It seems that a majority of US citizens are very reluctant to the word ‘regulation’, especially regarding gun ownership. As if it was threatening their liberty. The stats consistently show that not regulating this aspect of their lives puts them at a higher risk of being shot dead than elsewhere, but somehow, it remains in a blind angle of their consciousness.
I guess that’s something no-one outside of that part of the world can really understand.
For instance, do I feel myself threatened, or do I feel infringed in my civil liberties because there is a law regulating gun ownership in Switzerland? Of course not, the idea in itself is absurd.
Restrictions as a generic idea actually polls well. The issue that prevents this turning into a reality is not the gun rights activist per se, but the people who favour restrictions generically, but really mean they want “other people” being restricted in a way that does not impact their rights. The result is a critical mass of people who claim they would support additional generic restrictions will always find a way to argue this is the wrong sort of restriction.
So we’re left with executive branch actions via the regulatory agencies to find new ways of interpreting existing laws in more restricting ways. The big issue here is you typically only have narrow scope so you can create a new “restriction”, but still has massive holes that results in ways to get around those specific restrictions. It is also temporary and overturned at the stroke of a pen by the next person.
The modern wrinkle on that is we are now in an era where the courts are challenging Federal agencies from interpreting laws (see Chevron Deference). This means any move a regulatory agency wants to make to update their interpretation of an existing law (the way regulation of laws is supposed to work) is subject to a court captured by extreme right wing interests saying no. This is essentially what we had last week where the bump stock ban was overturned on the back of the court rejecting the ATF’s interpretation that a bump stop turned a weapon into an already restricted type of weapon (machine gun).
From the pov of people don’t trust the government at their word, the issue with adding regulation is that it’s seen as the opening of a tap that can’t be closed. Give an inch on gun control and they will end of taking a mile+.
I would personally welcome reasonable regulations like needing to take a firearms course before you take possession, some type of preventative measures to keep firearms away from mentally unstable individuals, etc. The “issue” is the perception (and probably proof in equivalent situations) that the government does overstep. There are unfortunately politicians that can’t tell the differences between an automatic and a semi-automatic, so no gun owner wants these types of people creating laws when it comes to one of their constitutional rights.
So, when the government required drivers to have a license, they then went on to control where you drive your car, who can be a passenger and the colour of your steering wheel.
Talk about over reach!
Actually, over the years, they added a whole bunch of legislation after the fact, and getting a licence was not the starting point, driving was. I probably wont disagree with any of it, nevertheless it happened. You are also talking about something that does not exist in the constitution in the form of the second amendment. As I said, talking from the pov of other people. I am sure there are plenty of examples of where government overreaches.
Going back to this idea that when MAGA talks about curbing immigration they really just mean preventing iullegal crossings, this thread by WaPo reporter covers what the Trump adminstration actually tried to do across the entire spectrum of immigration https://x.com/crampell/status/1804192542923108533
significantly cutting visas and green cards for skilled immigrants
advocating for a bill going through congress that would have cut legal immigration in half
advocating for criteria so strict that Trump himself would not have qualified under his rules
Him coming out this week and saying to the All In guys that he’d advocate for automatic green cards for immigrants who graduate from US colleges is the sort of policy incoherence he demonstrates repeatedly, one that illustrates his lack of seriousness and one he is never asked to account for.
In 2004 Kerry ran as a critic of the iraq war and so had to explain why he previously voted for the war authorization. His point was clearly stated and easy to understand - he treated the intelligence presented to the senate in good faith and once he came to realize how faulty, how purposefully ginned up, it was he changed his mind. That painted his opponent in the race in a terrible light, yet Kerry was tagged as a flip flopper and that ultimately killed his candidacy. Trump can disagree with himself in consecutive sentences and the entire media establishment goes into overdrive to try to find way to reconcile his contradictions rather than treating him like the known nothing arsebrain that he is.
In a general sense they do. There is a legal term called Chevron Deference that, in simple terms, means the courts should not second guess technical interpretations of regulatory bodies in the areas they have legislative authority to regulate. We have entered an era where the conservatives on the court are increasingly showing willingness to disregard this critical element of the regulatory state, which is what they did in this decision. They didn’t claim the ATF doesn’t have the authority, the 6 conservatives rejected the ATF’s interpretation of what a bump stock equipped gun is on technical grounds. It is the equivalent of the FDA approving a new drug and the court over-ruling it based on a challenge of their clinical risk-benefit analysis on which the approval decision was based.
We just spent the week in Appalachia, in the Blue Ridge Mountains in NC. This was a Trump +50 county in 2020. We drove around a LOT while we there. Maybe 2-3 hours a day in the car and the Trump signs were so infrequent they were actually a surprise to see. We saw maybe 3 houses flying them the entire time.
Her parents also just finished their biannual drive between South Florida and Up State NY, a drive that over the past 8 years has seen them go through many areas of trump country with visible shows of (aggressive) MAGA support. Unrelated to any other conversation they commented to us how notable the reduction in signage was this time.
