In the News

[Jubal]

Dammit, I'm going to have to read the comments now.

EDIT: Pretty appalling, but I've read worse, sadly.

[Jubal]

In other news, what the actual portugal, Mike Huckabee?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2015/06/02/mike_huckabee_says_he_would_have_pretended_to_be_trans_to_shower_with_girls.html

[Clockwork]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/27/us/supreme-court-same-sex-marriage.html?_r=0

Yay for gays.

[Jubal]

Huzzah 

[comrade_general]

AK-47s Equal rights, for everyone! Obscure reference if anyone gets it.

But still if you support the right to marry then you should support the right to carry, and vice versa, like the Libertarian Party has been doing since 1971.

[Jubal]

I think the counter from a liberal perspective would be the harm principle - guns are more likely to kill people than same sex marriages, which are not known for their use as assault weapons. I think if Americans as a whole want the right to carry guns for cultural reasons that's their business, of course, but at least for the UK I don't see a problem with having one and not the other. I guess for the US I'd still like to see slightly better systems to avoid nutjobs getting their hands so easily on assault rifles, but I can see a federal approach is near impossible to work with.

[comrade_general]

Assault rifle? Those are only used by military personnel. Civilians typically aren't legally able to own an assault rifle. Big time criminals sometimes get them sure, that happens in your country too. That term is just for media hype. According to them all of these problems boil down to "assault rifles". That Charleston kid didn't use one, so don't buy into the bullarmadillo. And besides, the problem starts with the nutjob, a person, not a "gun" or the millions of people who own them responsibly.

[Clockwork]

The liberal perspective as a whole should be in favour of the right to carry surely? I thought the whole point of it was more rights, more freedoms and equality. Saying you can't do something goes against that? You're against the extra security and all traffic monitoring for the internet which is in consideration due to the actions of a few nutjobs again who commit crimes online. You can say that hacking doesn't kill anyone, sure, but say you're identity gets stolen and used as a scapegoat for crimes and spend the next 15 in Wakefield or someones money and savings are taken and they kill themselves or something. It's all of a muchness in my view.

I'm all for the right to carry in principle but I don't think it's right for the UK at the moment or perhaps ever given how little space there is for it. I think we should definitely have gun ranges though.

[Jubal]

Rob: For me, as a liberal, it's about balancing what's likely to curtail freedom most: in other words, I think it's about weighing up the likelihood of someone taking someone else's freedom (to survive, for example) away with a gun versus the idea that people should be allowed to carry a gun. I think the UK's fairly strict gun control is right; we don't totally ban guns, and indeed I wouldn't support a total ban on all guns ever, but we do require people to have strict background checks. And that's pretty successful at ensuring we avoid gun massacres, which are a much larger impediment to someone's freedom than "you need to fill in these forms before we let you have a gun". I don't feel that is all of a muchness with the risk of identity theft, just since when someone's dead it's rather more immediately permanent.

I guess I should note that this way of looking at things isn't universal among liberals: part of what it comes down to is a split between liberals who are only liberals versus the state (perhaps these could be described as libertarians), and people like me who are liberals versus other power sources as well. So libertarians would tend to be more in favour of, for example, lower taxes, right to carry, etc, because higher taxes and removing guns is the state encroaching on an individual. Social liberals like me would tend to be concerned too, though, with the fact that individuals can oppress and remove the freedoms of one another - so will often advocate things which encroach on the liberty of one individual in order to protect and safeguard the liberty of another. Which isn't ideal, but in my view private power is as dangerous to freedom as public and state power is most of the time, so there needs to be some way to counterbalance that.

CG: Assault rifle was probably the wrong term, but these massacres are carried out usually with things that are a lot more dangerous than most of the guns available in the UK. And sure, the person may be the root of the problem, but a nutjob who only has a knife in a kitchen drawer will statistically be likely to kill far fewer people than a nutjob with any sort of weapon that's semi-automatic or has a sizeable magazine. As I say, I have no problem with you guys deciding you want guns anyway, but it's simply not true to pretend that all the mass shootings you guys have would happen anyway with or without easily available guns. We do have nutjobs over here too, but we don't have regular gun massacres.

[comrade_general]

I won't be handing my rights over for statistics, Joob.

[Jubal]

Well, that's kind of my point.

[comrade_general]

I can typing.

[Pentagathus]

Tbh is there even any point in a national debate over gun control in the US? I don't see any way you could realistically withdraw so many weapons from the general population without common criminals (as in pretty much any mug who wants to mug someone) keeping hold of even fairly high powered guns.
Edit:
The rainbow chat on the chatbox reminded me of this, UKIPs LGBT society were excluded from the london pride march, apparently on the basis of safety concerns after some llamabags opposed their invitation to join. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jun/05/ukip-banned-from-gay-pride-march-after-partys-inclusion-stokes-anger
But I read another article saying they took part anyway and it was all fine and dandy, so meh I guess.

[Jubal]

So what happened was basically that the organisation was told not to appear, not the individuals. It wasn't a case of banning the people at all (which I'd be against), but saying that a party with UKIP's views on gay marriage probably shouldn't be displaying its banners at a pride rally, which I guess kinda makes sense? I mean, otherwise you'd have to agree that the Tory party could turn up as part of anti-austerity rallies, or that fracking companies could wave banners around in anti-fracking protests, etc, which just seems silly. I guess the problem for Pride is that it's now sort of somewhere between a carnival/celebration of LGBT people and unity (in which case it makes sense to have all LGBT groups there regardless) and a political statement/movement/protest (in which case it's fair that they require attendees to be "on-message").

[comrade_general]

The Libertarian Party was banned from Pride rallies here in US.