Comment on Biden thinks Trump voters are trash.
HelixDab2@lemm.ee 2 weeks agoEasily.
First, banning assault-style rifles wouldn’t be ‘disarming’, unless you’re going to argue that any regulation of firearms is disarming. Is it dumb? Sure. Would it have any significant effect on firearm homicides? No; even most mass shootings are committed with handguns. (For the record, I own multiple assault-style rifles, and I compete in action pistol (USPSA, IDPA, etc.) and two gun matches regularly, in a non-ban state. I do oppose rifle and feature bans, because I oppose regulating tools rather than changing material conditions.)
Secondly, Roe v. Wade never allowed all abortions up to the point of birth. Roe v. Wade specifically balanced the rights of a person-to-be against the person that had to run the risk of pregnancy and birth, and said that prior to viability–broadly speaking, the end of the first trimester, but realistically more like 27 weeks–the rights of the women overrode the state interest in protecting the not-yet-life of a potential person. Beyond that, the overwhelming majority of all abortions that happen after the first trimester happen because there are defects incompatible with life, or because there’s a complication that will kill the woman if she does not terminate the pregnancy.
I’ll also note that if you really wanted to reduce rates of abortion, you would ensure that schools taught comprehensive sex education–including accurate, factual information about birth control and how to use it (e.g., none of this ‘abstinence only’ bullshit)–as well as making birth control widely, easily, and affordably available to all people.
the_toast_is_gone@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Thank you.
So what is an “assault-style rifle” and how is banning them not disarmament? If banning them wouldn’t significantly affect firearm deaths, then why are Kamala Harris and the majority of the Democratic Party pushing for it?
On the topic of abortion, less than 8% of reported abortions happened past the first trimester. They also generally don’t happen for medical reasons. And fair point about the third trimester thing. However, given the number of states that have very little or even no restrictions on abortion, it’s likely to me that they’ll push for the same nationwide.
HelixDab2@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
There are several reasons. First, the times they are used in crimes, they tend to create much higher casualties than you would otherwise be likely to see. The combination of a vry high velocity intermediate cartridge with a box magazine makes it very easy for a novice shooter to expend lots and lots of bullets, bullets that are generally more deadly than a pistol-caliber firearm. Secondly, it is a slippery-slope; they want to ban these now to make more extensive bans in the future seem more acceptable, esp. to courts. It’s a way of creating precedent. Third, for people that don’t grow up with firearms, they just seem more scary than wooden-stocked, full-power rifles. And last, all politicians, across the board, seem to want to maintain the supremacy of state-sponsored violence; Dems want to ban guns, Republicans want to give cops ever heavier firepower.
Again: neither side seems interested in directly addressing root causes for violence, which are largely economic. Fix the wealth disparity in this county, eliminate the systemic racism that limits access to opportunity for non-white people, and end toxic masculinity, and you eliminate most of the gun homicides. From speaking to a criminal defense attorney that specializes in gun rights, the biggest single thing the gov’t could do to sharply reduce gun homicides would be to entirely end the way on drugs.
FIRST - I misspoke/I was wrong. Each trimester is roughly 12 weeks. The absolutely earliest viability is about 22 weeks, or close to the end of the second trimester. Earlier than that, and a fetus is little more than a tenant that’s not paying rent.
This article isn’t saying what you think it’s saying. Yes, there isn’t a time limit, but most or all states do not allow abortions after fetal viability. That is, if a fetus can survive outside of the womb–heroic measures or not–you aren’t getting an abortion. Does it seem unreasonable to you to allow abortion when a fetus can not survive independently? If so, why does that seem unreasonable? Do you believe that any person should be legally required to use their body for the benefit of another person?
the_toast_is_gone@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
So we’re both in agreement that the whole quest for assault weapons bans is a smoke screen to take away people’s civil liberties. Good.
Back to abortion: We already have six states and DC without any restrictions whatsoever on abortion. All of the existing permissions, besides health of the mother, are utterly arbitrary. It’s a human being at every stage of development from the moment of conception and should be respected as such. And yes, human lives have precedent over the comfort of people who invited them to enter through consensual sex. We obviously should take strong measures to protect their lives, but that doesn’t mean the baby can be killed at any moment for the sake of convenience. In cases where they didn’t consent to sex, it still doesn’t make sense to kill them. That’s giving the wrong person the death penalty.
“Independent survival” can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Extremely uncharitably, it could mean anyone living in their parents’ house, disabled people, children, and anyone who generally depends on the structure of society to survive. If that’s the argument, we need to define the threshold of dependence and justify it. Even pretty narrowly, it could excuse infanticide.
We already legally require parents to provide for their children, or give them to people who can. Requiring women to not kill their babies in the womb is a logical extension of this. Once the baby is born, it can be given to someone more capable of caring for it.
If the baby has no chance of survival, as was the case of a woman who died of sepsis, that’s a much more reasonable time to permit abortion. Better, though, are measures taken to try and save the baby’s and the woman’s lives. A premature delivery, for example, wouldn’t be outright killing it, but it would have saved the life of the mother.
RonnieB@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You’re in favor of forcing rape victims to carry their rapist’s baby? You have no empathy at all.
HelixDab2@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
Based on what? Religion? Jewish thought says that a child only exists once it draws breath.
So, to be clear, once a person has already been deprived of their freedom and liberty by one person, they should continue to be deprived of their liberty?
Riddle me this: where would you stand on forced organ donation? That is, you’re a tissue match to me, and I need a kidney. Would you be okay with being legally obligated to undergo surgery and give a kidney to me so that I can live? To make it a little lower stakes, would you be okay with being legally obligated to donate blood every eight weeks in order to preserve the life of people that need blood and blood products to live? Why, or why not?
How is that different from someone being obligated to undergo the risk of carrying a pregnancy to term if they don’t want to be a parent, and especially if the were sexually assaulted?