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I don’t think that’s generally true. To draw a comparison, are there other rights where the same thing plays out? What are other examples of rights where we exp

by akerl_ 7y ago

I don’t think that’s generally true. To draw a comparison, are there other rights where the same thing plays out? What are other examples of rights where we expect the people exercising their rights to come up with a solution for people who abuse the right? Speech? Religion? It seems pretty clear that society as a whole is responsible for finding a way to maintain safety and stability in combination with upholding the rights the society has established. We don’t demand that the solution to radical religious extremists be proposed by churches or else we ban churches.

pjc50 7y ago
People routinely make those demands of mosques, though.
- akerl_ 7y ago
  True. I wonder what the overlap of people is who make that demand of mosques, vs people who would make that demand of the gun lobby. For what it’s worth, I think the gun lobby in the US does a disservice to the majority of lawful gun owners, as well as a disservice to victims of gun violence. Their primary goal as an organization seems to be remaining a large, powerful organization, and I find the majority of their policy positions and rhetoric to be fully detached from either lowering the rate of gun violence or protecting the rights of actual individual gun owners. See, for example, the waves of rhetoric leading up to each election cycle, warning that any liberal politician is going to “take our guns”. The impact here is a massive spike in gun sales and profit for gun manufacturers, despite the fact that liberal politicians haven’t had any substantial impact on individual gun ownership in a long time.
simonh 7y ago
Pretty much every law ever made was passed to stop people doing something they previously did. They are a restriction on freedoms, or 'rights'. That's pretty much what a law is, though sometimes they grant exceptions to other laws. Plenty of religions have been banned and members arrested. Nazis and such get arrested for hate speech from time to time. Until laws were passed to prevent it, anyone had the 'right' to make and even sell alcohol. Most sporting bodies have governance organisations that regulate themselves, in an effort to avoid regulations being imposed by law. The same is true of many professional organisations. In the UK the Royal College of Nurses, a trade union, gets involved in regulation of the nursing profession and advises on legislation. Every right comes with responsibilities. At a minimum one person't right is another person's responsibility to protect and uphold. They are impositions. If you have or want a right, and wish to retain it, that comes with a responsibility to the rest of society, or they will be entirely justified in taking it away. It's entirely normal and common for a pressure group or representative body to have input into laws and regulations. The NRA does this. It's time IMHO that they took that seriously and, along with their supporters, accepted some actual responsibility like grown adults.
- akerl_ 7y ago
  My point isn’t that rights can’t or shouldn’t be restricted. My point is that we don’t generally ask a specific group how to best restrict themselves. Sporting bodies don’t “regulate themselves in an effort to avoid regulations being imposed by law”, they generally work to make the most money by pushing the boundaries of the current law, and are eventually curtailed by more or different laws that they did not propose.
  - simonh 7y ago
    Ok, take brain injuries in American Football. Do you think the sports bodies have a responsibility to ensure their sport is safe to practice? After all, deliberately smashing someone on the head, with force and in circumstances known to reliably cause injury, is really assault. What job do the football associations have that is more important, in the broader context, than this? It could destroy the sport. Ideally a sporting body should set things up so that they don't have to spend much time on this, but it's a serious responsibility. The NRA spends an inordinate amount of it's time trying to avoid legal restrictions on their member's activities. They spend huge resources on it. To me, that's a sign that they are not doing their job very well at all, or taking their responsibilities seriously as members of society. It's their problem to solve. This is not something people who don't want to own guns should have to worry about. The fact that they have to is a clear abrogation of responsibility on the part of those that do.
    - akerl_ 7y ago
      There’s a couple threads here, so I’ll attempt to delineate my responses: Regarding the football comparison: there isn’t generally speaking a right to play football, and I’d prefer if sports bodies were committed to ensuring the health of players of their sport, but no, I don’t think that sports bodies should be relied upon to enforce some arbitrary standard for safety in their sport, with the threat of banning football. The football example is interesting because smashing somebody in the head as part of a football game isn’t “really assault”. If you and I agree to play football, and during the course of the game we collide and I get injured, you didn’t assault me. The problem with sports bodies is that they have several incentives that don’t align with overall player long-term health, and the players typically (especially historically) don’t have a strong enough negotiating position to push for systematic change. So to your question: no, I don’t think we should expect sports industries to carry the weight of making their sports “safe”, I think society should agree on laws that restrict sports bodies behavior so that they’re forced to operate in ways that are safe. We don’t ask construction sites to please make worker conditions safe, we set up OSHA and equivalent orgs, with regulations to mandate safety. Regarding the job that football associations have, that’s more important than long-term health, “profit” is the answer. The football organization isn’t a benevolent charity, they exist so as to ensure their own continued existence. They also don’t represent the players, nor the fans. Switching gears to the NRA: the NRA has a similar job. They exist in order to perpetuate their lobbying influence and perpetuate their funding. They are not an accurate picture of the average American gun owner. They push for or against policies on the basis of continuing that power, more so than any intrinsic goal of “avoiding legal restrictions on their members”, except insofar as their members are “NRA large-scale donors”, which effectively amounts to “gun manufacturers”. Regarding it being “their problem to solve”, you still haven’t addressed my critique of that premise. Gun ownership in America is a right, written into the foundation of US government. There’s a whole body of debate as to whether or not it should be a right, whether it should be written differently, etc, but at present, gun ownership in the US is written into the constitution at a similar level to freedom of speech or protest. We don’t tell free speech advocates to find ways to limit hate speech or we ban all free speech, why would we approach this any differently?

