Early front-runner for head-slapping lede of the year pic.twitter.com/xGfdPOVk9L
— David Joachim, NYT (@davidjoachim) January 1, 2016
For the record, it is possible to be a concealed-carry permit holder and not be a public nuisance. In fact, I suspect the sensible CCW people are almost as embarrassed as the rest of us are annoyed by the ammosexuals who demand the right to fondle their ‘fifth limbs’ in public. From the NYTimes article:
… The change directly affects only a small fraction of Texans — 925,000 men and women with active state-issued licenses to carry a concealed firearm, close to 4 percent of the state’s 27.4 million residents. Only those with a concealed-handgun permit are allowed to open carry, and all of them must submit their fingerprints and pass a criminal background check…
The law has brought renewed attention to the state’s licensed gun carriers, and questions of who will and who will not open carry. John Wittman, a spokesman for Gov. Greg Abbott, a longtime proponent of gun rights who signed the bill into law in June, declined to comment when asked whether the governor would openly carry. A spokesman for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who also has a concealed-carry license, said Mr. Patrick did not plan on openly carrying.
For many pro-gun Texans, the arrival of open carry is not enough. Many of them did not support the open-carry bill but instead called for legislation for what they called “constitutional carry” — allowing Texans to display and wear their handguns regardless of whether they were licensed to carry a concealed firearm because, they argued, the Second Amendment gives them the right to do so. They are urging the passage of a constitutional-carry bill in the next session of the Legislature.
The new law is anticlimactic for one other reason. Texas has no prohibition on the open carrying of rifles, shotguns and other long guns, a right that gun owners have taken advantage of in recent years by showing up at open-carry rallies and other events with loaded AR-15s and other military-style rifles strapped across their backs.
Good luck, Texas RT @jonfavs: https://t.co/wtlu55K2Ug pic.twitter.com/KQbmu09XVp
— laura olin (@lauraolin) January 1, 2016
Kryptik
Your regular reminder that the NRA essentially owns the country.
Schlemazel
This would be a good place for this:
“>Police: UNT student shot in car after party has died
It is not that rare but the timing is perfect
Arclite
Texas wants to secede. Tell me again why we aren’t letting them?
debbie
I hope these open carriers are held accountable if a stray bullet hits a bystander.
JPL
I hope that businesses suffer because of this. Only when people walk out of malls and restaurants, will the law change. The Chamber of Commerce used to be stronger that the NRA.
Amir Khalid
I remember the maker of the pink children’s rifle. It’s a company called Crickett Firearms, and it has a range of kid-sized rifles in brightly coloured plastic, called My First Rifle. It used to have a photo gallery on its website, full of pictures of kids aiming and firing Their First Rifles. It took the gallery down a few years ago, when people became aware of it and were horrified. I still can’t quite wrap my head around the idea of firearms for children.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I have to take a hard line on the whole concealed carry concept. I respectfully (as opposed to “with all due respect”) disagree with your respectful and generous comment:
Who are these sensible CCW people? In what context is it sensible to carry a concealed weapon/ Why? What monsters are gonna get them if they don’t have a gun hidden on their person? I suspect very few of them carry boot knives; hence my choice of “gun” to define “weapon.” I’ll agree that concealed knife carriers are likely not to be much of a public nuisance, because a carrying accident (not uncommon with guns, as we know) is unlikely to injure surrounding bystanders. Also a hidden knife, once brandished, is reasonably easy to escape – assuming that the wielder does not intend harm specific to you, but that’s not the topic.
To my mind, the potential injury to the public when a concealed gun carry permit holder exercises that choice by carrying turns them all into – at least potential – public nuisances. The ammosexuals are more dangerous, unquestionably. I’ll quite possibly be injured when I walk up closely to one from an angle and announce” you know your situational awareness sucks; if I were a threat you’d be down already.” I imagine such a comment would not be well received and could be met with a physical response. My thanks to burnsie (IIRC) for providing a more succinct script than I’d previously planned to use.
I cannot understand why people feel the need to go about armed, or what the fuck do they think they can accomplish by way of protection/prevention of harm by doing so? I had a discussion on the topic with a 27 year old Afghanistan vet who tells me even he can’t adequately explained to the armed amateurs how unlikely they are to be capable of responding in a productive fashion to a personal or public threat. He admits that he prefers just not to think about who might be the CCW man or woman in the room, and that he avoids places with open carry folks around.
Overly long ramble, I know.
Belafon
It’s also time to abolish the laws against libel and pornography while we’re at it.
Belafon
I think we ought to push a law requiring that all guns be of a gun color, preferably all black. That way they can be distinguished from toys.
Schlemazel
@Amir Khalid:
If you are into firearm hunting, Cricket makes sense as a normal rifle is too large to be handled by a kid. Now, you can argue that children shouldn’t be shooting but some parents want to take their kids out in the woods and blast the furry creatures of the upper woodland. It is justifiable by that standard. It is the culture of hunting that exists and has made many people happy for many years. I used to hunt & found the time in the woods very enjoyable, I never took my kids but 1 of 3 hunts now, he would have enjoyed going with me & I with him but I never bought him a rifle.
c u n d gulag
Add yet another reason why you couldn’t pay me to go that that festering bunghole of a state.
