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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023

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Today in minor CW news: Naomi Biden’s Secret Service detail takes shots at carjackers thieves breaking in to a USSS vehicle. The vehicle in question was not occupied, so it wasn’t literal self-defense, but I am willing to assume it’s within protocol.

I’m bringing this up here to take predictions on the level and type of attention this will receive. My prediction is that the most vocal coverage will be conservative Twitter/substack trying to make this about Democrat hypocrisy with regards to crime. There’s just not enough material to make it personal about the Biden family. While I don’t doubt that spicy takes will exist, I’m wondering if they’ll make it to cable news.

Edit: immediately after posting, I see the next Twitter link is some guy with triple parentheses talking about how crime is so normal in DC. I swear I hadn’t seen that when I made my prediction.

My prediction is that the most vocal coverage will be conservative Twitter/substack trying to make this about Democrat hypocrisy with regards to crime.

Yes, I agree with this prediction. The most common take will be something along the lines of, "see Democrats believe that shooting people that steal from people that matter is good, they just think you don't matter". For my part, I agree that shooting thieves is good, but I expect that most of the soft-on-crime left will maintain ideological consistency and say that it's bad that the Secret Service would shoot at someone that wasn't even a threat to anyone.

Yeah. It is a matter of routine for politicians or rich people who are strong advocates for gun control to have private armed security and even concealed carry licenses. Famously Dianne Feinstein had a CCW issued in San Francisco, which is about as common as unicorns when it comes to exclusive gun rights.

They don't want to disarm all of society. They want unimportant people like you and me to be disarmed. Important people such as them and their important possessions will still be defended with privately owned guns.

I don't think that's it:

In 1995 a hearing on terrorism after the Oklahoma City bombing, Feinstein recounted how, in the 1970s, she was the target of the New World Liberation Front which first attempted to blow up her home. After the bomb failed to detonate, Feinstein explained, she decided to arm herself.

That's still kinda the point, isn't it? Feinstein wanted to be armed to protect herself, while at the same time working to prevent others from being able to be armed to protect themselves. Granted, she had a reasonable basis to anticipate that she might need that protection, but it's not as if other normal citizens who also want protection are being unreasonable.

I'm all for gun control, but it seems entirely fair to point to the hypocrisy here.

OP claimed that she was allowed to carry a gun because she was "important", but in fact it is because she faced an unusual threat.

  • -12

Can't it be both? She faced an unusual threat but she was allowed to carry a weapon due to her prominence? If she was a business owner who faced a similar threat would she have been granted the permit? Were other people facing similar threats granted permits? It'd be interesting to review the permit applications to make an assessment but I don't think they're PAI. Feinstein says she voluntarily gave up her permit after she decided NWLF wasn't a threat to her (along with her cute little story about melting it into the cross for the Pope) but it rings a little hollow considering she had a tax-payer funded armed detail for her protection at that point.

IIRC she’s literally the only CHL permit that her county ever granted, so this isn’t a situation similar to, say, Italy where people who legitimately have a heightened need for security can get a license to carry concealed weapons but it requires a legitimate heightened need for security(and my understanding is that this is how European ‘may-issue’ CHL regimes actually work in practice, as opposed to US may issue regimes. There is probably a lesson there in why the red tribe doesn’t trust gun control).

Of course it can be both. But where is the actual evidence for the claim that "importance" is a causal factor, especially in general? Because that was the claim: that "it is a matter of routine" for advocates for gun control to have concealed carry licenses.

Your reply to TIRM on down was about Feinstein, so that's what I addressed in my comment.

As far as evidence, we'd need to be able to take a look at who's getting permits in CA but that data isn't FOIA-able due to privacy issues. There was a leak a while back but it looks like that dashboard is now offline.

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