Terror on Repeat: Devastation caused by AR-15 shootings
November 16, 2023 7:44 AM Subscribe
Terror on Repeat: A rare look at the devastation caused by AR-15 shootings
[Caution: disturbing photos with lots of blood; no bodies; Washington Post share link]
"...drawing on an extensive review of photographs, videos and police investigative files from 11 mass killings between 2012 and 2023, The Washington Post is publishing the most comprehensive account to date of the repeating pattern of destruction wrought by the AR-15 — a weapon that was originally designed for military combat but has in recent years become one of the best-selling firearms on the U.S. market."
[Caution: disturbing photos with lots of blood; no bodies; Washington Post share link]
"...drawing on an extensive review of photographs, videos and police investigative files from 11 mass killings between 2012 and 2023, The Washington Post is publishing the most comprehensive account to date of the repeating pattern of destruction wrought by the AR-15 — a weapon that was originally designed for military combat but has in recent years become one of the best-selling firearms on the U.S. market."
The review lays bare how the AR-15, a weapon that has soared in popularity over the past two decades as a beloved tool for hunting, target practice and self-defense, has also given assailants the power to instantly turn everyday American gathering places into zones of gruesome violence.Previously from the Post: The Blast Effect: This is how bullets from an AR-15 blow the body apart
This is an oral history told in three parts that follows the chronological order of a typical AR-15 mass shooting. It weaves together pictures, videos and the recollections of people who endured different tragedies but have similar stories to tell.
my husband was just showing me this article before I came onto MF. its very very upsetting and also I'm feeling a sort of helpless anger right now, but I gotta say: I think these images should be shown!! on the news, on the web, everywhere! we need more people to understand the utterly horrific level of destruction those guns cause. SO MUCH BLOOD. its difficult to comprehend. those guns should never have been available for civilian purchase, but profit above all! the lives of children are meaningless before it.
posted by supermedusa at 8:24 AM on November 16, 2023 [28 favorites]
posted by supermedusa at 8:24 AM on November 16, 2023 [28 favorites]
An outstanding and unfortunately necessary photo essay, it had to have been just awful to help create this. I hope people will pay attention, even though it's traumatic to do so, because the reality of this is so fucking awful that if we would all just actually look at it and see maybe enough of us will be rightly horrified to actually, collectively do something about this.
posted by LooseFilter at 8:25 AM on November 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by LooseFilter at 8:25 AM on November 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
Is there any restriction on showing gore in protest signage? The anti-choice crowd certainly had gross, gore filled signs in the past but that was a lot of fakery.
posted by Slackermagee at 8:29 AM on November 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Slackermagee at 8:29 AM on November 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
The biggest impressions I got from high-school history class were stories of regular people who suddenly saw something in their country which filled them with an overwhelming urge to get the heck out. I experienced that again the day of the Lewiston, Maine shooting when I went to a Walmart for coffee and was met with a row of Black Rifle Coffee products at eye-level.
posted by credulous at 8:39 AM on November 16, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by credulous at 8:39 AM on November 16, 2023 [10 favorites]
Despite all the iconography built up around the AR-15, the real reason for its immense popularity is its modularity and standardization. It is at this point a sort of cultural and political object, but I do think there's a hazard in demonizing it that ultimately feeds its fetishization by the reactionary gun culture. (See 'Black Rifle Coffee.')
The 'lower receiver' (the part that houses the trigger, other controls, accepts the magazine, and attaches to the stock and grip) is separable from the 'upper receiver' (the part that houses the chamber, the barrel, the gas system and some other moving parts). And the design makes it easy to customize those internal parts.
In the modern-looking AR-15s the original molded handgrip with its fixed sights (as in the Vietnam-era M16) is replaced with a longer barrel shroud handguard that has standardized accessory rails to attach your various other bits of kit to.
So the same basic design (and in many combinations, the same individual lower receiver) can be attached to different upper receivers.
The result is gun legos. Mix-and-match freely. Whatever you think of American gun culture, you can see the appeal there. It's like any other gearhead/tinkerer hobby.
The 'blast effect' is function of the round, not the gun (except to the extent that the gun provides the chambering, pressures and barrel length, etc that the round calls for). The amount of bullets that can be fired is a function of being semi-automatic, magazine loading, in combination with the size of the magazine. (Presuming the shooter doesn't have a licensed or illicit automatic weapon.)
Lots of other guns fire NATO 5.56, are semi-automatic, and magazine loading. And, though the injuries are different, you wouldn't really rather be shot with the larger, old-school bullets fired by previous generations of 'battle rifles' either (including the AK-47). Even if they look more like old-timey hunting rifles (which they continue to exist as).
This is what the 'assault rifle' laws try to get at, but due to Second Amendment limitations they ultimately are obliged to do so indirectly by regulating 'features' that make the guns only marginally less deadly at best (assuming the shooter doesn't just attach the forbidden equipment when they're ready to make an attack).
Meanwhile, they also tend to make the guns more awkward to handle and use accurately for those abiding by the laws; pleasing basically no-one. The same problem exists with California's handgun registry—it intentionally makes introducing new models onerous to the point of not being commercially viable, but it excepts purchase and resale by law enforcement. So the ironic result is that average people can't buy the newer models with whatever safety improvements the industry has grudgingly made, just the grandfathered models. Unless they go to the statutorily created grey market monopolized by sketchy cops. Whee.
The problem is the Second Amendment, made worse by its current interpretation by this abysmal Supreme Court. Though there are some signs that the Court isn't happy with how Thomas' decision in Bruen is being used and may pare it back.
California is trying to keep its high-capacity magazine ban in place, but unless SCOTUS does do something about Bruen it's unclear how that will turn out.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:39 AM on November 16, 2023 [26 favorites]
The 'lower receiver' (the part that houses the trigger, other controls, accepts the magazine, and attaches to the stock and grip) is separable from the 'upper receiver' (the part that houses the chamber, the barrel, the gas system and some other moving parts). And the design makes it easy to customize those internal parts.
In the modern-looking AR-15s the original molded handgrip with its fixed sights (as in the Vietnam-era M16) is replaced with a longer barrel shroud handguard that has standardized accessory rails to attach your various other bits of kit to.
So the same basic design (and in many combinations, the same individual lower receiver) can be attached to different upper receivers.
The result is gun legos. Mix-and-match freely. Whatever you think of American gun culture, you can see the appeal there. It's like any other gearhead/tinkerer hobby.
The 'blast effect' is function of the round, not the gun (except to the extent that the gun provides the chambering, pressures and barrel length, etc that the round calls for). The amount of bullets that can be fired is a function of being semi-automatic, magazine loading, in combination with the size of the magazine. (Presuming the shooter doesn't have a licensed or illicit automatic weapon.)
Lots of other guns fire NATO 5.56, are semi-automatic, and magazine loading. And, though the injuries are different, you wouldn't really rather be shot with the larger, old-school bullets fired by previous generations of 'battle rifles' either (including the AK-47). Even if they look more like old-timey hunting rifles (which they continue to exist as).
This is what the 'assault rifle' laws try to get at, but due to Second Amendment limitations they ultimately are obliged to do so indirectly by regulating 'features' that make the guns only marginally less deadly at best (assuming the shooter doesn't just attach the forbidden equipment when they're ready to make an attack).
Meanwhile, they also tend to make the guns more awkward to handle and use accurately for those abiding by the laws; pleasing basically no-one. The same problem exists with California's handgun registry—it intentionally makes introducing new models onerous to the point of not being commercially viable, but it excepts purchase and resale by law enforcement. So the ironic result is that average people can't buy the newer models with whatever safety improvements the industry has grudgingly made, just the grandfathered models. Unless they go to the statutorily created grey market monopolized by sketchy cops. Whee.
The problem is the Second Amendment, made worse by its current interpretation by this abysmal Supreme Court. Though there are some signs that the Court isn't happy with how Thomas' decision in Bruen is being used and may pare it back.
California is trying to keep its high-capacity magazine ban in place, but unless SCOTUS does do something about Bruen it's unclear how that will turn out.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:39 AM on November 16, 2023 [26 favorites]
Snufflupagus: a good comment, but I would add: something can be emblematic of a wider problem without being the entire problem.
posted by lalochezia at 8:49 AM on November 16, 2023 [15 favorites]
posted by lalochezia at 8:49 AM on November 16, 2023 [15 favorites]
Despite all the iconography built up around the AR-15, the real reason for its immense popularity is its modularity. It is at this point a sort of cultural object, but I do think there's a hazard in demonizing it that ultimately feeds its fetishization by the reactionary gun culture. (See 'Black Rifle Coffee.')...
Lots of other guns fire NATO 5.56, are semi-automatic, and magazine loading. And, though the injuries are different, you wouldn't really rather be shot with the larger, old-school bullets fired by previous generations of 'battle rifles' either (including the AK-47). Even if they look more like old-timey hunting rifles
Yeah, I was coming to say a variant on this. And the problem with articles like this one because of that aspect is they are immediately perceived as an ignorant attack on a cultural object, and people immediately go out and buy more AR-15s. It's an aspect of gun culture that I don't think much of more left-leaning society is aware of - that every time articles come out like this, or there's talk of a ban, it spurs a buying frenzy. It's so much of an issue that there's actually people who make thousands and thousands of dollars on "gun speculation", where they buy guns during times of low price, then wait for talk of AR-15s to spike in the media and for them to get sold out in local shops, then offer them for high prices at private sale. They often nearly double their money.
AR-15s are generally used in mass shootings because the kind of insecure (usually white) men brooding over their perceived loss of entitlement that are fixated on perceived wrongs and obsessing about guns either (1) focus on guns to the point of hyperfixation and want to have The Perfect Gun so they want to change every aspect of it sixteen times, or (2) have issues around perceived lack of masculinity and think of the military as the peak of masculinity so go for AR-15s as a aesthetic choice that makes them feel masculine. I'd argue an AK-47, despite its old-timey-looking wooden stock, would actually be *more* effective and deadly in a mass shooting: they are easier to use and to kill with for an inexperienced shooter.
I do think it's a good photo essay on the impact of mass shootings for people not previously exposed to the effects of lethal violence or shootings; I just wish they hadn't chosen the AR-15 focus, which I think lessens the impact of what is a really well researched and selected article.
posted by corb at 8:53 AM on November 16, 2023 [7 favorites]
Lots of other guns fire NATO 5.56, are semi-automatic, and magazine loading. And, though the injuries are different, you wouldn't really rather be shot with the larger, old-school bullets fired by previous generations of 'battle rifles' either (including the AK-47). Even if they look more like old-timey hunting rifles
Yeah, I was coming to say a variant on this. And the problem with articles like this one because of that aspect is they are immediately perceived as an ignorant attack on a cultural object, and people immediately go out and buy more AR-15s. It's an aspect of gun culture that I don't think much of more left-leaning society is aware of - that every time articles come out like this, or there's talk of a ban, it spurs a buying frenzy. It's so much of an issue that there's actually people who make thousands and thousands of dollars on "gun speculation", where they buy guns during times of low price, then wait for talk of AR-15s to spike in the media and for them to get sold out in local shops, then offer them for high prices at private sale. They often nearly double their money.
AR-15s are generally used in mass shootings because the kind of insecure (usually white) men brooding over their perceived loss of entitlement that are fixated on perceived wrongs and obsessing about guns either (1) focus on guns to the point of hyperfixation and want to have The Perfect Gun so they want to change every aspect of it sixteen times, or (2) have issues around perceived lack of masculinity and think of the military as the peak of masculinity so go for AR-15s as a aesthetic choice that makes them feel masculine. I'd argue an AK-47, despite its old-timey-looking wooden stock, would actually be *more* effective and deadly in a mass shooting: they are easier to use and to kill with for an inexperienced shooter.
I do think it's a good photo essay on the impact of mass shootings for people not previously exposed to the effects of lethal violence or shootings; I just wish they hadn't chosen the AR-15 focus, which I think lessens the impact of what is a really well researched and selected article.
posted by corb at 8:53 AM on November 16, 2023 [7 favorites]
Whatever you think of American gun culture, you can see the appeal there. It's like any other gearhead/tinkerer hobby.
I think I speak for a lot of us when I say there's no valid reason for there to be law-abiding combat weapon owners. If someone can't enjoy their hobby without there being a massive body count, fuck their hobby. They can get into archery, or airsoft, or machining, or rocketry, or any other of the thousands of other hobbies that, while sometimes dangerous, primarily only let someone endanger themselves. Guns are really interesting. I get that. But I can't and won't look at pictures of bloodied children's backpacks and think to myself we let this happen in the name of recreation.
posted by phooky at 8:53 AM on November 16, 2023 [79 favorites]
I think I speak for a lot of us when I say there's no valid reason for there to be law-abiding combat weapon owners. If someone can't enjoy their hobby without there being a massive body count, fuck their hobby. They can get into archery, or airsoft, or machining, or rocketry, or any other of the thousands of other hobbies that, while sometimes dangerous, primarily only let someone endanger themselves. Guns are really interesting. I get that. But I can't and won't look at pictures of bloodied children's backpacks and think to myself we let this happen in the name of recreation.
posted by phooky at 8:53 AM on November 16, 2023 [79 favorites]
This Chris Ware New Yorker cover really hit home with me - and all the more so when I read his account of the family conversations which inspired it.
posted by Paul Slade at 8:56 AM on November 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by Paul Slade at 8:56 AM on November 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
I give the WAPO credit for publishing the videos and photographs. These hideous mass shootings need to be exposed to the public. The NRA gun lobby and the gunmakers will not lift a finger. Neither will most politicians. Australia banned assault rifles in 1996 (?). There have been no mass shootings there since that date. What will it take to horrify the USA public?
posted by DJZouke at 9:04 AM on November 16, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by DJZouke at 9:04 AM on November 16, 2023 [9 favorites]
It's like any other gearhead/tinkerer hobby.
There's a material difference between some guy building his perfect home theater, or fixing up a classic car in the garage, or working on their own basement homebrewing setup, and people building literal death machines. If our normal suburban "gearhead/tinkerer" was building nail bombs or brewing up poison gas or cooking crystal meth, we would rightfully call them terrorists and criminals. But if you're just whipping up a device for rapid-firing high-velocity hunks of metal at people, that's suddenly good and wholesome because some guys who only ever had single-shot muskets and bulky cannons wrote a few vague sentences about it 250 years ago.
posted by Strange Interlude at 9:06 AM on November 16, 2023 [49 favorites]
There's a material difference between some guy building his perfect home theater, or fixing up a classic car in the garage, or working on their own basement homebrewing setup, and people building literal death machines. If our normal suburban "gearhead/tinkerer" was building nail bombs or brewing up poison gas or cooking crystal meth, we would rightfully call them terrorists and criminals. But if you're just whipping up a device for rapid-firing high-velocity hunks of metal at people, that's suddenly good and wholesome because some guys who only ever had single-shot muskets and bulky cannons wrote a few vague sentences about it 250 years ago.
posted by Strange Interlude at 9:06 AM on November 16, 2023 [49 favorites]
DJZouke that question was answered a while ago. personally, I felt that Sandy Hook was it. if little blond white children in a puddle of blood wasn't enough, nothing will be. the gun lovers and those who profit off of them have made their choice, and our government is fine with that.
posted by supermedusa at 9:07 AM on November 16, 2023 [26 favorites]
posted by supermedusa at 9:07 AM on November 16, 2023 [26 favorites]
The "LOL" written in blood on the Uvalde whiteboard is harrowing. Just shows how stiffer punishment won't do anything to solve this sort of problem. The perpetrators just do. not. care. about anything anymore.
posted by The Notorious SRD at 9:10 AM on November 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by The Notorious SRD at 9:10 AM on November 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
I do think it's a good photo essay on the impact of mass shootings for people not previously exposed to the effects of lethal violence or shootings; I just wish they hadn't chosen the AR-15 focus, which I think lessens the impact of what is a really well researched and selected article.
I just popped in here to say what corb said. That was an incredibly difficult read, and admittedly I sped through it. But the framing around the AR-15 adds a cultural context that I don't think benefits the discussion
posted by slogger at 9:15 AM on November 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
I just popped in here to say what corb said. That was an incredibly difficult read, and admittedly I sped through it. But the framing around the AR-15 adds a cultural context that I don't think benefits the discussion
posted by slogger at 9:15 AM on November 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
And the problem with articles like this one because of that aspect is they are immediately perceived as an ignorant attack on a cultural object, and people immediately go out and buy more AR-15s.
Oh, so it's kind of like when conservatives ban books from school libraries it's perceived as an ignorant attack on culture and people immediately go out and by more of those books.
Except for one crucial difference: books aren't AR-15s. Books are one of zillions of "cultural objects" that have never been used to inflict a mass shooting.
Why are guns so fucking special and why do we need to treat gun owners as such special snowflakes?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 9:15 AM on November 16, 2023 [33 favorites]
Oh, so it's kind of like when conservatives ban books from school libraries it's perceived as an ignorant attack on culture and people immediately go out and by more of those books.
Except for one crucial difference: books aren't AR-15s. Books are one of zillions of "cultural objects" that have never been used to inflict a mass shooting.
Why are guns so fucking special and why do we need to treat gun owners as such special snowflakes?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 9:15 AM on November 16, 2023 [33 favorites]
supermedusa You might be right. This country has been made numb to the slaughters. Maybe they should start showing the bodies of 7 year olds in a puddle of blood.
posted by DJZouke at 9:18 AM on November 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by DJZouke at 9:18 AM on November 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
At this point I don’t see things changing significantly unless the second amendment is repealed, and that isn’t happening soon. And while a lot of the conversation about gun violence centers around mass shooting and assault rifles, they really are only a small part of the death toll guns inflict on this country. I know my personal experience is not data, but I know about 5-6 people who have died from gun violence; all were suicides.
posted by TedW at 9:19 AM on November 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by TedW at 9:19 AM on November 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
combat weapon owners
They're all combat weapons capable of these kind of killings, is the thing, unless you wind the clock way back. One of the links I provided will show you a gun with a traditional wood stock that fires the 5.56 round. (The Ruger Ranch Rifle; which is based on the same design as the M14 battle rifle.)
The BAR fires the more traditional .308 'hunting' round—but that's what the WWII and mid-century 'battle rifles' fired (like the M1A and the M14, as well as the AK-47). The AR-10 fires that more traditional round, and it has also been used in mass shooting. And there are many 'hunting rifles' that fire it. They don't look like 'combat weapons' but they still have magazines and are semi-automatic.
To effectively ban all the weapons that enable these kinds of shootings, you'd need a SCOTUS willing to restrict civilian gun ownership to manually operated actions only. And given the very American pedigree of lever action rifles, you'd probably also need to just ban magazine loading entirely. We are very far away from that.
recreation
In the US context, so under the Second Amendment, once people are entitled to have guns then restrictions on them are going to be under some kind of elevated scrutiny. The current Bruen doctrine goes way overboard in basically constructing a free-wheeling mythos of American gun culture in its 'history and tradition' but there is some kind of fundamental right there; unless you can get to an interpretation that its been obviated by the establishment of a standing military and existance of state National Guard. We're even further away from that.
