The Right to Kill Someone by Mistake, and Other Notes
Iceaura said:
There is no such thing as a domestic abuser in the US who has no access to guns.
Given that you asked why guns are part of this discussion ...?
Because you don't get to raise the point about "poor gun regulation" when you're one advocating poor gun regulation.
Oh bullshit. If you want an example of the kind of innuendo that gives gun regulators a bad image, frame that bit of nasty and consider what it reflects on its source.
Oh, do go on.
The people advocating gun regulation are foul little gits with an authoritarian agenda - is that really the point you want to make? Well, you wouldn't be alone - it's been made, inadvertently to be sure, over and over, on TV and in the newspaper and right here, as we hear them tell us about the nature of those who do not agree that guns are useless and therefore should be removed from private hands by whatever means necessary and on whatever justification is available.
You know, given your reaction over the top, right there, one might wonder if maybe we're onto something.
One of the things about expectations is that they're always easy to aim at other people. Consider the misogyny part of this discussion; we've seen in other threads on the subject an adherence to a bizarre crime prevention theory that starts with less than a quarter of the rapes, identifies a minority proportion thereof, and focuses thereupon. So while one advocate might tell women what shoes to wear, or how being a woman means she shouldn't get as drunk as the next man, or something about her clothes and hair or using her mobile phone downtown or not separating from her friends at the club or whatever, notice where that advocate will usually hesitate.
Or, as one advocate put it, avoidance techniques aimed at preventing over seventy percent of rapes just isn't common sense.
And it's pretty apparent what's going on; it happens over and over. You've seen it. When the prevention advice is the sort of thing that—"Wha-wha-what?! I would certainly
never do that, myself!"—tells a woman to avoid
other men, a man is happy to dispense it. But the statistically more appropriate issue? Well, there are many, many heterosexual men who wouldn't stalk or abduct or drug a woman in order to rape her
do happen to be male friends and intimate partners of women. You've read their words, assessed their philosophy. Is there a better explanation of why the discussion of changing attitudes is always pushed aside in favor of telling women what they should and shouldn't do if they don't want to be raped?
For me, the issue hit after Stockton. And that makes for a convenient benchmark, as I'm certain the issue raged well before me—and we have the judicial records to prove that it did. It's convenient because it's a round number, sort of, and also a perfect example.
That is to say,
twenty-five years. In the twenty-five years I've been reasonably conscious of the firearm debate—
i.e., aware that it exists in a context beyond a young boy who thinks it would be really cool to have a machine gun, but, you know, not just any machine gun but one of those big-assed mofos from
Aliens that don't yet exist in our world—the question has focused on what constitutes punishment or other undue burden of "responsible gun owners", a term toward which you are likely aware I am somewhat hostile for its lack of clear definition. And one of the central themes there has been how to keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people while not "punishing" the "responsible gun owners".
Nobody who has been paying attention over the last quarter century should be surprised that the NRA would oppose a bill intended to keep guns out of the wrong hands.
And the
excuses people will make—
One reason the eminently sensible laws mentioned are opposed by so many, not just the NRA, is that they don't trust the source. Amy Klobuchar is not a terrible Senator, but if not watched she will make bicycle helmets mandatory, canoeing without actually wearing a lifejacket illegal, fireworks available only to licensed professionals, that kind of thing. The term "Nanny State" might have been coined for her utopia. And that poisons the well.
—just don't pass muster.
I think of a woman of my acquaintance—at least, I
think she's a woman, and have no reason to disbelieve, though in truth I've never crawled up her dress to check—who I've witnessed arguing that pathetic rape prevention theory, and it turns out the reason she does so is that a particular person she doesn't like happens to resent the lack of any substantial definition about a policy solution, disdained for its lack of efficacy, and would thus argue for changing societal attitudes.
It's almost like a misogynist stereotype in motion. You've seen versions of it in action.
And, similarly, if your well is poisoned not because the water is actually poison, but simply because the water flows under the land of a neighbor you don't like, which thus, in itself makes it toxic, that's all to you. But when the issue involves your "right" to "accidentally" or "mistakenly" end someone else's right, that just doesn't seem like a (
ahem!) "responsible" way of going about it.
There would seem to be a reason why, twenty-five years later, that debate I remember in the wake of Stockton has yet to be resolved. With a standing presupposition of "responsible gun ownership", it seems easy enough to advocate tough-on-crime policies. But the thing about codifying responsible gun ownership in
any way, be it legal or customary or whatever, that extends beyond a small, close-knit group of gun owners (friends, family, gun club, &c.), is that at some point people must address their own potential. And just like men who aren't stalkers and mickeyslippers and such hesitate when it comes to the "common sense" considerations that tread on their own circumstances, so do many firearms advocates seem to hesitate when the idea of "responsible" gun ownership treads too close to them. To some degree, it is a human reflex. But there also comes a point when it's straight ego defense, sustained and entrenched.
How are we going to keep guns out of the wrong hands if there is always an excuse for why we shouldn't? In the quarter-century since Stockton, we have yet to resolve the question of how. We are presently seeing an example of why that question is so difficult to properly address.
