There was a recent ballot measure in Montana designed to prevent individual cities from establishing their own gun law and regulations[1].
In support of this ballot measure, the NRA Big Sky Self-Defense Committee spent $52,632.37. In opposition, the Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund spent $208,357.84, the Alliance for Gun Responsibility spent 15,400.00,
I was personally very surprised because I had always been lead by the media to understand that the financials played out in the opposite manner, with huge funding coming from the big bad out of state NRA, and small local governments getting trampled.
Your example might be more of an example of the corrosive effect of politically active billionaires, who have the ability to outspend actual citizens' groups. IIRC, the billionaire Koch bothers were able to similarly wield outsized influence by spending heavily in down-ballot state races.
It seems to me that this is an example of the article’s point: NRA had money but it didn’t reach places like Montana because NRA executives were spending lavishly on things other than its core mission.
The numbers were similar in the background check referendum [0] in Maine a few years ago -- the NRA et. al. were outspent five-to-one by the coalitions pushing the measure (and the referendum still failed).
Open secrets is an obviously biased source that believes there should be more gun control. Their compiled numbers could easily exclude anti-gun spending, and I'm inclined to believe their do.
For instance, they say that in 2020, there was $1,540,000 spent on gun control[1]. The Montana ballot initiative referenced above had $1,629,596.12 spent in opposition to in in 2020 alone[2].
I was curious about the discrepancy, and Open Secrets doesn't really report its methodology well here. I did some digging and found that it's the amount of money that is spent on lobbying federal officials, not a number inclusive of all kinds of political expenditures.
It does seem a bit motivated to choose federal lobbying as the initial representation of spending around the gun issue, when it's clearly dwarfed by initiative campaign expenditures, donations to individual candidates, and electoral campaign expenditures.
Thank you for investigating that. I can't edit my above comment anymore or I'd include that. Although I think the broader point, that anyone can make the spending numbers look a certain way, is still valid.
> Open secrets is an obviously biased source that believes there should be more gun control.
Do you have a source for this claim? They're listed as a nonpartisan organization online[1], and it seems as though their founders were a pair of Democratic and Republican senators. Their current lead project appears to be tracing the Biden administration's money, which doesn't feel like towing the line to me.
Edit: I found this conservative source[2], which refers to them as performing "left-wing" campaign finance advocacy. I think they're referring to the Citizens United decision, which has been a rallying point for every government watchdog that I know of. It occurs to me that (1) you could label just about anything as "left-wing" in this manner, and (2) campaign finance reform isn't something that most self-identified leftists would consider "left-wing" (being firmly in the "make government more transparent" category of political activity).
"They have a strong viewpoint" is a not the same thing as "obviously biased." Conflating them is a rhetorical sleight of hand.
When I go to that page, I get a few grafs on recent mass shootings (which, barring conspiracy theories, everybody is presumably on board with having happened). Mentioning those at all indicates that they have a viewpoint, but I don't see anything that indicates that it biases their transparency work. There's nothing to justify the insinuation.
Handguns are responsible for almost all gun homicides, and are also the main category of firearms used for self defense. And on that core issue, support for restricting access is more unpopular than its ever been.
You used to call out that flaw in that logic yourself. We're not generally motivated by routine gun homicides, but by mass shootings, because, as you say, "the activity threatens social stability vastly out of proportion with the probability of any given person being victim to it." It can be rational for policy to target tactical rifles, which can be used to stand off police forces (as they have in several mass shootings) and to rain death down onto a crowded street from a high-rise window, while not addressing the more-common handgun fatalities, just like gun policy doesn't need address the still-more-common traffic fatalities.
I initially thought that a ban on 'assault weapons' might make sense, but after learning more about firearms technology, I've come to the conclusion that 'assault weapons' just doesn't make sense as a legal classification. It's mostly about minor cosmetic and ergonomic features (such as having a pistol grip) that look scary to large segments of the population. A Mini-14 Ranch Rifle is nearly as capable as an AR-15, yet nobody is trying to ban it because it looks like a traditional hunting rifle. And there isn't really a clear-cut meaningful distinction between rifles and pistols; a so-called 'AR-15 pistol' is legally a pistol even though it can be easily converted to a rifle by replacing the arm brace with a stock (but to do so legally requires a $200 tax stamp if the barrel under 16 inches long).
The addition of a pistol grip does lend increased tactical maneuverability to a rifle. It doesn't just look scary. The tactical ability of a semi/fully-automatic rifle does not exclusively come from its ability to rapidly chamber rounds, it also comes from its tactical maneuverability, especially when firing multiple rounds in a short period of time.
This is why the military uses rifles that look like the M4 platform, and not rifles that look like the M14 platform anymore. This is why the AK-47 doesn't look like the SKS. The addition of a pistol grip to a semi or fully-automatic rifle represents an advance in military technology.
The 2015 San Bernardino Shooting, the Sandy Hook shooting, and the Orlando nightclub shooting all involved light, tactical rifles with pistol-grips. Stephen Paddock had 21 pistol-grip rifles, and not a single Mini-14.
There is a meaningful advantage in the ability to kill people in in-close, rapid-fire situations with a light, semi-automatic rifle featuring a pistol grip. This is why people whose job descriptions involve killing people at relatively close-ranges (military, SWAT) use this style of weapon, and not a weapon that looks like a Mini-14.
The stock Mini-14 looks like a traditional hunting rifle, because it is engineered for hunting. Its design is not optimized for controllability when rapidly firing multiple rounds in multiple directions in a tactical setting. A good hunter shouldn't need to discharge much more than two rounds, and they have one single target. They're not controlling for recoil over the course of an entire 30-round magazine, while pivoting in multiple directions.
In that context, the legal classification of an assault weapon does make pretty good sense.
>The 2015 San Bernardino Shooting, the Sandy Hook shooting, and the Orlando nightclub shooting all involved light, tactical rifles with pistol-grips. Stephen Paddock had 21 pistol-grip rifles, and not a single Mini-14.
>Its design is not optimized for controllability when rapidly firing multiple rounds
Yes, that is a real disadvantage of the Mini-14 compared to the AR-15. And for military use, when engaging targets over 50 yards away, it is important. My understanding, though, is that most mass shootings happen at fairly close range, where the AR-15's reduced muzzle rise isn't as much of an advantage.
>This is why people whose job descriptions involve killing people at relatively close-ranges (military, SWAT) use this style of weapon, and not a weapon that looks like a Mini-14.
The military didn't choose the AR-15 for its performance at close range (like under 25 yards). At that range, the AR-15's greater difference between bore axis and line-of-sight becomes a disadvantage compared to the Mini-14.
>The addition of a pistol grip does lend increased tactical maneuverability to a rifle.
Do you have a source for that? Personally, I haven't found a pistol grip to make much of a difference in maneuverability. The overall length of the rifle certainly makes a big difference, though.
Not in the United States since 1986 according to that list.
Tactical maneuverability when discharging rounds at a rapid rate can come from maintaining the stock in-line with the bore of the rifle as-with a pistol grip, which allows for better control of rapid fire. It is also easier to pull the rifle into the shoulder quickly, which allows you to re-sight more quickly when firing rapidly, and transitioning from running to a shooting position. If you look at a standard, factory wood or synthetic-stock Mini-14 (not a side-folder), the bore is elevated over the stock. The fractions of a second needed to re-sight the rifle would create a disadvantage when rapidly discharging a weapon in close quarters. This is especially important for someone who has not received extensive training in handling weapons in these situations, such as the people who go postal in schools and nightclubs and such.
> At that range, the AR-15's greater difference between bore axis and line-of-sight becomes a disadvantage compared to the Mini-14.
This seems like a weird example, since I don't believe any modern, well-funded urban combat operations team uses the factory Mini-14, or any similarly-configured rifle with a more horizontal-grip stock. The prototypical close-combat rifle, the MP5, most definitely uses a pistol-grip, and SWAT teams in the United States seem rather fond of the AR-15-style platform.
Although I do not have evidence to support this, I would also make the argument that a pistol-grip offers advantages in quickly swapping mags in a high-pressure situation, as the mag release button is nicely situated with the wrist in a neutral position, and the ability to bring the rifle back-up to shoulder using the pistol-grip as a lever following a mag swap would be easier, especially for someone who is inexperienced, moving quickly, and prone to fumbling.
Plus, people are tired of seeing mass shootings on TV, and just don't want to have to worry about lunatics running around with these types of weapons. The definition of 'these types of weapons' will evolve, and typically correlate with what people see being used in mass shootings on the news.
I don't know that people's negative reaction to these weapons is particularly unreasonable in this context.
The pistol grip really isn't the big advance it's pitched to be, and lets be honest; banning it does nothing in the case of someone who has cracked enough to decide a large number of people are going to die today. It happened to be a feature of a design that won a military contract, therefore the tooling to produce that design was developed, therefore that tooling was put to work to make more due to economies of scale therefore people take the opportunity to post-rationalize tge ubiquity of the pistol grip as being some artificial killing power multiplier rather than just " hey, we can already make these so why not lecerage tge feature to make cheaper guns?" It's more an economic efficiency than anything else.
Pistol grips do not inherently make a weapon system more maneuverable, as they do not change any of your leverage on the firarm, nor its centre of mass or mass distribution. Making a weapon more comfortable does not make it more deadly since you can always fire more rounds if you miss. Pistol grips are simply easier to manufacture than weird shapes of wood or plastic.
Why wouldn't a pistol-grip impact leverage? It's literally a lever attached to the bottom of the rifle.
> does not make it more deadly since you can always fire more rounds if you miss
More rounds on-target is the definition of more deadly.
> Pistol grips are simply easier to manufacture than weird shapes of wood or plastic.
I don't follow. A hollow pistol-grip is not only more plastic, it also requires a much more complicated mold.
There's a reason every modern, light, self-chambering rifle system uses a pistol grip. If it were simply a matter of ease of manufacture, or of comfort with zero tactical advantage, nobody would care if AR-15s were banned because they'd be perfectly happy with their Mini-14.
Look at rifles like the SV98 or AW series. They don't have pistol grips but have the same ergonomic layout as a pistol grip. In fact, you can evade pistol grip laws by making butt stocks with holes that provide the same effective hand positioning. Learning to shoot a classic rifle grip is only a matter of training - after all, everyone from precision sports shooters to special forces utilised them to their full extent.
>More rounds on-target
You only need one .223 centre mass or in the intestines to require immediate surgery.
>hollow pistol-grip
Attatch two stamped pieces of metal or molded plastic.
>they'd be perfectly happy
One major reason not to ban pistol grips is that there is no major reason to ban pistol grips. I haven't been a witness to any statistical analysis regarding its positive effects. If anything, you want to motivate people to like the guns they own, so they shoot more often and are more disciplined. The fact that some commit heinous crimes is mentall illness, not the fault of the gun or even more so the fault of legal gun ownership.
Plus, the AR-15 platform has versatile configurations like the short-stroke piston operation of an HK416 or picatinny rails for attachments. After all, mounting a good infrared scope on a hunting rifle helps hunters place humane one-shot-stops rather than blindly causing suffering.
