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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30018 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023

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Also, cars have immediate, obvious utility to basically the entire population. For all the theory behind an armed populace, stochastic self-defense, etc. a gun should never be involved in buying groceries. That goes a long way towards making cars feel justified.

a gun should never be involved in buying groceries

Hunting is the original grocery trip, though.

You say this like many of the same people pushing gun control aren't explicitly anti-car or at least very heavily pro-public-transport and would absolutely want to restrict car ownership to suit their ends.

Aren't those two very different subsets of the large group that is 'center-left people'? Gun control is a very broad democratic issue, while anti-car is a much more niche issue, at least 1/10th the size if not smaller (plenty of suburban moms who have no issue with cars or suburbs are democrats). And I don't see too many gun-control arguments on YIMBY twitter - there's a bit, but the strong advocates of both are different people.

I suspect that if you were to interrogate a lot of YIMBYs you'd find above average support for gun control, but so far YIMBY groups have tried to avoid holistic activism and stick to land use reform, so it doesn't come up much.

Shrug.

Out of the people I know who are most nervous about guns, all of them are regular drivers. They may appreciate and endorse public transit, but anti-car is out of the Overton window for a lot of people, especially outside the densest cities.

Never underestimate how much familiarity breeds acceptance. This is part of the reason I take friends and family shooting whenever I get the chance.

I went down to Florida a week ago to golf some. I was on the putting green before a round and overheard some boomers talking about the different guns they owned, and the conversation eventually shifted to the new Florida gun laws that allow permit-less CC (think someone joked "do you have a holster attachment on your bag?"). They were all dumbfounded as to why anyone would want someone with no firearms training to have guns on them in public, and couldn't understand the possible motives for passing such a bill.

The next day driving north I saw a random with a gun for the first time in my life on the interstate; two motorcyclists on a windy day (so their shirts were flapping up) with holsters on over their sweatpants (and no helmets).

Reminder that permit less carry is now the fact of the law in most states now.

They were all dumbfounded as to why anyone would want someone with no firearms training to have guns on them in public, and couldn't understand the possible motives for passing such a bill.

Well, Florida has had shall-issue concealed carry since 1987 and has issued millions of concealed carry permits and seen that it doesn't cause excess violence or deaths?

So the 'motives' are probably based on noticing the real-world results. I dunno.

has issued millions of concealed carry permits

That undermines more than supports the argument for permitless carry, doesn't it? I can see a strong argument for permitless carry in states where the legislature says "shall-issue" but the licensing agency says "ooh, sorry, on your application you did/didn't close the top on the digit '4', please try again, that'll be another $200 filing fee", but if training requirements are actually providing training rather than obstruction then they don't seem like a bad idea in theory.

it doesn't cause excess violence or deaths

I don't think you can extrapolate from "Florida allows trained licensees to carry concealed and the homicide rate kept declining" to "Florida allows anyone to do so and the homicide rate won't jump" ... but "dozens of states allow anyone to do so and the homicide rate kept declining" is decent evidence. New Hampshire isn't exactly a murderous hellscape.

I think the point is more that "in the absence of strong evidence that there's a serious danger to public safety, the default position should be in favor of expanding/preserving rights."

Florida basically concluded that anyone who isn't a felon, drug abuser, or otherwise legally proscribed from owning a gun can most likely be trusted to carry one, based on years of legal permit-holders generally being more law abiding than average.

It's a norm that I personally appreciate. If we can accept utilitarian arguments in favor of limiting certain civil rights, then it needs to be mediated by the 'null hypothesis' being that we should allow behaviors until the evidence is strong enough to justify reconsideration.

We of course end up arguing endlessly over what certain evidence actually means.

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