Roe vs Wade / gun laws

[placewherewebelong]

I have been reading with horror as the case has unfolded. I personally struggle to see how people can claim to be pro life then subject children to be potential orphans, or in care, or to live with parents who didn't want them, or as the product of a rape, and be so PLEASED with themselves. It horrifies me.

That aside -

why on earth is a country that still has gun laws where children are shot dead and people are encouraged to carry arms deciding that the biggest problem is stopping women from making their own choice about their own child and their own body?

I don't understand :'(

‘These people don't care that little kids get murdered in their school, as long as they keep their right walk into a supermarket and pick a gun off the shelf.’

I find this reductive to the point that it’s almost offensive to me. If 50% of people in rural areas in the US don’t care that little children are murdered, maybe it’s not worth me commenting on US politics, because that must be insurmountable. Sounds like an awful place.

To be honest, that is rather the conclusion I have come to in recent times.

America is definitely one of those, as Donald Trump put it, 'shithole countries'.

There are other solutions rather than an outright ban, though, and I think it’s better to explore them from the position of ‘nobody wants these mass school shootings to continue’ rather than running round shouting about 50% of rural Americans wanting kids to die because it almost certainly isn’t true.

One thing that might work is a system of zones - make it harder to get a gun in a city than a town, in a town than a shack in the middle of nowhere.

The study looked specifically at handguns, not all guns.

"over 50% more likely to be shot dead" still needs to be applied to your overall chance of being shot dead, which is still thankfully small. The study also looked specifically at handguns, which people often buy for personal protection. It was exploring the mismatch between how much safer people think guns make them versus the reality.

In the US your lifetime odds of dying by gun assault is 1 in 221, compared to 1-7 from cancer, 1-67 from an opioid overdose, 1-101 car crash 1-1,024 drowning, 1-69,016 dog attack.

You also have a 1-93 chance of dying from suicide, of which a very large number will also be gun deaths, a method that doesn't lead much scope for changing your mind.

‘1-101 car crash’

Bad driving!

I think there is grand hypocrisy here.

On the one hand, the first amendment emphasises separation of church and state. Yet, the fundamentalist Christian Conservatives keep throwing the bible at certain decisions and lobbying efforts, of which they are v influential.

They claim all life is precious- unless you're alive, poor, an immigrant or of a different colour.

Death Penalty on one hand, but pro life the other.

A little far fetched maybe, but I have wondered whether there is a little bit of insidious soft Eugenics at play. I think Ben Wattenberg talked about this in his book 'The Birth Dearth'-Not enough white babies are born-so best to save them so that POC don't out number them.

They yell 'The govt should not interfere with my civil liberties!- My Body My Choice!' when they were asked to get vaccinated and put a temporary mask on- to help reduce their horrendous death toll during the pandemic, but then get their knickers in a twist when women yell "The govt should not interfere with my civil liberties- My Body My Choice'

Apologies - that was a different study. I agree - it's low. This was the source. Unfortunately you need a paid account to dig into the numbers.
www.statista.com/statistics/476461/mass-shootings-in-the-us-by-legality-of-shooters-weapons/

@achillestoes why are you so defensive of gun laws?

re your point about it must be an awful place - it is!

I’ve clearly said I hate guns. I’m defensive of fact-based argument and getting a proper understanding of the opposing perspectives because I don’t think the alternatives are effective.

Pro life up until birth. After that, fuck 'em seems to be the attitude.

Re the gun thing I saw a comment on Reddit about how you now have to wait for an abortion until your kid goes to school which ok I get the point being made but it was dark as hell.

I didn’t saying precludes, I said resist. Forcing through a gun ban by reinterpreting the SA will take political will, and political will takes consensus that seems not to exist at the moment. If the Biden administration finds a way to legislate on guns without having first won some hearts and minds, it will cause more political strife. Some states might secede.

And I’m not sure it is inconsistent. The SA confers a positive right, so laws that breach it (however you interpret it) are unlawful laws. The constitution doesn’t seem to confer the right to abortion, so laws that deny that right (although I oppose them politically) don’t seem to be unlawful.

Except that the Supreme Court just issued a ruling expanding the right to conceal carry in response to a challenge to NYC's 108 year old ban. There are no zones mentioned in the Constitution so how can they be instituted now?
I keep going back to the example of the police officer who punched a woman in the face twice at a pro abortion rally. He is running for office and was inspired to do so to fight proposed legislation aimed at banning high capacity magazines. That's not even the weapon itself that is being addressed.

In the US the issue of gun ownership is tied to the abortion debate in a way that people in the UK can't appreciate, along with the capacity to violently impose these beliefs on others even when it is not necessarily the majority view.

We're being beaten in the streets and subjected to not only political oppression but also personal violence by those in power, who have sometimes not even won the popular vote, and you ask me what I propose to do?

‘Except that the Supreme Court just issued a ruling expanding the right to conceal carry in response to a challenge to NYC's 108 year old ban. There are no zones mentioned in the Constitution so how can they be instituted now?’

Yes. In light of this, and of your stated opposition to guns, what is the plan? You say you can’t get what you want through democratic channels. Is it force then? How is that better than the people who want to keep their guns?

Wallaw

They were saying that. And I’m not making excuses. I dislike guns.

‘One thing that might work is a system of zones - make it harder to get a gun in a city than a town, in a town than a shack in the middle of nowhere. New York State did, in fact have checks and balances that 8 out of 10 voters supported. The Supreme Court has overturned their right to impose them. So how does your system of zones work in that world?’