The purpose of assault-weapons bans are to reduce the likelihood of a single, mentally-unstable person from killing large numbers of people with a semi-automatic rifle.
> you can evade pistol grip laws by making butt stocks with holes that provide the same effective hand positioning
Not in California. That grip is considered a 'feature' and is not allowed in conjunction with detachable magazines on a semi-automatic rifle.
> You only need one .223 centre mass or in the intestines to require immediate surgery.
Center-mass is on-target. For an inexperienced person working their way through a school or office-building, they are trying to increase the number of on-target shots, and reduce the number of magazine reloads.
> The fact that some commit heinous crimes is mentall illness, not the fault of the gun or even more so the fault of legal gun ownership.
We can't ban mental illness, so the purpose of the laws is to reduce the likelihood of certain weapons systems from falling into the hands of people with mental illness, or those with an ideological grudge and the motivation to carry out an attack. This has worked out pretty well in the state of California so-far.
> mounting a good infrared scope on a hunting rifle helps hunters place humane one-shot-stops rather than blindly causing suffering.
If a hunter needs an infrared scope to place a humane shot, then they need to go to the range and get better before they go outside and shoot an animal.
> If anything, you want to motivate people to like the guns they own, so they shoot more often and are more disciplined.
I understand this perspective, as I am a shooting enthusiast as well. However, this perspective is simply not in-line with the opinions of most voters, who don't really care how much anyone enjoys these weapons. They simply don't want to have to worry about themselves or their children getting shot by some lunatic with a gun. When they hear 'more disciplined,' they hear 'more skilled at killing my kids.' Since firearms for the vast majority of gun owners are little more than a hobby, it's really hard not to see the logic in their perspective.
The fact they're bolt-action is irrelevant to their grip. I'm still not convinced banning semi-automatic rifles will lead to (or has lead to) mentaly unstable people bieng unable to commit crimes. There's still a large selection of pistols (especially rifle-looking pistols) and lever-action rifles. You can still shoot them as quick as you can aim.
>inexperienced person
It's very inadequate to target a small minority of people with laws that are based on wishful thinking, sacrificing the vast majority. Do you not find it easier to simply take action with mental healthcare for the weeks, months, and years prior to the shooting?
>We can't ban mental illness.
Of course. Because it's an obviously failed concept. When you ban weapons you can always cherrypick statistics to show loose correlation (not sure by which criteria it's worked out well in California when Chicago's gun laws don't repeat the results). It seems like the banning attitude is the wrong approach, and the issues at hand are far greater than a single handwave of the senate or similar.
And let's not forget how easy it is to make DIY pipe bombs, flash bangs, stinger grenades, molotovs, poison gas grenades. I'm certain pipe bombs are more dangerous in close quarters than guns because of their spread. If you've barricaded the classroom door, all you need to do is stay outside the deadly funnel and there is no way the firearm will hurt you. But explosives have no such limitation if you can fit it in.
>go to the range and get better
This isn't about skill but visibility in low-light conditions, easier target acquisition, and actually having a guarantee of what you're looking at. Any benefit you gain from training will be increased with an infrared scope.
>They simply don't want to have to worry about themselves or their children getting shot by some lunatic with a gun.
Mental illness is a major cause of worry right now for America's youth. The easy and naive handwave solutions of banning mentall illness and guns are, at best, tangent to the goal of reducing violence, and at worst rob people of the right to defend themselves or use tools they are well trained in. It is the easy short-term way out to use non-combative and 'safe' gun owners as scape goats. It is the easy way out to tell someone what his use case, goal, and constraints are, and back it up with strongarm authority.
It is not the easy way out to admit a complete failure of the federal government to implement mental health care. It is not the easy way out to push changes that will span several presidents. It's not the easy way out to cooperate with all sides of the community. It's not easy - that's why we trust politicians with our taxes, so they work it out the best way, the most rational, informed, and difficult way. Isn't that the point of politics - to abstract away the angry mob seeking retribution?
By the way, I'm not American. I live in the EU but have had the privilege to spend hundreds of euros on trips to countries to shoot some guns. Thanks to EU gun laws, the best defense against getting robbed or home invaded is to know civilian-safe, ethical tai chi.
You raise some really good points, and I appreciate the thought behind your response.
I wanted to kind of try to maybe unpack the point you made as best as I can:
> Do you not find it easier to simply take action with mental healthcare for the weeks, months, and years prior to the shooting?
We have zero mental health infrastructure in the United States, and it would take decades to build a working system (there's not even the political will to try at the moment).
In the case of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting where 17 people died, the police were well aware that the suspect was a threat, they had received multiple tips that he was going to shoot up the school, and they knew he had guns. But there isn't framework in the United States to do anything about it because we have such strong free-speech and civil liberties protections. It's also perfectly legal for someone who hasn't been convicted of anything or put on an emergency mental health hold to own a semi-automatic rifle. As a result, the guy who told everyone exactly what he was about to do took his gun, walked into his high school, and murdered almost 20 people.
People are looking for pragmatic solutions to prevent these types of mass shootings.
1. We could enable the police to arrest or detain people who haven't committed a crime, but that would conflict with constitutional free-speech protections, and would set a stronger precedent for police arresting people for things they haven't actually done yet (slippery slope).
2. We could build an entire mental health system from scratch (decades of work assuming at some point in the next ten years this would be a priority for the president and congress).
3. We could increase restrictions on certain types of guns to prevent them from falling into the hands of a disturbed 19 year-old (incredibly easy to do, there's widespread popular support, and all Congress would have to do is pass a single bill). The only people negatively impacted would be a minority of people who would be slightly inconvenienced, but still be able to pursue their hobby. The majority of people would gain the ability to send their kids to school without wondering if they're going to get murdered.
Only one of these options (#3) seems to be within the realm of actually being achievable. We're just not going to build a mental health system from scratch anytime soon, and people aren't thrilled about giving the police more ability to arrest people who haven't actually committed a crime. We're left with more weapons restrictions as the only pragmatic solution (what Europe, Australia, Canada, Mexico, etc. have done).
Only a minority of Americans own guns, and there's consistent support among the majority of voters for increased restrictions on firearms.
I enjoy shooting guns myself as a hobby, and I live in California which has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country. The laws really aren't such a big deal. It just means an assault rifle has a 10-round mag restriction, and it's a little slower to change mags since they require a few additional steps to swap out. I don't find that to be a particularly big deal, especially since it helps my friends, family, and neighbors not have to worry about the safety of their children. I still get to pursue my hobby, and there's no way I need more than 10 rounds for home defense. Even if they outright banned assault rifles, I could have fun for the rest of my life target shooting with bolt-action rifles.
I'd like to add it's not a hobby, one of the greatest concerns in buying a firearm is self defense from people who don't care about the laws and can indeed access weapons of different types. It also seems like the government isn't following #3 in what you would consider productive ways. I don't see how 10-round magazines, armbraces instead of stocks, and pistol grips are going to offer other than a minor inconvenience.
For me it's a hobby since I am not allowed to defend my home. My rights are already gone. As far as the EU is concerned, if you are afraid of getting hurt, get life insurance. If you are afraid of getting robbed, get house insurance. It would be sad for America to fall like that mostly due to corrupt and/or lazy politicians.
Pistol grips are a common interface, they don't have a significant tactical improvement on their own. It is massively beneficial to have all/most weapons a soldier might be called upon to use to have the same basic setup though.
1. The stock to remain in-line with the bore of the rifle.
2. Additional leverage to control recoil.
3. Quicker and more intuitive return of the weapon to-shoulder after running or changing magazines.
4. The wrist to remain in a neutral position when depressing the magazine release button.
The Sten, BAR, and the PPSH were pretty much the last generations of fully-automatic rifles to use a horizontal grip configuration, and in both cases, (Soviet and Western) weapons designers converged on the pistol-grip for subsequent designs of the autoloading light rifle, despite substantial differences in design between the M16 and the AK-47.
Why did they make the change? All three of those weapons (Sten, BAR, PPSH) were in widespread combat usage at the time, as were horizontal-grip semiautomatic rifles like the SKS, M14, and M1 Garand/Carbine (as well as a variety of horizontal-grip bolt-action rifles). Why not keep the same configuration for the next generation of rifles so that soldiers would be using the same basic setup that they had originally been trained on? Why did the StG 44, AK-47, Thompson, and later the M-16 all make the switch? Even the Swedes started adding pistol-grips to the BAR in the twenties.
Horizontal-grip rifles just don't seem to be as well-suited for controllability of fully-automatic, or rapid semi-automatic fire.
I don't want to recapitulate the whole very long argument here, but I believe this meme about "assault weapons" being incoherent and cosmetic is essentially propaganda. The original FAWB proposals targeted all semi-automatic rifles with detachable clips. Like you, I took the time to learn more about firearms technology and I came to the opposite conclusion you did. See this thread for my reasoning (somewhere in there, there's a back-and-forth about the Mini-14, which is a favorite Facebook meme subject).
And last time you brought this up, I pointed out you mischaracterized the proposal in question. I'd correct your statement to say "The original FAWB proposals targeted all semi-automatic rifles with detachable [magazines that a future Attorney General wanted to ban]."
As the thread shows, the intent of the original FAWB proposals was not to focus on scary-looking cosmetic features. I think my description in this thread is fair, you'd like to qualify it further, and that's fine, but I don't think we should pretend like we don't understand each other, or that there aren't sources that refute the idea that the original intention of assault weapons regulation was just stuff like barrel shrouds.
The problem is that neither the proposal you linked nor the 1994 FAWB make a rational distinction between banned semi-automatic rifles with a capacity to accept a detachable magazine ("assault weapons") and ones that shouldn't be banned, with the exception of a few specific carveouts. In the proposal you link, instead of feature tests, we get the attorney general judging which guns are ok and which ones aren't.
AWBs are incoherent and irrational. The feature tests are a manifestation of that. But the lack of them doesn't fix the irrationality of the whole idea.
I think the bill I cited is has a pretty clear and coherent definition of assault weapons: they're semi-automatic rifles that accept detachable clips of more than 10 rounds. You're fixated on the fact that the AG/SecT can designed some semi-automatic rifles with clips as "not" assault weapons, at their discretion. So what?
I don't think mandatory licensure of tactical rifles is an irrational idea at all.
The ban you linked works the other way around: Such rifles are legal until the AG/SecT specifically bans them. It's the functional definition + irrelevant stuff formula I object to as irrational. If the ban you linked worked as you describe, I'd object to it as bad public policy, but I'd be hard-pressed to call it irrational.
And I'm not sure how licensure comes into this. Neither the 1994 FAWB nor the proposal you linked license the possession of "tactical rifles." They ban them with grandfathering. And for what it's worth, I don't think licensure regimes necessarily are irrational.
The AG/SecT has the authority under this proposal to simply classify all of them as assault weapons. Not all firearms, period; there is a technical definition that carves out weapons that can't be, and, again, it's not based on cosmetic features.
