4 ms·

Invoking Orlando, Senate Republicans set up vote to expand FBI spying

20 points by spenvo 10y ago

colejohnson66 10y ago
While slightly off topic, what don't right wing people (and a few left wings, namely Feinstein) understand about encryption? The right wind peddles the claim that "if guns are banned, only criminals will have guns" yet seems to fail to understand that if encryption is banned, only criminals will use encryption. Can someone enlighten me on this besides just "they're stupid" (the anti-gun movement is viewed as stupid and uneducated by pro-gun people)?
- smt88 10y ago
  You seem to be asking how people can so publicly be hypocrites. The fact is that they're not all stupid. They're mostly scared[1][2][3], but some are paid off by lobbyists[4]. (I'm not even sure how we would define stupid. Being stubbornly ideological doesn't always mean someone is smarter, since pragmatism requires compromise and therefore hypocrisy.) Conservatives in the US think that they're safer if gun ownership increases or that they're safer if they carry a gun or both. They also think they're safer if we sacrifice some freedom in order to protect us from "suspected" "terrorists". I personally think it's a terrible tradeoff most of the time and leads to tyranny, but I still wouldn't call it stupid. 1. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/201104/conservatives-big-fear-brain-study-finds https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/201104/... 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/11/18/why-fear-is-more-prevalent-and-powerful-among-conservatives/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/11/18/wh... 3. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/calling-truce-political-wars/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/calling-truce-poli... 4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-nras-true-believers-converted-a-marksmanship-group-into-a-mighty-gun-lobby/2013/01/12/51c62288-59b9-11e2-88d0-c4cf65c3ad15_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-nras-true-believ...
  - donw 10y ago
    In my experience, at least, safety is not the driving factor. Not unimportant, but also not primary. It's more about self-reliance. I know a pretty decent number of people with concealed weapons permits, and not one walks around in cloud of fear and suspicion. Nobody carries because they fear a mass shooting, or because they are afraid of being attacked. I can also say with confidence that all of them hope to never need to use their weapons, outside of a range. But, as the old saying goes, it is better to have and not need, than need and not have. Hopefully this isn't too political for the mods; apologies if it is.
    - smt88 10y ago
      We're not exactly talking about people carrying handguns. We're talking more broadly about the ideology behind gun-rights support. Though unlikely, your friends who carry might support an AR-15 ban. To address the tangent though: if they carry the gun, they do so because they think they might use it defensively. That is fear, to me. If people walked around in bulletproof vests, I'd say they were also doing it out of fear.
      - donw 10y ago
        Given that they all, except one, own AR-15s -- it is the most popular rifle in the US for a reason -- I rather doubt they would support a ban. It's not like one model of rifle is really any more or less lethal than another, after all. As far as fear goes, if we apply the same logic, would it be fair to say that people who own fire extinguishers, train in CPR, wear seatbelts, own amateur radios, or use bike helmets also do so primarily out of fear?
        smt88 10y ago
        > It's not like one model of rifle is really any more or less lethal than another, after all. That isn't true, because rates of fire, capacity, accuracy, and ammunition vary between rifles. An M1 Garand is just not going to kill the same way (or in the same quantities) as an AK-47, which can fire 10x rounds in the same amount of time. > fair to say that people who own fire extinguishers, train in CPR, wear seatbelts, own amateur radios, or use bike helmets also do so primarily out of fear? Yes, absolutely. In some cases, it's not their own fear, but rather society's fear (which results in regulations, like mandatory extinguishers and mandatory seatbelts). But, at its core, it's still a fear of something going wrong that has motivated those decisions. What's wrong with fear? Fear is a vital emotion that sometimes helps us make great decisions and sometimes causes us to make terrible decisions.
- donw 10y ago
  Out of curiosity do you have any sources that show Republicans as being any more or less anti-encryption than Democrats? The most recent push (for Apple to backdoor iPhones) came from the FBI, and from a fairly left-leaning Justice Department and AG. Not trying to make this a who-is-worse sort of thing, and I've seen a few articles in sites like Gizmodo, but given how often the mass media is wrong on... well, pretty much everything, it would be nice to have a better source.
- lisper 10y ago
  They're not stupid, they just have different goals than what you are tacitly assuming. You are assuming that they are employing logic and reason to fashion sound public policy, but that is not what they are doing at all. What they are doing is using marketing and salesmanship to appeal to the constituencies and donors that get them re-elected. (And they are manifestly doing it quite well.)

