194 thoughts on “Shooting at Boulder Grocery Store Leaves 10 Dead”

  1. That supermarket is about a half mile from one of my agency’s biggest federal laboratories. Many of my friends and colleagues shop there regularly. Some live in the adjacent neighborhoods. Thankfully we are all still on maximum telework practical so only a few would have been in the building and possibly in that store. I have not heard of any fatalities among my colleagues, but its still early.

    Given that Colorado is an open carry state, I have two questions – Where were the “good guys” with the guns and when is the “right time” to talk about gun control?Report

    1. 1) Even open carry states have very few people who carry openly or concealed.
      2) There are plenty of good ideas for how to do gun control better, unfortunately, very few of those get any serious political traction because they are largely technocratic fixes, and those don’t fit nicely into soundbites.Report

      1. Even open carry states have very few people who carry openly or concealed.

        Boulder restricts open carry, requiring that the weapon be in an appropriate recognizable case. Both King Soopers and its parent company Kroger ask customers to not bring firearms into their stores.Report

          1. Cynically, I would say “look at when stores asked people to put a literal piece of cloth on their faces in order to try to prevent spread of a potentially deadly disease”

            I dunno. I don’t like that this is the “normal” we seem to be returning to – that COVID has been bumped out of the news by mass shootings.Report

              1. Anyone who operates a public accommodation, even on private property, surrenders a lot of their authority to discriminate among customers. Some states don’t allow open carry. Some states don’t allow discrimination against open carry. Colorado is in a gray area, but the best guess seems to be that only state and local government can restrict open carry.Report

  3. Kroger has already put out a tweet/statement that literally used thee words thoughts and prayers. Is there anyone alive who does not think these statements are meaningless shit? It would almost be refreshing to hear a corporate pr lickspittle lackey state “we offer the victims nothing.”Report

      1. I think you are part of the problem. Words are cheap and do nothing. We have heard the words thoughts and prayers time and time again after every mass shooting. What does it do? Does it offer financial support? medical treatment for physical and mental injuries?

        Mass shootings in American public places resulting in eight or more fatalities, by decade:

        1950s: 0

        1960s: 1

        1970s: 0

        1980s: 6

        1990s: 6

        2000s: 7

        2010-2021: 21

        https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/19/us/mass-shootings-fast-facts

        Mass killings can happen in other countries but not with this frequency. It is not because those country lack violent people but those countries do have effective legislation that makes it nearly impossible to get military grade weapons and assemble collections that look like an armory at a military base. I think that a good number of right-wingers think that frequent mass shootings are an acceptable price to pay for low taxes, low regulation, and the right to own a stockpile of military grade weapons. Most of them are too cowardly to admit this out loud. If children are the victims, then the conspiracy fever dream alarms go off and we are in false flag and crisis actor land.Report

        2. Drawing lines where there are no connections.

          For example, very few of the people who commit these crimes have stockpiles or arsenals. They rarely have enough to fill a small gun safe.

          Very few commit these crimes with whatever your definition of “military grade” is.

          I think the connection is that we are a society of, for lack of a better term, bullies. We may have started to take the myriad forms of bullying seriously in primary school, but we have multiple generations for whom being bullied and being a bully is ingrained. For whom cruelty towards themselves or others is seen as normal, until it breaks them.

          As I’ve said many times, super strict gun control might reduce the number of gun deaths, but I’d be utterly shocked if it significantly reduced the number of killings. People who think it will are, IMHO, kidding themselves.Report

          1. I don’t think other countries lack mentally unstable people and/or violent people. Such people exist everywhere. And sometimes if they have enough willpower, they manage to commit a mass shooting or murder by other means. But I have seen very little evidence to convince me that gun control and regulation will not work. I see a lot of people doing everything in their power to convince themselves gun control will not work because it goes against their priors. DD is lashing out quite harshly right now.

            Every now and then, someone will make some noises about how we need more mental health access but then that person realizes “Oh that means more taxes” and the mental health spending never comes.

            I think it would be refreshing to have someone admit that he or she thinks mass murder by gun is an acceptable price to pay. It would be honest.Report

            1. I don’t think other countries lack mentally unstable people and/or violent people.

              My expectation is the countries which have serious problems with this sort of thing are the ones which (like us) glorify it.

              So the countries which have movements which proclaim you’ll go to heaven if you blow yourself up? They have bigger problems and higher body counts. They don’t just stop the glory after you’re dead either, they put the dead guy on posters and make him famous.

              There’s a lack of recognition that we do this sort of thing here. We’ll spend months pouring over his life story making him famous.

              A LOT of these shooters study the previous shooters and learn from them how to min/max their shooting bodycount and thus how to make themselves a success.

              This is a media problem.Report

          2. How many mass-casualty knife killings are there? I’ve seen a few knife fights up (relatively) close. No nut with a knife can go into a crowd of able-bodied adults and inflict mass fatalities. Either he will be subdued, or most potential victims will be able to keep their distance.Report

              2. Makes my point, that mass stabbings, or bombings, or vehicle ramming, just requires the perpetrator to choose his target a wee bit more carefully.

                So my point stands, that it’s less of a gun problem, and not even a mental health problem.

                It’s a hate problem, an anger problem, a power problem, and a problem of rampant dehumanization.

                Removing guns will only reduce the number of gun killings. I don’t think it will much effect the number of mass casualty events.Report

              3. The people who kill kill the people they want to kill, and use the appropriate methods to get the job done. Do you really think that someone who now kills adults with an AK-47 in a grocery store or a massage parlor will shift to knifing kids at a day-care center or seniors at Bingo night if he can’t conveniently kill the people he wants to kill?Report

              4. Depends on who he wants to kill and why.

                The Atlanta guy could have just as easily ended eight lives with a machete he got at Home Depot, simply because he hit targets that were unable to effectively to fight back.

                Do you think Newton would have fewer dead kids if he’d only had a big knife?

                The Boulder shooter, do we know if he had a specific grievance against a person in the store, or the store itself, or did he just want to, as they say, watch a bit of the world burn?

                I hate to tell you this, but most people, even people who like to pretend that they would take some action in the face of wanton violence, mentally lock-up when it happens in front of them. So a killer has a rather large window of time to operate in before anyone is likely to begin moving against them, and if they have a large crowd, or are willing to stay on the move, they can rack up a body count.

                So yes, a killer with a big knife could very much be as lethal as with a gun. Maybe even more so, because a gun is loud, and a knife is not.

                IMHO, the reason knives are not used more often is two fold. Guns are scarier, and if fear is what they want, a gun gets them that. And knives are melee, which means up close and personal to the blood.

