Las Vegas Shooting

[Simon_Jester]

Ray245, I am rapidly losing my ability to believe that you're actually interested in listening to my argument. You keep trying to grab isolated pieces of it and yank them away so that you can continue advancing your own arguments, but when I try to present a complex idea in multiple steps, you won't even acknowledge when Step One has been reached because you're too busy trying to find paragraphs you can quote out of context in order to launch a counterattack.

If you actually WANT a serious attempt to answer "why should being armed be a right?" then you need to show a certain measure of respect for other people's attempts to outline an extended argument. It's just a basic practical necessity if you're going to be sincere when debating philosophy- sometimes you have to be willing to agree to hear someone out, acknowledge that they have made an intermediate point, and wait until the end when you actually understand their point before picking a few specific weaknesses to respond to.

If I stop to respond to every one of your numerous divergent responses, the whole discussion will dissolve into a morass of quote spaghetti and you'll continue crowing that I can't justify a right to bear arms, because every time I try to present an explanation it gets picked to death by someone who's too impatient to wait to finish reading an essay before precommitting to attack it because it leads to the wrong conclusion.

So are you willing to hear me out, dealing with an extended, structured argument by actually engaging with the structure? Or are you going to continue the current pattern until I give up trying to argue with people whose attention span is shorter than mine? Because frankly, I probably shouldn't spare the hour or two it'll take me over the next couple of days to keep this up, especially if you've already precommitted to the idea that the argument I'm trying to advance is without merit because of your own notions of how societies work by default. I'd be better off doing a hell of a lot of other things with the leisure time available.

[Simon_Jester]

Okay, this is a single coherent objection, and as long as it stays coherent I can actually engage with it.

@Simon:

Not to bog things down further but most non-US nations care far less about the induvidual and far more about the cohesive good of the community. So from this view point and discussion of rights already has the added clause of 'Is this right beneficial to the public at large while not overly onerous on the induvidual?' Hence why many nations with similar economic standards as the US have higher taxes and greater social programs to go along with greater restrictions on things like guns and self defense. We already answered the question you're posing to such a degree that Ray may never have consciously realized it needs explanation.

Jub, I don't think you realize the degree to which non-US Western societies are individualist and base their concept of the public good in terms of maximizing the welfare of individuals, rather than of communities.

The entire post-Enlightenment project of Western democracy is all about atomizing the traditional concept of community. And about changing legal interactions from the old model where individuals were mostly subject to local community customs and leaders, with the state as a distant external force. Turning them into something more simple- individuals, and the state, with no aristocracies, no clan patriarch or village elders or the like to interfere. Just individuals, who all stand equal before an abstract, democratically constructed legal system that represents no specific community other than the highly abstract community of "the nation-" a thing too large for any one individual to comprehend.

And this is a good thing. It allows a tremendous amount of progress, because it allows us to replace a million petty tyrants each lording it over their little 'communities' of a few dozen or a few hundred, with a body that can be largely neutral in the affairs of individuals precisely because it is not a community in the normal human sense of the term. It's a bureaucracy, it's a constitutional republic, it's anything but the kind of structure small groups of humans naturally form for themselves.

...

If you want to look at societies that are very different on the individualism versus communalism axis, don't compare the Sweden to the US. Sweden and the US agree on a lot of points about, for instance, how much obligation individuals have to obey the leading figures within their family (virtually none). How much control local religious leaders have over the actions of the populace (virtually none). How much right a prominent local family has to tell you how to vote in an election (none at all).

No, you should compare Sweden to, say, Iraq, a country where clan structures led by patriarchs still play a prominent role in local politics.

And you will find a rather different dynamic in play there.

...

What I'm trying to get at here is that what you think of as "the community" is itself the product of a major victory won by individualism over older community-based social paradigms. The new kind of community may very well have a great claim on the resources and loyalty of individual citizens, for a variety of reasons. But it's entirely unlike the old communities, which could be intimately personal and intimately terrible in ways only those with a nasty old grandparent or in-law terrorizing their entire extended family can fully understand.

At the same time, though, this means that sometimes there are important ideas about the relationship between the 'new community' of the state and the individuals who are its citizens, hidden in the "source code" of individual rights that gave rise to modern Western ideas of democracy and civil liberties as we know them.

[Adam Reynolds]

Given that he no longer has said license, that is hardly true. It likely expired in 2010 or 2013*.

That was his MEDICAL - pilot licenses do not expire. Even after his medical expired he'd still be legal to fly quite a few small, lightweight aircraft (sport pilot and ultralights). Getting a new medical certificate requires making an appointment with a certified FAA medical examiner, filling out a form, paying the doctor for his time, and getting your completed form. The last two times I had to re-up my form I picked up the completed new one on my way out the door of the doctor's office. For someone with no medical problems and money to spare getting it is trivial.

That was what the article I linked indicated. I really have no idea how it works otherwise.

He was also only ever certified to fly a single engine aircraft, which would have probably done less damage than his 23 rifles did.