I think in the 1980s an outright ban on tactical rifles could have worked. That's the context of the bill. Since then, the black rifle has become a de facto standard platform for hunting and sporting, the market has followed, also somehow a feral hog explosion, and so an outright ban would be very disruptive. My point is that bans aren't the only option, and, in 2020 (but not in the 1980s) the cost of a ban would outweigh the benefit.
I think reasonable people can have all sorts of opinions on what kind of regulations there should be around firearms, and my confidence in my own beliefs is not all that high. But I am fairly certain that thought-stopping appeals to the definitions in the FAWB (or, for that matter, to the Sturmgewehr) don't make good arguments, and can be quickly disposed of.
>The original FAWB proposals targeted all semi-automatic rifles with detachable clips.
OK, I agree with you that such a proposal makes sense conceptually. (But I would still oppose it on the grounds that it offends the Second Amendment.) My complaint about conceptual incoherence is limited to bans that focus on things like pistol grips.
>The original FAWB proposals targeted all semi-automatic rifles with detachable clips
Yet that was not the definition used in the law.
The original FAWB (for rifles) itself defined an assault weapon as a semi-auto rifle with 2 of
- folding or telescoping stock
- pistol grip
- bayonet mount
- flash hider
- grenade launcher.
This was such a ridiculous list, with about zero to do with lethality, that it was trivial to work around. No one was killing people with grenade launchers or bayonets, for example.
Targeting only detachable clips only leads to fast loaders like those used for 6-shooters, i.e., it's not much of a deterrent to quickly reloading weapons.
In practice and history, these bans seem more based on scary looking features than empirical lethality.
"The law" was the result of intensive lobbying by groups like the NRA and represents a capitulation from the original position of gun reformers. I don't accept that we're bound by the definitions in that law when we're discussing potential new policy. In fact, rejecting that definition of "assault weapon" is the point of my comment.
> I don't accept that we're bound by the definitions in that law when we're discussing potential new policy
Here's a recent Assault Weapons Ban by Diane Feinstein, 2020, not the result of political lobbying.
It takes your statement to heart. Do you see any holes in this one being effective? I do.
>the result of intensive lobbying by groups like the NRA and represents a capitulation from the original position of gun reformers
Every bill will be the result of lobbying and ideas from competing groups, and will result in compromise. That's not such a bad thing. Not every American wants either extreme that political parties can concoct.
I’m not denying there’s a rational reason for an assault weapons ban, apart from a ban on handguns. (I might even support it, for the reasons you mention, if I didn’t believe that assault weapons—arms you could use in a militia capacity if necessary—are actually more protected under the second amendment than self-defense weapons like handguns).
But insofar as gun control advocates cite “gun violence” as a problem to be solved, lumping together both homicides and suicides, well handguns are the thing driving that and support for banning those, like in the UK or some other countries, is at historic lows.
Well, you disagree with Scalia in Heller then, who drew a sharp distinction between military weapons and arms carried for self defense, over like 8 paragraphs, and concludes with a distinction between the kinds of weapons civilians carry and the kind soldiers carry, the latter not necessarily being protected.
I agree that we're not likely to get a handgun ban any time in the next 50 years.
Yes, I do. Second amendment scholarship has changed a lot over the past few decades. It was in the past much more hospitable to gun control than today. Scalia is a product of that. Scalia was also, presumably, trying to build the 5-4 part of the majority. And in any event, the case itself was directed to a self-defense context. But post-Heller scholarship has acknowledged that the case didn’t go as far as it could have.
> The premise that private arms would be used for self-defense accords with Blackstone's observation, which had influenced thinking in the American colonies, that the people's right to arms was auxiliary to the natural right of self-preservation. See WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, 1 COMMENTARIES 136, 139; see also Silveira, 328 F.3d at 583-85 (Kleinfeld, J.); Kasler v. Lockyer, 23 Cal. 4th 472, 97 Cal. Rptr. 2d 334, 2 P.3d 581, 602 (2000) (Brown, J., concurring). The right of self-preservation, in turn, was understood as the right to defend oneself against attacks by lawless individuals, or, if absolutely necessary, to resist and throw off a tyrannical government.
Scalia wrote certain things in dicta in Heller in order to get Justice Kennedy's vote, in a very narrow ruling in a case specifically about handguns.
I wouldn't read much into that on the constitutionality of "military weapon" bans -- keeping in mind of course that the things gun control advocates like to call "assault weapons" aren't actually military weapons at all, as manufacture of actual military weapons for civilian ownership has been heavily restricted since 1968 and absolutely banned since 1986.
I guess my counterargument would be that the modern sporting rifle was designed to be a military weapon. I'd be interested in learning more about the technicalities that designate something as an according-to-Hoyle military weapon, but I'm a little dubious that such a definition will cause me to forget the history of the AR-15.
Well, I suppose there really aren't any technicalities that designate a weapon as "military style" -- it's really a point that doesn't mean anything.
The military has used pump action shotguns similar to what you'd find in a duck blind, they've used Remington 700s (the most common hunting rifle and military sniper rifle), they've used air guns (all the way back to the revolutionary war -- the first semiautomatic rifles were air guns used in the Revolutionary War), they've used Ruger .22 handguns with suppressors on them...
The distinction that was made in 1986 was that anything fully automatic was banned. I think that's pretty silly, as I'm just as effective with a semi-automatic AR-15 as with a fully automatic M4A1. It makes no real difference, most military troops never flip the switch to automatic because the weapon isn't really even designed for it (machine guns need to have spare barrels, an assistant gunner, normally belt fed ammunition, etc -- they're ineffective otherwise). But that's the legal "definition" such as it is.
anyway, kind of all over the place, but the general point is this -- if you look the history of the time in which the 2nd amendment was written, civilians could -- and did -- own ships, cannon, artillery, etc at the time. Who cares about small arms if you can own a ship of the line with cannon? The concept of civilians being restricted in which types of weapons they could own based on whether or not the military could own them would have been considered ridiculous to the founding fathers. "military weapons" are the most effective weapons, if we have the right to own weapons, why would we be restricted to ineffective ones? Conversely, if you're going to ban weapons, why would banning the most effective weapons have any real impact, when a>there are still millions of them in circulation that are never going to come out of circulation, and b> even "ineffective" weapons can be just as effective as those "military style" weapons in a barely trained shooter's hands? I can literally teach someone in fifteen minutes how to be just as effective with a Glock 19 as with an M4A1 inside of a building. Even with 10 round magazines.
See, I strongly agree with you about the near equivalence of an AR-15 and an M4 carbine, and I'm glad to get further confirmation of the reading I've done suggesting that fully automatic rifle fire is highly overrated and rarely used professionally.
To me, that strongly suggests that the AR-15, even though it has become the "modern sporting rifle", is a weapon of war. It's clearly a military weapon (that's its origin and the intent behind its design). The thing that separates it from the weapon we all consider indisputably military, the selective fire M16, is a trivial amount of metal and additional machining --- and that tiny bit of extra stuff is rarely needed in the field anyways. My claim: the fact that Adolf Hitler chose to describe a rifle with a couple extra pieces of metal in the trigger assembly as a "bad-ass rifle" (my translation) has assumed an outsize role in our policy.
I think a rational target for our firearms policy should be all semi-automatic rifles with detachable (or high-capacity) magazines. Doesn't mean we should ban them or even seek to reduce the number of them in commerce today, just that those are the weapons I think we should be talking about.
All small arms are "weapons of war". Clubs and sticks are "weapons of war" in certain societies, and people kill other people with them all over the world. In some places they do so quite effectively.
That's really the fact of it.
The UK and Japan have banned pocket knives. I couldn't legally possess a Leatherman the entire six years I spent in Japan. We had metal detectors at the brow of the ships to ensure no one LEFT the ships with their every day tools they carried to do their jobs, because they would be arrested and thrown in a hole for carrying them off the ship (yes, this literally happened. 10+ days in a Japanese hole waiting on a charging decision for a junior LT on a ship there because he had a pocket knife in his backpack). The UK is now attempting to ban clubs. The logical extension of this "ban weapons of war" desire is to literally ban sticks. Everything has to be banned in order to have a perfectly "safe" society. But then people will kill each other with their fists. It's the human condition, unfortunately, and attempting to address a meatspace problem with technology bans has never proven to be effective in all of history.
Targeting semi automatic rifles with detachable or "high capacity" (another meaningless term) magazines, isn't a useful thing to do. It doesn't make any difference, won't make any difference, and can't make any difference. They were banned from 1994-2004, and that led to literally almost fifteen years of destruction of that political party and made those banned weapons the most popular weapon that has ever been designed. Again -- it's the human condition.
The reason gun rights advocates are so set against this is that every time there's a "discussion" it's designed to make something we own illegal. We can talk about it all day, but that at the end is always the goal of gun control advocates. They don't want to talk, they want to make us criminals.
I don't think the facts bear that timeline out, but I'm certain we're just talking about different things. From the top of the thread: my concern is about mass casualty shooting events, particularly the kind in which the shooter can stand off first-responder police forces (or, in the most horrible cases, get a clear line of fire on a crowd of people from a fortified position).
I don't think an assault weapons ban is going to do anything about routine gun crime. But it doesn't have to. (I also think "bans" are dumb).
Which timeline? 1994-2004? They banned a bunch of scary looking guns to save the children for ten years. It wasn't successful. That was my entire point with that -- if I got a detail wrong I'm happy to be corrected.
The mass casualty shooting events aren't going to be affected by the technology solution. In Japan just a couple of years ago a guy walked into a home for disabled people with a sword and killed ten or so of them as I recall. Swords are banned in Japan, along with knives and guns.
In the Tokyo subway not too long ago a death cult released a bunch of poison gas and killed a bunch of people. Again, guns, swords, knives are all banned. We're not talking only certain types of guns are banned, Japan doesn't fuck around -- they banned EVERYTHING. Even pocket knives. Didn't stop people who wanted to kill people from killing people.
Columbine -- they messed up their explosives (fortunately!), but that was the plan on how they were going to hold off first responders and kill a bunch more people. Same thing in the Atlanta bombing as I recall. Information is out there, it's not hard. You can buy the ingredients to make common explosives at Walmart. You can kill a lot of people with a Remington 700 if you want to.
Another AWB (or regulation, or talking about it) isn't going to affect crime in any way. If we want to fix the problem in the US, we ought to be looking at what happened to cause people to think that murdering people was ok. Pieces of metal didn't do that, something went wrong in our culture that did that.
BTW sorry this is like a day after the conversation, every time I type more than two replies in a thread I get rate limited and can't post anymore. This site drives me nuts.
I agree that the original FAWB was performative and ineffective.
But it happened that way because interest groups lobbied the original proposals, which were far more coherent, down to an ineffective, face-saving stump. I don't accept the FAWB as a serious reference point in gun policy; it isn't. The right discussion to have is about regulating all detachable-magazine semi-automatic long guns.
I'm not sure where Aum Shinrikyu gets you in a discussion like this, because I'm confident our polity agrees roundly that random people can't possess Sarin.
You can kill a lot of people with all sorts of weapons. But tactical rifles and Sarin gas are examples of weapons that allow ordinary people to kill outsized numbers of victims while standing off first responders that would otherwise be able to cut spree killings short, and those kinds of killings would be the target of a new assault weapon ban.
