GUN LIST, WITH OCCASIONAL MUSIC
Jan. 15th, 2013 11:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogAs I’ve said before, one of the reasons I stay out of the gun control issue is because honestly, there’s nothing new to say. It’s the same arguments recycled over and over again on both sides, with varied levels of hysteria.
However, occasionally someone finds a way to put a new, weird spin on it.
No, not Alex Jones trying to get Piers Morgan deported. I mean, yes, that’s weird. And insane. But that’s Alex Jones for you. He does six impossibly weird things before breakfast every day.
I’m referring to the list of gun owners in two counties north of NYC that a newspaper reporter compiled and published.
Hilariously, gun owners are so angry that the newspaper now has to hire armed guards to protect the staff from angry gun owners.
And as you’d expect, conservatives are screaming about liberals violating their privacy (even though all of the data is publically available information that anyone could look up) and how it’s intended as intimidation (which is an ironic thing for a gun owner who owns guns for protection to say) SOCIALISM DICTATORISM COLD DEAD FINGERS FLURBLE GURBLE GARF!
And for all that, I am stuck on a single question: what is the point of a list like this?
Other than to prove you can do it, I suppose. But look, seriously, I cannot get my head around this.
Okay. You are Joe Public, and you have an aggregated list of everyone who owns a gun, where they live, and whether they have a permit for concealed-carry or whatever.
Now what? What do you do with that information? What good is it to you?
That may depend on who you are. If yr a grad student doing research on how many people own guns and have carry permits, it’s a gold mine. Or, if you are a house burglar, now you know which houses not to rob. Or, if yr a house burglar smart enough to break into homes when the residents are absent and yr in the market for a gun, you know where to get one. Or, if you find yrself in need of a gun (in a non-emergency situation), you know who you can go to and ask if you can borrow one.
For everyone else (and by “everyone else” I mean “people who are not on the list”), what good does it do to know who in yr neighborhood has guns? Does it make you safer? Does it make you feel safer? Does it make you feel less safe?
And in any case, what good does that do you?
I am perplexed. Really. I see no useful purpose in this. Say you find out yr neighbor owns a gun. There’s only four options available to you: (1) live in fear that yr neighbor is going to do an Adam Lanza, (2) shrug and go about yr business, (3) move, or (4) get yr neighbor to move.
Options 3 and 4 are not realistic, and odds are you were already doing Option 2. Which leaves Option 1, and who wants to live like that?
Okay, some people have said it would be useful information if they were looking for a new home/apartment to move to. And the original article does suggest that people would be less worried about someone who has a .22 in the house for protection and more worried about the guy with enough AR-15s to invade a small Central American country.
The thing is, it’s basically a blacklist that says “Watch out for these people and worry about them”. It won’t stop mass shootings or even run-of-the-mill shootings or deaths by gun-cleaning accidents, but it will create a miasma of fear, paranoia and suspicion of anyone on the list.
But then fear, paranoia and suspicion are the New Normal in these post-9/11 years, so who am I to be critical?
Address withheld,
This is dF
However, occasionally someone finds a way to put a new, weird spin on it.
No, not Alex Jones trying to get Piers Morgan deported. I mean, yes, that’s weird. And insane. But that’s Alex Jones for you. He does six impossibly weird things before breakfast every day.
I’m referring to the list of gun owners in two counties north of NYC that a newspaper reporter compiled and published.
Hilariously, gun owners are so angry that the newspaper now has to hire armed guards to protect the staff from angry gun owners.
And as you’d expect, conservatives are screaming about liberals violating their privacy (even though all of the data is publically available information that anyone could look up) and how it’s intended as intimidation (which is an ironic thing for a gun owner who owns guns for protection to say) SOCIALISM DICTATORISM COLD DEAD FINGERS FLURBLE GURBLE GARF!
And for all that, I am stuck on a single question: what is the point of a list like this?
Other than to prove you can do it, I suppose. But look, seriously, I cannot get my head around this.
Okay. You are Joe Public, and you have an aggregated list of everyone who owns a gun, where they live, and whether they have a permit for concealed-carry or whatever.
Now what? What do you do with that information? What good is it to you?
That may depend on who you are. If yr a grad student doing research on how many people own guns and have carry permits, it’s a gold mine. Or, if you are a house burglar, now you know which houses not to rob. Or, if yr a house burglar smart enough to break into homes when the residents are absent and yr in the market for a gun, you know where to get one. Or, if you find yrself in need of a gun (in a non-emergency situation), you know who you can go to and ask if you can borrow one.
For everyone else (and by “everyone else” I mean “people who are not on the list”), what good does it do to know who in yr neighborhood has guns? Does it make you safer? Does it make you feel safer? Does it make you feel less safe?
And in any case, what good does that do you?
I am perplexed. Really. I see no useful purpose in this. Say you find out yr neighbor owns a gun. There’s only four options available to you: (1) live in fear that yr neighbor is going to do an Adam Lanza, (2) shrug and go about yr business, (3) move, or (4) get yr neighbor to move.
Options 3 and 4 are not realistic, and odds are you were already doing Option 2. Which leaves Option 1, and who wants to live like that?
Okay, some people have said it would be useful information if they were looking for a new home/apartment to move to. And the original article does suggest that people would be less worried about someone who has a .22 in the house for protection and more worried about the guy with enough AR-15s to invade a small Central American country.
The thing is, it’s basically a blacklist that says “Watch out for these people and worry about them”. It won’t stop mass shootings or even run-of-the-mill shootings or deaths by gun-cleaning accidents, but it will create a miasma of fear, paranoia and suspicion of anyone on the list.
But then fear, paranoia and suspicion are the New Normal in these post-9/11 years, so who am I to be critical?
Address withheld,
This is dF