I don't think you know as much about aircraft as you think you do. I don't really care to elaborate on how to turn a single-engine airplane into a terrorist weapon, but, given the way the crowd was packed together and what I know of that category of airplane I think he could have achieved similar results if he had really wanted to go that route.

If you look at air show crashes, only one of them(Sknyliv) was as deadly as this shooting, with 77 deaths and 538 injuries. They also involve heavier military aircraft with more fuel.

[Formless]

If you look at air show crashes, only one of them(Sknyliv) was as deadly as this shooting, with 77 deaths and 538 injuries. They also involve heavier military aircraft with more fuel.

Accidents are accidents, how deadly they are is up to chance. Terrorist attacks are not random, they are a result of deliberate planning. If Broomstick says a plane could have done as much damage but does not want to talk about the specifics for liability reasons, I am inclined to believe her. Because based on my own knowledge of aviation, I know that airplanes almost never fly with more fuel in the tank than they have to for efficiency reasons, so that can limit the damage an accidental plane crash can cause unless it crashes on launch. And at least one 90's era airplane hijacking was prevented from becoming 9/11 because the French authorities recognized the hijacker's demands to fill up the fuel tank to be a prelude to a kamikaze attack, and had special forces storm the thing while it was on the ground.

[Jub]

Jub, I don't think you realize the degree to which non-US Western societies are individualist and base their concept of the public good in terms of maximizing the welfare of individuals, rather than of communities.

The entire post-Enlightenment project of Western democracy is all about atomizing the traditional concept of community. And about changing legal interactions from the old model where individuals were mostly subject to local community customs and leaders, with the state as a distant external force. Turning them into something more simple- individuals, and the state, with no aristocracies, no clan patriarch or village elders or the like to interfere. Just individuals, who all stand equal before an abstract, democratically constructed legal system that represents no specific community other than the highly abstract community of "the nation-" a thing too large for any one individual to comprehend.

And this is a good thing. It allows a tremendous amount of progress, because it allows us to replace a million petty tyrants each lording it over their little 'communities' of a few dozen or a few hundred, with a body that can be largely neutral in the affairs of individuals precisely because it is not a community in the normal human sense of the term. It's a bureaucracy, it's a constitutional republic, it's anything but the kind of structure small groups of humans naturally form for themselves.

I actually see that as working the opposite of how you've described it.

Yes, we moved power away from the smaller scale plantation owner and city-state lord but we replaced that with intermediate levels of governance that which have centralized control in a way that we could never have imagined even 200 years ago. This centralization is so prevalent and so pervasive that we hardly even notice the fact that everything we do is watched over or informed by a government on a scale that people in the system it replaced could scarcely imagine it.

Of course, this has been done with respect for the individual so rights have been gained in the transition while still creating resource pools that benefit the community in ways no feudal system or independent city ever could have.

If you want to look at societies that are very different on the individualism versus communalism axis, don't compare the Sweden to the US. Sweden and the US agree on a lot of points about, for instance, how much obligation individuals have to obey the leading figures within their family (virtually none). How much control local religious leaders have over the actions of the populace (virtually none). How much right a prominent local family has to tell you how to vote in an election (none at all).

No, you should compare Sweden to, say, Iraq, a country where clan structures led by patriarchs still play a prominent role in local politics.

And you will find a rather different dynamic in play there.

This isn't really what I was getting at.

Yes, we've moved importance away from smaller units of economic and political power and the pockets of centralized power that created. However, we've also regulated everything from workdays, to speed limits, city zoning, and food additives in doing so. Most of these things benefit citizens in a very real way and we wouldn't find many arguments for removing them. However, when a family is forced to pull down a tree house due to an obscure city bylaw or you're denied the ability to raise chickens in a suburban area it's hard to argue that personal freedoms have remained untouched by even these generally benign laws.

You can debate that we could relax the more personal scale restrictions these laws create, but the point stands when I say that we're bound by more laws now than we were under the old system. Ironically we're also freer because for every restriction we shrug and deal with we've gotten two protections from old abuses. It's just a matter of what we choose to give up in exchange for what we see as the greater good.

In the case of weapons, most nations have decided that armed citizens aren't a requirement for a safe or free society. The US is the sole exception among 1st world nations and, as I pointed out in my mega-post, the US is one of only 3 nations worldwide that have the right to bear arms; the other 2 are Mexico and Guatemala. So I think that, perhaps, I'm justified in asking what makes the US so special that it needs armed citizens for both liberty and personal defense?

Not to bog this down with reams of data, but Cato's Human Freedom Index rates Canada as more free than the US* even with our lack of a right to bear arms. So, would you argue that Canadians would be made significantly safer and freer if we had the same firearms culture as the US does? If you can't, can you explain why doing so makes the US significantly less safe and free?

*See pages 14 and 15 of this document for the numerical data.

https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/ ... date-3.pdf

[Simon_Jester]

Okay, I can work with this still, since it remains coherent. Before I do, though, I would like to make something clear.

