The latest school massacres

[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

WaPo

I believe there are many gun owners in this situation, and I have met some at field dog trials,
I have sometimes asked if they are a member of the NRA, and do they subscribe to the various NRA magazines.

This is where the NRA gets it's "membership" numbers, and a some of it's political power.
The NRA counts all magazine subscribers as "members" and is speaking for them.

There is a very simple and powerful way to voice opposition to NRA's political positions - write a letter to voice your opinion and
CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONS and maybe your NRA MEMBERSHIP.

.

[Sundae]

Sorry, my amended post above looks a bit shouty.
I was simply emphasising for clarity, not shouting at the screen in rage.

[DanaC]

I'm sorry, but those two things do not equate. If you're not a driver, you shouldn't make laws about cars? Maybe, I could go with that. If you've never taught, you sholdn't make education law? Fine.

But having a gun and having a fucking vagina are not the same thing.

One gender making laws about what the other gender can do with their body is not the same as a set of people who don't own some things, making laws about whether someone else can own those things.

There are plenty of good arguments against gun control, and clearly there is some kind of identity level shit going on with gun control, but equating rights over vaginas and rights over guns is ridiculous and icky. Seriously, that shit makes my skin crawl.

[it]

Originally Posted by DanaC

I'm sorry, but those two things do not equate. If you're not a driver, you shouldn't make laws about cars? Maybe, I could go with that. If you've never taught, you sholdn't make education law? Fine.

But having a gun and having a fucking vagina are not the same thing.

One gender making laws about what the other gender can do with their body is not the same as a set of people who don't own some things, making laws about whether someone else can own those things.

There are plenty of good arguments against gun control, and clearly there is some kind of identity level shit going on with gun control, but equating rights over vaginas and rights over guns is ridiculous and icky. Seriously, that shit makes my skin crawl.

But is the point really about choice, or about impact?

We all can get hit by cars or shot by lunatics, regardless of whether we own a car or a gun. likewise, whether it is forced fatherhood against someone's will (with possible jail time) or the other way around - killing someone who they believe in and view as their living breathing child - men are affected by them. Not to mention consent laws applying to both genitalia, and unfortunately censorship laws, because of.. reasons...

Note that I am pro-choice, but I disagree that they can't be equated - The point isn't a pro life one, but rather that anything which gives us the means to impact others becomes the business of others who don't want to be negatively impacted, regardless of the level of agency in the process of acquiring it, and regardless of whether we try to deal with it on a case by case basis through life or organize around it as a society.

[tw]

Originally Posted by traceur

The point isn't a pro life one, but rather that anything which gives us the means to impact others becomes the business of others who don't want to be negatively impacted, regardless of the level of agency in the process of acquiring it, and regardless of whether we try to deal with it on a case by case basis through life or organize around it as a society.

Since my thoughts and words can affect others, then others should have the right to regulate my thoughts and words?

That reasoning stands on a very slippery slope.

[it]

Originally Posted by tw

Since my thoughts and words can affect others, then others should have the right to regulate my thoughts and words?

That reasoning stands on a very slippery slope.

I am not saying it generates rights - whether your reaction to how it can effect you has a right to be forceful or part of social organized force is another matter altogether - even if only women had a vote for "womb regulations" it would still be an application of organized force by whoever side won over the side that didn't, whether they had a right to do so would still have the same questions and problems, and is not granted by the fact they'd all be women.

Rather, I am saying that the "if you aren't x you don't get to decide comment or have opinions on things related to x" line of arguments is nonsense - you don't have to be something to have invested interest in it, whether it's womb owners or gun owners.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by traceur

I am not saying it generates rights - whether your reaction to how it can effect you has a right to be forceful or part of social organized force is another matter altogether - even if only women had a vote for "womb regulations" it would still be an application of organized force by whoever side won over the side that didn't, whether they had a right to do so would still have the same questions and problems, and is not granted by the fact they'd all be women.

Rather, I am saying that the "if you aren't x you don't get to decide comment or have opinions on things related to x" line of arguments is nonsense - you don't have to be something to have invested interest in it, whether it's womb owners or gun owners.

I agree - I have never really liked the 'if you don't have X experience then you don't get a view' argument. I have never been a soldier, but I'm damn sure I have an opinion on what my country's soldiers do when they are in someone else's country. I don't drive, but I have an opinion on the state of the roads.

My only real problem with the earlier points was the equating of vaginas and guns. Women's bodies are routinely objectified in a way that male bodies are not. Time and again I hear people make the argument that girls and women should take precautions against rape, for example, by equating the woman's body to an unlocked car or house risking burglary and theft.

I get what you're saying about men having a sense of the child as theirs, in arguments over abortion - but the 'get out of my vagina' argument is not just about the right to an abortion - it's about contraception, family planning, and enforced and medically unnecessary procedures for women who are seeking abortion as a way to make those abortions more difficult to obtain. And, probably more importantly, it's about recognising the awesome power over another person's body that this implies.

