Doesn't matter what you and I want. Matters what the voters at large want. Right now they want lots and lots of guns and shitty healthcare. You say one is an easier sell than the other, but I don't see any evidence for that actually being true. barfo
Except, it's not Just a sales job both ways. It's just a sales job on education and healthcare For the kind of gun control you're talking about it is a TOUGH sales job (good luck convincing the Trumpers), as well as a nearly impossible constitutional amendment process. As well as a nearly impossible and infinitely expensive physical removal and exchange process that will result in our prison population likely quadrupling. We have literally never seen any restriction (like this would require) work on anything close to a similar scale. It's just such a monumental undertaking and has historically shown to be such an absolutely inefficient and ineffective solution... This is literally like trying to put the cat back in the bag. Or trying to close Pandoras box. It's already too late. The guns are already here, and they will be here for at least a hundred years. Another angle is how much money the cartels stand to make on gun running. The black market will absolutely explode with fully automatic assault rifles (they are far easier to make than semi auto, and if you have to break the law anyway... ) It'll be insane.
Hmm, yes, Trumpers are SO much more enthusiastic about improving education and healthcare. It's only impossible because people don't want currently overwhelmingly want it. Same as healthcare and education. The constitution is not impossible to amend - you just have to have agreement it's necessary. Or, you don't have to amend it, you just need the supreme court to reverse their corrupt ruling that 'well-regulated militia' has no meaning whatsoever. But then I guess the supreme court never reverses rulings from the past... Somewhere there is a Spock-with-a-beard Phatguysrule that is arguing that universal healthcare can never work, that it's such a monumental undertaking to change the current system, that there are millions of people and thousands of companies who feed off the current system and would resist changes with a 'from my cold dead hands' fervor. barfo
The affordable care act is popular with Trumpers until you call it Obamacare. This has been shown over and over. They are for it, they just don't know they are. Yes, and in 40 years when we get a democratic majority they might be corrupt enough to throw out the prior 3 or 4 supreme court rulings on the 2nd amendment. Not likely though. They will probably roll back the last one, but that's about it. There is no interpretation of well regulated militia that will override "shall not be infringed". And in order to get the change you've already conceded would be required, it would have to. That may be, but you're trying to compare a couple million healthcare workers (who could go get jobs in education or in the trades) to 72 million gun owners. These things are not on the same scale.
you're grossly underestimating the amount of people who work in health care....and the amount of caregivers and insurance agents and nurses, radiologists, dentists, trainers, specialists of all sorts of fields including pschologists.. etc there are out there..if you're going to complain about comparisons...please try not to exaggerate on that level. The economy generated by health care workers is substantial and found in every small town in the country. A quick search on the census site says that in the medical field there are 9.8 million workers...those are the specialists, not the venders, laundry services, ambulance drivers, custodians, etc..
All of those people in healthcare would still be needed. In fact, we'd need more, as more people would be getting care. The two million who would need to find another industry are just the middle men and women who wouldn't be needed and don't have the education or expertise to actually treat patients.
caregivers for disabled people don't treat them...they transfer them, feed them, bathe them etc....they are in huge demand because it's hard work and they do get training in transfers, etc...but they are not doctors or nurses in many cases
Yep. We'd still need them. I just don't think many insurance sales people or insurance adjusters, or medical billers would be interested in being caregivers. But hey, if they are interested in doing that, even better.
Yes, but not in the way you meant it. Try telling millions of people they need to go get jobs in another field and get back to me about how receptive they are to the idea. Gun owners are obviously pretty passionate about guns, but relatively few people depend on guns to pay the rent. If you want to believe that gun control is impossible, but that everyone will easily agree to reform healthcare and education, that is your right. But the either-or scenario we are discussing isn't valid. It's not the case that we can either do gun reform or healthcare reform, but not both. People aren't failing to improve the healthcare system because they are too busy talking about gun control. People are failing to improve healthcare because it is politically very very difficult. We can do one, both, or neither. Likely neither, for the next several years. You are surely correct that improvement in health and education would help reduce gun violence. But I don't see any reason to think that talking about gun control is somehow preventing us from doing anything else. barfo
General discussions about gun control aren't preventing anything else, I completely agree. But the political efforts toward gun control are preventing other action. An echo chamber about gun control (or anything else) without looking at the real and tangeable obstacles or considering other alternatives is almost certainly not helpful. There is only so much political capital. So when our leadership is focusing on solutions which are incredibly unlikely to be implemented effectively because of structural obstacles and have never been proven effective even in the absence of structural obstacles, it is extremely wasteful and harmful. It becomes simply a tool for distraction. It doesn't matter if 2 million people are 100% opposed. If only 10% of 72 million people are 100% opposed that is a much larger obstacle. Then you look at the built-in structural obstacles like the second amendment and multiple supreme court rulings protecting the rights of individuals to use guns and there is simply no comparison to the difficulty. Having our media and leadership constantly pushing red herrings distracts the population from focusing on more realistic solutions. This is what we complain about the right wing doing all the time. Convincing Republicans to vote in leaders against their own best interest. That's what the left and media is doing with gun control. Keeping people ao worked up about it that they don't focus on real solutions.