When people with significantly different worldviews engage in political debate, they have to overcome the problem that any given person's worldview consists of mutually interlocking "modules." Any one module can be debated at a single time, but there is no practical way to debate five or ten such modules simultaneously. When worldviews differ enough that more than one module differs at once, there is a very strong tendency to run around in circles. As an example discussed here in this blogger's 'anti-libertarian FAQ,' there is the problem that "Too often I find that if I can convince a libertarian that government regulation can be effective, they respond that it doesn’t matter because it’s morally repulsive, and then once I’ve finished convincing them it isn’t, they respond that it never works anyway."

That is, the libertarians have a "regulation is ineffective" module and a "regulation is immoral" module. The author can engage with one of those modules at a time. But if whenever he wins a debate on a subject that affects one module, the other module automatically kicks in and moves the goalposts of the discussion somewhere else, it is impossible for him to ever make progress no matter how well-crafted and justified his arguments are.

...

For US to have a meaningful conversation that is not just a purely pointless waste of time and life, WE, collectively, need to have the mental self-discipline to engage only one module at a time, sequentially.

I can argue about whether gun ownership 'should be' in some sense of the word 'should' a right. OR I can argue as a practical matter to what extent "gun ownership should be a right" has to be compromised with "people have a right to not be riddled with bullets by malicious lunatics." I cannot possibly do both at the same time.

Suppose I spend an hour trying to advance a complex argument based on political philosophy for why gun ownership should be a right, and I get back half a dozen variations on the theme of "but Simon, that right needs to be compromised with the right not to get murdered!" And then I nod and spend an hour trying to discuss details of how to craft such a compromise, and I'm met with the reply "but Simon, why should there even be a compromise, when gun ownership shouldn't be a right in the first place!?"

I have two options. One is to go back to advancing a complex argument for why gun ownership should be a right. This puts me right back where I started, only two hours closer to the grave and having achieved nothing with those two hours of my life. The other is to give up on the discussion entirely and find people with more mental self-discipline to talk to.

You can begin to understand why I might find the second option more appealing than the first, if compelled to choose between them.

So I'm asking that we agree in advance to stick to one thing or the other, because I am no longer willing to try to explain one part of this position to people who lose focus on that explanation and start beating a different drum every time I make any headway.

Can you agree to this? I am happy to.

---

Right now, we are discussing, specifically, the question of whether our current system of civil rights is founded in individualist or communalist concepts of how society is to be structured. From there, we can have a variety of different conversations about the right to bear arms, or lack thereof. But we cannot even decide which conversation we're having in an intellectually honest manner without first addressing this issue.

Jub, your position seems to be that civil rights come from a communalist foundation of society. My understanding is that you say this because you believe our societies are more communalist than they used to be, because they are more regulated. Possibly also more taxed?

My own position is that it is very easy to count the number of pages in a law book, but this is ultimately a very superficial way to measure whether a society is individualist or communalist. I would argue that there is a much more significant way to measure things. What level of sacrifice is the average person expected to be prepared to make, in the interests of preserving the community? When the community's values are weighed in one pan of the balance, and the individual's happiness is weighed in the other pan, who wins?

...

I would argue that Western society in general, and the liberal democracies that exist in direct line of descent from the Enlightenment philosophers in particular, tends to let the individual win, to a much larger degree than is normal for the whole of human history and society. The large movements within Western society that abandon this trend the most in the West tend to be radical fringe movements, and their actions tend to include a lot of things that are atrocities in the eyes of the majority of Westerners. Consider, for example, the sublimation of individual liberties and autonomy into the populist-nationalist Will of the People in fascism, or the comparable sublimation of individual control over property and economic conditions under Marxism-Leninism.

Conversely, I would argue that past societies, and non-Western societies that lack a healthy distribution of civil rights, tend to be more communalist- insofar as the people in these societies lack these rights, it is precisely because they are locked into communal structures that seek to override these rights or ignore them.

I can provide a number of examples, if you are interested. There are many practices which we in Western societies would consider repugnant, but which are common in certain other cultures, or even in the historical past of Europe. By and large, these practices do not make sense if we assume that culture was more individualist in the past and more communalist today. At a bare minimum, I think I can easily demonstrate that some important categories of "community" that used to exercise oppressive control over the average person have clearly been dissolved in Western society, and it is far from obvious what, if anything, replaced them.

...

In addition, to specifically address your argument that modern societies are more communalist because they are more regulated,

Many of the things that we now regulate did not exist more than 100-200 years ago. If you look at things that have existed consistently for millenia, they were generally regulated quite tightly even in the distant past. For instance, in medieval Europe there were 'regulations' governing whether peasants could do something as simple as go into the forest to gather acorns! There were very complex, interlocking sets of local rules and knowledge regarding who could do what on which patches of agricultural land. There were detailed codes of personal behavior. There were ironclad customs that you could make yourself suspicious in the extreme by disobeying.