The point is that you can ban things all day long, and it doesn't actually have any effect on the people who are going to break the law. It affects me, because I strictly follow the laws even though I believe they both violate the Constitution and my natural rights, because a society where laws are ignored is a society that cannot function -- but I digress and that's another discussion.
Someone who is going to commit mass murder isn't going to sit down and think "well, they made my favorite weapon illegal, so I guess I just can't do it anymore". It simply doesn't work that way -- it's not difficult at all to find a way, just like the tokyo death cult and just like the dude who chopped up a nursing home with a samurai sword in a country where possession of both is illegal, and just like people regularly murder each other with knives and baseball bats in the UK.
BTW, I try never to say the names of any of these people who commit mass murder. I really think a HUGE part of why people do this is because they want the attention the media gives mass murderers, and I think their names should be shut out of the history books.
The crime bill was slightly reduced in impact from the overall ban the left wanted, but it banned possession and manufacture of any semiautomatic weapon that had a scary feature and limited magazine capacity to ten rounds as I recall.
There's no data that even suggests it had any effect nor would have the overall ban they wanted. The only people who follow the law are by definition law abiding people. I don't think it's likely that there's some subset of people out there who just accidentally pick up an AR-15 because it happens to be around and go commit mass murder. We're not talking about crimes of passion here, we're talking about sociopaths who are generally above average IQ, quite capable of getting their hands on anything they want to get their hands on, whether it's legal or not. A person willing to murder a school isn't going to be stopped by some minor difficulty in obtaining the exact brand of weapon they want.
Another point - manufacturing fully automatic weapons is a remarkably easy task. There are people who have made a functional AK-47 out of a shovel. The Sten gun plans have been publicly available for 50+ years, and that's one of the simplest weapons there is to build. Banning an AR-15 doesn't make hundreds of years of knowledge in machining vanish. You don't even need a mill to make a Sten, but if you have a mill that costs a couple of thousand dollars you can pretty much make any weapon you want in your garage. Spend a few more dollars and you can just plug a thumb drive into the CNC controller and push a button and have a computer make it for you, very little skill required.
A gun ban would likely be just as effective as the cannabis ban has been. It would put thousands of law abiding citizens in jail for a made up crime, and it would probably accomplish exactly nothing in terms of public safety. And it would be mostly ignored by the citizenry. There are 300+ million black rifles in the hands of the public, how do you propose to take them away?
There's another issue, most of this gun ban talk comes from people who live in cities, and really don't understand why semi automatic rifles exist. If you've never needed to hunt coyotes that were destroying livestock or kill varmints that are digging up your pasture and destroying livestock, or defend your life in a situation where the nearest county sheriff is a hundred miles away and you probably can't even reach him by radio until the end of the day if you're lucky (there are some really nasty people that live on the fringes of society where there's nobody to bother them too much), you can't really appreciate why it pisses us off to hear city folk talking about how they need to take our guns away because they're scary and because criminals exist. There will always be criminals. If you made all guns vanish today, they'd use bombs. If you made all bombs vanish today, they'll just use swords. When you're banning sticks like the UK one has to wonder where the ridiculousness ends. VA is literally trying to ban pieces of metal that look like they could be turned into a gun right now.
You can search "ranch rifle author:tptacek" if you want to get a sense of my patience level with these mic-drop appeals to wooden-stock coyote hunting rifles.
As I've said repeatedly, and you don't seem to be acknowledging: the original gun control proposals were far more ambitious than what they got whittled down to. The original proposal, as I've said, was semi-automatic rifles writ large. Appeals to the performative "crime bill" restrictions are not interesting.
I'm also losing patience with the arguments about "bans". I don't think bans are a good idea either, and I'd appreciate it if you'd stop demanding that I defend them.
that search comes back with nothing. Anyway, if the desire is to ban semiautomatic detachable magazine rifles, that's what is being banned. And most people don't even understand that, the proponents of the last AWB didn't.
>and those kinds of killings would be the target of a new assault weapon ban.
Maybe you slipped there? You're right, the original desire, and the always desire, from the left, is to ban everything. Not even just semi-autos, they want to go to the UK/Japan model where everything is banned. That's the desire. If you want something else, it's going to be step 1 in the incremental ban of everything. That's always how it is. It's an article of faith with the left that guns are bad and only bad people want guns.
We need to ban guns (maybe "some" guns that are scary enough or you or somebody has determined I shouldn't be able to own) for the children because guns kill people. That's the argument you are making, even if you couch it in other terms. If you're not, what argument are you actually making?
It's pretty much banning firearms unless you're rich. The training requirement alone would cost thousands of dollars, the licensing requirement costs 800 bucks a year, and it has an outright ban on magazines.
So, if we apply the same standard to voting or publication...
Specifically, California requires any handgun sold new in California (with exceptions for law enforcement) to be on a "safe handgun roster" maintained by the state. A handgun must meet certain standards to be placed on this roster. That started out with safety testing, like the requirement that a handgun not fire when dropped, but was later expanded to require features like an indicator that there's a bullet in the chamber.
In 2008, the law was amended to require that semi-automatic handguns stamp identifying marks on shell casings in certain ways that researchers later determined to be more or less impossible. This provision of the law, however, was not to go into effect until the Attorney General of California certified that the technology was commercially available. In 2013, Kamala Harris falsely made that certification and no new model handguns have been added to the roster since. As manufacturers improve their designs, older versions have gone out of production. As a result, the roster has shrunk significantly since.
I wouldn't go as far as to say it's a handgun ban. I think Glock, for example, is perfectly happy to continue to manufacture their Gen3 models as long as the California market exists. But it does lead to a situation where the selection for enthusiasts is extremely limited and will become even more so over time.
All new commonly available handguns introduced since 2013 are completely banned from sale in California, including all of the safest and most popular handguns in the country.
A recent bill passed, requiring that for every new gun added to the roster, 3 must be removed.
You can carry an AR-15 for self defense in your truck. The question is do you require the ballistics of an AR-15's .223 round over a 9x19? In many cases yes, if your intent is to neutralise a threat, then the .223 is a vastly superior round to a 9x19. An ar-15 is more accurate than any pistol, so you will have no misses or at least not as many. And you need fewer bullets to achieve your goal.
There is only one major distinction between military weapons and civilian self-defense weapons. For self defense, you have a clear target and you take a few shots. In the military, you provide a base of fire and often don't see what you shoot at. Everything else is commentary.
You shoot where and how you are commanded to, it is not your job to think about the rules of engagement when you are given clear orders to, for instance, fire bursts ar a bunch of rocks someone's hiding behind. The average civilian involved in a shooting bears more responsiblity and is scrutinized much heavier than any policeman and certainly any military personnel.
I have no active military experience but I have been trained in small arms and tactics. There is sufficient video evidence of US troops shooting to suppress an enemy when given an order to do so. I'm not rejecting RoE but I am referencing such scenarios.
Ironic coming from someone who has never carried a weapon.
A Soldier is responsible for every round they fire. Yes, suppressive fire is a thing, and it has nothing to do with what you're talking about.
You don't randomly "suppressive fire" on things you can't identify.
You don't randomly shoot at things someone "orders" you to shoot.
You don't get to say "oh but LT dumbfuck told me to shoot that civilian" when you shoot a non combatant. In fact, by law you MUST refuse that order as it violates the LOAC. Go google that because I know you don't know what it means.
You are responsible for every round you fire. There are plenty of former Soldiers in prison for not believing that.
>you believe that Soldiers on the battlefield run around randomly shooting wherever and whatever they want.
That's ludicrous and exactly what I'm pointing out as strawman. I will not repeat myself. I especially did not mention soldiers are not responsible for their rounds.
No, it's exactly what you said. I didn't make up any straw man, you believe that Soldiers on the battlefield run around randomly shooting wherever and whatever they want.
It simply isn't true. As a Soldier, you are responsible for every round you fire.
The military is pretty good at managing context. Currently no one is really deployed in a traditional combat sense and rules of engagement are very strict and each shot would be evaluated. if The U.S. were to invade Canada or vice versa the rules would obviously change.
I think it's one of those "schrodinger's stats" where if you're using it to convince someone that america has an alarming number of mass shootings it is conveniently valid, but if you're using it to convince someone that rifles may not be the culprit it is conveniently invalid.
We should be able to agree here, at least, that commonly cited counts of Parkland-style mass shootings are overstated, and that the prevalence of tactical rifles in those kinds of mass shootings are not.
Of the 28 mass shootings of 10 or more victims in the last 50 years, 14 of them list the use of a semi automatic rifle or carbine, so while I agree that changes the numbers a bit, I don't think 50% is as conclusive as you're letting on.
This is from wikipedia, so take it with a grain of salt if you'd like.
The percentage goes up if you select more recent shootings (say, since 2000, inconveniently leaving Columbine behind), which makes sense, because semi-automatic rifles have become more prevalent since then. And 20 years is still a plenty long time ago.
The guy posted some statistics on handguns and you asked him not to mislead people. The facts are very clear that shooting 4 dudes in your apartment is considered a mass shooting. Such is the law in this case. People who think mass shootings are sensational breaking-news events like a mad teenager shooting at innocent people, have been led to believe so. It is simply not the case, I'm afraid.
Starting in the 1980s anti-gun groups pivoted from trying to ban handguns to a top-down approach. Start with bans on big scary weapons AKA "assault weapons", which aren't as common, then move on to handgun bans. Ironically, their push to ban "assault weapons" has only made them more popular with the general public.
I’m actually convinced that most ‘anti-gun’ groups don’t care about banning guns so much as making political hay over the general issue. If they were serious, the “solution” to the “assault weapon problem” is a semi-automatic firearms ban. It’s not realistic, but it is the maximalist position (and only effective way to remove guns of that capability from common possession).
It's always a "fallacy" because the fallacy points out that the "next step" is not an inevitable consequence of the step it's arguing against. An assault weapons ban, to follow this example, will not magically manifest a handgun ban by its very existence, and it is entirely plausible that a handgun ban will still face tremendous resistance.
That the "next step" can be someone's eventual goal or desire is irrelevant to the "fallacy" part.
> Not only not every, but in fact “slippery slope” rarely is a fallacy.
Personally, I think a ratchet is a better analogy. While it's theoretically possible to stop at any point, realistically each click is just one partial step towards a complete goal, and it's harder to go back than go forward.
Not really. Texas is about to become a 2A sanctuary, Utah, Iowa, Texas, Tennessee, Florida are close to passing constitutional carry. Kansas wants to expand concealed carry to 18-20 year olds. Gun sales are at record highs, etc etc.
The numbers suggest that a minority of gun owners are buying more and more guns, not that we are seeing more and more gun owners as a percentage — just gun hoarding.
Not according to industry surveys such as data from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) which reported that 40% of new guns sold in 2020 went to first time buyers, a total of 5 million new gun owners.
