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You are here: Home / Embracing the NRA on gun control – Updated

Embracing the NRA on gun control – Updated

by David Anderson|  January 13, 20166:00 pm| 101 Comments

This post is in: All we want is life beyond the thunderdome

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Adam L. Silverman: After the comment brouhaha about running afoul of Chief Wright’s wishes on how his posts are handled, I contacted Richard and asked if I could have a go at editing his post keeping the Chief’s concerns in mind because this is such an important topic. And from reading Chief Wright, I know its an important topic for him as well. So below the update line below, is an amended variation on what Richard put together this morning

——— Update at 6:00 PM ———

Last June (26 JUN 2015) Chief Jim Wright at Stonekettle Station wrote a thoughtful and thought provoking post about how to handle the reasonable regulation of firearms that every Supreme Court ruling dealing with the 2nd Amendment, including the recent Heller decision* recognize as being constitutional.

 

Chief Wright posited that the way to cut through the politics and arguments and intransigence around the 2nd Amendment would be to enshrine the NRA’s rules for safe firearm handling as law. These rules, sometimes called the four rules or four laws of firearm safety are generally credited to Colonel Jeff Copper a former US Marine Corps officer and WW II and Korean War Veteran.

The rules that Chief Wright argued should be made into law are:

….Always assume the gun is loaded, unless you personally have verified that it is unloaded……

Always point the gun in a safe direction.

Know your target and what is beyond.

The NRA adds a very reasonable and sensible fifth rule:

 

Store guns so they are not accessible to unauthorized persons.

Click over and see the Chief’s commentary on each of these, as well as how and why this should be pursued as a matter of public policy.

This post was not the first time that Chief Wright addressed issues pertaining to firearms or America’s seeming fascination with them or what to do about this fascination when trying to develop and establish public policy in line with the 2nd Amendment and the Supreme Court’s interpretation of it. These posts can be found linked to below and I highly recommend that you take the time to click over and read them if you have not done so before:

The Seven Stages of Gun Violence

The Bang Bang Crazy series:

Part 1, What we need, see, are more guns, big fucking guns
Part 2, Gun violence isn’t the exception in America, it’s who we are
Part 3, Sandy Hook, the NRA, and a gun in every school
Part 4, More dead kids and why we have laws
Part 5, Gun control and a polite society
Part 6, The Christopher Dorner rampage, they needed killin’
Part 7, Still more dead kids and let’s print our own guns!
Part 8, Let’s try blaming the victim, shall we?
Part 9, Armed soldiers on post, sure, nothing to go wrong there.

And:

Random Thoughts on the Giffords Shooting (updated x2)

The Sunday Morning Come to Jesus Moment on Second Amendment Solutions

 * The Heller decision is the first time that the Supreme Court has recognized an explicit right for individual’s to own firearms, and to do so for self defense, in the 2nd Amendment. Prior to that previous Supreme Court rulings had recognized an implicit right for individual’s to own firearms.

 

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Reader Interactions

101Comments

  1. 1.

    Betty Cracker

    January 13, 2016 at 11:36 am

    I’m just stealing a massive post from Stonekettle Station

    Might want to be careful there…

  2. 2.

    MomSense

    January 13, 2016 at 11:37 am

    If I left my child in a hot/cold car all day and caused his death by my negligence, I would be prosecuted. In all these cases of “accidental” gun deaths, how often are the responsible parties charged? Just yesterday a little boy found a loaded gun at his dad’s store and killed himself. Will dad be charged?

  3. 3.

    RaflW

    January 13, 2016 at 11:42 am

    This is one place where the GOP mantra of personal responsibility makes excellent sense. Hold the user liable for their consequences. I love that the NRA has laid out the roadmap to accountability!

  4. 4.

    Patricia Kayden

    January 13, 2016 at 11:42 am

    Having grown up in Canada, I just don’t get why anyone needs to own a gun. I get that people hunt but still don’t understand the gun culture that has developed and is so strong in the U.S. I would be terrified to have one in my house for so many different reasons.

    Sadly, if the killing of little school children in Newtown didn’t move the needle on gun reform legislation, I’m afraid nothing will. The gun culture is too entrenched.

  5. 5.

    charluckles

    January 13, 2016 at 11:44 am

    Why is it plausible?

    And these kinds of arguments are ludicrous:

    “Laws don’t stop crime. It would be nice if they did, but laws don’t stop crime. Instead laws give society legal recourse when its members engage in antisocial behavior…Laws against theft and murder don’t stop theft and murder, they give society legal options when theft and murder occur.”

    Jumping from laws don’t stop all crime, to laws don’t stop crime is insane and plays right into the NRA etals framing on this issue.

  6. 6.

    japa21

    January 13, 2016 at 11:45 am

    It should be noted that not a single one of those in any way infringes on the right of a person to own firearms unless that person breaks the law by failing to meet those requirements. And taking away a person’s right to own firearms due to various reasons is established as being in accordance with the 2nd Amendment.

    The GOP, that well known paragon of the philosophy of personal responsibility would, of course, fight every one of those suggestions, because personal responsibility only applies to those who are moochers on the government teat (unless you are white and getting huge government subsidies for business and farming).