So, while there is an individual right, then the courts are going to consider when the burden placed on it is reasonable. And, with the understanding that guns are basically just bullet launchers, there isn't a great reason to ban the AR-15 specifically, given that it allows gun owner to, for example, own a single lower receiver (which is the registered part of the gun) and then a bunch of different upper receivers to attach to it, which lets the gun owner have one gun that can fire the same .22 rimfire rounds as the most unobjectionable plinker, another that fires the 'modern' 5.56 by swapping the upper in a minute or two. And that it lets gun owners maintain their guns without as much expertise, equipment and expense as traditional guns with wood stocks and bedded-in parts.
It would be like requiring everyone to drive Model T's to cut down on traffic deaths. The Court is not going to do that. The way the gun looks is not the problem.
The model specific bans that have passed muster in states like CA (though not under Bruen, yet) are workable in part because the rifles are not reconfigurable, so they only exist in configurations that have banned feature combinations and in part because they are import bans on Chinese and post-Soviet arms makers models that no one is going to go to bat for, politically.
Why are guns so fucking special and why do we need to treat gun owners as such special snowflakes?
In the literal sense, for the same reason we protect all of the other rights found in the Constitution.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:20 AM on November 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
They're all combat weapons capable of these kind of killings, is the thing, unless you wind the clock way back. One of the links I provided will show you a gun with a traditional wood stock that fires the 5.56 round. (The Ruger Ranch Rifle; which is based on the same design as the M14 battle rifle.)
The BAR fires the more traditional .308 'hunting' round—but that's what the WWII and mid-century 'battle rifles' fired (like the M1A and the M14, as well as the AK-47). The AR-10 fires that more traditional round, and it has also been used in mass shooting. And there are many 'hunting rifles' that fire it. They don't look like 'combat weapons' but they still have magazines and are semi-automatic.
To effectively ban all the weapons that enable these kinds of shootings, you'd need a SCOTUS willing to restrict civilian gun ownership to manually operated actions only. And given the very American pedigree of lever action rifles, you'd probably also need to just ban magazine loading entirely. We are very far away from that.
recreation
In the US context, so under the Second Amendment, once people are entitled to have guns then restrictions on them are going to be under some kind of elevated scrutiny. The current Bruen doctrine goes way overboard in basically constructing a free-wheeling mythos of American gun culture in its 'history and tradition' but there is some kind of fundamental right there; unless you can get to an interpretation that its been obviated by the establishment of a standing military and existance of state National Guard. We're even further away from that.
So, while there is an individual right, then the courts are going to consider when the burden placed on it is reasonable. And, with the understanding that guns are basically just bullet launchers, there isn't a great reason to ban the AR-15 specifically, given that it allows gun owner to, for example, own a single lower receiver (which is the registered part of the gun) and then a bunch of different upper receivers to attach to it, which lets the gun owner have one gun that can fire the same .22 rimfire rounds as the most unobjectionable plinker, another that fires the 'modern' 5.56 by swapping the upper in a minute or two. And that it lets gun owners maintain their guns without as much expertise, equipment and expense as traditional guns with wood stocks and bedded-in parts.
It would be like requiring everyone to drive Model T's to cut down on traffic deaths. The Court is not going to do that. The way the gun looks is not the problem.
The model specific bans that have passed muster in states like CA (though not under Bruen, yet) are workable in part because the rifles are not reconfigurable, so they only exist in configurations that have banned feature combinations and in part because they are import bans on Chinese and post-Soviet arms makers models that no one is going to go to bat for, politically.
Why are guns so fucking special and why do we need to treat gun owners as such special snowflakes?
In the literal sense, for the same reason we protect all of the other rights found in the Constitution.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:20 AM on November 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
So I was raised with friends that hunted with their families. So guns / firearms were big, heavy, scary steel pipes and wood that people worn, like, cushions on their shoulders to protect from the blow-back. People in my high school parking lot had gun-racks in their trucks with fishing poles and rifles there on fridays so that they could leave for their lease as soon as the bell rang.
So like I will never understand this world of students since the Columbine massacre to contemporary school life.
But I did get a chance at one point to go and fire off rounds with a firearm similar to the AR-15. And let me say that those guns have zero effort to fire. They are super-light, and they feel mostly like a fancy version of the toy guns my lads and I played with in our yoots.
But the lack of any consequence of firing that weapon made a huge impression on me. Hammer staplers are harder to use. And that bar being so low for so much mayhem is horrifying.
"Federalist 29" never wanted a standing army, an armed paramilitary groups in the federal/state/municipal levels, AND an armed populace.
We went from trying to take the tools that created tyrants from our leaders to living in a Western stand off.
posted by MonsieurPEB at 9:23 AM on November 16, 2023 [15 favorites]
So like I will never understand this world of students since the Columbine massacre to contemporary school life.
But I did get a chance at one point to go and fire off rounds with a firearm similar to the AR-15. And let me say that those guns have zero effort to fire. They are super-light, and they feel mostly like a fancy version of the toy guns my lads and I played with in our yoots.
But the lack of any consequence of firing that weapon made a huge impression on me. Hammer staplers are harder to use. And that bar being so low for so much mayhem is horrifying.
"Federalist 29" never wanted a standing army, an armed paramilitary groups in the federal/state/municipal levels, AND an armed populace.
We went from trying to take the tools that created tyrants from our leaders to living in a Western stand off.
posted by MonsieurPEB at 9:23 AM on November 16, 2023 [15 favorites]
Despite all the iconography built up around the AR-15, the real reason for its immense popularity is its modularity and standardization.
I think this might be oversimplifying things.
The AR-15 is popular because it's modular and customizable, yes, but it's also popular because the companies that manufacture them advertise relentlessly, from doing product placement in video games a la Joe Camel, to producing print and online ads that trade in the worst kinds of toxic masculinity and vigilante fantasies, and because there's a very powerful trade organization, almost completely wedded to one political party, spending millions of dollars to fight any kind of meaningful regulation and millions more producing propaganda to juice up the demand every time someone from the other party gets elected dogcatcher.
And, in case this comment wasn't enough of a bummer already, there is a nonzero number of people for whom AR-15s are popular because those are the guns that people use in mass shootings.
posted by box at 9:31 AM on November 16, 2023 [23 favorites]
I think this might be oversimplifying things.
The AR-15 is popular because it's modular and customizable, yes, but it's also popular because the companies that manufacture them advertise relentlessly, from doing product placement in video games a la Joe Camel, to producing print and online ads that trade in the worst kinds of toxic masculinity and vigilante fantasies, and because there's a very powerful trade organization, almost completely wedded to one political party, spending millions of dollars to fight any kind of meaningful regulation and millions more producing propaganda to juice up the demand every time someone from the other party gets elected dogcatcher.
And, in case this comment wasn't enough of a bummer already, there is a nonzero number of people for whom AR-15s are popular because those are the guns that people use in mass shootings.
posted by box at 9:31 AM on November 16, 2023 [23 favorites]
The Founders never intended to create an unregulated individual right to a gun. Today, millions believe they did. Here’s how it happened.
posted by superelastic at 9:35 AM on November 16, 2023 [21 favorites]
posted by superelastic at 9:35 AM on November 16, 2023 [21 favorites]
Just shows how stiffer punishment won't do anything to solve this sort of problem. The perpetrators just do. not. care. about anything anymore.
And this is kind of the problem - the absolute terrifying nihilism of some of these shooters.
Even were bans of all of these types of rifles to be implemented tomorrow, there are between 15 and 20 million "modern sporting rifles" presently in the United States which would need to be grandfathered to avoid being an unconstitutional taking. (Or the US could give a fair market value for each rifle, but that would be a lot of money, and I think it would be politically a non-starter). There is really no realistic way to avoid the access of a determined mass shooter to this type of firearm, because they don't care about the consequences - they don't care about anything, morals, or their lives.
If we are going to end this devastation we have got to do something about these ticking time bombs living among us - these incredibly violent men who are practicing violence on women they encounter until the time when they snap and enact mass violence on children who they feel have more of a future than they did or people who might seem happier than they feel. In the Lewistown shooting, people warned law enforcement months beforehand that this man was a danger and specifically that he was a danger of a mass shooting. Why, to say nothing of the broader societal issues we need to solve, was at the very least this man not absolutely inundated with social workers?
posted by corb at 9:36 AM on November 16, 2023 [16 favorites]
And this is kind of the problem - the absolute terrifying nihilism of some of these shooters.
Even were bans of all of these types of rifles to be implemented tomorrow, there are between 15 and 20 million "modern sporting rifles" presently in the United States which would need to be grandfathered to avoid being an unconstitutional taking. (Or the US could give a fair market value for each rifle, but that would be a lot of money, and I think it would be politically a non-starter). There is really no realistic way to avoid the access of a determined mass shooter to this type of firearm, because they don't care about the consequences - they don't care about anything, morals, or their lives.
If we are going to end this devastation we have got to do something about these ticking time bombs living among us - these incredibly violent men who are practicing violence on women they encounter until the time when they snap and enact mass violence on children who they feel have more of a future than they did or people who might seem happier than they feel. In the Lewistown shooting, people warned law enforcement months beforehand that this man was a danger and specifically that he was a danger of a mass shooting. Why, to say nothing of the broader societal issues we need to solve, was at the very least this man not absolutely inundated with social workers?
posted by corb at 9:36 AM on November 16, 2023 [16 favorites]
The AR-15 is popular because it's modular and customizable, yes, but it's also popular because the companies that manufacture them advertise relentlessly...there is a nonzero number of people for whom AR-15s are popular because those are the guns that people use in mass shootings.
Yes, I agree. Popularity in the sense of 'widespread adoption,' then there's its celebration for all the reasons you gave, along with the flag-waving blue-line tacticool contingent. But its utilitarian aspects (and that very widespread adoption) are why a ban of the AR-15, specifically, wouldn't survive scrutiny, even if you set aside all the culture war aspects (which I won't pretend this SCOTUS ignores).
I don't intend to trivialize the violence that guns enable by the comparison; but it really is like modular PC building, compared to earlier bespoke computing. Should it be that accessible? Maybe not, but that's the state of the art—and in the sense of eras.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:38 AM on November 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
Yes, I agree. Popularity in the sense of 'widespread adoption,' then there's its celebration for all the reasons you gave, along with the flag-waving blue-line tacticool contingent. But its utilitarian aspects (and that very widespread adoption) are why a ban of the AR-15, specifically, wouldn't survive scrutiny, even if you set aside all the culture war aspects (which I won't pretend this SCOTUS ignores).
I don't intend to trivialize the violence that guns enable by the comparison; but it really is like modular PC building, compared to earlier bespoke computing. Should it be that accessible? Maybe not, but that's the state of the art—and in the sense of eras.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:38 AM on November 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
DJZouke that question was answered a while ago. personally, I felt that Sandy Hook was it. if little blond white children in a puddle of blood wasn't enough, nothing will be.
... and Sandy Hook happened just 11 days before Christmas (Dec 14, 2012). Don't forget that additional "surely this" element that also counted for nothing.
posted by Paul Slade at 9:39 AM on November 16, 2023 [9 favorites]
... and Sandy Hook happened just 11 days before Christmas (Dec 14, 2012). Don't forget that additional "surely this" element that also counted for nothing.
posted by Paul Slade at 9:39 AM on November 16, 2023 [9 favorites]
I think snuffleupagus nails it. ARs are not fundamentally, legally, qualitatively different from a lot of other weapons. I DO agree that the AR is emblematic of modern mass shootings but it’s a very deliberate lightning rod. If one is using the AR as a symbolic instrument of death to advocate on overturning the 2nd Amendment and fully banning guns*, great, that tracks. Anything else is rules lawyering (see: California) that is hard to definitively defend judicially and will go back and forth forever depending on ideology of individual judges.
Meanwhile, every time there’s an injunction against laws banning specific guns or gun tech, they’ll keep getting snapped up in droves by people worrying about whether they’ll be able to do the same tomorrow, and there are thousands more in gun safes.
* This completely leaves aside how happy many ban-favoring folks are to have these weapons (everything from pistols to fully automatic ARs) on the streets in the hands of cops.
posted by supercres at 9:45 AM on November 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
Meanwhile, every time there’s an injunction against laws banning specific guns or gun tech, they’ll keep getting snapped up in droves by people worrying about whether they’ll be able to do the same tomorrow, and there are thousands more in gun safes.
* This completely leaves aside how happy many ban-favoring folks are to have these weapons (everything from pistols to fully automatic ARs) on the streets in the hands of cops.
posted by supercres at 9:45 AM on November 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
Nunchucks, saps, and monkey fists can be assembled at home from cheap materials. A corporation cannot make a lot of money from them. We've decided that these weapons are not protected by the 2nd Amendment, and many cities/counties ban them.
AR-15s and semiautomatic handguns are expensive and the demand and price for them goes up when there's a pandemic, social unrest, or any time a Black guy gets elected President. Several corporations make a lot of money from them. We've decided that these weapons are protected by the 2nd Amendment.
The politics at work here are not unintentional.
posted by AlSweigart at 9:50 AM on November 16, 2023 [37 favorites]
AR-15s and semiautomatic handguns are expensive and the demand and price for them goes up when there's a pandemic, social unrest, or any time a Black guy gets elected President. Several corporations make a lot of money from them. We've decided that these weapons are protected by the 2nd Amendment.
The politics at work here are not unintentional.
posted by AlSweigart at 9:50 AM on November 16, 2023 [37 favorites]
I find it telling that the conversation in this thread so quickly became one about the specifications of this particular gun -- about its status as a "cultural object." What does that mean, "cultural object"? If looking at these images doesn't fill you with an anguish that supersedes all of these ideas about the freedom to own guns, I don't know how to talk to you. And I'm tired of being lectured about understanding and accommodating the feelings of gun owners. It hasn't made any difference in changing the laws. What gun owners should know is that people like me do not care -- at all, not even one bit -- about how they feel about their guns. I do not need to hear any more "well, actually" about the sizes of cartridges or how many times a man has to reload to shoot children.
posted by Il etait une fois at 9:55 AM on November 16, 2023 [43 favorites]
posted by Il etait une fois at 9:55 AM on November 16, 2023 [43 favorites]
America has a bullet in its head.
posted by adept256 at 9:57 AM on November 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by adept256 at 9:57 AM on November 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
As I recall, the 2A basically says "since everybody knows militias are a good idea, you won't get in trouble with the federal government for keeping or bearing arms." So it permits exactly two things: keeping them and bearing them. It says nothing about buying them, selling them, gifting them, loading them, aiming them, firing them, cleaning them etc. If you're going to be a strict constitutionalist, uh, do that.
Not directed at anybody, just thinking out loud.
posted by emelenjr at 9:59 AM on November 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
Not directed at anybody, just thinking out loud.
posted by emelenjr at 9:59 AM on November 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
A few months ago, I read an article about a child of about six who had survived a school shooting. Pictures showed what the shooting had done to his body, things like big hunks of muscle in his arm that were just missing. I understand why we don't want to show pictures of the actual crime scenes when children are involved, but I thought showing more photos of what the survivors are dealing with physically could be a good way to get the same message of devastation across, and survivors can, of course, consent to those photos being used.
Another time, an article I read mentioned a faker—someone who claimed to have been a witness or first responder to a school shooting, One of the actual first responders commented that it was obvious she was faking because she said, "I'll never be able to forget their little faces." The real first responder said, "What faces?"
To me, that was an incredibly arresting and vivid image. Not more graphic than others I've read, but it somehow drove the devastation of it more forcefully into me. I didn't need that article, or this article, to be grieved and angry and appalled about the shootings. But I think I maybe collect these things that really drive it home like I think, "If enough people saw that surviving child's scars," or "if enough people heard that 'What faces?' line and understood what really happened in a shooting like this," then, surely, surely, surely, there would be the will to end it.
We had active shooter training at my workplace. This was last spring, not long after the February 13, 2023 mass shooting at Michigan State University. I work at a community college about three miles from MSU, in a building that was renovated during the shutdown. We're a tutoring center, our floor is huge, and everything is open. There are maybe three dividers of the space that hold smartboards for use in tutoring. The handful of classrooms on the floor, and the admins' offices along one end of the building, are entirely glass-walled. The motion-activated lights cannot be disabled.
The campus police chief suggested that running was our best option. He thought it might be good for us to have some glass-breaker tools to be able to get out through windows; the three entrances to the building are at opposite ends, and our shortest way out would be through a window. On the other hand, he said, you don't necessarily want to keep something around that could be used against you as a weapon, so weigh that.
Week before last, a student came into the building and made his way from one end to the other, throwing over furniture, potted plants, recycling bins, anything he could get his hands on as he went. I have a lot of experience of being present for this kind of displaced violence, and it upset me quite a bit. I excused myself to collect myself in a quiet room for awhile. I was the only one who did this. In conversations with coworkers later, it seemed that I was the only one who was reacting as if this was violence in the workplace, which it was. Other people may just not have wanted to describe it that way. Or may not have recognized or felt it as violence.
I like our building, but find myself surprised that, in the current climate, the redesign didn't incorporate survival features. Those glass-walled offices! I don't want to live in a world where our architecture includes safe rooms, but my coworkers and I feel a little bit like the powers that be were kind of reckless with our lives.
posted by Well I never at 10:01 AM on November 16, 2023 [21 favorites]
Another time, an article I read mentioned a faker—someone who claimed to have been a witness or first responder to a school shooting, One of the actual first responders commented that it was obvious she was faking because she said, "I'll never be able to forget their little faces." The real first responder said, "What faces?"
To me, that was an incredibly arresting and vivid image. Not more graphic than others I've read, but it somehow drove the devastation of it more forcefully into me. I didn't need that article, or this article, to be grieved and angry and appalled about the shootings. But I think I maybe collect these things that really drive it home like I think, "If enough people saw that surviving child's scars," or "if enough people heard that 'What faces?' line and understood what really happened in a shooting like this," then, surely, surely, surely, there would be the will to end it.
We had active shooter training at my workplace. This was last spring, not long after the February 13, 2023 mass shooting at Michigan State University. I work at a community college about three miles from MSU, in a building that was renovated during the shutdown. We're a tutoring center, our floor is huge, and everything is open. There are maybe three dividers of the space that hold smartboards for use in tutoring. The handful of classrooms on the floor, and the admins' offices along one end of the building, are entirely glass-walled. The motion-activated lights cannot be disabled.
The campus police chief suggested that running was our best option. He thought it might be good for us to have some glass-breaker tools to be able to get out through windows; the three entrances to the building are at opposite ends, and our shortest way out would be through a window. On the other hand, he said, you don't necessarily want to keep something around that could be used against you as a weapon, so weigh that.