There's also reason to believe that in an increasingly anti-gun climate, gun owners are lying on traditional gun ownership surveys. On these studies, there's always a significant portion of respondents who refuse to answer the question. I think these are silent gun owners. When democrats like Beto are calling for gun confiscation, would you want to make yourself known as a gun owner?
I realize this is anecdata, but I can confirm that my wife has personally lied on a survey about gun ownership. I've never been part of a survey that asked, but would definitely lie if I was.
Um, that statistic you just quoted says that the majority of new guns sold were to existing gun owners, so it's perfectly consistent with the thesis you are using it to contradict (and that's even before considering how many of those first-time buyers aren't first-time owners, but people raised in gun-owning families making their first independent purchase.)
The long term trend in gun ownership (both individually and by households) has been down for a long time (different data sources have different exact numbers, but the trend is consistent across them.)
The increase over time in guns per capita is the smaller share of gun owning households getting more guns each: more women in those households getting guns, more guns per adult owner, and kids in gun families getting real firearms younger.
It doesn't matter if 40% of new sales went to new gun owners or 4%. If people who were not gun owners are buying guns, then the % of people who owns guns is increased.
>The long term trend in gun ownership (both individually and by households) has been down for a long time (different data sources have different exact numbers, but the trend is consistent across them.)
Or, the number of people willing to admit owning a gun has been on the decline in a gun-hostile climate.
> If people who were not gun owners are buying guns, then the % of people who owns guns is increased.
That's not true. Because people who own guns can stop being gun owners, too, both through giving up gun ownership—volintarily or not—and death. There's always some share of gun purchases that go to new gun owners, but the trend in gun ownership for at least 50 years has been:
1. Smaller number of households with guns.
2. Smaller number of individual adults with guns (though not by as much as #1, as the average number of adult gun owners per gun owning household has gone up.)
3. Larger number of guns per gun owning household.
4. Larger number of guns per gun owner (though not by as much as #3, for pretty similar reasons as the relationship between #2 and #1.)
Gun ownership is becoming a narrower subculture, and within families within that subculture gun ownership is becoming more universal, and to involve more guns per owner. Guns have become the “bling” of a shrinking subculture.
> Gun ownership is becoming a narrower subculture, and within families within that subculture gun ownership is becoming more universal.
Completely false:
‘There are 5 million new gun owners, and many are minorities, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
The group said that its surveys of gun stores found that 58% of the firearm purchases were by black men and women, “the largest increase of any demographic group.”
What’s more, said the group, “women comprised 40% of first-time gun purchasers.”’
Even if there were 5 million net new gun owners (which your source doesn't even begin to indicate), that would be less than +2% of the adult population, which would be within the year-to-year noise in any of the data series on gun ownership. It wouldn't cast even the slightest bit of doubt on the long term trend, which is clear in every long term data series on the issue.
And, of course, 5 million first time gun buyers aren't the same as 5 million new gun owners, much less 5 million net new gun owners, (that is, after accounting for gun owners who died or—voluntarily or not—stopped owning guns; and the died part is more significant than you might think, as gun ownership is significantly lower in the sub-50 age cohorts than the 50-64 and 65+ cohorts; just by naive estimation considering only age, deaths in the 50+ cohort alone would reduce the count of gun owners by something like 1.3 million, and in all age categories by about 1.4 million)
Thar counting new buyers isn't the same as counting net change in gun owners is a serious critique. That people, including gun owners, do in fact die is a major part of that.
I'm quite up front that I wasn't proposing that the calculation was more than a very simplistic estimate of the number that assumes gun owners don't have substantially different mortality risk than other people of the same age, but the number wasn’t the important part of the critique, the fact that the argument about increase in gun owners completely ignores all sources of reduction—deaths, people voluntarily stopping being gun owners, people involuntarily stopping being gun owners was the critique.
Also the fact that even if the 5 million was net new gun owners, it wouldn't actually mean much in the overall trend.
1. The increase in new gun owners is a change of direction.
2. The fact that most of the new gun owners are in previously unrepresented groups shows this. I.e. it can’t be just noise.
3. If you are claiming it is an artifact caused by neglecting deaths or people becoming non-gun owners, you need a real analysis, otherwise you are just introducing unsubstantiated FUD about the methodology. Like I said, and you have essentially agreed - not a serious critique.
4. How do you know that if there are 5 million net new gun owners it is not part of a change in the trend? That is a naked assertion that evaluates to simply ignoring the data that would indicate a change.
I will share the anecdote that I know people who work at shooting ranges, and they say that they have been completely innudated with new shooters.
That simply wouldn’t be the case if it were just an artifact of the numbers.
It’s worth pointing out that if there is any correctness to the idea that the mass of gun owners trends older and so are dying and the trend is towards new gun owners trending younger, then the upward trend would be stronger than the numbers show and would be masked rather than negated.
No, because the data can’t address how many gun owners gave up their guns (willingly or not) in the time period. Or how many gun owners died for that matter.
If first-time buyers made up 40% of sales, a net increase in gun ownership is likely. If it’s much lower, maybe not.
Im just saying that they are automatically being included as pro gun whereas the measurement should be individual gun ownership. Not the household stat which is obviously used to make it look more impressive.
And remember it's not binary, a lot of people are indifferent and many want more gun restrictions and some want less
Back to my original point is the average american does not own a gun
Not really - if people own guns for home defense, then it’s reasonable not to buy one for each person in a household, and yet those people are still part of a gun owning group that happens not to need one each.
I presume each family member in such a household doesn’t each own their own vacuum cleaner or stove, either.
It’s not reasonable to count all these people as ‘gun owners’ in their own right, but it’s also not reasonable to pretend it’s binary.
That is true, less than a third. That is a pretty large minority as minorities go. And almost half 48% live in a house with a firearm. 72% have fired one. It isn't an unusual aspect of life in the US by any definition.
Like every other state, there is a stark divide in the culture and politics of the major metropolitan areas and everywhere else. San Francisco vs parts of rural Northern California are an even starker example of that than what you would see between Austin or San Antonio and rural Texas.
As a non-American, I feel that, from whatever I've read, the NRA is finding itself increasingly diminished due to poor leadership that was/is lining its pockets and being a poor steward of their core objectives.
> Restricting access to guns is popular in this country.
This is a very misleading statement.
The only thing that is popular is keeping guns out of the hands of criminals - which has support across the board.
That translates into general support for background checks.
Almost no specific proposals other than improving background checks have broad support, and support goes down as more detail is provided.
It is not true to say that there is some kind of general support for restricting gun ownership amongst anyone other than already convicted criminals (who don’t generally buy guns from stores anyway).
Restricting gun access is less and less popular, and gun ownership is rising rapidly across demographics that were traditionally opposed to gun ownership - e.g. women and black women in particular.
The NRA is simply a corrupt organization, and even within the pro-gun community has been under criticism for years.
It occurs to me that restricting access to guns is popular in a lot of countries. In a bigger perspective, I'm not sure that the US is unusual in this regard.
The advances in gun control have almost exclusively been through highly-funded ballot measures. Ballot measure outcomes can generally be predicted when one side has an outsized ad campaign. Look at the funding disparity where gun control measures have passed. And this doesn’t apply solely to gun control but really any target. Buying any legislative change through the ballot measure process works pretty well.
> Restricting access to guns is popular in this country.
I think this is a problem with or feature of our democracy. If eighty percent of the voters want gun control but only half of them show up (forty percent) and vote for one of four different candidates but twenty percent of the population makes it their single issue and votes reliably for the same candidate, the candidate wins in first past the post.
Be suspicious when you’re told 80% of the country agrees on any policy position. 80% of the people also probably want society to have less offensive speech, but does that translate to 80% of the people wanting to abridge freedom of speech (particularly theirs)? Probably not. Effective policy, especially when abridging rights, is a very nuanced discussion that most people don’t have the patience or interest to discuss, but everyone has sentiment. “If wishes were fishes, nobody would go hungry.”
Similarly, you'll see crazy high numbers in support of things like universal background checks, but as soon as you ask questions like "Do you believe a background check should be required to loan your roommate your gun to take to the range/loan your nextdoor neighbor a gun when her ex finds out where she lives/etc." the percentages plummet.
This is a common rhetorical technique in politics.
There are a lot of policies that sound good at first glance but are basically useless or harmful on closer inspection.
For example, there are two categories that dominate firearms deaths in the US. The first is gang violence; in this case background checks would have no real effect because gangs have the means to acquire firearms outside of legal channels. The second is suicides; in this case background checks do very little because the purchaser would generally pass the background check.
So you have a policy that sounds good, but doesn't make a real dent in the problem and costs a lot in fees and inconvenience on innocent people.
But it polls well so it's a rhetorically effective attack, because the opponents who have actually done the cost benefit analysis have to register their opposition to a "popular" proposal.
> "For example, the large majority of firearms deaths fall into one of two categories. The first is gang violence..."
that's incorrect. accidental shootings and suicide are major categories, while intentional homicides, of which "gang violence" is a subset, is pretty low on the list.
> that's incorrect. accidental shootings and suicide are major categories, while intentional homicides, of which "gang violence" is a subset, is pretty low on the list.
So you're saying that it is correct, because the combination of the two categories constitute the large majority of firearms deaths.
Suicides by themselves are the large majority of firearms deaths, granted. And accidental deaths would generally fall under the same "the purchaser would have passed the background check" issue.
The point was that people would expect the policy to make a difference in homicides. But the large category of homicides where background checks would be expected to be useful, i.e. career criminals, are the place where they don't happen, because career criminals are members of criminal organizations that can provide access outside of legal channels.
to clarify, yes, you're right that background checks are largely useless at reducing firearm deaths, but no, intentional homicides are not a major category of firearm death, and to worry about "career criminals" is a non-sequitur.
your (as in anyone's) chances of successfully defending your property and friends/family from a "career criminal" using a gun is basically zero, both because it's exceedingly rare to encounter such situations and because it's even rarer to have the necessary skill (i.e., intense training and practice) and the necessary presence of mind to mount such a successful defense, so that doesn't matter to the argument at all. it's generally a bugaboo brought up to generate irrational fear.
edit: i should add that while reducing homicides is often used as a justification for background checks, it's a poor policy because it doesn't achieve that aim, as you point out. to have much impact, we need to focus on accidental shootings and suicides principally.
I'm pretty sure that gun suicides outnumber gun homicides by ~2:1, and gun homicides outnumber accidents by ~30:1. Estimates for accidents are in the 500/year range, while homicides are closer to 15,000/year.
my apologies, i was confusing/misremembering mass shooting deaths, which are tiny, with gang/homicide gun deaths. indeed, refreshing myself on the stats indicates that homicides are about 1/3 of (american) gun deaths and suicides are ~2/3, while unintentional deaths are estimated at 1-7% (depending on year).
with that said, most people who own guns are still very unlikely to encounter gang violence (because most people with guns are not in a gang), and even less likely to defend themselves successfully with a gun when encountering gun violence of any sort. guns escalate injury and death rather than having a preventative effect. we really should stop glorifying guns as a culture (particularly for self-defense) and soberly understand them as the specialized and limited tools that they are.
