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

[barnbwt]

That's what I keep saying, over and over. The 2A camp lives in a fantasy world of choir preachers, inventing stories of an enemy which doesn't exist.

Or more like you refuse to believe they exist--

Okay, so no one. Thanks.

And I'm not "ignorant". You don't understand what AI is.

--even after being given specific names & social/political positions. I've still not figured out what you think you're looking for if I'm to 'prove' my position for you; some stereotypical anti-gunner version of a pro-gun person's vision of an anti-gun person? No Tropic Thunder reference needed

It is commonplace psychology - if your enemies don't seem obviously bad enough to hate, invent characteristics that are hateful. "The Hun", "Baby killers", etc.

They ruin the lives of innocent Americans every day to the direct benefit of lawless criminals who prey upon them; what more do you want, proof that they themselves don't even think they are being altruistic? I've already said that many anti-gunners are in denial as to the real effects of their goals...which you have vociferously denied... All while attacking one of the more historically effective lines of pro-gun argument (the danger of tyranny), which turned back the anti-gun crescendo of the 90's single-handedly.

The Brits' and Aussies' laws no longer respect even a personal right to violent self defense against violent attack; how is this not 'hateful' and a straight endorsement of tyranny? Are our domestic anti-gunners not extolling the suposed virtues of those systems this very day?

Would love to hear your thoughts on AI, and how it is different from a system of government at a conceptual level of identifying problems & formulating solutions.

TCB

 

[RX-79G]

Or more like you refuse to believe they exist--



--even after being given specific names & social/political positions. I've still not figured out what you think you're looking for if I'm to 'prove' my position for you; some stereotypical anti-gunner version of a pro-gun person's vision of an anti-gun person? No Tropic Thunder reference needed

No, you didn't. You named one politician who made a comment about due process, and that was all.

Everything else you said was back to "if they are pro-gun control, they want tyranny" nonsense that you started with.

 

[Jackal]

The Federal Gov has 3 primary jobs.

1. Keeping us safe from outside threats.
2. Maintain trade.
3. Collect enough taxes to cover the first two.

They've done only one of these REALLY well.....:banghead:

 

[Deanimator]

I suspect that's true and that it also extend to a plurality of pro-gunners as well.

I've had racial slurs directed my way by White anti-gunners for disobeying their ORDERS to support invidiously discriminatory gun control laws FAR more than I EVER have by White pro-gun people.

 

[Deanimator]

That's what I keep saying, over and over. The 2A camp lives in a fantasy world of choir preachers, inventing stories of an enemy which doesn't exist.

It is commonplace psychology - if your enemies don't seem obviously bad enough to hate, invent characteristics that are hateful. "The Hun", "Baby killers", etc.

Anti-gunners are more than bad enough without ANY exaggeration. They're as bad as any Holocaust deniers I've ever encountered.

In fact, some of them WERE Holocaust deniers.

 

[RX-79G]

Anti-gunners are more than bad enough without ANY exaggeration. They're as bad as any Holocaust deniers I've ever encountered.

In fact, some of them WERE Holocaust deniers.

This is the least interesting, on topic or useful argument offered on this forum.

 

[Deanimator]

This is the least interesting, on topic or useful argument offered on this forum.

There are Holocaust deniers.

There are also deniers of the essential racism and general bigotry of the anti-gun cult.

They have their [sometimes overlapping] motivations.

 

[P5 Guy]

Like abortion, support for increased gun control has simply been institutionalized in some circles.

Out of the 3000 counties in the USA some 150 dictated the last POTUS to all the others. While that was majority rule is becomes obvious that large metropolitan areas have sway over the political system.
The media has control over all these population centers and broadcasts the agenda 24/7.

 

[barnbwt]

You got a purpose here but to backbite, RX? If you even bothered to offer your theory (something about us not needing to worry and carry on losing as we had until recent decades when The Mask on the anti gunners was lifted, I'd imagine) it was lost amid your denials of everyone else's thoughts. Starting to protest a bit much, and without much substance; just your assertion that we are all wrong. Do you have closer knowledge of the souls of our anti-gunners?

How many anti-gunner fascists chasing authority you want me to list, before you call your insistence there's *none* in that set a falsehood? Should I even bother, given you insist my evidence of Machin's leanings toward authoritarianism mean nothing?

Anti gunners can be the worst kind of people to have a conversation with, and this one is starting to feel familiar; I don't care to debate with people arguing a position in bad faith.

