Hey folks, it's me again with some more opinions that nobody asked for.
I've been watching the NBC democratic presidential debate from June 27th with my wife, and it just sorta struck me as a surprise in a few ways.
For one, I'm pretty excited to see things actually entering the national discussion and being endorsed openly: Single payer healthcare, legitimate reform of lobbying, gerrymandering, citizenship questions, border deescalation, improving international relations and foreign policy, addressing root causes of declining quality of life, racial questions, police accountability, climate crisis plans, agricultural improvements, energy shifts, and even a candidate basing his platform on universal basic income. Neato.
A lot of this stuff was fringe ideology for a long time, and I am super excited to see how these ideas are developed as more people learn about them. The fact that we are talking about them right now fills me with determination. For the first time in my life, I'm realizing that there can be change in our political status quo, and I think it's for the better. That's just neat. It's slow, but encouraging.
One thing though, that concerns folk on this forum, is the general sentiment toward gun violence and particularly "assault weapons." I realize I'm resurrecting a dead horse to beat to death and then to continue beating by bringing this up again, but it's something that I feel inclined to talk about.
Some of you know me, and I'm a pretty radical lefty snowflake millennial. But as far as liberals go, I'm one of those 40% of us who are gun-toting. And one of the concerns I have is that a bulk of our current democratic candidates, particularly in this debate, seem pretty set on solving violence by such means as assault weapons bans. Even those radical snowflake panderers that I have taken a fondness to.
It should be said here that I support background checks for everybody. I support allowing the ATF to use computers to keep criminal and mental health records. I support things like red-flag laws and temporary restrictions. I support age restrictions on firearms: maybe be 21 before you get yourself an AR? You know, let that brain develop a little further and decrease the likelihood that you will do something that idiot teenagers do. I support increasing accountability and education of firearm owners. I support permitted concealed carry. I might even support permits or a slightly more accountable process for semi-automatic firearms in general.
But what I don't support are bans.
See, I like the NFA. I like that if you are motivated enough, and your passion is to own a pristine condition Vietcong AK with the original fire-control group, our current NFA laws allow you an avenue to do that. Sure, we decided in the 80's that maybe it's a little too dangerous to allow just any person to mail-order themselves a sub-machinegun kit. But there are those among us, such as military collectors or firearms enthusiasts, who would like the opportunity to responsibly own such a device. And it's hard to do, it's expensive, but it's not impossible and it's not illegal. That's the key: Sure the NFA restricts some things and who is qualified to own them, but it's not just a ban. Should we add "Assault Weapons" to the NFA? Well...no. But the sentiment is important. It's well thought out. It's complex, and that's what's important about the NFA legislation.
What an assault weapon ban does is very little...but also a whole lot. And they don't really do what people tend to think they will. So what do they do?
First off, Assault Weapon Bans really suck at defining what an assault weapon is, leaving massive loopholes. Look at California-legal semiautomatic rifles: Does sticking some plastic on a pistol grip make a renamed AK variant less dangerous? The only way to capture the volume of fire issue completely is to ban all semi-automatic firearms. Looking at you, Ruger 10-22, M1 Garand, Browning Automatic-5, you dirty terrorist guns. It presents problems. These models I just mentioned are really not assault weapons. They're things your grandfather owns and takes out to show off to his war buddies. There's a grey area here. There's a grey area in basically the entirety of firearm ban conversations, unless we talk about getting rid of all of them. And it seems pretty clear to me that removing some without removing all will just force the next one into the role of an assault weapon. And I doubt most of us consider our ownership of 10-22s as enabling domestic terrorism.
Secondly, assault weapons bans don't really stop bad guys from having them. Criminals, for whatever purpose that drives them, will always be able to acquire or manufacture very destructive devices. It's illegal to buy a mac-10 out of a dude's trunk, but if you've got some business doing a mass murder, you don't really care about the law. Those people that do care about the law tend to be those people who don't want to break it.
Third, Assault Weapons bans don't stop people from causing massive destruction. 9/11 was done with box cutters. Oklahoma City Bombing was done with fertilizer. Charleston was a Dodge Challenger. Most gun violence is committed with common pistols. It's not going to change the amount of people who are determined to cause massive loss of life, and it at most will just force them to change how they do it. People, as we know, are crafty and despicably creative and it should frighten us as to how this creativity is used by disturbed people, with or without assault weapons. This is more or less why we bailed on the '94 assault weapons ban: it didn't really stop terrible things from happening.
Fourth, it clearly stops law-abiding and well meaning folks from pursuing their firearm interests. Be you a competitive shooter with a lightweight AR, or the collector grandpa type, if you are made a criminal for pursuing those peaceful interests, you're probably going to bail on those. I mean even those of us who want a semi-auto rifle to protect our farms from drug-runners (or whatever) will probably comply with federal law, even if it means being less able to protect our families. Varmint hunters? Not anymore. Now you've just got less chickens or whatever it is that varmint steal from you. My competition rifle for shooting matches? Nah, method of mass violence. It doesn’t matter that I don’t even have the heart to kill spiders in my house- I should be considered dangerous.
