For example, can you be a gun shop owner without being pro-gun? Some would say actions speak louder than words.
On the other hand, if you own a bakery being apolitical is a lot simpler. Avoid the Masterpiece Cakeshop case and there's as little politics as you'll find anywhere.
It's funny you bring up bakeries. In 1905, the Supreme Court ruled that a NY law limiting daily working hours for bakers was unconstitutional under the 14th amendment (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochner_v._New_York). The point of the law was to keep overworked and tired bakers from making a mistake and blowing the place up (aerated flour is quite the accelerant). This ruling began the era of the Lochner court during which many of the labor protections we take for granted like child-labor laws and overtime protection were struck down under the 14th. Fortunately, we have since pivoted, but that bakery owner's seemingly benign decision to work his employees a bit harder had massive political ramifications for years.
It's not as easy as one thinks to just steer clear of politics. Just about everything has an impact.
The announcement from Coinbase specifically says that issues concerning working conditions are in bounds:
> Of course, employees should always feel free to advocate around issues of pay, conditions of employment, or violations of law, for instance. Hopefully the above sets some clear guidelines.
One might make the argument for related vs unrelated politics. (Though the line between what's related and unrelated is fairly subjective)
A bakery is obviously going to have an interest in politics directly related to operating a bakery and the employment laws affecting it. A bakery might reasonably avoid political stances on something unrelated, such as nuclear power, foreign conflicts, etc.
This is a bit off topic from the original discussion, but I think you definitely can be a gun shop owner and be against guns at the same time, albeit still in a political sense. Having a gun shop provides you with the best possible venue for educating your customers about guns "from the inside", hence being able to push your agenda in the long term.
That being said, running a gun shop is definitely a political statement. I guess you could control what you sell as well, like "I only sell hunting rifles - for hunting" and refusing to sell hand guns or automatic rifles. Sorry for the example of guns, I'm swedish and have no insight in what is commonplace in US gun stores.
But owning a gun shop would by its very nature makes you pro-gun from a conflict of interest standpoint. Your very livelihood would require that the laws stay lax. It might even require that you actively advocate against any proposed legislation that might damage your business. To remain apolitical or even anti-gun would be failing your duties to your family, employees, and shareholders (if you have any) to grow and sustain the business and keep them fed, housed, employed, and paid.
> But owning a gun shop would by its very nature makes you pro-gun from a conflict of interest standpoint.
No it most certainly doesn't. A person can hold the opinion that many people can engage in some activity responsibly, while not everyone can.
Being a gun store owner that favors regulation on the ownership of guns is not all that different from a beer brewer that favors regulation of drinking age or laws against operating vehicles while inebriated.
Ignoring morality for a moment, there's a business argument in there too. A bunch of drunk hooligans causing car accidents is bad for business. Anyone in the business of dealing in "harmful" products is aware of potential public backlash from irresponsible people and will seek to mitigate that in some form.
Sure, I suppose our disconnect comes from two things: 1. The laws I imagined when I was drafting my comment were more akin to taking away guns completely, not something like more stringent background checks or cool down periods. That was my mistake 2. I personally believe the dollar has more political power than any vote by way of directly enabling or disabling the ability to act in any manner. In that regard, I feel that businesses are political in, for example, the supply chain activities (environmental impact, labor practices, etc) that they choose to fund. Merely by existing and directing money towards real world consequences, a business is political.
“Hunting” rifles and semi-automatic rifles that are erroneously referred to as “assault rifles” are functionally the same. Almost nowhere can you readily buy automatic rifles.
Not to dive too far into the politics or semantics of this, but I feel like OP meant "hunting" rifles to mean "bolt-action" or "single-shot" type rifles.
Also, OP didn't actually say anything about semi-automatic rifles, at all. So it's really a nothing statement to make that distinction; I guess I took the bait, though.
For most people, the debate about "assault rifles" seems to be a misunderstanding about the language being used by the other side. For people who label semi-automatic rifles as "assault rifles", they think of hunting rifles as small capacity, bolt-action rifles. Whereas folks like you do not make that distinction.
It's so weird to see that conversation play out, and realize that neither side understands the most basic definitions of the other. It's super common in gun debates. And very, genuinely strange.
> It's so weird to see that conversation play out, and realize that neither side understands the most basic definitions of the other. It's super common in gun debates. And very, genuinely strange.
it's not symmetrical that way. the way gun control advocates use "assault rifle" is usually pretty vague. I have friends who would call a semi-automatic MP5 an "assault rifle". to a gun enthusiast, an "assault rifle" is a specific type of gun that is quite difficult to legally own as a civilian. I suspect 2A folks understand what the other side means by "assault rifle" (as well as they do themselves, at least), but choose not to give it the dignity of acknowledgement.
the inverse occurs in discussions about racism. the left uses "racism" to mean "power + prejudice", while the right understands it simply as "discrimination on the basis of race". folks on the right don't necessarily understand through context which definition is being used (if they're even aware of the "power + prejudice" definition). folks on the left absolutely understand the source of confusion, but pretend they don't to leave their interlocutors looking stupid.
in both cases, you essentially have one side mocking the other for not having done their homework. not unfair imo, but probably not the most productive way to have the discussion.
