Liberal Gun Owners ®

Liberal Gun Owners established an online community in 2007 and a 501c4 in 2017. Our mission supports firearms ownership rights and public safety.

[Liberal Gun Owners ® @LibGunOwners]

Big thanks to @RecoilMag, Lars Smith, and @DaveFMerrill for a great opportunity to do an interview. Very solid support and respect. Recoil has shown itself to be a publication that contributes to 21st century mindsets. They have our support.

https://t.co/qNxqwbe7cC

[Liberal Gun Owners ® @LibGunOwners]

"As populations grow and wealth accumulates, skillful political entrepreneurs emerge as de facto leaders who aggrandize their power, prestige, and authority by manipulating social inequality to attain personal goals. Promotion of commitment to belief in a moral High God who commands cooperation enforced by supernatural punishment would be an appealing tool for such an individual.”

Peoples and Marlowe, 2012

[David Yamane @davidyamane]

I'm excited to speak to public policy students at UVa today about "The Paradox of Guns: Normality & Violence." I will try to bring together many of the lessons I've learned over the past 15 years I've been a gun owner hanging around other gun owners & roaming around gun culture.

[Liberal Gun Owners ® @LibGunOwners]

@Schocker65 Paul...I know how to talk mad street shit. I'll interpret. : )

-RM-

[Liberal Gun Owners ® @LibGunOwners]

As it pertains to the previous post: the entire core of gun control is about maximally controlling access and supply. It's not about "common sense gun laws." Within this, the core is actually about supply. The amount of mitigative power that can be obtained through common enforceable rules is very small. In order to have a significant effect, you must stack a lot of them...a lot of them. To gain significant mitigation through control of supply, your goal needs to be to drive the supply of guns as close to zero as you can. Anything else will deliver very little mitigative effect.

As it pertains to supply, there is no "common sense gun law" that delivers anything significant. To be effective, It needs to be a draconian control scheme that turns American gun ownership into British or Japanese gun ownership. This control scheme needs to be maintained with the same dedication and expense that we use for something like infrastructure - an enormous undertaking with enormous expenses. Well beyond what gun control advocacy currently spends. Well beyond what it is capable of.

In terms of behavioral science and supply, you simply need to crush American gun ownership to get the effect that you are looking for. This consideration is prior to the reality of rights, the second amendment, political fights, financing etc. Serious supply reduction is an irrelevant variable in the real equation of mitigation because it's not possible to achieve. Mediocre supply reduction will have very little measurable effect. Light, "common sense" reduction of supply is basically worthless.

Access is still something worthy of debate. Supply is a dead road.

Regardless, this is just more support for our conclusion: if the law is not being used to support non-legal modalities, then it is being used improperly.

[Liberal Gun Owners ® @LibGunOwners]

Our years long analysis of textual evidence in the area of violence-related crime has been bank-breakingly expensive. As such, we have not yet begun an analysis of statistical data. The expense related to statistical analysis is not currently possible for us to cover. However, we are confident to now say that, based on our current analysis, the base textual data does not justify the use of regulation and policy as the prime method for mitigating gun-related negatives. Things other than the law are actually more superior for addressing the behaviors that lay beneath gun crime. This means that law and policy, at most, need to be secondary considerations for advanced mitigation - if they are to be used at all. If laws and policies do not support primary, local, private forces of behavioral contouring then they are too weak to seriously address these problems. The entire gun control movement is a movement whose subtext is: policy as prime tool. This exists in opposition to what the facts actually support. If the law cannot observe its own limits, then it is doomed to be ineffective as it pertains to gun-related negatives.

Publication forthcoming.

[Liberal Gun Owners ® @LibGunOwners]

"We are anything but a mechanism set up to perceive the truth for its own sake. Rather, we have evolved a nervous system that acts in the interest of our gonads, and one attuned to the demands of reproductive competition. If fools are more prolific than wise men, then to that degree folly will be favored by selection. And if ignorance aids in obtaining a mate, then men and women will tend to be ignorant."
Michael. T. Ghiselin, Biologist. (1974)

[Liberal Gun Owners ® @LibGunOwners]

We get a lot of sour reactions from "progressives", merely because we deal with the subject of guns. It's constant. And what you are really seeing there is a sub-culture of absolutists who just want the entire topic of guns to go away. In reality, all LGO501c4 does is to give a fair weight and value to gun ownership. We merely deal with guns, as true progressives, by acknowledging that they exist as something other than a pall on society - which is a fact. That's not an opinion. There are factual positive values connected to gun ownership. In addition to the associated negatives, there is also validity. Factual validity. We merely acknowledge both sides of the issue fairly.