Fifth and finally, it seems clearly to decrease one of those few powers that we historically held as citizens of this country. Call me a radical or a conspiracy theorist or a prepper nut or whatever, but we are historically, as citizens of this country, supposed to present a credible threat to malicious forces abroad and at home, including those that claim to govern us. Sure, an AR isn’t a founding-father approved smooth-bore musket, but neither is a predator drone, nor an abrams tank, nor a precision-guided cruise missile, or AP 50-cals. But the thing is that these advanced weapons systems are in control of only two exclusive groups: Our government's military for one, and for two, those entities that can otherwise afford them. I could easily see those systems as being used by bad guys who want to control people. Without some measly semi-auto rifles, those of us who don’t want space-age 1984 style totalitarianism or malicious corporate overlords protected by private military contractors enforcing their will on the people, really don’t have a lot left to defend ourselves. I’m all for peaceful, passive reforms, and I advocate progression within our political system, but I worry about what will happen if it all fails and there are no options other than...submitting. There are some historical reasons for having armed citizens, and those reasons are to stop oppression of people by the power-hungry, warlike and corrupt. Power-lust, war and corruption don't seem to be going away any time soon, so there's that to consider, folks.
One of the problems that I see with politicians from all sides of the political spectrum is this sense of...optimism. Being optimistic that whatever simple thing you choose to do will solve the problems that we have. And I think this is misguided. It’s never that rosey. And it’s never that easy.
Let’s remember that a whole lot of violent crime is bred from desperate situations. A whole shitload of it, in at least gun deaths, is self-inflicted. Which is really sad. But other gun deaths arise because of a lack of safety nets: mental health systems failing people like the Aurora shooter, improper addressing of addiction and unhealthy stimulus such as the Vegas shooter, crimes born in poverty like robbery, or of desperation, or of depression, or rejection or not understanding acceptance. Our society is sick and gun deaths are a symptom.
I wonder what sort of impacts we would see after we have actually taken steps to improve the world around us and the lives of those around us, and of ourselves. Would a Universal Basic Income curve crimes of desperation? I could easily see it doing so. Would increasing access to and the quality of physical and mental health decrease the number of incidents of sick people doing terribly misguided things? Absolutely. Would addressing systemic racism defuse violent racial tension? You betcha. Would revisiting and reminding ourselves of constitutional liberties such as the right to faith help bridge gaps between misguided and hateful people and those who just want to pray in peace? I sure hope so. Would addressing issues like gerrymandering and political disenfranchisement help people feel less threatened, powerless and desperate? Would these measures help reduce the conditions that breed violence? I really, honestly, believe so.
It’s a real, funky, world we live in these days. I wonder where it is going. We’ve put up with a lot in the past, especially when charged with emotions like fear. 9/11 did a number on us, and to feel better we basically threw away the 4th amendment via the Patriot Act. Our constitution is supposed to be open to amendment, and we like it that way. But if we framed it in that context, I wonder how many of us would have said “Yeah, let’s strike the 4th amendment. We don’t need that liberty. We don’t need the right to our own security and privacy. Who the fuck do those founding fathers think they were thinking we don’t want the government rifling through our shit. Of course we do #neverforget.”
This is why the firearm debate is interesting. Because it is directly a constitutional conflict. There’s questions by federal judges as to whether or not magazine capacity infringes on constitutional rights. Well what about all semi-automatic firearms? It’s a question of give and take. It’s a matter of what we are willing to settle for. Do the gains outweigh the losses, right? That’s what we should be considering. I think there’s plenty of reasons to continue to allow our people to be armed, peaceful and not, you know, within reason.
I think there are plenty of reasons to vote for democrats. At least they are starting to talk about the things that we really care about.
But I guess my point is that it’s a little disheartening when even the people you like take simple and lazy stances on issues. It makes you wonder how much of the substance of what they claim to stand for is just...based on the slightest amount of thought. It’s no secret that a lot of people, especially democrats, support assault weapon bans. And maybe those politicians are just pandering to that demographic, which sucks, but I guess it's normal and in the best interests of their presidential bid.
A lot of people just don’t really understand what it all means. “Assault Weapon” is hardly even a proper descriptor. It’s really just a nasty word. But the firearm debate is due for some careful consideration, examination and exploration. And precisely because it isn’t simple or easy to understand the relationship between firearms and violence, it needs to be a part of our national conversation.
June 2019 Dem. Debate and Firearms
1Free love, yo. Does anybody have any broken guns they don't want?