                In the second is where I would think we MIGHT see a reduction in events, because a gun is removed from the gore, so the killer can remain detached in a way that a knife won’t permit. But then, a bomb is detached, as is a big truck moving at speed into a crowd that can’t effectively disperse, so I’m not certain we’d see a reduction.

                I still come back to, why do we have some element of the population that is A-OK with exorcising their personal demons with violence upon the general population? Other countries have big knives, and trucks, and everything you’d need to make a bomb, so socially, culturally, what is different? Less media glorification of violence? Less official acts of violence? Less toxic masculinity? Better mental health care? Better social cohesion?Report

              5. Couldn’t you also argue that if American culture is uniquely violent it means we need more gun control? At this point though, nothing is changing any minds on this debate.Report

              6. Yes, you could, but you’d have to overcome the millions of people who don’t give in and perpetuate violent fantasies.

                You hit the same problem you have when restricting any right because of bad behavior. You are effectively punishing the whole for the misdeeds of the very, very few.

                Like Chip, I’ll say what I always say. There are plenty of posts and comments I’ve made. I’m sure Jaybird can find them for you if you are curious.Report

              7. How much gun control do you want, and how much of a problem is that going to be for the BULK of lawful people who don’t commit crimes?

                Worse, how easy will it be for mass murderers to avoid it with a few years to plan?Report

              9. Knife fights with pocket knives between two guys is a different critter than a guy with what is effectively a short sword rampaging amongst folks who can’t defend themselves.

                You can’t equate the two.

                You can’t equate the twoReport

              11. I’ve seen people fighting with a knife, they are maneuvering to both cut, and avoid being cut. That kind of fight is different from a person using a knife to slaughter, with little fear of being cut in return. Someone intent on such a killing is more akin to a butcher than a knife fighter.

                It’s similar with gun fights versus shootings. In a gun fight, everyone is trying to aim and land a shot, while also moving to avoid being shot. In a shooting, the shooter isn’t trying to avoid anything, they are simply aiming and firing.Report

        3. This isn’t even proof that shooting incidents have increased.

          From your link: Because there is no universal definition of mass shootings or central database tracking them, this list is based primarily on media reports and may not be complete or representative of all mass shootings.

          So what we have is after the main media started treating all local news as global and we got good search engines, we got the ability to find these.

          those countries do have effective legislation that makes it nearly impossible to get military grade weapons

          “Military grade weapons” are expensive collector items, sharply restricted, and as far as I can tell haven’t ever been used in these sorts of events.

          Now we have seen a lot of military style weapons used… but “military style” means “can have a bayonet attached”.Report

      1. Set up a scholarship fund for the 7 kids of the cop.
        Donate millions to anti-violence organizations for years to come.
        Pay its people hazard pay instead of closing stores in California.

        And that’s just what comes easily to mind.Report

          2. you asked. The first two were serious ideas, and could be done by Kroger with a tweet, much less a paid spokes person going on and on about broken hearts. My third suggestion was about something Kroger is actively doing that might add stress to already stressed persons and thus make some sort of violence more likely. Corporations can either contribute to solutions, and help heal broken lives or they can keep racking up record profits while leaving economic and social destruction in their wakes. So far Kroger seems hell bent on the latter while trying to wrap itself in the cloth of the former.

            And. That. Needs. To. Stop.Report

            1. Corporations are a force akin to gravity. They’re largely helpful because they supply jobs and products but everything after that is largely virtue signaling.

              As for Kroger, looking at their finances (wiki), the long term story is number of stores has been going down since 2006. They reversed that in 2014 (merger) but that trend resumed in 2017.Report

            2. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be the kind of person who thinks of “record profits” as a good basis for criticism, but in point of fact, Kroger’s profits were about 20% higher in 2018 than in 2020, so value judgments aside, it’s not even factually true.

              Personally, I don’t currently live near any stores owned by Kroger, but I used to shop at QFC pretty regularly, and I think it made a fine contribution to solving the problem of supplying the rest of the community and me with groceries at reasonable prices, which honestly, is all I feel I can reasonably expect from a corporation that specializes in grocery stores. I guess I just don’t have the inflated sense of entitlement needed to demand more from them.Report

              1. Businesses are parts of a community. They are places of employment, and providers of goods and services. They can do a lot – outside of the allegedly heavy hand of government – to help shape community values as well as socio-economic outcomes. Businesses played a much more significant part in enforcing Jim Crow then government did. Which is why the lunch counter sit ins and bus strikes were so effective at driving public policy changes during the Civil Rights era.

                Large national Corporations can have an even bigger impact when they choose to. As the Covid Pandemic was ramping up on 2020, Home Depot gave millions to get Donald Trump reelected. Lowes gave millions to small and Black Owned construction and hardware businesses to keep them afloat economically. As a result, one of those big boxes still gets my money when my local hardware store doesn’t have what I need, and one doesn’t.

                Kroger as a corporation has a greater obligation to the society and economy that allows it to make profits then just to wish thoughts and prayers for the victims families – at least two of whom apparently worked at the store in question. And they can meet those larger obligations without endangering their bottom line or long term survival.

                Fiscal 2020 Highlights
                – Identical Sales without fuel grew 14.1%, digital sales grew 116%
                – Record Our Brands sales of $26.2 billion, up 13.6%
                – EPS of $3.27; Adjusted EPS of $3.47
                – Operating Profit of $2.8 billion; Adjusted FIFO Operating Profit of $4.1 billion

                http://ir.kroger.com/CorporateProfile/press-releases/press-release/2021/Kroger-Delivers-Strong-Fourth-Quarter-and-Fiscal-Year-2020-Results/Report

              2. Legal question: If a public business (with shareholders) decides to shift gears from largely investing in growth or shareholder service, and instead plows money back into communities, do they have to worry about shareholder lawsuits for failure to meet a duty to shareholders?

                If they don’t have any real threat from that, then I would suggest that the problem sits squarely on the idea of share price as an indicator of corporate financial health. And until you figure out a way to get corporations to stop being focused on share price and short term numbers, you won’t really get your wish.

                ETA: Ergo, businesses respond to the incentives we give them. If you want different behavior, you need to give them different incentives.Report

        2. Why should Kroger have any special obligation here? Mass shootings in suburban grocery stores are rare enough that it doesn’t really make sense to put armed guards in every store, so while I’m sure that a bunch of lawyers are working overtime this week to try to find a way to make the case that they were negligent in a way that enabled this, I’m skeptical that there’s actually a good case to be made.Report

          1. Why should Kroger have any special obligation here?

            They don’t. However if they’re trying to virtue signal over the dead bodies in their store, doing just a tweet on twitter seems cheap.

