Guns were for hunting, and gun control and regulation was in more support by everyone, but increasingly guns are becoming for protection, and murder, and polarized along political lines, and until one side defeats the other in a epic civil war (what an oxymoron), guns are going to be less regulated, and perceived more and more to be for murder, and not hunting.

Everybody loses.

Ahhhh, nice positive uplifting prognostication. I can hardly wait.

Reason magazine posted an interesting article about how gun rights were a part of the American civil rights movement.

"I'm alive today because of the Second Amendment and the natural right to keep and bear arms," declared John R. Salter Jr., the civil rights leader who helped to organize the famous sit-ins against segregated lunch counters in Jackson, Mississippi. "Like a martyred friend of mine, NAACP staffer Medgar W. Evers, I, too, was on many Klan death lists and I, too, traveled armed: a .38 special Smith and Wesson revolver and a 44/40 Winchester carbine," Salter recalled. "The knowledge that I had these weapons and was willing to use them kept enemies at bay."

https://reason.com/blog/2017/10/05/how-the-second-amendment-helped-activist

The left will get decimated, they're unarmed. :p

The "left" has a more 'collectivist' approach, and generally thinks that the government should keep the peace. The "right" has no time for such nonsense and is armed and dangerous. You're probably right. We can, perhaps, afford to lose 10% of the left. That's what decimated means - 1 in 10. deci.

Some people are alive today because they were armed and were able to defend themselves. Many more people are dead today because they were armed and were pierced by a bullet before they had time to shoot their assailant. Even more are dead who had wielded their guns and were shot by somebody else first, and a lot of people are dead, whether they had a gun or not, because somebody just up and shot them with or without a good reason, or was aiming at person X, missed, killing Y instead.

Shoot before you might be shot is part of the logic of guns. Shoot first and sort out the bodies later is part of the gun logic. Shoot, shot, shit.

I did use "decimated" recklessly without thinking of the literal meaning.

Gun deaths do just pale in comparison to cell phone related ones, or fast food related ones though. Also, everyone owns less guns, because everyone hunts less, but that hasn't stopped people from toeing party lines and supporting guns, and reducing regulation, because it's part and parcel with their political identities. Giving a shit about actual life and health isn't. Fitting in is.

That provides no argument at all in favour of lax gun laws. That somebody who has received credible death threats by powerful adversaries needs armed protection is not in dispute, and such armed protection is provided in the most gun-restrictive countries in the world, just as in the most permissive. I can assure you that the protective detail of the British PM are armed, as are the police charged with protecting a key witness against organised crime.

Allowing or providing armed protection for people at grave risk under definite threats bears no relation at all to allowing the vast majority of the population, who are under no specific threat whatsoever, to carry guns wherever and whenever they want.

There was a good discussion on the NRA, the American terrorist group, on Fresh Air tonight. Terry Gross interviewed Mike Spies, who writes for The Trace, a publication about gun violence.

The fellow interviewed made three very important points:

#1, the goal of the NRA is to "Normalize guns in public". They want people to get used to, and accept as normal, seeing guns everywhere. They want no "gun free zones".

#2, the NRA is like a religion, or a way of life. The 5 million members of the NRA believe in the importance of guns; that an armed society is a safe society.

#3, gun carryers can now buy insurance (Chubb is the large insurer offering the policies) that will cover your legal fees should you kill somebody (in an act of "self defense" and be sued. That way, you won't be bankrupted if you kill somebody under the Stand Your Ground laws.

Most states had "duty to retreat" laws say, 15 years ago. People were expected to retreat in the face of a threat, rather than resort to violence. Stand Your Ground laws reverse that principle.

My take away: The NRA should be considered a subversive, and terrorist organization and treated like the KKK.

NRA, the American terrorist group — Bitter Crank

As long as the show was objective and not biased :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)

BC I hope you don't mind if I don't engage with the specifics of your post. Gun rights are not one of my hobby horses; so that when I discuss the subject it's from a more detached point of view. For the record I favor gun rights in the abstract but I don't own a gun. Who the hell am I going to shoot, right? I think a lot of "gun nuts" do deserve that name, and I am unalterably opposed to gun stupidity, of which there's far too much. So I have some mild opinions, sympathy with both sides, and like I say it's not a subject I care much about.

As tempted as I am to reply to your post point-by-point, just for the intellectual exercise, I see that it's not an intellectual exercise to you. Anything I say would be regarded by you as not just wrong, but evil.

So I'll regrettably have to pass on responding to the specifics of your post.

In practical terms there are five million members of the NRA. and fifty-five million gun owners. Who's gonna cross that demographic?

Besides I could point you to groups like the Pink Pistols, who promote armed self defense for gays. Their motto: Armed gays don't get bashed.

There are arguments and statistics and datapoints and people of good will on every side of this issue.

Gun rights are not one of my hobby horses — fishfry

Thanks for your response. Actually, it isn't one of mine either. I don't own a gun (but I think target practice might be interesting). What interests me here is the politics, sociology, and psychology surrounding guns, and how it has come to pass that the NRA has managed to be so successful in it's mission. Even the NRA is against gun stupidity. How it is that we can have a string of attacks, and yet Senator McConnell doesn't want to "politicize" the slaughter in Las Vegas --as if slaughter wasn't already political.