It is a mistake to think that a desire for "common sense gun laws" is the affective force that drives gun control advocacy. This is simply not true. Absolutism and disgust against the valid aspects of guns is the affective force that drives "progressive" thought on guns. This and compassion for victims. The latter part is admirable. The former - not so much.

We also want to reduce gun-related negatives. But absolutism and disgust is not "progressive" in this case, it's not scientific, and it's a far less effective way to problem-solve.

[Liberal Gun Owners ® @LibGunOwners]

An enjoyable break in the research dungeon that I'm in. Joining Rob Pincus for a little segment on the MP5 and MP5 clones.

https://t.co/QFSqACdB3Y

[Liberal Gun Owners ® @LibGunOwners]

Still in the research pain-cave. But here’s a nugg:

Much of the sentiment of those who ardently support gun control measures are irrelevant as it pertains to real-world improvements with gun-related problems. Anyone with sense understands the math: if you reduce American gun ownership to the level of gun ownership represented by ardent gun control supporters, then you would have a large reduction in gun-related negatives. You won’t have many gun problems with only 0-4 guns in America.

Through consensus bias and projection, ardent gun control supporters spend an awful amount of energy pimping the idea that America can morph gun ownership into their preferred version of gun ownership…which means no guns…or the amount of guns that are privately owned in a situation like England / Wales: 500,000.

These kinds of mentalities are useless to real-world solutions. We all know that zero guns means zero gun-problems. There’s just no road to zero guns. More important than that, there’s also no road to less than 350 million guns in America. Currently we have ~ 393 million guns. The Democrats, Bloomberg, Moms Demand Action, and every gun violence advocate in America could work 24 hours per day and they would not be able to remove 43 million guns from America’s private stockpile.

Whatever the equation is to real-world mitigation of gun-related problems, its going to have to include a constant of 350 million guns +.

All of the activist and policymaking energy that is being spent on denying this constant is a waste and a hindrance. It’s static and bullshit.

GVP advocates: stop saying you want common sense gun laws. Gun-related laws and policy are a supremely weak tool with very little upside for the effects you are looking for. Policy has to strike at the root of the behaviors that underly these problems. Current policy does not approach this whatsoever. The only way you can get what you want, using the the tools that you prefer, is to take away the whole thing. Get complete and supreme control of all aspects of gun ownership while you also get complete control of the existing stockpile.

(By the way, the national armies of both Russia and China could not achieve getting control of the American private stockpile…even if we removed the entire military complex of the U.S. as a variable.)

If you cannot take away the whole thing, you are going to have to start to consider how to mitigate through a more advanced approach.

P.S. The NRA still blows…and InB4 more: “We just want common sense gun laws.”

-Miyanovich-

[Liberal Gun Owners ® @LibGunOwners]

We'll be starting a substack in the next few months to consolidate posting and publications.

[Liberal Gun Owners ® @LibGunOwners]

On living in a "post-truth" era...

Humans and human societies have been running on mythologies, stories, and dogma for a long long time. There's nothing new about humans choosing self-soothing belief over the hassle of facts. There's no such thing as "post-truth", really. We are "truth when it's convenient" by nature.

It has just intensified because of the new tech paradigm.

Definitely makes it harder to get better results with both gun rights AND public safety.

-M-

[Liberal Gun Owners ® @LibGunOwners]

As it pertains to known scholar-induced mythologies like Keeley's Myth of The Noble Savage:

