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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023

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This weekend, I visited my friendly local gun store, idly browsing for shotguns and learning about interstate purchases. Then I drove to my parents and spent the evening playing board games. It was a nice night with good food, drink and company.

Meanwhile, five minutes up the highway, some lunatic was murdering random strangers at a local shopping mall.

No one I know was killed. No one I know personally was present—though a friend of a friend was. I didn’t hear about it until the next morning. Big nothingburger, right? And yet I’ve been to that mall. I’ve been to the bar across the street with my coworkers. If I’d had an errand or three to run, instead of visiting my family, I might have been cowering in a storeroom or staring at a splatter of brains on the sidewalk.

I’m not linking to any articles. Partly for the thinnest veneer of opsec, partly because media coverage is predictably terrible. All sympathetic pictures and, as we’d say here, recruiting for a cause. Nothing good will come of this. Either we’ll force through a knee-jerk bill with symbolic limits on firearms, or we’ll (correctly) dismiss that as posturing and (incorrectly) do abso-fucking-lutely nothing.

It’s not like I can do anything about it. I don’t know what I would actually expect to work, and if I did, how could it be brought about? State, even local politics is as tribal as it gets. Enjoy your a la carte selection of two options, and one of them is out of stock.

Meanwhile, I guess the best I can do is pick up some CCW training and a good holster. Fuck.

I don’t know why gun rights advocates don’t just admit that yes, if all guns were confiscated and a very strict licensing regime was put in place gun homicides would likely drop substantially.

Mostly because it's a truism.

Real question is how many gun deaths would occur in the process of trying to enforce the confiscations.

Estimate about 50 million gun owners in the U.S., conservatively estimate 1% of them decide to put up a fight rather than comply. Conservatively estimate that in 10% of such encounters that at least 1 LEO is seriously injured or killed.

50,000 casualties. Out of ~800,000 police officers in the U.S.

And this is assuming large-scale compliance by gun owners, and a relatively low rate of LEO injury. Granted it'll probably be spread out over the course of years.

And one cannot ignore the fact that 3D printers can turn anyone into a gun manufacturer too.

Estimate about 50 million gun owners in the U.S., conservatively estimate 1% of them decide to put up a fight rather than comply.

It will be much closer to zero than that. Especially after they shoot the first one who gets physical with them (without even using the gun). And destroy the houses of the first few who give "boating accident" lines.

These are the same police officers that were too terrified of shooting an untrained minor at Uvalde. I frankly don't see them having the stomach to face down people who are both more dangerous and better armed.