  7. 7.

    qwerty42

    January 13, 2016 at 11:48 am

    Richard, I’m afraid that’s the old NRA. The major concern now is not proper use of firearms, it the arrival of Armageddon or ISIS or Democrats or something (gets kind of vague) and when it’s the fin de siècle, believing every gun is loaded isn’t your first priority. Well, until you shoot someone at the grocery store as you were reaching to pick up the bread.

  8. 8.

    Cyrus

    January 13, 2016 at 11:49 am

    Ha. Ha. Ha. These seem like great ideas that the NRA and absolutely every gun owner would fight with their dying breath if someone actually tried to make them laws and enforce them.

    We start right there: anyone who picks up a gun is responsible for its condition. No excuses.

    What! How is this going to be enforced? Are jackbooted thugs going to inspect home gun safes? Which DA is going to add insult to injury by prosecuting the parent of a toddler who shot someone? DAs are elected in most places; that won’t look good in a campaign ad.

    Always keep the gun unloaded until ready to use, that’s NRA rule #3….

    But then what’s the point of open carry, or for that matter concealed carry? How are people going to fantasize about defending themselves from a “thug” on the street or heroically being the good guy with a gun at a would-be mass shooting if their weapon is unloaded?

  9. 9.

    Hillary Rettig

    January 13, 2016 at 11:51 am

    it’s a great list

  10. 10.

    patrick II

    January 13, 2016 at 11:52 am

    @MomSense:

    The sad thing is that the potential of having your kid could blow his own head off should already be enough to ensure that your gun is locked away. The fact that we think that criminal charges in addition to losing a child might actually make a difference shows how little we think of these guys.

    And it might. An acquaintance’s eight-year-old nephew shot himself to death with a loaded shotgun found in a closet. His dad said it must have been god’s will. The threat of the father himself actually paying a steep price might have actually given him pause before storing his gun so carelessly.

  11. 11.

    No One of Consequence

    January 13, 2016 at 11:52 am

    Fear not, and keep in mind, from the esteemed Ursula L LeGuin:

    “…We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”

    Assuming parity with Australia (for arguments sake, after Port Arthur, when significant changes occurred), what will be required is a single event where roughly 3,000 citizens are killed. This will require a shopping mall or sporting event or concert to be assaulted and every person there to be killed, with minimal aid from explosives or supplemental non-firearm weaponry. It will be important that explosive use is minimized if not skipped entirely, lest the event be written off as terrorism of one flavor or another. It certainly will be that, but the vast majority of the deaths must be from bullet wounds, fired from assault-style weaponry.

    Short of that, like too many others (especially foreigners trying to understand our madhouse of a country), if twenty 6-year-olds gunned down in their class does not do it, nothing will.

    I hope I am wrong, but I suspect I am not.

    – NOoC

  12. 12.

    Miss Bianca

    January 13, 2016 at 12:01 pm

    works for me.

  13. 13.

    C.V. Danes

    January 13, 2016 at 12:04 pm

    The ease with which people can buy guns is a problem for sure. But the amount of guns is merely a symptom of fear: people only buy guns in the quantities they have been buying them because they think they have to to be safe. What we’re experiencing is a breakdown of civil society.

  14. 14.

    MomSense

    January 13, 2016 at 12:05 pm

    @patrick II:

    I guess I don’t understand why there is a double standard. If it does cause parents to better educate themselves and to take steps to prevent an “accidental” death, then it is a good idea.

  15. 15.

    C.V. Danes

    January 13, 2016 at 12:06 pm

    @No One of Consequence: we did have a single event where 3000 people were killed, and the result was people buying more guns because terrorism. If 20+ children getting murdered didn’t change things, nothing will.

  16. 16.

    Kropadope

    January 13, 2016 at 12:06 pm

    @Betty Cracker: At least he game them credit.

  17. 17.

    Villago Delenda Est

    January 13, 2016 at 12:06 pm

    If you own a gun, you should be required carry liability insurance.

    The howls of the ammosexuals can be heard even as I typed those twelve words.

  18. 18.

    JPL

    January 13, 2016 at 12:08 pm

    @No One of Consequence: Sadly, I agree with you. If all crime scene photos were released, maybe then, we see an uproar in our country. Look what happened when a boob was exposed at the Super Bowl.

  19. 19.

    Archon

    January 13, 2016 at 12:10 pm

    @C.V. Danes:

    Definitely wouldn’t solve all our problems regarding guns and the root cause of gun violence but a layer of liability laws surrounding guns would absolutely cut down on the number of people getting killed.

  20. 20.

    Tim C.

    January 13, 2016 at 12:11 pm

    We managed to change cultural attitudes about drinking and driving in a really similar manner. Tougher laws for people who get caught doing horrible things really sends a message. Locally we had a toddler get shot in the face because her uncle decided he really needed to use his gun cleaning kit right away on Christmas morning. No charges are being filed because he feels bad already. I get the impulse toward mercy. I really do. But it really is no different than your typical drinking and driving death. Most of those guys never want to kill or maim anyone either. I really like this idea as being something that can do some good.

  21. 21.

