[3/4]
If we focus on "teenagers killing elementary school kids" and "why 18 year old males are even wanting to go into a elementary school and kill kids", there remains a question of other iterations of mass violence, such as shooting up a grocery store, hospital, nightclub, or maybe a church. Our neighbor
asserts↑, "Guns have always been around but not mass school shootings."
Those aren't the only two dots on the page, and if we skip the connections in between, we will surely fail to comprehend the shape of the phenomenon. As
Bells↑ put it: "The ban reduced the number of mass shootings in general. You understand this, yes?" It's one thing to hear firearm advocates contest the overall efficacy of regulation, but now we need apparently need to parse the difference between mass shootings in schools versus anywhere else.
By the time we get to
#31↑, we must address the point that "the original AR15 was made in the 1950s". Armalite issued the AR-
10 military rifle in 1956; in 1959, the struggling arms manufacturer sold its AR-15 design to Colt, who introduced the rifle for sale in 1964. The AR-15 had already distingusihed itself in battlefield assessments. We should observe, the "civilian market" our neighbor notes in
#38↑ includes law enforcement, and the proof that it wasn't designed for something else,
i.e., hunting, is that you can
modify the design to make it more appropriate for something else: "You can use the same rifle for shooting rabbits as for deer," Seattle reminds, "by just changing out the 'upper' rather than by buying a whole new rifle."
And in
#32↑, the seemingly substantial middle paragraph is itself absurd, mostly a setup for a stinger¹, "Believe what you want."
Consider
#34↑, and wondering if he's just effing with people: "What happens when someone uses a bomb on school buildings instead of a gun? That's not to say that gun control isn't a good idea but it's just not the main solution to this particular problem." Is the mad bomber using military hardware? Yes, supply and distribution regulation will affect supplies and distribution channels. But inasmuch as gun control is, "not the main solution to this particular problem", we might wonder what is. While it is true that addressing the factors leading to violence is an important endeavor, addressing the firearm supply will affect opportunities to iterate violent impulses.
But it almost seems like he finishes the turn in that post: "It's also probably barking up the wrong tree to focus on the AR15 as that has now seemingly become the America's Sweetheart of the rifle world," he says, acknowledging the supply aspect and then continues by praising—"and many of the reasons for that are quite understandable now that I've checked into it more"—what are otherwise considered significant points of concern. That is, he is no longer ignoring the differences, but praising what sets the AR-15 and similar weapons apart.
Moreover, if we pay close attention, he doesn't seem to understand how gun control and other regulation works; regulatory policy can evolve according to needs of circumstance. Meanwhile, notice how much of his rhetoric ends up in vagary, though at least he got to complain about "the 'defund the Police' movement".
Still, he goes on to declare, "talk about an AR15 ban reducing homicides and school shootings is ridiculous", and toward what happened in Uvalde, maybe it won't take a lot to convince me the police would have been afraid to confront a shooter with a .380 handgun delivering 240 foot pounds and requiring reload every six shots, but the whole thing about the only thing being good guys with guns ought already be as dead as those children.
In #38, he poses a stock firearm advocacy argument: "Your arguments are just generic arguments for comparing rifles vs pistols," he complains. "Most of the arguments are just those that apply to anyone who doesn't believe that there should be any handguns, shotguns or rifles." He is actually just ducking out on
observable, important differences↑, such as the discussion of the basic difference between handgun and AR-15, and glosses over the difference between the AR-15 and a .22 long cartridge hunting rifle by observing that the AR-15 can be reconfigured.
And he even falls back to the argument about cars. We might, as such, observe that if a
car was designed explicitly to
facilitate extraordinary lethality, we probably wouldn't allow it on the road. As our neighbor pointed out in
#24↑, "All guns are designed to kill so no need to keep bringing that up." Except we do need to consider the point, because cars are not designed as killing devices.
Still: "When people get angry and use a car to mow down a crowd of protestors," he observes, "no one suddenly suggests banning cars." And then complains, "Yet that's exactly what we do regarding guns." At least now we know what he is protecting, and in order to do so, he falls back to straw fallacy, suggesting, "It's because they didn't think guns should be legal in the first place."
To the other, at least he got to suggest, "It would be better to have that direct and more honest debate".
If the vagary about his argument in
#40↑, feels familiar, that is part of the point. His argument tends not toward some status quo, but some sort of idyll that kind of feels like it. After a fallacious setup, he suggests "more considered regulation" is "not primarily the issue behind school shootings … and it's not the primary solution". A lot rides on what he means by "primary".
Yet at
#44↑, he comes around to declare, "If we could have the same regulations and requirements as Switzerland I'd be fine with that." Two things stand out; one is that would actually allow more lethality without addressing other aspects, such as why young men turn to massacre; the other is how easily anyone might suggest to accept or agree with something they think is "never going to happen here".²
And in
#47↑, he seems to be sketching some aspect of whatever solution, or, perhaps, demands to be satisfied. But when we get to those aspects, we will come back to the question of politics and his relationship with the various components of answering questions about why such violence occurs. He asks if we should take the overwhelming tendency of mass shooters to be male into account, and where the answer is yes, we will find a lot of political noise. Compared to El Paso or Buffalo or even Christchurch, for instance, what happened in Uvalde occurred on a different arc, which includes École Poly, Isla Vista, Marysville Pilchuck, Umpqua, Aztec, Yonge Street, Danforth, Hanau, Crown Spa, Glendale Westgate, Atlanta, and Plymouth. Understanding the presence and influence of masculinity in mass shootings is a difficult and complicated endeavor; even beyond our neighbor Seattle, we might wonder who will be discomfited: Should tendency toward masculinity be accounted for? Yes, in more ways than we can count.
And while amending the constitution is a tricky task, as he notes in
#49↑, it is not actually necessary. Still, even with a wishlist Supreme Court, actually tacking back toward our constitutional purpose would be a slow and arduous undertaking. This is actually a very messy discussion in and of itself, but also one that takes place well beyond the confines of our neighbor's sort of pabulum pitch.
Then again, per
#51↑, he would "have no problem if we didn't have the 2nd Amendment", and two notes go here: First, it is difficult to express just how extraordinary a proposition that is. And then, it also has a kind of odd rhetorical safety about it, of something that is never going to happen. If we have a majority sufficient to amaend the constitution, then we already have a less drastic solution available to us through the courts. The elimination of the Second Amendment is nearly an absurd prospect.
But there is also
#52↑: "I'd also have no problem if alcohol drinking was banned or greatly reduced. That's what a civilized country would do." One might wonder to what degree we should take such trivialization seriously, but in his way, our neighbor is emblematic: In
#56↑, he lays out "perspective and facts", and "whatever changes are to be made, if any, need to address that". So let's stop and think about that: Not only do we have the car analogy, we now have a booze analogy. We "don't call cars 'modern killing machines'" for the simple reason that they are designed for another purpose. And now we're supposed to equivocate a bottle of booze to an AR-15. We see what he protects.
____________________
Notes:
¹ Our neighbor is not the only example of this sort of behavior around here, but neither is he the most obvious example.
² Strict enforcement of such regulations would be an extraordinary challenge in the U.S., and might require Constitutional amendment.
[(cont.)]
