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this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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Or by legal gun owners, who are responsible for a massive percentage of gun violence, (for example, 80% of all mass shootings).
You know, the same legal gun owners who let their guns get stolen or staunchly oppose closing gun show loopholes or making straw-purchasing more difficult.
I agree with all of your points but have a small nitpick that I really wish people would stop calling it the gun show loophole
The loophole is that private sales (depending on state laws) don't require a background check (which, to be clear, I disagree with)
But all of those guys with tables set up at the gun show are FFL dealers, buying from them is just like buying from any regular gun shop with all of the normal background checks and other requirements you'd expect in your state.
Now any of the random folks wandering around the show, in theory, could sell you a gun without any background check, but that's not unique to them being at a gun show, they could do the same from their garage, a Walmart parking lot, a random street corner, a TGI Fridays, etc.
I'm also pretty sure that most, if not all gun shows specifically prohibit those private sales from happening at their events.
Again, I'd like to see the loophole closed, but calling it a gun show loophole just leaves the door open for gun nuts to say "lol, there is no gun show loophole, see you don't even know what you're talking about" because there's really nothing unique about gun shows as it pertains to the law.
Instead i'd say we should refer to it as the private sale loophole or the Brady bill loophole.
The loophole thing really turned into a talking point, didn't it? Whenever someone uses that word, I automatically assume they've never been to a gun show.
I tend to make the same assumption, not that I think it's important for people saying these things and crafting these laws to have ever been to a gun show, but they should at least understand what it is they want to regulate.
I am by no means anti gun, I like guns, enjoy shooting, I don't currently own any because I have other priorities for my money, but if I suddenly found myself with a lot more disposable income I'd probably own a couple. That said, I do support a lot of gun control measures that would make the average Republican voter call me a crazy gun grabbing communist.
Mostly though, I hate seeing people pushing for laws and regulations when they clearly don't understand what it is they're trying to regulate. You see a lot of liberals get up in arms (and rightfully so) about shitty Internet laws crafted by geriatric politicians who can barely manage to check their own emails, but then go and make the same kind of mistakes with gun laws
To name one particularly egregious example, McCarthy describing a barrel shroud as "a shoulder thing that goes up" had similar energy no Stevens describing the internet as "a series of tubes" except the tubes analogy could actually kind of work for some internet issues (though not the specific one he was complaining about) whereas I can't think of any way to twist the shoulder thing comment to make it apply to a barrel shroud.
That's all fair, but it remains the most widely accepted term for the issue, complete with its own Wikipedia page.
It doesn't matter what it's called, they'll continue to oppose addressing it because their strategy is to only take, never give.
That doesn't mean we need to make it easy for them to oppose it. Don't give them a stupid way to dismiss the conversation before it even gets off the ground, make them actually defend their position that private sales shouldnt need background checks.
IMO, getting stuck calling it the gun show loophole when there are better things to call it because that's what everyone has always called it has the same kind of energy as conservative assholes who refuse to learn a person's pronouns or old people who never bothered to scrub things like "colored" or "oriental" from their vocabulary. Language can, does, and should change with the times, and we need to keep up with it.
Sounds like bikeshedding to me.
Them getting caught up on you calling it the gun show loophole is bikeshedding, and you can solve it by the simple action of calling it something else.
Again, there is no possible combination of words that will make the pro-gun community support its closure and you're doing them a massive favor by implying they have a role in the conversation at all.
With Google searches for "private sale loophole" returning results for "gun show loophole" (as well as information about the origin of the term), it could just as easily be argued that you're muddying the waters for semantics.
So I'll just keep using whatever phrase gets my point across and you can use whatever words you want in the gun-control comments you don't seem to be making, to placate people who don't seem to exist, so they don't use a talking point that's trivial to address.
It's not about changing the gun nuts' minds, like you said, it's not going to happen, but there's a whole lot of people out there without strong feelings one way or another, who don't know about what laws are out there, and who are potentially open to being persuaded to your way of thinking, and if you want to convince them of your position, you don't want to give your opposition an easy opportunity to derail the conversation and make it look like you don't know what you're talking about and they do.
Fine. I'll never call it a gun show loophole again. Anything to stop this tedious discussion of semantics for a situation I've never found myself in.
Call it a "private sales loophole". It's more accurate, and covers what you would actually want covered.
A big issue with gun control, outside of the NRA being a huge grift, is that gun control advocates have no idea how guns work and what current laws actually do. They often confuse things that are truly dangerous with purely cosmetic features.
Well even the most profoundly stupid person can see the most important thing American gun laws do; fail on a daily basis.
Great! Then you can run off and ban collapsible stocks again. That will surely help.
Hey if you want us to ban things that actually help, I'm all for it. Should we start with semi-automatic weapons or handguns?
If that's what you want, start arming African Americans and LGBTQ+ folk. The GOP will be falling over themselves to ban guns then.
No they won't. They're paid $16 million a year to make sure nothing interferes with the profitability of the gun lobby. It's why the price doubled after Sandy Hook.
Armed minorities aren't a threat to anyone they care about and if it gives police more excuses to execute them in the street, that's a few less democrat voters.
If guns actually made the public safer, America would be the safest country in the world by a wide margin.
80% of mass shootings isn't a "Massive percentage", it's quite small actually
I know you're trying to say "the people killed by domestic terrorists in America are statistically insignificant" but awkwardly shoehorning it in like that just makes it sound like you don't understand percentages.