A semi-auto rifle ban is also one issue that I believe if we laid off of it, Republicans would be more willing to play ball with common sense gun regulation knowing negotiations weren’t being made in bad faith and with an ultimate goal of opening a pathway to banning semi-auto rifles.
All of what I’ve said is already common knowledge to Republicans, but polls show they are open up to things like universal background checks and mandatory licensing. Just not when they feel like they need to use those things as a buffer to less justifiable regulatory ambitions. The Democratic attempt at voter appeasement with a hardball “all or bust” approach and a low willingness to have regulatory talks without a semi-auto rifle ban on the table has been very counterproductive on a federal level.
Well said, but unfortunately most of my fellow progressives will just disagree emotionally and not engage in good faith. They’re not willing to accept that semi-automatic rifles are not the main problem. Maybe because all they care about is school shootings and don’t care about the more frequent, random violence that involves handguns. After all, even the progressives don’t exactly talk about how they want to prevent gang violence, a major factor in gun violence. And whenever they talk about firearms and suicide, they never link together that this is handguns that people are using to kill themselves.
But semi-automatics are scary and make better talking points, I guess.
Edit: It occurs to me that this is actually probably even more pandering than I realized. Democrats are extremely unlikely to own semi-automatic rifles but not that unlikely to own a handgun. So it’s easy for them to accept semi-automatic rifles being banned while it’s not so easy for them to accept that the handgun they keep by their bedside or in their closet might be banned.
A semi-auto rifle ban is also one issue that I believe if we laid off of it, Republicans would be more willing to play ball with common sense gun regulation knowing negotiations weren’t being made in bad faith and with an ultimate goal of opening a pathway to banning semi-auto rifles.
All of what I’ve said is already common knowledge to Republicans, but polls show they are open up to things like universal background checks and mandatory licensing. Just not when they feel like they need to use those things as a buffer to less justifiable regulatory ambitions. The Democratic attempt at voter appeasement with a hardball “all or bust” approach and a low willingness to have regulatory talks without a semi-auto rifle ban on the table has been very counterproductive on a federal level.
Well said, but unfortunately most of my fellow progressives will just disagree emotionally and not engage in good faith. They’re not willing to accept that semi-automatic rifles are not the main problem. Maybe because all they care about is school shootings and don’t care about the more frequent, random violence that involves handguns. After all, even the progressives don’t exactly talk about how they want to prevent gang violence, a major factor in gun violence. And whenever they talk about firearms and suicide, they never link together that this is handguns that people are using to kill themselves.
But semi-automatics are scary and make better talking points, I guess.
Edit: It occurs to me that this is actually probably even more pandering than I realized. Democrats are extremely unlikely to own semi-automatic rifles but not that unlikely to own a handgun. So it’s easy for them to accept semi-automatic rifles being banned while it’s not so easy for them to accept that the handgun they keep by their bedside or in their closet might be banned.