    Southern Beale

    January 13, 2016 at 12:13 pm

    This is nice but as long as the loudest, most paranoid elements of the gun “debate” are allowed to dominate, common sense is chucked out the window. And let’s be real: even the “patriots” don’t listen to their own advice on guns. For example:

    Anti-Obama march organizer fatally shoots right-wing militant buddy in drunken dispute over gun

  22. 22.

    w3ski

    January 13, 2016 at 12:13 pm

    I Like it. I am a lifetime gun owner. I was taught these rules by my Dad, an Army Officer, before I ever shot any firearm. I still live by these rules 62 years later and have never shot anything I did not intend to.
    Make it the law. I am All for it.
    w3ski

  23. 23.

    Betty Cracker

    January 13, 2016 at 12:14 pm

    @Kropadope: Most bloggers don’t give a shit if you repost their stuff with attribution — this guy definitely does. Just saying.

  24. 24.

    FlipYrWhig

    January 13, 2016 at 12:15 pm

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Having grown up in Canada, I just don’t get why anyone needs to own a gun.

    Because one day the Dark People will come, and they’ll have guns, and you’ll want to be able to shoot them so they don’t rape your wife and daughter, or, if they do it anyway, you can get them afterwards in a vendetta. America!

  25. 25.

    Gin & Tonic

    January 13, 2016 at 12:15 pm

    @Archon: My homeowners’ insurance company required me to add a railing to the steps going down from the deck (it was 4 steps, and anything more than 3 requires a handrail) for liability reasons. They did not ask if I own firearms.

  26. 26.

    MomSense

    January 13, 2016 at 12:17 pm

    @Betty Cracker:

    I thought that it was considered good form generally to post no more than 2 paragraphs and to provide the link to the article.

  27. 27.

    Southern Beale

    January 13, 2016 at 12:19 pm

    Also: stuff happens!

    Congratulations, Unidentified IN Person! You’re Our 2nd Amendment Hero Du Jour

    I mean, I’m sorry. Telling people not to handle firearms when they’re drunk, make sure the gun isn’t loaded, make sure YOU’RE not loaded, make sure the person you’re killing really IS an intruder, not your own kid — this is all very well and good but haven’t we been telling people this forever? That hasn’t changed the law of averages. People are going to fuck up because that’s what people do. The more guns out there in the general population, the more people interact with guns on a regular basis, the more accidents and other problems happen.

    THAT’S CALLED MATH, PEOPLE.

  28. 28.

    Amir Khalid

    January 13, 2016 at 12:22 pm

    @No One of Consequence:
    The Port Arthur mass shooting was much more atypical in Australia than it would have been in America. Guns are not made a fetish in Oz popular culture as they are in America’s. To my knowledge, Australia doesn’t have a domestic firearms industry like the USA does. Nor does it have an equivalent to either the Second Amendment or the NRA. These political impediments make proper gun control laws much harder to enact in the US than anywhere else.

  29. 29.

    Southern Beale

    January 13, 2016 at 12:22 pm

    @Gin & Tonic:

    That would probably be against state law because Constitution, etc. There was one of those boiler-plate pieces of legislation peddled around the state legislatures a few years ago called something like the “firearms anti-discrimination act” that prevented insurance companies from “discriminating” against gun owners by either refusing policies or even charging more for the added risk.

    Small government alert, I know. So let’s basically remove the one free-market restraint on guns.

    I wrote about Florida’s law here.

  30. 30.

    Paul in KY

    January 13, 2016 at 12:26 pm

    @patrick II: People who store loaded firearms in places where kids can get to them should be beat like they do in Singapore. 10 lashes with cane. That’s the ones who the gun didn’t kill/maim any innocent party.

  31. 31.

    The Other Chuck

    January 13, 2016 at 12:27 pm

    @No One of Consequence: It WILL be written off as terrorism, full stop. Or, assuming the perpetrator is sufficiently white, a one-off event that just underscores the need for more guns.

    There is no stopping the murder/suicide of this country by gun

  32. 32.

    patrick II

    January 13, 2016 at 12:27 pm

    @MomSense:

    I’m not saying these laws wouldn’t be a good idea. I’m saying that people should already have the incentive do the necessary gun safety things when they have kids — because they have kids. But they don’t. So, evidently we need laws that put the gun owner in peril — and that, not their own children’s safety, may be the thing that gives them the incentive to do proper gun safety. And that is pretty sad.

  33. 33.

    Anoniminous

    January 13, 2016 at 12:27 pm

    If a group of people want to accomplish something they create an organization to unite around and to push the issue to the general public and to lobby politicians. The ammosexuals have the NRA. To stop the gun madness there has to be something similar on the control side.

  34. 34.

    cahuenga

    January 13, 2016 at 12:31 pm

    @Gin & Tonic:

    The link you reqested downstairs:

    http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2013/07/SDT-millennials-living-with-parents-07-2013.pdf

    Pay particular attention to chart on page 2 –
    Living with parents – 36%
    Living with other kin – 7%

  35. 35.

    japa21

    January 13, 2016 at 12:31 pm

    @Southern Beale: Yes people will screw up. And yes, they have been told for decades about all the stuff in this post. And as the article points out, this has been done by the NRA.

    But there have been no consequences for failure to follow these simple guidelines, so many people don’t pay any attention to them.

    Perhaps, if there were consequences, as outlined above, people may start giving second thoughts. Look, I know that a parent feels bad if they accidentally shoot one of their own kids, or if their kids shoots themselves or someone else. But unless there is a further consequence, then all we will have is parents who feel bad and a mounting death toll of kids who, if their parents hadn’t been so careless and negligent, would still be alive.

