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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30022 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023

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I guess short-term it's the right strategy, but it makes pro-gun people sound like lunatics when they deny that getting rid of the guns would reduce murder. It's not quite as bad as the people who insist that those racial crime statistics don't mean what you think they mean, but it's the same kind of politically-convenient reality denial. If you don't have an affirmative case for why gun rights are more valuable than X dead kids per year, I hate to tell you, but you're going to lose.

I guess short-term it's the right strategy, but it makes pro-gun people sound like lunatics when they deny that getting rid of the guns would reduce murder.

I respectfully disagree. As a gun nut, it's the only strategy. I'll admit it "privately" on here and that's pretty much it.

There is no room for compromise, reasonableness, or mercy with the gun control lobby. If you could guarantee me that a licensing and insurance regime would remain static for the lifetime of the republic I could build you a great framework that would vastly reduce gun violence.

But we have to deal in the real here. We already have a fucking constitutional amendment that says, in no uncertain terms, civvies get to keep the guns. And now we have to do this bullshit arguing about what a militia is with a bunch of hateful, statistically illiterate idiots. This is the strongest possible enshrinement of a fundamental right that you can get! And still, it's constantly under bad faith attacks.

Nah. No way, no how.

If you don't have an affirmative case for why gun rights are more valuable than X dead kids per year, I hate to tell you, but you're going to lose.

The affirmative case is obvious: X dead kids per year is a small price to pay for the impediment to tyranny an armed populace offers. How many kids will the next totalitarian state kill for ideological reasons? It's going to be more than die by the happenstance of gun crime.

I guess short-term it's the right strategy, but it makes pro-gun people sound like lunatics when they deny that getting rid of the guns would reduce murder.

and yet this strategy had led to more gun rights being regained throughout the US than before when honesty-bot and cooperate-bot had hollowed out those rights over sixty or so years

If you don't have an affirmative case for why gun rights are more valuable than X dead kids per year, I hate to tell you, but you're going to lose.

allowing that framing of the discourse in such a way means gunrights have already lost which is why they've wholly abandoned the strategy you apparently think is the right one

should the gunrights/self-defense advocates given the honesty-bot and cooperate-bot strategy another 60 years to see if it would eventually work in the "long term"?

If you don't have an affirmative case for why gun rights are more valuable than X dead kids per year, I hate to tell you, but you're going to lose.

Progressives have zero affirmative case for why their policies permitting violent vagrants to kill people are more valuable than X stabbing victims per year; they have yet to lose.

First they reinvented original sin as white privilege, and the selling of indulgences as buying sustainable / environmental / electric. Now they’ve reinvented the mortification of the flesh.

I find this both scary and amusing. Maybe I’m just up too late, too tired.

This is amusing. It seems to be like some kind of zombie Christianity or something. Yes, secular humanism is Christianity with the serial numbers filed off, but this is an interesting thing indeed.

You're not wrong, but... have you looked at the US lately? We are the very epitome of short-term thinkers. Corporations routinely burn down long-term profits for next-quarter profits, voters flip-flop between candidates in the two parties because they are pissed off at the current one... but don't bother to remember that they're voting in the party they were pissed off at 4 years prior. People cripple themselves with debt and make their life awful in the long run because they really want something right now. We are a nation of short-term thinkers. It should hardly be surprising that extends to politics as well.

it makes pro-gun people sound like lunatics when they deny that getting rid of the guns would reduce murder.

Why is our hypothetical anti-gun person trying to get a pro-gun person to admit something that has no practical relevance to the debate? I don’t think the pro-gun person assuming that his interloper is just sound-bite hunting is very crazy.

Saying something like “assume a magical fairy takes all guns out of private ownership in the US, would murders go down?” seems a lot fairer, because you’re making it clear “I’m saying something kind of silly to establish if you’re debating in good faith”.

But if you say “do you admit if there were no guns in the US then there would be fewer murders?”, I don’t think it’s surprising if the pro-gun guy assumes ill-intent.

it makes pro-gun people sound like lunatics when they deny that getting rid of the guns would reduce murder

The proposition here was that getting rid of the guns would reduce gun murder, not murder in general.

If you don't have an affirmative case for why gun rights are more valuable than X dead kids per year, I hate to tell you, but you're going to lose.

If it's framed that way, gun rights have already lost.

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