A useful way to experience the lunacy of Progressives is to discuss guns with your local lefty. Most people understand that gun control is worthless as a tool to control crime or even reduce gun accidents. The people using guns in crime are by definition not the sort to obey gun laws. Similarly, the people inclined to shoot themselves or friends while playing William Tell will find some way to off themselves, no matter what you do. The only result of gun control is to harass honest citizens exercising their rights as citizens.
The mountain of data in support of liberalized gun laws is beyond dispute. Even if you are not inclined to dig into the details, the fundamental logic is manifest. People who abide by the laws are, by definition, not the sort to break the laws. That means people who break the law are not interested in any new laws you are passing. Therefore, passing gun laws will only inconvenience those who follow the law and do nothing to stop the criminals. At best, gun laws are just a tool of the state to go after the more clever street gangs.
Despite all this, Progressives obsess over gun laws. This story from a few months ago is a good example. The people who support this sort of stuff know nothing about guns, gun culture or gun shows. Yet, they remain convinced that gun shows resemble an arms bizarre in the Middle East, where bearded men buy and sell military gear. Further, they remain convinced that gun shows are exempt from the thousands of gun laws on the books. They are convinced that “gun show loophole” is a real thing.
That’s what makes guns a useful topic for understanding the Prog mind. All of us have had the experience where the Prog friend or relative starts going on about guns. Someone then steps forward to correct all of their errors about guns and gun laws. Then someone gently explains to them the anti-logic at the core of gun control. The Prog will take correction, nod along and seem to understand the material, but then soon after they will be repeating the same gun control slogans they were saying the last time.
It’s tempting to think it is a mental illness and to some degree it is. It’s just the nature of the fanatic. They see only that which confirms the nature of their fanaticism. That simple and seemingly effective conversation you had with the blue haired girl at the office about guns may as well have been in Swahili. As soon as she confronted disconfirmation, her receptors shut down and she went onto autopilot, appearing to comprehend what you were saying, but not really hearing any of it. You were Charlie Brown’s teacher.
It’s why it is an error to think they are stupid or dishonest. Those things may be true, but the reality is, they don’t know they are doing it. It’s as natural to them as blinking is to the living. Gun control has become an obsession with Progs, because they are convinced it harms white people, particularly white men. Again, this is not malice of forethought. It is instinctual as the Prog faith is an explicit rejection of the culture created by western white males. Gun control reminds them of this and it makes them feel good, so they embrace it.
This is why gun control has been a political topic for more than fifty years. G. Gordon Liddy, when he was in the Nixon administration, worked on gun control. That was the early 1970’s. His task was to help craft regulations to get the so-called “Saturday Night Special” off the streets, particularity the streets of DC. That term came into the lexicon via the Gun Control Act of 1968. In other words, like the “gun show loophole”, 1960’s Prog fanatics invented a phrase to market gun control, despite the fact there was no such thing.
That’s what makes the gun issue useful in understanding the Prog mind. Gun control as a social policy has been thoroughly discredited, but that does not dissuade the Left from pushing gun control. It’s why it is pointless to think you can change their mind or get them to reconsider their position. The Prog is beyond the reach of facts and reason. They are the truest of true believers committed to a cause they put above all else. You can no more talk them out of their beliefs than talk a Muslim out of his faith.
This applies to all issues, not just guns. Take a look at this video of Tucker Carlson talking with the neocon nutter, Ralph Peters. The neocons have been wrong about everything with regards to foreign policy. Despite the disastrous results, they continue to advocate for the same polices that have been discredited by reality. At one point, Peters admits to having been wrong about Iraq, but then seamlessly presses the case for repeating the mistake in Syria. It’s as if he tuned out his own admission of failure.
The lesson here is that there’s no point in trying to reason with a fanatic. Whether or not the neocons are the Trotsky wing of the Progs or the Buckleyites is debatable, but there is no debate about their fanaticism with regards to Muslims and the Russians. The endless fake news about Russia and the election is rooted in neocon fanaticism. They are sure Putin is Tsar Alexander III threatening to impose the May Laws on Manhattan. The abject lunacy of it, like the lunacy of gun control, has no effect on the mind of these fanatics.
There’s another lesson here. The NRA has been the one effective organization in the culture wars of the last half century. They do not win every fight, but they have managed to claw back territory after having lost some fights in the 60’s and 70’s. The reason is they avoided party politics and the temptations of political access, They stuck to building majorities in favor of their issues. They win because they transcend Washington politics and build large coalitions in favor of gun rights. Our team can learn a lot from the NRA.