  36. 36.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    January 13, 2016 at 12:31 pm

    @Betty Cracker: Yup. if Richard were to ask my advice, it would be to either end the quote after

    …looks like the NRA

    Or, use only:

    There are no accidents with guns.

    There. Are. No. Accidents.

    It’s a killing machine. You’re responsible. Period. No exceptions

    .

    Either of with a link encouraging Juicers to read the piece in its entirety at the site. And add Mayhew thoughts around it, if desired.

    I strongly urge revising the post from its current version. Did I mention it’s emphatically offered advice?

  37. 37.

    Paul in KY

    January 13, 2016 at 12:32 pm

    @C.V. Danes: That one was fuel loaded metal missiles. Port Arthur was 40 or so shot in Australia. NOOC was correct, the same size massacre here would be around 590 shot by guns (my calculation).

    Note: Australia population at time of massacre approx. 21 million.

  38. 38.

    russell

    January 13, 2016 at 12:36 pm

    works for me.

    as does delenda’s liability insurance suggestion, at a minimum for folks who carry.

  39. 39.

    scav

    January 13, 2016 at 12:37 pm

    A polite society is one shutting up or being careful of word choice because of the threat of armed force: doing the same explicitly because of a concern for the feelings of others is PC bullshit nonsense. All Hail NRA’merka.

    (If you’re not a birth-right ‘merkan, it’s terrorism. See how it all coheres? Buy local, employ only ‘mercans for deadly rampages.)

  40. 40.

    Calouste

    January 13, 2016 at 12:39 pm

    Getting “responsible gun owners” to follow those NRA rules has the same likelihood as Christianists actually following the ten commandments.

  41. 41.

    scav

    January 13, 2016 at 6:25 pm

    @srv: Whereas you people believe in magic fairy dust and jelly babies curing all ills? (I know, I know!!!! You touched his robe and were cured!!! You could walk!! — albeit, not while chewing rubble bubble at the same time, but hey. Bubble are for financial markets, not the hoi.)

  42. 42.

    Patricia Kayden

    January 13, 2016 at 6:27 pm

    @FlipYrWhig: I’m one of those Dark People, but I’m not coming for anyone’s wife or daughter. You’re probably right that America’s racial demographics play a part in the entrenchment of its gun culture. Charlton Heston hinted at that in his comments to Michael Moore in “Bowling for Columbine”

    From Wikipedia: “For the final scene of the film, Moore visits Charlton Heston in his home and asks him about American firearm violence. Heston’s response includes the suggestions that the United States has a ‘history of violence’ and more ‘mixed ethnicity’ than other countries.”

  43. 43.

    debbie

    January 13, 2016 at 6:28 pm

    Except that Heller was wrong. That is what needs to be revisited.

  44. 44.

    pea

    January 13, 2016 at 6:40 pm

    rules chief wright failed to remember:
    don’t put your finger on the trigger unless you intend to wound/kill.
    people who’ve believed they verified their guns were unloaded were wrong.
    don’t store your gun on your night table.
    people who are freaked out have no concept of “right direction”
    children and the mentally ill have no concept of any of these “rules”
    psychopaths, sociopaths, pissed off white, misogynist, angry for whatever-the-fuck-reason don’t give a shit about these “rules”.
    but i’m sure he’s a nice guy.

  45. 45.

    eemom

    January 13, 2016 at 6:41 pm

    How utterly hilarious that the issue of shameless reposting of other people’s work came up, on THIS blog, against Richard of all people.

  46. 46.

    Roger Moore

    January 13, 2016 at 6:47 pm

    @Southern Beale:

    The more guns out there in the general population, the more people interact with guns on a regular basis, the more accidents and other problems happen.

    The law of averages says that for a very large number of guns, you can estimate the number of gun “accidents” as the number of guns times the probability of an accident. In the absence of a way of reducing the number of guns, our best hope is to reduce the probability of accidents, and the rules of firearm safety are a good start. If you look at your own Tennessee Gun Reports, you’ll see that a large fraction of the “accidents” are a result of violating basic safety rules, so there’s still plenty of room for improvement in that department.

  47. 47.

    pea

    January 13, 2016 at 7:03 pm

    @No One of Consequence: timothy mcveigh was not enough.

  48. 48.

    Betty Cracker

    January 13, 2016 at 7:04 pm

    @eemom: I brought it up first, I think, but I intended no criticism of Richard, whose posts I find uniformly informative and valuable. The only reason I pointed it out at all was because, unlike the vast majority of bloggers, Wright strenuously objects to anyone excerpting significant amounts of his material without his prior permission — even with attribution. I would have given the same heads-up to anyone who posted the original entry.

  49. 49.

    Roger Moore

    January 13, 2016 at 7:05 pm

    @patrick II:
    I think you’ve misdiagnosed the problem. It’s not that people aren’t afraid of the penalty for things, it’s that they think it will never apply to them. They think that their gun is too well hidden for their child to find it, or they’ve trained their children so well they’ll never mishandle a gun, or whatever. Because they believe there’s no chance of a gun incident, they aren’t afraid of the penalty no matter what it is. They really think it will never apply to them.

