mindhog @[email protected]

My wife's (much younger) cousin is getting married this summer. They've insisted that everyone attending the wedding be vaccinated against COVID-19. I won't vaccinate my children, as they're at very low risk, the vaccines seem to have very high rates of adverse effects and their long-term effects remain unknown.

There was some family drama over this, but ultimately it seems that the boys and I will not be attending this wedding.

I am not disappointed.

I think the most interesting article for me personally was Damon Root's, which makes a case that abortion should actually be protected under the 9th amendment (the "catch all" amendment: "just because we didn't enumerate a right, doesn't mean the government can infringe on it").
The difficulty with unenumerated rights is it's very hard to establish exactly what they are. And, indeed, in this case you could certainly argue for the fetus' rights vs the mother's.

https://reason.com/2022/06/24/alitos-abortion-ruling-overturning-roe-is-an-insult-to-the-9th-amendment/

In general, the sentiment on reason.com towards Dobbs seems to be mostly negative, a little surprising given that Libertarians have always been somewhat divided on abortion.
Nick Gillespie did note in one article that many of his own colleagues felt differently about it.

The FASTER program in Ohio and Colorado gives school staff training and concealed carry permits in the interest of dealing with an active shooter.
https://reason.com/volokh/2022/06/01/faster-teaches-teachers-how-to-save-lives/

@billblake2018 @h4890 Probably true. Though it would be interesting to see the MSM discussing its own role in propagating these events.

@h4890 @billblake2018 It also seems less likely to be prone to the slippery slope phenomenon than what we've seen with gun restrictions.

@h4890 @billblake2018 However, it's much easier for me to imagine a very targeted restriction against one constitutional right (which is also already limited) being more effective than the broad set of targeted restrictions against another constitutional right (one which, by plain text "shall not be infringed") that don't seem to have made much of a difference.

@h4890 @billblake2018 AIUI, the very first incident of this kind of mass murder at a school was the Bath school disaster in 1927, and it was a bombing. That said, it's uncertain whether school mass shootings would turn into bombings in the absence of guns.
To your point about the slippery slope of free speech restrictions, I agree.

@h4890 @billblake2018 However, WRT mass school shootings specifically, the two other possible solutions that have been identified are 1) arming more people at schools (or more generally, other defensive mechanisms) and 2) reducing the media coverage of these kinds of events given that there's evidence that coverage breeds emulation.

@h4890 @billblake2018 So I'm going to circumvent the whole discussion of education. I don't think it's irrelevant, but the subject I was speaking of was specifically in reference to mass shootings at schools (apropos the recent incident at Uvalde, Texas).
More broadly, it's not at all clear that the presence of guns in a community has any correlation with the amount of violence in that community.

This is why I have to question either the integrity or the intelligence of anyone proposing this kind of solution. If you seriously care about the problem, you should be thinking outside of the boundaries of a particular solution, and clearly we're not getting anywhere with this line of reasoning.
There are a number of other potential solutions on the table. Maybe this would be a good time for us to elevate the broader discussion?

So why expend energy arguing for a solution that is a legal non-starter, not likely to solve the problem and ignores a wide swath of extremely negative side-effects?
The only conclusion I can draw is that the basic agenda here is not one of preventing school shootings, but simply one of ratcheting up gun control laws -- an area in which these kinds of activists have been quite successful.

There's also the question of personal defense. IIRC, Americans defend themselves with guns between 60 thousand and two million times a year (depending on whose estimates you believe).
By what moral calculus do you deprive a population of protecting itself from that many robberies, rapes or even murders in the interest of preventing one specific kind of extremely rare mass murder?

And, of course, there is the budding field of 3D printed weaponry and even ammunition that is likely to ensure a future supply of armaments to those willing to break the law.

Beyond this are logistical challenges: there are 20% more guns than people in the US. Even with a massive buy-back/confiscation program, such an attempt is likely to be thwarted by non-compliance.
That's not even considering how to deal with guns in the hands of police and the military.

At the forefront is always a chorus calling for banning all guns. Proposing such a solution is hopelessly naive, almost at the level of saying "just give all the poor people money" as a solution to fight poverty.
For one thing, you can't ban all weapons in the US because of the second amendment. You won't repeal the second amendment because there is no where near enough popular support for that (instead the current SCOTUS may very well only strengthen it in the near future).

Every time we have one of these mass school shootings, we go through the same ritual: the MSM immediately jumps to a "national dialog" on gun control and we get a flurry of new regulations that make life tougher for legitimate gun owners while failing to prevent future mass school shootings.

@h4890 Yeah, it's a pretty common phenomenon Johnny Cash wrote a song about it ages ago (describing a scenario with a less optimal outcome 😂 ).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIUIoopMmxg

Arghhh. My good friend and band-mate is going off the rails on gun control right now (likely as a result of the days events).
I'm just gonna not engage on chat. If it comes down to a face-off, though, there's no holding back.
That's one good thing about band-mates, you're in each other's faces constantly. You get good at it, generally without breaking shit 🙂