Most people (gun owners or not) are unlikely to encounter gang-related violence, that’s true. Another side of that stat is that most criminal violence using guns is confined to a chronically small percentage of zip codes, many (most?) of which already fall under some of the strictest gun regulation in the country.
The fact is, 95-8% of this country is a really, really safe place to live statistically. You’re as likely to be in a mass shooting as you are to get struck by lightening. You are far, far more likely to die from a drunk driver. With that said, I can point to more than a few mass shooting incidents where a law abiding gun owner put a stop to it. You are unlikely to be in such an event, and you are even less likely to be the guy that stands up to it, but it happens and it has saved the day for many people.
So people are unlikely to defend themselves with a gun like people are unlikely to put out a fire with a fire extinguisher. Doesn’t negate their value. Given a choice, I’d rather have a means to protect myself against stronger and/or more numerous assailants, especially if at risk. Guns are a force leveler. Without them, it’s simply bigger person (often a man) wins. You might be surprised how frequent defensive gun use actually is. There is a bit of data emerging on this, but it’s damn difficult to tally the way dead bodies are counted (often there are no bodies, often nothing gets reported. DGU does not necessitate somebody getting shot).
Agree that we need to stop glorifying violence (not just guns). I’d be rich if I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard some actor spout off about “gun violence” and then go make money on a film in which he heroically breaks all kinds of laws running around with guns blazing. We also need to stop sensationalizing it when it does happen. I saw some stat that over half of people surveyed in US were worried they’d be in a mass shooting. I chalk that up to a news industry focused on keeping us all afraid of something, all the time.
What constitutes gun safety in my book is education. It’s no different than the logic behind sex ed, and what I see the gun control groups advocating is abstinence. In a country whose origin story revolves around guns, whose resistance in the Jim Crow South frequently depended upon guns, it’s understandable that guns are part of our culture. If people are as likely to encounter guns as they are in this country, knowing how to use them safely seems a better approach than political groups preaching fear and movies being the only source of (bad) information.
yes, the risks here are tricky to think about, which is why conversations like this are more fruitful than partisan or ideologically-driven ones.
while guns are force levers, they're not really 'levelers', as differences of skill and perception still abound, to more serious consequence. what they definitely are, are risk multipliers. it's unclear that they are effective deterrents (that is, reduces the overall risk of a situation) in the various cases commonly believed, because those situations are rare (how rare is debatable), and, as you point out, the research is difficult (hard to prove a negative).
also, force escalation as represented by (offensive or defensive) gun proliferation is generally anti-social. hypocritical hollywood (and other media) certainly add fuel to that fire needlessly. whereas guns for hunting, farming, sport (which in many cases is basically advanced training), and even anti-oppression (from tyrannical government) are not generally anti-social. as such, i generally support the latter but not the former.
Gun stores cannot keep inventory on their shelves. In 2020 America gained five million new gun owners. Restrictions have done nothing to curb demand. History tells us gun demand is proportional to threats of new restrictions...so oddly enough if you wanted to reduce demand, you would be better off reducing restrictions
Over 4.3 million guns were sold in January 2021. We are on track for another record year. Hard to tell how many were from people exempt from background checks, likely a few hundred thousand more.
The NRA's financial disclosures and their public statements indicate they are not experiencing financial difficulties. Their stated purpose in filing bankruptcy is to dissolve the New York corporation and reincorporate in Texas to escape an ideologically hostile regulatory environment. It sounds insane to use bankruptcy in this way. Every bankruptcy expert I've read looking at this thinks the approach is nuts and will fail.
> Their stated purpose in filing bankruptcy is to dissolve the New York corporation and reincorporate in Texas to escape an ideologically hostile regulatory environment. It sounds insane to use bankruptcy in this way.
By "hostile regulatory environment" it is meant that they allegedly committed fraud against their donors and the (Democratic) attorney general is going after them for the breaking law:
The hostile regulatory environment is far more than the NY AG going after them for fraud.
In this most recent investigation, the remedy sought is politically motivated. If the AG were interested in protecting and vindicating the wronged donors, a more apt remedy would be to disgorge the ill-gotten gains and remove those responsible from the organization. Instead, the AG is trying to destroy the organization, which probably isn't what the people who donated to the NRA want.
And folks have tried to fix it up: Oliver North (of all people) went after LaPierre to route out corruption and lost. The NY AG is arguing that at this point it is irredeemable and should be nuked from orbit.
The Biden admin just reversed course[0] on the Fair Access provision in federal banking regs, so now banks are free to deplatform organizations which go against the party line. You thought social media deplatforming was bad..
Probably. The NRA's power has always been voters not money. They have a large number of voters who listen. When they spend $.50 on a stamp that money is more likely to result in a vote than anyone else spending $10,000 for a TV commercial. When the NRA speaks their members listen.
As far as preserving civil liberties in America, I much preferred GOA over the NRA. While the NRA traditionally has been a great organization in preserving the heritage of marksmanship in America, somewhere in the late 90s or early 2000s the wheels came off. I don't think the CEO of such an organization should be making $800k/year.
GOA and SAF have gotten much more of my money and time for the last few years. I still think there is a large gap to fill if the NRA were to go away. Mostly around outreach, training, and insurance. The other guys are getting there, but the NRA is big for a reason.
Yes, many people forget that the NRA is more than politics. It helps range startup and operations, runs a training/safety/certification curriculum, facilitates sports/competition events, standards, and materials. These are dimensions that GOA and SAF have nothing to do with.
The foundational role it has in gun culture probably makes it a juicier target than their lobbying, considering they are consistently outspent by the gun control lobby in state ballot measures each year.
I can envision an NRA where paying the CEO $800k/year is warranted. But this NRA isn't it. This NRA has tied its fortunes to the Trumpist GOP and promoting tired culture war narratives, seriously harming their political influence and their ability to advance gun policy favored by gun owners.
Once again on hackernews the bastion of online discourse and rational debate, merely mentioning Trump gets you downvoted without any counterargument regardless of argument. If you support him at least make a case
Wouldn’t this be the logical result of the demonisation of guns by the left? I understand they can’t pretend to be bipartisan when one of the parties want to strip them of their rights.
No, it's pretty clearly counterproductive. Over the past 10 years, the NRA has successfully reduced the share of gun-friendly Democratic Party members from 25% to nearly 0%. (https://www.thetrace.org/2020/09/nra-grades-2020-election/) Gun-friendly people on the left like myself are basically unable to talk about the issue nowadays; forget concealed carry or large-capacity magazines, in a lot of circles I'm not comfortable discussing even absolute basic things like "you might want a gun for home protection if you live in a high crime area".
Making your cause a parochial concern of a single political party is almost always going to be good for that party and bad for your cause.
> the NRA has successfully reduced the share of gun-friendly Democratic Party members from 25% to nearly 0%
While your trend is correct, I think you're mixing up cause and effect as evidenced by your later statement:
> in a lot of circles I'm not comfortable discussing even absolute basic things like "you might want a gun for home protection if you live in a high crime area"
That more closely describes those circles' perceptions and positions than anything else. A positive rating from the NRA for a Democrat seems like a bigger risk for the Democrat than the NRA and probably correlates with them being primary'd.
I'm not familiar with any cases of a Democratic candidate getting primaried for being too gun-friendly. Obviously it's hard to prove the direction of causation here, but it's my strong subjective sense that it's just become politically toxic to talk about guns positively when the biggest gun rights organization is leaning so hard into culture war nonsense.
So you're saying that the reason there are no pro-gun democrats anymore is not because democrats are very anti-gun, it's because a pro-gun democrat would be associated with the NRA which is "leaning so hard into culture war nonsense"? So basically its republican's fault that there are no pro-gun democrats?
Is it also republican's fault that there seem to be no democrats opposed to putting transgender women into women's sports?
Is it also republican's fault that repeating the n-word in the context of trying to have a discussion with a student about its meaning will get you fired?
Or maybe the better explanation for all this is that democrats have moved substantially to the left?
It's not the fault of Republicans. They're a big political party with positions on a lot of issues. It's the NRA's fault for allowing all these random controversies you're describing to get tied into the gun rights debate.
For a more concrete example, concealed carry has been a large and unambiguous gun rights success story, with shall-issue going from pretty rare in the 80s to near-universal today. What I'd expect an effective gun rights organization to produce is a roadmap for how to convince the holdouts. Illinois passed their shall-issue law with 76% in favor, and Washington has had it for decades; what lessons does this teach us about how to get left-leaning people on board? If a group of California residents wants to convince their sheriff to issue more permits or their assemblyperson to support statewide shall-issue, what should they say? I'd really like to see answers to these questions (please do send me links if you have any!), but as far as I can tell the NRA is wholly uninterested in thinking about them.
> in a lot of circles I'm not comfortable discussing even absolute basic things like "you might want a gun for home protection if you live in a high crime area"
Why not? What will be the consequences for you to state such an "absolute basic thing"?
It would be seen as a strong, disruptive political statement. Some people in my generation have legitimately never heard a pro-gun message other than the weird trolling the NRA prefers on their social media accounts, so when I say "you can take steps to feel safe when there's a burglar in your neighborhood" they hear this guy with his flamethrower: https://fb.watch/3wkI4gq4WM/
It's not really "the left", as most actual leftists I know also own guns. The problem is that the NRA basically took the side of school shooters, so now being a gun owner in liberal-left circles puts you on the side of the people who support school shootings.
Well, the party platform of the DNC is solidly anti-gun. The DNC is not the left, but I’m not sure the left is the the left either. ;)
It would suffice to say though that if you assume a democrat politician supports gun control either by personal conviction or the nature of caucusing, you would be right 95+% of the time. It is as much of a shame that a democrat majority is de facto hostile to gun rights as it is that the NRA hitched its wagon to unrelated culture issues.
A major reason why that shift happened was because if there was a pro-gun Democrat and a pro-gun Republican facing off against each other in a tight race, the NRA would back the pro-gun Republican and claim that the Democrat was going to take your guns away. The net result is that it is always a losing position for a Democrat to be pro-gun.
So over the past 20 years the pro-gun Democrats have almost entirely died off. The NRA is probably the single most significant driver of this shift.
There used to be pro-gun Democrats the NRA would give “A” ratings to, that’s true. But your reasoning about the demise of pro-gun Democrat politicians doesn’t make much sense. First, all else being equal, of course the interest of gun rights would side with the politician whose party is less hostile to gun rights. Again, all else being equal. Not sure how far you want to go back but as long as I’ve been alive the major federal gun control agendas have always been initiated by one party in particular. It may be fine to give an “A” rating to Democrat Dan’s record in support of gun rights, but if his election turns control of a legislature to a party openly hostile to the 2nd Amendment, Democrat Dan’s election on the balance isn’t going to be good, is it? To be honest, the NRA rarely goes beyond issuing their report card on a candidate’s voting record and public statements. I don’t recall seeing them “endorse” a politician where their opposition has a strong pro-gun record, though ai wouldn’t be surprised if it did happen if the election was high-profile enough. I’ve just never seen it happen.