We didn't have million-page legal codes back then. But that isn't because there wasn't a strong sense of communal values that exerted a high measure of control over individuals. It's mostly from two other things. One is that the cultures of that time were less literacy-focused; important laws that directly impacted the elite got written down and codified, but local-level rules and customs usually didn't. The other is that medieval societies didn't have the same concept of "the rule of law" that we do in our modern age of highly artificial nation-states. Small-scale violations of the social order were very likely to be settled informally between individuals and small communities, rather than through a bureaucratic court system. Larger-scale violations were often settled through ad hoc rule by edict on the part of the aristocracy.

It's not that there was a lack of community, or of government control. It's just that the control was subdivided among many smaller units. The size of the community with which you identify has little or nothing to do with how much of your life it controls.

Contrary to the views of many libertarians, the past was not an individualist paradise- or even an individualist dystopia. Human beings naturally form communities that self-regulate tightly. A high degree of individuality and autonomy is very much an artificial concept, one that can only exist in an artificial environment that permits a single person to reliably survive by their own means, without the aid of a 'tribe' of villagers or hunter-gatherers to help them live.

(Yes, I am arguing that civil rights have a basis in individuality, while claiming libertarians are wrong about important things. This is a self-consistent position once it is properly explained. Which I can do if you would like to know more, and are prepared to listen.)

---

So, if we try to stay focused on this subject, and not blow up into a mess of quote spaghetti, what would you like to say about this?

[TheFeniX]

The U.S. is just not like a lot of other countries. The county changes so much in so many areas even across smaller metropolitan areas. Is there a country anywhere near as ethnically and morally diverse as the U.S.? I'm honestly asking.

Going further, we have multiple levels of government with considerable power depending on the area. Local, County, State, Federal. There isn't just one "state" to bend a knee to. Concerning guns, while there are federal mandates, what you can and can't own can change between state lines and even city limits and does change in this regard. Where you can and can't carry a firearm (sometimes openly) changes as well.

And I have no idea where this idea that the government monopolizes violence came from. I can't think of a single first-world country without comprehensive self-defense laws, many of which do not mention the use of a firearm. And the idea of Citizens Arrest is fairly common as well, if not generally a bad idea.

The ability to apply self-defense with a firearm is largely irrelevant to the concept self-defense.

The "State" has a monopolization on "Justice" and/or "Punishment." I can't fine someone for trying to rob me. My interaction with the Justice System ends once I have stopped the immediate threat to life or (in some places) property. That's it. The state (for the better) has taken over for something like a posse or a lynch mob to dispense "justice."

[Lonestar]

Failing to properly secure weapons is a way to cause harm.

Yes, and not stopping one or two beers short is also a way to cause harm.

Obviously this means you're in favor of snap inspections to make sure no one is downing a bottle of scotch in one sitting?

How many news stories of kids blowing themselves away with a handgun that was left loaded in a drawer do we need before that point is clear to you?

What percentage of households in the US that have guns would you say include a story along the lines of "kids blowing themselves away"?

Yes, or at least to Canadian levels of heavy restriction. I don't think I've hidden my views on this in this thread or any other.

You in favor of banning alcohol?

[SCRawl]

For US to have a meaningful conversation that is not just a purely pointless waste of time and life, WE, collectively, need to have the mental self-discipline to engage only one module at a time, sequentially.

I can argue about whether gun ownership 'should be' in some sense of the word 'should' a right. OR I can argue as a practical matter to what extent "gun ownership should be a right" has to be compromised with "people have a right to not be riddled with bullets by malicious lunatics." I cannot possibly do both at the same time.

I'm going to stick my head in here just to point out that I don't think that you can treat these in isolation, since it is the fact that they are in opposition as a practical matter.

I'll take my personal stance on things, just because I know it best. I really don't care if firearm enthusiasts have their guns. I don't want any guns, but I wouldn't care if people who feel differently from me on this point have them *if there weren't any other issues that could arise as a result*. But because everyone has this right, thousands of people get killed every year, a great many of whom would not have been killed if firearms were less extravagantly available. Every now and then -- approximately once per day, if this year is a good yardstick -- a mass shooting occurs, because this right exists.

So the question in my mind is one of balancing the rights of firearm enthusiasts to possess whatever quantity and quality of firearms they want against the rights of all people to go about their lives without an unacceptable level of risk of being shot by people who possess firearms.

It strikes me that you could make roughly the same argument for the elimination of the automobile, but because personal transportation is more or less required in many parts of the US, the knock-on effects of eliminating automobile use would probably be worse than continuing to use them. I'm open to evidence either way, though.

[SCRawl]

All right, but my understanding was that being on the receiving end of that transaction means that an extremely thorough set of vetting had to be done. Is this not the case?

In addition to the Fingerprinting (lol that was high tech in 1934), the Chief Law Enforcement Officer (CLEO) of your locale has to sign off on your Form. Basically, your county sheriff.

In many locales, the CLEO simply refuse to sign off Class III paperwork.

