stop them for, they’ll stop them on suspicion of plutonium. Or something else that’s illegal in Texas.
as i said. it’s not a debate. these things have worked elsewhere. we’re not magic. they’ll work here too.
fwiw. i do believe in changing america’s culture too. it is a longer haul, but yes it will have even deeper effects. ironically? one intrinsic part of that is enacting new protections like those ive already citied.
adopting them would show our society’s willingness to accept responsibility for our gun violence. it would show it to ourselves. being against new gun laws shows we’re still not ready to accept that responsibility. it telegraphs gun violence is a-okay.
we need to make that step now. change culture by changing law. things clearly aren’t going to get better without it.
Surely safe storage requirements would also reduce theft of guns, which AIUI is one of the more common sources for firearms used in crime.
On checking the data, while only 6.5% of prisoners who possessed a firearm while committing their crime had stolen it themselves, the most common single source for firearms used in crime was “Off the street/underground market” which includes people selling guns that they stole.
In the UK, which has strict safe storage requirements (guns must be locked in a safe when not in use, and other members of your household who don’t have a gun licence aren’t supposed to know the combination or where the keys are kept), while I haven’t seen statistics, I don’t think theft from legitimate owners is a common source of guns used in crime. The exception which proves the rule is “grey guns”- old service or war trophy weapons brought back by WW2 veterans (when such things weren’t really regulated), stored under a bed and forgotten about.
I don’t have it backwards. I know they stop them because they are POC. And if they have drugs or guns on them or what ever is illegal - aha! now they have justification for their stop, and can proceed with arrests and charges.
Removing all of these prohibitions - set up in the first place as a reason to police people - then even though they can continue to harass and stop people, they lack the ability to arrest and charge for those things. Maybe they will come up with other bullshit reasons - disturbing the peace, or what ever. But the pretense is gone, and their ability to arrest is gone for those infractions. I call that a win for anti-authority. It is the same reason why people are pushing for drug possession decriminalization. YMMV.
I disagree. Changing laws doesn’t change culture. Laws can change due to culture change. Did drug laws destroy “drug” or “hippie” culture? Nope. Did prohibition stop people drinking or change their habits? Nope. Possibly made it worse and people started drinking hard booze vs beer and wine. Are these new voter laws a reflection of culture change, or actions of a party desperate to stay in power by rigging the system? Etc.
And I agree we need a cultural change. That change is to acknowledge America’s deep systemic racism roots and how it has royally fucked millions of people and lead to the social economic problems we see today. It needs to acknowledge that our social safety nets are full of holes and way too easy for someone to slip into inescapable poverty due to a few bad things happening in a row they can’t recover from. It needs to realize nobody can fucking pay for any sort of meaningful healthcare. We are too broke to get mental healthcare when we need it - and a social stigma that we are somehow broken and weak if we do need it. Finally we need to take violence against women seriously with a safe house program for women and children to flee to and begin a process to live on their own away from abusive partners, and actually enforcing restraining orders.
Those things and more are the root cause mitigations that needs to take place.
First off, THANK YOU for linking this PDF. The last data I saw on this was a similar survey from like 1999. So glad they finally made a new report.
You’re right. Stolen firearms are a source of where criminals get their firearms. Even bigger is straw purchases, where a non-restricted person can buy a gun for them. Or people buy with the intent of reselling on the black market.
But yes, while I am not suggesting we victim blame people who are victims of theft, everyone should be vigilant with security and keep firearms secure. There are already programs in the community to keep firearms locked up (partly lead by safe manufacturers.)
Note too this shows how all the laws in the books don’t actually do much, only 7% are using the current system of checks and balances to obtain a firearm. So when people are like, “All sales, even private, need to go through and FFL and NICS check.” Do you think ANYONE who got their gun “obtained it off the street
or from the underground market” is now going to go, “Oh, wait, we have to go through a NICS check to complete this private transaction.” No, of course not. It is this “set up a fence and everyone as to stay withing the lines” mentality with gun laws, when people just hop the fence.