TCB

 

[Deanimator]

If I had a dime for every racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, or homophobic justification for gun control I've seen or heard in the last 59 years, I'd be able to buy a water cooled Browning .50 with all of the accessories, tools, and mounts, and a couple of pallets of ammunition.

 

[Frank Ettin]

...The 2A camp lives in a fantasy world of choir preachers, inventing stories of an enemy which doesn't exist....

I'll agree to a point -- the point at which we continue to mistakenly focus on government rather than the body politic.

The Feinsteins, Schumers, et al, of our world push gun control because their constituencies support them for pushing gun control.

Their constituencies aren't afraid of tyranny, of the erosion of personal initiative and responsibility, of foreign invasion, of government excess. The folks who elect the Feinsteins and the Schumers, et al, are afraid of gangbangers with guns, of getting caught in a crossfire between rival drug dealers, of the nut who with a gun who takes his anger and disappointment out on innocent school children, of the ordinary guy carrying a gun who's not competent and too quick to shoot first and ask questions later.

The folks who elect the Feinsteins and the Schumers, et al, also don't believe that ordinary people having guns is a positive for our society or contributes anything worthwhile to our life. And we're doing a lousy job of convincing those folks that the anti-gun policies of the Feinsteins and the Schumers, et al, won't really allay their fears, or that it can be a good thing for ordinary, honest folks to have guns.

 

[barnbwt]

There are also deniers of the essential racism and general bigotry of the anti-gun cult.

They have their [sometimes overlapping] motivations.

Nothing seems to anger them more than the discussion of those unseemly motivations

 

[RX-79G]

There are Holocaust deniers.

There are also deniers of the essential racism and general bigotry of the anti-gun cult.

They have their [sometimes overlapping] motivations.

Some of them may be vegans or roller skaters, too.

The number of people in the US in favor of some kind of gun control are enormous (and includes many gun owners). The number of people in the US that are holocaust deniers AND are anti-gun are teeny-tiny compared to the number of Aryan Brotherhood types that are both pro-gun and deny the Holocaust.


This is the most ridiculous distraction to this important issue. People like you are destroying our ability to deal with a real public policy issue by shrouding everything in utter nonsense. If we lose, it will be thanks to people like you who live in a fantasy world.

 

[Deanimator]

You got a purpose here but to backbite, RX? If you even bothered to offer your theory (something about us not needing to worry and carry on losing as we had until recent decades when The Mask on the anti gunners was lifted, I'd imagine) it was lost amid your denials of everyone else's thoughts. Starting to protest a bit much, and without much substance; just your assertion that we are all wrong. Do you have closer knowledge of the souls of our anti-gunners?

How many anti-gunner fascists chasing authority you want me to list, before you call your insistence there's *none* in that set a falsehood? Should I even bother, given you insist my evidence of Machin's leanings toward authoritarianism mean nothing?

Anti gunners can be the worst kind of people to have a conversation with, and this one is starting to feel familiar; I don't care to debate with people arguing a position in bad faith.

TCB

Gun control can only be defended by intentionally denying the facts and by intentionally denying the defenders' motivations.

Gun control can ONLY be defended in bad faith.

 

[Deanimator]

Some of them may be vegans or roller skaters, too.

The number of people in the US in favor of some kind of gun control are enormous (and includes many gun owners). The number of people in the US that are holocaust deniers AND are anti-gun are teeny-tiny compared to the number of Aryan Brotherhood types that are both pro-gun and deny the Holocaust.


This is the most ridiculous distraction to this important issue. People like you are destroying our ability to deal with a real public policy issue by shrouding everything in utter nonsense. If we lose, it will be thanks to people like you who live in a fantasy world.

I've never seen anyone defend invidiously racist gun control on the basis of veganism or skating.

I've FREQUENTLY seen it defended on the basis of "keeping <insert racial, religious, or ethnic slur here> from having guns".

Denying that is like denying Babi Yar.

An unpleasant truth is only a "distraction" to someone uninterested in the truth... usually because that truth strikes uncomfortably close to home.

 

[barnbwt]

And we're doing a lousy job of convincing those folks that the anti-gun policies of the Feinsteins and the Schumers, et al, won't really allay their fears, or that it can be a good thing for ordinary, honest folks to have guns.

Can something as complex, and honestly, personal as this realization really be communicated so simply as a talking point, though? It took me months to get a clue after growing up ambivalent, and a dive into the extrmely obscure hobby of gun building to more fully understand my own feelings on the issue, and begin to come to real conclusions on gun control. Is that likely or possible for the greater public to go to such lengths, or to instead insist upon recognition & respect for what will always be an unpopular subject in many circles?