As to why there aren’t outspoken pro-gun democrats, I hardly think you can blame the NRA for that. The NRA just doesn’t matter all that much, bogey man reputation aside. Realistically, how much of a chance does a Dem candidate have in a primary, all else being equal, if they are an outspoken advocate of gun rights? It impacts their funding, their volunteer support. The reality is that the DNC’s official platform is anti-gun, and a politician who doesn’t support a party’s platform (on either side of the aisle) is increasingly rare these days. It has more to do with the lack of opportunity for nuanced political positions.
Because it wasn't like this until the NRA ramped up their identification with the right. Again, as recently as 2010 there was a large minority of openly pro-gun people on the left.
To back that up, I know a great many left-leaning gun owners in LA that would never join the NRA as a matter of principle (due to its extreme positions), including members of law enforcement, retired military personnel, and regular joes who just like guns and things that go boom.
It’s a shame really. They don’t represent the gun owner as much as the manufacturers today. They were once a reputable civil rights org and now are more of a lobby.
I hope a new civil rights organization begins to lead and is able not be as fundamentalist as the NRA has become and lead the conversation towards a few common sense reforms.
It’s an important civil right and one we should cherish. It deserves a group committed to defending the bill of rights while also working to limit access to criminals.
Yes, "gun rights" has unfortunately become as extremist as politics.
Gun owners are not allowed to even entertain tougher gun laws whether they be red flag laws, requiring you own a safe, restrictions on magazine size, etc.
In fact the push from gun rights advocates is to move in the opposite direction: to allow reciprocal concealed carry in every state, reversing the National Firearms Act that restricts ownership of fully automatic weapons, legalizing silencers, etc.
Poor Dick Metcalf, editor of Guns and Ammo — was shown the door when an editorial of his after Newtown suggested that maybe gun laws were too lax.
> He has stated that "way too many gun owners still seem to believe that any regulation of the right to keep and bear arms is an infringement" and that "all constitutional rights are regulated, always have been, and need to be". In terms of specific policies, he supports the requirement of adults getting a concealed carry license to take gun safety and handling classes.
Pro-2A folks push back against further restrictions because the restrictions are already numerous and do not achieve their stated aim.
Limiting magazine sizes is really annoying for people who comply with the law - it has no affect on those breaking it. Extending and manufacturing many common magazines is trivial.
Red flag laws are used before a crime is committed to limit a right. There is no defense to them since you can't defend a non-crime and it is impossible to reclaim your property. They are ripe for abuse by anyone upset at you.
There is already a safe storage requirement AND a mandate that locks be issued with a firearm. What is not required is that someone spend $400 or more for a 200lb box that may not be practical to install in an apartment - a requirement which would most heavily impact poor and minority firearm owners.
I have debated many folks who support gun control - they believe people do not have a right to bear arms, often do not understand firearms or the current firearm laws, and are afraid of firearms.
One only needs to look at California to see that even the most insane gun control has no affect except to limit a constitutional right to those who can afford lawyers and insane requirements.
If you think voter ID is a naked attempt at jim crow, you have no right demanding licensing requirements for firearms.
> One only needs to look at California to see that even the most insane gun control has no affect except to limit a constitutional right to those who can afford lawyers and insane requirements.
Except those laws are there on the books next to states with laws that are basically non-existent for gun control. so it's trivial to go there and get a non-complying gun.
regardless of your stance on guns that's not a good argument.
> it's trivial to go there and get a non-complying gun.
Completely false. It’s illegal for an out of state dealer to sell you a gun (or for any dealer to sell you a gun without a background check), and it’s illegal for you to bring a gun back into California unless you lived outside the state, or it was a gift from a parent or child.
If you are willing to buy guns illegally, you can do so more easily within California than by going out of state to do so.
With some exceptions not relevant here (e.g. people holding Federal Firearms Licenses), it is unlawful to buy a handgun in a state where one is not a resident. No gun store will sell or transfer a handgun to a non-resident. And if the state in question allows face to face private transactions, federal law requires the seller determine if the buyer is a resident of the state.
The last part isn't accurate. There is no law that requires this from non-licensees.
As a practical matter, I won't sell to someone I can't verify is a legal resident of my state and has a CCW permit, that way I know they're not a prohibited person -- but there's no law that requires me to do so.
Your correction is incorrect for at least some states. Texas requires a good faith belief (but not evidence per se) that the transferee is a legal resident of Texas (and they recommend but don't require asking for some kind of ID).
It sounds like you said what I said... Except that the discussion was specifically about federal law, there are various states that have additional laws.
>it's trivial to go there and get a non-complying gun.
Is it? I haven't tried buying a gun in another state because that's illegal, but I'm assuming it would take some effort.
And honestly, what's the point? For the most part, the things that California bans aren't guns themselves. The bans are focused on how you put the pieces together, as well as what plastic doodads you attach to the gun. It would take about 3 minutes and a screwdriver to turn my two California-legal rifles into two felonies. No need to drive to Arizona and find a gun seller who is willing to break the law by selling to someone from out of state.
>Gun owners are not allowed to even entertain tougher gun laws whether they be red flag laws, requiring you own a safe, restrictions on magazine size, etc.
Why would people who's seen their rights restricted in piecemeal fashion over the last century be willing to compromise? Seems perfectly logical for them to draw a line in the sand and not give an inch.
I think because a plurality, or nearly, favors stricter gun laws. I believe it’s very likely this plurality will grow and the risk gun owners face is they won’t be the ones leading the discussion, or even have a seat at the table.
This is an opportunity to lead and propose effective solutions that don’t infringe. Otherwise the plurality could grow and just do it on their terms. Or get large enough to revoke 2a (which wound be awful imo) and use military force to confiscate firearms and lock offenders in prison.
> reversing the National Firearms Act that restricts ownership of fully automatic weapons, legalizing silencers, etc.
That's wrong. IIRC, the NFA only requires that machine guns and silencers be registered and taxed. See this Forgotten Weapons episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po715YGEzTY. It's for a fully automatic M-16 with a device that makes it sound like an AK-47 that's regulated as a silencer. It was up for auction, but the winner would have to pay double the tax because it's a "two stamp" gun.
Well, I suppose that's technically correct (e.g. restricts ownership to people who can pay the $200 tax and fill out some forms), but I wouldn't describe that as a meaningful "restrict[ion on] ownership," which I think would be things like bans or hard-to-get licensing requirements.
With the Hughes amendment closing the machinegun registry, it effectively restricts machinegun ownership to those who can afford to pay $5,000 for a low quality item and $20,000 or more for something for something decent.
The NFA is an outdated, obsolete and unconstitutional.
You need a $200 tax stamp with a 9+ month waiting period to buy a short barrel rifle, but not for a .556 AR or AK "Pistol", even though they are almost identical.
You can't put a vertical forward grip on your AR "Pistol" because then it would become an illegal AOW (any other weapon). But if you put a bipod or some other substitute on it, then it's still a handgun.
You need a $200 stamp with a 9+ month waiting period to buy a suppressor, even though in other countries with supposedly stricter gun laws, suppressors are over the counter items.
You can't modify your gun to shoot full-auto, but you can put a binary trigger on it, which fires 1 shot when you pull the trigger, and another when you release it.
There’s plenty of room to criticize the NRA, but this doesn’t seem on point. The industry lobby is the NSSF. The NRA does far more than politics that is of practical benefit to range operators (insurance, startup and ops guidance), individual gun owners (training, safety, local organization), and sports (event facilitation, sponsorship, material support, rule-making). Many people outside the gun world don’t see that at all, but it’s what makes the destruction of the NRA all the more important to the gun control lobby.
I agree the NRA needs to “be better”, but let’s not forget that much of the gun community are enthusiasts, in that they are fans of the manufacturers the same way a comic book fan supports Marvel and DC. They want more product, they enjoy ads, they enjoy events. They are hardly victims of the manufacturers any more than a motorcycle enthusiast is a victim of Ducati.
Gun manufacturers are represented by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), a separate lobbying organization that, while mostly ignored due to the media's fascination with painting the NRA as the root of the world's evils, is in fact well funded and a presence on the hill.
Once paranoia-based gun sales became a pervasive and profitable, it was my impression that manufacturers and their funding took over the NRA. Although causality may be reversed there.
I would also be curious to see if the left's accusations of foreign funding / interference had any truth.
The NRA receives relatively little funding from gun manufacturers, and most of what it does receive from gun manufacturers is in the form of advertisments in the NRA's official publications, etc. The vast majority of the NRA's funding is from individual members.
The gun industry has its own well-funded lobby, the NSSF. They don't really need the NRA.
Unless the NRA is straight-up lying on their IRS paperwork, they get a fairly small amount of money from manufacturers. The majority comes from individual donations and membership dues
As one of those who believe that self defense is an inalienable human right, I left the NRA years ago along with many in the gun community. They're a laughing stock among the younger crowd (Negotiating Rights Away is a common epithet). They are seen as much more focused on fundraising and slush funds for executives, while being far too open to yet more compromise with too few successes. Meanwhile other organizations seem to be getting things done even if progress is slow.
All my "gun advocacy" money goes to:
- Gun Owners of America
- Second Amendment Foundation
- Firearms Policy Coalition
- Texas State Rifle Association (technically an NRA affiliate, but most infringements are state level and there are a number of important measures this legislative session in Texas).
I don't disagree with you, but let me offer an alternate viewpoint on the broader picture.
The NRA has become, for better or worse, the media's lightning rod for the media on gun rights. Could the SAF accomplish what they have the last 15-20 years if they had to be the media's lightning rod instead?
I have had some thoughts that even though the NRA is no longer the organization I want, it's name-awareness serves a purpose. I hadn't thought of it serving another purpose by "drawing the fire" so to speak.
It will be interesting to see how things shake out as the NRA falls by the wayside. Unfortunately it's hard to remove the threat to the things I value from the situation, so I can't look at it passively.
“We have a technical term for this. It’s called Open Kimono.” That’s such a weird thing to be a technical term. Is there some history to this phrase? Technical terms in my field tend to be more technical in nature and less focused on one’s schlong.
I had also understood it as a feudal Japanese term referring to revealing you have no blades hidden underneath. A reveal that must happen before a civil conversation can begin. Also I don’t think people are naked beneath their kimonos.
Not to defend the term itself, but like with many items of culturally historic clothing that have since become fetishized, people normally wore practical underclothes underneath kimonos. That way, you don't have to change or wash your bulky, elaborate outerwear so often, just the layers that touch your skin. It's also more comfortable and easier to customize the inner layers to suit your particular body.
People say that all of the time in Investment Banking and I cringe on every instance... Always such an uncomfortable mental image. Why not say "lay down the cards" or something like that?
I think its more management bullshit speak than actual technical term.
Apparently it comes from feudal Japan when people would open their kimonos to should there were no weapons hidden there (may be BS). I guess it like shaking hands in that sense.
Not sure I believe the thesis of this article: in a bankruptcy the creditors get to delve into financial details. Okay, but how does this play into the hands of the NRA's opponents? They are the last people likely to be creditors of the NRA. Not seeing the mechanism here.