Week before last, a student came into the building and made his way from one end to the other, throwing over furniture, potted plants, recycling bins, anything he could get his hands on as he went. I have a lot of experience of being present for this kind of displaced violence, and it upset me quite a bit. I excused myself to collect myself in a quiet room for awhile. I was the only one who did this. In conversations with coworkers later, it seemed that I was the only one who was reacting as if this was violence in the workplace, which it was. Other people may just not have wanted to describe it that way. Or may not have recognized or felt it as violence.
I like our building, but find myself surprised that, in the current climate, the redesign didn't incorporate survival features. Those glass-walled offices! I don't want to live in a world where our architecture includes safe rooms, but my coworkers and I feel a little bit like the powers that be were kind of reckless with our lives.
posted by Well I never at 10:01 AM on November 16, 2023 [21 favorites]
The technical talk about which gun is what and why people like them is a red herring. Bottom line is that that anything that lets you shoot lots of bullets, very quickly should be severely restricted or banned. I understand that means a lot of guns. I don't care.
We are at a point where every child gets out of school as a survivor of trauma. They have all had dozens of lockdown drills, false alarms and, for many, gun violence that touches them or their family from only 1 or 2 degrees of separation.
Real reform is impossible with the current supreme court. But Alito and Thomas will die someday, and we need to make sure that believers in gun reform control the Whitehouse and Senate when that happens. In the mean time, any temporary, or stopgap band-aid that can address a small part of the problem is valuable.
posted by being_quiet at 10:05 AM on November 16, 2023 [29 favorites]
We are at a point where every child gets out of school as a survivor of trauma. They have all had dozens of lockdown drills, false alarms and, for many, gun violence that touches them or their family from only 1 or 2 degrees of separation.
Real reform is impossible with the current supreme court. But Alito and Thomas will die someday, and we need to make sure that believers in gun reform control the Whitehouse and Senate when that happens. In the mean time, any temporary, or stopgap band-aid that can address a small part of the problem is valuable.
posted by being_quiet at 10:05 AM on November 16, 2023 [29 favorites]
Also, I recently read American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15.
I nearly gave up on it early on, because the early history from the 50s-70s is just ugly. To my anyway. The designer has no qualms about his design at all; he wants it to do what it does. And there are some disturbing descriptions of experiments done during the design process.
When he gets to the 70s and 80s, the history helps to explain why police felt threatened and unsafe, and you can see how that carries through to our day, how it sets up this idea that police officers are in danger, and need to be more militarized, and even how this perception that they're unsafe on the street contributes to our culture of police shootings of Black people. This felt like the most useful part of the book, like it helped explain, "How did we get here from there."
posted by Well I never at 10:08 AM on November 16, 2023 [12 favorites]
I nearly gave up on it early on, because the early history from the 50s-70s is just ugly. To my anyway. The designer has no qualms about his design at all; he wants it to do what it does. And there are some disturbing descriptions of experiments done during the design process.
When he gets to the 70s and 80s, the history helps to explain why police felt threatened and unsafe, and you can see how that carries through to our day, how it sets up this idea that police officers are in danger, and need to be more militarized, and even how this perception that they're unsafe on the street contributes to our culture of police shootings of Black people. This felt like the most useful part of the book, like it helped explain, "How did we get here from there."
posted by Well I never at 10:08 AM on November 16, 2023 [12 favorites]
> I do not need to hear any more "well, actually" about the sizes of cartridges or how many times a man has to reload to shoot children.
Yes, and along these same lines:
Knowledge is knowing the difference between a clip and a magazine, a bullet and a round, and a semiautomatic rifle and a machine gun.
Wisdom is knowing that these differences don't fucking matter when talking about mass shootings.
posted by AlSweigart at 10:08 AM on November 16, 2023 [50 favorites]
Yes, and along these same lines:
Knowledge is knowing the difference between a clip and a magazine, a bullet and a round, and a semiautomatic rifle and a machine gun.
Wisdom is knowing that these differences don't fucking matter when talking about mass shootings.
posted by AlSweigart at 10:08 AM on November 16, 2023 [50 favorites]
What gun owners should know is that people like me do not care -- at all, not even one bit -- about how they feel about their guns.
I think it's worth noting that there are a ton of gun owners who are in favor of gun control. This idea that the NRA actually represents the average gun owner is a myth.
posted by joannemerriam at 10:10 AM on November 16, 2023 [10 favorites]
I think it's worth noting that there are a ton of gun owners who are in favor of gun control. This idea that the NRA actually represents the average gun owner is a myth.
posted by joannemerriam at 10:10 AM on November 16, 2023 [10 favorites]
overturning the 2nd Amendment and fully banning guns
yes, please?
I know, I know...
posted by supermedusa at 10:10 AM on November 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
yes, please?
I know, I know...
posted by supermedusa at 10:10 AM on November 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
corb You make a good point. This is something that I bring up in conversations with sane people about gun control. There are so many of these guns stockpiled in warehouses all over the country. I should clarify my last comment with "showing photos of what is left of the bodies of a 7 yr old children after being shot with an AR-15 or variants of such a weapon."
posted by DJZouke at 10:16 AM on November 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by DJZouke at 10:16 AM on November 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
This is over. Do you know what matters? Nothing. Do you know what doesn't matter? Everything. This is a moribund argument. You're complaining about an inevitability. It is over.
The recent shooting in Maine, the locals, the government officials, the police, all expressed the same stunned sentiment - this doesn't happen in Maine. I thought it was plain that they were wrong. There is nowhere in the united states where this can't happen. Then - during the manhunt for the killer - they didn't suspend hunting, rather they asked hunters to report suspicious people with guns.
It doesn't matter. It's over, and in the end nothing matters. I hate America.
posted by adept256 at 10:21 AM on November 16, 2023 [10 favorites]
The recent shooting in Maine, the locals, the government officials, the police, all expressed the same stunned sentiment - this doesn't happen in Maine. I thought it was plain that they were wrong. There is nowhere in the united states where this can't happen. Then - during the manhunt for the killer - they didn't suspend hunting, rather they asked hunters to report suspicious people with guns.
It doesn't matter. It's over, and in the end nothing matters. I hate America.
posted by adept256 at 10:21 AM on November 16, 2023 [10 favorites]
At this point the problem seems so far gone that in the hypothetical pipe dream/nightmare (depending on what side of the issue you stand on) scenario where Democrats win overwhelming control of Congress, the Senate and the Presidency, all of the conservative justices on the Supreme Court retire and are replaced by liberals and legislation is passed outright banning guns like this, these types of gun owners would revolt and start killing the types of people they deemed responsible en masse in a semi-organized fashion.
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:32 AM on November 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:32 AM on November 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
Even were bans of all of these types of rifles to be implemented tomorrow, there are between 15 and 20 million "modern sporting rifles" presently in the United States which would need to be grandfathered to avoid being an unconstitutional taking.
So?
Why do they even need to be grandfathered? The whole point of banning personal ownership of senseless killing devices is to keep people from owning senseless killing devices. There's no "oh, I guess everyone who legally bought a senseless killing device before they were outlawed gets to keep it because it would be unfair to take their senseless killing device away from them"
Declare a limited amnesty for them to be turned in. After that, possession is a felony.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:35 AM on November 16, 2023 [23 favorites]
So?
Why do they even need to be grandfathered? The whole point of banning personal ownership of senseless killing devices is to keep people from owning senseless killing devices. There's no "oh, I guess everyone who legally bought a senseless killing device before they were outlawed gets to keep it because it would be unfair to take their senseless killing device away from them"
Declare a limited amnesty for them to be turned in. After that, possession is a felony.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:35 AM on November 16, 2023 [23 favorites]
I do not need to hear any more "well, actually" about the sizes of cartridges or how many times a man has to reload to shoot children.
Knowledge is knowing the difference between a clip and a magazine, a bullet and a round, and a semiautomatic rifle and a machine gun.
These sentiments are understandable and rack up dopamine-inducing +++ points when you’re preaching to the choir but the details are important if one wants to effect change. Gun people know these things, most liberals don’t. Again, unless we’re talking about repealing 2A, banning all firearms at a federal level, and somehow confiscating the millions of firearms currently in the hands of Americans*, there will always be loopholes and workarounds, and the details are critical there.
* I’d wager that’s significantly less likely than reshaping our society into one free of the alienation, hopelessness, and hatred that contributes in no small part to mass shootings.
posted by supercres at 10:35 AM on November 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Knowledge is knowing the difference between a clip and a magazine, a bullet and a round, and a semiautomatic rifle and a machine gun.
These sentiments are understandable and rack up dopamine-inducing +++ points when you’re preaching to the choir but the details are important if one wants to effect change. Gun people know these things, most liberals don’t. Again, unless we’re talking about repealing 2A, banning all firearms at a federal level, and somehow confiscating the millions of firearms currently in the hands of Americans*, there will always be loopholes and workarounds, and the details are critical there.
* I’d wager that’s significantly less likely than reshaping our society into one free of the alienation, hopelessness, and hatred that contributes in no small part to mass shootings.
posted by supercres at 10:35 AM on November 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
It doesn't matter. It's over, and in the end nothing matters. I hate America.
Yep. This country is deeply sick in the soul and is probably irredeemable without a revolution (violent or non-violent, hopefully non-violent.) Nothing works here and no one cares.
posted by rhymedirective at 11:25 AM on November 16, 2023
Yep. This country is deeply sick in the soul and is probably irredeemable without a revolution (violent or non-violent, hopefully non-violent.) Nothing works here and no one cares.
posted by rhymedirective at 11:25 AM on November 16, 2023
One of the reasons so many gun nuts are complete pedants wrt gun terminology, is that you need to be to avoid catching a felony. For example, if you want to legally own an AR-15 in California, you must become a huge AR-15 nerd to not run afoul of the laws (which are ever changing).
So these days most gun forums will have threads discussing case law and recent legal decisions. That's actually pretty wild for what is traditionally a rural, outdoorsy hobby.
posted by ryanrs at 11:32 AM on November 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
So these days most gun forums will have threads discussing case law and recent legal decisions. That's actually pretty wild for what is traditionally a rural, outdoorsy hobby.
posted by ryanrs at 11:32 AM on November 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
Why do they even need to be grandfathered? The whole point of banning personal ownership of senseless killing devices is to keep people from owning senseless killing devices.
So I think one thing that can sometimes turn up the heat on conversations, when it doesn't need to be, is that sometimes people are talking about different layers of a problem, and someone thinks the other person is talking about one, when they're really talking about the other.
When I say that guns would need to be grandfathered, I wasn't talking about the policy reasons or moral reasons, though there probably are some I could get into, I was talking specifically about the legal standard a law would have to meet in the United States in order to be ultimately held constitutional. Because it's not just about the Second Amendment analysis - one of the big ones that comes up here is also a Fifth Amendment problem: the relevant text here is:
posted by corb at 11:47 AM on November 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
So I think one thing that can sometimes turn up the heat on conversations, when it doesn't need to be, is that sometimes people are talking about different layers of a problem, and someone thinks the other person is talking about one, when they're really talking about the other.
When I say that guns would need to be grandfathered, I wasn't talking about the policy reasons or moral reasons, though there probably are some I could get into, I was talking specifically about the legal standard a law would have to meet in the United States in order to be ultimately held constitutional. Because it's not just about the Second Amendment analysis - one of the big ones that comes up here is also a Fifth Amendment problem: the relevant text here is:
nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.So legally, if the federal government were going to seize the guns and actually take them away - they would have to pay a fair price for them in order to meet that standard of just compensation. That could be done - but by my reckoning, just with the modern sporting rifles alone, it could be a price tag as high as 40 billion dollars. I shudder to think what the market value of every semi-automatic weapon in the United States is, as some have suggested above. Here is the economic impact analysis of the arms and ammunition industry for 2023 alone - it's 20 billion dollars.
posted by corb at 11:47 AM on November 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
What if you just take the lowers?
posted by ryanrs at 11:50 AM on November 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by ryanrs at 11:50 AM on November 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
Even if the second amendment were repealed the gun people would just revert to the first amendment - gun fetishism meets all the criteria for a religion now.
A horrible, anti-human religion.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 11:58 AM on November 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
A horrible, anti-human religion.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 11:58 AM on November 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
The gun's type doesn't matter: the wound doesn't care what sent the bullet, or the caliber of the bullet, or its shape, or its material. The body bears the wound and so the body dies, or survives with scars.
All the reasons are bullshit: I don't care about your hobby. (I shot in my high school's NRA program, and have the medals to prove it. I have other hobbies now.) I don't care about the money you spent. (I also spend money on activities, which I can't get back.) I don't care about the need to rebel someday. (The U.S. Army won't be stopped by small groups of guys with one weapon each, no matter what you think you took away from "Red Dawn.") I don't care about home defense. (You'd be using a shotgun if you cared about your family, in their bedrooms behind those thin gypsum board walls.) I don't care about hunting. (Use a bolt-action gun, or use a bow & arrow like my uncle who killed a bear that way.)
I am just so exhausted by the selfishness of "you can't have my guns."
posted by wenestvedt at 12:05 PM on November 16, 2023 [35 favorites]
All the reasons are bullshit: I don't care about your hobby. (I shot in my high school's NRA program, and have the medals to prove it. I have other hobbies now.) I don't care about the money you spent. (I also spend money on activities, which I can't get back.) I don't care about the need to rebel someday. (The U.S. Army won't be stopped by small groups of guys with one weapon each, no matter what you think you took away from "Red Dawn.") I don't care about home defense. (You'd be using a shotgun if you cared about your family, in their bedrooms behind those thin gypsum board walls.) I don't care about hunting. (Use a bolt-action gun, or use a bow & arrow like my uncle who killed a bear that way.)
I am just so exhausted by the selfishness of "you can't have my guns."
posted by wenestvedt at 12:05 PM on November 16, 2023 [35 favorites]
Corb, hi. When I express this nihilistic realization that everything is broken and nothing is right, that includes your stupid fucking laws as much as the numb repetition of dead bodies. I'm not very interested in your legal theories. Don't you understand what is happening? You need to reject that anything about this is legal. You can't make this inhumanity right with some lawyer shit. I'm tired of this. Take the guns and throw them in a volcano.
posted by adept256 at 12:10 PM on November 16, 2023 [19 favorites]
posted by adept256 at 12:10 PM on November 16, 2023 [19 favorites]
So I think one thing that can sometimes turn up the heat on conversations, when it doesn't need to be, is that sometimes people are talking about different layers of a problem, and someone thinks the other person is talking about one, when they're really talking about the other.
Fair enough, but also keep in mind the content of the linked article and overall frustration that nothing has been done about this, and nothing will be done about this. Pointing out that the Fifth Amendment would technically make the entirely-hypothetical-and-not-at-all-gonna-happen seizure of guns unrealistic for simple, economic reasons also turns up the heat. Yes, it's true, but as with the earlier discussion about how gun owners take offense when non-gun owners are ignorant about guns it feels kind of tone-deaf.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 12:13 PM on November 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
Fair enough, but also keep in mind the content of the linked article and overall frustration that nothing has been done about this, and nothing will be done about this. Pointing out that the Fifth Amendment would technically make the entirely-hypothetical-and-not-at-all-gonna-happen seizure of guns unrealistic for simple, economic reasons also turns up the heat. Yes, it's true, but as with the earlier discussion about how gun owners take offense when non-gun owners are ignorant about guns it feels kind of tone-deaf.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 12:13 PM on November 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
Article: The impact is often shielded by laws and court rulings that keep crime scene photos and records secret.
Paired with the Dickey Amendment, that is, the 1997 mandate that none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be used to advocate or promote gun control. that effectively ended federal research on the impact of guns on human health,
"Our" laws are being used to herd us into a pen and slaughter us, en masse.
Because profit.
posted by Dashy at 12:33 PM on November 16, 2023 [14 favorites]
Paired with the Dickey Amendment, that is, the 1997 mandate that none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be used to advocate or promote gun control. that effectively ended federal research on the impact of guns on human health,
"Our" laws are being used to herd us into a pen and slaughter us, en masse.
Because profit.
posted by Dashy at 12:33 PM on November 16, 2023 [14 favorites]
(The fiscal year 2020 federal budget included $25 million for the CDC and NIH to research reducing gun-related deaths and injuries, the first such funding since 1996. Mind you, 25M is peanuts in research dollars.)
posted by Dashy at 12:36 PM on November 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Dashy at 12:36 PM on November 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
It is too bad that this article and Meta thread could not put on a crawler on all the cable news stations. However it is the images that really penetrate not the words. I wonder if some day some newspaper (print and online) would have the guts to show the images of innocent people slaughtered by a deranged person. It is ok to show images of innocent dead civilians in Israel and Gaza but not children in our grade schools in the USA.
posted by DJZouke at 12:36 PM on November 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by DJZouke at 12:36 PM on November 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
The picture near the end of the article, from Las Vegas, looks like Jonestown.
I'm not sure whether the pictures or the words are harder to take.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:45 PM on November 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm not sure whether the pictures or the words are harder to take.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:45 PM on November 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
Availability does matter; people are lazy, so making weapons hard to get acts as a filter. This is of course more true for the more impulsive consequences of weapon use, like suicide and brawl-homicide (homicide that are caused by a fight escalating).
It would be a massive effort and likely lead to civil unrest, but a well-funded buyback program, combined with a ban on buying, importing and manufacturing on self-loaders (all semi-automatic firearms) and handguns, barring "legitimate interest" uses like defense against polar bears, might work.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 12:56 PM on November 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
It would be a massive effort and likely lead to civil unrest, but a well-funded buyback program, combined with a ban on buying, importing and manufacturing on self-loaders (all semi-automatic firearms) and handguns, barring "legitimate interest" uses like defense against polar bears, might work.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 12:56 PM on November 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
And by handguns, I mean any handgun, including an old-timey single-shot blackpowder pistol.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 12:57 PM on November 16, 2023
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 12:57 PM on November 16, 2023
> What does that mean, "cultural object"?
I can't give you an exact definition, but I get the feeling that the only things we'd count as American cultural objects are things that mostly men are into.
posted by AlSweigart at 1:05 PM on November 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
I can't give you an exact definition, but I get the feeling that the only things we'd count as American cultural objects are things that mostly men are into.
posted by AlSweigart at 1:05 PM on November 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
Do we think that pictures like this will change any hearts that could not be swayed by Sandy Hook?
