I think we’re back to this debate because TRUMP IS GONE!
This is why I keep talking about the long game. I think the view of gun control advocates in 2021 America is not unlike that of abolitionists in, say, 1840, or, yes, anti-abortion advocates in the late 20th century. Or suffragettes. There are some political movements which have to begin in earnest when all “sensible” people think they are unrealistic. I am perfectly prepared to view gun control in that light, and vote/advocate/agitate accordingly.
A key part of this process, incidentally, is for some people to stake out the extreme position and hang tough there. You need a William Lloyd Garrison to make an Abraham Lincoln feasible.
Granted, 2A is a very particular obstacle in this specific case, but I will not disregard the fact that current “common sense” take on 2A is largely the result of right wing/NRA propaganda and deliberate targeted political campaigns/lobbying, rather than any received wisdom shining down from the days of the Framers.
But members of Congress represent all of them.
I’m still looking for the common sense proposals that most gun owners would agree to. And the process for acting on them.
ShivaX
7506
Probably start at the top and work down?
But keep in mind that the GOP is owned by the gun lobby so anything past the halfway mark is going to get very unlikely (red flag law runs into some serious due process concerns as well imo, but it might be workable in some form). The second one has insanely high approval, so I’d start there with a relatively clean bill. Show that you’re not grabbing guns, you’re trying to fix problems in the system, that sort of thing.
I don’t have all the answers, by any means. I just know a lot of gun people and generally how they’ll react to shit. I’ve been spending the last 4 years convincing them that the Democrats aren’t gonna steal their AR-15 and some of them are now Democrats. But if you go after their AR-15 they’ll vote Republican in a heartbeat.
Houngan
7507
Closing the private sale loophole is pretty popular with most of the people I talk to about it. I think a subsidized storage requirement would be possible.
To be clear, the House passed a bill to close the gun show loophole and require background checks for all gun sales in 2019.
The bill passed with only 8 Republican votes, then died in the Republican controlled Senate.
This is an example where the Democrats properly targeted a popular, common-sense measure that (allegedly) gun owners support. And it’s dead on arrival.
ShivaX
7509
Yeah, Mitch left it in the hole he left all legislation in.
I mean, it might get filibustered, but then you can point and say “this is bullshit” and most gun owners will be on your side.
Here is the thing. Something like this is one of those “they should really do something about that” issues. Where you then never think about it again. It’s not a thing that’s gonna be a deciding factor for many people. Gun Show Loopholes aren’t Abortion for most people at the end of the day. But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep trying. It also doesn’t mean you Go Even Bigger because that’s definitely going to fail and you just gave political ammo to the other side for nothing other than posturing.
IMO YMMV (but seriously we can’t let the GOP get back into power right now)
They won’t be on my side in any practical way, though. They’ll mostly vote for Republicans and keep Mitch in charge and our common-sense consensus can just eff right off. So it’s really wrong to say that they’re agreeable to these common-sense proposals, since that agreement doesn’t turn into civic action to make it happen; instead, it turns into the opposite.
Taking the second paragraph first, I’m (until recently) an outsider with no cultural sympathy for the US attitude to guns and am perfectly content to see heavy regulation of them (my personal starting point would be a blanket ban on all self-loading weapons in private hands). But, I don’t see any plain language reading of the 2nd Amendment that interprets the first clause as anything more than an explanation or justification for the second clause. I know that’s not the only view, but it’s the view that is embedded in case law and precedent.
So, to your first paragraph, if you’re willing to buy into a commitment to a long game, not a quick fix, then the most productive - and most honest! - direction to take that would be a public campaign for a new constitutional amendment. Times have changed, and the second amendment is premised on a purpose which is no longer relevant. The defence of the nation does not depend on a militia, as the founders understood one - militias as understood in the 18th century do not exist in the modern US - and armed citizens are as likely to be trying to overthrow democracy as defend it. So if the first clause is out of date as a justification, then it’s time to abolish that 2nd clause.
