Posted on 12/26/2012 5:47:25 AM PST by Kaslin
When you argue for a living, you can tell how an argument is going for you. The evidence and my gut both tell me that the liberals have lost control of the gun control narrative.
Not for lack of trying – it was almost as if they were poised to leap into action across the political, media and cultural spectrum the second the next semi-human creep shot up another “gun free zone.” This was their big opening to shift the debate and now it’s closing. They’ve lost, and they are going nuts.
The evidence is all around that this is not going to be the moment where America begins a slide into disarmed submission through an endless series of ever-harsher “reasonable restrictions” on our fundamental rights. You just have to look past the shrieking media harpies to see what’s really happening.
Let’s start with the most obvious omen that this tsunami has peaked. President Obama thrilled his base by grandstanding at the memorial, and then promptly washed his hands of it by handing it over to a “blue ribbon commission.” Making Joe Biden its chairman was like staking a vampire through the heart, then hosing him down with holy water before burying his body beneath the Gilroy Garlic Festival.
Why does Obama want this gun thing buried? While intensely popular with metrosexual pundits, coastal liberals, and cultural bigots slobbering at the opportunity to stick it to those banjo –strummin’, God-believers out in the hinterlands, gun control remains poison to Red State Democrats.
Joe Manchin of West Virginia couldn’t resist some sanctimonious posturing, but clearly he heard enough from his constituents to sprint-back his heresy with a WaPo op-ed explaining how awesome the NRA is and how groovy gun owners are. He will never take sides against the family again.
We didn’t see the Red State Democrats up for re-election in two years out dumping on their constituents to please the media. Call it “the Fredo Effect,” and 2014 is the rowboat. We won’t hear from the likes of Senators Landrieu, Pryor and Begich until they vote “No.”
Sure, Senator Feinstein will submit her gun ban wish list to Harry Reid, who will look at it sagely, nod politely, and let it die. He’s more Tom Hagen than Fredo. He is going to retain the NRA “A” rating his website proudly showcases regardless of what Chuck Schumer thinks. What gets you hosannas in Manhattan gets you unemployed in Searchlight.
So, the politicians’ actions have spoken louder than their words, but what of the media? We lawyers always say that when your case is strong, pound on the law and the evidence, and when your case is weak, pound on the table. The furniture is splintering in Liberalland.
Their post-Newtown strategy was always to prevent an effective response from the pro-gun freedom side by both rapid action and by demonization. But the holidays and the kabuki theater that is the fiscal cliff drama meant that legislative action, their Holy Grail, would have to wait. That gave people time to think and the gun freedom side the time to react.
Demonizing those who support gun freedom was always intended as a weapon to silence them. It was also critical that we, law-abiding gun owners, become the Other. By dehumanizing us and painting us as evil, it is that much easier to strip us of our rights.
But gun freedom advocates fought back. Using the mainstream media, conservative media and especially social media – we need to understand its huge significance here – gun freedom advocates countered liberals’ bogus “facts.” Media reports about “automatic” weapons were corrected, clownish statements about “high caliber magazines” and “large capacity round” were mocked. The struggle raged over millions of Facebook posts. The average citizen saw gun banners ask “When will America control access to weapons?” and then saw several experts among his or her friends post about the significant hurdles one needs to get over to get a gun. Truth bypassed the mainstream media and became a weapon for the side of fundamental rights.
The banners overplayed their hand, losing credibility with every distortion, evasion and smear. The cries of “Blood is on your hands!” failed to resonate – reasonable Americans just did not blame the actions of a single sociopath on millions of their fellow neighbors. And it did not help when third-string celebrities and wizened literary has-beens took to hoping gun rights advocates would be shot for daring to oppose disarmament.
The gun banners also counted on a narrative that portrayed a respect for the Second Amendment. They sought only “reasonable restrictions” – why, no one wants to ban or confiscate your guns! The problem was one of memo distribution – not everybody got that memo. Mayor Bloomberg was putting out that what few guns he might graciously deign to leave in the hands of the unworthy would be starved of bullets, while Governor Cuomo acknowledged that confiscation was one of the options.
Oops. “Gun control” is a process that is designed and intended to lead to a total gun ban, and the banners are counting on people not realizing it.
Their credibility and motives already in question, the gun banners became vulnerable to a shift in the paradigm from depriving law-abiding citizens of effective defensive weapons to the idea of protecting kids with armed personnel in schools.
Suddenly, the gun banners had to argue two ridiculous positions. The first was that allowing trained educators or police having weapons in schools is a danger. The problem is that people generally like and trust teachers and cops. The second position was even worse, that armed personnel or police are somehow utterly useless against untrained, amateur creeps who seek to confront six-year olds. All over America, millions of parents noted how none of the wealthy gun banners were disbanding their personal security teams and thought, “You know, I think I’d like having a cop around my kid too.”