Re: trauma, one thing I hear sometimes is that children are not really traumatized by things like safety drills or world events as long as the adults around them convey the message, “I’ll keep you safe.” I’ve never had it in me to convey that message, personally, not since I had to look in the face the fact that — on so many levels, in so many ways — I can’t actually do that. So many consequential things are in the hands of others, the people who could choose to do harm or to refrain. I know that’s actually true for all parents, when you get right down to brass tacks, but I’m guessing most families don’t have to confront this until the children are old enough to handle it. School violence, though, I think that hits more and more of us close to home every year. Suspension of disbelief is wearing very thin.
posted by eirias at 1:06 PM on November 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
Re: trauma, one thing I hear sometimes is that children are not really traumatized by things like safety drills or world events as long as the adults around them convey the message, “I’ll keep you safe.” I’ve never had it in me to convey that message, personally, not since I had to look in the face the fact that — on so many levels, in so many ways — I can’t actually do that. So many consequential things are in the hands of others, the people who could choose to do harm or to refrain. I know that’s actually true for all parents, when you get right down to brass tacks, but I’m guessing most families don’t have to confront this until the children are old enough to handle it. School violence, though, I think that hits more and more of us close to home every year. Suspension of disbelief is wearing very thin.
posted by eirias at 1:06 PM on November 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm on the safety committee at work, and we watched a mass shooting preparation presentation when the Uvalde shootings happened. My daughter is the same age as those kids, and it could just as easily been her school. That broke me for a long time.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:26 PM on November 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by kirkaracha at 1:26 PM on November 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
What does that mean, "cultural object"?... I do not need to hear any more "well, actually" about the sizes of cartridges or how many times a man has to reload to shoot children.
I can't give you an exact definition, but I get the feeling that the only things we'd count as American cultural objects are things that mostly men are into.
The technical talk about which gun is what and why people like them is a red herring.
Being sarcastically coy about what a 'cultural object' or political 'iconography' even are, or inserting lazy race and gender dunks in threads like this is its own kind of unneccessary culture war posturing.
(If anything, so long as the guns and the gun culture is out there it would be better if they were less identified with conservative white men. Tacticool Girlfriend on firearm basics. Robert Evans interviews Yellow Peril Tactical on expanding gun ownership on the left.)
So is accusing people of commenting in bad faith or heartlessly or being horrible monsters or whatever for responding to the actual post and article, or thinking that the engineering aspects of how firearms work and the ballistics of the projectiles they fire are somehow less important to coming up with effective firearm regulation than, say, the engineering aspects of cars and traffic flow are to highway safety.
The title of this thread is "Terror-on-Repeat-Devastation-caused-by-AR-15-shootings" and by the framing of the OP is about the "repeating pattern of destruction wrought by the AR-15."
The article itself calls the AR-15 "an American icon." Would people pretend not to understand what is intended when people call the car an 'American icon' of personal freedom? However we might criticize that as a poisonous illusion from an environmental or epidemiological or urbanist perspective?
(And cars aren't even Constitutionally protected. Which is not something that can actually be handwaved away, if you want the other rights found in it to endure.)
Yes, it's about mass shootings, but this is the framing the article itself has chosen.
The article includes exploded, animated diagrams of the AR-15's action and compares the 5.56 cartridge (the "AR-15 bullet") to 9mm (which is misleading—the average reader would respond differently to a comparison to the older battle rifle rounds, which look 'worse' to a layperson).
Maybe if the article included a comparative animation of a larger .308 round fired from a WWII collector's piece simply detaching someone's limb or blowing out their entire chest cavity, that would get the point across? Part of the point of the military development of the 5.56 round was that it's less likely to kill outright. You can bury bodies. You have to triage wounded and then care for disabled veterans. The older guns are not actually any better in terms of not killing people until you go back to effectively pre-industrial designs.
That is a point worth understanding when it comes to understanding what you'd have to actually ban to meaningfully change the ability to commit these massacres.
If you don't want to have that discussion then maybe don't come into a thread explicitly framed to discuss the deadliness of a specific weapon and the round it fires, and literally calls it an "icon," to shame people who do.
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:47 PM on November 16, 2023 [9 favorites]
I can't give you an exact definition, but I get the feeling that the only things we'd count as American cultural objects are things that mostly men are into.
The technical talk about which gun is what and why people like them is a red herring.
Being sarcastically coy about what a 'cultural object' or political 'iconography' even are, or inserting lazy race and gender dunks in threads like this is its own kind of unneccessary culture war posturing.
(If anything, so long as the guns and the gun culture is out there it would be better if they were less identified with conservative white men. Tacticool Girlfriend on firearm basics. Robert Evans interviews Yellow Peril Tactical on expanding gun ownership on the left.)
So is accusing people of commenting in bad faith or heartlessly or being horrible monsters or whatever for responding to the actual post and article, or thinking that the engineering aspects of how firearms work and the ballistics of the projectiles they fire are somehow less important to coming up with effective firearm regulation than, say, the engineering aspects of cars and traffic flow are to highway safety.
The title of this thread is "Terror-on-Repeat-Devastation-caused-by-AR-15-shootings" and by the framing of the OP is about the "repeating pattern of destruction wrought by the AR-15."
The article itself calls the AR-15 "an American icon." Would people pretend not to understand what is intended when people call the car an 'American icon' of personal freedom? However we might criticize that as a poisonous illusion from an environmental or epidemiological or urbanist perspective?
(And cars aren't even Constitutionally protected. Which is not something that can actually be handwaved away, if you want the other rights found in it to endure.)
Yes, it's about mass shootings, but this is the framing the article itself has chosen.
The article includes exploded, animated diagrams of the AR-15's action and compares the 5.56 cartridge (the "AR-15 bullet") to 9mm (which is misleading—the average reader would respond differently to a comparison to the older battle rifle rounds, which look 'worse' to a layperson).
Maybe if the article included a comparative animation of a larger .308 round fired from a WWII collector's piece simply detaching someone's limb or blowing out their entire chest cavity, that would get the point across? Part of the point of the military development of the 5.56 round was that it's less likely to kill outright. You can bury bodies. You have to triage wounded and then care for disabled veterans. The older guns are not actually any better in terms of not killing people until you go back to effectively pre-industrial designs.
That is a point worth understanding when it comes to understanding what you'd have to actually ban to meaningfully change the ability to commit these massacres.
If you don't want to have that discussion then maybe don't come into a thread explicitly framed to discuss the deadliness of a specific weapon and the round it fires, and literally calls it an "icon," to shame people who do.
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:47 PM on November 16, 2023 [9 favorites]
And it's worth considering, since we've had widespread civilian ownership of semi-auto magazine fed rifles for half a century (including the AR-15 but also widely surplused forerunners), why has the violence intensified and spread so dramatically over the most recent few?
It's not only about the availability of these kinds of guns, there's also all the surrounding structural conditions that are intensifying alienation, anomie, antisociality, etc. Though being able to better control the guns than currently allowed would doubtlessly help.
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:59 PM on November 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
It's not only about the availability of these kinds of guns, there's also all the surrounding structural conditions that are intensifying alienation, anomie, antisociality, etc. Though being able to better control the guns than currently allowed would doubtlessly help.
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:59 PM on November 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
If you unfucked the politics of this country to the point where a national gun ban could conceivably pass, I suspect nearly all mass shootings would already have stopped.
posted by ryanrs at 2:03 PM on November 16, 2023 [15 favorites]
posted by ryanrs at 2:03 PM on November 16, 2023 [15 favorites]
I think it's worth noting that there are a ton of gun owners who are in favor of gun control. This idea that the NRA actually represents the average gun owner is a myth.
I feel like in the current US political climate around guns, that "ton of gun owners" have a very, very strong responsibility to organize themselves into an organization at least as politically potent as the NRA. If they can't, then it's just lip service and they can rot in hell.
This assumes "average gun owners" actually exist in any substantial numbers, which might be the real myth here.
posted by Rumple at 2:20 PM on November 16, 2023 [13 favorites]
I feel like in the current US political climate around guns, that "ton of gun owners" have a very, very strong responsibility to organize themselves into an organization at least as politically potent as the NRA. If they can't, then it's just lip service and they can rot in hell.
This assumes "average gun owners" actually exist in any substantial numbers, which might be the real myth here.
posted by Rumple at 2:20 PM on November 16, 2023 [13 favorites]
(If anything, so long as the guns and the gun culture is out there it would be better if they were less identified with conservative white men. Tacticool Girlfriend yt on firearm basics. Robert Evans interviews Yellow Peril Tactical on expanding gun ownership on the left.)
Why is the solution always more guns?
That is a point worth understanding when it comes to understanding what you'd have to
actually ban to meaningfully change the ability to commit these massacres.
The more people insist that there's important nuance to be learned in exactly how different ammunition rounds tear through flesh and shatter jaws, the more I want to ban all guns, period. Fuck guns.
It takes an awful lot of Second Amendment privilege to still quibble over the comparative deadliness of an AR-15 vs a 9mm handgun after seeing some of the images in that article.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 2:51 PM on November 16, 2023 [12 favorites]
Why is the solution always more guns?
That is a point worth understanding when it comes to understanding what you'd have to
actually ban to meaningfully change the ability to commit these massacres.
The more people insist that there's important nuance to be learned in exactly how different ammunition rounds tear through flesh and shatter jaws, the more I want to ban all guns, period. Fuck guns.
It takes an awful lot of Second Amendment privilege to still quibble over the comparative deadliness of an AR-15 vs a 9mm handgun after seeing some of the images in that article.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 2:51 PM on November 16, 2023 [12 favorites]
As is often noted, Australia's response to a mass shooting event in 1996 (the Port Arthur Massacre) was nationwide gun control, pursuant to the National Firearms Agreement. Rather than focussing on aspects of the design of the weapons (a la many of the US attempts an assault weapon bans), the bright line the legislation drew was between single shot and manually operated firearms (Category A and B) and semi automatic firearms (Category C and D).
Which is not to say that you can't legally own semi-auto longarms of handguns in Australia. You can, but the licencing requirements are onerous and very strictly applied, and those who have managed to get access to Cat C or D firearms are generally pretty motivated to not run foul of the law.
One of the difficulties that the US faces is that the cat is well and truly out of the bag. Perhaps if this bridge was crossed 20 or 30 years ago before the black rifle industry had a chance to really crank up it would be able to be managed better, but the reality is that there's something about how the AR has insinuated itself into the consciousness of the country, and how mass shooting events have become part of the cultural vocabulary makes this difficult or impossible to address from a regulatory perspective.
posted by tim_in_oz at 3:08 PM on November 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
Which is not to say that you can't legally own semi-auto longarms of handguns in Australia. You can, but the licencing requirements are onerous and very strictly applied, and those who have managed to get access to Cat C or D firearms are generally pretty motivated to not run foul of the law.
One of the difficulties that the US faces is that the cat is well and truly out of the bag. Perhaps if this bridge was crossed 20 or 30 years ago before the black rifle industry had a chance to really crank up it would be able to be managed better, but the reality is that there's something about how the AR has insinuated itself into the consciousness of the country, and how mass shooting events have become part of the cultural vocabulary makes this difficult or impossible to address from a regulatory perspective.
posted by tim_in_oz at 3:08 PM on November 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
If you unfucked the politics of this country to the point where a national gun ban could conceivably pass, I suspect nearly all mass shootings would already have stopped.
I’m still thinking about this one. Why do so many Americans want to kill people? Why is this appealing? Can we fix any of those things?
posted by eirias at 3:40 PM on November 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
I’m still thinking about this one. Why do so many Americans want to kill people? Why is this appealing? Can we fix any of those things?
posted by eirias at 3:40 PM on November 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
If every AR-15 in the country vanished tomorrow, shootings might become more rare, but I fear that would-be shooters would just eventually move on to different kinds of weapons. They're tools that make it easier to do horrible things. But sadly the desire will still be there.
posted by gottabefunky at 4:31 PM on November 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by gottabefunky at 4:31 PM on November 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
Just outlaw bullet manufacture and sales.
posted by fnerg at 4:34 PM on November 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by fnerg at 4:34 PM on November 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
I feel like in the current US political climate around guns, that "ton of gun owners" have a very, very strong responsibility to organize themselves into an organization at least as politically potent as the NRA
This is incredibly difficult: let me explain why.
The NRA once used to be a fairly anodyne gun organization that promoted marksmanship and wildlife conservation, for the first 90 years of its existence. From the article,
I would consider myself a reasonable gun owner who would be the target for this. At the moment, I own precisely one rifle. I may someday get a handgun to protect myself from my extremely dangerous ex husband, but I don't see the need as of yet. But the problem is that I have so many other organizations and causes that I feel are incredibly important right now. Reproductive rights are under attack: in the state I currently live, abortion is illegal. LGBTQ rights are under attack: the town my roommate went to school in has just banned public homosexuality. Protest rights are under attack: the state of Georgia has just used a RICO indictment against a number of protesters, including a legal observer, for using a solidarity fund or being involved with protests in other states. People are being pushed into out of housing and into the streets. I can't afford to spend all of my money and time on such an organization, because I care about this world and the things happening in it and I have to divide my money and time among the multiple causes that I support. And when I vote for people, I can't afford to vote just based on how they make decisions about guns - I need to care about the other rights they protect or don't protect.
But those guys - they're not always, but they're usually guys - who sit at home and obsess about how they feel their world is disappearing and the government is coming for them and their 26 rifles are all that's going to protect them when it comes? Those guys can spend all their money and all their time on the NRA. They can buy gold plated guns from companies that pay the NRA a boatload of money to advertise in their hokey magazines. They can vote for only candidates that the NRA endorses, who in turn make sure there's a favorable climate for the NRA to exist.
So the NRA is always going to outspend every other reasonable gun organization and have more political friends. The NRA outspends the Sylvia Rivera Gun Club, or the John Brown Gun Club, or any other gun club not made up of insane people, by truly exponential factors. And I don't really know a way around that. Because reasonable people care about a lot of things and that means things will be spread around.
posted by corb at 5:48 PM on November 16, 2023 [15 favorites]
This is incredibly difficult: let me explain why.
The NRA once used to be a fairly anodyne gun organization that promoted marksmanship and wildlife conservation, for the first 90 years of its existence. From the article,
From the early 1920s through the early 1970s, the NRA continued to support gun control and participate in public sessions — they were willing to reach compromises, including for the nation’s first major federal gun control law in 1934 outlawing submachine guns that were in vogue with gangsters like Al Capone, and then the 1968 Gun Control Act, which was prompted by the assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King, and Bob Kennedy that outlawed the interstate sale of long guns.But when it was, it wasn't nearly the political powerhouse it is today. It moved on, and became an ideological focus for people who bundled their obsession, not just love, of guns, with party ideology, and became flush with more money and power. Sure, some members of the NRA are members just because gun ranges started in the 1940s still require NRA membership, but those aren't the "whales", the people keeping the organization funded and politically powerful.
I would consider myself a reasonable gun owner who would be the target for this. At the moment, I own precisely one rifle. I may someday get a handgun to protect myself from my extremely dangerous ex husband, but I don't see the need as of yet. But the problem is that I have so many other organizations and causes that I feel are incredibly important right now. Reproductive rights are under attack: in the state I currently live, abortion is illegal. LGBTQ rights are under attack: the town my roommate went to school in has just banned public homosexuality. Protest rights are under attack: the state of Georgia has just used a RICO indictment against a number of protesters, including a legal observer, for using a solidarity fund or being involved with protests in other states. People are being pushed into out of housing and into the streets. I can't afford to spend all of my money and time on such an organization, because I care about this world and the things happening in it and I have to divide my money and time among the multiple causes that I support. And when I vote for people, I can't afford to vote just based on how they make decisions about guns - I need to care about the other rights they protect or don't protect.
But those guys - they're not always, but they're usually guys - who sit at home and obsess about how they feel their world is disappearing and the government is coming for them and their 26 rifles are all that's going to protect them when it comes? Those guys can spend all their money and all their time on the NRA. They can buy gold plated guns from companies that pay the NRA a boatload of money to advertise in their hokey magazines. They can vote for only candidates that the NRA endorses, who in turn make sure there's a favorable climate for the NRA to exist.
So the NRA is always going to outspend every other reasonable gun organization and have more political friends. The NRA outspends the Sylvia Rivera Gun Club, or the John Brown Gun Club, or any other gun club not made up of insane people, by truly exponential factors. And I don't really know a way around that. Because reasonable people care about a lot of things and that means things will be spread around.
posted by corb at 5:48 PM on November 16, 2023 [15 favorites]
A sidebar: Yes, the WaPo pics are disturbing, and as some have been noted above, long overdue, inasmuch as unsettling pictures remind the public of how disturbing murder is, how devastating bloody carnage is to all of us. The publication of these pictures is intended to act as a call to action.
Some have suggested that were pictures of the heaps of dead children at Newton to be published, something would be done--immediately--to ameliorate the explosion of gun violence.
And a sidebar to the sidebar: American media publishes images of the dead bodies of non-white people on a regular basis.
posted by kozad at 7:46 PM on November 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
Some have suggested that were pictures of the heaps of dead children at Newton to be published, something would be done--immediately--to ameliorate the explosion of gun violence.
And a sidebar to the sidebar: American media publishes images of the dead bodies of non-white people on a regular basis.
posted by kozad at 7:46 PM on November 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
I have no interest in guns, but if a family member was killed in a shooting , there’d be a whole lot of gun shows, gun shops, and shooting ranges mysteriously going up in flames. Gun culture is horseshit. Gun ownership is mostly horseshit. “Culture” implies some sort of lengthy and meaningful tradition … at best they are like pop culture - shallow, meaningless, unfulfilling. For bonding with dad there’s always baseball. I had one ex army buddy who did concealed carry and I gave him constant shit about it. Nice guy, but he was fucking paranoid.
posted by caviar2d2 at 7:53 PM on November 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by caviar2d2 at 7:53 PM on November 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
These sentiments are understandable and rack up dopamine-inducing +++ points when you’re preaching to the choir
I'm seeing this kind of thing more and more, referring to brain chemistry to disparage people's arguments, especially if they are altruistic.
It's kind of gross?
It's a way to gaslight another person, essentially saying that they are pretending to care about something but actually they're just want to feel good about themselves.
It's very similar to the false binary of emotions vs rationality, as if emotions can't be a valid input to forming opinions.
posted by Zumbador at 8:22 PM on November 16, 2023 [18 favorites]
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." When did America decide to drop 'well regulated' and obsess over 'shall not be infringed '? I suppose zero regulation is the definition of not infringed. Am I exaggerating somewhat? Probably. But I think people who quibble over technical details over the guns most commonly used in the mass murder of children are more or less by default on the side of mass murder is inevitable, because we just can't ban guns! That's illegal!
Why no health care? Republicans! Maybe it goes to their AR lapel pins budget. Which, again, leads me back to....... Are these people tacitly supporting mass murder? There's nothing that could get me to wear an icon of terror like that. Not after the first mass shooting, not after the tenth, not after.... I don't even know what we are on and that's equally terrifying and heartbreaking.
So yeah, an AR 15 is a cultural icon to a certain type of people like a rainbow flag is to their diametric counterparts. One stands for freedom denied and fought for, to live a happy and safe life.... The other is a gun of choice for the people who increasingly threaten my little quiet rainbow world. Legally, verbally, on news and actions, and by buying more guns. Sometimes I wish I was a gun instead of a transgender woman. Must be nice to have so many people advocating for 'not infringed ' instead of hate laws.
posted by Jacen at 11:57 PM on November 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
Why no health care? Republicans! Maybe it goes to their AR lapel pins budget. Which, again, leads me back to....... Are these people tacitly supporting mass murder? There's nothing that could get me to wear an icon of terror like that. Not after the first mass shooting, not after the tenth, not after.... I don't even know what we are on and that's equally terrifying and heartbreaking.