Please, please secede!
That’ll give the rest of us a better chance to succeed.
Villago Delenda Est
Exqueeze me, but why the FUCK do they even have a metal detector if they’re letting ballless wonder open carry people just breeze through security?
“If you’re hiding your gun, you’re a threat. If you’re open carrying it, well, no one who speaks German could be evil!”
Redshift
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Same reason far more people are afraid of flying than afraid of driving – people tend to feel safer if they believe (however wildly incorrect that belief may be) that they are somewhat in control of their own safety, rather than trusting in others, even well-trained others.
Amir Khalid
@Schlemazel:
If the US didn’t have the firearms culture it has now, would as many people be so keen on hunting?
Villago Delenda Est
@debbie: When a stray bullet hits a bystander, the actions of any human are not involved. It’s an “accident”. It’s “unfortunate”. It was the gun’s fault, not the person with their finger on the trigger.
Corner Stone
C’mon, people. Let’s not act like Texas is the only place around with this in effect.
Anoniminous
@debbie:
We’re talking Texas. Don’t be silly.
Corner Stone
@Amir Khalid: The hunting culture is part of the fabric and lore of this nation. The ability for poor folk to try and feed their family without being hanged for poaching was a pretty big deal, IMO.
Belafon
@c u n d gulag: Of the top ten states that pay more in taxes than they take in, Texas is the only conservative state. At the same time, Texas has a huge border with the rest of the United States. There will be plenty of refugees from the state, including people like me and my family, that the rest of the US will have to deal with. Imagine trying to monitor that border.
Texas also has a history of trying to take back what was once part of it, see Santa Fe when the Civil War started.
Belafon
@Amir Khalid: The British still hunt.
Adam L Silverman
I’ve lived in two open carry states and was a part timer in a third. In two of them I never saw anyone open carrying and in the third, Pennsylvania, I saw two people. And I tend to be more observant than most. I will say that the rules for the Texas state house are kind of screwy.
Amir Khalid
@Corner Stone:
Surely very few Americans today are subsistence hunters.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid: Very few are, but the myth runs deep.
Baud
I wonder why they originally banned open carry after the Civil War.
Adam L Silverman
@Amir Khalid: Yes. A lot of people hunt for subsistence/food supplementation. Others do it because they grew up doing it with their parents/grandparents. Its a particular subculture or culture all to itself. And while there’s some overlap between them and the need to be armed at all times crowd, there’s often a fair amount of tension between the hunting community and the carry at all times community. The latter will often refer to the former as Fudds, from Elmer Fudd. They feel that they are unreliable allies and cannot really be trusted to protect the full/maximalist meaning and interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.
Corner Stone
@Amir Khalid: Hence usage of the words “lore” and “was”.
ETA, and in my lifetime I have personally known a small chunk of people who did in fact make it through the year by taking fish and/or game to add to the pantry. Maybe not daily sustenance, but certainly stretched their meager budget/larder.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: The Confederate lost causers were going around and publicly intimidating the Reconstruction agents and freed African Americans, and others, by show of arms. Also, the standard in a lot of places in the 19th century west was to ban guns within city limits. The immediate, but not root, cause of the gunfight adjacent to a location near the OK Corral was that the Clantons had to check their weapons when entering town.
Anoniminous
@Baud:
Because it was dangerous to bystanders and people got tired of their town getting shot up by drunken, armed cowboys, the ammosexuals of their day.
dmsilev
@Villago Delenda Est: That’s a big problem. Me, I’d say the law should be, ‘open carry if you want, but if one of your bullets kills someone, you are automatically charged with murder. Not manslaughter; murder.’
Elizabelle
@JPL:
It is going to take a day without a customer. Or several days.
Money is the only thing that talks.
Baud
We never should have banned dueling. It was a slippery slope.
I blame Alexander Hamilton.
Baud
The Split Between the States Over Guns
Anoniminous
@efgoldman:
Or we could cut to the chase and call them what they are: a bunch of dumb hicks who have no existential value and who are filled with hate and resentiment because they can’t lynch Negros anymore.
ETA: unless they join the local police force and thereby gain a License to Kill.
Corner Stone
Nice finish to the Penn St v Georgia game.
Schlemazel
@Amir Khalid:
I’d argue that the hunting came first. I was a hunter and an NRA member (back in the 70’s and early 80s when the crazy came out big time). Most gun owners were hunters I think. It wasn’t until the late 60’s that the crazy took over . . . I wonder what changed in the mid-to-late 60s to make white middle-aged guys go nuts
Julie
@Baud: According to this article in the Guardian, open carrying of handguns was banned in Texas “in significant part to stop African Americans obtaining weapons after the civil war.”
Redshift
@Villago Delenda Est: Also, hunting rifles are not the major source of America’s insane gun violence, handguns are. In the days before the loony ammosexuals completely took over the conversation, conservative politicians used to routinely spout the line that “I grew up with guns and we never had any trouble” as a way to express that guns couldn’t be the problem.
What they were either lying about or willfully blind to was the explosion of handguns since “those days.” It’s become a much bigger business than hunting rifles, which has helped turn the NRA into a lobby for gun manufacturers, fighting any restrictions.
