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Calls for stricter gun laws, or even outright bans, are almost exclusively the result of mass shootings and the horror they inflict on the public. In Australia, it was the Port Arthur massacre of 1996 that radically transformed the country's gun laws. In England, handguns were effectively banned after the Dunblane school massacre in the same year. Here in the US, it is the recent Las Vegas and Parkland shootings that have inflamed the discussions once again and led us back into a battle for our rights. One more shooting at a similar level of severity during the current legislative session in OR or WA could deliver the fatal blow.
Lacking the protection of a new Supreme Court decision, above and beyond Heller and McDonald, to finally and explicitly protect all commonly-used firearms, I think the time has come for gun-rights advocates to address the mass-shooting issue directly, loudly and unapologetically.
One idea that I find interesting was suggested by columnist John Daniel Davidson in his Feb. 2019 article Is The Second Amendment Worth Dying For?. In the article, Davidson asks the reader to think about the trade-offs between safety and freedom, and proposes a thought experiment:
What if we decided that a certain baseline vulnerability to mass shootings is part of the price of the American idea?
Should this be standpoint of the gun community: we will never be able to 100-percent protect ourselves from mass shootings. However, we value the the right to self-defense, as well as the ideas concerning tyrannical governments incorporated in the Second Amendment, and accept the necessary sacrifices, up to and possibly including the greatest sacrifice, to preserve these. It will likely not convince the opposition, but it's finally a message that puts us in an offensive position while weakening theirs, one that explicitly says we will no longer accept mass shootings as an excuse to take away our rights.
I don't have a further, in-depth analysis of the idea at this point, but in writing this post, simply wanted to get the idea out there and the conversation started.
Lacking the protection of a new Supreme Court decision, above and beyond Heller and McDonald, to finally and explicitly protect all commonly-used firearms, I think the time has come for gun-rights advocates to address the mass-shooting issue directly, loudly and unapologetically.
One idea that I find interesting was suggested by columnist John Daniel Davidson in his Feb. 2019 article Is The Second Amendment Worth Dying For?. In the article, Davidson asks the reader to think about the trade-offs between safety and freedom, and proposes a thought experiment:
What if we decided that a certain baseline vulnerability to mass shootings is part of the price of the American idea?
Should this be standpoint of the gun community: we will never be able to 100-percent protect ourselves from mass shootings. However, we value the the right to self-defense, as well as the ideas concerning tyrannical governments incorporated in the Second Amendment, and accept the necessary sacrifices, up to and possibly including the greatest sacrifice, to preserve these. It will likely not convince the opposition, but it's finally a message that puts us in an offensive position while weakening theirs, one that explicitly says we will no longer accept mass shootings as an excuse to take away our rights.
I don't have a further, in-depth analysis of the idea at this point, but in writing this post, simply wanted to get the idea out there and the conversation started.
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