            Having said that, I dislike the idea that these sorts of things can change public policy. That might be encouraging the wrong behaviour and empowering the wrong things.Report

    1. and here you are whining about your swear-laden rant not being posted. Like, your thought this was such an important contribution to the world’s conversation that here you are crying to the teacher about it not instantly appearing on the website.Report

    1. It wouldn’t have stopped this even if it had remained in force. The alleged shooter lives in Arvada, so would not be subject to the ownership ban. Without some other reason for searching his car, no one would have known he was violating the transport ban. And once he had the weapon out in the open, he was in violation of the city’s existing open carry restrictions.

      Anyone who has driven into Boulder at rush hour on either the Turnpike or the Diagonal would find the notion that Boulder could search cars against the possibility of someone bringing an assault weapon into the city ridiculous.Report

      1. “I’d back new laws restricting firearm sales and banning certain types of weapons 1000% if the libs didn’t say they wanted to defund the police last year.”Report

        1. My reason for not supporting new gun laws involves such things as “the cops will be the ones enforcing them”.

          If you want to know why I don’t think that the cops will do a particularly good job enforcing new laws, I can find you some citations of police not living up to the idea that many of us have of how police ought to act, I suppose.

          Need me to dig them up?Report

          1. All that to say: We Have Several Problems.

            One of them is an Order-Of-Operations problem. If we don’t fix X before we fix Y, we won’t ever be able to fix Y.

            If you want to fix Y, we have to fix X first.

            This isn’t even me arguing that we ought not fix Y. This is me arguing that fixing Y has pre-reqs and those pre-reqs are necessary.Report

      1. I rather expect that we will quickly switch to a policy of “Do not name the shooter, that’s what they want. Name the victims! Do *NOT* make the shooter famous!”

        My boss is a Redditor and he tells me that the shooter’s name has been wiped from the site.

        I just did a search for the guy’s name and while it hasn’t been *WIPED*, the top five hits are:

        r/Firearms
        r/Destiny
        r/gunpolitics
        r/conservatives
        r/Damnthatsinteresting

        It’s not showing up on r/news, r/worldnews, r/politics, or so on.

        See for yourself.

        Here is a front page thread on the NRA’s blocking of the AR-15 gun ban, sorted by controversial for your convenience.Report

        1. Hoo boy. Rumors are now circulating that the shooter has ISIS sympathies.

          His social media has been scrubbed and so it’s not really possible to confirm for oneself and there are screenshots circulating but… you know. Screenshots.Report

            1. Oh, you mean Robert Long? We can talk about Robert Long’s heinous crime, what a horrible person he was, and how he’s likely representative of a bunch of toxic philosophies.

              And we can talk about him by name. “I hope Robert Long burns in Hell!”, we can say. Look at his picture. What a loser. The Face Of Hate.

              He was a Christian, did you know that? Southern Baptist variant.Report

              1. I asked my question sincerely and this offered me nothing.

                I’m not on Reddit. Was Robert Long’s name wiped from the site similar to Alissa’s?

                Have Robert Long’s social media profiles been scrubbed?

                If this is standard practice after mass shootings, we can talk about whether this is good or bad practice.

                If it happens sometimes and not others, I’m happy to look for patterns and weigh in on what might emerge.

                Right now, you’ve offered a single data point and I’m asking if you can offer more.Report

              2. This is tougher because it was a week ago but I found this post from r/news.

                Both “robert long” and “robert aaron long” show up in reddit searches now, but I don’t know how to search for a week ago (but not the last three days).

                The current subreddits for Robert Long are:

                r/aznidentity
                r/mensrights
                r/asianamerican
                r/promalecollective
                r/bad_cop_no_donut

                Have Robert Long’s social media profiles been scrubbed? I don’t know. The police officer who was quoted out of context about Robert Long’s bad day has scrubbed his… apparently there were some anti-Asian t-shirts displayed prominently.

                You’re right, though.

                I don’t know whether Robert Long was plastered all over Reddit a week ago.

                I do not have a second data point (and the r/news article, as its top comment, says “No name. No photo. No notoriety.”

                So maybe that’s just what Reddit does.Report

              4. Eh, I have a theory that the Boulder shooting will be more quickly forgotten than the Atlanta shooting and it does have to do with the names of the two shooters.

                And if you want to ask “What do you mean ‘forgotten’?”, I mean something like “The Tennessee RV Bombing Forgotten”.Report

              5. That’s a fair theory to have.

                That’s different than responding to a question about what did or did not happen that you don’t know the answer to with something supporting your theory about what will happen. But keep doubling down like my question was the problem instead of just admitting you were wrong.

                FWIW, I’m still seeing his name everywhere. Maybe we shouldn’t treat Reddit as a harbinger of things to come.

                And I dare say the Tennessee bombing faded from memory because no one died. If it bleeds, it leads.Report

              6. Kazzy, I was wrong about Reddit.

                I was wrong about using Reddit as a data point for the whole “let’s not use the guy’s name!” theory that I have floating around.

                But we only learned the guy’s name yesterday.

                I’m not sure that I can come up with a testable hypothesis for the “we’re going to have a different attitude for this guy’s name than Robert Long’s.”

                If you’d like to suggest one, I’m all ears.Report

              7. To your hypothesis there does seem to be a weird dynamic in play with respect to which one of these people becomes the ‘face’ of the phenomenon and which don’t.Report

              9. The only picture of the CO shooter I’ve seen is the one taken from yards and yards away (where his leg is bleeding).

                We have a picture of Robert Long here on this very site, in the Hate is Hate post on the front page.

                His picture shows up a couple of times in that post.Report

  9. Whenever a mass shooting occurs, a lot of the pro-gun defense team seems to be arguing anything they can to avoid the fact that these incidents don’t happen in other countries because access to guns is harder. Take away guns and people won’t have an ability to act out their violent fantasies. They might still have them but putting them into practice will be a lot harder.Report

      1. Doesn’t matter. I’m middle aged with a really bad dating life as people on this blog know and I never felt the urge to go out and kill over it. Same with a lot of us.Report

        1. “I’m one of the good ones!” is an argument we hear all the time from the main demographic behind Gamergate. Now we have a fat and unattractive 21 year old shooting up a grocery store in Boulder because “Stacy” won’t give him a second look.

          Maybe we should do a better job of tamping down on this peculiar form of toxic masculinity instead of pointing out all of the exceptions.

          We had an Incel shoot up a bunch of massage parlors last week!Report

              2. We’re in the same freaking place as hardcore Pro-lifers are with abortion.

                We need to pass a law, they say. As if a law would help.