Their opponents aren’t claiming to be creditors or trying to get money. They’re trying to show their claims of corruption were right.
Opponents claim NRA is getting money from nefarious places and spending them on sketchy things. With bankruptcy, their books will be wide open to the public and their opponents can be proven right.
I was also unclear reading the article as to who the creditors were, because it seemed to me that this 'committee of creditors' which has been setup would be the ones to probe the affairs of the NRA, not just the Attorney General from NY and any other opponents.
I mean, if the Attorney General is a creditor then fine, we will surely see some difficult questions asked.. but if the creditors are supporters of the NRA and don't want to ask any difficult questions then surely .. you see the problem
There are severe disgruntled people who formally supported the NRA but now feel like they were deceived. One notable donor who gave millions is suing and I think a few others are as well. Search for articles and you’ll find plenty of upset former supporters.
The article is something of a nothing sandwich imho. No new news, no deep analysis.
I'm still unclear how the bankruptcy is meant to dispel fraud charges. Or how they can close in New York and reopen in Texas (or anywhere else under US law) and escape their liabilities.
It would be very entertaining if someone bought the rights to the name and ran the NRA as a campaign group for safety and education...
They're facing charges as an organization at the state level for laws that don't exist in Texas. The organization in New York will cease to exist and New York will have no jurisdiction over a Texan organization.
Did you like it when the SCOTUS threw out the claim Texas made against Pennsylvania's election laws because the claim had "no standing"? That will be the same situation if New York tries to sue the Texas organization
Also the NRA _is_ a safety and education organization in addition to a lobbyist organization. As a child I learned gun safety from Eddie the Eagle. I still remember the song
"If you find a gun, stop! Don't touch! Find an adult!"
The NRA's biggest failings in late years have been capitulating to anti-gunners (they supported no fly no buy! which of course was a policy supported by both Clinton and Trump and is designed to disarm minorities) and generally siding with the GOP instead of staying on the side of gun owners' rights, which is why I give money to Gun Owners of America instead.
But I'm a crazy person. I think marksmanship and gun safety should be taught in high schools.
>They're facing charges as an organization at the state level for laws that don't exist in Texas. The organization in New York will cease to exist and New York will have no jurisdiction over a Texan organization.
> Did you like it when the SCOTUS threw out the claim Texas made against Pennsylvania's election laws because the claim had "no standing"? That will be the same situation if New York tries to sue the Texas organization
IANAL, but that doesn't sound accurate. I don't believe court ordered fines are dischargeable in a reorg. If the NY NRA ceases to exist, and is legit dead, they'll need to start from scratch. Doesn't sound like that's their intent.
You can't just walk away from fraud charges by switching states. Phrasing your statement as "did you like it when..." is aggressive and political. It's also wrong. For the analogy to work, new york would have to be suing the NRA for things they did in texas after leaving new york. They're suing them for things they already did in new york, and then fled to another state.
Gun safety is a good thing, and maybe the NRA used to be more principled. These days it seems awfully corrupt. Even if you're pro gun-rights, the NRA just seems like a bad way to accomplish that. I'd call it a money grab by some sleazy execs personally.
> Did you like it when the SCOTUS threw out the claim Texas made against Pennsylvania's election laws because the claim had "no standing"? That will be the same situation if New York tries to sue the Texas organization
That's not how standing works. Texas v Pennsylvania was thrown out because Texas was challenging Pennsylvania's state laws on grounds of violating the federal constitution by violating the state constitution, and if that sounds like a squirrelly claim that has no legal basis, it's because it is.
NY suing the NRA is completely different. For starters, the NRA doesn't have any sovereign immunity you can work around. So what matters instead is whether or not a court can find personal jurisdiction over the NRA. NY's jurisdiction over the issues they're being investigated for is already established, I believe, and given that the events have already happened, moving won't change that. Instead, this is basically an attempt to evade the law by disestablishing and reestablishing itself and saying "well, you're challenging NY NRA, but we're TX NRA and that's completely different," which isn't likely to go over very well.
As a general rule of thumb, if you could plausibly describe your legal strategy with a clickbait headline like "One Weird Trick to Evade Legal Responsibility," then the courts are unlikely to actually agree with you.
The reason it's not that simple is that the organization in New York has assets - trademarks, offices, etc. - that they'd like to keep when they reincorporate in Texas. They almost certainly can't erase New York's claim on the assets of a New York organization by just setting up shop in another state.
Wouldn’t the NRAs biggest recent failings need to include the fraud and personal enrichment of their execs? Regardless of what you think about 2A, the NRA is a corrupt org.
I disagree with your assessment of the NRA. They appear to me to be first and foremost acting on the behalf of gun manufacturers and the most extreme firearms owners. If they were truly interested in standing up for responsible firearms owners they would have made a public statement about the murder of Philando Castile yet they've remained completely silent. I own firearms and enjoy hunting but the NRA is not a positive force in the US.
Thanks for this comment. I'm not a gun owner (I'm actually a limey brit) am I'm never sure how much the NRA are "crazy gun nuts" and how much they're just demonised as such.
Gun owner in the US. I think GP is engaging in demonization by saying first and foremost, the NRA is acting on behalf of gun manufacturers and the most extreme gun owners. 1) The NRA is a membership organization that appears to primarily be funded by the dues and donations of their millions of members. They promote gun ownership not to enrich manufacturers, but because thats what their members want. 2) The "most extreme gun owners" frequently deride the NRA as "Negotiating Rights Away" and encourage people to instead donate to other organizations like Gun Owners of America or the Firearms Policy Coalition. I don't believe the the NRA's positions on gun policy are significantly more radical than their members or most gun owners, generally.
That isn't to say no criticism of the NRA is warranted. The accusations from the NYS AG that the organization has unfairly enriched its executives and their families seem spot on, even if the proposed remedy (dissolution) is unwarranted. And as a gun owner, I've been dismayed to see the NRA lean into guns as a partisan issue. I wish they'd stay out of politics if it was unrelated to guns. In what world should they be honoring FCC Chairman Ajit Pai?
> That isn't to say no criticism of the NRA is warranted. The accusations from the NYS AG that the organization has unfairly enriched its executives and their families seem spot on, even if the proposed remedy (dissolution) is unwarranted. And as a gun owner, I've been dismayed to see the NRA lean into guns as a partisan issue. I wish they'd stay out of politics if it was unrelated to guns. In what world should they be honoring FCC Chairman Ajit Pai?
From my read of the situation, this is exactly right. It sounds like the NRA leadership is corrupt and should be removed, but the attempt to dissolve the organization really seems like abusing the legal system to achieve a partisan aim. If anyone has been harmed by the NRA leadership, it's its members and donors, and I don't see how dissolution helps them.
Also, partisanship just seems totally damaging and unstrategic to any single-issue group: once the party you tied your fortune to goes out of power, there goes all your clout. It sounds like the unions made the same mistake: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/06/opinion/labor-unions-repu....
Which NRA are you referring to? The "NRA", or the NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund, or the NRA Foundation, or the NRA Special Contribution Fund, or the NRA Freedom Action Foundation, or the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, or the NRA Political Victory Fund?
Which one(s) is for education and which one(s) is for giving donations to politicians to make sure gun sales keep flowing?
See also:
> From 2005 through 2011, the NRA received at least $14.8 million from more than 50 firearms-related firms.[228] An April 2011 Violence Policy Center presentation stated that the NRA had received between $14.7 million and $38.9 million from the firearms industry since 2005.[230] In 2008, Beretta exceeded $2 million in donations to the NRA, and in 2012 Smith & Wesson gave more than $1 million. Sturm, Ruger & Company raised $1.25 million through a program in which it donated $1 to the NRA-ILA for each gun it sold from May 2011 to May 2012.
Nothing wrong with manufacturers (firearm or otherwise) lobbying in their own interest, but the "NRA" seems to be mixing and matching things at various levels.
I agree and wanted to add that they also scare and radicalize good people. I have friends and family in rural areas who think a mob of BLM and Antifa are going to show up and destroy a strip mall based on apocalyptic NRA propaganda.
I personally like guns but would prefer this organization didn’t exist at all.
I honestly don't mind gun ownership and I agree about teaching it in high school. I think it should be harder to get a gun (you should need some training and safe storage etc).
Afaik, the modern NRA opposes all gun control laws basically on principle. They are also deeply in bed with the GOP. That's not appropriate or helpful as it politicises gun laws and gun owners. So I won't pretend I wouldn't like to see the organisation fall.
If the org decides to fold, it will have to surrender all its assets. So it either has no net worth or I don't see how they can just "run off" to Texas. Maybe they don't have any assets?
I think the issue is, if you can pursue the org for fraud, you can almost certainly pursue the officers for fraud. So how long until NY does that and extradite those same officers back for trial?
I hasn't actually seen this angle before but maybe that's why they're going after the org first: force the opening of the books, audit the whole thing, then you have all the evidence you need against individuals?
If the org is being prosecuted for fraud, their liabilities include that prosecution. They can pay off their other liabilities, and they can sell assets, but that has to be at market rate. No judge will tolerate them selling all their assets to a new Texas org to avoid accountability for crimes in NY.
Yeah sure. But this whole case isn't about the New York Attorney General merely seeking fair restitution for liabilities or charging them with fair fines.
Instead, what they want is to dissolve the organization.
This second goal is what the NRA will be able to effectively avoid by declaring bankruptcy.
They will be charged in court and pay the fines if they pay the fair prices for the fines for the fraud, ect, but by selling the assets they will be able to get around the real goal of the prosecution which is dissolution of their organization.
I never quite understand the logic here. The lawsuits are a big deal for the senior officers of the NRA. They're the ones being exposed here.
If the NRA dissolves, it's members are free to reform under a new org. They can do that in Texas though ironically NY would be better as (apparently) Texas doesn't punish leaders of groups who steal from their members...
They might lose a few things enroute (the name, the url?). But it doesn't seem like it will make much difference to members.
The leaders on the other hand are looking at jail if the company is found guilty (though that will rely on separate prosecutions).
You previously just asked why they would want to take these actions. And I told you why.
It is because none of this has anything to do with creditors making good faith attempts to get paid back.
What this whole thing is about, is about an attempt by the new york AG, to dissolve the organization, and is not a good faith attempt to make creditors whole.
The whole point of all this stuff, is to sidestep back faith attempts at dissolution, and instead go through the normal process for handling fines/fraud/ect.
The NRA financials are solid. This bankruptcy is the response to a politically motivated attack to (illegally?) dissolve the NRA by the AG of New York since historically the NRA is registered in New York. NRA is using bankruptcy as a method to remove itself from NY and reestablish in Texas where there is solid support for second amendment rights from the state government.
In support of this ballot measure, the NRA Big Sky Self-Defense Committee spent $52,632.37. In opposition, the Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund spent $208,357.84, the Alliance for Gun Responsibility spent 15,400.00,
I was personally very surprised because I had always been lead by the media to understand that the financials played out in the opposite manner, with huge funding coming from the big bad out of state NRA, and small local governments getting trampled.
[1] https://ballotpedia.org/Montana_LR-130,_Limit_Local_Governme...