We lost our guns in Australia to a conservative government in 1997 I think it was. Nothing changed with regards to criminals having guns, only now they act with much more impunity. Melbourne is in the grip of a massive crime wave by Sudanese immigrant children who arrived in 2008. Of course the media refuses to discuss such realities as skin color when reporting on the latest home invasions or carjackings. Police are much more inclined to prosecute people who have defended themselves in their own homes to armed intruders than the intruders themselves. It is beyond belief. Recently there… Read more »
In the 1960’s I have heard it told there was a bumper sticker that said, “Mr. Politician: What do you have planned for me that makes you want my guns so badly?”
When your rights are confiscated, and the excuse is “safety” you are invariably being lied to.
Why aren’t they being deported?
Every time I’ve been at a gun show over the years there have been a few young black guys there checking it out enthusiastically, and more than a few young Hispanics. They are completely at home surrounded in this white and white redneck culture and nobody gives them a crossed eye back. It’s the Progs who are truly alien beings.
Fucking based!/DR3
re: DR3
WTF?
Dan Kurt
More stupid American meme stuff:
DR3 = Dems R Real Racists
Not that I don’t agree with the idea, but believe in simple language that most everyone understands.
Hey Ursula, this is an American blog.mid you don’t like the lingo then kindly fuck off
If
Maybe you’d be happier keeping company with the Antifa, who similarly respond to comments they don’t like, Sticky Burr.
Hey Sticky Burr, I’m an American exercising free speech thanks to our country’s 1st Amendment. Got a problem with that? Do you have any intelligent argument or just mentally undeveloped vulgarity to offer?
AT first I thought you were foreign, there’s a fair amount of them here, but your not one, but two replies clearly demonstrate that you are indeed an American woman. My apologies.
I read a Timothy McVeigh biography years ago and an FBI agent who met him at gun shows admitted that no matter how much he tried to steer the conversation to race, trying to entrap McVeigh in some kind of racist RAHOWA banter, McVeigh would just shrug and say his issue was with the wars of the U.S. government and bureau overreach in things like Waco and Ruby Ridge (which a lot of Americans across the political spectrum thought was reasonable). I noticed in the Army that “rednecks” who had confederate flags got along fine with blacks (especially from the… Read more »
@Joey Junger that’s one of the main reasons blacks on campus are so radicalized. You’ve never seen condescension like 19 year old female SJW condescension. I honestly can’t even blame them — if someone routinely talked about me the way all campus SJWs talk about all blacks, all the time, I’d spend all day every day out in the parking lot, having “discussions” about it.
Without condescension, SJWs got nuthin.
Colin Noir is a popular guy with the NRA and has some pretty good gun videos on Youtube.
Progressive Invertebrates: No critical thinking skills? Blame it on guns. Substance abuse issues? White privilege. Have a useless college degree and will spend the rest of your life working a minimum wage job to pay off the loan? Because transgender bathroom wars. No conflict resolution skills? Find the nearest Trump supporter and have at it with a bike lock. #Bring Back Our Insane Asylums.
All of the left’s principle-based arguments, be it on guns, immigration, free speech, etc are ends justify the means tactics who’s goal is to disadvantage their enemies. The left has no principles beyond “win at all costs”. The left is particularly disingenuous on the right to bear arms. When the DNC/NAACP/SPLC/etc commit themselves to sweeping through the slums of South Chicago, Baltimore, New Orleans, Los Angeles to end the weekly carnage, I might listen. After all, wouldn’t they be protecting the very people they claim to care so much about? But they don’t do this. Why? One it wouldn’t be… Read more »
Bingo. I read a comment on another blog recently that highlights the issue. The man has a Jewish daughter in law who lives in London. She is currently expecting her first child. She voted for the Muslim mayor of now-non-majority-Brit Londonistan to ‘kick the Tories in the shins.’
Our enemies are so psychotically fixated on kicking us in the shins they are destroying our civilization.
I joined the NRA years before I ever bought my first gun. Am something like a patron level lifetime member now– I can’t really remember. Anyhow, things like this get you the ability to sit near the front when they have the big meeting and you get to see the presidential candidates up close and the reactions of the crowd to them. Back when Romney ran in the primary against McCain they both spoke. I think the issue had already been decided, but the timing was before the convention, so both were there. I had my first hints that McCain… Read more »
My only worry was that he wouldn’t die. If that nasty old shit finally kicks off we will have gained a seat in the Senate.
