The Latest Dance on Gun Policy
It was bound to happen. For most of the last decade, the public became largely detached from the consequences of a lawless gun policy and the resurgence of the once-extinct assault weapons into the firearms market, but I always knew there would be a game-changing event that would bring gun control back into the public conversation. And so it did with last week's horrific school shooting of 20 elementary kids and 6 adults at a school in Connecticut. At this brief moment in time, there is a break in the National Rifle Association's successful propaganda stranglehold that has prevented sensible gun laws from materializing (or in many cases, sensible existing gun laws from being repealed). Politicians from both sides of the aisle who have been petrified of the NRA are now reconsidering their unyielding fealty to the organization.
This is a tough issue for me as both sides are tugging me their direction in certain ways. I tend to be libertarian on these sorts of things and bristle at the idea of law-abiding citizens having freedoms taken away. And I also buy into one of the gun lobby's long-standing talking points...the idea that people who are seeking guns for pernicious reasons will find a way to get them regardless of laws intended to prevent certain guns from falling into the wrong hands.
However, that is about the only argument from the NRA that I find compelling. Beyond that, "Second Amendment absolutists" drive me nuts with their cynical and often mindless arguments conjured up based on their fetish for shiny objects that go "bang". They allow this gun fetish to cloud their better judgment and it seems as though their IQ drops 50 points whenever the topic arises and they preach on and on with all the usual stupidity.....that guns are "inanimate objects" that don't deserve to be blamed for those who do evil things with them....that killers who want you dead will go on murder sprees with rocks or piano wires if they don't have access to guns....that if everyone was packing a Glock 9 we'd be safer since the would-be killers wouldn't dare to assault us....and of course, pointing to the second amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees citizens the right to own a black powder musket to use when serving the National Guard, is really a license to own an unlimited arsenal of weapons with absolutely zero legal limitations.
In case you can't tell by my tone, the stupidity and self-serving cynicism of gun rights' defenders in the modern era has managed to align me against them, at least superficially, even though I'm emotionally closer to their side of the issue. And the case of Adam Lanza is a good example of why some restrictions couldn't hurt, especially as it applies to assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. As I said above, most people who want access to guns are likely to get them, but in Adam Lanza's case, they were right at his fingertips because of his mother's gun fetish. If mom hadn't introduced him to these diabolical assault weapons and then left them accessible to him within the home, it's very likely 27 people would be alive today. While banning assault weapons wouldn't put an end to ALL mass shootings, it probably would have stopped this one....and there's a decent chance it would stop the next one. Given that these assault weapons and high-capacity magazines serve no practical purpose other than stoking the fetishes of the most immature gun owners around, it's a pretty easy call to side with the preservation of human life, both in principle and in practice.
With all that said, the Democratic Party will lose this fight at the ballot box. The NRA easily won the public relations war, and even though Democrats have been silent on gun control since the end of the Clinton years, gun owners still see the Democratic Party as the enemy. The conventional wisdom among liberals today who are pushing for Democrats to push for new gun laws is that the gunslinging rural rednecks who were part of their coalition during the Clinton years have all become Republicans, and Democrats no longer need them to win elections...and thus should no longer fear the wrath of the NRA. There's some truth to this, as there are very few places left in America populated by gun enthusiasts where the Democratic Party still wins elections. However, the limitations on this theory are evident when recognizing that John Boehner remains the Speaker of the House (with a decisive 234-201 advantage) even though the Republican Party got more than a million fewer votes in House races than did Democrats. In other words, the nature of the House of Representatives requires Democrats to get votes outside of cities and suburbs if they have any hope of getting a majority.
I grew up in a gun-loving rural area and judging from my old friends back home and their activity on Facebook since the Newtown shootings, there is zero tolerance for any legal measures against guns. With the help of cynical NRA framing, it seems as though gun enthusiasts are incapable of differentiating between a law reducing the magazine capacity of AK-47s and a platoon of ATF agents kicking in their door and taking away their Winchester hunting rifle. As I said, the IQs of otherwise intelligent people fall 50 points when the subject turns to guns. And I venture to say many of these people are receptive to many of the Democratic Party's arguments on a plethora of other issues, but their gun fetish renders every other issue inconsequential once they set foot into the voting booth.
So ultimately, this becomes a moral issue for Democrats similar to civil rights two generations ago. Do Democrats feel so strongly about the connection between assault weapons and the loss of human life that they risk alienating millions of voters by imposing new gun restrictions? It's quite a dilemma, and I'm sure if I had a personal connection to someone senselessly killed by guns I would be more steadfast in my support of new gun laws, but I must confess that with everything at stake, I don't want to alienate any voters if it means any additional empowerment for a Republican Party that grows more unhinged every day. For better or for worse, I'd much rather take my chances on the limited likelihood of getting gunned down in a mass shooting by a lunatic who stole his mother's assault rifle than a die a more certain death at the hands of the metaphorical policy gun that the Republican Party is pointing at my head.