    It’s as if we only penalized drunk drivers after they got into an accident. Nobody gets into the car expecting to be in an accident; they honestly believe they’ll be able to get to their destination safely. Because of that, we need to make drunk driving itself illegal because it puts people at risk. Even people whose judgment is so clouded by alcohol to think they’re unimpaired may still be afraid of getting pulled over. We’re only going to get through to gun nuts if and when they can be penalized for unsafe behavior in the absence of actual harm.

  50. 50.

    NCSteve

    January 13, 2016 at 7:07 pm

    Col. Copper’s first rule needs modification and was modified in my household growing up in post-war Kentucky: the fucking thing is loaded, okay? Always. Even when you think you unloaded it, even if you took the damn thing to pieces, even if you’re only just holding a disassembled handgrip or barrel in your hand, it’s got a bullet in it, okay? Because if you don’t train your muscles and reflexes to always assume it’s loaded, always, every time, you could lose the “I thought it was unloaded” lottery of death.

  51. 51.

    Mandalay

    January 13, 2016 at 7:09 pm

    @MomSense:

    I thought that it was considered good form generally to post no more than 2 paragraphs and to provide the link to the article.

    That sounds reasonable, though there is no set amount if lawyers got involved. Anne Laurie is absolutely shameless about regularly stealing huge chunks of other people’s work, frequently without even adding any commentary.

    Just because lot’s of people do it, and few get prosecuted, it’s still theft – and immoral regardless of the legal side of things. And that is the case whether you link to the original text or not. Attribution doesn’t get you off the hook for stealing.

  52. 52.

    JimmyB

    January 13, 2016 at 7:11 pm

    @C.V. Danes: No I’m sorry it is not a breakdown of civil society it is the direct result of the 24/7/365 negative media all the time. It’s a psychological issue. Only show bad stories and stories that scare people and people will do something to make themselves feel less afraid (like stay home more or buy a gun). Despite the fact that violent crime as an overall in America is declining. What person living in a rural city under 4000 people has to carry a gun all the time to protect themselves from violent crime in an area where statistically they have as much of a chance of being a victim of violent crime on par with the powerball odds. Move to a large urban or suburban setting and the odds decrease but not by much. On a day to day basis here in the US you have a .00003 percent chance of being a victim of a violent crime committed with a gun. There is a better chance of being struck by lightning.

  53. 53.

    NJ

    January 13, 2016 at 7:11 pm

    @Betty C: I’ve never known Jim Wright to object to his blog being shared with attribution to non commercial sites. I’ve known him to get quite snarky when someone steals his work and publishes under their own name or a pay for site steals it and uses it without remuneration. Actually he’s far more civilized than I would be if someone tried to rip off my work.

  54. 54.

    Mnemosyne

    January 13, 2016 at 7:12 pm

    @Patricia Kayden:

    I still wonder if dementia from his encroaching Alzheimer’s affected Heston’s behavior. It’s so bizarre to me that he could go from marching with Dr. King to thinly veiled racist screeds. If so, shame on the NRA for exploiting someone who was not mentally competent.

  55. 55.

    pea

    January 13, 2016 at 7:14 pm

    @C.V. Danes: and yet, two major precepts of the “christian” religion are,
    “fear not” and, that “god” will avenge one’s enemies.

  56. 56.

    Mnemosyne

    January 13, 2016 at 7:16 pm

    Also, too, when reading some comments (by strangers) on Facebook about the father who shot his son to death thinking he was an intruder, there was a whole lot of talk about the NRA rules and how the fool had broken them, but very little consciousness that most gun owners these days never got an hour of training in gun safety, because they don’t have to. It’s completely optional.

    I know — let’s make it optional to pass a driving test before we give people drivers licenses. There’s no way for that to go wrong.

  57. 57.

    Mike J

    January 13, 2016 at 7:17 pm

    Let’s make that “embrace and extend the NRA on gun control.”

  58. 58.

    Mnemosyne

    January 13, 2016 at 7:18 pm

    @C.V. Danes:

    Given how fast the crime rate is going down (even the recent spikes are relative to the current all-time lows), civil society seems to be doing just fine despite what gun owners appear to believe.

  59. 59.

    Roger Moore

    January 13, 2016 at 7:22 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    civil society seems to be doing just fine despite what gun owners appear to believe.

    No, it isn’t. When there’s a group of people freaking out and acting up the way the ammosexuals (and the rest of the scared whites) are, society is not doing fine. Maybe crime isn’t a problem, but we have a massive fracture within our society that is causing all kinds of other problems.

  60. 60.

    Mandalay

    January 13, 2016 at 7:25 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    we need to make drunk driving itself illegal because it puts people at risk.

    @Mnemosyne:

    let’s make it optional to pass a driving test before we give people drivers licenses. There’s no way for that to go wrong.

    These are simple but very powerful arguments that anyone can understand. I wish our politicians would use analogies to driving laws when making the case for gun laws.

  61. 61.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    January 13, 2016 at 7:26 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    let’s make it optional to pass a driving test before we give people drivers licenses.

    Driving around here, I thought that already was the case.

    ETA: TDS did 2 segments on getting a gun license, very funny and really good.

  62. 62.