We could put handguns and military-style weapons under the same restrictions as machine guns (you can go play with them in a controlled environment, but you can’t own them), and preserve hunting culture while having an acceptably low level of gun violence. But as usual, conservatism means we can’t have nice things.
Emma
@Amir Khalid: You’d be surprised how many people supplement their store-bought groceries with hunting and fishing. I’ve had venison and duck from hunters in the Michigan UP who distribute what they get among family members. One deer can feed a lot of people in winter.
Funny enough, none of them EVER walked around with guns. Like you don’t walk around toting your circular saw, you don’t walk around toting your gun.
Adam L Silverman
@Julie: this was the case in most places post Civil War. Once Reconstruction broke down and Jim Crow began there were significant efforts made to disarm African Americans and to prevent those that did not own firearms from obtaining them. Much harder to terrorize a community if they can come out on their porch and shoot you if you’re trying to burn a cross in their front yard.
Culture of Truth
I’d be in favor allowing open carry of fishing poles.
Keith G
@JPL:
For those who do not know this and/or don’t have the gumption to do a bit of 5th grade level research, businesses are allowed to be gun free zones. As is the case with my neighborhood grocery, the one mentioned in this article. The Houston Galleria will follow the same policy.
I wish the law had not been passed, but since it has I really do not think it will have much of a statistically noticeable impact the daily events of the vast majority of Texans.
Roger Moore
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
There are a relatively small number of people who genuinely do need concealed carry permits for their own protection: bodyguards, off-duty police (especially ones who do undercover work), domestic abuse survivors with vengeful exes, etc. They’re probably a minority of people who have, much less want, concealed carry permits, but they do exist.
Corner Stone
@Culture of Truth: God, those Boat/BaitSexuals are the worst. Just the freakin’ worst.
Baud
@Culture of Truth: How Andy Griffith.
PurpleGirl
@Amir Khalid: That may be true but I know a number of people of who like to hunt as a hobby. They live in the city but own land in up-state counties (NY) where they can hunt. They do eat what they kill, mostly deer. I will say though that these people aren’t ammosexuals or gun nuts, they see guns as tools for hunting. As such they take care of the weapons and are very safety conscious. (This includes my late college friend Maria, who when she lived up-state, would keep a rifle in her car during deer season.)
Corner Stone
@efgoldman: I’ll let you know when I spot one. I suggest not holding your breath if you want to see the grandchild again.
JPL
@Adam L Silverman: What do you think about Saudi Arabia executing the Shiite cleric? Guardian has pretty good coverage and to a lesser extent the NYTimes.
JPL
@Keith G: That’s similar to GA law, but you can open carry at the airport.
Ridnik Chrome
@Julie: It’s funny how advocates of an “armed society” will talk about how the Nazis took guns away from the Jews, but never about the systematic disarming of African-Americans in the Jim Crow South…
dogwood
@Corner Stone:
In my neck of the woods the majority of people don’t hunt anymore, but everyone probably knows someone who does. My contractor is a hunter, just like his father and grandfather. They do it for sport and sustenance. However, for my contractor, sustenance isn’t really related to economics, but rather nutrition. He and his wife are very health conscious eaters. This shift in focus has had some embarrassing consequences for him. Eating at his grandparents’ home his 4 year old daughter, returned a plastic wrapped American single to her Nana informing her that she thought the cheese was fake.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Corner Stone: As a kid in the 1960s, once my babysitter’s husband saw a squirrel get run over when he was driving somewhere. He turned his truck around, picked up the squirrel, and brought it home to his wife to skin and make for dinner.
Poor people did things like that to work to survive.
I’m sure hunting to put meat on the table still exists as a tiny but not-insignificant activity in the US.
It’s unfortunate that legitimate uses of firearms like that by a tiny fraction of the population (we recall that 80+% of the US population lives in urban areas) prevents sensible regulation for the other 99+% of us. :-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Dread
I don’t want to ban all guns, but I do think the following laws should be national laws:
1. Total background checks for all sales of firearms.
2. Registration and a national database of firearms
3. Your gun, your crime. You are responsible for every bullet discharged from your weapon. If your gun is stolen, it had better have been in a gun safe or you will be charged as an accessory for any crimes committed with your weapon. If your toddler finds your gun and blows his head off or his sister or mother or father’s head, you get charged with murder. Fire a gun in public, you risk charges for any stray bullets or unnecessary discharges, and your guns are seized.
4. Bi-Annual safety certifications.
5. Mandatory liability insurance.
6. Guns for those with restraining orders or domestic violence charges are to be seized pending trial.
7. Make a threat, you face charges and have your guns seized for six months.
I’m sure the current SCOTUS would, however, probably throw most of those out.
Anne Laurie
@Amir Khalid:
Believe it or not, there were a lot more Americans ‘keen on hunting’ before the NRA turned gun ownership into a social fetish! There are plenty of Americans who still rely on game hunting (primarily deer) as a valuable addition to their family’s subsistence — and more who can remember when that was true for their parents or grandparents. (My Spousal Unit’s father, for instance; his brothers back in Michigan still hunt, as do many of their neighbors, and they’re not even in the “wild” Upper Peninsula.) TBogg has written about hunting for meat, as a youngster… and about giving up hunting because now there are too many untrained, unskilled idiots making it dangerous to be out in the woods during hunting season.