Jordan Peterson has a nice term for progs and other secular zealots, the Ideologically possessed.
Gavin McInnes described that when you corner them and prove how they are wrong, they just double down and keep pushing. See my first sentence for explanation of this.
“Mein Kampf” is mostly unreadable, but it has some gems like this one: “The more I argued with them, the better I came to know their dialectic. First they counted on the stupidity of their adversary, and then, when there was no other way out, they themselves simply played stupid. If all this didn’t help, they pretended not to understand, or, if challenged, they changed the subject in a hurry, quoted platitudes which, if you accepted them, they immediately related to entirely different matters, and then, if again attacked, gave ground and pretended not to know exactly what you were… Read more »
Try listening to it as an audiobook with an accomplished vocal talent.
I’ve been arguing with anti-gun lefties for going on 20 years now. If I was being truthful: I would admit that I became a gun owner in large part because I knew it pissed off lefty progressives more than anything else. At least this was true 20 years ago – I suppose there’s other things now that piss them off more. My young(er) more ignorant self thought that just offering up the facts would be enough to persuade ( I assumed people were mis-informed). It didn’t take long to get “educated” as to the mindset illustrated by Zman’s post. It… Read more »
I think one of the big features of the gun culture is the chance to offend the lefties. Walking into a gun shop or show would be slightly less delicious if it didn’t make them so sad.
You are doing God’s work, sir. There is no point in being polite to people who are okay with gelded children and sanctuary cities and colonia of religious fascists from the Middle East or Somalia… and also okay with killing or imprisoning you over an inanimate object that goes bang. These child-gelding vote-rigging freaks are insane. Poke them in it. They have it coming.
There is a wonderful quote from the movie Cromwell when Oliver after being told by Charles I that he is “impertinent”, replies, “the issues, Sir, are beyond “good manners””. In reality, the two never met, but it was a wonderful theatrical moment. And yes, I’ve done the same. When you reveal they have no logic in their argument, particularly in front of other people, Progs get really pissed off. One of may favorites when some cites Europe (pre-Hajji invasion) is to tell them “well if you are not black, 13-34, live in the worst parts of about two dozen metros… Read more »
I am a forester by trade and like you I used to argue with the environmentalists. I finally realized That the fine points of ecology had nothing to do with environmentalism. It all boiled down to the same thing that all leftist arguments come to: Capitalism is bad and the only solution is a dictatorship of the elites. Damn near every leftist meme ends there.
This is the most frustrating thing about them. They go on (and on and ON) about how much they fucking love science, so you naturally think facts and logic are a good way to refute them. “But look, more guns, less crime! Here are 72 studies, and we didn’t even have to ‘normalize’ the data.” But just as the “best” astrologers in India have middle-class engineers for clients, so liberals can “fucking love science” while ignoring all evidence.
@Severian
We all know by nature the Left is extremely hypocritical. They embrace science with unabashed enthusiasm until you point out Bruce Jenner still has the “frank and beans”. “And what about his science?” Of course from them you get mumbling and stumbling at best. Unless they double down on it. They need a fucking punch in the mouth to bring them down a notch.
For the Left, “science” is pretty much just the antonym of “fascism.” If they don’t like it, it’s fascism; if they like it, it’s “science.” That’s how gender is nothing but a social construction, but being “transgendered” is science. Same thing with rioting to shut down speakers in the name of free speech: The speaker — but not the protester! — is “a fascist.”
I don’t think it’s debatable that the neocons are Trotskyites. I think Irving Kristol (the father of the movement and Bill Kristol) has admitted as much. It’s probably anti-Semitic of you or I to point that out, but Jacob Heilbrunn is a Jewish guy who worked for The New York Times, so he could get away with writing a book like “They Knew they were right: The Rise of the Neocons.” The thing I don’t understand about the left and gun control is that whenever there’s a crime involving a gun, they say we should outlaw guns and that anyone… Read more »
When the shooter is a non-White – guns are the problem
When the shooter is White – Whites are the problem
Hence, Whites with guns are their biggest concern. Shoah 2 Electric Boogaloo incoming.
