What do you believe is the PRIMARY reason for the push to increase gun control?

Do you honestly believe the Clintons care what's going to happen many decades down the road?

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Do I honestly believe most senior citizens are consumed with worry about the future of their grandchildren or great grandchildren? It's the same thing with fossilized politicians, except it's the institutions they've dedicated their lives to that are their 'baby' (often instead of their actual and/or alleged offspring)

Post an example of a commonly held racist rationale by a rank and file gun control supporter.

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Practically every black-majority urban center anywhere. Perhaps not racist so much as 'classist' and specifically targeted to poor people in general, but the brutal facts are these indicators correlate in modern America. There's always a huge outcry whenever gun rights groups try to make inroads with these disenfranchised populations, to the point that today you have idiots claiming guns themselves are 'racist' as if that makes any sense whatsoever. But more generally, there's a pervasive belief that poor inner city people (i.e. black) should not be allowed to be armed --for their own benefit, naturally.

Didn't Bill Maher or some similar Head have an ugly gaffe on this issue somewhat recently? Someone's gonna have to refresh my memory.

Do you really believe that's the case here in the US?

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Really?
-"Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them in" --Feinstein
-"I don't believe in firearms, the world would be better without them" --numerous
-“We need a bill that is going to confiscate, confiscate, confiscate.” --NJ Senate
-"Guns are an abomination" --Richard Nixon

You can't be serious, that you think total disarmament of civilians is not the objective of a great many (if not most) in the gun control camp. How else could you possibly explain that they literally never stop trying to pass new measures, to the point you end up with de facto outright bans on entire classes of guns in the US, or more generally in countless nations where gun banners have been allowed to flourish?

TCB

Trying to remove any voice of decent within the group, thereby shrinking the group into a core of ideologically pure and utterly ineffective losers. And after the guns are banned, you guys can all agree that you did everything you could, and it wasn't your fault. Just like the South did after they lost.

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You *do* realize that we've only seen our recent strong gains at the state and to a much lesser extent federal level, precisely because of the "ineffective losers" you denigrate? Actually, I'm convinced you do at this point, and is why you decry their efforts at productive organization and initiative.

-You've consistently denied (not refuting, since that involve more than naked assertions) practically every explanation offered by anyone here
-I don't think you've offered a single theory yourself, so you really come off as defending personal criticism as opposed to engaged in the topic of reasoned explanation for a type of political behavior
-You have a rather...ignorant viewpoint as to Southern culture & motives with regards to the Civil War
-You insist Fascism has nothing to do with Socialism (a comical assertion on its face, and indicative since WWII of a socialist perspective)
-You insist upon 'compromises built into' the RKBA, despite its stark unmeasured language and intention being largely unmolested until Progressives got ambitious in the late 1800s --oh, and you call those who disagree with this baseless claim flat-earthers
-And you oddly pulled rank on me regarding an irrelevant topic like AI without even addressing the clumsy metaphor I attached to it.

You wouldn't happen to be from an urban tech hub, would you? This seems uncannily familiar to my contacts in Austin.

"Your brand of fanaticism has no place in a democratic society, and all it does is hurt all of us."
You meant to say Democrat society, right? Because then your sentence would make sense. Gun rights has had a prominent role in our society right up until the New Deal when it began to be attacked intentionally in pursuit of federal authority (feel free to argue how the war on guns has done anything besides strengthen federal authorities). Feel free also to argue how we gun rights fanatics must be purged for the sake of the Motherland, since you all but called for a pogrom.

"It's just an illogical, disprovable, faith based belief system that educated people on both sides of the aisle politely ignore."
Are you describing pro-gun zealots, or anti-gun zealots? I readily admit my beliefs are founded in the notion that people left free to their own devices apart from some very basic ground rules and a system to effectively resolve differences will tend to be peaceful, and that self defense & the courts can take care of those few who will not live peacefully. Not my problem if faith in your fellow man is such a foreign concept to you, though it would explain your approach to the topic. I agree that if I lived in an urban hellhole of powerful greedy backbiters seeking to exploit me at every turn with few constraints on their behavior, that I'd probably desire a Big Brother to settle my scores for me.

Oh, and you failed to 'disprove' anything. You're just ignoring peoples' arguments while demanding they 'satisfy' you rhetorically with unnamed points at this point (I know this might *seem* the same to you, but the difference is clear to anyone else reading)

We are trying to unite gun owners and as far as I am concerned, anyone who advocates compromise is against us.

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This is absolutely right (or at least I've not seen a convincing argument for the utility of compromise on this topic), therefore we must resolve ourselves to oppose those who would advocate for compromise, even if they claim they want to be or are on our side of the issue. Like that ugly dude in that terrible movie, a phalanx cannot function if even a single member is unable or unwilling to do their job properly, regardless their good intentions. Allowing them to impact tactics only serves to weaken the remainder, and has the effect of aiding the opposition.

