Man assaulted outside of Philadelphia gay bar

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

You know what?

The whole gun discussion is largely irrelevant to this.

This is scary to me because it shows how strong homophobic violence is in this city, where I live, which gets such high rankings for being progressive and queer-friendly. We have huge pride parades, we have gay and trans flags flying all over, we have a city council on LGBT rights...and there's still this.

We'll probably always have people who want to hate someone, Fuzzy. I'm sorry, but no place is absolutely safe from any kind of violence for pretty much any reason. All any of us can do is to manage our risks.

It sucks, but tearing yourself up over it just hands a little more victory to the worst kinds of people. Enjoy life as best you can, just to spite 'em.

I cannot but agree. It's your life to live, you best be the one living it and not some jerk who doesn't like the LGBT minority.

I am living it, for the record. I still wear Bi Pride pins and belts and my outfest T-shirt and basically anything I can to remind the world that I'm not straight. I'm still going to attend pride, and drink at gay bars.

That doesn't mean I'm not afraid, or okay with it, or that i think "well then go get a gun!" is an appropriate or thoughtful response to the situation I live in.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

*You* "They should require licenses for that."

*Me* "They already do. Here's one of the flaws of it, though."

*You* "This is hardly reasoning against requiring licenses for that."

Why hello Jackie I have not seen you in a while.

*Me* (Pretty much what you said (pretty much))
*You* "From my experience..."
*Me* "I'm reading that they're not actually required, though yes from what I'm reading from Politifact, most sellers are licensed, probably given that the people with the most guns to sell who are willing to sell them somehow in public probably have licenses and thus are compelled by law to do background checks. However from what I read on politifact, Obama wanted to extends licenses to anybody who sells guns period, whether they have an accompanying business license or not.

Oh yeah and what I was also saying was that the issue of local bias by the sheriffs is probably outweighed the safety concern of people illicitly getting guns, especially considering a bunch of people have licenses to sell anyway, and it isn't doing much to restrict supply."

[Darth Wedgius]

I'm a bit... dubious here.

...
The trouble with rights like the second amendment is that it's often dead paper for those who are most likely to be oppressed. If you belong to a class who are likely to be shot on sight by police if you're armed or presumed to be armed, and it's well known that those shooting you will face no consequences, then being armed makes you more vulnerable, not less. More people will be willing to shoot you, and the consequences of your firing back are ever more dire.
The question then becomes if queer folk, generally, would fall into that category (independently of other factors). And honestly I'm not sure we really have that data? Intuitively however, I suspect it would simply depend on visibility. That is, straight passing white gays would probably benefit, trans women of color would be turbo-fucked, with the usual sliding scale in between.
...

So straight-passing queer white males would benefit from being armed? That should help, anyway. Though I thought more men than women were being shot by the police?

There's no such thing as "straight-passing", just hetero normative assumptions and being closeted.

Really? I was using the phrasing from CmdKing and assumed he'd know. And I could have sworn I've seen that phrase used by gay men, too.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Yeah I didn't really catch that either. Considering CmdrKing's general articulation I just presumed he meant simply people that aren't apparently gay to people that target.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I'm a bit... dubious here.

...
The trouble with rights like the second amendment is that it's often dead paper for those who are most likely to be oppressed. If you belong to a class who are likely to be shot on sight by police if you're armed or presumed to be armed, and it's well known that those shooting you will face no consequences, then being armed makes you more vulnerable, not less. More people will be willing to shoot you, and the consequences of your firing back are ever more dire.
The question then becomes if queer folk, generally, would fall into that category (independently of other factors). And honestly I'm not sure we really have that data? Intuitively however, I suspect it would simply depend on visibility. That is, straight passing white gays would probably benefit, trans women of color would be turbo-fucked, with the usual sliding scale in between.
...

So straight-passing queer white males would benefit from being armed? That should help, anyway. Though I thought more men than women were being shot by the police?

There's no such thing as "straight-passing", just hetero normative assumptions and being closeted.

Really? I was using the phrasing from CmdKing and assumed he'd know. And I could have sworn I've seen that phrase used by gay men, too.

It's used by a lot of biphobic gay men who want to pretend LGBT stands for Lesbian Gay Bacon Tomato.

[LittleRaven]

I was talking about the gun show loophole specifically, which is an understood circumstance where people can buy guns at gun shows without required background checks. Like you can google it exactly and get to the wiki.

With respect, BridgeConsole, you're falling prey to a lack of information.

Yes, there is a political term called "the gun show loophole." Like most political terms, it doesn't actually mean what it presents as. It doesn't actually have anything to do with gunshows at all.

Basically, it refers to 'private party' sales. You could theoretically do one of these at a gunshow, although honestly they're fairly rare at those venues, because most of the sellers at gunshows are FFL holders, and are going to perform a background check regardless. The loophole is actually more likely to come up in a Seven-11 parking lot, where I sell Antiboyscout my 22 pistol for $80 in cash. I don't have an FFL, but as long as neither Antiboyscout or I are crossing state lines, and the firearm in question doesn't fall under the NFA, then it doesn't matter - I have the legal authority to sell my legal property, assuming that I don't have reason to believe that ABS means to do harm.

There are a couple of good reasons why this 'loophole' exists. One is that right now, there's no good way for the government to monitor when every private citizen decides to sell a gun. There are tens of millions of gun owners and hundreds of millions of guns out there, after all. But that's a problem we could presumably solve with enough money if we decided to do so. But doing that will likely open up another front of legal battles over exactly how much authority the government can actually exert over a right guaranteed by the Constitution, and frankly, given the current makeup of the Supreme Court, I'm not sure that's a battle the left wants to take up right now.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled discussion of gay rights.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

The politifact article that I was referring to which also includes the post you quoted, it does describe how the terminology is backwards.

And I do get that government is often unable to enforce its policies immaculately, but that's not really a weighing factor for drafting such policy though. And that just brings you back to gun shows anyway. To say that we can't regulate gun sells out the back of a van under the bridge doesn't really transition to not regulating sells at gun shows.

[LittleRaven]

To say that we can't regulate gun sells out the back of a van under the bridge doesn't really transition to not regulating sells at gun shows.

Sells at gun shows are absolutely regulated - as long as the seller is an FFL holder. Which most of them are - have you ever actually BEEN to a gun show?

But if I meet ABS in the parking lot at a gun show and sell him my pistol for $80, well, yeah, that's not regulated. And changing that is not without political danger for gun-control advocates, which is partially why it hasn't been closed..

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Yep most of them are and not all. The legislation was addressing that deliberately.

If you want to disclose how making parking lot sales illegal is politically dangerous, then please. Otherwise everything we've brought up here was already understood or covered with Admiral.

[LittleRaven]

If you want to disclose how making parking lot sales illegal is politically dangerous, then please.

I already did. The Interstate Commerce act makes it clear that as long as something crosses state lines, the Feds can intervene. However, the Supreme Court has generally taken a dim view of the Feds getting involved in private sales of legal property within state lines...which is exactly what we're talking about here. Remember, guns are not only legal, but their ownership is currently protected by the Constitution itself. It's right up there with Freedom of Speech on our values list. And given that 5 of the Supreme Court justices are currently considered to be right-wing when it comes to gun regulation, this might not be the best time to pass a law that the NRA can aim a constitutional case at. People are already freaking out about what might happen in the New York case. Regulating private sales would almost certainly offer a much bigger target, depending on what exactly that regulation looked like.