This is why Trusts became so big, once the internet de-mystified a lot of the mysteriousness behind a trust -- you could use the Trust to bypass the CLEO sign off; and by adding officers to the Trust, you could let others use or inherit your Class III weapons without having to do a transfer/signoff/fingerprinting all over again.

Well, that's clearly me not understanding the current reality, then. This seems really insufficient to me.

[Civil War Man]

The U.S. is just not like a lot of other countries. The county changes so much in so many areas even across smaller metropolitan areas. Is there a country anywhere near as ethnically and morally diverse as the U.S.? I'm honestly asking.

I was curious about this, too, so I did a bit of searching. It seems to depend on how you define ethnicity, but the US ranks as generally average overall, though it ranks very high in religious diversity. A lot the lists I saw were mostly dominated by African countries, particularly Sub-Saharan African countries, due in large part to different tribal affiliations.

[TheFeniX]

Well, that's clearly me not understanding the current reality, then. This seems really insufficient to me.

I'd have to look again, but IIRC there's been 2 crimes committed with legally owned NFA weapons in the last 70-some-odd years. And those crimes were committed by active law enforcement officers.

I was curious about this, too, so I did a bit of searching. It seems to depend on how you define ethnicity, but the US ranks as generally average overall, though it ranks very high in religious diversity. A lot the lists I saw were mostly dominated by African countries, particularly Sub-Saharan African countries, due in large part to different tribal affiliations.

Interesting. Though it makes me wonder how "diverse" they really are. I can drive 20 miles one direction and end up in a small town. Drive another 20 miles and find another small town with almost identical makeup. They're all about the same little pockets of reality. Really, the only thing they seem to get into it over is WHICH high school football team they support and "small town football" is serious fucking business here.

Holy shit, the rivalry between East Bernard and Sealy over this stuff is hilarious.

[Lonestar]

Well, that's clearly me not understanding the current reality, then. This seems really insufficient to me.

Trusts don't circumvent CLEOs like they used too because Obama changed the rules two years ago,and photographs + fingerprints are now required for all trust members. However over, the same rule change removed the CLEO's ability to veto such a purchase; you know have to send a letter of notification to the CLEO.

My county used to require you to fill out a shitty word doc and send it back, the doc mostly concerned about storage and why you wanted it. Supposedly "because guns are loud" was considered an acceptable reason for wanting a silencer, and it was rare that a NFA item was not-permitted.

The actual vetting the ATF goes through for issuing a NFA Stamp is...not functionally different than a instant background check. It's just that stamp issuance takes approximately 10 months(or more) because there are 13 people doing it for the entire country, and of course LE Agencies had priority.

[Simon_Jester]

The "State" has a monopolization on "Justice" and/or "Punishment." I can't fine someone for trying to rob me. My interaction with the Justice System ends once I have stopped the immediate threat to life or (in some places) property. That's it. The state (for the better) has taken over for something like a posse or a lynch mob to dispense "justice."

Yes. This.

One of the hallmarks of a stable central government is that it puts an end to all sorts of little clan feuds and internal ethnic wars. The clan feuds persist because small communities take it upon themselves to avenge or punish perceived wrongs committed against their members. A larger community that is more bureaucratic and less personal can actually step back and say "okay, let's have a formal trial instead of just forming a posse out of all local able-bodied males to avenge the death of Cousin Fred." And this is also one of the first steps in the abolition of intermediate communal social structures like "clans" and so on- because as their power to punish people for offending their members is removed by the state, they lose the ability to prevent competing social structures from growing up around them.

I'm going to stick my head in here just to point out that I don't think that you can treat these in isolation, since it is the fact that they are in opposition as a practical matter.

No, they're not. There are several separate philosophically tenable stances we can take here...

1) "The right to bear arms is absolute." I don't really consider this tenable, but I'm at least going to list it.
2) "The right to bear arms is very important; compromise is okay but it has to be limited."
3) "The right to bear arms is not very important; it can be heavily compromised and that's okay."
4) "There is no right to bear arms, whether guns are legal is purely a utilitarian question based on calculating the harm and good; rights do not exist here to act as precautions against bad, high-volatility systems.

Basically, we can occupy a stable debating position between (2) and (3), but we can't wobble back and forth between (3) and (4) readily. My concern is to settle the difference between (3) and (4), then work out whether to occupy (2) and (3).

[Zixinus]

The NRA is in favor of banning bumperstocks

No, I am not kidding and hell needs snow-shovels.

The National Rifle Association has called for "additional regulations" on bump-stocks, a rapid fire device used by the Las Vegas massacre gunman.

The group said: "Devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations."

Republicans have said they would consider banning the tool, despite years of resisting any gun control.

Lawmakers plan to hold hearings and consider a bill to outlaw the device.

The NRA called on Thursday for regulators to "immediately review whether these devices comply with federal law".