So if anyone hasn't figured out this is a binary, all or nothing issue that drives countless others, all I can ask is you step aside for the time being and study the issues a bit further until you find your resolve. Once you realize the Germans must be defeated, by all means weigh in on whether Sword or Juno is the more vulnerable beach head. If you haven't gotten even that far yet, you won't be very effective.

TCB

In the political climate of the time, nothing would have stopped the GCA of 1968. Politics is the art of the possible, not the art of the impossible. A "no compromise" gun lobby would not have stopped GCA68 or the AWB, and would most likely have killed the FOPA. And a "no compromise" gun lobby would have left us with a worse GCA68 and with the AWB still in effect.

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Maybe, maybe not. I'm too young to have known for sure, but from what I can tell there's a whole host of differences between these eras, even apart from the perfect storm of civil unrest boiling in throughout the country. You may be right, but there's also no way an even larger fraction of the public that owned guns back then would have been less effective than today with sufficient motivation. May still not have been enough, but it's hard for me to say.

Same goes for the 1934 NFA, which despite the most token kind of opposition by pathetically naiive gun owners, was still unable to effect outright bans of any sort or apply the prohibitive tax scheme to common pistols. Arguably the same environment of mass demonstrations and rampant crime, without the war but with crippling economic crisis. If the vast, vast majority of Americans who owned some type of firearm had been aware exactly what all was going to be impacted by the law, it likely would not have included anything but machine guns (and even then, it'd probably just be a racially motivated ban scheme targeted to the urban poor that wouldn't effect most others)

TCB

Different reasons for different groups. For politicians, the Second Amendment and our firearms ownership are a bridle they resist. Their first instinct for gun control may not be so much controlling us as not wanting boundaries on them.

For supporters, it's wanting to belong to a group. The group may even believe they are wanting a greater good. In the real world, anyone who can think at least two moves ahead can see the futility and damage coming from gun control. But some who find themselves thinking for themselves, retreat realizing such thoughts could lead to being drummed out of the liberal camp.

The uninformed/disinterested: The Second Amendment is a sophisticated distillation of history. It came from the founders' knowing, from first hand experience, how governments and societies devolve. We've become more and more ignorant of that history.

No way. Grandparents LOVE their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Politicos are out to benefit themselves.

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So Susan B Anthony was just a political opportunist who had no desire to make a mark on history, or MLK for that matter, or Mandela, Castro, Mussolini, Lenin, Mao , or Hitler? Just out for a quick grift before the reaper came calling? Yes, these names are arranged on a spectrum from 'saint' to 'devil,' with a giant leap between MLK and Mandela

Politicians --especially prominent or accomplished ones -- LOVE their legacies more than life itself, which is why so many end up reaping the whirlwind. But notice how many of them get whole sections devoted to them in the history books, good or bad

Sorry but no sale. Disarming the US would take several generations -- if ever. I don't see current politicos expending political capital on anything that doesn't benefit them in the short term.

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Gun control's only been a 'thing' of any significance since 1934, and yet it's made steady gains ever since then until now. It's *been* on the books for several generations, and it's already had disarming effects --buy any new machineguns, lately? They're scarcely different from your semi-autos, yet they cost 10-20 times more and from an ever-shrinking supply. When has gun control EVER been a benefit to anyone in the short term (well, without kickbacks from Bloomberg or Tammany Hall being involved)?

You seriously think that because the ultimate gun control dream cannot be realized in a single lifetime (that said, see England or Germany or Meiji Japan) that no one is pursuing it? Democrats have been agitating for socialized healthcare since the New Deal with FDR, and are just now closing in on the end game

TCB

Deanimator said:

"I don't want to take guns away from EVERYBODY, just the <insert racial slur here>!"

Then of course you have Rudy Giuliani's quaint assertion that the 2nd Amendment means something entirely different in Brooklyn, NYC than in Brooklyn, OH.

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And who are you quoting? Quote a person, not a fever dream.

Different reasons for different groups. For politicians, the Second Amendment and our firearms ownership are a bridle they resist. Their first instinct for gun control may not be so much controlling us as not wanting boundaries on them.

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I suppose that's one way of looking at it. But if you view politics as a zero sum game doling out power between individuals and the group, their freedom *is* our restraint.

The group may even believe they are wanting a greater good.

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Of course, these aren't cartoon villains at Cobra Command plotting the construction of an earthquake machine (although the wikileaks revelations are showing them to be darn close at times ). But all sorts of horrible things have sprung from the altruism of powerful groups; French Revolution(s) and The Great Terror, practically all religious warfare to include Al Qaeda/ISIS, Russian communism revolutions and pogroms, eugenics and the Holocaust, Chinese communism and the Cultural Revolution, Fascism and the destruction of half the planet and tens if not hundreds of millions of lives, and we may yet see Mutually Assured Destruction at the hands of people with good intentions.