"The difference between Archeologist Lawrence Keeley’s experience and my own? I am coming into the life-cycle of the myth that penetrates law and policy prior to the effort required to gather the hard evidence into a professionally usable form. In Anthropology, a good portion of the properly handled evidence was already in usable form when Keeley awoke from the drugging effect of the scholar-induced myth on his own psyche - which he admitted to. One of the issues with The Myth of Law’s Supremacy is that the subconscious mythological conspiracy is society-wide. It does not just exist in academia. It exists for the entire world. At various times, depending upon feelings and beliefs, humans from all walks of life believe that the law has power and effect that it does not have. There is plenty of evidence for this sitting inside of the existing literature. It has just not been extracted into a professionally usable form. And this should be an indicator for anyone who is interested in the full-field of facts: despite the intense cultural commitment of academia to support The Myth of Law’s Supremacy, they are simply unable to prevent the associated counter-balancing facts from leaking into the research. Imagine the data picture if the skewing was removed. What would happen? My opinion is that academia would be forced to adjust its view on the use of policy and law as the prime mechanisms of mitigation. Using legal products is fine. Believing in them at the level of a religious fantasy is not. And it’s not okay because it’s less effective."

-Miyanovich-

[Liberal Gun Owners ® @LibGunOwners]

Does the academic / research culture skew the data associated with how the law / policy affects gun-related negatives?

Yes. 100%. They do this as a matter of course.

Is the academic / research culture skewing the data on the actual occurrences of gun-related negatives? No, they are not doing that. They are right about that. There are a lot of negative things that happen with guns.

Do some legal products have an actual effect on gun-related negatives? Yes. But if you merely remove the false presupposition of maximum legal effect (which almost all of these agents adhere to) and you include the full field of facts, what you will find is an enormous amount of evidence for the constant of fundamental legal ineffectiveness…along with steeply marginalized returns for more law and policy. The more laws that you make, the less effect you get. More is not more in mature jurisprudence. The laws and policy that are being created have a range of effects that go from nothing to mediocre. As I have stated previously, evidence for these factors is already in existence…in spades…in the existing data.

The data is being skewed, as a matter of course, by the political-financial reality that surrounds Gun-Violence Prevention. The proper interpretation of the existing data is being financially and culturally prohibited by the GVP culture itself. It is being assisted by the people who have a primitive emotional dedication the Myth of Law’s Supremacy - the myth of supreme legal effect over human behavior.

We don’t just see a lack of better results because the NRA is “blocking”. We see a lack of fundamental effect because gun control culture believes in a level of legal effectiveness that can never exist.

It’s kind of an important fact if we want maximized mitigation.

Which is why you need a dedication to the full field of facts over cultural dogma (and the political influence of gun control culture) in this case.

The cultural gatekeeping and self-righteousness that surrounds GVP / Gun Control Culture warps the science. And you can easily palpate for this warping by looking at the behaviors of the academics and researchers who are in that field.

-Miyanovich-

[Liberal Gun Owners ® @LibGunOwners]

After a seven-year-long review, I have come to the conclusion that there is enough evidence already in existence in gun violence studies to show that law and policy, as phenomena, possess a continuous fundamental ineffectiveness towards the problems that the associated legal products are trying to address. That is to say: legal products (law / policy) as tools lack a fundamental ability to affect the behaviors associated with gun-related negatives.

This is not to say that legal products cannot help in a comprehensive approach towards mitigation - they can. It is the current cultural / political practice of placing legal products in the prime position for effect that is mainly the problem. There's a difference between the politics of mitigation and the reality of mitigation.

American Gun Control is largely a political con - one that is motivated by legitimate compassion and supported by a lot of people who have no conception of the deeper reality. When we see a lack of mitigative power, we are mostly seeing fundamental legal ineffectiveness...not issues with enforcement, implementation, life-span of the law / policy, lack of additional research, lack of proper composition etc.

When we see lack of effect, we are mainly seeing the absolute limit of the law's ability to affect behavior. And, really, the only way to goose more effect out of something so limited is through a totalizing scheme. The only road for the current politics of Gun Control is through a platform that will attempt to squash American gun ownership into British or Japanese gun ownership.

If no one has guns, we will have no gun problems. This idea isn't any kind of real accomplishment. It's not the goal of any mature adult. It can never be real in America.

The data already exists in spades for fundamental legal ineffectiveness. The issue is that, from the academic / researcher all the way to the legislator, no one is incentivized to see the constant of fundamental legal ineffectiveness. Everyone is incentivized to frame the results away from this fact.

The data is there. The funding and resources to frame the full field of facts is not. The incentives are not. In this reality, the very cultures associated with "gun violence data" exist to ignore an essential fundamental constant.

They are incentivized to remain oblivious or they are ignoring it on purpose.

-Miyanovich-