This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Obviously, I'm not a gun guy but this seems eminently reasonable to me, is this particularly onerous? Does it allow for a business to put up a sign saying "guns welcome" that serves as a blanket permission? Just speaking for myself, I would be outraged if someone carried a gun into my house without notifying me, like if I saw that my plumber was carrying a gun I would be angered by this and would definitely favor a law of this sort.
Edit: I'm not speaking to the constitutional legality of any of this, just my own preferences
The text of the law is here. I don’t carry, but I still find it onerous.
It creates a bubble of misdemeanors around any private property unless the owner adds ”clear and conspicuous signage” at the entrance. How many people are going to go to the trouble of affixing a scarlet letter?
More options
Context Copy link
Yes. This statute might look reasonable from first glance, but it's extremely broad and very difficult to actually comply with it short of not carrying anywhere.
Private property is really broad, as it was used in this statute; it doesn't just mean houses or even businesses closed to the public, but businesses generally open to the public, lawns, outdoor areas of strip malls, even some sidewalks and roads. This is worse than average in Hawaii because of its generally anti-fence culture (for similar reasons as the open/closed range stuff in the Southwest), but even parts of the country with clearer deliminations would leave it really hard to tell where property lines start and stop without a deep survey dive for every single location you were visiting or even passing through. It wasn't until fairly late in oral arguments at appeal that the state claimed it wouldn't apply to all parking lots, and then only to exclude large parking lots, and only so far as you trust their nonbinding claims.
Even where the line for a specific private property is known, it's not always clear who could give permission. Even for the standard example of "I'm already CCWing, but I need to pick up some eggs and milk on the way home", if you want to run by a WalMart, what happens? Do you have to park outside of the WalMart's property line, lock your gun, go into the store, track down a manager, and then can they give you permission? Can you call ahead, even if the agent you'd get on the line near-certainly won't be at that specific store? For more complicated ownership situations, it might not even be clear to the people on the ground who could give permission: if you're visiting a friend in an apartment building, is it enough if they're okay with you CCWing, or do you need to call the property manager? If you're a tenant, do you need explicit permission to go through a public area on the way to your own apartment? Does this change whether the shared walkspaces are indoors or outdoors? If you're going through a strip mall, is it enough that you're going to a pro-carry gun store, do you have to call up whoever owns the strip mall, or do you need permission from every tenant?
((And then there's the social side of things. Antigun groups have routinely coordinated dox and protest campaigns against pro-gun establishments in anti-gun states, they've openly called for pro-carry businesses to face ruinously higher insurance premiums, and they've recently called out for civil plaintiffs so they can support lawfare against pro-carry businesses regardless of what connection any real or perceived harms had to the permit policies.))
California's version only recognizes permission through a posted sign (of a specific size yada yada), which seems to be part of why it was too much for even the Ninth Circuit (though in turn it also only applied to private businesses open to the public). Hawaii's allows wider breadths of affirmative consent, though there's a lot of legal questions about oral consent that never really got answered.
There's policy versions that focus on private homes or houses that's more reasonable, even if it might still raise constitutional questions if anyone could get standing/redressability, to an extent I wouldn't expect the groups like SAF to be willing to put the effort into a challenge. But this isn't that law, or even close to it.
(re: constitutional questions, by contrast, the same Ninth Circuit has held that blocking door-to-door salesman except where homes have "Solicitors Welcome" sign up was unconstitutional (Project 80s v. Poctello). And that law was much more restrained.)
This is rumored to be behind the sheer number of not legally binding no-guns signs; Texas standards require English and Spanish of minimum size and specific verbiage, specific locations, etc etc. A simple ‘no guns’ sign doesn’t suffice and actual licensed concealed carriers know it- but constitutional carriers often do not. One group is not like the other.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The CCW permitee objections to this is (at least) two-fold, one being related to pratical carrying, and the other to the environment that these regulations live in.
First, the practical consideration: If you as a gun owner want to be able to carry your gun outside your home, prior to these laws being passed, the presumption is that you can carry except where forbidden by law, or where prohibited by posted signage. If the default presumption is that carrying is allowed, you can watch for signs indicating businesses that are open to the public where your firearm is not allowed, and avoid carrying in those places, but otherwise live you life. Since legal definitions of sensitive places are static, and most businesses do not post a sign disallowing firearms, odds are that you can both carry and go about your day. If the presumption is that carrying is disallowed, your ability to use your concealed carry permit to carry firearms is effectively limited only to those places that explicitly invite you to do so, which limits your ability to carry at all.
Environmental/explicit permission concerns: if you are in environments where concealed carrying is explicitly prohibited except by explicit permission, businesses that wish to allow concealed carry must provide explicit signage (New York's language requires "clear and conspicuous signage indicating that the carrying of firearms, rifles, or shotguns on their property is permitted or by otherwise giving express consent"). But this signage also marks the business as explictly pro-gun, which may carry negative business implications that tacitly allowing concealed carry would not, encouraging those that may otherwise allow you to carry in their environment to avoid providing you the necessary permission.
Given that businesses could previously disallow firearms with a sign, and that states such as New York enacted these immediately after the Supreme Court banned "may issue" concealed carry schemes, these laws seemed aimed at reducing the usefulness of the "shall issue" CCW permits these states are now required to issue.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link