Las Vegas gunman
Las Vegas urges Trump to act
Five reasons US gun control won't happen

"In the aftermath of the evil and senseless attack in Las Vegas, the American people are looking for answers as to how future tragedies can be prevented," NRA chiefs Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox wrote in the statement.
Media caption'It was the scariest moment in my life'

They criticised politicians who are calling for gun control, writing that "banning guns from law-abiding Americans based on the criminal act of a madman will do nothing to prevent future attacks".

The statement, the organisation's first since Sunday's attack in Las Vegas that left 58 people dead and nearly 500 injured, noted that bump-stocks were approved by the Obama administration's Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms.

Living with a monster
They died in each other's arms

The NRA's plan becomes clear

Analysis by Anthony Zurcher, BBC Washington

The NRA's strategy for responding to the Las Vegas mass-shooting is now coming into focus.

By recommending that an executive branch agency conduct a review of the legality of bump stock devices, the extremely influential gun rights lobby is seeking to direct efforts towards administrative, not legislative, solutions.

If Congress were to start drafting new laws, the process may be more difficult for the NRA to control. Democrats, who have been clamouring for the opportunity to debate new gun-control laws, could have their chance. Republican congressional leadership may try to clamp down on the proceedings, but there's a chance other proposals -like limits on magazine capacity, military-style rifle features and new background check requirements - could come up for consideration.

These types of provisions are popular with the public at large but vigorously opposed by the NRA and their supporters in Congress. It could make for difficult votes for some conservative legislators.

The White House and many congressional Republicans are pledging to have a "conversation" about the issue and "look into" the details. That, for the moment, is a far cry from action.

The NRA is now suggesting an alternate route.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, who spoke to reporters moments after the NRA statement was issued, said: "We're certainly open to that moving forward, but we want to be part of that conversation as it takes place in the coming days and weeks."

In the same statement the NRA urged Congress to pass their longstanding pet proposal to expand gun rights nationwide, so-called right-to-carry reciprocity.

The lobby group wants gun-owners with concealed-carry permits from one state to be allowed to take their weapons into any other US state, even if it has stricter firearms limits.

Another NRA policy priority, the deregulation of silencer attachments, appears to have stalled in Congress in the wake of the Las Vegas attack, after Republican sponsors withdrew their bill.

A bill to ban bump-stocks was submitted to the US Senate on Wednesday by California Democrat Dianne Feinstein.
Media captionHow US mass shootings are getting worse

A Republican-led version of the bill may be submitted for debate as early as Thursday, Florida Republican Carlos Curbelo told reporters.

Bump-fire stocks, also called bump-stocks and slide-fire adapters, allow semi-automatic rifles to fire at a high rate, similar to a machine gun.

But they can be obtained without the extensive background checks required of automatic weapons.

Stephen Paddock, the gunman in Las Vegas, had fixed the accessories to 12 rifles used in his attack.

Bump-stocks typically cost less than $200 (£150) and allow nearly 100 high-velocity bullets to be fired in just seven seconds, according to one company advert.

One of the most popular manufacturers of bump-stocks, Slide Fire, said they had sold out "due to extreme high demands" since the Las Vegas shooting

To be frank, the more i read about bumpers-stocks, the less I can imagine that they have a legitemate use beyond almost-like-full-auto thrill. Yes, they might be a relatively simple hack but the issue is still that they are sold as ready-made kits, especially ones that allow bump-firing to be done while aiming with the shoulder. I think it also rasises issue whether there should be reconsiderations about regulations on the effective rates of fire.

[Crazedwraith]

Probably because they can ban this one thing. Call the job done and the problem "solved" and then go back to ignoring the issues and any other ways of solving them.

Directing this equally at the NRA and Republicans here.

[TheFeniX]

Yea, I've never been a huge fan and honestly never could work out why they're legal even if it's just a "simulated" full-auto fire. There is of course the problem of "you own this simple piece of metal, you're going to jail" which would be a dumb law. But posting videos on youtube of your full-auto mods and showing everyone how cool and legal this modification can be is something I take issue with. Though I also don't know how effective a ban will be, if at all, because a home-made version of it is doable with limited knowledge and time and you can't ban the parts to create them as "steel and some springs" isn't something you can ban.

That said, the "spring stock" available for ARs and their derivatives is related, but useful for an entirely different purpose. Essentially, instead of the gun releasing all the recoil into your shoulder through a rigid stock, the stock "collapses" backward into your shoulder and rebounds with the aid of a spring, negating near all of the recoil impact of the weapon. This makes the gun incredibly comfortable to shoot and increases accuracy for subsequent rounds.

But, as Crazedwraith beat me to it: this is a "gimme law." They are essentially throwing a bone to look reasonable and not impacting the market all that heavily in the process.

[Elheru Aran]

* Hunting is also entirely recreational at this point in society, so that counts there as well.

I know people who live out in the mountains who get a large portion of their meat from hunting. In parts of the country hunting is still food on the table.

How large a percentage of the total US population is this, though? I won't argue that hunting isn't an effective way to contribute extra protein to the diet, but I have to question how *necessary* it is for say... probably 90-95% at least of the population?