    George

    January 13, 2016 at 7:31 pm

    Which DA is going to add insult to injury by prosecuting the parent of a toddler who shot someone?

    The same DA who charges a parent whose child is killed or injured during a DUI. In NY we have Leandra’s Law, where having a child under 15 in the vehicle when you receive a DUI is a felony.

  63. 63.

    Mandalay

    January 13, 2016 at 7:36 pm

    @Betty Cracker:

    Most bloggers don’t give a shit if you repost their stuff with attribution — this guy definitely does.

    That’s completely unfair; what he has done is explicitly specify how much of his content you can freely use:

    You don’t need my permission to quote me
    Quotes should be short, no more than a paragraph
    You must quote me verbatim. In context would be nice too, just saying.
    Proper attribution is required, though you don’t actually have to include a link to Stonekettle Station.

    What’s wrong with that? Anyone who chooses to ignore HIS rules about HIS work deserves to end up in court. The same principles apply to any content – you can’t just steal stuff from others, and then claim that it is OK because nobody complained. That’s like getting away with shoplifting in Walmart,and then claiming that it must be OK because Walmart didn’t stop you.

    BJ OPs steal way too much shit from others.

  64. 64.

    morgan sheridan

    January 13, 2016 at 7:37 pm

    @Betty Cracker: And they fixed it and made nice with Wright after having read comments such as yours about his standards and preferences. :)

  65. 65.

    Baud

    January 13, 2016 at 7:42 pm

    @Mandalay:

    That’s completely unfair;

    How so? All she said was that this guy is more restrictive than most bloggers. Isn’t that accurate?

  66. 66.

    Mnemosyne

    January 13, 2016 at 7:42 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    If it’s one very specific section of society that’s freaking out, does that really count as an overall breakdown of civil society?

    Given some of the reports from Oregon, it sounds like the Bundy assholes and their supporters are trying to cause an overall breakdown, but I don’t think we’re actually there yet.

  67. 67.

    eemom

    January 13, 2016 at 7:45 pm

    @Mandalay:

    Anne Laurie is absolutely shameless about regularly stealing huge chunks of other people’s work, frequently without even adding any commentary.

    Oh, THAT’s not fair….surely the tedious refrain of “Apart from [XYZ], what’s on the agenda for [the day/week/weekend]” counts as commentary.

  68. 68.

    Bobby Thomson

    January 13, 2016 at 7:45 pm

    @George: it has to happen. Those parents are just as guilty as the ones who let their kids play in the highway. And people need to see them as criminals, not victims.

  69. 69.

    Betty Cracker

    January 13, 2016 at 7:52 pm

    @Mandalay: I didn’t say there’s anything wrong with Wright’s rules; I just pointed out that they exist and that they’re unusually stringent for a blogger.

  70. 70.

    mclaren

    January 13, 2016 at 7:53 pm

    Being the sparkling cheery friend-of-all-humanity that I am, wellllllllllllll…I have a slightly different suggestion about how to deal with gun violence in Shithole America.

    Indefinitely detain the leadership of the NRA for material support for terrorism.

    Shut down all gun manufacturers in America for material support for terrorism.

    Take guns away from police and give them a whistle to summon help from the public, as in John Peel’s original police force in England.

    Make possession of firearms a crime punishable by death with no possibility of appeal.

    Oh, and by the way: here’s a statistic for you — states that required background checks for firearm purchase saw a 38% reduction in the murder of women by intimate partners.

    What kind of reduction in the murder of women do you think you’d see if we banned guns outright and stopped their manufature in America?

    Let’s face it, people, the main function of guns in America is for husbands and boyfriends to murder their girlfriends or wives.

    Enough.

    Shut it down. Shut it all down.

  71. 71.

    Mandalay

    January 13, 2016 at 7:56 pm

    @Baud:

    this guy is more restrictive than most bloggers

    That may or may not be true; he is simply being explicit about what you can and cannot do with respect to his work, whereas most bloggers don’t do that. Part of the problem is that the law is vague, but the general principle is that you can’t take a significant amount of the work of someone else without their explicit permission. I believe AP limit quotes of their work to just 10 words.

    I don’t have a sign in my front yard telling people not to steal my mangoes, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care, and the absence of a sign does not imply that I am giving my consent for people to take my mangoes, and it certainly doesn’t imply that it is legal to take mangoes from my front yard.

  72. 72.

    patrick II

    January 13, 2016 at 7:59 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    Since you are using drunk driving as an example, the death rate for victims of drunk driving as fallen by half since the MADD campaign for stricter drunk driving laws in the 1980’s.

    For the most part, legal charges could only be filed after an “accident” happened. No law enforcement agency is going to conduct a search to assure guns are locked away — until after a gun “accident”. I think the potential for legal liability would make a difference (otherwise why have the law except for retribution?). But I’ve been wrong before.

  73. 73.

    Pete Daggett

    January 13, 2016 at 8:00 pm

    @Betty Cracker: Jim is a pretty intense guy, but he’s also reasonable, you can temper his words in the rant you referenced here with the what he wrote at 16:00 today 1/15/16 as a response to his essay being posted on Balloon Juice.

  74. 74.

    Baud

    January 13, 2016 at 8:02 pm

    @Mandalay: I agree with all that. On the other hand, if you knowingly allow people to take your mangoes for an extended period of time without trying to stop them, you could be deemed to have given implied consent to the practice. A blogger who is concerned about it would be wise to say something one way or the other.

