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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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I don’t agree with forcing expansive gun rights on liberal states whose electorates have clearly rejected them.

Complain legitimately about the way in which red states had progressive politics forced upon them (in some cases at gunpoint). And by all means advocate the federal government enforcing policy on the states when it comes to borders, immigration, foreign policy and (actual) interstate commerce, as conservatives rightly do in the first two cases.

But I see no reason why conservative gun owners must force the population of Hawaii to accept a law which both doesn’t affect the gun policy of conservative states and is transparently deeply unpopular there. Similarly, I’d find it wrong if and when a progressive Supreme Court limited gun ownership rights in a conservative state.

It doesn’t seem bad if Texas is the Wild West and Hawaii is East Asia when it comes to gun policy. Conservatives still have plenty of places to live. Regional differences in view on permissiveness around vices, weapon ownership, abortion and so on are part of the normal tapestry of life in countries with hundreds of millions of people.

I don’t agree with forcing expansive gun rights on liberal states whose electorates have clearly rejected them.

Fine. Then Kim Davis gets her job back, all lawsuits dismissed, and gay marriage only exists in gay-friendly states. Otherwise, none of this "Federalism for thee but not for me stuff". Particularly since unlike gay marriage, gun rights are in the Constitution.

Gun rights are in the bill of rights, but given every legal benefit and cost around marriage I still think it's insane to deny recognition of gay marriage. It seems trivially easy to classify under equal protection.

  • -11

It seems trivially easy to classify under equal protection.

No, it really isn't; it's a huge stretch that would never have occurred to the writers of the Fourteenth Amendment.

After Obergefell, any official dissenter (and as far as I can tell Kim Davis was the only one) was overruled, fired and ruined. When the same is done to all these legislators, bureaucrats, governors, and lower court judges who are making Heller and Bruen into mere academic exercises, THEN perhaps gun rights will have been properly taken seriously.

Which of the following do you think should be covered under gun rights? Single-shot normal rifles, shotguns, assault rifles, SMGs, single-shot pistols, anti-materiel rifles, machine guns, technicals/IFVs, MANPADs, recoilless rifles, rocket launchers, tanks, Davy Crocketts?

(This is not mockery. The argument that's literally in the 2A - militia makes you harder to conquer - applies to all of the above except maybe Davy Crocketts.)

What sort of things do you think should be covered under free speech? Advertisements for restaurants, fiction novels, history papers, science papers, instructions on how to do illegal things, porn, advocacy of violent overthrow of the government, smears of politicians, orders to do illegal things?

Which is to say, I don't know the point of the question. Often enough similar question are asked in order to either say "Oh, so there's a limit... let's just push that back until a Brown Bess is covered but not much more" or "You monster, you'd accept nukes". Gun rights cover all of those except technicals and tanks (vehicles rather than arms) and maybe the nuclear projectile for Davy Crocketts. But just because I'm open to excluding the Davy Crockett doesn't mean I'm at all willing to play the game of "well, modern guns have a much higher rate of fire than 1781 muskets, so they shouldn't be covered either".

My parenthetical note was intended to make it clear that I'm not trying to do that foot-in-the-door tactic, but simply trying to get someone else's opinion on the matter. But whatever, you answered which is what I wanted. Is your line at vehicles driven by the actual text of 2A ("bear" arms), or by some argument I don't currently comprehend?

As for your question retort: not orders, and I split hairs on instructions/advocacy/smears. Specifically:

  • If someone grows cannabis illegally, we can deal with that after the fact; if someone builds a nuke illegally, it's a bit harder to deal with that after the fact, so I'm more concerned about the details of how to build an implosion nuke than I am about the details of how to grow cannabis (or even the details of how to make dynamite off-label, though I'm not about to spread the latter myself).
  • I generally draw the line at indirect/vague vs. direct/specific incitement.
  • Ignorant misinformation shouldn't be punishable, but I've no issue with banning disinformation with the associated mens rea of deliberate deception. Much less of a chilling effect from the latter.

Is your line at vehicles driven by the actual text of 2A ("bear" arms), or by some argument I don't currently comprehend?

The actual text. It's an academically interesting question about whether mounting a gun in the back of a Toyota Hilux counts under "bearing arms", but the Hilux itself isn't covered under "arms".

Ignorant misinformation shouldn't be punishable, but I've no issue with banning disinformation with the associated mens rea of deliberate deception. Much less of a chilling effect from the latter.

As we saw with COVID, that's an exception that can swallow most of the rule.

As we saw with COVID, that's an exception that can swallow most of the rule.

The various censorship on that was aimed at "misinformation"; AFAIK they rarely alleged deliberate lies. There's definitely a huge issue with trying to police misinformation, but if you can prove that someone's deliberately lying I see little issue.