by akerl_ 7y ago

pjc50 7y ago

People routinely make those demands of mosques, though.

akerl_ 7y ago
True. I wonder what the overlap of people is who make that demand of mosques, vs people who would make that demand of the gun lobby. For what it’s worth, I think the gun lobby in the US does a disservice to the majority of lawful gun owners, as well as a disservice to victims of gun violence. Their primary goal as an organization seems to be remaining a large, powerful organization, and I find the majority of their policy positions and rhetoric to be fully detached from either lowering the rate of gun violence or protecting the rights of actual individual gun owners. See, for example, the waves of rhetoric leading up to each election cycle, warning that any liberal politician is going to “take our guns”. The impact here is a massive spike in gun sales and profit for gun manufacturers, despite the fact that liberal politicians haven’t had any substantial impact on individual gun ownership in a long time.

simonh 7y ago

Pretty much every law ever made was passed to stop people doing something they previously did. They are a restriction on freedoms, or 'rights'. That's pretty much what a law is, though sometimes they grant exceptions to other laws. Plenty of religions have been banned and members arrested. Nazis and such get arrested for hate speech from time to time. Until laws were passed to prevent it, anyone had the 'right' to make and even sell alcohol. Most sporting bodies have governance organisations that regulate themselves, in an effort to avoid regulations being imposed by law. The same is true of many professional organisations. In the UK the Royal College of Nurses, a trade union, gets involved in regulation of the nursing profession and advises on legislation. Every right comes with responsibilities. At a minimum one person't right is another person's responsibility to protect and uphold. They are impositions. If you have or want a right, and wish to retain it, that comes with a responsibility to the rest of society, or they will be entirely justified in taking it away. It's entirely normal and common for a pressure group or representative body to have input into laws and regulations. The NRA does this. It's time IMHO that they took that seriously and, along with their supporters, accepted some actual responsibility like grown adults.

akerl_ 7y ago
My point isn’t that rights can’t or shouldn’t be restricted. My point is that we don’t generally ask a specific group how to best restrict themselves. Sporting bodies don’t “regulate themselves in an effort to avoid regulations being imposed by law”, they generally work to make the most money by pushing the boundaries of the current law, and are eventually curtailed by more or different laws that they did not propose.
- simonh 7y ago
  Ok, take brain injuries in American Football. Do you think the sports bodies have a responsibility to ensure their sport is safe to practice? After all, deliberately smashing someone on the head, with force and in circumstances known to reliably cause injury, is really assault. What job do the football associations have that is more important, in the broader context, than this? It could destroy the sport. Ideally a sporting body should set things up so that they don't have to spend much time on this, but it's a serious responsibility. The NRA spends an inordinate amount of it's time trying to avoid legal restrictions on their member's activities. They spend huge resources on it. To me, that's a sign that they are not doing their job very well at all, or taking their responsibilities seriously as members of society. It's their problem to solve. This is not something people who don't want to own guns should have to worry about. The fact that they have to is a clear abrogation of responsibility on the part of those that do.
  - akerl_ 7y ago
    There’s a couple threads here, so I’ll attempt to delineate my responses: Regarding the football comparison: there isn’t generally speaking a right to play football, and I’d prefer if sports bodies were committed to ensuring the health of players of their sport, but no, I don’t think that sports bodies should be relied upon to enforce some arbitrary standard for safety in their sport, with the threat of banning football. The football example is interesting because smashing somebody in the head as part of a football game isn’t “really assault”. If you and I agree to play football, and during the course of the game we collide and I get injured, you didn’t assault me. The problem with sports bodies is that they have several incentives that don’t align with overall player long-term health, and the players typically (especially historically) don’t have a strong enough negotiating position to push for systematic change. So to your question: no, I don’t think we should expect sports industries to carry the weight of making their sports “safe”, I think society should agree on laws that restrict sports bodies behavior so that they’re forced to operate in ways that are safe. We don’t ask construction sites to please make worker conditions safe, we set up OSHA and equivalent orgs, with regulations to mandate safety. Regarding the job that football associations have, that’s more important than long-term health, “profit” is the answer. The football organization isn’t a benevolent charity, they exist so as to ensure their own continued existence. They also don’t represent the players, nor the fans. Switching gears to the NRA: the NRA has a similar job. They exist in order to perpetuate their lobbying influence and perpetuate their funding. They are not an accurate picture of the average American gun owner. They push for or against policies on the basis of continuing that power, more so than any intrinsic goal of “avoiding legal restrictions on their members”, except insofar as their members are “NRA large-scale donors”, which effectively amounts to “gun manufacturers”. Regarding it being “their problem to solve”, you still haven’t addressed my critique of that premise. Gun ownership in America is a right, written into the foundation of US government. There’s a whole body of debate as to whether or not it should be a right, whether it should be written differently, etc, but at present, gun ownership in the US is written into the constitution at a similar level to freedom of speech or protest. We don’t tell free speech advocates to find ways to limit hate speech or we ban all free speech, why would we approach this any differently?