So yeah, an AR 15 is a cultural icon to a certain type of people like a rainbow flag is to their diametric counterparts. One stands for freedom denied and fought for, to live a happy and safe life.... The other is a gun of choice for the people who increasingly threaten my little quiet rainbow world. Legally, verbally, on news and actions, and by buying more guns. Sometimes I wish I was a gun instead of a transgender woman. Must be nice to have so many people advocating for 'not infringed ' instead of hate laws.
posted by Jacen at 11:57 PM on November 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
It is mind blowing to me that even here on Metafilter so many people are defensive about the idea of banning guns. Honestly, if you look at this article and don't immediately think that all guns should be banned, you are complicit in this. No hunting exceptions, no nothing, ban all guns.
posted by Literaryhero at 1:04 AM on November 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Literaryhero at 1:04 AM on November 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
So legally, if the federal government were going to seize the guns and actually take them away - they would have to pay a fair price for them in order to meet that standard of just compensation.
Ban the guns, give a limited amnesty period where they can be handed in, and after that they are illegal-to-possess property. When the police seize other such property, they can do so without compensation - when was the last time you heard of the police offering a fair market value for a dealer's brick of cocaine, for example? Why would guns be different if/when they're illegal in the same way?
posted by Dysk at 2:36 AM on November 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
Ban the guns, give a limited amnesty period where they can be handed in, and after that they are illegal-to-possess property. When the police seize other such property, they can do so without compensation - when was the last time you heard of the police offering a fair market value for a dealer's brick of cocaine, for example? Why would guns be different if/when they're illegal in the same way?
posted by Dysk at 2:36 AM on November 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
(And the argument that "but there are so many guns functionally like the AR-15" isn't an argument against banning AR-15s, it's an argument for doing so by banning guns with the features that make them similar to an AR-15. Nobody needs a short-barrel rifle, nobody needs semi-auto, nobody needs removable magazines or capacities beyond what you can count on the fingers of one hand.)
posted by Dysk at 2:38 AM on November 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 2:38 AM on November 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
It is mind blowing to me that even here on Metafilter so many people are defensive about the idea of banning guns.
I’m not seeing a lot of full throated defenses here of why guns are great. I’m reading the pushback as saying, this won’t actually work and here’s why. The fact that guns can’t realistically be banned in the US is one of many things that make me feel like I maybe should’ve thought harder about emigrating at some point.
posted by eirias at 3:08 AM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
I’m not seeing a lot of full throated defenses here of why guns are great. I’m reading the pushback as saying, this won’t actually work and here’s why. The fact that guns can’t realistically be banned in the US is one of many things that make me feel like I maybe should’ve thought harder about emigrating at some point.
posted by eirias at 3:08 AM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
This is such a typical US discussion. Most countries allow gun-ownership, and in some countries there are lots of guns. Like in Canada, or Switzerland. It's just that in most countries, guns are regulated. Just like it says in the 2. Amendment that it should be in the US. But here a flame war breaks out where the opposing sides want either a total ban or total access.
Why would anyone need an assault weapon? And if you need a gun for hunting or sports-shooting in a range, why shouldn't your access be well-regulated? If you enjoy shooting with an AR 15 in a shooting range, why can't it be kept there, in a guarded locker? In the article, it is mentioned that people own AR 15s for hunting. What are they hunting? Dinosaurs? It makes no sense at all.
What is the meaningful argument for not regulating guns?
Self-defense is a really stupid argument. In countries where arms are well-regulated, very few people get shot. They don't get shot in their homes, or in their schools or in their workplaces. Criminals have guns, because if you are already dealing drugs, you might as well also have illegal weapons, but on the other hand, the first thing the police look for when they search a person or a car is weapons, and bang, you get to go to jail. Heck, here you can't even carry a hunting knife, if you can't explain your purpose, like if you are in the middle of a big city and walking on the street.
I live in an area where the gangs sometimes shoot at each other, and I know two people who were shot and survived, because even the gangs don't use assault weapons, both because they are harder to get and because even the gangs have a sense of purpose that means they don't want to kill random people. (Though the two people I know were kind of random -- one was a teen hanging out with a gang, but not yet involved in crime, and another was a dad who was passing by and tried to stop the shooting).
A little while ago there was a tik-tok trend where Americans who lived or had lived abroad told about experiences that had made them aware that the US had broken their perception of reality (if you want to search for it, the wording was less polite, AFAIR).
Two stories stood out to me: one was a young women who had moved abroad as a teen and started in a local school. After a while she had asked -- when is the active shooter drill? The other kids had be completely confused, they didn't follow US news and had no idea what she was talking about.
The other story was a black man who had been stopped for a traffic offense. He had done everything a black man in the US should do when stopped by the police, and the officer had at first been completely confused. He just wanted to explain a local rule to him. But the police officer had heard about the situation in the US, and was very kind. The punchline of the story was that the police officer didn't carry a gun.
posted by mumimor at 3:21 AM on November 17, 2023 [11 favorites]
Why would anyone need an assault weapon? And if you need a gun for hunting or sports-shooting in a range, why shouldn't your access be well-regulated? If you enjoy shooting with an AR 15 in a shooting range, why can't it be kept there, in a guarded locker? In the article, it is mentioned that people own AR 15s for hunting. What are they hunting? Dinosaurs? It makes no sense at all.
What is the meaningful argument for not regulating guns?
Self-defense is a really stupid argument. In countries where arms are well-regulated, very few people get shot. They don't get shot in their homes, or in their schools or in their workplaces. Criminals have guns, because if you are already dealing drugs, you might as well also have illegal weapons, but on the other hand, the first thing the police look for when they search a person or a car is weapons, and bang, you get to go to jail. Heck, here you can't even carry a hunting knife, if you can't explain your purpose, like if you are in the middle of a big city and walking on the street.
I live in an area where the gangs sometimes shoot at each other, and I know two people who were shot and survived, because even the gangs don't use assault weapons, both because they are harder to get and because even the gangs have a sense of purpose that means they don't want to kill random people. (Though the two people I know were kind of random -- one was a teen hanging out with a gang, but not yet involved in crime, and another was a dad who was passing by and tried to stop the shooting).
A little while ago there was a tik-tok trend where Americans who lived or had lived abroad told about experiences that had made them aware that the US had broken their perception of reality (if you want to search for it, the wording was less polite, AFAIR).
Two stories stood out to me: one was a young women who had moved abroad as a teen and started in a local school. After a while she had asked -- when is the active shooter drill? The other kids had be completely confused, they didn't follow US news and had no idea what she was talking about.
The other story was a black man who had been stopped for a traffic offense. He had done everything a black man in the US should do when stopped by the police, and the officer had at first been completely confused. He just wanted to explain a local rule to him. But the police officer had heard about the situation in the US, and was very kind. The punchline of the story was that the police officer didn't carry a gun.
posted by mumimor at 3:21 AM on November 17, 2023 [11 favorites]
The comments I made here last night were peculiar and dismissive. I feel like I need to correct the balance.
The last time I fired a gun was at school. Don't worry, the sound of gunfire was quite common at my school. We had a rifle range. This is because the state of Australia I live in is as large as Texas. For families that live and farm in the most remote parts, the only opportunity for their children's education is to send them to the city.
But they must also learn to shoot and be good marksmen. It's just a skill that you need on a farm. It's not recreational, it's vocational. Rabbits, foxes, pigs, dogs, deer, dingo, the list of invasive species is endless. We have a unique and precious natural heritage which is under constant threat, and we need guns to preserve it.
Do you know there's a bounty for foxes? If you're good at hunting foxes, you can make some decent money.
There is a necessity for guns in Australia, and where that is the case, you are allowed to have them. You really need to look at that word 'necessity'. Self-defense doesn't count. If you just think that they're cool and like to have them, that doesn't count. You may genuinely need to protect your livestock from foxes, dingoes, dogs - okay you may have a gun to do that, but not an automatic rifle. People driving money trucks are allowed to have pistols.
I think we have the balance right. We don't have mass shootings. We have the amount of guns which are necessary and no more.
I apologize to Corb for being rude.
posted by adept256 at 3:41 AM on November 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
The last time I fired a gun was at school. Don't worry, the sound of gunfire was quite common at my school. We had a rifle range. This is because the state of Australia I live in is as large as Texas. For families that live and farm in the most remote parts, the only opportunity for their children's education is to send them to the city.
But they must also learn to shoot and be good marksmen. It's just a skill that you need on a farm. It's not recreational, it's vocational. Rabbits, foxes, pigs, dogs, deer, dingo, the list of invasive species is endless. We have a unique and precious natural heritage which is under constant threat, and we need guns to preserve it.
Do you know there's a bounty for foxes? If you're good at hunting foxes, you can make some decent money.
There is a necessity for guns in Australia, and where that is the case, you are allowed to have them. You really need to look at that word 'necessity'. Self-defense doesn't count. If you just think that they're cool and like to have them, that doesn't count. You may genuinely need to protect your livestock from foxes, dingoes, dogs - okay you may have a gun to do that, but not an automatic rifle. People driving money trucks are allowed to have pistols.
I think we have the balance right. We don't have mass shootings. We have the amount of guns which are necessary and no more.
I apologize to Corb for being rude.
posted by adept256 at 3:41 AM on November 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
So legally, if the federal government were going to seize the guns and actually take them away - they would have to pay a fair price for them in order to meet that standard of just compensation.
Nah. No one paid the slave owners for their "property", and no one should pay wannabe murderers to take their toys away. This isn't an actual legal barrier, just an excuse to watch more children die.
posted by Proofs and Refutations at 3:51 AM on November 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
Nah. No one paid the slave owners for their "property", and no one should pay wannabe murderers to take their toys away. This isn't an actual legal barrier, just an excuse to watch more children die.
posted by Proofs and Refutations at 3:51 AM on November 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
No one paid the slave owners for their "property"
Untrue, I'm afraid.
The British government paid out £20m to compensate some 3,000 families that owned slaves for the loss of their “property” when slave-ownership was abolished in Britain’s colonies in 1833. This figure represented a staggering 40 per cent of the Treasury’s annual spending budget and, in today’s terms, calculated as wage values, equates to around £16.5bn.
posted by Paul Slade at 3:59 AM on November 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
Untrue, I'm afraid.
The British government paid out £20m to compensate some 3,000 families that owned slaves for the loss of their “property” when slave-ownership was abolished in Britain’s colonies in 1833. This figure represented a staggering 40 per cent of the Treasury’s annual spending budget and, in today’s terms, calculated as wage values, equates to around £16.5bn.
posted by Paul Slade at 3:59 AM on November 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
What is this thread about?
TFA, which is specifically about the American context (and made an editorial decision to focus on one gun), and so has to include the Second Amendment under the current state of the Federal judiciary; or gun control and gun violence generally?
Sure, let's ban all guns. Now, what would you like to do in the current United States short of that goal? Because it is not happening in the short term.
Do you want to save lives and reduce harm? Now? Or do you want to tout your ideological purity and churlishly cast other people here in the role of demons for wanting to have an actual policy discussion, instead of sermonizing?
Cars and car culture kill a lot of people and do lots of other harm. Directly and indirectly. Imagine transferring these arguments to car owners (which are not a protected class) and trying to make change that way. (That might also help understand the 'takings' bit, too.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:19 AM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
TFA, which is specifically about the American context (and made an editorial decision to focus on one gun), and so has to include the Second Amendment under the current state of the Federal judiciary; or gun control and gun violence generally?
Sure, let's ban all guns. Now, what would you like to do in the current United States short of that goal? Because it is not happening in the short term.
Do you want to save lives and reduce harm? Now? Or do you want to tout your ideological purity and churlishly cast other people here in the role of demons for wanting to have an actual policy discussion, instead of sermonizing?
Cars and car culture kill a lot of people and do lots of other harm. Directly and indirectly. Imagine transferring these arguments to car owners (which are not a protected class) and trying to make change that way. (That might also help understand the 'takings' bit, too.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:19 AM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Guns are really interesting. I get that. But I can't and won't look at pictures of bloodied children's backpacks and think to myself we let this happen in the name of recreation.
Flagged as fantastic.
posted by Gelatin at 4:26 AM on November 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
Flagged as fantastic.
posted by Gelatin at 4:26 AM on November 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
What is the meaningful argument for not regulating guns?
Never heard one. I want them gone. I don't care how incremental the progress is, how "well actually it's impossible and unfair to some gun owners" (brace myself for these stupid arguments every time and every time, no matter how mildly they are put forth, it is grotesque), I want them GONE.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:32 AM on November 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
Never heard one. I want them gone. I don't care how incremental the progress is, how "well actually it's impossible and unfair to some gun owners" (brace myself for these stupid arguments every time and every time, no matter how mildly they are put forth, it is grotesque), I want them GONE.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:32 AM on November 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
Do you want to save lives and reduce harm? Now? Or do you want to tout your ideological purity and churlishly cast other people here in the role of demons for wanting to have an actual policy discussion, instead of sermonizing?
Actual policy discussion time: How do we make weapons like the AR-15 so difficult to obtain that it's effectively impossible for anyone to posses one?
So far, the excuses I've heard include:
1) It's impossible to have a serious debate about gun control without being able to strictly define which weapons are to be regulated/banned. Being too broad only antagonizes reasonable gun owners who worry that they're going to be unnecessarily burdened.
2) It's impossible to strictly define the AR-15 or similar assault weapons for the purposes of a ban or additional regulations because they're modular platforms that share a lot of similarities with other weapons that reasonable gun owners own. (Lego guns!)
3) The Second Amendment makes this impossible. At best you'll have to find some sort of compromise that reasonable gun owners can get behind which doesn't run afoul of (1) or (2).
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:51 AM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Actual policy discussion time: How do we make weapons like the AR-15 so difficult to obtain that it's effectively impossible for anyone to posses one?
So far, the excuses I've heard include:
1) It's impossible to have a serious debate about gun control without being able to strictly define which weapons are to be regulated/banned. Being too broad only antagonizes reasonable gun owners who worry that they're going to be unnecessarily burdened.
2) It's impossible to strictly define the AR-15 or similar assault weapons for the purposes of a ban or additional regulations because they're modular platforms that share a lot of similarities with other weapons that reasonable gun owners own. (Lego guns!)
3) The Second Amendment makes this impossible. At best you'll have to find some sort of compromise that reasonable gun owners can get behind which doesn't run afoul of (1) or (2).
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:51 AM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
The article linked by superelastic above is worth reading for many reasons, but not least because IMO it actually points to what can be done: what the gun people did, but in reverse and based on the facts instead of lies. And that includes understanding that this is a generational project, not something that can be achieved in one election cycle. The article is from 2014, in a more optimistic age, but that doesn't change the message, you have to keep working for the good.
The WaPo article is part of that good work, though it is so difficult to read that I suspect that those who need to read it the most won't do it.
posted by mumimor at 6:09 AM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
The WaPo article is part of that good work, though it is so difficult to read that I suspect that those who need to read it the most won't do it.
posted by mumimor at 6:09 AM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Mod note: Several comments and responses removed. Please remember the Guidelines, in particular the 'Be considerate and respectful' part and avoid attacking others.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 6:15 AM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 6:15 AM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
MA resident here. If we look at the most recent data, MA has some of the lowest rates of gun-related homicides in the country and my guess is it's because it's hard to get a license to own a gun. To get a license you need to pass an unbelievably easy test AND get 2 letters of reference AND live in a town where the chief of police will issue you a license. So Cambridge residents can't easily get a license because of the Chief of Police AND you can't have a gun within 500 ft of a school (and basically all of Cambridge is within 500 feet of some school or another).
The 2nd Amendment also says something about a "well regulated militia" - let's put that back into force. If gun owners need to show up at the range once a year, demonstrate they understand how to use the weapon and hit a target, AND there are no red flag citations, you get to keep your guns for another year. I would love to see them require gun owners to carry insurance, but that's been addressed in the courts already. I would live to see gun manufactures held liable in some fashion if only to stem the flow of weapons - but this also didn't go far.
I would love to see 100% of guns gone as well but we aren't likely to get there. Note that 1/3rd of MA voted for Trump last go-around so there are folks here that consider the existing rules excessive without considering how successful they've been in reducing gun violence. Recently there was some discussion of rewriting MA gun laws and the pro-gun side pointed out that all of the crimes committed in MA with guns were by unlicensed and therefore illegal gun owners and therefore changes in the laws wouldn't change any outcomes because criminals aren't too concerned with the laws.
Finally - I agree that the current state we're living in is completely insane, but this is just one topic of many (abortion, book bans, human rights, the environment, that sort of thing...) where it's going to take years of dedicated action to get back to a place of sanity.
posted by Farce_First at 6:18 AM on November 17, 2023 [8 favorites]
The 2nd Amendment also says something about a "well regulated militia" - let's put that back into force. If gun owners need to show up at the range once a year, demonstrate they understand how to use the weapon and hit a target, AND there are no red flag citations, you get to keep your guns for another year. I would love to see them require gun owners to carry insurance, but that's been addressed in the courts already. I would live to see gun manufactures held liable in some fashion if only to stem the flow of weapons - but this also didn't go far.
I would love to see 100% of guns gone as well but we aren't likely to get there. Note that 1/3rd of MA voted for Trump last go-around so there are folks here that consider the existing rules excessive without considering how successful they've been in reducing gun violence. Recently there was some discussion of rewriting MA gun laws and the pro-gun side pointed out that all of the crimes committed in MA with guns were by unlicensed and therefore illegal gun owners and therefore changes in the laws wouldn't change any outcomes because criminals aren't too concerned with the laws.
Finally - I agree that the current state we're living in is completely insane, but this is just one topic of many (abortion, book bans, human rights, the environment, that sort of thing...) where it's going to take years of dedicated action to get back to a place of sanity.
posted by Farce_First at 6:18 AM on November 17, 2023 [8 favorites]
One thing that I think would do more to reduce mass shootings with firearms, without reducing necessary functionality and without being an improper taking - though the gun companies would absolutely scream to hell and high water about it - is require that all firearms everywhere be cerakoted in bright, (preferably feminine-coded) colors. Let them be so bright and friendly that the toxic dudes who are currently dreaming about how cool they would look with them would be ashamed to take a picture with them. You can still defend your home if you need to, you can still hunt effectively - deer can't actually see pink! - but what you can't do is imagine yourself a tough-guy warrior looking cool while you slaughter people. And without that fantasy, I think a lot of the whole thing falls apart.
Yeah, you'll have some people trying to illegally cerakote them back or fail to cerakote them in the first place, but the first time they took them to the range, or to a gunsmith, it would be super fucking obvious it was illegal, because it's not bright pink.
The public policy argument probably couldn't acknowledge toxic masculinity, but it could address concealability and warning the public when a gun is out in public.