JJ wrote: “I don’t think it’s debatable that the neocons are Trotskyites. I think Irving Kristol (the father of the movement and Bill Kristol) has admitted as much. It’s probably anti-Semitic of you or I to point that out, but Jacob Heilbrunn is a Jewish guy who worked for The New York Times, so he could get away with writing a book like “They Knew they were right: The Rise of the Neocons.”” Oh, yeah. I tried to give a summary of conservatism and neoconservatism from 1950-present day and you would have thought I was a nazi cassock wearing a… Read more »
Roo, “aloha snackbar” may be an old phrase for you, but it has made my cynical day. Thanks for that.
Also, I ran into Bill Kristol’s disingenuous mass-murdering-loving ass in the pit known as DC once. It was one of the few times I knew I was in the presence of a relentless sociopath. I pity the man’s wife and children. Regardless, seeing him Kathy Griffin-style broken by Trump’s election was the highlight of my 2016.
Don’t you think it remarkable that not a single exploding Mohamed has ever attacked a Neocon target?
The largest category of gun deaths is suicide. Most of the rest is black-on-black inner city street crime. Gun deaths outside if those two categories are practically nonexistent.
Suicides and black-on-black street crimes will continue, if it takes ropes and rocks to commit them. Which means that the entire issue, in the real world, is a contrived one. But then, the Libs don’t live in the real world and most of their “issues” are contrivances.
I remember the anti-gun debates from the 70’s onward. It boiled down to this: The Left did not like whites owning guns and having the ability to defend themselves. They did not care that criminals would always have guns, they didn’t care(prior to three strikes) that those committing crimes with a gun were given very lenient sentences. BTW the gun grabbers were the same one who opposed three strikes as well. The Left really has no regard for human life outside of leveraging it for political purposes. Take the case of Tookie Wiliams who was the founder of the Crypts… Read more »
Rod, you can transport us all back to the wonderful 60s and 70s if you master the ritual denunciations of the “petty bourgeois”, apparently the worst people in the world. After all, David Brooks insists that specific words matter a lot and we all have to signal our belonging by using the right ones.
The John and Ken Show (640AM Los Angeles) featured a “Tookie Must Die (For Killing 4 Innocent People) Hour” on their show in the lead up to the execution to countersignal the left. This culminated with a live broadcast outside the prison on Tookie’s special night. In attendance was Mike “BJ Hunnicutt” Ferrell, who was holding a vigil. John and Ken asking Marxist Mike how he felt about the four people Tookie murdered. Ferrell was rendered speechless, and knew none of their names. FYI – During the Nicaraguan cilvil war, Ferrell would fly in to render medical aid to Sandinesta… Read more »
Ah, Mike Ferrell, the pacifist hypocrite. I remember him being interviewed on TV in the 1990’s when then President’s Clinton decided to send US troops into Somalia to protect the food shipments. He said he was good with it, since it was going to take good guys with bigger guns to deal with bad guys with guns. Too bad he never thought the same way how the UN/US saved SK from NK and the Red Chinese in the Korea war, when he was playing the snobbish cool MASH doctor constantly criticizing why they were there, and showing so much empathy… Read more »
I think there are two keys to the NRA’s success: 1. They have one, and only one issue. They are practically religious in their position on the issue. 2. They are non partisan. If a democrat is right on guns, the NRA gives them the same glowing endorsement they give a republican. Those two things combine to provide reliable political capital to politicians who take the right position on guns, and they also work to prevent entryism and convergence. The cleanest counterpart on the alt-right I think would be immigration. Endorse candidates who vote against illegal immigration and especially those… Read more »
In at least 30 years of arguing, I think I have convinced maybe 2 people how wrong gun control is. Argumentation does not work against worldviews. The worldview first has to be destroyed by some unusual event (e.g., a woman being raped might cause her to rethink the issue).
http://strike-the-root.com/problem-with-people-are-idiots-meme
The problem with attempting to combat another’s worldview is that you are not fighting an individual. You are fighting decades of teaching, parenting, and the go-along-to-get-along survival mechanism. The moment you start cracking through their armor of idiocy, the poor dolts have a micro-second realization that their lives are naked ugly lies. That glimpse of reality is what drives most of them, inevitably, into an even more recalcitrant position. Doing otherwise would mean biting the hand that feeds and the fist that controls. This last election showed that merely voting for the wrong candidate is grounds for divorce. How many… Read more »
The fanaticism that you describe derives from a perception of existential threat. Parasites need willing or compliant hosts upon which to feed. They understand that the host may eventually tire (or rebel) against being the food supply for the parasites, but if they control government and only the government is armed, then they are OK. An armed host may fight back and rid themselves of the debilitating parasites.