I was curious about this, too, so I did a bit of searching. It seems to depend on how you define ethnicity, but the US ranks as generally average overall, though it ranks very high in religious diversity. A lot the lists I saw were mostly dominated by African countries, particularly Sub-Saharan African countries, due in large part to different tribal affiliations.

Interesting. Though it makes me wonder how "diverse" they really are. I can drive 20 miles one direction and end up in a small town. Drive another 20 miles and find another small town with almost identical makeup. They're all about the same little pockets of reality. [snip]

Having lived in Africa for 13+ years in the boondocks...

Racial diversity isn't the thing there. Even ethnic diversity isn't that huge. What you get more of usually, is linguistic diversity. In your average African country there are hundreds if not thousands of small communities living ~20-30 miles apart, but up until the past... oh... 30-50 years or so, the only way to have travelled between them is either slogging through heavy forest or long, dry savanna, and most people simply didn't have time for that unless they were traders or conquerors. So you get an incredible variety of linguistic diversity, to the point where Nigeria (where I spent those 13+ years) has over 500 distinct languages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Nigeria

It's perhaps one of the more extreme cases (Nigeria is a pretty big and notably diverse country), but it's a good example of how much diversity you can get in language. A LOT of these people are, racially speaking, pretty much the same sub-Saharan African stock, with minor variations (Fulani, for example, are noticeably different from the local Tangale folk where I lived, being tall, light-skinned and gracile for the most part while the Tangale tended towards shorter and stockier, with barrel-shaped bodies and darker skin). Ethnically, they have more diversity, but generally due to the geographic situation I mentioned they tend to be spread out a bit, and while it's not as granular as 'one tribe per town' it can be something like 'one tribe per 3-4 towns' with minor sub-dialects in each town.

So when you extrapolate from that (with an adjustment for the exceptional diversity of Nigeria, most sub-Saharan countries won't be nearly as large and diverse) you can see how these various African countries could easily be considered more diverse in their own way than the US. [/end sidetrack]

[Elheru Aran]

Probably because they can ban this one thing. Call the job done and the problem "solved" and then go back to ignoring the issues and any other ways of solving them.

Directing this equally at the NRA and Republicans here.

And, more cynically: A lot of these are produced by small makers, not the gun corps that own the NRA. Thus, competition. Thus, now they have a great excuse to eliminate the competition.

[Broomstick]

Call me cynical, but part of me thinks the NRA is on board with restricting bump-stocks because the victims in this shooting are their demographic - largely white, middle-class and up conservative types. Note that I said largely, as unquestionably there were non-white victims and people on the lower end of the financial scale. The point being, a lot of NRA members can see themselves in the victims of the Las Vegas shooting and thus in their minds it's about "Us" and not "Them" being in danger.

[Formless]

I think it also rasises issue whether there should be reconsiderations about regulations on the effective rates of fire.

The thing is, while its easy to talk about banning a device that enables high rates of fire, its hard to ban something as abstract as the rate of fire itself. Bump-fire stocks were just one method of enabling such fire, basically turning your finger into a part of the machine while your arms do all the real work. But there are other ways. For instance, response triggers, initially developed for paintball guns, fire a round when you pull the trigger and when you let go of it, doubling your rate of fire (and frankly I have been wondering ever since I saw them why the ATF never declared this to be a form of burst fire. I guess they think that it counts as two trigger pulls even when its obviously not). There is the device Bean posted earlier which modifies the trigger guard rather than the stock or trigger itself. There are gatling gun devices which fire the gun with a crank. One could imagine spring loading such a contraption, although I am sure it would quickly be declared illegal. Not that it matters if you can simply print the parts with a 3d printer. And yes, not only can slide-stocks be made at home, I've seen it done. How do you ban what is literally just a few pieces of wood meant to bump-fire a pistol?!

And before you say it, banning semi-automatic weapons and autoloaders does not solve the problem for two reasons. First, pneumatic weapons aren't considered firearms by law, and there is at least one design for a pneumatic machine-gun specifically designed as a means of protest when the 1986 ban went into effect. And the guy has video proving it to be as powerful as a normal submachinegun, its no joke. I don't know about the range it has, but it does not seem relevant given the close range of most shootings. Banning the components to such a weapon is an exercise in futility and ridiculousness. Second is the fact that even setting aside alternative technologies to powder weaponry, cowboy action shooters figured out how to rapid fire a lever action rifle a long time ago. Then to top it all off, some company realized you can take half the technique out of it by simply attaching a tiny little removable clip to the trigger guard that fires the thing every time you finish pulling it back into battery. Basically, you make the lever itself the trigger. How are you even supposed to catch someone with an item so tiny they can slip it into their pocket when they aren't using it?

Basically, banning machine guns may be considered sensible by most people and perhaps this event will put more scrutiny on certain kinds of devices to enable rapid fire, but trying to arbitrarily restrict the actual rate of fire a gun can achieve beyond "one trigger pull, one bullet" flies in the face of human ingenuity and would frankly stir up a ton of shit with people who better understand firearms technology.

