Gun rights and gun control laws should not be seen as opposites, but more as partners that work together to come up with reasonable compromises.
We already have more than enough "compromises." We have jumped through enough hoops, submitted to privacy-invasive background checks, patchwork "gotcha!" laws in some states, and so on. This is our point. There are thousands of gun laws already on the books and the answer is always, "Just a few more."
We have no reason whatsoever to believe that it will ever end, or that any number of gun regulations will ever satisfy anti-gun people. We know what is in place now is pretty much useless (like any drug law is), and what is proposed is paperwork and bureaucracy, which only affects people who actually follow the law.
These laws strike us as ridiculous and absurd on face. If we compromise, there will only be more. And more.
How do we know this? This is how it's been for decades.
And perhaps even more significantly, there doesn't seem to be much effort from people supporting "moderate" gun control to call out and challenge the more extreme people on their side. Obama goes on the Maron show and suggests the Australian model as something "reasonable." It isn't.
We have zero reason to work with or trust people who want more gun control. None at all. Every thing that they've gotten has simply made them want more.
Then there's just the degree to which - and yeah this happens on both sides, I'm speaking from mine now - I just don't like these people personally.
How can I work with people who basically use this "logic":
Yes.
No, that will do nothing.
Every time the concept of "balanced" Second Amendment rights comes up, or the idea that any right has its limit (as if the Second Amendment isn't basically limited to hell and back already), the idea is, "I want this ridiculous thing, it is unjust that I don't get it, and you love death and mayhem for not giving it to me."
The supposed "common sense gun regulations" being proposed aren't reasonable. Even the jacking of the language here is dishonest and propagandistic.
It's gun control - and is is control which basically impacts only those who already follow the law, the same way drug laws only impact those who already follow the law, or the way alcohol prohibition didn't impact your great grandfather who made bathtub gin, or the way people still will have abortions even if it is legal.
I am about tired of arguing with people who believe in, know, and argue for the fact that prohibitionist laws don't work but totally will in this instance.
This leads me back to the point that anti-gun people not only do not understand gun owners, but have made no effort to do so. Those who deride guns as "toys" as in "oh no, they're taking away my toys/hobby." or reduce the insistence - the assertion - of the right to own them as some sort of "playing cowboy," are people we cannot even talk to. There is a stubborn, pig-headed unwillingness to even try to understand why we own guns, or the degree to which we will go, not to argue for the right, not to "protect" the right, but to assert the right.
Instead, we get "sorry anti-gun nuts" concerning one specific anecdotal situation.
I don't like the term "anti-gun nuts" because I don't think most anti-gunners are insane. They have no problem using that term for us. Seriously, many of them believe we are clinically insane. How can even have a discussion at that point?
I believe anti-gunners are solipsistic, willfully ignorant, and frequently hypocritical. Everyone on reddit lives the quip "muh rights!" until it's one of their rights someone seeks to take away. Even mocking the concept of someone who is concerned about their rights indicates such a complete lack of values, I don't know what the point of having a conversation is.
See, a lot of anti-gunners - and we can tell by their quips - really think of all of us in the same thought as middle aged guys in hunting vests. So they make quips about, you know, how we supposedly are afraid of black people being armed (Sarah Silverman and her "black NRA" video) -- in point of fact, the opposite is true. Maybe this was true in 1968.
It is not 1968 anymore, and gun control advocates still somehow think it is when they talk to us.
Conversation is impossible when you're basically a social liberal in terms of gay marriage, dope legalization, reducing the prison population, pro-choice on abortion, but your opponents insist you're some kind of angry right wing stereotype. And the insistence that we are really is a commonality among most anti-gun people I encounter, especially on reddit.
These are the people who are probably really in the minority, but scream and yell the loudest to make sure their extreme positions are the only ones heard.
One man's extreme is another man's principle. You can define the center anywhere convenient to you and then call anyone far from it an "extremist." We have the NICS system in place. We have endless municipal, state, and federal laws on the books. Machine guns are difficult or nearly impossible to come by. We are regulated around schools, government buildings, and many of us have been fingerprinted and have been through background checks (like myself.)
Enough is enough. If saying "no more" is really extreme to you, so be it.
Lastly, there is nothing left to say on this issue. There have been zero new arguments for or against gun control in decades. They are basically the same points made repeatedly, and you buy them or you don't.
My argument to gun advocates is the best use of your time is not to argue but to donate, canvass, and elect.
But as I indicate, the point here is not really to argue for the Second Amendment, except to the degree that argument for it may relieve us from asserting it.
And assert it, we will.
As to gun control, the answer is "no." We've given enough up, on what is the second thing in the Bill of Rights right after Freedom of Speech.
And I know, it's not really a right. My favorite is when people attack the Second Amendment and insist it means the opposite of what it does. Or how our rights are somehow "granted" by a god-like state, without which we'd have no rights at all. Like if somehow they abolished the First Amendment we wouldn't have any right to free speech anymore.
I actively dislike people who argue for more government, a more intrusive state, less liberty, and distrust of citizens, in a post-Snowden era in which the government's overreach has been put on display as a matter of public record than ever before.
In the wake of that, to have people argue that I really need to be less free, more hobbled by restrictions and regulations, yields what is should: a visceral "no."
So as to gun control, so-called "moderate" gun control, so-called "common sense gun safety laws," the answer is "No."
And should it come down to people who clutch their pearls about violence and guns applauding the government using violence and guns to enforce some bullshit regulation -- the same police they're ranting and railing about in other threads for gunning people down in the streets -- expect me to never stop pointing out the irony.
Compromise and discussion is important to Democracy, but it is not the only thing.
Another is:
"...so perish all compromises with tyranny."