  75. 75.

    gene108

    January 13, 2016 at 8:02 pm

    OT: Watching Tron and it is quite amazing how incredibly advanced people felt computers were in the early 1980’s.

    With War Games and even Superman III the idea we had the computing power to create AI’s capable of running the world might have been Sci-Fi, but it is derives from the general feeling at the time that we had crossed a technological threshold and were very highly advanced; rather than being at the primitive beginning of personal / portable computing age.

  76. 76.

    bhjulian

    January 13, 2016 at 8:06 pm

    @C.V. Danes: Safe from what? The people I know that are armed to the teeth have never experienced a violent crime. They don’t have gangs of thugs roaming the streets or live with daily carjackings, etc. Their fear has little or no basis in reality. It’s been manufactured, carefully polished, planted and tended by, I don’t know who exactly. Other “gun nuts”? Fringe media? Makes no sense to me.

  77. 77.

    gene108

    January 13, 2016 at 8:07 pm

    @patrick II:

    Since you are using drunk driving as an example, the death rate for victims of drunk driving as fallen by half since the MADD campaign for stricter drunk driving laws in the 1980’s.

    How much are DUI laws and how much is because cars are much safer than 30 years ago?

    Basically, we are making cars much safer generation after generation of new cars and that has helped reduced auto fatality rates across the board.

    DUI laws, like seat belt laws, have raised social consciousness about their respective issues and changed behavior.

    There might be a way to do these things with guns, though I’m not sure how to actually make a gun safer and still easily usable.

    Social awareness of gun safety could have a mitigating effect.

  78. 78.

    blueskies

    January 13, 2016 at 8:09 pm

    @No One of Consequence: Only if those 3,000 are “the right kind of people.” White, upper-middleclass or rural (ideally, all 3).

  79. 79.

    Flukebucket

    January 13, 2016 at 8:11 pm

    I found Jim Wright through Balloon Juice and that guy is a national treasure

  80. 80.

    Mnemosyne

    January 13, 2016 at 8:13 pm

    @gene108:

    G was watching episodes of “Lou Grant” on Hulu this weekend (because that’s how he rolls) and a big plot point was that someone broke into an office just to use a computer to do some calculations for a nuclear device. Because, of course, we weren’t all carrying powerful computers in our pockets 24/7, so you had to track down one of the few places that would have one.

  81. 81.

    No One of Consequence

    January 13, 2016 at 8:13 pm

    Trying to respond in a fell swoop, please allow me to try to respond to the ones who responded/riffed:

    Yes, 3k dead on 9/11. Guns were not used. Planes were the weapons that day.
    Yes, the tragedy of Oklahoma City. Again, guns were not used. A truck bomb was the weapon that day.
    Another responder was correct in that I was calculating the number of dead at a multiple of the population of Australia at that time to our current 330 million (roughly). Fudging a bit because it is America and we will have to be beat over the head with it. I am afraid that even 1000 dead in a single incident might not be enough.

    This would entail planning a team of killers. If a small team isolated a venue with that number of potential victims, it would take time to kill that many with semi-automatic weapons alone. Exits would have to be locked, up, some of the assailants might need to delay the initial law enforcement response, etc.

    Again, my thoughts is that it will take a large event, minimal (if any) bombs or other anti-personnel measures, and assault-style weaponry. Small team of dedicated suicide fanatics would be required. A mall or a concert hall, or the like.

    Additionally, they would (obviously) need to be all-white American whackos, not potentially-politically-spun members of any compromised groups.

    Yes, that is a lot of conditionals, but short of that butcher’s bill, with no obvious scapegoating possibilities, we will continue on in denial of the sacrifices we make on the altar of the second amendment.

    – NOoC

  82. 82.

    Mandalay

    January 13, 2016 at 8:13 pm

    @Betty Cracker:

    they’re unusually stringent for a blogger

    But they’re not! They are just EXPLICIT for a blogger. By default you can’t go lifting chunks of material from ANY blogger if they don’t impose any explicit rules, and I think you’re on shaky ground by claiming that most bloggers don’t care.

    AL recently stole – and I mean STOLE – eight paragraphs from a Washington Monthly article here without adding any commentary. I can see the argument that reposting a couple of sentences, or even a paragraph, can act as clickbait, and potentially help the original site. But when you are posting eight fucking paragraphs without consent, and without adding any value, you are stealing, just as surely as if you went into Walmart and stuffed a pair of socks down your pants and left without paying for them. Posting eight paragraphs of someone else’s work without their consent is flat out wrong, and you can’t assume that the other party doesn’t care just because they don’t complain.

    The irony is that when linking back to Washington Monthly from BJ’s stolen content they were doing a fund raiser. And the double irony is that when I did a google search for the Washington Monthly article, BJ was at the top of the results list. Cheats may prosper, but it’s still wrong.

  83. 83.

    Mandalay

    January 13, 2016 at 8:27 pm

    @Baud:

    you could be deemed to have given implied consent to the practice

    Heh – an interesting argument. IANAL and have no idea when “implied consent” is meaningful.

