Yeah, the gun control battle is lost. There’s no hope of that changing. Maybe in 50 years after these current generations die out and society finally tires of all the bloodletting. But there’s no way that’s happening now.
I’m all for ideas that don’t touch gun control. Maybe there’s a different approach out there.
You could probably do the same thing the NRA did but in reverse, work on having gun ownership be considered wrong by the culture at large, where having a large gun collection is not a funny anecdote but a marker of being weird, someone who is probably best to avoid. Where shooting a gun isn’t a regular thing but something very few people consider as a normal thing for someone to do in their life.
Do this for long enough and maybe it can change. The NRA did it the other way around, so, it could work.
That is likely the approach that has to be taken to make any gun legislation palatable. Attitudes towards drunk driving have been changed over time. Perhaps it is possible with gun ownership.
KevinC
7586
Seems like this side effect of mass shootings is another perverse incentive for the gun lobby to halt any legislation on gun control.
Even being raised by a NRA gun nut I’ll never understand the fetishizing of firearms. They’re a tool and for a lot of people I understand why they want that tool, but wrapping their identity around them is just bizarre. To me it’s like basing your identity around a shovel. I just… don’t get it.
In theory, yeah. The thing is though that the culture of guns has a long history that rests on a combination of historical need for weapons, the association of being armed with being free, and the correlations between guns and masculinity. Reversing that requires addressing how Americans understand what it means to be a citizen, what it means to be free, and for a large chunk of the population, what it means to be a man.
Menzo
7588
I also think that the radicalization of Republicans means that MAAD’s campaign against drunk driving would not work today. In the 80s there were still Republicans with shame, so they wouldn’t dare speak against a coalition of moms.
Today that’s not the case, and there’d be a concerted effort to discredit the organization and the people in it, simply because it’d be viewed as progressivism.
ShivaX
7589
Stonekettle from Twitter has an idea along those lines. Basically it’s enforce the NRA’s gun rules as law.
No incident with a gun is an accident. I’ll try to hunt it up, it’s actually a pretty solid idea.
Edit: He wrote it back in 2015, but of course nothing has changed.
Maybe we can install a “Days Without A Mass Shooting: X” sign in every airport hallway where people come out of customs.
Yeah, the threatening douche with the AR is going to get thrown in prison pending trial. And your fucking sick kid ain’t getting to Italy.
Nesrie
7593
Pretty sure it’s not going to be the government that tells him he can’t put his son on a privately owned plane. I mean the guy must be losing sleep over the fact that that private companies can add someone to a No Fly list. Those airlines might want to take down this guy’s name.
I don’t buy that getting rid of the gun show loophole and extending the time for the FBI to complete a background check (to figure out if people are planning violence/are nuts) is “overturning the Second Amendment!!1”
Hell, at least for anything with more than a 6 round magazine, FFS.
It’s the gun lobby’s job to treat every tiny incremental regulation as an existential threat to gun ownership while simultaneously pushing for open carry in state legislatures across the country.
Everybody knows this, apparently gun control is a dead letter anyway, yay America!
CNN has a story about how the conservative justices on the Court are looking for a way to expand 2nd Amendment rights, not restrict them.
Hard to understand how they can be further expanded. All military weapons fair game? Nuclear weapons legal?
antlers
7598
I don’t see why Amazon shouldn’t have an independent nuclear deterrent capability.
ShivaX
7599
Constitutional Carry RPGs.
Menzo
7600
Look what happens to gun sales when they do it. The NRA isn’t about protecting individual rights - it’s about creating enough fear in white people that they go buy more guns.
RichVR
7601
Allowing the purchase of full auto weapons?
Hell, who didn’t shoot targets with a .22 rifle at some point as a kid. I know I did (not here in the city, but at my late grandma’s place in the country). I understand that some people (particularly in rural areas) need them for critter control/self and property defense, and that some people in (sub)urban areas want them for self/property-defense. But a weapon that can punch a hole in a soldier’s helmet a mile away? and one that (to boot) can have a 20+ round magazine or something? And that’s totes OK and shouldn’t come under more scrutiny/slight delay because “muh gunz!!!” and the fact that it’s only semi-auto? Fuck that.