I never discuss anything remotely political with the blue haired girl at the office. I need her to not hate me and make sure my meetings are scheduled properly – and I want to interact with HR as little as possible.
A couple of years before I quit working for the university mega medical corporation one of the girls in the office started asking me about self defense and the use of firearms for personal protection. Said she was thinking about getting a handgun and wanted my advice on what kind to get. Soon the conversation went to questions about whether I was carrying and what kind. I told her that university property was off limits to firearms and carrying was a fireable offense and that I was not carrying while at work. I went on to try to explain to… Read more »
Dodged that bullet, so to speak.
Liberals should always be kept in their natural environment: Ignorance
When you live behind enemy lines, the First Rule of Gun Club is, you don’t talk about Gun Club. Eventually you figure out who is like minded (and isn’t) We have whole sets of rituals to figure that out, safely. Funny story, at my new firm, at the first annual exec management meeting I attended, somehow got an assigned seat for dinner with the guys from a division HQ’d in the midwest that focuses on the agriculture business–basically a bunch of farmers with college degrees. This was right before the election. So there was this weird to and fro on… Read more »
The Progressive Agenda long term is genocidal. It could be Black folks (c.f Margret Sanger) Whites (c.f the current lot) Kulaks or whoever is in the way at the time but a lot of somebodies have to die for utopia
A well armed population makes that a lot harder
Thus the necessity for gun control
So, what are the keys to the NRA’s effectiveness that could be taken up by other organizations on the right for use in other areas_? Our esteemed proprietor posits that ‘they focus on one issue only and ignore the seductions of any particular politician and party politics’. Sounds right, for whatever little my opinion is worth. One could add National Right to Life et al to the very short list of organizations who have reasonably held the line on public opinion, I think, and for the same basic reasons: They focus on their one issue only, they identify who their… Read more »
“The lesson here is that there’s no point in trying to reason with a fanatic.” The “fanatics” Z talks about are the kind of fanatics who have been responsible for millions of people dying exactly because they where successful in disarming the population. The way I see it, you don’t argue with them when they come for my guns, you shoot them with your property, because my guns are my property, thats the first thing. Both my property, and that property of my guns are explicit in that regards, they are both integral to my liberty, and for defending my… Read more »
Fine meme, but correct the spelling: mite—> might
This is one fundamental difference I have noticed between libtards and conservatives. The left promotes ideology but they NEVER step back to evaluate whether it worked or not. If it didn’t work, and mind you, it did, you just need to tweak it and throw more money at it. The fundamental concept is ALWAYS correct, you just need get to rid of those bigots that oppose the change, since they’re all racists and on the wrong side of history. Conservatives may not admit they were wrong, but they withdraw from the debate when they are. Then 20 years later some… Read more »
“….The Prog is beyond the reach of facts and reason. They are the truest of true believers committed to a cause they put above all else. You can no more talk them out of their beliefs than talk a Muslim out of his faith…..” Boy oh boy, is the above statement totally dead on target or what ! I once had a “conversation” with a grown man, a voter, a NYC Manhattan resident of about 55 years of age. He told me how Bush, Cheney and the Israeli Mossad took down the World Trade Center on 9-11. He was totally… Read more »
The Official Version of 9/11 goes something like this… Directed by a beardy-guy from a cave in Afghanistan, ( This well appointed Suite http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/nether_fictoid3.htm according to the London Times): nineteen hard-drinking, coke-snorting, devout Muslims enjoy lap dances before their mission to meet Allah… Using nothing more than craft knifes, they overpower cabin crew, passengers and pilots on four planes… And hangover or not, they manage to give the world’s most sophisticated air defense system the slip… Unfazed by leaving their “How to Fly a Passenger Jet” guide in the car at the airport, they master the controls in no-time and… Read more »
Gunphobia is just an extension of the Prog superstitious mindset. They are so into Freudian motivations, since they rely so much on feelings than thinking, that they project that the gun has its own ego, to sway anyone near it to pick it up and shoot anyone nearby. I believe they are so afraid of their own perverse feelings, already manifest in their anything goes sexual lifestyle, that they harbor within themselves the dark desire take a gun and shoot someone, just to sadistically experience what it would be like— a new sensation, however dark. Since they fear themselves for… Read more »
Right now I’m at Walmart purchasing a new Marlin 336w waiting for the
gun loopholebackground check to complete. No kidding!“The NRA has been the one effective organization in the culture wars of the last half century.”