I 100% disagree with this assessment. This is exactly the kind of stuff that makes change. It will not be quick and there are many that will continue to suffer because the supreme court decided that the constitution only means what it says for some of the words but not others, but it will happen. Maybe not this decade or the one after it, but all these kids that are afraid of going to school because some nutjob that should not have access to guns can have them because the proponents of the 2nd amendment are unwilling to "regulate" will remember and sooner or later will get the voting power. This country has a gun problem, it is simple to see - and while other things can help - you do not look for the coin under the light because it's easy, you look for where you really dropped it because that's where it will be. For the record, some nutjob apparently decided to shoot at kids playing baseball 4 miles from our home last night. Luckily he managed to miss everyone and everything, but this shit is so common now that gun control needs to be discussed all the time until a real solution is found.
There are already laws that should prevent nut jobs from legally getting guns. The 2nd amendment doesn't prevent restrictions on dangerous people at all. If this conversation prevents us from improving access to education and healthcare for the next 20 years then it has caused far more damage than any gun control could ever solve. And it clearly has done so, from my perspective. By hardening many among gun rights supporters against leaders who would have been far less bad. How many more gun loving Florida votes would Gore have gotten if they weren't concerned about his stance on gun control? How many more gun loving rust belt votes would Hillary have had? How much better could our access to education and healthcare be right now if those two elections had gone the other way? And those are just national elections. That is wasted political capital. In fact, harmful political policy. There are countries with similarly high of household gun ownership rates as the US without the violence problems (but they have FAR better social safety nets). There are countries with with far lower household gun ownership rates with far higher rates of violence and murder (they have worse social safety nets than the US). We have a problem with unhappy and unhealthy people. Those kinds of people are more violent. The well-being of middle and lower class population is the only thing that tracks across the board.
The us has the same percentage of the population with mental problems as many other countries, yet we have mass shootings every day and they don't. Access to guns and proper regulations for keeping and training with guns are severely lacking in this country especially when you look at it on the federal level. Even places that try to regulate guns better are vulnerable to people going and bringing guns from nearby states with lesser regulations. Ignoring the absurd ways people can get guns and are not required to maintain them and keep them registered and pass ongoing fitness tests to having them is absurd. Gun regulations in this country, to me, are a joke. It's that simple and that's why we should continue to bring it up over and over again while these horrible things continue to happen
I didn't say we have more mental health problems though. I said people are unhealthy and unhappy. Our middle and lower classes are desperate and under more stress in higher numbers than most other developed countries. Poor and desperate people make poor and desperate decisions, which puts them in dangerous situations. That's why we have so much violent crime, regardless of guns. The fact that we have similar number of mentally unwell people isn't as significant as the fact thst our mentally unwell people don't have access to the care or social support to keep them from becoming violent in higher numbers. I'm not suggesting we stop talking about gun control. I'm suggesting we stop wasting political capital on policies which have been shown to be marginally effective at best.
Disagree. There are very few people who care about gun control and nothing else. Surely no more than people who care about healthcare or education and nothing else. It's just not true that somehow people can't have more than one political position. What percentage of their time do you think 'our leadership' spends on gun control? I'd guess less than 1%. It does matter if 2 million people are 100% opposed. A very angry vocal minority can and frequently does torpedo policy initiatives. Especially if they have money and political power. In fact that's exactly why you are claiming that gun control can't work - because a minority of people are very angrily opposed. Again, I don't know of too many citizens, or too many politicians, who are so consumed by gun control advocacy that they can't think about any other topics. barfo