I suppose it doesn’t. So where does it leave the argument?

If gun control is deemed to be unconstitutional, how do you proceed? Because it sounds to me - in law - like the people I disagree with are right: they do have a right to arm themselves.

‘You don't seem very good at shades of grey. One interpretation of 2A is the right to arm themselves. It's a big leap to the right to arm themselves with any weapon they want with few or no background checks.’

I’m not bad at shades of grey at all. I understand this. But there doesn’t seem to be a valid SA interpretation that would prevent the sort of mass shootings with legally acquired weapons that we are seeing in the US.

Am I wrong?

And if I’m right, is there a solution that doesn’t involve persuasion?

I agree.

I had a hunch this is where we’d (by we, I’m mean women) end up about 15 years ago. Right when I started to find my own side’s arguments lacking when in debate.

I’m in favour of abortion being legal. I had an illegal several decades ago and it’s not an experience I’d want to see more women go through. It was hard enough being there knowing I absolutely did not want my baby born into the mess I was making of life at the time. But so many women in that waiting room were there under duress. I’m sure legal abortion clinics miss cases of coercion, but I’m equally sure they’d intervene if a patient was sobbing while her much older male partner, or her dad, had a firm grip on her arm and was threatening her sotto voce in a menacing tone. That stuck with me more than anything else (and there was a lot that was memorable) about it. I felt like a minority in the waiting room in that I wanted the abortion.

You can’t protect choice for the average woman, who wishes to terminate her pregnancy for typical reasons if rape, incest, child sex abuse and America’s constitution as it pertains to guns/gun crime are the arguments.

Worst case scenario it might help shift a few more towards being sympathetic to more limitations regarding legal and affordable access to abortion.

Which is what I saw happening to the pro life side decades ago. They initially came from the status quo and felt they had the quieter majority onside. They carried on being so dogmatic, self congratulatory, judgmental of others (in the 2D, assumption loaded version they imagined their opposition to be), incapable of nuance and disinterested in anything other than the most extreme examples of awful abortion outcomes/reasons. As the years went on they didn’t notice that people had stopped listening to them. They didn’t regroup and rethink after losing key legal decisions. They were so convinced of the rightness of their position they didn’t feel they had to upgrade it or adapt it to the reality that the public was so turned off by their go-to arguments, tone & attitude towards “unbelievers” (or anybody asking for more than a surface debate) that the public became more & more sympathetic to the other side of the argument.

I’m not blaming high visibility pro choicers arguments, tone & attitude entirely for where we stand today and what might happen next . There are a lot of factors. But it is part. You can’t mount a great defence to new strategies from the other side in a changing landscape, with extra added curveballs, if you copy what the other side did when they were LOSING hearts, minds and legal rulings.

I haven’t changed my mind since I sat in that waiting room when I was a very young woman. I don’t want anybody else to see what I saw, feel what I felt. I don’t regret having the abortion. I have a son in his 20s now. I know what it takes to raise a child to adulthood, and I was right when I decided back then that I not up to job, I was only off the mark by the degree to which I was not up to it, by a long margin, looking back I wouldn’t have entrusted 20ish me with the well being of a hamster, let alone a baby. I want abortion to remain legal & accessible. Because I don’t have to immagine what it’s like when it’s not.

Which is why it troubles me that so many high visibility, pro choice arguments (online and off) sound off-putting, contrived and unconvincing. These days my impression is that the focus is on preaching to the members of the choir, yelling heretic at anybody with questions or doubts, to keep said choir suitable cowed into nodding along.

I am firmly onside. So what kind of of impact could be the arguments and the mode of delivery have on anybody who is onside but a bit wobbly, or leans pro choice but with some (potentially growing) reservations ?

Yes, that is an interesting article.

Wallaw, I was reading it as you posted.

‘Of course there's a solution. Just ban them.’

But then what happens? The SC says you can’t ban them.

‘I am firmly onside. So what kind of of impact could be the arguments and the mode of delivery have on anybody who is onside but a bit wobbly, or leans pro choice but with some (potentially growing) reservations ?’

This is so important. You have to compromise and work with people or you just have a polarised fight.

@achillestoes I have repeatedly told you that dissenting opinions are being met with physical violence, that physical violence has always been used in the US for political oppression and that those in power here are not necessarily elected by the majority of voters.

Our system of government is not a strict democracy and what is happening in the US is not determined via a national referendum as Brexit was for the UK.

Have you ever expressed an opinion and had a police officer punch you twice in the face because he disagreed with you? What do you do when that happens? You keep asking me what I intend to do. I intend to not be punched in the face by a cop in the middle of the street. I intend to not get shot by a gun nut, not even one who has different political opinions than I. This is called being oppressed. For the stronger person or the better armed person, violently oppressing someone works. That's why they do it.

I suspect this response will be very satisfactory to you. To force a woman to admit that she is so afraid for her safety that she will offer no resistance.

Which proves my point that there is a connection between people who are pro-life while simultaneously supporting gun rights. And it has nothing to do with babies.

@AlienatedChildGrown - that was a really interesting perspective.

"But so many women in that waiting room were there under duress. I’m sure legal abortion clinics miss cases of coercion, but I’m equally sure they’d intervene if a patient was sobbing while her much older male partner, or her dad, had a firm grip on her arm and was threatening her sotto voce in a menacing tone."

When you reintroduce illegal, unregulated abortions (which previously didn't need to exist) you risk introducing other unintended consequences.