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this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
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Ah yes, the "If it's not going to stop 100% of the problem, let's not do it at all" bullshit.
That old chestnut.
If random check stops don't stop 100% of drunk drivers, why do them at all. Your just punishing the drivers who AREN'T driving drunk!
If seatbelts don't save 100% of lives, why regulate that we wear them. Muh Freedums!!
It bullshit excuses made by people with literally nothing of any real sense to fall back on.
Not on that guy's side, but he didn't strictly say that we shouldn't have those laws.
He said that if you're siteing a case where we did have those laws and a bad thing happened as an example for why we need laws like that in place to stop the bad thing from happening, it falls a little flat.
Not that the idea of having laws like that is bad, but citing individual cases is flawed, as no amount of regulatory structure will ever prevent 100% of cases.
To frame it a different way, I could argue that there's literally no country on earth with strong enough gun laws, because there's no country with zero gun deaths. I could argue that we need random searches of people homes to try and find guns, or imprisoning people who talk about guns, because the current laws clearly aren't good enough because people are still getting shot. Doesn't matter if it was only 1 incident in the past 30yrs. Still happened, so we need stricter laws.
That's obviously an absurd level of hyperbole, and I want to reiterate that I'm all for regulation on firearms. Just wanted to point out that the core argument here is unideal.
The guy said "would have done so regardless of what laws were in place".
As in, this happened, and there are already laws, so there's no point in stronger laws or more restrictions.
That's like saying "Sure, there are hundreds of fatalities in this factory, but they already get 10c fines whenever there's an at-fault accident. The accidents would have happened regardless of the fines! There's no point in higher fines since the fines have shown they're not working!"
That's all valid, but I think you've missed my point.
While I disagree with "the laws did nothing so why have laws," I also disagree with, "the laws didn't work, so we need harsher laws." Both are flawed logically.
There is, in fact, a level of restriction that goes too far in the name of preventing crime. We could lock everyone in jail for instance, as people in cages can't commit crimes (ymmv). That's obviously a bad idea though, for many reasons.
And I'm with you. I think we need to evaluate what that right balance is. What I was pushing back on was the idea that, "if there's even one gun death ever, then the laws didn't go far enough, and we need more restrictions," which I took to be the sentiment of the OP. That lack of nuance worries me is all.
I don't know if the gun laws that were violated were good enough or not. I didn't look them up, tbh. But you can have all the laws in the world, and have them be completely useless if they aren't properly enforced. Maybe the laws are actually good, and the enforcement mechanism is flawed? Maybe both are good and this is just an unfortunate side effect of it being impossible to police everyone all the time. Or maybe the laws themselves are flawed and the OP is right that something needs changing. I don't know. But I do know that it's a big issue with a lot of nuance, and that a knee jerk reaction of "we need more laws" is unhelpful at best and detrimental at worst.
I don't know what you mean by "logically". There's no "logical" way to determine what will work. This is a matter of human nature, not logic. But, science strongly suggests that harsher laws do work when it comes to guns. Places with strong gun laws have been clearly shown to have fewer gun crimes. That doesn't necessarily work for everything. During prohibition, strong laws forbidding alcohol did somewhat reduce alcohol use, but it definitely didn't eliminate it, and it dramatically increased crime due to smuggling alcohol. For guns, the picture is much clearer. When they're harder to own legally there are fewer gun crimes.
In this case it's more "we need the same laws as the rest of the civilized world, which doesn't have all these problems with gun crimes".
I really think we're just having two completely different discussions here mate. I don't disagree with what you're saying. I never did.
I also don't know that I think it's worth the time to hash out at this point. We're just talking past each other.
Imagine applying that logic to anything else:
"He would have been murdered regardless of what laws were in place. There's no reason to change the penalty for murder! The 10c fine already ensures that only criminals will murder other people."
"The city already has a firefighter, and the city block still burned down! What's the point in adding more firefighters if we already have a firefighter and we still get major fires?"
...
The kids got the guns illegally because it's incredibly easy to get illegal guns in the US. The biggest reason for that is that it's so incredibly easy to get legal guns too. In places like Japan or England where it's hard to get legal guns, it's extremely hard to get illegal guns, so the criminals tend not to use illegal guns.
If "would have done so regardless" were true, there should be no difference in gun crime in the UK vs the US. But, they're not. It's not because the US has far more of a problem with mental illness or something, it's because the tool designed for killing is harder to get.
Well, in MY state random stops ARE illegal. Thanks Oregon! Frankly, I'm surprised more states haven't done that.
https://romanolawpc.com/oregon-dui-checkpoints/
There are things that CAN be done, you just have to start with rejecting the idea of "hurrr durrr take all the guns" because that can't be done due to the 2nd amendment.
In THIS case, we know the two kids already had priors for car burglaries.
So #1) You find out who legally owned those guns, then you charge them with improper storage and/or failure to report a stolen weapon.
#2) When kids are arrested for a crime like burglary, you search their homes to make sure weapons weren't anything that were burgled.
“The solution to ensuring our freedom to own guns is to restrict all our other freedoms. “
Our other freedoms aren't restricted though.
Children steal a car and have their private property ransacked by the cops in case they have a gun. That was your suggestion was it not?
Tbf if you steal a car your rights are usually "infringed upon." They call it "jail."
They didn't steal a car, they burgled cars, big difference. But yeah, if the cops recover a stolen car and the owner goes "Hey, where's my gun?" Yeah, the cops absolutely need to be serving a search warrant.
Your rights protecting you from illegal search and seizure don't come into play when there's probable cause and a search warrant.
Wow you're a moron
Really? Well, what would your solution be?
Keep in mind, banning guns is not an option because of the 2nd Amendment and changing the 2nd amendment is currently a political impossibility.
Sooo? Thoughts?
The second amendment refers to a well regulated militia and bearing arms. It gives the right to possess guns by militia members.
The Second Amendment also states its purpose expressly: to protect the security of the state. If the "let everyone have whatever guns" approach is a threat to state security, then obviously that approach isn't protected by the Second Amendment.
Your version of the Second Amendment is a right-wing lie, not borne out by law books, history books, or dictionaries.
Again, rendered irrelevant by the Supreme Court rulings in Heller and McDonald:
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/554/570/
"The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Pp. 2–53."
Further, they explain their reasoning:
"As we will describe below, the “militia” in colonial America consisted of a subset of “the people”—those who were male, able bodied, and within a certain age range. Reading the Second Amendment as protecting only the right to “keep and bear Arms” in an organized militia therefore fits poorly with the operative clause’s description of the holder of that right as “the people.”"
This reading is pretty obvious when you look at the text of the 2nd Amendment:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
The right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms, not the right of the MILITIA to keep and bear arms.
Yes, this is a radical supreme court that is ignoring 200 years of president. In order to come up with these bullshit rulings. They aren't going to last more than a couple of decades.
We should hope so, but then it took 50 years to overturn Roe... so...
Right now, the court is 6-3 conservative.
If Biden wins in '24 and the Dems win again in '28, that gives a solid chance at replacing Thomas and Alito. Thomas is 75, Alito is 73. So 84 and 82 by 2032.
That would flip the court 5-4 liberal.
But the next 3 after that are Roberts, Sotomayor and Kagan. Roberts has been somewhat of a check on the crazier judges, losing these three under a Republican President would lock in Conservative rule for the better part of a century.