A friend told me this a few years ago. I’m glad to see you reaffirming this.
I’ve tried hard in the past to get Progs to see sense. Some of them fairly clever people working in higher education, local government and big business. The Kool-Aid has been sipped though and they risk their jobs, reputation and family if they were say some of the things I do. Most of them however are just simply cult followers. Reason, logic and pattern recognition mean nothing to them. So I’ve stopped trying to explain, I simply mock them as if they were talking about cooties or fairies. Why try? Have some fun, they are going to lock us all… Read more »
Belonged to the NRA for many years. ( it was a requirement for joining any of the local Sportsmen’s clubs ) Sadly the NRA didn’t have much interest in representing the firearm owners of Massachusetts. Not surprising really with Ted Kennedy and his ilk. Fortunately in recent years groups like G.O.A.L. and Comm2A have been mildly effective in challenging the draconian firearms laws of Massachusetts. Will most likely join the NRA again sometime in the future. ( signing up to another club ) Just wish they would end in their incessant begging. Don’t care for their cheap trinkets. Just defend… Read more »
Early in the ‘O’ years I sent my $35 or so to support the mission. As the year passed it seemed like they thought I needed to buy all sorts of products with the magic three letters including many offers for insurance. I could have heated the house with all of the worthless paper. When I failed to re-up the phone calls started. 5 years on they still pester me once a month. It is very difficult to become a non-member, but I will endeavor to persevere as The Chief said.
Next time check the box that says DO NOT SOLICIT.
Opt out is B/S. Anyone or organization that uses it is guilty of high treason.
“They are the truest of true believers committed to a cause they put above all else. You can no more talk them out of their beliefs than talk a Muslim out of his faith.” That is the key point, isn’t it? Its a faith, either a religion in the making or something like Buddhism or Confucianism, a philosophy without a specific godhead. “The endless fake news about Russia and the election is rooted in neocon fanaticism.” I don’t disagree with your greater point about fanaticism but I’m not so sure that the current Russia hysteria is about anything more than… Read more »
I think John Derbyshire was the first to make the Cossack connection. Paul Gottfried has argued that some portion of Eastern European Jews came to American in the early 20th century with a near obsession for this stuff. When you examine the roster of neocon nutters, it is striking that almost all of them have their family roots in the old Russian Empire.
Regardless, it is a fun taunt.
MAYBE THAT’S BECAUSE THE OLD RUSSIAN EMPIRE COVERED A GREAT DEAL OF THE CONTINENT OF EUROPE AND WESTERN ASIA.(sorry for the caps, lock was on). And their hysteria was actually grounded in fact and personal experiences.
There were about two million of the Talmud parsers imported between 1880-1920.
From that point onward there was an ever increasing loss of English common law and ever greater regulation where we are not at the point where that which is not mandated is prohibited, people commit three federal offenses a day and you can be find for not celebrating two sodomites shacking up.
“The neocons now, Jewish or otherwise…” Nice touch.
After Trump Tomahawked Syria, Hasbara propagandists invaded the Breitbart comments. Their goal? Convince burger conservatives that a war with Russia is dandy idea, up to, and including a full nuclear war. (((They))) disguised themselves as jingoist, unthinking “Merika F Ya! Finally we’re back!” types. When I asked them why they weren’t willing to use their own 200 nuclear weapons if Russia posed such an existential threat to the tribe they stopped talking. Our $4B/year in shabbos shekels should buy better lies.
>> There’s another lesson here. The NRA has been the one effective organization in the culture wars of the last half century. They do not win every fight, but they have managed to claw back territory after having lost some fights in the 60’s and 70’s. The reason is they avoided party politics and the temptations of political access, They stuck to building majorities in favor of their issues. They win because they transcend Washington politics and build large coalitions in favor of gun rights. Our team can learn a lot from the NRA. I would argue that pro-life organizations… Read more »
The NRA is responsible for the gun control laws of the last century and has been dragged kicking and screaming into supporting Heller and other cases that have gone to the ussc recently.
GOA, Gun Owners of America, deserves your support. They do more legislatively than the NRA. Wayne LaPierre should be put out to pasture before he gives away the whole store.