Again, the gun companies would fight this like the very dickens because half their marketing is that you need sixteen guns because each of them makes you look cooler than the last, but fuck them, I really don't care about them.
posted by corb at 7:16 AM on November 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
Yeah, you'll have some people trying to illegally cerakote them back or fail to cerakote them in the first place, but the first time they took them to the range, or to a gunsmith, it would be super fucking obvious it was illegal, because it's not bright pink.
The public policy argument probably couldn't acknowledge toxic masculinity, but it could address concealability and warning the public when a gun is out in public.
Again, the gun companies would fight this like the very dickens because half their marketing is that you need sixteen guns because each of them makes you look cooler than the last, but fuck them, I really don't care about them.
posted by corb at 7:16 AM on November 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
"Improper taking"
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:34 AM on November 17, 2023
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:34 AM on November 17, 2023
require that all firearms everywhere be cerakoted in bright, (preferably feminine-coded) colors.
That's an idea, except that we essentially already do that for toy guns because of a number of deadly misunderstandings where a fake gun was assumed to be real.
And apart from how ridiculously difficult U.S. law makes it to do anything, shouldn't it just be easier to establish license requirements for owning a gun and requiring people to register the ones they have, i.e. exactly the kind of thing we do with cars, boats, and airplanes?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:55 AM on November 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
That's an idea, except that we essentially already do that for toy guns because of a number of deadly misunderstandings where a fake gun was assumed to be real.
And apart from how ridiculously difficult U.S. law makes it to do anything, shouldn't it just be easier to establish license requirements for owning a gun and requiring people to register the ones they have, i.e. exactly the kind of thing we do with cars, boats, and airplanes?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:55 AM on November 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
require that all firearms everywhere be cerakoted in bright, (preferably feminine-coded) colors. Let them be so bright and friendly that the toxic dudes who are currently dreaming about how cool they would look with them would be ashamed to take a picture with them.
In principle this might work, but I wonder if it wouldn't have the unintended effect of making any kid walking around with a Super Soaker or Nerf dart gun into a perceived threat (google Tamir Rice). The toy industry already walks a real tightrope of making their products look "cool" by adding real gunlike features to toy weapons (rotating barrels, lock-and-load action) while also making sure to make them in bright colors to not look like real guns. Now the fake guns look like real guns, and arguably vice versa.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:56 AM on November 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
In principle this might work, but I wonder if it wouldn't have the unintended effect of making any kid walking around with a Super Soaker or Nerf dart gun into a perceived threat (google Tamir Rice). The toy industry already walks a real tightrope of making their products look "cool" by adding real gunlike features to toy weapons (rotating barrels, lock-and-load action) while also making sure to make them in bright colors to not look like real guns. Now the fake guns look like real guns, and arguably vice versa.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:56 AM on November 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
And something that I haven't read but that I feel in my soul ... that if the USA had the guns be gone then the cops would be so much f-ing cooler headed.
"Not getting shot" is one of those working conditions that even change a good human’s demeanor. And I think that policing in the USA will not change until the gun laws change.
posted by MonsieurPEB at 8:22 AM on November 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
"Not getting shot" is one of those working conditions that even change a good human’s demeanor. And I think that policing in the USA will not change until the gun laws change.
posted by MonsieurPEB at 8:22 AM on November 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Criminals have guns, because if you are already dealing drugs, you might as well also have illegal weapons
Even in the US, that's not actually all that true.
Criminals are not, by and large, forces of unreasoning malice and chaos; they're ordinary people whose way of making money is against the law and in many cases against well-established social norms. Like most people, they're risk-averse, even in a high-risk job, and they have a particular aversion to two particular forms of professional risk: grievous bodily harm and serious prison time.
Imagine you're a criminal. It's likely your form of crime doesn't involve violence as part of its normal mode of operation: most criminals aren't mob enforcers or assassins or even back-alley muggers. Chances are, you either sell drugs, or you steal stuff by stealth or cunning. And for the most part, carrying a gun in either of these roles is a liability rather than an asset. Drug-dealing can be complex, and situation-dependent (semi-independent or gang-oriented? which drugs? where do you deal?) and on the fringes violence is useful, but theft is very clear-cut. From a prison-avoidance standpoint, the calculus is clear: if you don't have a gun, your crimes are probably trespassing, B&E, and petty larceny. Those are pretty low-level offences, typically misdemeanors. With a gun, it's armed robbery and that's a felony almost everywhere.
But what, you might ask, if you end up in a physical confrontation with a homeowner or police? Don't you need a gun for that? No, you do not, because if you get into a firefight with a civilian or the cops, you've already lost. Those situations do not end without serious injury, serious police attention, or both. At worst you end up dead, at best you're on the run for injuring or killing someone, and in either case you probably don't get whatever it was you came for in the first place. Sensible thieves do not stick around to fight when discovered; they flee when things start getting messy, and surrender if there's no other option.
posted by jackbishop at 8:27 AM on November 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
Even in the US, that's not actually all that true.
Criminals are not, by and large, forces of unreasoning malice and chaos; they're ordinary people whose way of making money is against the law and in many cases against well-established social norms. Like most people, they're risk-averse, even in a high-risk job, and they have a particular aversion to two particular forms of professional risk: grievous bodily harm and serious prison time.
Imagine you're a criminal. It's likely your form of crime doesn't involve violence as part of its normal mode of operation: most criminals aren't mob enforcers or assassins or even back-alley muggers. Chances are, you either sell drugs, or you steal stuff by stealth or cunning. And for the most part, carrying a gun in either of these roles is a liability rather than an asset. Drug-dealing can be complex, and situation-dependent (semi-independent or gang-oriented? which drugs? where do you deal?) and on the fringes violence is useful, but theft is very clear-cut. From a prison-avoidance standpoint, the calculus is clear: if you don't have a gun, your crimes are probably trespassing, B&E, and petty larceny. Those are pretty low-level offences, typically misdemeanors. With a gun, it's armed robbery and that's a felony almost everywhere.
But what, you might ask, if you end up in a physical confrontation with a homeowner or police? Don't you need a gun for that? No, you do not, because if you get into a firefight with a civilian or the cops, you've already lost. Those situations do not end without serious injury, serious police attention, or both. At worst you end up dead, at best you're on the run for injuring or killing someone, and in either case you probably don't get whatever it was you came for in the first place. Sensible thieves do not stick around to fight when discovered; they flee when things start getting messy, and surrender if there's no other option.
posted by jackbishop at 8:27 AM on November 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
This Chris Ware New Yorker cover really hit home with me - and all the more so when I read his account of the family conversations which inspired it.
I clicked on that and looked through all Ware's covers and felt so sad, looking at all his images of children coming home from school to worried parents, thinking How did we all get here? and then, Well, duh.
Then I clicked on the photographs...
posted by y2karl at 8:55 AM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
I clicked on that and looked through all Ware's covers and felt so sad, looking at all his images of children coming home from school to worried parents, thinking How did we all get here? and then, Well, duh.
Then I clicked on the photographs...
posted by y2karl at 8:55 AM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
jackbishop, I totally agree. The reason drug dealers have guns here is that they need to uphold some form of order amongst themselves, and obviously, they can't rely on the police for that. So if things go off the rails, they go out and hurt someone. They usually try to avoid killing anyone and specially anyone who is not involved, for all the reasons you mention, but sometimes things go wrong, like in the case I described. Obviously no-one wanted to harm a kid or that dad who knew him from school. So in any case, automatic weapons are stupid and dangerous, even from the drug dealer's POV.
Which gets us back to the main question here: why would anyone want to defend unregulated use of those weapons? They are only useful for war, which we should avoid, mass killings, which we should avoid, and shooting ranges, which could easily be regulated.
I feel that anti-gun legislators aren't asking these questions enough. It's not enough to ask them once, to one person. You have to keep going, to ask every single lawmaker all the time. Why are you defending this?
And you have to be ready to dig into the ridiculous self-defense and sports arguments and ask more questions.
Reading that article superelastic posted and I reposted above, I realized how much of the current understanding of the 2. amendment comes from Southern conservatives, so it feels kind of obvious that this is about racial resentment and fear. Like so many other things in US politics that are hard to understand from outside. Farce_First listed some above: abortion, book bans, human rights, the environment, that sort of thing...
That doesn't mean that this is limited to the South or that all people from the South are racist, only that this clearly originated with Southern racists and spread from there. And then we had Trumps rally in Waco, didn't we.
posted by mumimor at 8:56 AM on November 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
Which gets us back to the main question here: why would anyone want to defend unregulated use of those weapons? They are only useful for war, which we should avoid, mass killings, which we should avoid, and shooting ranges, which could easily be regulated.
I feel that anti-gun legislators aren't asking these questions enough. It's not enough to ask them once, to one person. You have to keep going, to ask every single lawmaker all the time. Why are you defending this?
And you have to be ready to dig into the ridiculous self-defense and sports arguments and ask more questions.
Reading that article superelastic posted and I reposted above, I realized how much of the current understanding of the 2. amendment comes from Southern conservatives, so it feels kind of obvious that this is about racial resentment and fear. Like so many other things in US politics that are hard to understand from outside. Farce_First listed some above: abortion, book bans, human rights, the environment, that sort of thing...
That doesn't mean that this is limited to the South or that all people from the South are racist, only that this clearly originated with Southern racists and spread from there. And then we had Trumps rally in Waco, didn't we.
posted by mumimor at 8:56 AM on November 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
One thing that I think would do more to reduce mass shootings with firearms, without reducing necessary functionality and without being an improper taking - though the gun companies would absolutely scream to hell and high water about it - is require that all firearms everywhere be cerakoted in bright, (preferably feminine-coded) colors.
I mean, I guess that's a solution. Or have I wandered onto the Daily Mash?
posted by tavegyl at 9:15 AM on November 17, 2023
I mean, I guess that's a solution. Or have I wandered onto the Daily Mash?
posted by tavegyl at 9:15 AM on November 17, 2023
> "Improper taking"
Established legal principles don't stop applying just because you feel deep in your heart that they shouldn't. Can you articulate a legal argument to support your sarcasmaquotes?
posted by a power-tie-wearing she-capitalist at 10:44 AM on November 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Established legal principles don't stop applying just because you feel deep in your heart that they shouldn't. Can you articulate a legal argument to support your sarcasmaquotes?
posted by a power-tie-wearing she-capitalist at 10:44 AM on November 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Article: The impact is often shielded by laws and court rulings that keep crime scene photos and records secret.
Paired with the Dickey Amendment, that is, the 1997 mandate that none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be used to advocate or promote gun control. that effectively ended federal research on the impact of guns on human health,
Both these facts, combined with the immediate claim by loathsome bad-faith operators like Alex Jones that the horror of Sandy Hook was a "false flag" operation that used "crisis actors," are admissions that the reality of gun violence makes calls for gun control the obvious response.
People doesn't lie and suppress facts unless the facts do not support their position and they know it.
posted by Gelatin at 10:45 AM on November 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Paired with the Dickey Amendment, that is, the 1997 mandate that none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be used to advocate or promote gun control. that effectively ended federal research on the impact of guns on human health,
Both these facts, combined with the immediate claim by loathsome bad-faith operators like Alex Jones that the horror of Sandy Hook was a "false flag" operation that used "crisis actors," are admissions that the reality of gun violence makes calls for gun control the obvious response.
People doesn't lie and suppress facts unless the facts do not support their position and they know it.
posted by Gelatin at 10:45 AM on November 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
> "Improper taking"
Established legal principles don't stop applying just because you feel deep in your heart that they shouldn't. Can you articulate a legal argument to support your sarcasmaquotes?
Corb said, One thing that I think would do more to reduce mass shootings with firearms, without reducing necessary functionality and without being an improper taking -
In the scenario I imagine of proposed confiscation, the law would ban a gun and allow confiscation. That would then not be improper, but would be clearly still seen as illegal by certain gun advocates, as per corb's comment.
Since no one is proposing taking guns without a law allowing it, I'm having trouble understanding how a "Improper taking" would ever, ever occur, even if one disagrees with a new law.
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:54 AM on November 17, 2023
Established legal principles don't stop applying just because you feel deep in your heart that they shouldn't. Can you articulate a legal argument to support your sarcasmaquotes?
Corb said, One thing that I think would do more to reduce mass shootings with firearms, without reducing necessary functionality and without being an improper taking -
In the scenario I imagine of proposed confiscation, the law would ban a gun and allow confiscation. That would then not be improper, but would be clearly still seen as illegal by certain gun advocates, as per corb's comment.
Since no one is proposing taking guns without a law allowing it, I'm having trouble understanding how a "Improper taking" would ever, ever occur, even if one disagrees with a new law.
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:54 AM on November 17, 2023
It would lose in the courts even with popular support in the legislature. Even current gun laws are being eroded by the courts.
So is this thread a technical discussion of current law and case law, or is it a more nebulous vision of a less broken society? I think people are doing both in this thread, which creates some conflict.
The framing of this thread is literally bloody corpses, so maybe nitpicky legal arguments are unwelcome.
posted by ryanrs at 11:05 AM on November 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
So is this thread a technical discussion of current law and case law, or is it a more nebulous vision of a less broken society? I think people are doing both in this thread, which creates some conflict.
The framing of this thread is literally bloody corpses, so maybe nitpicky legal arguments are unwelcome.
posted by ryanrs at 11:05 AM on November 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
I'm pretty exhausted of being told change can't happen, myself. Particularly in threads like this, which is about the horror we should all be feeling, but apparently it is more important to say its not gonna happen. The nits ARE important but not for the average tired citizen. We can voice what we want.
I want the guns gone. And the tide appears to be rising with us against this bloodshed. I fervently hope so.
posted by tiny frying pan at 11:07 AM on November 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
I want the guns gone. And the tide appears to be rising with us against this bloodshed. I fervently hope so.
posted by tiny frying pan at 11:07 AM on November 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
Nah. No one paid the slave owners for their "property", and no one should pay wannabe murderers to take their toys away. This isn't an actual legal barrier, just an excuse to watch more children die.
Even if paying is a requirement, the numbers bandied about are not large. $20 billion is how much Apple makes every quarter in something like profit (not revenue that's over $100b). So 2 quarters of Apple profit to buy every gun? That's no big deal. And I use that as an understandable reference, because the US budget is in the trillions per year.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:23 AM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Even if paying is a requirement, the numbers bandied about are not large. $20 billion is how much Apple makes every quarter in something like profit (not revenue that's over $100b). So 2 quarters of Apple profit to buy every gun? That's no big deal. And I use that as an understandable reference, because the US budget is in the trillions per year.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:23 AM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Friends,
There's decades of favorable case law, a very sympathetic Supreme Court, and an entire Constitutional Amendment supporting your argument that even the most deadly assault rifles should be easily obtainable to anyone who wants them with absolutely no oversight, regulation, or limits.
There's no need to call out someone's misunderstanding of legal principals or clutch your pearls over how proposals to confiscate all the guns are clear violations of established property rights. You guys won. Your victory is so absolute and certain that you don't even need to argue with strangers who are being wrong on the Internet. If multiple school shootings weren't enough to change the national conversation, some rando's comments in a somewhat lefty online forum have not a snowball's chance in Hades of mattering more than a hill of beans.
So try not think about how wrong we are. Be secure in the knowledge that the nation and it's laws are exactly is as you desire them to be and that nothing will change.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 11:28 AM on November 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
There's decades of favorable case law, a very sympathetic Supreme Court, and an entire Constitutional Amendment supporting your argument that even the most deadly assault rifles should be easily obtainable to anyone who wants them with absolutely no oversight, regulation, or limits.
There's no need to call out someone's misunderstanding of legal principals or clutch your pearls over how proposals to confiscate all the guns are clear violations of established property rights. You guys won. Your victory is so absolute and certain that you don't even need to argue with strangers who are being wrong on the Internet. If multiple school shootings weren't enough to change the national conversation, some rando's comments in a somewhat lefty online forum have not a snowball's chance in Hades of mattering more than a hill of beans.
So try not think about how wrong we are. Be secure in the knowledge that the nation and it's laws are exactly is as you desire them to be and that nothing will change.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 11:28 AM on November 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
Since no one is proposing taking guns without a law allowing it, I'm having trouble understanding how a "Improper taking" would ever, ever occur, even if one disagrees with a new law
While making no moral arguments here, just answering the question asked - in essence, an improper taking is not just any taking but one that occurs without compensation. My apologies if I seemed unsympathetic - I am in my second year of law school and have to think about this stuff all day every day. Whenever someone proposes a law, the first lens I see it through is how is it vulnerable to challenge. I think you absolutely could, if you resolved the 2A challenges, design a law that seized guns or seized some guns without it being an improper taking, but you'd have to pay value for them. My sense is that the political will for that cost doesn't exist, but I might be wrong.
The way that most states banning certain types of firearms are getting around this Constitutional requirement without paying for it is by grandfathering the guns and trying to trickle them out. For example, looking at the recent WA assault weapons ban, which is the one I'm most familiar with the language on, says that people aren't allowed to distribute the weapons they are allowed to keep, but then defines distribute as
posted by corb at 12:07 PM on November 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
While making no moral arguments here, just answering the question asked - in essence, an improper taking is not just any taking but one that occurs without compensation. My apologies if I seemed unsympathetic - I am in my second year of law school and have to think about this stuff all day every day. Whenever someone proposes a law, the first lens I see it through is how is it vulnerable to challenge. I think you absolutely could, if you resolved the 2A challenges, design a law that seized guns or seized some guns without it being an improper taking, but you'd have to pay value for them. My sense is that the political will for that cost doesn't exist, but I might be wrong.
The way that most states banning certain types of firearms are getting around this Constitutional requirement without paying for it is by grandfathering the guns and trying to trickle them out. For example, looking at the recent WA assault weapons ban, which is the one I'm most familiar with the language on, says that people aren't allowed to distribute the weapons they are allowed to keep, but then defines distribute as
"Distribute" means to give out, provide, make available, or deliver a firearm or large capacity magazine to any person in this state.So Washington is hoping that by preventing the importation of guns into the state of Washington, and allowing the only place that people in WA can sell their guns to be outside the state of Washington, that eventually, over time, guns will flow out of the state of Washington such that it won't be a problem anymore. But I think that gets more tricky when you do it nationally, both ethically and legally, because there really aren't a lot of good places that want to buy mass guns from Americans. Mexico is pretty fed up with it, I think if the official US position was that the guns should be sent out of country that might be pointed at the nation rather than the manufacturers.
posted by corb at 12:07 PM on November 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Since no one is proposing taking guns without a law allowing it, I'm having trouble understanding how a "Improper taking" would ever, ever occur,
The same way the government can't "take" real estate by passing laws that condemn its previously legal use without compensating the owner and has to pay to exercise eminent domain rights, or can't "take" your old car because it no longer passes current pollution or safety standards, or demolish your house because it isn't up to current building codes.
Takings
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:12 PM on November 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
The same way the government can't "take" real estate by passing laws that condemn its previously legal use without compensating the owner and has to pay to exercise eminent domain rights, or can't "take" your old car because it no longer passes current pollution or safety standards, or demolish your house because it isn't up to current building codes.