                What are the arguments against banning abortion? I’m sure you know them by heart and I’m sure you’ve given them and you know the responses to the arguments before you hear them.

                “People will get abortions anyway.”
                Yes, but not as many.
                “Rich women will just get them anyway.”
                Yes, but not as many!
                “Are you suggesting we arrest women who get abortions as engaging in conspiracy to commit murder?”
                NOBODY IS SUGGESTING WE ENFORCE THE LAW

                And right around here we realize that the pro-lifers aren’t really thinking about the logistics of what the law would actually entail, in practice, but merely loudly expressing a *SENTIMENT*.

                I wish there were fewer abortions! I know! Somebody oughtta pass a law!

                So too, with guns.

                And you’d think that this point would be a lot more noticeable given the fact that we had about $2B in riots last year protesting bad policing.

                I appreciate that the people calling for gun control now are, similarly, loudly expressing a sentiment. I have sympathy for this. I wish that there were fewer shootings too.

                And, much like with abortion, maybe we should do more to provide better access to birth control. Maybe we should do a better job with sex ed. Maybe there are things that we could do to make abortions less necessary in the first place, if we agree (if only for the sake of argument) that abortion is a vaguely troubling thing that might be worth preventing in its own right in the first place.

                But, of course, the go-to argument for pro-lifers is to start screaming about passing laws.

                And here as well.

                Except, this time, we already know how cops act when they’re enforcing laws when they think that there might be a gun around somewhere.

                Say what you will about fetii, they don’t have guns yet.Report

          2. We had an Incel shoot up a bunch of massage parlors last week!

            I know this is facetious, but it’s worth noting here that he claims to have been the polar opposite of an incel. By his account, he wanted to be celibate, but couldn’t resist the temptation.Report

            1. There is actually a pretty big debate among incels whether or not seeing sex workers “counts.” The general conclusion is that seeing sex workers does not remove “incel” status. Certainly there are a fair number of men on incel forums who regularly see sex workers, and who nevertheless still consider themselves incels and resent women for rejecting them.Report

              1. This might be the lawyer in me but words should have meaning.* The cel in incel means celibate. Going to a sex worker counts because they are having sex even if it involves a commerical exchange.

                *Unless I need to argue differently for a particular client of course.Report

              2. You’re right about the word of course. According to its literal meaning, if you see a sex worker, you are no longer “celibate.” That said, language evolves, and sometimes words escape their historic meaning. In fact, the term “incel” has changed meaning quite a bit from when it was originally coined.

                In any case, it’s a fact that someone can regularly see sex workers, but at the same time call themselves an “incel” and be accepted as such on incel forums.Report

      1. I’ll suggest that Georgia’s same day gun buying with a 30 day wait to vote after registering has our rights squarely upside down.
        I’ll suggest that There are more controls on the first amendment then the second in the US and that gets our rights upside down too.Report

  10. If the pro-gun side really believes that the 2nd Amendment or their interpretation of this is really worth a society where danger and mass shooting are a constant than they should just come out and say so. They should say that five, eight, ten, or twelve getting mowed down by somebody off their rocker is just something that society needs to learn to live with because their abstract principles are the most important.Report

      1. Yeah, but that isn’t as scandalous sounding as, “We find these deaths to be an acceptable cost for the preservation of the right we value”.Report

      2. They do say this. This just shows they lack the courage of their convictions. Nobody who doesn’t already agree with them believes them.Report

        1. well, i’ll never own or use a gun (and i live in trumpy gun country) but i think the basic idea is really obviously clear – if you’re careening into people in your car, why take away licenses from other people not crashing all about? because they may, at some future point, also go careening?

          i think part of the fuel is that it’s also because this story and others like them are something that the media class can imagine happening to them. or anyone for that matter, judging by this thread. is it likely to happen to them? absolutely not. it’s like worrying about being struck by lightning.

          yesterday there were 15 shootings in chicago with a few fatalities…and not a lot of front page coverage in non chicago outlets. i think this mismatch is because there are certain kinds of violence that are congruent with their settings and the expectations of much of the media and news consumers that are not as motivating for people.Report

      3. The problem is that we are paying a price for their arsenals and I find a lot of their arguments are really not good. They just get angrier and trollier.Report

        1. American gun culture is on a dangerous downward spiral.

          A generation ago, a “typical gun owner” might fairly be described as a hunter, sport shooter, or maybe some sort of security guard.

          But as the ranks of hunters and sport shooters decline, the “typical” gun owner is increasingly a paranoid right wing hoarder of guns. Something like 3% of gun owners account for about half the guns owned.
          And for the other 97%, fewer and fewer are owning guns for the purpose of shooting animals or targets.

          The guns being collected now are for the purpose of shooting a fellow citizen. Mix this with the toxic culture of political paranoia and misinformation, conspiracy and hate, and it makes for a very bad outcome.Report

          1. Correct and it is not getting better. It will in fact get lost. Sandy Hook was probably the point at which the gun nuts won. This is when we saw the birth of the conspiracy theory that the massacre did not happen and it was false flags/crisis actors.

            Because if you want to keep the status quo on guns, your brain has to rationalize 20 dead first graders somehow and it is easier to state that kids really did not die/exist over stating that you are okay with children dying in order to preserve the status quo.Report

            1. This is also why the protestations of “Gun control won’t work!” get ever more vehement and the imagined consequences of gun control grow ever more absurd.

              Because part of the soothing lie is to pretend that nothing can be done. Otherwise, people would have to confront the fact that yes something can be done, but we just don’t want to.Report

              1. The protestations for “Gun control won’t work” are similar to the discussions of how masks don’t work back from a year ago.

                Is it that the argument is that gun control won’t result in a handful of outcomes that have better numbers than current numbers?

                Or is the argument that gun control won’t prevent 100% of shootings?

                We need to hammer out what “works” means!

                As for the “imagined consequences of gun control”, the question that was there the other day was not “do you support gun control” but about house-to-house searches.

                If someone thinks that at least one perfectly innocent black dude is likely to get shot from house-to-house searches, this shooting will be captured on camera, and this footage will be uploaded to social media, and this footage will then go viral…

                Well, it’s not absurd to think that this is likely.

                I suppose you can’t make an omelet.Report

              2. We have lots of evidence from other countries that gun control does work. Their loonies don’t go off the rails and kill dozens of innocent people going about their daily life.Report

              3. Sure! I agree with that!

                And so now the question is “how do we get from a place where we are to a place where other countries are?”

                Laws, I suppose, are one way.

                We’d have to pass them first, I think. We’d probably have to enforce them, after.