This is a tough issue for me as both sides are tugging me their direction in certain ways. I tend to be libertarian on these sorts of things and bristle at the idea of law-abiding citizens having freedoms taken away. And I also buy into one of the gun lobby's long-standing talking points...the idea that people who are seeking guns for pernicious reasons will find a way to get them regardless of laws intended to prevent certain guns from falling into the wrong hands.
However, that is about the only argument from the NRA that I find compelling. Beyond that, "Second Amendment absolutists" drive me nuts with their cynical and often mindless arguments conjured up based on their fetish for shiny objects that go "bang". They allow this gun fetish to cloud their better judgment and it seems as though their IQ drops 50 points whenever the topic arises and they preach on and on with all the usual stupidity.....that guns are "inanimate objects" that don't deserve to be blamed for those who do evil things with them....that killers who want you dead will go on murder sprees with rocks or piano wires if they don't have access to guns....that if everyone was packing a Glock 9 we'd be safer since the would-be killers wouldn't dare to assault us....and of course, pointing to the second amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees citizens the right to own a black powder musket to use when serving the National Guard, is really a license to own an unlimited arsenal of weapons with absolutely zero legal limitations.
In case you can't tell by my tone, the stupidity and self-serving cynicism of gun rights' defenders in the modern era has managed to align me against them, at least superficially, even though I'm emotionally closer to their side of the issue. And the case of Adam Lanza is a good example of why some restrictions couldn't hurt, especially as it applies to assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. As I said above, most people who want access to guns are likely to get them, but in Adam Lanza's case, they were right at his fingertips because of his mother's gun fetish. If mom hadn't introduced him to these diabolical assault weapons and then left them accessible to him within the home, it's very likely 27 people would be alive today. While banning assault weapons wouldn't put an end to ALL mass shootings, it probably would have stopped this one....and there's a decent chance it would stop the next one. Given that these assault weapons and high-capacity magazines serve no practical purpose other than stoking the fetishes of the most immature gun owners around, it's a pretty easy call to side with the preservation of human life, both in principle and in practice.
With all that said, the Democratic Party will lose this fight at the ballot box. The NRA easily won the public relations war, and even though Democrats have been silent on gun control since the end of the Clinton years, gun owners still see the Democratic Party as the enemy. The conventional wisdom among liberals today who are pushing for Democrats to push for new gun laws is that the gunslinging rural rednecks who were part of their coalition during the Clinton years have all become Republicans, and Democrats no longer need them to win elections...and thus should no longer fear the wrath of the NRA. There's some truth to this, as there are very few places left in America populated by gun enthusiasts where the Democratic Party still wins elections. However, the limitations on this theory are evident when recognizing that John Boehner remains the Speaker of the House (with a decisive 234-201 advantage) even though the Republican Party got more than a million fewer votes in House races than did Democrats. In other words, the nature of the House of Representatives requires Democrats to get votes outside of cities and suburbs if they have any hope of getting a majority.
I grew up in a gun-loving rural area and judging from my old friends back home and their activity on Facebook since the Newtown shootings, there is zero tolerance for any legal measures against guns. With the help of cynical NRA framing, it seems as though gun enthusiasts are incapable of differentiating between a law reducing the magazine capacity of AK-47s and a platoon of ATF agents kicking in their door and taking away their Winchester hunting rifle. As I said, the IQs of otherwise intelligent people fall 50 points when the subject turns to guns. And I venture to say many of these people are receptive to many of the Democratic Party's arguments on a plethora of other issues, but their gun fetish renders every other issue inconsequential once they set foot into the voting booth.
So ultimately, this becomes a moral issue for Democrats similar to civil rights two generations ago. Do Democrats feel so strongly about the connection between assault weapons and the loss of human life that they risk alienating millions of voters by imposing new gun restrictions? It's quite a dilemma, and I'm sure if I had a personal connection to someone senselessly killed by guns I would be more steadfast in my support of new gun laws, but I must confess that with everything at stake, I don't want to alienate any voters if it means any additional empowerment for a Republican Party that grows more unhinged every day. For better or for worse, I'd much rather take my chances on the limited likelihood of getting gunned down in a mass shooting by a lunatic who stole his mother's assault rifle than a die a more certain death at the hands of the metaphorical policy gun that the Republican Party is pointing at my head.
posted by Mark at 6:44 PM
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