I can’t recommend Dan Baum’s Gun Guys: A Road Trip enough — it really is a readable, often funny, tour of American “gun culture” in all its forms.
Ruckus
@dogwood:
The 4 yr old is right of course, that isn’t cheese. To be a rose it has to look and smell like a rose. To be cheese it has to look, smell and taste like cheese. That stuff in the plastic wrapped singles barely meets the first criteria, it’s somewhere near a reasonable color.
PurpleGirl
@PurpleGirl: For a few years I owned a .22 rifle for target shooting. I usually went with my friends to a range in Westchester County. I had joined a range in Manhattan but it was inconvenient to go there because I got strange looks from people as I carried my rifle case. Once a man kept asking me what was in the case — I told him it was none of his business. (I was following NYC law with a locked case.) I wasn’t interested in hunting but I liked target shooting.
goblue72
@Adam L Silverman: Many does not mean most, which is what Amir’s larger point is. Context here, is relevant.
In 2011, the US Fish & Wildlife Service data is that of U.S. residents over the age of 6, roughly 16 million went hunting. The U.S. population in 2011 was roughly 312 million. That is a mere 5 percent of the U.S. population that went hunting. 3 million more people went bird watching.
89 percent of hunters are male and 94 percent are white, and over half are over the age of 45. In the broadest terms, hunters fall in the most socio-economically advantaged demographic group.
Given the social welfare safety net in the U.S. (as tattered as it is) combined with those demographics (food insecurity is disproportionately concentrated amongst non-white households), the percentage of hunters who hunt primarily for subsistence as opposed to primarily for recreation is likely a minority of hunters.
Combine that a mere 5 percent of the U.S. population hunts, and within that number likely a minority hunts primarily for subsistence and you are left with an inarguable conclusion – a very small percentage of the U.S. population hunts for subsistence purposes. Let’s call it 1%-2%. That number is de minimis.
Keith G
@efgoldman: I know what you are getting at, but for the most part the only thing that is changing is that those folks who had a CCL will be able carry openly in some of the same venues.
Most will not.
The fuck ups who used to carry illegal but concealed guns will still do so. I do not know what that number was and I don’t see it growing more than it has over time.
In the end, the novelty effect will cause some to get a license just so they can be “that” guy or gal, but again I do not see that becoming a large number.
Probably not much is going to change, especially after the energy wears off.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Roger Moore:
I’ve always argued that they are a very small minority. I dated a man who’s done undercover work, so I get that. But I suspect we culturally give credit to far more people as “sensible CCW permit holders” than actually exist. That was my poorly articulated point. So we don’t disagree.
Roger Moore
@Ridnik Chrome:
And how reluctant they are to deal with the difference between the way open carrying blacks and whites are treated today.
Corner Stone
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: You’ve got to be damn poor to actively recruit a squirrel for its meat. It’s tough, stringy and poor flavor, IMO. It’s about the size of two chicken nuggets or a very small, thin tenderized beef steak patty after you’re done skinning it.
And I think I get what you’re saying in the last sentence but it seems an awkward construct.
Anne Laurie
@Emma:
Ha, I actually use that analogy when I’m arguing with ammosexuals: I don’t own a gun for the same reason I don’t own a chain saw. Sure, if I walked around carrying either one, I could probably be sure of getting a seat on the T — but that’s a ridiculous reason for buying one. And I’d be more likely to hurt someone, including myself, than to do anything useful with them!
Ridnik Chrome
@Dread: Those are all suggestions that in the past would have been considered moderate and sensible, but in our current upside-down political culture read like wild-eyed radicalism…
(ETA: Well, maybe not “would have been considered in the past”, but “should be considered”…)
goblue72
@Anne Laurie: Only 5% of the U.S. population over the age of 6 hunts. And of that subset, it is highly unlikely that the majority do so primarily for food subsistence purposes as opposed to hunting primarily for recreation purposes.
In short, the percentage of the U.S. population who hunts primarily for food subsistence is likely in the 1-2% range. That is a de minimis number.
In other words, who gives a shit about them in the broader context of gun control. Their food subsistence needs can much more efficiently be dealt with by modifying the country’s existing food stamp program in event those rural households with true food insecurity are for some reason unable to qualify for food stamps. And if they DO qualify, but refuse to use the program because “I can take of myself by hunting” – well, fuck that noise. Tired of kowtowing to rural yokels “hunting culture”. Its the 21st century.
Ruckus
@Anne Laurie:
I’m one of those who used to hunt. Stopped decades ago when there were a couple of instances where I came within inches of getting shot, and at close range. I have military exp with weapons and carried one for 2 yrs while on duty. But I also was in the shore patrol for about 6 weeks and we carried a nightstick, no guns. The guards at the base entrance were armed but that was it. On base security, dealing with drunks, even/especially around town, no guns.
A person I knew decades ago was on the security detail for the AG of CA. He had a couple of sidearms, a shotgun and a sub machine gun in the car he drove for the state, all concealed. He scared me not because of the guns, but because he wasn’t all that a responsible person. Maybe on the job he was. I hoped then and now.