The Second Amendment is a sophisticated distillation of history.

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That's an elegant way of putting it. I would expound on that to say our whole system of government is as well, and also includes historical & contemporary views on human nature (philosophy). I've actually come to the conclusion that a portion of our federal power balance issues stem from the incorporation of universal suffrage, into a system that was not originally designed to account for the unique motivations of all these suffrage groups & balance them against the other government organs (not saying it can't be done properly, but that it was done recklessly in our case, with the historically obvious result that the federal government began accumulating unprecedented power & resources at an accelerating rate right around the time of the various suffrage movements)

TCB

Yes, we need the respect of our opposition. We need credibility. We need to dispel the negative stereotypes of gun owners and be recognized as intelligent and thoughtful people worth paying attention to. I'm not sure what it will take to do that, but this sort of thing --

[Chipotle ninjas ninja-ing around in their natural habitat]

isn't well calculated to do that.

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Maybe. Although, obnoxious protests by gay rights folks did inure the greater public to the (then) disgrace and disgust associated with homosexuals, granted a bunch of more palatable efforts were going on simultaneously. Not to mention totally irrelevant fact that Texas does in fact have a form of Open Carry on the books for the first time in a century, despite or in part due to the particular individuals you've displayed for condemnation. Whereas California, California does not (and not because of the protesters that recently caused a fuss & got the law re-written; the fact the backlash was so swift & merciless meant your state had effectively lost OC a long time earlier, but simply hadn't been made official)

TCB

And who are you quoting? Quote a person, not a fever dream.

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Uh, Bloomberg, though naturally not in so few words;

“It’s controversial but, first thing is all of your, 95 percent, 95 percent of your murders and murderers and murder victims fit one M.O. You can just take the description and Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. They are male minorities 15 to 25. That’s true in New York, it’s true in virtually every city in America. And that’s where the real crime is. You’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of the people that are getting killed.”

Please, go on and tell us how this doesn't count, though . What's really funny, is there is a sizeable contingent of 'racist' gun rights folks who really wish legal guns & helpful self defense laws could make their way into these urban areas, since it would likely resolve at least some measure of the predation (I've seen several studies which conclude that a shockingly tiny number of individuals --think a couple dozen-- are responsible for the difference between a ghetto hellhole with leading murder rates, and a poor but livable neighborhood; if they are confronted only 5% of the time with lethal force when they do violent wrong, those dozens will rapidly dwindle to a handful of ruffians. Unfortunately, such improvement bodes poorly for federal and charity aid otherwise laundered through the local government)

Absolutely, and some dufus gun owners are not helping us, but we must take a stand and stop "compromising" when it isn't a compromise, only more gun restrictions.

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I'd argue that compromisers are just as detrimental to the cause as the Ninja toolbags. Both present an unhelpful image of gun owners as weak, vulnerable, or unsympathetic characters who could, or should be walked all over by authorities. Very much in the same vein as the Fudds of yesteryear (do they even still exist in significant numbers? I think the rural Pennsylvania/Ohio crowd has been pretty well sorted into Us and Them at this point)

TCB

Frank Ettin opined:

Nonetheless, the world is as it is, not as you'd like it to be.

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That, sir, is the exact problem. And it's not due to me, it's due to the personality traits which make people become politicians.

Control. In one word.

A requirement that persons buying certain types of ammunition show ID.

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That actually came to pass. I remember having to sign for buying some ammo. I remember my shock, and the dealer saying it was "an FBI requirement" and it soon went away anyhow. (I also remember filling out one of the first examples of the present 4473 which was on a mimeographed legal-sized sheet with the bare bones of the questions we now see.)*

A requirement that anyone carrying a gun be licensed.

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Well, we have that now, both in terms of the now-nearly-universal shall-issue concealed carry permits and the de facto "licensing" of the form 4473... after all, aren't all those requirements "licensing" requirements underneath it all? Not to mention the background check?

In the political climate of the time, nothing would have stopped the GCA of 1968.

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You are probably correct. But the tenor of the times was a result of the --if I may --"control freaks" in both the general population and the Legislatures pouncing on several highly spectacular shootings. (Never let a crisis go to waste.)

If I may say so, this is similar to the NFA being a result of the Valentine's Day Massacre and the rampant criminalism brought on by the Prohibition phenomenon. Which itself was brought about by other self-righteous control freaks.

Politics is the art of the possible, not the art of the impossible. A "no compromise" gun lobby would not have stopped GCA68 or the AWB, and would most likely have killed the FOPA. And a "no compromise" gun lobby would have left us with a worse GCA68 and with the AWB still in effect.

