Question:
How do you get a pro-RKBA/2nd Amendment advocate to sound like a Brady Org. anti?
Answer:
Show a whimsical interest in full auto, burst or bump fire. It never fails, you'll be told that it is impractical, dangerous, immature, boorish, useless and too difficult for a lowly civilian like yourself to administer. Pretty much word for word why Sarah Brady thinks you shouldn't own a handgun.
Which is exactly what the average person says about handguns in places they are extremely restricted/banned.
You will hear this repeated strongly by most people in such nations. 99% of the population becomes antis after guns have been banned a generation or two. Even in places where guns previously had a lot of cultural support.
What does it prove? The best way to make a population support gun prohibition is to have gun prohibition.
Want people to support a ban on full auto? Put ownership of full auto out of reach of the average person and within a generation or two most will think it is crazy to freely allow it.
They will invent and repeat any logic to support the ban on the dangerous foreign object.
Put ownership of firearms in general out of reach of most people and within a generation or two most people will support extreme restrictions.
They will support keeping the dangerous foreign object out of the hands of most people.
I heard the same arguments about assault weapons after they been banned for almost a decade except by people that owned one. "Who needs 'assault weapons' when anything you need to do with a firearm can be done by these non-'assault' weapons".
Even by many gun owners. Now that the ban has sunset and several years have passed and such targeted firearms are more common that sentiment is disappearing.
Want to find the largest number of anti-gun people? Go to places that have had extreme firearm restrictions for a generation or two.
Some will be a little more for or against, but the majority will eventually be near the set standard.
Unfortunately it proves that people in general are easy to control. It is easy to make the population approve or disapprove of ideas or freedoms just by forcing them to adhere to one for a generation or two.
Many other places around the world have shown it too. Who would have thought a place like Australia with huge wide open landscape, a "bush" culture, and a population density relatively low overall would in a generation go from quite pro gun to primarily antis.
The population can easily be forced to adjust to a new "normal" that they base future acceptance of freedoms or liberties on.
Put legislation in place enough years and that becomes their new median in determining what is acceptable.
Some will stray a bit from that median, but most will not stray too far.
In the 1920s and 1930s the thought of restricting firearms in the way the NFA did was considered un-Constitutional by the majority. Most judges thought it would be thrown out as soon as it went to court. Even judges that supported the restrictions generally thought it would not pass Constitutional review.
Then the first time it was challenged and up for review (Miller case) the challenger dies before it gets to the Supreme Court. Nobody argues on his behalf. Even the Supreme Court acknowledges it would have been thrown out if someone could have submitted evidence such weapons were suitable in the "militia" or in the military (easy to do considering numerous short barreled shotguns had been used in WW1.) But that they could not consider evidence never submitted.
Then there was no similar challenges heard for decades, it became the new normal, and now it is firmly entrenched in the public's mind as normal and acceptable.
So simply by existing for a few generations it became the new normal. The median from which people draw their opinions. You could say the same for the GCA and similar things as well.
