Look, just because you love your hobby more than other people’s lives, it doesn’t mean you can piss on us and say it’s raining. Laws restricting gun sales, possession, and carry work - full stop. They’ve worked globally and even the weak-sauce ones that have managed to get past the NRA bribe-gauntlet in the US have worked. That’s hard data. You can’t just assert that you can disprove reality and claim you’re right.
Spinning it as an issue of race is not just backwards, it’s insulting. Claiming gun owners are the victims of gun violence is, too.
Insulting? The first gun control laws and many more afterwards were a direct response to minorities owning guns. It was the reason for The Mulford act in California passed and signed by Reagan in 1967, which BB members love to point out was supported by the NRA at the time. It was the reason Bush signed executive orders for import bans for the then cheaper AK style rifles and other “non sporting” rifles is because rappers were posing with them and some were found used in “gang crimes”.
I’ve heard black gun rights activist make statements like, “Who do you think they are going to be the first to come down hard on with new gun laws? Us.”
I’m not saying everyone wanting more gun control are doing so for racial reasons. Most aren’t. I am saying that historically that has been the case for the reasons for many of the law. And I am saying that gun laws, just like drug laws, are used as a ways and means to over police. When I get pulled over I am not asked about guns and drugs in the car.
That attitude seems to be a popular one, huh? I don’t understand it at all. There are some hobbies I really love, but if one of them turned out to be even likely killing people, of course I would accept restrictions on it, and if that wasn’t enough sadly even give it up.
Nor is that a hypothetical at this point. Everything I enjoy that involves other people in person has been a health risk this last year, and instead of going all anti-lockdown, we have all either moved online or shelved them. Because lives come first. Why is this one hobby so much more important to people?
That’s one giant, stinky red herring. Gun rights in the US is not about protecting POC.
Among OECD countries, the US has 50% of the population and 82% of gun deaths, 90% of women killed by guns, and 91% of children under 14. POC have almost double the risk of dying from a firearm compared to Whites.
You should read/listen to statements from various minority gun rights groups, because they seem to think their rights are important as is self defense.
As I have slid further and further left from centrism on issues, partially thanks to my time on BB, and gone from giving cops the benefit of the doubt, to seeing them as basically armed thugs who can act with impunity - it has become clear that any power we give them is just abused and used to make things worse. Fighting crime with crackdowns hasn’t actually fixed any problems, it just puts more people in jail, which creates more, different problems. Removing the number of things they put people in jail for is a good thing, IMO.
Just because the Texas legislature didn’t have this in mind, doesn’t change the fact that it is one less thing police can charge people while on fishing expeditions. If the Democratic party had put this bill up as a means of decriminalizing weapons possession, they may well have voted against it.
Have a good 3 day weekend. Hope you catch some fish.
I don’t recall the NRA getting particularly flustered after Philando Castille was killed for having a legal gun in his car, or after E.J. Bradford Jr. was killed for being the “good guy with a gun” at a mall shooting, or after John Crawford III was killed for holding a BB gun for sale at a Walmart.
The fact of the matter is that the organizations in the United States that lobby hardest for expanding gun rights are usually much more concerned about protecting white people from People of Color than the other way around.
Oh look at this. Here’s another one. Just one city’s news feed is enough to puke. And this one was a stranger too. And a pregnant woman to boot. Shot inside a car by a 15 year old on a shooting spree because… reasons?
But by all means let’s hear the shitty excuses and pathetic apologetics again. Guns good. Kill by gun good! Less people moar guns! “Guns make free” in steel above the highways.