                What are we thinking? “Only The Authorities Should Be Allowed To Own Guns”?Report

              6. “Would rich/powerful/connected people be able to know when the cops would be hitting their part of town and hide their guns at a friend’s for the duration of a search?”

                “Why do you support children dying?”Report

              7. The funny thing is they actually try that. I’ve never heard of any kind of 2nd Amendment concern stopping the police from getting a warrant. And yet…Report

              8. We have lots of laws. The level of shoplifting in Baltimore suggests those inclined to shoplift are unimpressed by them.

                Said no one, ever.

                It’s weird how we have universal car registration laws, and if you don’t follow them, the Men With Guns come to your House and CONFISCATE YOUR CAR!!reee ree ree.
                And yet…no one gives a crap and we all get on with our daily lives.

                We have traffic laws, burglary laws, laws to control where you can take a piss and when you can play your stereo loud, all enforced by those same racist fascist cops who can’t be trusted to enforce gun laws without creating a dystopian nightmare.

                And nobody gives a crap and we all get on with our daily lives.

                And people all over the world in free democratic societies have strict gun laws, and they don’t give a crap and they get on with their daily lives.

                Its only here in America where we somehow pretend that doing something so simple is just so goshdarned complex, that really, a few dozen dead children every couple years is really not such a big deal when you think about it.Report

              9. Chip, this is all over the place and not even responsive. Obviously I’m not suggesting repealing shoplifting laws anymore than I’m suggesting we legalize felons buying guns out of cars and abandoned buildings. I am suggesting that making things that are already illegal double triple illegal probably won’t do much more to influence crime rates than giving someone 20 to life for the third shoplifted twinkie has.

                Regarding other countries it’s pointless to rehash. If I could wave a wand and make our homicide rate the same as whatever European country you pick, I would. Alas, I am constrained by reality. And hey I assume you heard about those guys at the concert in France a few years back. ‘Never’ is never quite never. They have their incidents of mass murder, but it’s easier to shrug them off when they can’t be conflated with gang violence and suicides to drive hysteria. It ain’t like the US media is paying attention.Report

              10. Even by your own argument, i.e. “American Exceptional Violent Culture”, is a defense of the status quo.

                Because it is never followed by ideas of how to change our violent culture, it just ends up being a shoulder shrugging acceptance.

                Which is my point, that the current level of violence IS acceptable to many people. All the handwringing and pious pleas for thoughtsNprayers just mask the fact that yeah, this is just not considered a problem worth addressing.

                Its like America is living with an abusive drunk, but has decided that a few black eyes and bruises are just something that one needs to live with because the alternative is too scary.Report

              11. Because it is never followed by ideas of how to change our violent culture, it just ends up being a shoulder shrugging acceptance.

                OK, so let’s change culture.

                1) We clamp down on lionising these shooters. We outlaw violence in movies and on the TV.

                This may require getting rid of the First AM.

                2) We really, really enforce the laws we have on gun control, especially against felons and gang members.

                This will look seriously racist and fill the prisons with minorities but we need to be good with that.

                3) We end the WOD.

                Weirdly this is the easiest of the 3.Report

              12. Well, my argument isn’t necessarily that we have an exceptionally violent culture. I think it looks that way if you compare it to rich, highly developed Old World countries. But if you compare us to other New World countries with similar socio-economic histories we’re actually quite peaceful and safe.

                Which isn’t to say we shouldn’t care or couldn’t do better. But what’s being asked is ‘how do you solve persistent inner city poverty and associated criminality?’ I have my ideas but there’s no one obvious solution and many a political career has crashed on those rocks. Even now we don’t really know why crime has plummeted since the mid-90s. Some people link it to getting rid of lead paint, which no one would have predicted during the height of the crack epidemic.Report

              13. Even now we don’t really know why crime has plummeted since the mid-90s

                Link to very brief review of 16 of the more popular theories.
                https://www.vox.com/2015/2/13/8032231/crime-drop

                Summation (in order presented skipping non or unknown effects).

                Small effect: More criminals are getting put in prison
                Small effect: More police are on the streets
                Small/some effect: Police have improved policing
                Some effect: Alcohol consumption has declined
                Small effect: The population’s just aging out of crime
                Some effect: Legal abortion is preventing would-be criminals from being born
                Some effect: Lead reduction

                Unclear if this is “many small effects added up” or if this is “we’re missing the important data”.Report

              14. [Shoplifting]

                I’ve no clue what you’re trying to say here.

                It’s clear that you want to reduce the murder rate to zero, holding up shoplifting laws as ways to reduce crime to zero doesn’t make a lot of sense.

                We’ve already outlawed a bunch of stuff. The people who are deterred by [whatever] don’t end up in the news.

                a few dozen dead children every couple years is really not such a big deal when you think about it.

                We have 6 children a year drown in buckets. We could stop this by getting rid of buckets, the reward isn’t worth the cost to society.

                If you’re aiming to reduce shootings, I’m not sure what the low cost way to deal with this is. Some variation of stop and frisk? If you’re intending on full disarmament of everyone, then that’s going to be pretty high cost and the bodycount is going to be a lot higher than “a few dozen”.Report

              15. Some variation of stop and frisk? If you’re intending on full disarmament of everyone, then that’s going to be pretty high cost and the bodycount is going to be a lot higher than “a few dozen”.

                George Floyd dying on camera resulted in a seriously interesting amount of property damage, an election that was seriously affected on whether we should abolish/defund police (according to some of the congresscritters, anyway), and several states having police departments get a case of The Blue Flu.

                I think that that will happen again in relatively short order if we have, to use a Strict Gun Control policy at random, house to house searches.

                I know, I know… “nobody is arguing that we have house to house searches”.Report

              16. “nobody is arguing that we have house to house searches”.

                If people want to disarm to the point where Sandyhook can’t happen, then we’re talking about disarming everyone.

                Disarming everyone without disarming everyone seems a problem.

                For that matter if we’re going to try this, then it’s probably fair to insist that the criminal class be disarmed first (just to prove that we can get criminals to follow the law).Report

              19. All this ginning up of bizarre paranoia- conjuring up hysterical science fiction images of stormtroopers conducting house to house searches and whatnot- only reinforces my point about the incessant need to justify the status quo with ever more extreme theatrics.

                The government regulates what kind of car and toilet and phone and cough medicine you are allowed to buy, mandating certain features while banning others. All cars and phones and medicines are registered tracked, with near-universal compliance.

                How do we enforce this, without stormtroopers conducting house to house searches?