To be honest, in the second case I refuse to acknowledge because it is newspeak: redefinition of words to mean whatever benefits the party now. (it has been a few years since I read 1984, but I think I remember this correctly.)
It is immediately clear even as a foreigner what racism really means and whoever tries to redefine it as a general slur deserves to be called out for it, just in the same way as they try to redefine assault rifle to mean any scary looking gun.
I can see why you would feel that way, but I don't think it's malicious usually.
the way I look at it is the "power + privilege" definition comes from "racism" as an academic term of art, a meaning that everyone engaged in a certain kind of study/research agrees on. a comparable example from CS would be "syntax" vs "semantics". when people scold someone for arguing over semantics, they mean something more similar to the CS definition of "syntax". if you, a CS person, interpret them using the CS definition of "semantics", it would sound quite ridiculous. I often see left-leaning people (esp college educated) using certain words with their academic meanings. they're not being deliberately misleading, but they don't always do a good job of handling the confusion that ensues when addressing a broader audience.
Lots of hunting rifles have an internal magazine with a smallish fixed capacity.
That's functionally quite different from a rifle with easily swapped external magazines with high capacity.
Chambering also matters a little bit. Weapons with a military lineage tend to have smaller rounds than rifles for big game. The smaller rounds make it easier to pack large amounts of ammunition and reduce fatigue.
Of course assault rifle is a meaningless term, but that's a result of many efforts to warp the discourse and not because the weapons used for war are literally the same as a weapon that is sufficient for hunting.
Assault rifles are marketed as "sporting" rifles by their manufacturers. My rifle doesn't accept detachable magazines which is one of the features of assault/sporting rifles.
>For example, can you be a gun shop owner without being pro-gun
What do you mean "pro-gun"?
You're fundamentally trying to reduce something that's a range to a binary and you're gonna lose a lot of accuracy doing that.
There's lots of gun shops owned by fudds who support various things from the "anti gun" wish list. Just by virtue of being older the "people who own gun shops" demographic is likely less extreme on the pro-gun spectrum than the average person on the pro-gun spectrum.
Obviously this is gonna generalize pretty well to other issues. Anyone running an abortion clinic is gonna be pro-life to some extend but selling the service doesn't necessarily mean they're at the super extreme end of it.
> For example, can you be a gun shop owner without being pro-gun? Some would say actions speak louder than words.
That's a false dichotomy. There are multiple stances on guns besides "guns should be completely unregulated" and "civilians shouldn't be allowed to own guns".
Working at a gun shop is, for example, very compatible with the notion that people should be subject to buying background checks before being able to buy a gun. After all, it's the brick-and-mortar gun shops who have to abide by background checks; the more these shops dominate the market, the smaller the market will be for gun shows where such background checks aren't required.
You're repeating a common misunderstanding about gun shows here which is that there are different rules for gun shows. There aren't. All licensed firearms sellers, i.e. all the people with booths, must do all the same background checks they would when selling from their stores. Meanwhile, all the non-gun-dealers (i.e. attendees) follow the same rules they would any other time of the year, which is that private-party transactions don't require background checks in some states. But that would be the same as if they sold a gun on Facebook or whatever. The dealers at the gun show are all doing the background checks as required by federal law (and additionally many states have more checks and/or waiting periods that also must be obeyed).
In any case, working for an actual gun dealer is still compatible with a stance of "I support universal background checks and closing the private-seller loophole", which is still a form of gun control and a departure from the status quo.
I don't know what political issues affect bakeries today, but infamously, being any sort of consumer business in the US (particularly in the South) in the 1950s and 1960s was extremely political.
I'm not one of them myself, but I know people who would argue that the ubiquity of sugary foods in our diets is a bigger net negative to society than guns.
I don't totally disagree, but you have to go a little further to really make the point. excess sugar seems to cause more deaths than guns, but how many years does it take off of people's lifespan? a poor diet killing someone at 65 instead of 78 is not quite as bad as a healthy 20yo being shot dead in an instant. to go even further, what's the cumulative impact to quality of life, even if one does live to a ripe old age?
For example, can you be a gun shop owner without being pro-gun? Some would say actions speak louder than words.
On the other hand, if you own a bakery being apolitical is a lot simpler. Avoid the Masterpiece Cakeshop case and there's as little politics as you'll find anywhere.