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Interesting hypotheses, but perhaps a "tougher" gun lobby would have resulted in the compromises made being even less [STRIKE]constriction[/STRIKE] restrictive of freedom.

Perhaps, perhaps, a "tougher" no-compromise gun lobby would have made such laws impossible, eh? (I am aware of and respect the NRA's political acumen, but even back then it was still largely comprised of old school wood and blued steel gun enthusiasts.)

You have your hypotheses and I have mine. Your "independent variables" involve the laws and cases of the past. My "independent variables" involve what ought to be and ought to have been, "case law" and legislation notwithstanding. Bad law is bad law, bad judges are bad judges, and bad legislators are bad legislators.

Terry, 230RN

*Neither of these were "corporate" requirements or those of the LGS. They were letterheaded by the FBI, which could merely have been "helping out" with distribution on behalf of the then-BATF.

RX79

Your brand of fanaticism has no place in a democratic society, and all it does is hurt all of us

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You speak with forked tongue, much as Hillary does.

Much as King O, Queen Shrillary and their followers in the MSM continually re-and mis-assert...we do not live in a Democracy.
Period. End of sentence.

Read the founding documents, understand the terms and the definitions.
To recap:

Your brand of ignorance (or willful mis-statement) has no place in our Republic.

Robert said:

We are trying to unite gun owners and as far as I am concerned, anyone who advocates compromise is against us.

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It is hard to imagine a more paradoxical statement.

You have simultaneously called for unity while promising to exclude a great number of people. And that's a winning plan?

The "more palatable efforts" are key:

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For the endgame, yes; but obnoxious protests are actually a *very* useful tool for forcing authorities to address a minority group. There's a reason that these types of acts almost always accompany the 'legitimate' main body of the movement. The violence of the Weathermen and Panthers (and KKK) most certainly gave an air of urgency to the demands of more moderate figures like King. Same with outrageous pride parades being used as a threat/tool to embarrass officials unless the demands of your Harvey Milks were heard. We see it now with rioting and looting in multiple city centers after unpopular police actions as a tool to force the hand of state & city officials to roll heads, resign, or redirect resources. Most recently the profoundly idiotic C***s Not Glocks animals in Austin, who are straining to keep opposition to OC alive. The OC crowd radicals did largely fail to color their demonstrations in a non-threatening manner when doing their most obnoxious stunts, like invading a state congressman's office --this could have probably been done without real guns & maybe been slightly less off-putting, but then that sort of defeats the purpose in attracting publicity. Fat middle-aged women in lingerie wearing rubber billy clubs in front of children in public is several orders of magnitude more offensive than anything the OCers ever did, yet in doing so they manage to get press shoutouts of OC opposition; mission accomplished.

Two step approach, in part due to the fact that there will always be obnoxious fools that really won't be controlled all that well (so we might as learn to use them)

It is hard to imagine a more paradoxical statement.

You have simultaneously called for unity while promising to exclude a great number of people. And that's a winning plan?

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The people being excluded are not conducive to a productive effort, though; in fact, they have historically been counter-productive. It's like asking why we don't unify by courting strident anti-gunners

Those of us who 'get it' can try to educate those who don't, but there is no point in moderating our cohesive stance simply to avoid that step; it's self-defeating. Especially when more and more gun owners are seeing the light & coming to the same 'radical' realization of what gun control is actually all about. I'll say again, gun owners saw no victories until your boogeyman LaPierre knocked heads around in the home office & got people to take this seriously. I'm well aware this is precisely why the man is so hated, because we'd be under AWB 2.0 with a semi-auto ban by this point were it not for 'his kind.'

TCB

HetchHetchy said:

Really?

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Yes, really.

The United States is marching shakily toward the precipice.

There won't be any coming back once we go over the edge.

barnbwt said:

The people being excluded are not conducive to a productive effort, though; in fact, they have historically been counter-productive. It's like asking why we don't unify by courting strident anti-gunners

Those of us who 'get it' can try to educate those who don't, but there is no point in moderating our cohesive stance simply to avoid that step; it's self-defeating. Especially when more and more gun owners are seeing the light & coming to the same 'radical' realization of what gun control is actually all about. I'll say again, gun owners saw no victories until your boogeyman LaPierre knocked heads around in the home office & got people to take this seriously. I'm well aware this is precisely why the man is so hated, because we'd be under AWB 2.0 with a semi-auto ban by this point were it not for 'his kind.'

TCB

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Almost no one even understands what gun control is, let alone how to fight it.

Guns have been restricted before, during and after the drafting of the BoR. Everyone knows that the language of 2A doesn't apply to prisoners and never did, but no one in the "shall not be infringed" camp can explain that. Instead they cling to a fantasy that never existed, and that's why they are extremists who are out of touch with reality, fighting a war they lost two centuries ago.