    Can the lawyer of a thieving bank teller argue in court that his client had been regularly stealing from the bank for years, and since they had never complained in the past they had given their implied consent? And if not, why might that same argument have any merit with the lawyer of a mango thief or a blog thief?

  84. 84.

    Adam L Silverman

    January 13, 2016 at 8:28 pm

    There’s no issue here. Richard didn’t know about Chief Wright’s preferences. So I asked Richard if I could rejigger this and I also reached out to Jim Wright to explain what had happened and what we’d done. This is why there’s a note on his site back to us here. There isn’t any reason to make more of this than Richard was trying to do a good thing and linked back to the original, pulled his post out of caution, and I made changes so we could put it back up because the topic and what Jim Wright wrote need to be discussed. Don’t go creating problems where there aren’t any.

  85. 85.

    Baud

    January 13, 2016 at 8:29 pm

    @Mandalay:

    Yes. If the theft was done with the bank’s knowledge and the bank didn’t do anything about it for a significant period of time. Not realistic, but it’s plausible.

  86. 86.

    JPL

    January 13, 2016 at 8:34 pm

    @Adam L Silverman: Thank you. I actually linked to the original post this morning.

  87. 87.

    Matt McIrvin

    January 13, 2016 at 9:04 pm

    @gene108: Back in the early Eighties a lot of people had a vague idea that all the computers in the world were connected to each other, even though, in those days, they weren’t. They are now, but popular mythology was ahead of reality.

  88. 88.

    Matt McIrvin

    January 13, 2016 at 9:09 pm

    @bhjulian: In the online discussions I see about guns, there’s always some guy who jumps in and insists that on several occasions he’s prevented criminals from invading his home and attacking him or his loved ones by brandishing or firing his gun. There’s likely a huge element of fantasy in these stories, but it’s hard to prove.

  89. 89.

    Betty Cracker

    January 13, 2016 at 9:20 pm

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Don’t go creating problems where there aren’t any.

    You’re new here, aren’t you? ;-)

  90. 90.

    Jeanne Watkins

    January 13, 2016 at 9:49 pm

    @Southern Beale: True, but if a person were held criminally, legally and morally responsible for their poor choices that changes the game. At this point unless you commit murder there are very few consequences for irresponsible gun ownership.

  91. 91.

    ET

    January 13, 2016 at 9:57 pm

    I saw today a story about how a father in Ohio accidentally killed him 14 year old son who snuck back home to play hookey. I know if that man didn’t have a gun the boy wouldn’t be dead. Of course the gun nuts are going to blame the son.

  92. 92.

    Adam L Silverman

    January 13, 2016 at 10:12 pm

    @Betty Cracker: Its like the scene with Kevin Bacon in Animal House: “everything is fine, no need to rush, please remain orderly” Kevin Bacon’s character gets stampeded over…

  93. 93.

    Omnes Omnibus

    January 13, 2016 at 11:07 pm

    @Baud: Adverse possession.

  94. 94.

    Ross Youngblood

    January 13, 2016 at 11:12 pm

    @Betty Cracker: looks like this was managed well by the balloon juice folks and the Author. I follow Jims page, he’s awesome. Thanks to the honorable handling of this I’ve now found Balloon Juice! Thx!

  95. 95.

    Adam L Silverman

    January 13, 2016 at 11:31 pm

    @Ross Youngblood: It was too easy to fix and welcome. We’re glad you’re here. Please make sure you have your safety helmet and other gear on at all times.

  96. 96.

    Cindy Montgomery

    January 14, 2016 at 1:31 am

    @MomSense:

    Since this is a brown-skinned family, I expect yes.

  97. 97.

    Paul in KY

    January 14, 2016 at 8:38 am

    @Mnemosyne: He marched, etc. when it was ‘cool’ for an actor to do that. He probably thought it would help him in some manner.

  98. 98.

    Paul in KY

    January 14, 2016 at 8:41 am

    @mclaren: Then we go back to the time when physical strength was all that mattered.

  99. 99.

    Fr33d0m

    January 14, 2016 at 11:44 am

    @No One of Consequence:

    IMHO, you are wrong. That will not change anything.

  100. 100.

    Fr33d0m

    January 14, 2016 at 12:05 pm

    I’ll take Jim’s points as somewhat valid, but I doubt the gun fetish crowd would so easily let them all pass–especially that part about keeping your weapon unloaded. Lets face it, these are the same people who see conspiracies around every corner. They’re not going to let this sneak up on them.

    IMHO licensing and insurance would do a better job. The more risk involved, the more you pay. That would seemingly price lots of the fetish crowd out of the market or at the very least force them to be safer. Own an assault rifle? Pay more because the risk of high volume death is higher. buy a safe? Get a slight price break. Accidently shoot someone? Pay higher prices.

    You don’t have to keep them from buying what they want, you just have to make them pay for the risk to society.

  101. 101.

    mudslicker

    January 14, 2016 at 12:43 pm

    @pea: Jim Wright is definitely a “nice guy.” Go back and read the Stonekettle article again. His approach is to control behavior based on the parameters that the NRA have set up. His contention is that there are NEVER true firearm “accidents” and that there should always be consequences for stupid/negligent/arrogant/egotistic/self-serving et al behavior. You want to buy, store, and carry your 2nd amendment? Then you’re 100% responsible for its “behavior.”

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