Roger Moore
@Anne Laurie:
I think there’s a cause and effect going on there. As hunting became less and less popular as a hobby and means of subsistence, the gun sellers were facing a future of declining sales. They started pumping up gun fetishism as a way of keeping the business going. That there were social worries about Those People just made it easier.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Roger Moore:
I’m a cynic, so I suspect they see that difference as a net positive.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: The past isn’t even past…
Corner Stone
@goblue72: AK’s reply and question at #22 was an open strawman and itself not relevant. No one made the statement the someone in 2016 needs a firearm to feed their family. The fact that people can truthfully cite personal knowledge of modern Americans stretching their supplies by adding taken meat is not testimony to existing subsistence hunters. Poor people in urban areas can’t afford the firearm, ammunition or licensing/permits, much less the processing charges. It costs money to even be allowed to hunt public lands, and the fines if caught without the appropriate licenses can be pretty steep.
Gindy51
@Amir Khalid: No. It happened in our family, granddads used to hunt now none of the 10 grand kids even want to bother with guns, they hate them.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Corner Stone: Awkward Constructs ᴙ Me.
I usually write most of a sentence, decide I need a URL, add the URL, and too often mess up the train of thought.
Most people in urban areas have no legitimate need for a gun. Hunting squirrels can be done with air rifles and the like (but even those can blind people). Pepper spray and 15M candlepower flashlights and air horns can handle the vast majority of “home invasion” type situations. ;-)
Yeah, it’s tilting at windmills, but we’ve got to start somewhere…
Cheers,
Scott.
Anne Laurie
@Culture of Truth:
Or hunting bows!
You can spend as much money on a top-quality compound bow as you can on a hunting rifle, and bring down big game very effectively, too. Only reason the ammosexuals don’t get sweaty over them is that it takes actual skill to use a hunting bow, and a tyro playing games is more liable to hurt himself than anyone else.
Adam L Silverman
@Keith G: Yes, but… The business have to have the appropriate signage. To ban open carry that is a Texas code 30.07 sign. To ban conceal carry it is a Texas code 30.06 sign. If it is not either of these, as in just a sign done up and printed out, then it doesn’t count. Moreover, if you read the firearms sites and the comments, people that carry or want to know who does and does not allow them to do so and based on their comments frequent or avoid based on whether they can or cannot carry at that establishment.
Anne Laurie
@dogwood:
No CWD (chronic wasting disease) among deer in your area?
I know of health-conscious Michigan hunters who’re quite paranoid about the possibility of prion disease in their kills…
goblue72
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Those conditions no longer exist. Although there was a temporary 4-year food stamp program as part of the New Deal, the first Food Stamp Act wasn’t enacted until the Johnson Administration in 1964. And that program was limited to three cities and a modest number of counties. The food stamp program did not become a nationwide program until the mid-1970s.
In other words, the tales of other generations need to hunt for food subsistence were very well true – but starting in the mid-1960s, and much much more so from the mid-1970s and onward, those conditions were drastically reduced due to the addition of food subsistence as part of the nation’s social welfare safety net.
debbie
Maybe it’s a good omen that the NRA is raising membership fees for the first time in 20 years. Not linking to gun nut sites, but a lifetime membership is increasing to $1,500 from $1,000.
Adam L Silverman
@JPL: To quote my favorite rhyming demon: “See man’s final disgrace, he cut’s his nose to spite his face.”
This is going to be a problem. The al Nimris, or more accurately the Albu Nimr, are a tribal confederation (tribe of tribes). They include both Shi’a and Sunni in Iraq (some of the original Anbar Awakening sheikhs were Sunni Nimris). They also include Shi’a members throughout the Gulf States. If I had to take an educated guess, my take would be that the Saudi authorities felt they had to do this to mollify the Muwaheedun clerics that provide the theological/ideological support for Saudi rule. Back over the Summer Islamic State fighters probed across the border into the Eastern Saudi Provinces – killing a Saudi brigadier. These provinces are home to two things: 1) Saudi’s oil and 2) Saudi’s Shi’a. My take on that raid was to see if IS could get Saudi to defend the Shi’a from IS attack, thereby demonstrating their apostasy in protecting the satanic, unbelieving Shi’a. There are already reports of unrest in Bahrain and the other Gulf States.
goblue72
@efgoldman: Again, who gives a shit. They represent such a small fraction of the U.S. population as to be completely irrelevant in any discussion of gun control. Bringing it up is what the straw man is.
And I would expect that a sizable number of those who truly need to hunt for food security purposes are eligible for food stamps but refuse to participate out of cultural pride. As I noted above, the vast, overwhelming majority of hunters are white man. And of those, the majority are over age 45. That is the demographic group that is socioeconomically the LEAST disadvantaged.
So why even bring up “I know some people who hunt for food”. Wonderful – I know a drag queen who is in the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Its about as relevant to gun control policy and needing to avoid affecting those who hunt for food. Neither are relevant.
realbtl
I would be willing to bet 1m internet dollars (just try and collect) that the Venn overlap between hunters and open carry folks is negligible. In 16 years here in NW MT i have seen exactly 0 folks open carry. As someone said earlier you don’t take you skillsaw or fishing pole into the grocery store.
dogwood
@Roger Moore:
You hit the nail on the head. And to take it one step further, when the number of households with guns starts declining across the board, you have to sell more guns to a smaller demographic. I realize there are many liberals who abhor hunting, but I don’t believe traditional hunting culture is responsible for the gun fettish culture we are living with today.