Feel free to challenge any point you want. Sure I do have feelings about gun violence (who doesn't, whowouldn't?) but I am approaching this as an intellectual, not as a ranting zealot. (I belong to no anti-NRA groups, no anti-gun groups; I don't subscribe to any anti-gun or anti-NRA publications.)

I've been mugged a couple of times--robbed, not bashed--and I didn't wish I had a gun at hand.

That provides no argument at all in favour — andrewk

It's a datapoint, not a whole argument. Just shows that the American tradition of gun ownership is part of the country's history, and often for the good. Nor was I making an argument, only presenting an anecdote in opposition to the popular wisdom that gun rights are uniformly evil.

As above I hope you understand that I am making intellectual points and in no ways moral once. I haven't got enough interest. If for you this is a moral issue and you want to go ban guns, then YOU go talk to the 55 million American gun owners. I'm not one of them and haven't got a dog in this fight. I hope this is clear. I have no emotional stake in this issue at all.

of lax gun laws. — andrewk

What you call "lax" gun laws are one of the core freedoms enshrined by Americans at the time of the nation's founding. Many on the left these days would decry "lax enforcement" of suppressing hate speech, not understanding that free speech is a core freedom of Americans and a damned important one.

Just today Black Lives Matter shut down a free speech rally, saying "Liberalism is white supremacy." So you tell me whether it's important to stand up for Constitutional freedoms. You can't pick and choose from the Bill of Rights. Not these days, when so many people want to tear down their own freedoms in the name of the politics of the moment. http://reason.com/blog/2017/10/04/black-lives-matter-students-shut-down-th

That somebody who has received credible death threats by powerful adversaries needs armed protection is not in dispute, and such armed protection is provided in the most gun-restrictive countries in the world, just as in the most permissive. I can assure you that the protective detail of the British PM are armed — andrewk

So the elite, our "betters," are entitled to the right of self defense. But I am not. This is a key argument of the pro-gun side. Self-defense is a human right. It's not just for the rich and powerful. It's exactly that elitism that weakens the moral position of the anti-gun lobby. Theresa May is entitled to self-defense but the proles are not.

, as are the police charged with protecting a key witness against organised crime. — andrewk

The State decides whose lives are worthy. You see in the US, the people are sovereign; and each individual has the right to self defense. You yourself are expressing an elitist view. The swells get armed protection, the rest of us are helpless victims of criminals. Am I correctly understanding you here?

Allowing or providing armed protection for people at grave risk under definite threats — andrewk

Now here you are saying that in the example of the article I linked, black civil rights workers in the deep racist south should have gone to the local authorities and said, "We are black civil rights workers down here in cracker-land, and we'd like your position to arm ourselves."

Andrew are you aware that the cops were the Klan back then? That was the reality. The local authorities were not about to issue carry permits to the black agitators coming in from out of town to sign black people up to vote. No Sir that was not going to happen.

Now I can just hear you saying, well sure but of course they could go to the Feds. But that's no help. During that era the presidents were JFK and LBJ, both Democrats. Now this is a fact not commonly realized among contemporary people, but back in those days, you know those cops and Klansmen and southern redneck racists? The were all Democrats. People don't realize that. Lincoln was a Republican, the KKK were Democrats, the southern racist rednecks in the 50's and 60's were Democrats. It wasn't till Richard Nixon's brilliant southern strategy that he got the southern white working class to sign on to the GOP agenda. JFK and LBJ were in no position to authorize black civil rights agitators to arm themselves before they went into the deep south.

Can you hear what you are saying? Did you really mean to write that? The civil rights workers should have appealed to the government to let them carry guns to defend themselves? It could never have happened at any level of government.

That is the point of the article. The American tradition of the right of individual self defense was part and parcel of the civil rights movement.

You wish to take power away from the individual. The US was a country built on the rights of the individual. That's what the pro-gun people see as being at stake.

bears no relation at all to allowing the vast majority of the population, who are under no specific threat whatsoever, to carry guns wherever and whenever they want. — andrewk

So the rest of us are the designated victims of the criminals. Unable to defend ourselves as a matter of law. Sheep to be shorn by order of our rulers. Who have armed guards.

It's not about whether the vast majority is never in a fight for their lives. I could give you a hundred cases at the flick of a Google search where law-abiding Americans defended themselves from home invasion, robbery, rape, and murder.

You would consign those people to their fate. I disagree.

Apologies for the word count! Thanks for reading.

I could give you a hundred cases at the flick of a Google search where law-abiding Americans defended themselves from home invasion, robbery, rape, and murder. — fishfry

Public policy based on whatever grab-bag of anecdotes an internet search can throw up? Really?
You're a mathematician. You know the importance of basing public policy decisions on credible statistical analysis.

If you can find a single credible statistical analysis that concludes Americans are safer than people in developed countries with normal gun restriction laws, I'd be interested to see it.