                Why is it only guns are somehow magically impossible to regulate, while every other category of consumer good is regulated and enforced and sometimes banned and no one questions it?Report

              20. We don’t have a right to cars or cough medicine in the Bill of Rights. That is what makes regulations of gun control different. Some of the people pushing for “common sense” regulations now have a long-term goal of getting rid of guns. Every time a new set of regulations gets put into place, it is a step closer to that. For people that do not want to give up that right, they will fight all of those little steps to make it harder to get to the end goal.Report

              21. What explains this bizarre fixation on guns?
                It isn’t hunting or target shooting, right?

                The modern culture of guns is steeped in fear and rage.

                And for those who argue the “American culture of violence” angle, this is your answer.
                American culture of violence is intrinsically entwined with our fixation on gun violence as a sacred right.

                We can’t change one without changing the other.

                Which is why I use the argument that there is no moral support for any such thing as an individual right to a gun and the SCOTUS ruling should be overturned.Report

              22. Or, we could, you know, work on rolling back that culture that happens to be a relatively recent thing.

                But it’s obvious you have a powerful dislike for guns themselves, and have no interest in trying to change the culture back.Report

              23. How would America “roll back” that culture?

                Like, how would our society regard someone like Lauren Boebert, or the guys who fly Gadsden flags and wear Punisher tee shirts?

                Would they receive affirmation and support, would they be on the receiving end of admiration and praise?

                Or would they be given scorn and shunning, mockery and ridicule?

                Changing culture requires both carrots and sticks.Report

              24. I don’t know, but banning guns isn’t going to fix that culture.

                Maybe we could have a refocusing of marketing. Maybe manufacturers could focus on ads that combat the desire to take a gun and shot up a place.

                Maybe we could dial back the acrimony of damn near everybody. When nearly every debate devolves into examples of Godwin’s Law and calls for people to be jailed or beaten or killed over opinions, where every problem is a desperate existential threat, people start to get fearful and anxious.

                But instead what you seem to want to do is utterly ignore the decades of harm over the simple regulation (and yes, banning) of recreational pharmaceuticals. I’m sorry, but I cannot imagine you think that stricter regulation and banning of firearms is going to somehow go any differently that the strict regulation and banning of drugs. Which makes it real hard for me to be charitable towards you in this. Because if the WOD, or Prohibition before it, is any lesson, a whole lot of people who enjoy owning firearms more than you are going to be seriously harmed for no good reason other than to satisfy your bias. Frankly, it’s hard to not believe that you want people convicted and jailed simply for owning something, that you want the police to have a very good excuse to shoot first.

                That, or you are refusing to game out what you are asking.Report

              25. How would America “roll back” that culture?

                1) Stop broadcasting the names and details of the shooters.

                That’s basically it for spree shooters, which are an amount so tiny they don’t move the numbers. For the bulk of everyone else….

                2) Improved Mental health for the suicidal.

                3) End the war on drugs to lower the gang vs gang stuff.

                4) Improved birth control for the inner city, presumably free implants.

                5) Get rid of lead water pipes.

                6) Clamp down, hard, on criminal gun use. Just saying +5 years for any crime with a gun or even having one if you have lost that right.

                7) The inner city is responsible for the bulk of shootings. That’s not the “you’ll never take our guns” culture. Ergo name and shame the inner city culture with the idea of destroying it.

                For that last, we’ll also need to review all laws and social programs to make sure we’re not rewarding or encouraging things that should be punished.Report

              29. Yes, I believe the police have the right to conduct house to house searches, if no other options are available.

                Are you suggesting no other options would be available?Report

              30. Oh, is that how you phrased your support for house-to-house searches originally? With the qualifier “if no other options are available”?

                Also, I’m not a fan of “house-to-house” searches.

                Get a warrant for cause. If you cannot get a warrant for cause, you should not be coming into my house.

                And if you want to know why I don’t think that you have the “right” to conduct house-to-house searches without an individual warrant for cause for each house, I can dig up a document that you might find interesting.

                Granted, I know that “the wording of that particular amendment doesn’t mean *THAT*” is a popular argument at this moment in time but I’m a fan of at least pointing to the amendment in the first place and making people explain what “probable cause” *REALLY* means.

                As for “are you suggesting no other options would be available”, I’ve got plenty of suggestions that might work.

                They don’t involve sexy stuff like “banning guns” though.Report

              31. Lets agree then, that house to house searches should only be conducted with a warrant.
                And I’ll stipulate that the warrant should be done with due process, and only after other mess intrusive means have been exhausted.Report

              32. There’s this webpage from California that talks about police searches. For some reason, it’s not a fan. Maybe we could explain that, seriously, if it’s for a good reason, the police should have more elbow room?

                My big issue with stuff like “any policy at freakin’ all” is that the immediate daydream is about how great life will be once the police kick down the doors of Trump Supporters and shoot their dogs and take their AR-15s away rather than how it’s more likely that a cop will kill a black teenager who is not armed but was holding a cellphone or something and then there will be hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of property damage done followed by a media backlash against police searches done without properly vetted warrants followed by a blue flu.

                If you want to change gun violence in this country, you’re probably going to need to adjust your daydreams.Report

              33. You need to be able to articulate a position on police searches then, when they should be allowed and under what circumstances.

                Because right now, your real enemy seems to be the 4th Amendment and 250 years of jurisprudence.Report

              35. My opinion on police searches will probably sound pretty crazy!

                In the absence of my giving my own pretty crazy opinion on police searches, I’ll say that I’m content, if only for the sake of argument, with the legal opinions given in the website I linked to.

                If you want to argue that that only applies to California, I’m okay with that.Report

              36. But…in your very own link…the police are free to conduct house to house searches for illegal guns, if they have a warrant.

                I don’t see any disagreement with my position, other than, “which guns should be made illegal”.Report

              37. You seem to be using the phrase “house to house searches” the way that I use the phrase “search a particular house after getting a warrant due to probable cause”.

                As if you don’t even remember Breonna Taylor from last year.

                (Do you remember Breonna Taylor from last year?)Report

              38. Maybe that’s because a warrant can be narrow or broad, for one house or an entire block depending on the evidence presented to the court.

                See, this is my point about the need to dial up the fear factor to 11 so as to defend the status quo.

                You keep harping on “house to house searches” as a consequence of gun control, attempting to make it sound like some bizarre dystopian hypothetical when:
                1. There are plenty of less draconian methods of enforcing gun regulations and;
                2. Searches are a common and everyday occurrence.Report

              42. There are plenty of less draconian methods of enforcing gun regulations

                Yes, but they won’t work now will they? People will still die. Headlines will be created. You’ll still be talking about how the dozens of dead bodies justifies “more”.Report

              44. Ehhh yea maybe when ‘other countries’ means a handful of European and east Asian ethnostates with violent crime rates* that have never resembled post war America. Compared to the rest of the Western hemisphere though? We’re really pretty good.