KS in MA
@Dread:
Please let me know when you’re running for office. I’ll move so I can vote for you!
PurpleGirl
@Anne Laurie: There are counties in NYS where you can only hunt with bows. Hunting bows are quite sophisticated and look like torture devices. Hunting is also relied on to cull the deer population.
Adam L Silverman
@Ridnik Chrome: Actually a lot do. I’m not sure how much is that they empathize versus a reflexive shield against charges of white privilege. Same thing when they fail to acknowledge that Japanese Americans could legally purchase firearms and it did them no good in preventing themselves from being rounded up and interred.
Keith G
@Adam L Silverman: The Texas code 30.07 signs cost less that $15.00 at Staples (I am a manager/baker at a cafe). In my community, I doubt we would notice a dip in sales if “carriers” drove on by.
Again, after the heat blows off, this won’t be much of an issue for all but a very few.
Adam L Silverman
@Anne Laurie: And Adam Winkler’s Gun Fight too.
Roger Moore
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I assume that they don’t really “see” it; they’ve bought into the doublethink so thoroughly that they just don’t notice the contradiction. They’ve bought so heavily into the idea that all blacks are criminals that they can’t acknowledge that they’d ever have a right to open carry.
Anne Laurie
@goblue72:
… who can least afford to be legally targeted for ‘lifestyle violations’.
Apart from ‘primary subsistence’, there’s still a larger minority who enjoy hunting, do so safely, and eat what they kill. I don’t smoke marijuana, and I’d prefer people didn’t smoke it or tobacco or clove cigarettes around me, but I don’t consider it a good use of public money or energy to lock up marijuana smokers on the grounds that what they’re doing could lead to more dangerous pursuits, or enable criminals to take advantage of the ‘loophole’.
Corner Stone
Basing an argument of relevance/irrelevance off a strawman reply is a powerful way to persuade.
goblue72
@Roger Moore: Pretty much. Less than 30 percent of those who recently bought a gun did so for hunting. The majority did so for “home protection” – this in spite of the fact that U.S. crime rates continue to decline and are levels that haven’t been seen since the 1960s. 6 percent of those who own a semi-automatic rifle use it primarily for hunting.
Paranoid race-based fantasies by gun nuts are the growth sector for gun manufacturers and thus for their lobby, the NRA. Its in their interest to fuel the paranoia.
Adam L Silverman
@Keith G: Good to know if I ever open a business in Texas. The debate on the firearms sites over who to frequent/support/shop with/patronize with business over this stuff is amazing to read.
realbtl
@goblue72: Fuck you and your ‘who gives a shit.” My grandson and his SO supplement their minimum wage jobs with not only hunting but harvesting fresh road killed deer, legal here in MT with the proper form. Are you volunteering to kick in a couple of $k to help them out?
I thought not so shut up about things of which you know nothing.
Redshift
@efgoldman:
They are definitely a problem, and should be dealt with as there is no sane argument for anyone to own them and mass shootings are a horrific problem that we could easily prevent. But I’m pretty sure that in terms of gun deaths, the percentage from mass shootings is pretty tiny compared to handguns. (I don’t have a reference handy, so I could be wrong.)
One thing that pisses me off about the gun debate in this country is that the ammosexuals have so narrowed the measures that politicians will even consider that even in the places they’re passed the effect is marginal enough that the ammosexuals will trumpet their ineffectiveness.
Omnes Omnibus
Since the amount of subsistence hunting seems to have become a thing in his thread, I’ll just note that handguns and AR-15 type assault rifles are not particularly well suited for hunting. Strong regulations of those guns would have little effect on sport or subsistence hunters.
Adam L Silverman
@goblue72: And always have been. Somewhere in a box in storage I have copies of ads taken out by firearms manufacturers during Reconstruction promoting the need to purchase a firearm for self defense. With the end of the Great Rebellion, sales were drying up. Similar adds went up again in the 60s with the advent of the Civil Rights movement.
And to consolidate responses: I see nothing in the stats you’ve cited that I would disagree with. I’m not sure, however, that setting a policy that has a side effect of punishing even an extreme minority that hunts is a well designed policy. If hunting is dying out, then killing it via policy making may not be an effective use of policy. Better to just let it continue on its current trajectory.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus:
And so it is noted, no one on the thread that I have seen was arguing differently.
Adam L Silverman
@Redshift: Almost all of our policy making issues are unnaturally limited in some way by well financed and vocal special interests. So we don’t judge policy on their actual merits of “is it good for the general welfare” and is it “feasible, acceptable, and suitable”, but rather on whether it can be shoe horned into the existing political constraints.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: True. I wasn’t intending to argue with anyone; I was making an observation.