Self-defence is also a matter of power over one's own body - I can see that part of the equivalence - but, classic's snarky comment about transgender women aside, we don't get to choose our gender it is something we are born with. The reason the 'get out of my vagina' trope came about is that there is a profound gender imbalance at a political and law-making level. And this is just where we are now - coming from a historical perspective where that imbalance has generally been much more profound and women's bodies far more a matter for male legislation and ruling.


I don't, as it happens, believe that men should not have a say in issues around abortion. That's ludicrous - it is a thing in the world that they live in. But I am sick of women's bodies and the things that are done to them being equated with inanimate objects and the things that are done to them.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by traceur

I am saying that the "if you aren't x you don't get to decide comment or have opinions on things related to x" line of arguments is nonsense - you don't have to be something to have invested interest in it, whether it's womb owners or gun owners.

This is the first thing you've said which I agree with ... no I am questioning myself.

[Happy Monkey]

Bad example. Caitlyn still doesn't have one.

[DanaC]

Oh, and that quote about needing guns to disarm people - seriously? You can make a massive dent in the number of guns through the use of amnesties and buy-backs. The rest happens across time as new laws begin to bed down. There will always be people for whom illegality is enough of a barrier that simply making it illegal would reduce numbers.

It then becomes unsafe to use guns because - you shouldn't have it in the first place. It becomes a less comfortable thing to have. It becomes the thing you mitght get caught out on if the police pull you over for something unrelated, or have to turn up at your house because of a burglary. You won't get rid of all of the guns - as a nation I can't see you guys ever wanting that to happen. But you could make them less ubiquitous.

It doesn't happen over night. It happens in stages. It becomes a generational change.

And most of the stuff I've seen from the pro-control camp isn;t about ridding America of guns - ot's about setting some limits on the kinds of guns and ammo that can be bought and the level of availability.

You aren't allowed to just jump in a car and drive down the freeway without having learned how to drive and passed a test to prove it.

[Happy Monkey]

The "New Rule" conflicts with the last one. The government owns guns, and makes laws.

[DanaC]

I guess.

I think, where I am coming from is that I generally trust my country's soldiers and police with guns marginally more than I trust my next door neighbour or my cousin's crazy ass husband with guns.

As cynical as I am about state and the sinews of power - I don't think I have anywhere near as much distrust and fear of them as you guys seem to. I cannot imagine stockpiling weapons for the day when they send in the troops. There are odd times, during periods of great upheaval and social unrest (like during the Vietnam War in America, and the poll tax demonstrations in the UK) where battle lines seem tobe drawn - and that's when you get incidents like Berkeley campus, or the army on standby, with rubber bullets at Downing Street.

But, whilst there are governments who can rely on their armies to quell the population through brute force, fire into crowds of of their own civilians, and uphold the rule of a dictator there are many governments whose armies would balk and desert in great numbers at the idea of such an attack. I think the US is in the latter camp.

To stay fully armed against the highly unlikely and wholly hypothetical possibility of the government going to war against its own people seems kind of bizarre to me. The logic of owning a gun in case I am threatened with volence by a nutjob rapist makes way more sense. The constitutional arguments just don't work for me. You can all have guns and the army would still be better armed. Unless you're also planning on getting kitted out with full kevlar body suits and anti-tank weaponry. And even then they would still be better armed. You would still have to rely on the notion that they would be unwilling to launch an all-out fucking napalm attack - you'd still be reliant on them observing some kind of self-imposed limit to the level of violence they're willing to mete out.

There are many kinds of freedom. Freedom from an armed populace and for the most part an armed police force is something I value.


[eta] I suspect a lot of that is down to a different history. Not least the history of law enforcement. The reason we only have specialist units of police that are armed, with the majority of police unarmed is something that comes from the way in which law enforcement developed here during the early days of police forces. We have as much of a cultural inclination towards unarmed police as you have a cultural inclination to armed police. That's one of the civil freedoms that characterises british culture - for the same reason we have, for most of the early modern and modern periods, had relatively small standing armies except in times of war. Because standing armies swore their loyalty to the monarch, we have always tended to have quite a large 'militia' component to our land forces.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

The "New Rule" conflicts with the last one. The government owns guns, and makes laws.

Originally Posted by DanaC

I guess.

Just to be clear; I was responding to the meme post; I agree with you 100%.

[Griff]

The root cause of these events isn't guns. It is a lack of empathy. Empathy developed by having real connections with people. A friend was telling me today about something the teaching staff of the school she used to work at started doing after Columbine. Every Fall they would put every kid in the schools name on a 3x5 card on a wall. The teachers would put a check mark by every kids name that they felt they had a relationship with. They took away all the names of kids with a connection to staff and focused on the remaining kids the rest of the year slowly trying to build emotional connections with every one of them. This was a huge multi-year effort, but I think much more useful than pointing fingers left or right.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Griff

The root cause of these events isn't guns. It is a lack of empathy. Empathy developed by having real connections with people.

So suddenly we no longer have sufficient empathy? Nonsense. Empathy did not change. We now openly encourage everyone to use violent tools.

The study is indeed intriguing. But it does not address what has changed. We know throughout history, more guns means increases in violent deaths. We know people today suddenly 'need' to defend themselves where it was not so necessary BEFORE propaganda promoted that need and fear (ie 1950, 1960s).