Takings
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:12 PM on November 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
Compensation for a gun is absurd to me. Its a mindfuck. But if that's what it would take to save peoples lives because people can't part with their lethal toys, then fine though, you know? We still have to start, loudly, with, WE DO NOT WANT THIS, the status quo of endless ruined lives, any more.
I honestly didn't imagine a policy discussion would emerge from such a horrifying FPP and I am not participating in it any more.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:13 PM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
I honestly didn't imagine a policy discussion would emerge from such a horrifying FPP and I am not participating in it any more.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:13 PM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Ok, so if "Improper taking" means compensation, then I wish corb had said that to start with. "Improper taking" is a phrase I have never heard until today.
It's not on us, the people who want fewer people dead in our schools, streets, synagogues, grocery stores, concert venues, or movie theaters, to say the exact right things, like to make sure we say gun owners should be compensated when we call for gun confiscation. I do not make policy, nor do I care what the particulars are. I want the guns gone. Lecturing us about our phrasing or what gun parts are is besides the point. I will not be the one drafting legislation, so you need not worry.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:18 PM on November 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's not on us, the people who want fewer people dead in our schools, streets, synagogues, grocery stores, concert venues, or movie theaters, to say the exact right things, like to make sure we say gun owners should be compensated when we call for gun confiscation. I do not make policy, nor do I care what the particulars are. I want the guns gone. Lecturing us about our phrasing or what gun parts are is besides the point. I will not be the one drafting legislation, so you need not worry.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:18 PM on November 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm a bit late responding to this, and I don't want to get lost in an argument over it, but I was absolutely not being sarcastic or coy in asking what a "cultural object" might be. It's hard for me to imagine a defense of the gun as a cultural object. Is it a representation of violent patriarchal masculinity, of colonial expansion (disingenuous though that signaling may be), of white supremacist murder and oppression, of right-wing terror? Why wouldn't it be useful to demonize that?
And thank you, Zumbador, for articulating something I have been thinking a lot about: the false binary of reason and emotion. It's not a "dunk" to point out that this kind of dismissal of emotion is gendered. And regardless of what you think about the connectedness of emotion and moral belief, it's not uncommon to take feeling into account when discussing moral outrage.
posted by Il etait une fois at 12:35 PM on November 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
And thank you, Zumbador, for articulating something I have been thinking a lot about: the false binary of reason and emotion. It's not a "dunk" to point out that this kind of dismissal of emotion is gendered. And regardless of what you think about the connectedness of emotion and moral belief, it's not uncommon to take feeling into account when discussing moral outrage.
posted by Il etait une fois at 12:35 PM on November 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
And regardless of what you think about the connectedness of emotion and moral belief, it's not uncommon to take feeling into account when discussing moral outrage.
It would probably be a good idea for the center and left to point out that all conservative politics are about emotions, not facts. It's a fact that children are killed in the USA. It's a feeling that ordinary citizens need assault weapons.
posted by mumimor at 12:45 PM on November 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
It would probably be a good idea for the center and left to point out that all conservative politics are about emotions, not facts. It's a fact that children are killed in the USA. It's a feeling that ordinary citizens need assault weapons.
posted by mumimor at 12:45 PM on November 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
I feel like in the current US political climate around guns, that "ton of gun owners" have a very, very strong responsibility to organize themselves into an organization at least as politically potent as the NRA. If they can't, then it's just lip service and they can rot in hell.
The NRA notoriously is, or maybe at this point it's more correct to say was, funded by dark money, including from Russia. It's not exactly the nonprofit next door.
I grew up occasionally shooting--hunting and target practice with pellet guns and shotguns. I enjoy skeet shooting. I now own two shotguns. Shells are kept in a locked safe. The guns are at the back of a closet, with trigger locks. I'd still happily give them up, even though they--and I--are not the problem. Guns just don't mean that much to me. Sometimes I go months forgetting that I own them. They're not part of my identity or my profession, and I don't need them to protect land or livestock on it.
I live in Baltimore, where hearing the pop-pop-pop of gunfire is routine. As ludicrous as it is that "assault rifles"--or any fast-shooting hunting rifle designed to blow human bodies apart--are legal for the general public to own, the number of deaths from handguns is far higher than is the number of deaths from so-called assault rifles. Mostly from suicides. It's an epidemic. If this country were allowed to treat it like the public health problem it is.... well, nevermind. We know how that turned out with covid.
The article and the photos are harrowing. I cried. I shook. I'm so glad the Post published it. I also know nothing will change our murderous gun laws until the Supreme Court turns over.
posted by ImproviseOrDie at 2:18 PM on November 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
The NRA notoriously is, or maybe at this point it's more correct to say was, funded by dark money, including from Russia. It's not exactly the nonprofit next door.
I grew up occasionally shooting--hunting and target practice with pellet guns and shotguns. I enjoy skeet shooting. I now own two shotguns. Shells are kept in a locked safe. The guns are at the back of a closet, with trigger locks. I'd still happily give them up, even though they--and I--are not the problem. Guns just don't mean that much to me. Sometimes I go months forgetting that I own them. They're not part of my identity or my profession, and I don't need them to protect land or livestock on it.
I live in Baltimore, where hearing the pop-pop-pop of gunfire is routine. As ludicrous as it is that "assault rifles"--or any fast-shooting hunting rifle designed to blow human bodies apart--are legal for the general public to own, the number of deaths from handguns is far higher than is the number of deaths from so-called assault rifles. Mostly from suicides. It's an epidemic. If this country were allowed to treat it like the public health problem it is.... well, nevermind. We know how that turned out with covid.
The article and the photos are harrowing. I cried. I shook. I'm so glad the Post published it. I also know nothing will change our murderous gun laws until the Supreme Court turns over.
posted by ImproviseOrDie at 2:18 PM on November 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
I might have missed a comment above, but I think I'm the first commenter here who will directly say that I own an AR-15. It's fun to shoot, the ammunition is cheap, and it has fantastic ergonomics. But if it became illegal and there was a buyback program, I'd be right there in line to turn it in. It's not part of my identity and I'm not attached to my hobbies. But weirdly, that model of gun is part of a lot of people's identity now, which is so different from what I remember from even 15 years ago.
Also, I recently read American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15.
This book is really worth reading, in my opinion. There are some emotionally tough parts for sure, but it does a great job contextualizing and explaining how we got from a time when a civilian AR-15 was rare to now, when they represent a large percentage of firearms sold.
As ludicrous as it is that "assault rifles"--or any fast-shooting hunting rifle designed to blow human bodies apart--are legal for the general public to own, the number of deaths from handguns is far higher than is the number of deaths from so-called assault rifles. Mostly from suicides. It's an epidemic.
Which is also something discussed in that book. But there's two separate gun issues, probably with separate solutions. One is the overall firearms deaths (mostly handguns, much of it self-harm); the other is "mass shootings" of the Uvalde type (mostly AR-15s and similar rifles). Magically making all the AR-15s go away wouldn't put much of a dent in overall firearms deaths, but would severely reduce the specific kind of horrifying mass shootings that keep happening.
But I did get a chance at one point to go and fire off rounds with a firearm similar to the AR-15. And let me say that those guns have zero effort to fire. They are super-light, and they feel mostly like a fancy version of the toy guns my lads and I played with in our yoots.
If all you have shot are old-school hunting rifles and shotguns, it is shocking how good the ergonomics are on an AR-15 and how easy it is to shoot. It's a genius design, whatever you might think about guns in general or that type of gun in specific.
Maybe if the article included a comparative animation of a larger .308 round fired from a WWII collector's piece simply detaching someone's limb or blowing out their entire chest cavity, that would get the point across? Part of the point of the military development of the 5.56 round was that it's less likely to kill outright.
All I know about the development and selection of the 556 round is from reading the book mentioned above (American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15), which only lightly touches on it, but from that I don't believe this statement is true. They wanted a highly lethal round that is also very small and light (so soldiers can carry way more bullets). The book quotes early observation reports from when they shipped some early M-16s overseas for testing by local anti-insurgent forces in Vietnam and the people sending back the reports of what the bullets did were pretty graphic in terms of lethal damage -- that (plus the tests on animals and watermelons and whatnot) is what got the Pentagon to select the round versus the competing old-school larger caliber supporters.
posted by Dip Flash at 3:29 PM on November 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Also, I recently read American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15.
This book is really worth reading, in my opinion. There are some emotionally tough parts for sure, but it does a great job contextualizing and explaining how we got from a time when a civilian AR-15 was rare to now, when they represent a large percentage of firearms sold.
As ludicrous as it is that "assault rifles"--or any fast-shooting hunting rifle designed to blow human bodies apart--are legal for the general public to own, the number of deaths from handguns is far higher than is the number of deaths from so-called assault rifles. Mostly from suicides. It's an epidemic.
Which is also something discussed in that book. But there's two separate gun issues, probably with separate solutions. One is the overall firearms deaths (mostly handguns, much of it self-harm); the other is "mass shootings" of the Uvalde type (mostly AR-15s and similar rifles). Magically making all the AR-15s go away wouldn't put much of a dent in overall firearms deaths, but would severely reduce the specific kind of horrifying mass shootings that keep happening.
But I did get a chance at one point to go and fire off rounds with a firearm similar to the AR-15. And let me say that those guns have zero effort to fire. They are super-light, and they feel mostly like a fancy version of the toy guns my lads and I played with in our yoots.
If all you have shot are old-school hunting rifles and shotguns, it is shocking how good the ergonomics are on an AR-15 and how easy it is to shoot. It's a genius design, whatever you might think about guns in general or that type of gun in specific.
Maybe if the article included a comparative animation of a larger .308 round fired from a WWII collector's piece simply detaching someone's limb or blowing out their entire chest cavity, that would get the point across? Part of the point of the military development of the 5.56 round was that it's less likely to kill outright.
All I know about the development and selection of the 556 round is from reading the book mentioned above (American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15), which only lightly touches on it, but from that I don't believe this statement is true. They wanted a highly lethal round that is also very small and light (so soldiers can carry way more bullets). The book quotes early observation reports from when they shipped some early M-16s overseas for testing by local anti-insurgent forces in Vietnam and the people sending back the reports of what the bullets did were pretty graphic in terms of lethal damage -- that (plus the tests on animals and watermelons and whatnot) is what got the Pentagon to select the round versus the competing old-school larger caliber supporters.
posted by Dip Flash at 3:29 PM on November 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Maybe this is a bit too chatfiltery. But it may underline the fact that I am not contributing from an academic or idyllic place. I just went down to walk the dog, and the back entrance to our building was covered in blood.
I haven't heard any gunshots, police or ambulance, so I assume it must have been a stabbing.
There was an ambulance in the next street over, so probably the guy's friends have dragged him home, and then realized they couldn't handle it on their own.
I felt very sad for the whole situation, and I wondered if it would have even happened if I had walked the dog a half hour earlier. But I wasn't scared.
posted by mumimor at 3:33 PM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
I haven't heard any gunshots, police or ambulance, so I assume it must have been a stabbing.
There was an ambulance in the next street over, so probably the guy's friends have dragged him home, and then realized they couldn't handle it on their own.
I felt very sad for the whole situation, and I wondered if it would have even happened if I had walked the dog a half hour earlier. But I wasn't scared.
posted by mumimor at 3:33 PM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
I’m on my phone so I don’t have access to my quoting bookmarklet, but there was a comment upthread about the constitutional amendment that says guns should be easily obtainable. But that’s not what the second amendment actually says, although I might be ignorant of evidence that’s how it has been interpreted in case law. Isn’t there a difference between “you can have one because militias” and “they should be easy to procure”?
posted by emelenjr at 7:02 AM on November 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by emelenjr at 7:02 AM on November 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
As I understand it, targeted gun buyback programs (eg. that aim to get newer, more destructive guns out of circulation not just be an easy place for people to offload great grandpa’s old antique for some cash) are one of the measures that have been successful in decreasing gun use. And as was noted in another comment above, while billions sounds like a lot to each of us personally, it’s not really that much relative to the US federal budget, especially when considered against savings in health care and potentially other policing costs.
But given that the spectre of unpaid forfeiture has been brought up in this thread, permit me to play devil’s (or angel’s, depending on your perspective on this?) advocate for a moment and note that guns are certainly among the items regularly seized without compensation - from ordinary, law-abiding citizens in traffic stops in some cases, if news reports are to be believed - by police officers using civil asset forfeiture. I’m not a lawyer or law student, but from what I have seen of the practice of law, it seems to me that it is very much not a settled slam dunk that prohibiting entire categories of guns would be interpreted as a taking, or that police not doing any sort of formally organized search for the then-prohibited weapons but seizing them whenever they ran across them in their normal course of action would not just be the usual civil forfeiture.
posted by eviemath at 7:59 AM on November 18, 2023
But given that the spectre of unpaid forfeiture has been brought up in this thread, permit me to play devil’s (or angel’s, depending on your perspective on this?) advocate for a moment and note that guns are certainly among the items regularly seized without compensation - from ordinary, law-abiding citizens in traffic stops in some cases, if news reports are to be believed - by police officers using civil asset forfeiture. I’m not a lawyer or law student, but from what I have seen of the practice of law, it seems to me that it is very much not a settled slam dunk that prohibiting entire categories of guns would be interpreted as a taking, or that police not doing any sort of formally organized search for the then-prohibited weapons but seizing them whenever they ran across them in their normal course of action would not just be the usual civil forfeiture.
posted by eviemath at 7:59 AM on November 18, 2023
As I understand it, targeted gun buyback programs (eg. that aim to get newer, more destructive guns out of circulation not just be an easy place for people to offload great grandpa’s old antique for some cash) are one of the measures that have been successful in decreasing gun use. And as was noted in another comment above, while billions sounds like a lot to each of us personally, it’s not really that much relative to the US federal budget, especially when considered against savings in health care and potentially other policing costs.
I would be really curious how many guns (old and new both) would get turned in if there was an adequately-funded voluntary national buyback program that was easy to access and ongoing. My guess is that the answer is "a heck of a lot." There was a local gun buyback day near here a little while back, and they blew through all the funds in about half an hour, leaving a huge line of people to be turned away. Guns are actually a pain to sell (assuming you care about legality) and lots and lots of people (including myself) have guns that they don't particularly want to own but also don't want to deal with the practicalities of selling. It wouldn't solve the problem of gun deaths (either killings by handguns or the type of mass killings featured in the article) but it would likely remove a massive amount of guns from circulation which seems like a real net positive and at least incremental progress.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:10 AM on November 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
I would be really curious how many guns (old and new both) would get turned in if there was an adequately-funded voluntary national buyback program that was easy to access and ongoing. My guess is that the answer is "a heck of a lot." There was a local gun buyback day near here a little while back, and they blew through all the funds in about half an hour, leaving a huge line of people to be turned away. Guns are actually a pain to sell (assuming you care about legality) and lots and lots of people (including myself) have guns that they don't particularly want to own but also don't want to deal with the practicalities of selling. It wouldn't solve the problem of gun deaths (either killings by handguns or the type of mass killings featured in the article) but it would likely remove a massive amount of guns from circulation which seems like a real net positive and at least incremental progress.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:10 AM on November 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
We need to require gun insurance on weapons of concern, to allow underwriters in the mental health and medical insurance business to assess risk, not the government. We could also use that insurance card to restrict bullet sales for those guns. Prohibition of anything requires the kind of government the bullet-hosers want. The US founders protected only firearms as they knew them.
posted by Brian B. at 8:18 AM on November 18, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Brian B. at 8:18 AM on November 18, 2023 [6 favorites]
Came across my feed today; the Madison County NC Toy Run (sponsored by the Sheriff's department) has an AR-15 as a raffle prize. spoiler: "Former Law Enforcement use"
posted by achrise at 9:38 AM on November 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by achrise at 9:38 AM on November 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Late to this, but I must admit I'm a little bewildered with some of the responses here, and in the comments on the articles themselves in the Washington Post, where their readers are treated with great delicacy, and respond accordingly, with shock and horror, and reports of weeping and retching. I have to ask-- have they never seen photographs like this before? As some have mentioned, photographs from war zones, or other sites of tragedy, such as earthquakes, feature not just blood but the actual bodies of dead children. What would anyone expect a classroom to look like once a dozen human beings there were shot to death with weapons designed to blow apart whatever body part its bullets hit? How are the pools of partially dried blood a surprise? Even the article showing the damage dealt by an AR15 pulls its punches, and leaves the modelled bodies more or less intact. And, sadly if predictably, why has this thread defaulted to the usual sense of helplessness in the face of entrenched power, and picking over language?
The two most accurate, or to the point, moments in this thread, from my POV: "What faces?". And this: I feel like in the current US political climate around guns, that "ton of gun owners" [who agree with gun laws] have a very, very strong responsibility to organize themselves into an organization at least as politically potent as the NRA. Now there's a place to start to begin to counter the power of American gun culture.
posted by jokeefe at 1:31 PM on November 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
The two most accurate, or to the point, moments in this thread, from my POV: "What faces?". And this: I feel like in the current US political climate around guns, that "ton of gun owners" [who agree with gun laws] have a very, very strong responsibility to organize themselves into an organization at least as politically potent as the NRA. Now there's a place to start to begin to counter the power of American gun culture.
posted by jokeefe at 1:31 PM on November 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
As a foreigner, one of the things that I find really bizarre about the US gun debate is that although there is some awareness that this is a US problem, and that other countries don't have this issue, there sometimes seems to be a kind of mythical narrative as to how things came to be that way.
The myth goes that the US diverged on this when the Second Amendment was written, and so America decided that everyone could have guns, while other countries decided they couldn't, and now here we all are, and it's too hard to change this because it was all decided so long ago.
And I'm like... what?
I mean, I don't know about other countries, but in Britain the main decision was made less than thirty years ago. Before that, we had guns. My grandfather had a bunch of them. And then one guy walked into a school up the road from here and shot 16 kids, and that was that. The government passed a law, took the guns and paid compensation for them, and it's never happened since.
posted by automatronic at 7:36 PM on November 22, 2023 [5 favorites]
The myth goes that the US diverged on this when the Second Amendment was written, and so America decided that everyone could have guns, while other countries decided they couldn't, and now here we all are, and it's too hard to change this because it was all decided so long ago.
And I'm like... what?
I mean, I don't know about other countries, but in Britain the main decision was made less than thirty years ago. Before that, we had guns. My grandfather had a bunch of them. And then one guy walked into a school up the road from here and shot 16 kids, and that was that. The government passed a law, took the guns and paid compensation for them, and it's never happened since.
The Dunblane massacre took place at Dunblane Primary School in Dunblane, near Stirling, Scotland, on 13 March 1996, when 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton shot dead 16 pupils and one teacher and injured 15 others before killing himself. It remains the deadliest mass shooting in British history.In the context of the US gun debate I feels like this might read like fantasy fan fiction, so just to be clear, I pasted the above from Wikipedia. We did it, it worked, the end.
