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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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For the last 8 - 10 years we have been winning on gun control

LOL. In red states, you've got constitutional carry; that at least is real. In blue states there used to be "no carry" or "may issue".... and now there's carry permits that have so many carveouts that you can't actually carry, and anyway there's a super-long backlog to apply. Not to mention in blue states there are still permits to purchase which are hard to get. Some "right to keep and bear arms"! On the Federal level there are still import bans, machine guns remain banned, suppressors remain difficult to obtain legally, there's the new bump stock ban, the new pistol brace ban, there remains the ban on interstate transfer of firearms. There's red flag laws passed at state levels (and including red states) and encouraged by the Biden administration. There's bans which can be triggered by an ex parte restraining order, bans which apply to "domestic violence misdemeanors" (ex post facto of course), etc.

That's not winning. That's a mixed result. It only looks like winning because of the rout in so many other areas.

When rationalists complain about the "crisis in sense making" what they're really noticing is that the ability of progressive gate keepers in academia and the media to project power has been crushed, thier credibility eliminated.

Not so. COVID proved otherwise. People may say they don't trust the media or whoever, but they'll fall right in line with whatever the gatekeepers say anyway.