I'm coming to realize that "respect now, understanding later" is the political reality of things, and that our opponents have no reason to heed our arguments as long as they can walk all over us, which is the case when the current body of gun owners do not act as a unified force (since there's more than enough of us to demand our rights be respected)

TCB

 

[RX-79G]

You got a purpose here but to backbite, RX? If you even bothered to offer your theory (something about us not needing to worry and carry on losing as we had until recent decades when The Mask on the anti gunners was lifted, I'd imagine) it was lost amid your denials of everyone else's thoughts. Starting to protest a bit much, and without much substance; just your assertion that we are all wrong. Do you have closer knowledge of the souls of our anti-gunners?

How many anti-gunner fascists chasing authority you want me to list, before you call your insistence there's *none* in that set a falsehood? Should I even bother, given you insist my evidence of Machin's leanings toward authoritarianism mean nothing?

Anti gunners can be the worst kind of people to have a conversation with, and this one is starting to feel familiar; I don't care to debate with people arguing a position in bad faith.

TCB

My purpose here is to highlight the stupidity that the majority of our voting block seem to be mired in. I have yet to see a single pro-gun message that would appeal to ANYONE who is not fervently pro gun already. People like Deanimator seek to make the pro-gun POV more extreme, exclusive, narrow and ultimately - powerless.

Fervent, rabid raging against imaginary foes is a loser's position.

 

[HetchHetchy]

Precisely. I urge everyone reading this thread to read Edward Gibbons' "The History of the Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire..."

That's extremely good advice. The problem I see is that most gun enthusiasts I know would never make the investment to read Gibbon's landmark work.

 

[Deanimator]

Nothing seems to anger them more than the discussion of those unseemly motivations

...and their WELL documented historical precedents.

 

[barnbwt]

Gun control can only be defended by intentionally denying the facts and by intentionally denying the defenders' motivations.

Gun control can ONLY be defended in bad faith.

I hold out hope there is such an argument, and there are some that come close (the realpolitik ones by nihilists are somewhat hard to refute rhetorically), but I haven't found one that withstood close examination in my eyes. I've tried. I used to be something of an anti-gunner myself, self-righteous hypocritical illusions of Utopia and everything. All of them founded in ignorance, and riddled with contradiction.

TCB

 

[phil dirt]

Hillary and Obama are striving for a one party political system in which the so called Progressives, (I call them Communists) control everything. The first thing any Progressive/Communist wants is to disarm all opposition. Gun owners had best vote for their gun rights in November or be prepared for what comes next.

 

[RX-79G]

I've never seen anyone defend invidiously racist gun control on the basis of veganism or skating.

I've FREQUENTLY seen it defended on the basis of "keeping <insert racial, religious, or ethnic slur here> from having guns".

Denying that is like denying Babi Yar.

An unpleasant truth is only a "distraction" to someone uninterested in the truth... usually because that truth strikes uncomfortably close to home.

Racist Jim Crow gun control in the south was a real thing. Your attempt to turn the realities of racism and gun control on its head is disgusting.

 

[barnbwt]

That's extremely good advice. The problem I see is that most gun enthusiasts I know would never make the investment to read Gibbon's landmark work.

To be fair, it is basically the tomiest of tomes

THR should have a reading list, unless there's a hidden sticky for one already

 

[barnbwt]

Weren't some of the earliest gun laws (and Prohibition laws, and poll restrictions, etc) targeted against Irish immigrants in the big northern states? Also, what is possibly more authoritarian than a slave holder?

 

[HetchHetchy]

My purpose here is to highlight the stupidity that the majority of our voting block seem to be mired in. I have yet to see a single pro-gun message that would appeal to ANYONE who is not fervently pro gun already. People like Deanimator seek to make the pro-gun POV more extreme, exclusive, narrow and ultimately - powerless.

Fervent, rabid raging against imaginary foes is a loser's position.

That's very true -- and it gets worse. Just look at how skewed the speakers are at the annual NRA convention. If I was liberal, I wouldn't go near such a meeting. Heck, even as a conservative, I would be ashamed to attend -- despite being an NRA member.

While I understand the NRA's need to fire-up its base of supporters, doing so as it does almost guarantees it will never have substantially more members. Enough members so that it would truly have some serious pull in all areas of politics.