Following the killings, public debate centred on gun control laws, including public petitions for a ban on private ownership of handguns and an official inquiry, which produced the 1996 Cullen Report.
The incident led to a public campaign, known as the Snowdrop Petition, which helped bring about legislation, specifically two new Firearms Acts, which outlawed the private ownership of most handguns within Great Britain with few exceptions. The UK Government instituted a temporary gun buyback programme which provided some compensation to lawful handgun owners.
Since the massacre and tighter firearm restrictions, no mass shootings with handguns have occurred.
posted by automatronic at 7:36 PM on November 22, 2023 [5 favorites]
In the context of the US gun debate I feels like this might read like fantasy fan fiction, so just to be clear, I pasted the above from Wikipedia. We did it, it worked, the end.
It's not that the US can't follow that path, it's that we've, at least for now, decided not to, regardless of each new school shooting. "Obama will take your guns" was, in addition to being a really effective way to get single-issue voters riled up and for the industry to sell a crap-ton of guns, an acknowledgment that the country could in fact actually radically restrict gun ownership were we to want to. It's a possibility that everyone is aware of, but it's also a possibility that a significant percentage of people are prepared to be single-issue voters against. (Whereas the supporters of those restrictions are not single issue voters.) That, plus the current supermajority on the Supreme Court, creates some pretty significant barriers between where we are now and severely restricting gun ownership.
There's also a lot of differences in terms of political structures between here and the UK or Australia (like having some version of gun rights enshrined in the Constitution, whether or not you believe the Supreme Court's current interpretation of that sentence), and not having a parlimentary system, that would impact how easy that process would be. But there's nothing in the US's structure that would prevent this, there would just be more hurdles to overcome.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:01 AM on November 23, 2023 [3 favorites]
It's not that the US can't follow that path, it's that we've, at least for now, decided not to, regardless of each new school shooting. "Obama will take your guns" was, in addition to being a really effective way to get single-issue voters riled up and for the industry to sell a crap-ton of guns, an acknowledgment that the country could in fact actually radically restrict gun ownership were we to want to. It's a possibility that everyone is aware of, but it's also a possibility that a significant percentage of people are prepared to be single-issue voters against. (Whereas the supporters of those restrictions are not single issue voters.) That, plus the current supermajority on the Supreme Court, creates some pretty significant barriers between where we are now and severely restricting gun ownership.
There's also a lot of differences in terms of political structures between here and the UK or Australia (like having some version of gun rights enshrined in the Constitution, whether or not you believe the Supreme Court's current interpretation of that sentence), and not having a parlimentary system, that would impact how easy that process would be. But there's nothing in the US's structure that would prevent this, there would just be more hurdles to overcome.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:01 AM on November 23, 2023 [3 favorites]
Dip Flash, I understand all that very well. My point was just about how recently other countries made this change.
The way that the idea of taking away guns gets talked about in the US, I feel like people must have the impression that other places simply never allowed private gun ownership at all, and so nowhere else ever had to deal with the prospect of taking a lot of guns away from their lawful owners, and that this would be some totally impractical thing that makes the problem uniquely more difficult to solve in the US.
When in fact that's exactly what Britain did. My grandad had to go down to the police station and hand in his guns. Some years ago when we had to clear his house after his death, I found a couple of boxes of ammo that he'd forgotten, and we had to call the police to arrange to hand those in. It was not a big deal.
That's why I find the US debate so bizarre.
posted by automatronic at 7:54 AM on November 23, 2023 [3 favorites]
The way that the idea of taking away guns gets talked about in the US, I feel like people must have the impression that other places simply never allowed private gun ownership at all, and so nowhere else ever had to deal with the prospect of taking a lot of guns away from their lawful owners, and that this would be some totally impractical thing that makes the problem uniquely more difficult to solve in the US.
When in fact that's exactly what Britain did. My grandad had to go down to the police station and hand in his guns. Some years ago when we had to clear his house after his death, I found a couple of boxes of ammo that he'd forgotten, and we had to call the police to arrange to hand those in. It was not a big deal.
That's why I find the US debate so bizarre.
posted by automatronic at 7:54 AM on November 23, 2023 [3 favorites]
Isn't it like the universal healthcare debate in the US? There's this thing that everyone else has, but the US cannot get for a host of reasons. And a lot of political debates in the US end up being very radical. Either you have all the guns or you have no guns. Either you have universal healthcare or you have the current chaos. Either you have free abortion or abortion is murder.
It's not that there aren't reasonable voices in the US, there are plenty, it's just that both the media situation and the political system reward drama and hyperbole, and of course part of that is that the cost of political campaigning in the US is so immense, that lobbyists and interest groups have far too much influence.
posted by mumimor at 8:28 AM on November 23, 2023 [4 favorites]
It's not that there aren't reasonable voices in the US, there are plenty, it's just that both the media situation and the political system reward drama and hyperbole, and of course part of that is that the cost of political campaigning in the US is so immense, that lobbyists and interest groups have far too much influence.
posted by mumimor at 8:28 AM on November 23, 2023 [4 favorites]
The way that the idea of taking away guns gets talked about in the US, I feel like people must have the impression that other places simply never allowed private gun ownership at all, and so nowhere else ever had to deal with the prospect of taking a lot of guns away from their lawful owners, and that this would be some totally impractical thing that makes the problem uniquely more difficult to solve in the US.
I agree, but also, the UK and Australian examples (where guns were legal and then overnight mostly became illegal, with a massive, mandatory hand-in) are really unusual cases world wide. Most developed countries manage to be more like, say, Canada (at the upper end of the more normal per-capita ownership rates) or Denmark (down towards the lower end of ownership), with fairly easily-accessed legal gun ownership but also a lot of very rigorously enforced restrictions, and a resulting muck lower gun violence rate. That, to me, seems like a far more attainable goal in the US than the UK/Australian examples, and is something we've come closer to in the past before the current hardcore move towards the current laissez-faire, anything goes approach.
Or, like mumimor says, it's setting up that same unhelpful everything/nothing dichotomy, which we are seemingly stuck in on so many fronts.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:39 AM on November 23, 2023 [2 favorites]
I agree, but also, the UK and Australian examples (where guns were legal and then overnight mostly became illegal, with a massive, mandatory hand-in) are really unusual cases world wide. Most developed countries manage to be more like, say, Canada (at the upper end of the more normal per-capita ownership rates) or Denmark (down towards the lower end of ownership), with fairly easily-accessed legal gun ownership but also a lot of very rigorously enforced restrictions, and a resulting muck lower gun violence rate. That, to me, seems like a far more attainable goal in the US than the UK/Australian examples, and is something we've come closer to in the past before the current hardcore move towards the current laissez-faire, anything goes approach.
Or, like mumimor says, it's setting up that same unhelpful everything/nothing dichotomy, which we are seemingly stuck in on so many fronts.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:39 AM on November 23, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's worth noting that it isn't like it's nothing here in the UK either - you can still own firearms here. There are restrictions, sure, but it's not like all guns are illegal, just handguns and anything semi-auto. Everything else you can be granted a license for.
Some of the toughest restrictions on the world according to Wikipedia, but guns aren't banned.
posted by Dysk at 9:02 AM on November 23, 2023 [2 favorites]
Some of the toughest restrictions on the world according to Wikipedia, but guns aren't banned.
posted by Dysk at 9:02 AM on November 23, 2023 [2 favorites]
Some years ago when we had to clear his house after his death, I found a couple of boxes of ammo that he'd forgotten, and we had to call the police to arrange to hand those in. It was not a big deal.
In USian social mythology, guns are confiscated before the communists take over. Atop that there is a survivalist movement that needs them to kill game to feed their families. Atop that there is the "prepper" belief that is fed by folklore concerning the anticipated rapture, something most zombie films express in their subtext. And the South will rise again they say. It goes on and on, but the gun restriction movement in America was punished when it changed course from seeking to register handguns and made a bold but short-term gambit with a ten-year assault weapon ban beginning in 1994. Conservatives swept the following election in a legislative bloodbath.
posted by Brian B. at 10:01 AM on November 26, 2023
In USian social mythology, guns are confiscated before the communists take over. Atop that there is a survivalist movement that needs them to kill game to feed their families. Atop that there is the "prepper" belief that is fed by folklore concerning the anticipated rapture, something most zombie films express in their subtext. And the South will rise again they say. It goes on and on, but the gun restriction movement in America was punished when it changed course from seeking to register handguns and made a bold but short-term gambit with a ten-year assault weapon ban beginning in 1994. Conservatives swept the following election in a legislative bloodbath.
posted by Brian B. at 10:01 AM on November 26, 2023
Atop that there is a survivalist movement that needs them to kill game to feed their families.
My parents in Denmark go hunting pretty frequently with the shotguns and bolt actionrifle they are licensed for and own. There is always venison and other game in the freezer at their house. Denmark is a country with serious gun control.
There is virtually nowhere where hunting is possible where the gun laws don't allow for it. We're coming for your AR15s and handguns, not your hunting weapons.
posted by Dysk at 1:16 AM on November 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
My parents in Denmark go hunting pretty frequently with the shotguns and bolt actionrifle they are licensed for and own. There is always venison and other game in the freezer at their house. Denmark is a country with serious gun control.
There is virtually nowhere where hunting is possible where the gun laws don't allow for it. We're coming for your AR15s and handguns, not your hunting weapons.
posted by Dysk at 1:16 AM on November 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
There is virtually nowhere where hunting is possible where the gun laws don't allow for it. We're coming for your AR15s and handguns, not your hunting weapons.
Survivalism assumes disaster or civil breakdown, not licensed hunting. The general idea being that one out-survives someone less prepared, likely inspired from anticipating nuclear war for generations. Also, they clearly see you coming for their AR-15s, because the gun lobby posters said so for over thirty years and has helped sell millions of them.
posted by Brian B. at 7:53 AM on November 27, 2023
Survivalism assumes disaster or civil breakdown, not licensed hunting. The general idea being that one out-survives someone less prepared, likely inspired from anticipating nuclear war for generations. Also, they clearly see you coming for their AR-15s, because the gun lobby posters said so for over thirty years and has helped sell millions of them.
posted by Brian B. at 7:53 AM on November 27, 2023
So it isn't about killing game to feed their families, as claimed. You don't need a high-capacity removable-magazine semi-auto to do that.
posted by Dysk at 8:20 AM on November 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Dysk at 8:20 AM on November 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
So it isn't about killing game to feed their families, as claimed. You don't need a high-capacity removable-magazine semi-auto to do that.
They imagine all levels of doom at once, one day hunting, next day fending off attackers. Paranoia is not rational, but it tends to feature a large set of what-ifs. One gun fits all with thousands of rounds stockpiled, something to trade as currency, something to defend their preserved possum stew from city invaders.
posted by Brian B. at 8:54 AM on November 27, 2023
They imagine all levels of doom at once, one day hunting, next day fending off attackers. Paranoia is not rational, but it tends to feature a large set of what-ifs. One gun fits all with thousands of rounds stockpiled, something to trade as currency, something to defend their preserved possum stew from city invaders.
posted by Brian B. at 8:54 AM on November 27, 2023
So it isn't about killing game to feed their families, as claimed. You don't need a high-capacity removable-magazine semi-auto to do that.
No, the high capacity magazine survivalist fantasies are all about the danger of other people (often in very thinly-disguised racial coding, you know, "those people"). There are other survivalist fantasies, but once you start including AR-15s you aren't really talking about hunting any more (unless you mean supplemental protein from the people you catch and keep in your basement, of course).
And like Brian B. said, "We're coming for your AR15s and handguns" has been a central messaging strategy for the gun industry and for attracting those single-issue voters for about 30 years now, and has largely been effective for them.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:57 AM on November 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
No, the high capacity magazine survivalist fantasies are all about the danger of other people (often in very thinly-disguised racial coding, you know, "those people"). There are other survivalist fantasies, but once you start including AR-15s you aren't really talking about hunting any more (unless you mean supplemental protein from the people you catch and keep in your basement, of course).
And like Brian B. said, "We're coming for your AR15s and handguns" has been a central messaging strategy for the gun industry and for attracting those single-issue voters for about 30 years now, and has largely been effective for them.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:57 AM on November 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
Just noting that it was what was achieved in a lot of other places in living memory, and was a popular policy. The USA is certainly a unique cultural context, of course.
But it is worth pointing out that what is often portrayed as a total ban in a lot of other places was/is actually nothing like that, it's a ban on handguns and murder-rifles. All the reasonable firearm things that people like or need to do, you can still do, with perfectly reasonable firearms.
posted by Dysk at 9:03 AM on November 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
But it is worth pointing out that what is often portrayed as a total ban in a lot of other places was/is actually nothing like that, it's a ban on handguns and murder-rifles. All the reasonable firearm things that people like or need to do, you can still do, with perfectly reasonable firearms.
posted by Dysk at 9:03 AM on November 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
the high capacity magazine survivalist fantasies are all about the danger of other people
This is one of those things where once again I just wish I could take gun control supporters shooting regularly for a year and then send them back to make the same overall broad arguments but just from a better understanding of their opposition. Because seriously, nobody gains from making opponents into cartoonishly evil villains.
I'm not going to deny that the weird creepy white nationalist fetishists who want to stockpile weapons against the coming race war or whatever exist. But they are not by and large the majority and just because they are outsize consumers of things like this does not make them the only consumers of things like this.
I own what I suppose are now considered "high capacity magazines". I do not own them because I want to murder indiscriminately, but because it is the most cost effective and least assholish way to practice.
As a responsible gun owner, it behooves me to get range time in regularly, rather than just assume because I shot expert fifteen years ago I am set for life. Since I do not own acres of land that let me create my own gun range where I can shoot with impunity as long as my heart desires, that means I must go to a commercial gun range. Most commercial gun ranges have a set number of lanes - usually six to eight. They charge you by the hour. Because of safety, only one person can shoot per lane at a time. That means at a crowded location, other people may be waiting for you to finish so that they can shoot. This means the courteous (and financially sound) thing to do is to come with your magazines pre-loaded, so that you can switch them out without having to waste people's time while you load another magazine at the lane.
So yes - while in a fighting situation I would have no need for twenty rounds unless I were trying to stand off a squad or some nonsense, in a civilian target shooting situation, higher capacity magazines actually make perfect sense.
This is also one of the situations where well meaning, but ignorant of the actual norms, gun control measures in some cases have defeated reasonable and responsible methods for securing guns. I would actually love if I could store my rifle and high capacity magazines at a locker at the gun range. That would be awesome. I have no need to keep a rifle in my home. Gun stores used to offer that. In fact, gun stores also used to offer temporary gun storage when people felt unsafe with guns in their home. But because of rules against transferring "assault weapons" to third parties or storing them with third parties, I can no longer do so in my home state even when the third party is a fucking gun store.
posted by corb at 10:32 AM on November 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
This is one of those things where once again I just wish I could take gun control supporters shooting regularly for a year and then send them back to make the same overall broad arguments but just from a better understanding of their opposition. Because seriously, nobody gains from making opponents into cartoonishly evil villains.
I'm not going to deny that the weird creepy white nationalist fetishists who want to stockpile weapons against the coming race war or whatever exist. But they are not by and large the majority and just because they are outsize consumers of things like this does not make them the only consumers of things like this.
I own what I suppose are now considered "high capacity magazines". I do not own them because I want to murder indiscriminately, but because it is the most cost effective and least assholish way to practice.
As a responsible gun owner, it behooves me to get range time in regularly, rather than just assume because I shot expert fifteen years ago I am set for life. Since I do not own acres of land that let me create my own gun range where I can shoot with impunity as long as my heart desires, that means I must go to a commercial gun range. Most commercial gun ranges have a set number of lanes - usually six to eight. They charge you by the hour. Because of safety, only one person can shoot per lane at a time. That means at a crowded location, other people may be waiting for you to finish so that they can shoot. This means the courteous (and financially sound) thing to do is to come with your magazines pre-loaded, so that you can switch them out without having to waste people's time while you load another magazine at the lane.
So yes - while in a fighting situation I would have no need for twenty rounds unless I were trying to stand off a squad or some nonsense, in a civilian target shooting situation, higher capacity magazines actually make perfect sense.
This is also one of the situations where well meaning, but ignorant of the actual norms, gun control measures in some cases have defeated reasonable and responsible methods for securing guns. I would actually love if I could store my rifle and high capacity magazines at a locker at the gun range. That would be awesome. I have no need to keep a rifle in my home. Gun stores used to offer that. In fact, gun stores also used to offer temporary gun storage when people felt unsafe with guns in their home. But because of rules against transferring "assault weapons" to third parties or storing them with third parties, I can no longer do so in my home state even when the third party is a fucking gun store.
posted by corb at 10:32 AM on November 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
He shot the students there under the table. And so, I didn’t hear any yelling or crying. But I think it was due to the bullets, the gun, being so loud. Arnulfo Reyes, teacher. Uvalde.
I was stunned. I was hurt. I couldn’t move. Two kids fell on my back. Another two kids fell on those two kids’ back. We were stacked up right here like cordwood. David Colbath, church congregant. Sutherland Springs.
I saw my right arm get blown open in two places and my right hand. The pain was the worst pain I ever felt. I looked at it as I felt it, and it looked like shredded raw meat. And there was a lot of blood. Andrea Wedner, synagogue congregant. Pittsburgh.
It was a war zone and there was injured, there was blood everywhere. There was magazines, there was bullets. Danielle Gilbert, high school student. Parkland.
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:26 PM on November 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
I was stunned. I was hurt. I couldn’t move. Two kids fell on my back. Another two kids fell on those two kids’ back. We were stacked up right here like cordwood. David Colbath, church congregant. Sutherland Springs.
I saw my right arm get blown open in two places and my right hand. The pain was the worst pain I ever felt. I looked at it as I felt it, and it looked like shredded raw meat. And there was a lot of blood. Andrea Wedner, synagogue congregant. Pittsburgh.
It was a war zone and there was injured, there was blood everywhere. There was magazines, there was bullets. Danielle Gilbert, high school student. Parkland.
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:26 PM on November 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
...part of that is that the cost of political campaigning in the US is so immense, that lobbyists and interest groups have far too much influence.
As Bob Dylan sang long ago, money doesn't talk, it swears.
posted by y2karl at 6:46 PM on December 1, 2023
As Bob Dylan sang long ago, money doesn't talk, it swears.
posted by y2karl at 6:46 PM on December 1, 2023
But because of rules against transferring "assault weapons" to third parties or storing them with third parties, I can no longer do so in my home state even when the third party is a fucking gun store.
Ironically, one exception to around this (at least around here) is to be on the wrong side of a restraining order—then you can (must) immediately store your guns with an FFL (or turn them into the police).
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:48 PM on December 1, 2023
Ironically, one exception to around this (at least around here) is to be on the wrong side of a restraining order—then you can (must) immediately store your guns with an FFL (or turn them into the police).
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:48 PM on December 1, 2023
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