Geeno
Around here (Rochester, NY), fishing is what the poor do to supplement the diet. Hunting is too expensive between the gear and heading out to some place where it’s allowed. Hunters are usually middle class guys looking to add food they consider a luxury to the pantry. Game meats like venison and wild goose are delicious and rarely carried by the local grocer.
dogwood
@goblue72:
You are right. “Hunting for food” doesn’t mean hunting for survival any more than gardening for food means garden or die.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Ridnik Chrome:
Actually, they talk about it all the time. They use it as a reason that gun control is evil, leaving people defenseless. Of course, I’ve yet to hear of a liberal that wants gun control to apply only to a minority portion of the population, so their argument doesn’t really make sense.
goblue72
@efgoldman: I am perfectly aware. I am also aware that Obama boosted SNAP between 2009 – 2013 as part of ARRA. I am aware that in 2013 those benefit increases phased out, amounting to a roughly 5% benefit cut from the increased rate.
I am also aware regardless of the up and down of SNAP benefits over last 10 plus years, food insecurity in the U.S. remains extremely lower than it was prior to the Food Stamp Act of 1964 and its nationwide expansion in the 1970s – such that “some people need to hunt for food” is completely irrelevant in the broader context of gun control policies in the 21st century.
Eric U.
it would be one thing if concealed permits required some background check to get, but they have been working on that. Around here, you write the sheriff and then they send you one.
realbtl
@efgoldman: What he said. I’m familiar with this poster and should have known better.
Anne Laurie
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yup.
Just like strong regulations about who can buy cigarettes, and where they can be consumed, have not destroyed the cigarette industry (yet). But they’ve saved a lot of individual suffering and public-health dollars, by making it harder for dumb kids to get addicted, and easier for people with health concerns not to spend their days trying to avoid second-hand smoke.
I advocate for treating gun management the way we’ve treated tobacco consumption — one small step, one venue at a time. You are, I think, old enough to remember when “everybody” (almost half the adult population) smoked; it was legal for adults to smoke in schools and hospital maternity areas! Now even the less considerate smokers know it’s on them to avoid being a nuisance… they’ll still bitch about ‘health nazis’ but they don’t actually light up indoors in most public spaces.
Gin & Tonic
@efgoldman: Hell, I don’t even like venison, but some people see it as a delicacy, for others it’s a way to have extra meat in the freezer at minimum expense.
Coming in late, but sport hunting is also part of a comprehensive wildlife management program in most of the United States. Arguably it is better for deer to be shot and in someone’s freezer than it is for them to starve to death in the winter.
Redshift
@Anne Laurie: I think the point with hunters is that as the ammosexuals get more insane and more embarrassing, it may be possible to split more hunters off from the absolutist NRA sheep. The important thing isn’t whether they need to hunt, it’s about whether they can be part of a coalition of sane people big enough to counter the gun manufacturers (which doesn’t exist yet) as the number of gun owners continues to decline.
In my view, anyone who says fuck you to hunters in pursuit of a total ban is just being a purity pony, which we can afford even less on an issue where we don’t yet have a working majority than on issues where we’re defending gains.
Adam L Silverman
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: These conversations usually make liberal (see what I did…) reference to Goldberg’s opus de derp Liberal Fascism”, so…
goblue72
@realbtl: I vote every year for candidates who will raise taxes and expand the social welfare safety net. And volunteer my time working for the political party that generally supports that as well. Even if its going to be benefit those voters in red states that would rather cut off their noses than raise taxes. That’s what I do, bub.
And yes, I don’t really care about the one-off anecdotal examples in the broader context of gun control that merely distracts from the need to take away the vast majority of everyone’s guns.
dogwood
@Anne Laurie:
If CWD were an issue in my area, I’m pretty sure my contractor would not be eating venison.
Adam L Silverman
@Redshift: The 2nd Amendment maximalists/absolutists already consider the hunting only community suspect. Its why they call them Fudds.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
Those two near misses I wrote a about up thread? Both people in my hunting party, both supposed to be safe hunters. That was as I said decades ago. Hunters are people with guns, maybe a bit better than ammosexuals but not by much.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh. Well then, the Observatory is over that way. This here is the Arguments Dept.
Corner Stone
Man, these Andrew Luck “Lucky Beard” commercials are freakin’ epically ironic at this point in the season.
realbtl
@goblue72: Shit, no one has called me bub in at least 55 years.
Gin & Tonic
@efgoldman: Damn fast typing!
Easier if you don’t waste your time reading most of the comments.
Redshift
@Adam L Silverman: So we should definitely be trying to win them over to the idea that gun control doesn’t threaten their lifestyle choice.
dogwood
@efgoldman:
Hunters are an integral part of complex wildlife management regimes.
father pussbucket
@Belafon:
When pink guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have pink guns.
Gvg
Hunters that follow safety rules of sense do not deserve to have spiteful laws aimed at them. Many are frightened of the popular gun culture people who have invaded their woods, don’t know safety and are often drunk. Hunters may be collectors also as it’s a hobby many like so they may resemble gun nuts too but if they follow safety rules and don’t insist their way is the only right way, they aren’t the problem.
Rules that forbid and fund enforcement of losing privlidges if you have any other drinking or anger run ins with the law would be more to the point.
Stardust
Elections have consequences. You get what you vote for or fail to vote against.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: I know hunters that hunt to supplement their food supply because they like game. I know some folks, as I’ve lived in a lot of rural areas, that hunt to supplement their food supply period. And I know those that hunt because they enjoy it and they like the taste of game. I also know what happens when populations aren’t kept under control.
