
Invoking Orlando, Senate Republicans set up vote to expand FBI spying - spenvo
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-fbi-emails-idUSKCN0Z7056
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colejohnson66
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
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/...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-
beast/201104/conservatives-big-fear-brain-study-finds)

2\. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
fix/wp/2015/11/18/wh...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
fix/wp/2015/11/18/why-fear-is-more-prevalent-and-powerful-among-
conservatives/)

3\. [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/calling-truce-
poli...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/calling-truce-political-
wars/)

4\. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-nras-true-
believ...](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)

~~~
donw
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
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
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
> _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.

