this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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I don't EVER suggest no compromise. I don't EVER suggest that nothing should ever change (and I agree that is anti-progress). I suggest that ignoring a previous compromise is disingenuous. I say that it's valid to say 'we compromised last year, we're living the compromise today, why should I compromise again if I get nothing in return?' And I suggest we should focus on doing what we agree on, rather than fighting over what we don't.
So here's a compromise I (as a pro-gun person) would agree to.
You get universal background checks. Every permanent gun transfer between people requires one. Per existing law, these checks can never be used to build a database. The government must provide the check for free (right now it costs about $50 to do the check at a gun store). And there's an exemption for temporary transfers between known people, and transfers between family members (IE, I can lend my buddy a rifle for a hunting trip without 'transferring' it to him and then back to me), and father can pass guns down to son without paperwork).
In exchange, gun owners get national reciprocity. That means if they get a carry permit from their home state, that permit is valid in all other states, just like a drivers license. They must comply with all applicable laws of the state they visit, for example magazine size limits and where it's permissible to carry.
That IMHO is a real compromise. You get something, I get something. What you get has a few limits from what I want, what I get has a few limits from what you want.
What do you think? Would you take that?
So basically, your position is that you have to get something. The fact that a given piece of policy is designed to reduce crime and save lives and does you no harm isn't good enough, it ALSO need to materially benefit you specifically.
Sadly, we'll never be able to negotiate on terms like that. I view the field of policymaking as pointing towards a better future. You see it as a way to win at team sports. Good thing I am not a politician because that kind of compromising I view as heinous.
What you're proposing doesn't worry me at all. The guns already walk across state lines however they please. It would change nothing, saying a license in one state is valid in another -- so long as that license was honestly issued with training and care and the guns identifiable and registered. So sure, I'd take that deal, but you don't get to have that be the end of it because work still needs to be done.
Fortunately, there is a political party full of politicians willing to make those kinds of compromises for better policy. They're the Democrats. They'll compromise anything and everything to move an inch forward. So vote for them, they're who you want.
And this is the core of the pro/anti debate, right here.
I accept that gun control proposals are intended to reduce crime and save lives. I accept that anti-gun people generally have the best intentions, they want to save lives (I do too).
I (along with most pro-gun people) just don't believe that gun control laws will have a significant effect on reducing gun crime or overall making our society safer.
Also, let's talk about Democrats. I feel I have some authority to speak on this subject as I am personally registered as a Democrat, and I come from a very blue state (Connecticut). I identify as liberal-libertarian- I think the married gay couple should have AR15s to defend themselves, their adopted children, and their legal marijuana farm from criminals, secure in the knowledge that universal health care will be there for them if they get hurt. I suspect we'd agree on a great many ways the GOP is utterly failing our nation.
But one thing that infuriates me about the left these days is an inability to even consider the possibility that we are wrong about anything. There's the Left side, the Correct side, and the wrong side. And if you don't support most of the liberal agenda you're the so called deplorables and fuck you.
I'll give a perfect example- the AR-15 rifle. There's a big push to ban AR15s and similar rifles.
But consider FBI expanded homicide table 8. About 300-400 people each year are killed by rifles, that includes both 'assault' rifles and other rifles like hunting rifles.
To put that in perspective, about 300-350 people per year get struck by lightning. Getting struck by lightning is so rare we make jokes about it.
In comparison, every year about 800 people (mostly children) die from being tangled in their own bedsheets. And about 180,000 people per year in the US die of obesity-related issues.
So WHY are we burning tons of political capital and alienating all gun owners to ban something that is statistically not a serious threat to our society? If we put half that much effort into fighting obesity, we'd save 10x as many lives.
I am on the correct "side" of this. Because my position is that we should pursue solutions instead of refusing to do so. My position is we should study what works well elsewhere in the world and try to adapt those lessons here. My position is that we should make changes and observe results. And after we see results, roll things back or make further changes. That is the correct position.
And I'm also still correct about my original point: we already ban lots of categories of weapons as we judged to be too harmful. And very nearly no one considers that an unjust violation of rights. This more recent idea that no further boundaries should ever be tolerated no matter what is based on revisionism and sophistry.
"It might not work so we must do nothing" is and always has been a stupid position. One conservatives love to disingenuously invoke to resist any kind of progress. It's an argument backed up only by the idea that every single slope is too slippery to dare trod and so we're better off starving to death on top of the mountain.
You seem to think we're having a debate about what specific gun policies we should have. That's not the debate I'm here for. The debate I'm here for is that the entire pro-gun movement has allowed itself to be captured by no-compromise gun-nut lunatics.
And you very much have not convinced me you aren't one of them. You fall into their techniques and pitfalls multiple times here while trying to present reasonable and I think I've called you out on it every time. That pattern has repeated itself too much and I don't want any part of it anymore.
Now Lord give me strength to resist engaging with you on the zombie stat or "obesity-related issues".