20 points by spenvo 10y ago

While slightly off topic, what don't right wing people (and a few left wings, namely Feinstein) understand about encryption? The right wind peddles the claim that "if guns are banned, only criminals will have guns" yet seems to fail to understand that if encryption is banned, only criminals will use encryption. Can someone enlighten me on this besides just "they're stupid" (the anti-gun movement is viewed as stupid and uneducated by pro-gun people)?

smt88 10y ago
You seem to be asking how people can so publicly be hypocrites. The fact is that they're not all stupid. They're mostly scared[1][2][3], but some are paid off by lobbyists[4]. (I'm not even sure how we would define stupid. Being stubbornly ideological doesn't always mean someone is smarter, since pragmatism requires compromise and therefore hypocrisy.) Conservatives in the US think that they're safer if gun ownership increases or that they're safer if they carry a gun or both. They also think they're safer if we sacrifice some freedom in order to protect us from "suspected" "terrorists". I personally think it's a terrible tradeoff most of the time and leads to tyranny, but I still wouldn't call it stupid. 1. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/201104/conservatives-big-fear-brain-study-finds https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/201104/... 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/11/18/why-fear-is-more-prevalent-and-powerful-among-conservatives/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/11/18/wh... 3. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/calling-truce-political-wars/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/calling-truce-poli... 4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-nras-true-believers-converted-a-marksmanship-group-into-a-mighty-gun-lobby/2013/01/12/51c62288-59b9-11e2-88d0-c4cf65c3ad15_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-nras-true-believ...
- donw 10y ago
  In my experience, at least, safety is not the driving factor. Not unimportant, but also not primary. It's more about self-reliance. I know a pretty decent number of people with concealed weapons permits, and not one walks around in cloud of fear and suspicion. Nobody carries because they fear a mass shooting, or because they are afraid of being attacked. I can also say with confidence that all of them hope to never need to use their weapons, outside of a range. But, as the old saying goes, it is better to have and not need, than need and not have. Hopefully this isn't too political for the mods; apologies if it is.
  - smt88 10y ago
    We're not exactly talking about people carrying handguns. We're talking more broadly about the ideology behind gun-rights support. Though unlikely, your friends who carry might support an AR-15 ban. To address the tangent though: if they carry the gun, they do so because they think they might use it defensively. That is fear, to me. If people walked around in bulletproof vests, I'd say they were also doing it out of fear.
    - donw 10y ago
      Given that they all, except one, own AR-15s -- it is the most popular rifle in the US for a reason -- I rather doubt they would support a ban. It's not like one model of rifle is really any more or less lethal than another, after all. As far as fear goes, if we apply the same logic, would it be fair to say that people who own fire extinguishers, train in CPR, wear seatbelts, own amateur radios, or use bike helmets also do so primarily out of fear?
      - smt88 10y ago
        > It's not like one model of rifle is really any more or less lethal than another, after all. That isn't true, because rates of fire, capacity, accuracy, and ammunition vary between rifles. An M1 Garand is just not going to kill the same way (or in the same quantities) as an AK-47, which can fire 10x rounds in the same amount of time. > fair to say that people who own fire extinguishers, train in CPR, wear seatbelts, own amateur radios, or use bike helmets also do so primarily out of fear? Yes, absolutely. In some cases, it's not their own fear, but rather society's fear (which results in regulations, like mandatory extinguishers and mandatory seatbelts). But, at its core, it's still a fear of something going wrong that has motivated those decisions. What's wrong with fear? Fear is a vital emotion that sometimes helps us make great decisions and sometimes causes us to make terrible decisions.
donw 10y ago
Out of curiosity do you have any sources that show Republicans as being any more or less anti-encryption than Democrats? The most recent push (for Apple to backdoor iPhones) came from the FBI, and from a fairly left-leaning Justice Department and AG. Not trying to make this a who-is-worse sort of thing, and I've seen a few articles in sites like Gizmodo, but given how often the mass media is wrong on... well, pretty much everything, it would be nice to have a better source.
lisper 10y ago
They're not stupid, they just have different goals than what you are tacitly assuming. You are assuming that they are employing logic and reason to fashion sound public policy, but that is not what they are doing at all. What they are doing is using marketing and salesmanship to appeal to the constituencies and donors that get them re-elected. (And they are manifestly doing it quite well.)