This is not my understanding of the history of 2A interpretation, based on articles I have read, but I will concede my knowledge of that history is quite limited.
Put very crudely, if muskets are in but tactical nukes are out, everything in between seems to me negotiable.
To the second point… abolishing/replacing 2A seems like a long shot even to us ‘long game’ folks. But I suppose some folks out there could be staking that out, if only for Overton Window-shifting purposes.
Inevitable rejoinder “but it will make the right hate you even more” – I am done responding to this line of thinking, forever. Others can respond to it.
Law enforcement being able to track gun ownership is not the same as forensics analysis of a bullet. Do you think I don’t know that? I mean, I’m as left-coast liberal as they come on this issue, but I’m not that dumb.
Glad you asked! Because, yes, I do. Common sense legislation about gun ownership, no matter how stridently it’s opposed by gun nuts.
I understand the legal pitfalls created by the 2nd Amendment. And I’m okay with legislative and judicial challenges to it. They’re necessary, in fact. But you’re so eager to head off at the pass anything that could be construed as challenging the 2nd Amendment that you think it’s a “separate reality”.
And here we are accusing each other of alternate realities. Does that sound familiar? Guess which side you’re on. Because there’s no “separate reality” about mandatory insurance, registration, and legal limitations on gun ownership. There is only your weird perception that these things are impossible.
Yeah, this sort of shrugging is the worst possible reaction to the current situation. Unconscionable, really. It has been for some time.
It’s so weird to be disagreeing with people on P&R again, right?
If there’s one thing you should have learned in the last four years, it’s that you can’t implement policy based on whether it’s going to piss someone off. Because a certain bloc of voters – and folks “clinging bitterly to guns” is a significant subset of this bloc – is going to get pissed off no matter what you do. Whether it’s keeping guns from the mentally ill or outright snatching AR-15s from the hands of West Virginia toddlers, it’s all the same to them. You can’t let people’s absurd worldviews drive policy.
-Tom
Especially after this past year during which we’ve been given a clear look at how confused and perverse some of those views are on concepts like freedom or unity.
Unity means doing everything the Right wants even when the Right loses every branch of government. Dontcha know that?
Houngan
7516
Not a bad bill, though there are a few logistic problems with it as written. It’s gotten to the point where some (I can’t say if it’s few or many, but I’ve been refused by two in town) FFLs won’t even do transfers because they are swamped. I’d like to see some sort of government sponsored mechanism that would streamline the process, a website to do most of the paperwork, let the check start processing in the background, then you got to the local gun office and they rubber stamp it based on the result.
Edit: Actually I’m dumb, because then you would have a federal/centralized record of the transfer, and that’s a nuclear potato.
This is kind of beside the point, isn’t it? If the argument is that most gun owners support common sense measures like these — that this sort of thing is the possible middle ground — why does it get buried in the Senate?
Houngan
7518
Depends on the Senate? I don’t think anyone in this thread is going to try and figure out how to make a GOP majority act rationally.
Okay, but then what does it mean to say that Democrats should focus on these small measures that most gun owners support? If doing that won’t cause most gun owners to support and vote for Democrats, or at least force their Republican representatives to the table, why should Democrats do it as the ‘smart’ alternative to going bigger? Why is a narrowly defined bill that can’t possibly succeed better than a broad one that can’t possibly succeed, and what does it mean to say that gun owners support the former?
rowe33
7520
We need smart guns that can only hurt someone else holding a gun. Some sort of Westworld technology. Then all the gun nuts can kill other gun nuts and leave the rest of us the fuck alone.
Houngan
7521
Dunno, I’m not the one saying that. With control of the house, Senate, and executive they should start probing around for what they can and can’t get away with. I’d wager the Dems are pretty sensitive to overreach on the issue as well, only certain things will get the full 50 in the Senate.
You can’t pass a gun control bill in reconciliation. It’s not a budget matter. You’d need 60 votes.
