I'm a leftist (Libertarian-Socialist), who votes progressive, because I live under an "elected" government, and I had thought I had purged the MSNBC/CNN Nation from my friends list, but apparently not, as my timeline is just chock-full of media-driven hysteria over current events, so here's a primer:
"Liberals" who think their arguments are clever or relevant to the Second Amendment are exhausting.
They are not the left; they are just one half of the good cop/bad cop act of the corporate owned fire-hose of bullshit that is the corporate media, and corporate America's governing criminal cartel/duopoly.
Both cults "I like simple and ineffectual 'solutions', because they make me feel like I'm doing something, and I'm just stinky with fear."
There are over a hundred million legal gun owners, who some want to punish for somebody else's crime.
Well, there are some things to consider.
We've been a heavily armed country since 1621, and yet the epidemic of daily mass-shootings didn't begin until 20 April 1999 (Columbine), at a time when gun ownership was at an all-time low, and five years after Clinton's assault-weapons ban, so maybe guns aren't the variable.
Maybe, just maybe, dead school-children are the price of the neoliberalism practiced under the "Washington Consensus" of BOTH right-wing authoritarian parties since the 1980's?
When your country offers you no prospects, and you become terrified of the future, what then?
Fear can make unstable people do desperate things.
Add to that a culture of celebrity, and what could possibly go wrong?
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-the-idea-that-changed-the-world
Another factor that goes completely unexamined, is the way Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill emptied our state hospitals onto our streets, and onto families ill-equipped to deal with the sometimes violent mentally ill.
https://apps.bostonglobe.com/spotlight/the-desperate-and-the-dead/series/community-care/
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/story/2023-04-24/opinion-impact-of-deinstitutionalization-on-homelessness-reagan-mental-health-hospitals-san-diego
https://calmatters.org/commentary/2019/03/hard-truths-about-deinstitutionalization-then-and-now/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/opinion/us-mental-health-community-centers.html
Thank God, the "solution" is so simple...
Also, 84% of NRA members support universal background checks. The problem is, every time a bill comes up for a vote, Democrats add poison pill amendments guaranteeing defeat in the legislature (and the courts), and then they proceed to tell the TV cameras that "once again the GOP and the gun lobby have voted down background checks and defied the will of the people", or some such nonsense.
If you want to watch Dems sabotage universal background checks (while Republicans roll their eyes and face-palm) in real time, go here:
https://www.c-span.org/networks/
P.S. You can probably guess which one of these three groups I belong to (Hint: It's the one that's growing and actually decides elections):
https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/bk82tkyic0sqaulbp34asq.png
https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/4pu9xgkg_ks-tp_mjld5dq.png
#LaborPartyNow!!!
P S The line, "You don't need 30 rounds to shoot a deer!" is not clever.
The Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting tools, toys for hobbyists (target shooting), or even weapons for self-defense.
It's about ARMS!!!
It's about the individual citizen's right to arms, so they'll be prepared to join a militia, not the other way around. ‘Well regulated’ at that time, simply meant, ‘efficient.’ In other words, in order for a muster to be efficient, civilians needed to be already armed.
So the "collective rights" argument has a couple of problems that make it quite unhinged from history and reality.
1) As I've mentioned above, Americans have always been relatively heavily armed. How did that happen in a collective rights paradigm?
2) Contrary to what you were probably taught in school, by the time of the Confederate artillery barrage on Fort Sumter, the war over slavery had already been going on for over six years, and was fought entirely by independent volunteer militia's. Fort Sumter was just the beginning of official involvement by government troops. How did that happen in a collective rights paradigm?
3) In what universe do government forces need to have their right to arms protected?
4) Since when do National Guard members keep National Guard arms (Hint: they're kept at the armory, and have been since colonial times)?
5) Obviously, "Liberals" are stupid.
Again: #LaborPartyNow!!!
P P S That was ENTIRELY the point of the first fruits of dissent, the 10 Amendments we've come to call the BILL OF RIGHTS (which have become a beacon to aspiring democrats all over the world), to protect INDIVIDUALS from the government they had just created. #TrueStory
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