[Civil War Man]

They might have also deemed that fighting to keep bump stocks legal would be a bridge too far politically. It's hard to even pretend that they serve any other purpose but to increase the amount of carnage in a shooting. Apparently guns with a bump stock take a major hit to accuracy, so they'd be poorly suited for pretty much any application of firearms that doesn't involve firing indiscriminately into a crowd. The NRA doesn't even allow them to be used at their HQ's gun range.

[Gandalf]

They might have also deemed that fighting to keep bump stocks legal would be a bridge too far politically. It's hard to even pretend that they serve any other purpose but to increase the amount of carnage in a shooting. Apparently guns with a bump stock take a major hit to accuracy, so they'd be poorly suited for pretty much any application of firearms that doesn't involve firing indiscriminately into a crowd. The NRA doesn't even allow them to be used at their HQ's gun range.

It's also good for them to be seen to move quickly on something related to this.

[Elheru Aran]

The NRA's statement is even lousier when you examine it a little further... (emphases added)

Slate article[/url]

By Wednesday afternoon, two measly members of Congress had indicated they’d be willing to reconsider the legality of “bump stock” accessories that allowed Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock to simulate automatic fire from his many semi-automatic weapons. By Thursday morning, that position was spreading among Republicans in Congress, with the top two House Republicans and the head of the House Judiciary Committee saying they, too, would be willing to look into it. On Thursday afternoon, the shift appeared to be complete, as the National Rifle Association issued a statement that didn’t wholly trash the idea.

But lest it get out that the NRA is throwing its weight behind a bump stock ban, let’s examine its statement more carefully.

The statement starts by lamenting that “the first response from some politicians has been to call for more gun control.” Ho hum. Then, however, it notes that “reports indicate that certain devices were used to modify the firearms involved.”

Despite the fact that the Obama administration approved the sale of bump fire stocks on at least two occasions, the National Rifle Association is calling on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) to immediately review whether these devices comply with federal law. The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations.

Note what the statement does not do: explicitly call on Congress to act on the issue through legislation, like California Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s bill to ban bump stocks. It just asks the ATF, which the NRA controls, to take another look.

The statement does ask Congress to do something else, later in the statement—specifically, to pass its top legislative priority of this session. “[W]e urge Congress to pass National Right-to-Carry reciprocity, which will allow law-abiding Americans to defend themselves and their families from acts of violence.”

It’s notable that the NRA is signaling even the slightest degree of softness on anything related to firearms. But this isn’t much. The NRA’s position is to punt a flashy object into an opaque agency process that it can manage, while at the same time instructing Congress to pass legislation allowing people to carry guns wherever they want.

And whenever the NRA shows the least bit of give on an issue, you can bet that the Gun Owners of America will rush to sweep up the newly available gun-nut market share.

Gun Owners of America OPPOSES any restrictions or bans bump stock devices https://t.co/MjXG8Euwdc
— GOA (@GunOwners) October 5, 2017

[ray245]

Ray245, I am rapidly losing my ability to believe that you're actually interested in listening to my argument. You keep trying to grab isolated pieces of it and yank them away so that you can continue advancing your own arguments, but when I try to present a complex idea in multiple steps, you won't even acknowledge when Step One has been reached because you're too busy trying to find paragraphs you can quote out of context in order to launch a counterattack.

If you actually WANT a serious attempt to answer "why should being armed be a right?" then you need to show a certain measure of respect for other people's attempts to outline an extended argument. It's just a basic practical necessity if you're going to be sincere when debating philosophy- sometimes you have to be willing to agree to hear someone out, acknowledge that they have made an intermediate point, and wait until the end when you actually understand their point before picking a few specific weaknesses to respond to.

If I stop to respond to every one of your numerous divergent responses, the whole discussion will dissolve into a morass of quote spaghetti and you'll continue crowing that I can't justify a right to bear arms, because every time I try to present an explanation it gets picked to death by someone who's too impatient to wait to finish reading an essay before precommitting to attack it because it leads to the wrong conclusion.

So are you willing to hear me out, dealing with an extended, structured argument by actually engaging with the structure? Or are you going to continue the current pattern until I give up trying to argue with people whose attention span is shorter than mine? Because frankly, I probably shouldn't spare the hour or two it'll take me over the next couple of days to keep this up, especially if you've already precommitted to the idea that the argument I'm trying to advance is without merit because of your own notions of how societies work by default. I'd be better off doing a hell of a lot of other things with the leisure time available.

What I want is to have a discussion whereby we can remove the American context, and instead focus on establishing whether gun ownership is a right for individuals as a principle argument. Because all I am getting from you is to keep telling to me to wait for an argument has ye to arrive. I do not see why is it so difficult for you to first establish your principal argument before developing a more contextual-based argument.

Am I a little impatient? Well kinda because I've seen too many people making an America is an exceptional argument as reasons to oppose things like UHC and free speech.

I have no reason to believe you aren't diverting the topic.