                *How/whether events of roughly 1933-1945 figure into this conversation poses an interesting but rarely remarked upon angle to this argument.Report

            2. in order to preserve the status quo.

              What law do you want to pass that could have stopped Sandyhook?

              The killer planned it for years and murdered someone for her guns.

              Now he was a mass-murder-media-fame junky so maybe we could not make these guys famous.

              But as far as gun control goes, I’m no sure what we can do to help with this one even in theory.Report

  12. If I, a gun owner, were to craft laws that would make spree killing harder I’d look at ballistics. The .223/5.56 (AR-15) is a pernicious round… the absurdly low recoil and efficiently lethal ballistics make it a fabulous anti-personnel round for military use around the world. I’d work with ballistics teams and gun owners to identify the band of existing (and hypothetical) rounds that make the .223 too easy to handle with no training.

    It’s a pretty big step-up to a .308/7.62 (AR-10…and maybe that should be included in the evaluation) that would make the firing platform just a bit harder to handle without training. It’s the everything in-between that would need review and/or laws. And, ultimately, any round on any platform is lethal in any given situation… but I’ve seen enough to recognize that the .223 (and the like) should be taken out of circulation. You can’t hunt Big Game with it in most states, the .17 is a better varmint round, and there are literally hundreds of other options for home defense that are better (or at least as good)… there’s just no place for it outside of sport, military, or unfortunately spree. I’ll admit its fun to shoot, sorry Sport shooters.

    To be sure, my ol’ 336 Marlin with simple 30/30 rounds is plenty lethal… but not in the way the .223 is.

    Ballistics experts know what the design specs are… that’s the expert you want designing gun legislation.

    Handguns are, of course, the single biggest killer… but if we’re controlling for a certain sort of spree, then it’s the .223 that’s really dangerous. At 20 paces, an untrained user won’t hit what they’re aiming at with a 9mm (most of the time)… but will with a .223 platform (most of the time) and will get off an accurate second or third shot. People vastly underestimate the difficulty of firing a pistol with accuracy at range (especially by someone who hasn’t trained with it).

    Something to think about… I’m less concerned about regulations around ammunition vs. regulations around the tools themselves. In any case, steel yourselves for endless discussions about the relative lethality of the 5.56 vs. the 6.8 vs. 7.62×39 or x51… vs. etc. At some point the line is arbitrary… but we who shoot know there’s a line.Report

    1. The .223/5.56 (AR-15) is a pernicious round… the absurdly low recoil and efficiently lethal ballistics make it a fabulous anti-personnel round for military use around the world.

      Add the caveat that the military prefer the full metal jacket version because it delivers incapacitating wounds, but is generally not lethal.Report

    2. I don’t know that I buy that making a difference more than on the margins, though in fairness I don’t see most laws helping more than on the margins. I think we’re seeing focus on AR-15s because (i) media hypes them up due to the aesthetics and (ii) people possessed to do a spree stranger murder are now seeing it as the weapon to increase notoriety. I don’t remember these being the gun until Sandy Hook. When the debate in this form started circa Columbine it was the TEC-9.

      And then you look at VA Tech (9mm pistols) or Annapolis Star (pump action 12 guage shotgun). I also regularly read about incidents like this either in SE DC or Baltimore or one of the bad areas and can’t find any report of weapons or ammunition. I mean I sort of assume we’re talking illegal handguns in small caliber but we don’t know and the media isn’t interested in digging into the details, except for when they are for reasons so…Report

      1. Yes. It is quite clearly an approach that works on the margins; but working on the margins is the only approach that makes sense. And, further, one has to start with the margins that the opposition might be willing to concede on. I recognize that the secondary argument, that forcing spree shooters to use under/over-powered arms is a soft-mitigation argument in that we could never calculate whether the next spree that kills 10 people might have killed 14 were it not for the mitigation efforts… but I’m comfortable saying that the .223 round is a pernicious round that we should reduce access to.

        I recognize that rhetorically I’m not going to go to the matt arguing I’d rather be shot by a .17 than a .223… but to Michael’s point above, if we’re doing weird “would you rather” scenarios, I’d rather be shot in the arm by a .17 than by a .223 than by my .50 muzzle loader… but then even if you could automate my .50 the act of shooting it and recoil would enable more people to scatter and run faster than a shooter could recalibrate – esp. these shooters who are buying their guns a week before their spree.

        I take your point, of course, about handguns… VA Tech in particular is a horror story of trapped victims and point blank shots. Most all the lessons learned there were about lockdowns and egress. And most ‘semi-spree’ shootings are acquaintance/family killings with handguns for which this marginal regulation would have no effect. Which is to say, handguns are their own issue.

        This is a concession I’d be willing to make recognizing that the .223 and that ballistic profile and platform lowers the bar too low… and the growth of the .223 market, you have to admit, is a real thing over the past 10-15 yrs. But yes, this small proposal isn’t anything like a ‘silver bullet’ but it is something I’d be willing to concede that doesn’t fall into the realm of aesthetics or the kabuki theater of divining intentions via background checks (that already happen).Report

        1. We could also talk about civilian versus military ammo. Maybe it’s not the .223 caliber we need to look at, but the powder charge, or the material of the round?

          The needs of a person trying to stop an attacker inside 21′ is way different from the needs of the military, or a hunter, or a sport shooter working on their long range accuracy.Report

          1. Sure… ballistics people are their own special kind of weird, but the engineering behind ammunition and platform specs is very easy to regulate (if you know how it all works).

            Ultimately the ammunition on the shelf (or not on the shelf) is the regulating factor.Report

            1. Exactly, if you want the kind of rounds you find today, you need to show a permit of some fashion. Otherwise you get the kinds of rounds that are dangerous a very close range, but fall off drastically after that.

              Of course, doing so would require some re-engineering of the firearms themselves, since a reduced charge would alter the action, but that might be as simple as replacing a spring.Report

        2. I guess as a technical member of the opposition my question is ‘what am I getting in exchange with regard to a principle I still find important?’ And I’ll even up front say that if a proposal includes retiring the .223/5.56 from civilian usage it’s a price I’d totally consider but only if there are some real paradigm shifting concessions shoring up rights and changes in how we talk about this issue. Because if there’s not the exact same conversation is going to shift goal posts to the next thing that needs banning.

          Coming from the side of the river that did an AWB after Sandy Hook I can say I’m pretty cynical about it.* Which comes to your point about why so many people have purchased them lately. It’s driven by the constant threat of the ban and lack of any limiting principle or coherent policy aims. At least that’s what happened in the year leading up to the ban here.