By the way, I'm not involved in this issue either, as I am very fortunate to be a citizen of a country where gun-based homicide is not a national sport. My interests in the topic are (1) the fascinating psychological bizarreness of the US gun obsession and (2) sympathy for those people that have to live surrounded by that gun-mania and don't have the resources to be able to re-locate to a safer and more free country.

Just shows that the American tradition of gun ownership is part of the country's history, — fishfry

That's right. Hunting for meat was de regueur in until the frontier closed in the 19th century. Lots of people still hunt. I'm fine with hunting. But the United States did not have a "gun culture" until about 1980. No gun deaths before 1980? Sure there were. Bootleggers and major crime figures (think Al Capone) were often armed and dangerous. The NRA changed in 1977, allied itself with conservative interests and embarked on its present program of normalizing guns in just about any private or public setting. (Previously it had focused on gun safety courses, stuff like that.)

The interpretation of the 2nd Amendment had, up until the 1970s, applied to militias (like the national guard). The People had a right to organized defense through arms. The fairly conservative
Chief Justice Burger said that interpreting the 2nd Amendment to mean that every individual is entitled to carry guns is "stupid".

Now this is a fact not commonly realized among contemporary people, but back in those days, you know those cops and Klansmen and southern redneck racists? The were all Democrats. — fishfry

That's right. In the 1960s, there was a 4 way split in the parties. There were southern Democrats and northern Democrats. There were liberal Republicans (the 'Rockefeller wing) and there were conservative (Goldwater) Republicans. The liberals of both parties eventually threw in their lots together, as did the conservatives of both parties. There wasn't much similarity between the Democratic Farm Labor Party in Minnesota and the Alabama Democratic Party.

JFK and LBJ were in no position to authorize black civil rights agitators to arm themselves before they went into the deep south. — fishfry

"I'm alive today because of the Second Amendment and the natural right to keep and bear arms," declared John R. Salter Jr., the civil rights leader who helped to organize the famous sit-ins against segregated lunch counters in Jackson, Mississippi. "Like a martyred friend of mine, NAACP staffer Medgar W. Evers, I, too, was on many Klan death lists and I, too, traveled armed: a .38 special Smith and Wesson revolver and a 44/40 Winchester carbine," Salter recalled. "The knowledge that I had these weapons and was willing to use them kept enemies at bay." — fishfry

At least in 2005, John R. Salter Jr was alive and well and living in Idaho, so his son, John R. Salter III says.

It's worth mentioning that Salter is white. The Mississippi police viewed him as a loathsome "outside agitator" but it would have been safer in the early '60s for a white man to carry guns in Mississippi than a black man. Of course, once he opened his mouth and revealed his Yankee accent, he would have been dead meat. Also, many of the freedom riders were practicing non-violent resistance. Why non-violent resistance? Because oppressed people understand that the State, and it's sometimes-allies like the KKK, are much much better at violence than they are.

That's why leftists who have any brains don't plan violent revolutions in America. Start a violent revolution in America and you'll be in the morgue by sundown. The State is powerful, better armed than anyone else, and has the law (it is the law, more or less) on its side.

You wish to take power away from the individual. The US was a country built on the rights of the individual. That's what the pro-gun people see as being at stake. — fishfry

The rights of the individual is part of the American tradition -- and the English common law that our legal system is based on. Pretty much everyone more or less honors the concept that the individual is more important than the collective. The pro-gun people haven't claimed any unique ground on this issue.

Indeed, I would say the gun lobby is no more interested in the individual than any one else is. The NRA (and some much smaller allied groups) have a narrow interest: the normalization of a gun in every hand. Why they wish to achieve that end is something of a mystery to me.

The "left" has a more 'collectivist' approach, and generally thinks that the government should keep the peace. The "right" has no time for such nonsense and is armed and dangerous. You're probably right. We can, perhaps, afford to lose 10% of the left. That's what decimated means - 1 in 10. deci.

Some people are alive today because they were armed and were able to defend themselves. Many more people are dead today because they were armed and were pierced by a bullet before they had time to shoot their assailant. Even more are dead who had wielded their guns and were shot by somebody else first, and a lot of people are dead, whether they had a gun or not, because somebody just up and shot them with or without a good reason, or was aiming at person X, missed, killing Y instead.

Shoot before you might be shot is part of the logic of guns. Shoot first and sort out the bodies later is part of the gun logic. Shoot, shot, shit. — Bitter Crank

This thread is very interesting, and it relates well to my reading of René Girard. The logic of violence outlined here seems to be everywhere in society. We tend to arrive at situations that seem to force us to choose between kill or be killed - situations that demand resolution through violence. Think even of the conflict between US and North Korea. Both sides are approaching faster and faster the understanding that it is a game of kill or be killed, which is exactly what will lead to conflict.

The so called "gun-logic" is nothing but the permanent logic of humanity from time immemorial. Our entire society is built on this logic, the logic of the lynch mob, of the unanimous violence of the many against the one which brings unity, paradoxically. In "gun-logic" we are united by our mutual hatred of the victim - our love is polarised against the suffering of the victim. In fact, we only love each other because we sacrifice the victim together.