I do appreciate the reasonable, non-hysterical tone of the tangent on firearms laws, and I don't think it's that far off topic. FWIW, I think this forum has come a long way since the vax / anti-vax hysteria phase. I'm tempted to unmute the two or three folks who I muted back then.
Non-hysterical, non-polarized discussions about regulatory issues? IMHO, that is how problems get solved: You have to get your hands dirty. You have to use trial and error, make hard decisions, guess wrong sometimes, which sometimes means people get hurt or killed while it's getting figured out. The three-class system for eBikes is far from perfect-- you've heard me complain about Central Park in NYC-- but we're doing WAY better with eBikes than we did with opiates and guns. It's one reason I'm proud to be an eBiker: For whatever reason, the way we are regulating eBikes isn't totally frickin' insane.
For so many other regulatory issues, I often feel like we're charging in exactly the wrong direction. With opiates and guns, certainly, we've broken down into two polarized camps, and more and more people are still getting killed every year. It seems like every we law we write is dictated by extremism, without any common sense. Sure, carry guns to church and bars in some states! Let's make that legal, great idea! But in California, there are only a handful of .22 caliber revolvers -- low caliber, low capacity -- you can purchase legally. We're real concerned about gun violence here-- that's why we've outlawed the safer ones!
It's amazing out species has survived this long.
Don't get me started on operating systems and IT. If we'd had the same hands-off/capricious regulatory approach to electricity that we now have for information technology, we'd have different voltages coming out of the wall in every house on the block.
Jebediah, you and I might disagree on many topics-- I don't know if I believe that some people are just evil, I think intent is more complicated than that-- but I take your general point: Whatever happened to saying, "I need to think on that" and then actually doing it? Having a complex, nuanced position? Thank you for raising that issue, and raising it the way you did.
I favor gun control, not banning firearms, and certainly not confiscation. I may not feel that way all the time, but that's the way I think about it now.
But I will say, PMC and Pedal, you got me thinking, too. What about proliferation? What happens to your weapons when you die? That's one point some of y'all are making that I really respect: There are too many of them out there. Maybe that's part of sensible gun control: You have to specify what you want done with the weapon when you pass on, sign a legal document. If your kid or spouse doesn't want it, they don't get to just leave it lying around, it has to be recycled And it's probably more responsible to get a used gun if you have to have one. Dang. If we'd been doing that since the 1920s, we'd probably have a lot fewer weapons floating around out there, and they wouldn't be nearly as deadly. I hadn't even really thought about that. Why is this the first time I've ever heard anyone talking about it, either?
We also don't talk about safe storage, indemnifying mental health professionals who monitor red flag laws, or the idea that maybe the reason law enforcement professionals often make bad decisions is because they're decisions the rest of us don't want to make. There's a lot we don't talk about, because we're too afraid of offending someone, of crossing some ideological line that's unacceptable to the other members of our tribe.... well, you see what I'm saying.
Listen, I hate bump stocks, I hate ARs. I don't think I'd carry a loaded gun in my car even if were legal, and I was being attacked by a horde of zombies. And there's a school of thought that believes that firearms training has been poisoned-- often with the best of intentions, sometimes... er, not-- by the military and law enforcement mentality that large caliber and high-capacity are the only way to go, even though home and personal defense is an entirely different proposition, because your intent is to deter, and not to neutralize.
As Jebediah said? Let's think on it.