Start making list of “dangerous” products and you find it’s a very long one. Knives, cars, matches, boats, fertilizer, cell phones, knapsacks, staplers, nail clippers, fireplaces…A newborn child is a potentially dangerous product given all the crimes committed by grownups. Why not do background checks on the parents?
Gun control as a policy debate ended in the late 1990’s when Wayne LaPierre correctly stated that the Clintons and the Democrats were more than willing to tolerate a certain level of gun violence in order to advance their gun control objectives. That was it. That was the end of really any serious political threats to gun owners in this country. Since that time, the Courts have taken it even further, striking down a lot of the gun bans in existence (such as the one in D.C.). “Gun Control” today is a fundraising trigger, and in primaries and off-year elections,… Read more »
The other reason the NRA is effective is that they fight – hard – on every issue no matter how small it may be or how irrelevant to members. Teflon coated bullets are a good example of this.
They understand that leftists regard every win, no matter how big or small, as a stepping stone to the next win and they make those stepping stones hard to get.
a truism forgotten, maybe never learned:
“those who beat their weapons into plowshares will plow for those who don’t.” T. Jefferson
true then, true now, true forever. dismiss it at your own peril.
I view gun control as a urban vs rural issue with a heaping helping of narcissism thrown in. “Why would anyone need a gun?” says the typical big city prog. Why, police are everywhere and they are relatively responsive. Sure some criminals have guns but they mostly use them on each other and the cops, it doesn’t really affect me. What’s the big issue with restricting guns to a law enforcement priesthood? It seems to work just fine here in the big city I live in. To a large degree, what you’re hearing is someone advocating for the interests of… Read more »
Your praise of the NRA is going to make a lot of people mad. For some reason, because the NRA hasn’t been perfect throughout its existence, people the alt-right often hate it. Funny, these were the same people who dismissed Trump’s left wing imperfections in favor of the few things he said right.
Keep in mind that there are some stupid people in the alt-right.
“gun laws are just a tool of the state” You can take “gun” out of that string and it applies to every facet of modern life in the US.
Find and replace “Prog/Progs” with “female/females” and it reads exactly the same.
Faith in the Second Amendment is misplaced. Think about it: The Amendment WITH the wording “shall not be infringed” is the MOST infringed, licensed, and limited Amendment of the entire twenty seven. Furthermore, a future generation of our posterity is likely to see the Second Amendment whittled away entirely or repealed altogether. This is inherent nature and danger of optional Enlightenment rights versus non-optional Biblical responsibilities, such as the following: “Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a twoedged sword [or today’s equivalent in their hand; to execute vengeance upon the heathen, and punishments upon the… Read more »
> Yet, they remain convinced that gun shows resemble an arms bizarre in
> the Middle East, where bearded men buy and sell military gear.
Well, other than arms and ordinance they’re right.
Still a pretty good idea to legislate guns kept out of the hands of insane people as a huge portion of mass murderers lately have been obviously crazy or religious (largely Muslim) fanatics, who are probably a p/o legally crazy too. Yet the NRA & several Right Wing nutjob legislatures like in Texas continue to fight for the rights of those who are crazy to carry guns, even legally in public. The NRA will allow nothing that comes between a gun purchaser, batshit crazy or not, & that transaction & they’ve bought most of Congress to ensure it.
Thank you for being an example of the sort of fanatic I was describing in my post.
So you are saying that I didn’t need to fill out that mental health and criminal background check paperwork to get my FID card? Damn.
I’m sorry your freedom has been restricted and you’ve been stigmatized by requiring you to have a “Firearms Owner ID Card”, like a Jew wearing a star in Nazi Germany. Perhaps you should consider moving to a free state, where a peaceable citizen may buy a firearm from a friend without the government being involved.
That would be Whitopia, Vermont. Carry, concealed carry, no permit.
“That would be Whitopia, Vermont. Carry, concealed carry, no permit.”
And now also in NH and Maine I believe.
It’s almost as if the fewer negros you have, the more freedoms you can have.
Get the government out of the gun control business entirely. if someone is mentally ill to the point they shouldn’t have weapons (like my neighbor alas) assign them a minder. if they are a repeat chronic criminal problem, cell till they stop, or noose or bullet if the won’t
Its cheaper, deprives no one of rights without trial, doesn’t punish after the fact and creates much less bureaucracy overall.