Adam L Silverman
@realbtl: Has anyone seen Goblue72 and Wolverine together? Eh?
Adam L Silverman
@Redshift: I’m honestly not sure these arguments can be won. Very few seem to be persuadable and like so much else there are sharp divides with little willingness to compromise by the most vocal and active members of either side.
goblue72
@Redshift: Banning handguns and semi-automatic rifles (which I am in favor of) will involve taking away those kinds of guns from “good” hunters. Which is why its a waste of time for liberals to tilt at windmills trying to find allegiances over the issue with “hunters”, because serious gun control will require taking away some guns from those hunters. There is just no way to get around that. And they won’t support that – at least in meaningful numbers that make it worth the time. And active hunters make up a mere 5 percent or so of the U.S. population.
I would rather chase the increasing number of people in the U.S. (and increasing percentage of the U.S. population) who DON’T own a gun at all and move them from passive neutral observers to active supporters of gun control, and get them to show up at the ballot box.
Politics involves the prioritization of resources to assemble voting coalitions. And that involves driving wedges between voter groups. Public policy achievements in politics is not about incremental change. It is about continuing pushing issues where incremental achievements are made IN THE MEANTIME (which serves the purpose of both having some minor successes that are better than none while keeping base supporters interested, until those infrequent windows of opportunity open up during temporary control of sufficient levers of government by a single party caucus occurs, during which actual material achievement can be advanced – after which the window closes again.
Outside of disability rights, all of the major Federal level civil rights legislative achievement occurred within a very brief window of time (roughly 1964-1968) that has not been recreated since. The big environmental achievements at the Federal level (the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, AKA NEPA, the Endangered Species Act, the Water Pollution Control Act, the creation of the EPA) all occurred with a brief window between 1970 – 1973. Federal level universal healthcare had a brief window open in the mid-1960s (creation of Medicaid and Medicare under the Social Security Act of 1965) that would not meaningfully re-open until the ACA was passed. (One could argue it re-opened in the early Clinton Administration and that they just botched it – but there’s also an argument to be made that the window at that time wasn’t really all that open).
President Obama recently appeared on Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Car Drinking Coffee web series. To Seinfeld’s question of “politics/governing is most like which sport?”, he made the quite trenchant observation that its like football – grinding away a yard here, a yard there, fumbling and losing yards, having to put a lot because you can’t convert – and pushing away until a little space opens up for the big gains that are the playmakers.
geg6
I grew up in a hunting family and learn to shoot and dress game. This was in the 60s, my parents had six kids, my dad worked two jobs (steelworker and cemetery worker) and my mom one (and went to school part-time, too). We definitely used the deer and turkeys that my dad and/or one of us kids, after the age of 15, got during the season every fall to supplement the food my parents could buy. Especially the year the steelworkers were out on strike. I still know families who are not eligible for food stamps but don’t make enough to make ends meet who need to hunt to keep the freezer full (and they garden and can for the same reason). I don’t begrudge them the ability to do that in any way. But neither my family in the 60s nor the families I know who hunt for food are ammosexuals. They have hunting rifles and hunting bows and they consider them tools. I have no desire to make their lives harder or less enjoyable. But the fetishists are a whole other kettle of fish. They have turned me into a big advocate of gun control and they’ve just about done the same with almost everyone I know. Most hunters of my acquaintance are not fans of the ammosexuals and their fetish. They see them for what they are, scared blowhards with minuscule genitals. They feel the same way about canned hunts and big game hunters.
Goblue72
@geg6: Do the hunters you know own handguns? If so, they don’t need them. Not for any purpose related to food. How would they feel about surrendering their handgun/s to the government?
dogwood
@Adam L Silverman: ‘
I think you can make slow progress with some people. I had a small victory with my gun owning contractor recently. He’s not overly political ,but he is defensive about gun rights. Slippery slope and all that. We were chatting about my annoying neighbor one day and I told him she drives me crazy when my grandson is with me because she wants him to come to her home a play with the grand daughter she babysits. Well, that’s never gonna happen because they keep loaded guns in the home. The upshot of this conversation was that just before Christmas he told me that he never kept loaded guns in his home, but he had decided to purchase a gun safe. He said he realized he wouldn’t want his kids playing with an unloaded gun if they ever found it. Baby steps.
geg6
@Goblue72:
No, not in general. A few do, but they are cops and an old friend who competes in marksmanship. So, they are still considered tools to them.
Adam L Silverman
@dogwood: true, but this is also just smart safety consciousness.
dogwood
@geg6:
I’ve never owned a gun, but 40 years ago I never thought that gun ownership signified all that much. I never assumed that people who owned guns must be fundamentally different than me. For many people today buying guns is a political act. The problem for society at large is that when guns become a symbol of someone’s wingnut loyalty, there is no reason to trust that they are responsible gun owners.
geg6
@dogwood:
True. This why I’m glad to see that my hunter friends are getting almost as disgusted by the gun fetishists as I am. We need to get them aboard with us. Until they do, and act on it, we’ll be destined to fail in our goals to minimize the probability of gun deaths and injuries. I know several who have given up their NRA memberships in disgust. That’s a hopeful sign.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@goblue72: Pretty good post, but Title IX from 1972 is a pretty big piece of civil rights legislation.
Cheers,
Scott.