[maxerickson]

I initiated my comments in this thread by proposing to change the basic laws (or at least, acknowledging that they are a big factor).

And it isn't that I expect such a discussion to not be emotionally loaded, I'm just going to reject assertions that only one sort of emotional loading is warranted.

I agree it will take a long time to impose effective restrictions on guns in the US, we should get started as soon as possible. I think looking at Britain and Australia make it clear enough that gun restrictions do make a difference (even if their more generous social welfare systems tend to lead to lower general levels of criminal violence to begin with).

[Karunamon]

So allow me to get meta for a moment here. Do you want to be right, or do you want to change people's minds?

Ignore the fact that we see this on two different levels and don't even agree on first principles for a moment. Let's just talk about the pure practicality and rhetoric involved.

From a purely objective standpoint, a great many people in this country believe in the 2nd amendment as written.

There is no legislative solution that doesn't involve their consent. As much as you'd like to drag them over kicking and screaming, you can't. Our legislative system has safeguards in mind to prevent minority opinions from being imposed on the rest of the country. You're talking a 2/3 majority in both houses of Congress, or a constitutional convention involving 2/3 of states, to amend the constitution.

Please realize this. It's important. There's your goal which even I can agree is admirable, and then there's talk of realistic ways of achieving it, which is a much more interesting conversation, and one you sadly don't seem to want to have.

So that said - why the tone-deaf posturing? Do your comments here advance your goal of reducing gun violence in any way?

Or rather, do they confirm every stereotype of anti-gun people ever cooked up?

Do you realize your earlier conversation could be run verbatim by the freakin' NRA as an example of what they fight against, generating more support for the exact opposite of what you hope to accomplish?

[maxerickson]

The NRA represents 5 to 10 million lost causes, nothing like the insurmountable constitutional blocker you propose. I agree that there are many more people that have associated their personal identity with the 2nd amendment than that, I'm not sure they constitute a majority of the country.

The way I see it, step one is getting to a place where emotional appeals about grandma needing a force equalizer are dismissed more quickly than points about statistics showing that guns overall enhance violence. So experimental comments that turn some people off? Meh.

[jboggan]

The NRA represents a lot more people than you think, even on this board. I've never been a member but reading your comments reminds me that I ought to purchase a membership and donate today.

My grandfather, father, mother, and myself have all used a handgun in self defense before. I would posit that I am existing to type this because of personal firearm ownership. Whenever I see comments like yours I empathize and remind myself that you are good natured but that you lack the background and context to realize why someone might reasonably want or need to arm themselves. Most of my friends here in California are like that, and they have no idea how nice and safe their environment and upbringing was in the pricy coastal cities and university towns of the West Coast. Some of us are from rougher places. Having lived in many different environments with different threat levels I understand the genesis of both viewpoints, but I know which one I'd consider right.

Our criminal neighbor tried to bash my father's head in with a tire iron on the front lawn - before you counter that we wouldn't need firearms to defend ourselves with if there weren't firearms out there in the first place.

[maxerickson]

For what it's worth I've mostly lived in moderately poor communities in the Midwest. Not grindingly poor, but not on the right side of various median measures.

Somehow I haven't been in any situations where a gun seemed like it would have helped (and there aren't such stories flying around my extended family either).