Guess what, liberals? We will NEVER know enough about guns to be "qualified" to write gun laws!

[rrneck]

182. The point is

Last edited Fri Jan 25, 2013, 03:25 PM - Edit history (1)

that we are talking about a distinction without a difference. Of the four options listed above numbers 1 (full auto) and 4 (single shot) are useless and unnecessary for anything but esoteric activities that are not really germane to the debate. Items 2 (semi auto) and 3 (manual) are almost indistinguishable when it comes to lethality. A guy with a shotgun like the one in the first video would be perfectly capable of killing a number of people with ease. Twenty dead children is a horrible tragedy. How many fewer dead children would it take to make it not a tragedy?

Given the realities of how guns work, legislation to carefully parse their function any more than it already is will be a failure. Legislation is expensive. It costs money. It costs people a measure of their civil liberties. It costs political capital. We can't afford to support legislation that won't work just because we don't like guns. We have to support laws that will actually serve people, not our own ideology. And when it comes to guns we have to be extra careful because conservatives like them as much as we hate them. We're screwing around with their totem, and that will surely energize them to our disadvantage. They won't hesitate to make us look like idiots to every centrist voter out there because we don't understand two hundred year old technology.

Granted, Americans do seem to be more violent that almost anybody else in the world with indoor plumbing. Our national character is the result of our history, which is as unique to us as other countries cultures are unique to them. Comparing the United States to other countries is an exercise in futility. We have to work with the culture we have, not simply graft the laws we like from other countries on top of it.

Current gun control legislation is a consumer solution to a cultural problem. Americans seem to think that if we can just get the right stuff our lives will be properly adjusted. The corollary to that idea is that if we can just keep people from getting the wrong stuff they won't do the wrong thing. We can't simply shop for just the right legislation the way we shop for just the right carpet. Cultures don't work that way.

Our current cultural problems are more related to the Gilded Age than anything else. The response to those problems was significantly different from the means and methods of identity politics in postwar America.