          *I could go into all kinds of details about how little its changed on multiple fronts from crime rates, to spree killings in the jurisdiction, to what remains available for sale (not that the people who passed the law have ever been in a gun store) but I doubt it’s anything you haven’t heard before.Report

          1. Sure, fair point.

            I guess I’d think about it this way… if people who own guns look at them and look at what a sensible regulatory regime might look like and drive our own self-legislation, it would reduce the likelihood that negotiating from zero-sum – which is what kills any desire to discus any limitations because there’s really no limit to the limitations desired.

            The irony in this is to marginalize the negotiating partner that has no interest in negotiating – on both sides. The ultimate benefit is to us who know that the .223 is an anti-personnel round that shouldn’t be in the hands of punters.

            But sure, let’s trade better regulated CC laws and reciprocity for ‘shall-issue’ laws with greater proof that the carrier is competent and qualified… a reasonable compromise for the ‘well regulated’ part without going full ‘militia’ requirement. Couple CC laws with guaranteed, standardized (and maybe expanded) Castle Defense for those who don’t want CC.

            But yes, I take your point that absent a reliable negotiating partner, what’s the point of negotiating is a rational position.Report

            1. I’ve often said I’d take the Czech Republic system in a heartbeat, which is a shall issue system of graduating training and licensing requirements. I get the distinct impression that they went at it to create something that works. We have ‘ban everything we can get away with banning’ versus ‘hold the line even on the least defensible stuff.’ And it shows.Report

              2. I think that’s true but I also think it goes beyond that. We’ve reached a point where preservation of the issue to rally partisan troops is more important than getting the right policy.Report

              3. We’ve reached a point where preservation of the issue to rally partisan troops is more important than getting the right policy.

                Well put and fully agreed, and for other issues too.

                Having said that, it’s not clear to me how many lives would be saved by the right policy. It’s certainly not “all”, and it might not even be very many.

                It may be that, for all the sound and fury, this issue is pretty good where it’s at and there’s not much reason to change.Report

              4. It is very fair to think that people claiming “Sandyhook can be stopped via regulation”, “any death is unacceptable”, and “there is no individual right to a gun” won’t be satisfied with anything less than full disarmament of everyone.

                If that rhetoric is wrong and they’re actually willing to trade, then I’ve missed it.Report

              6. total abolition of the 2nd Amendment needs to be the extreme position…

                There is no difference between “total abolition of the 2ndAM” and “the 2ndAM doesn’t give an individual right to a gun”.

                Those two positions have the same effect and mean the same thing.Report

              7. By this logic, there was no 2nd Amendment until 2008.

                And yet…America was a free and well ordered nation.

                Lets Make America Great Again by returning to the days of our forefathers who in their wisdom established that only regulated militias had a right to guns.Report

              8. And yet…America was a free and well ordered nation.

                The issue is gun control and whether or not your position can reasonably be viewed as “extreme”.

                “well ordered nation” can be used to support anything from “no abortion” (because we used to have that) to “slavery”.

                Lets Make America Great Again by returning to the days of our forefathers who in their wisdom established that only regulated militias had a right to guns.

                So in other words, “no, individuals don’t get guns and we should disarm everyone”.

                Or am I not translating that correctly?

                And btw, back in the day “regulated” meant “functional”. A clock would be well regulated if it told time correctly. The regulatory state was an FDR thing.

                “Militia” meant “all civilian free men”.Report

              9. You’re the one insisting that there is no difference between a world pre-2008 Heller decision, and abolition of the 2nd amendment.

                I can’t make sense of that for you.Report

              10. You’re the one insisting that there is no difference between a world pre-2008 Heller decision, and abolition of the 2nd amendment.

                If there were no 2nd am, then the issue would be left up to the states… which is basically what we had before Heller.

                That’s why District of Columbia thought they could ban the handguns from people’s homes and insist that lawfully owned rifles and shotguns in people’s houses needed to be kept “unloaded and disassembled”.Report

              11. Total abolition is the extreme position. There is a lot of support for expanding background checks. I’ve talked about it before that some of the bigger issues around that involve temporary loans, and the fact that the NICS is limited to a very small subset of persons.

                Craft smart regulation regarding when a transfer is a transfer versus a temporary loan, and expand access to the system (I should be able to run a check on my phone via an app), and all but the most extreme opposition evaporates.

                But the political class doesn’t care about that, they only take seriously the noisy margins, because that doesn’t require them to actually do anything, or spend any money.Report

              12. There are already background checks… the issue with background checks are the fact that there isn’t shared data or a central clearing against which the checks can be made.

                BUT… if we’re negotiating… then let’s make the National ID that we’re checking the same thing you need to Vote and is also the Employment check.

                I think Vikram put this on Twitter as one of those grand bargains everyone would object to… because at the end of the day, it isn’t the background check it’s the idea that there’s a system that determine who’s in and who’s out. We just can’t agree on the out groups.Report

              13. Yeah, there is considerable disagreement on who the out group ought to be. There shouldn’t be, but everyone wants to satisfy their prejudices on the back of the system.Report

    1. And the 9th Circuit steps up!

      Report

      2. That will definitely force the Roberts Court’s hand. Now we can finally see if the Originalists and the textualists actually honor the original meaning. If not the need to hand in their cards . . .Report

        1. I would guess the right to have a gun so you can form a militia is pretty worthless unless you have the right to carry that gun around. The alternative is what, every militia member will hide in their house?Report

    1. I normally don’t comment on such things but this is laughably ignorant. Not only do I rarely comment myself, since it isn’t really fair for the person responsible for posting and promoting the content of the site to be doing so other than my personal opinions, I never “ghost” any comment from a regular commenter, whatever that is supposed to mean. We don’t even have a mechanism to do so. If it’s flagged it is for a reason, and almost all the flagged comments are still allowed. For example we have zero flagged comments right now as I write this. I can count on two hands the number of comments I’ve intervened on in the last 3 years and almost all of them was to discuss those comments with the other editors and leave to Will what to do about it. The one – ONE – case of me swinging the moderator hammer on someone in comments in the last three years was not involving you and was only with discussion with Will and unanimous approval of the editors.

      Be mad elsewhere, your venting is misplaced here and makes you look silly.Report

      1. Ridiculing in the use of ignorant or silly would have some sting if it weren’t done from behind the curtain. The curtain is the problem. I do apologize that i directed this at you in error as i considered the rest of the crew beyond this.

        I suppose things are worse here than i considered. Best of luck to you.Report

Comments are closed.

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