Frustration at the fact that their argument had not been unquestioningly accepted morphed into faux moral outrage that their opponents had dared offer any alternative proposal at all. E.J. Dionne of the WaPo was a prime example. He had to “grope for words to describe the National Rifle Association’s proposal,” yet he managed to find some: “Absurd, unbelievable, tragic, obscene,” as well as “insane.”
Note that Dionne’s righteous fury does not apply to the armed guards at the Post’s front door, surrounding President Obama, or to anywhere else other than in the vicinity of regular people’s children.
Particularly amusing are the liberals who transform into green eyeshades misers with the public purse when it comes to cops in schools. The folks who can’t spend enough dough on fudge-smeared, patriarchy-challenging performance artists suddenly become thrifty Scotsmen when it comes to doling out a few shillings to put a cop on campus.
They have been unable to articulate any coherent argument opposing putting cops in schools because there is no coherent argument against putting cops in schools. But more than anything, the mommies at the affluent Los Angeles-area school my kids attend have convinced me that the narrative has escaped the gun grabbers.
Knowing our reputations as proud conservatives – we represent diversity for our liberal friends – a pal of my wife remarked, out of the blue, that “I think my husband and I need to buy guns.” Whoa.
And as third graders sang holiday songs at their pageant while I surveyed the packed, vulnerable room, I blurted out to another mommy that I wished I could legally carry a weapon to protect those kids. And she told me that she wished that I could too. Whoa.
Gun banners, you lost the President, the senators, the social media, and now you’ve lost liberal LA mommies. You’ve lost everything. Again.
Without arrogance and elitism, leftist/liberals wouldn’t have much to fall back on.
They are so much more “advanced” than you that it is simply ridiculous to believe that anything could be done in opposition to the State...
I think Mussolini had a similar point of view.
Had a similar situation with a relative at Christmas (I know, avoid politics and religion, but she brought it up). She said she saw no reason why anyone should own an assault weapon. I asked her how she defined an assault weapon and her definition was essentially a fully automatic weapon. I calmly tutored her on the need for a Class 3 license for that and that most of what the Democrats wanted to ban now were semi-automatic rifles, functionally equivalent to a common hunting rifle but which look similar to military rifles. It would be like banning cars with Corvette bodies but Chevette engines because you can race Corvettes.
I don't think I changed her mind, but at least she knows not to poke the bear.
almost every time I have been in a gun shop in the past 3 months (once every couple of weeks or so), I have seen older women buying their first gun.
One old gal bought a .45 and then asked the dealer to teach her how to shoot it.
He hooked her up with some classes to do just that
Me either Laz.
LLS
Me either Laz.
LLS
I saw a pic on FB with the armed guards at Baraq’s kids school. Quite effective!!
1.Tax cuts? We can't afford them. (we've given in to the idea that the gov't owns all our money)
2. Abortion? Clearly consequence free promiscuity is more important to American woman than is the life of any baby they concieve.
3.Gay 'Rights'? In today's world the good guys fight for gay marriage while the evil old hateful rightwingers oppose them.
4. The American Work Ethic? For chumps only!
5. Living on the Dole. Every American's right!
6. Founding Fathers? Racist, sexist, slave owners.
And on and on and on. The liberals foist one perversion of our culture after another on us and call it normal and good, while those of us who dare say otherwise are pushed off the stage as racist bigots. Music, television and the movies offer debased and depraved 'entertainment' that the masses slurp up like pigs at a trough.
We're living in a world that calls good evil and evil good. And it gets worse every day.
You, sir, have nailed it. We do not need to control the media for gun control to fail. We need only inject a little common sense and facts. We have been creating enough new media for decades. We have reached a point where we had enough media to puncture the emotional push for "gun control".
Early Christmas morning two Binghamton police officers were responding to check on two suspicious men...as they approached the men fired on them...one officer was shot, one bad guy was shot dead. Officer was treated and released. If I want a gun, I should have the right to protect myself from the crazies in this world. By the time police officers could arrive on the scene, I would be dead.
This author’s optimism apparently results from his view of the issue through rose-colored glasses.
Since Newtown, four friends have asked to attend my training class so they can get their LTCs. One is a mom of small kids who told me, “I don’t want to be unable to defend my kids.” Another lives in Boston and walks his dog late at night. I told him that the brain-dead, gun-grabbing Menino would probably deny him an LTC but, as the owner of a large business, he wants to be able to apply for one.
No. All politics is personal.
I agree somewhat. Senator Manchin’s 180 degree change was an indicator that those in Congress that aren’t assured of re-election are still looking at one of the third rails of American politics. That Manchin was caught up in the emotion of the moment and felt he had to shove his foot in his mouth is bizarre. He was quickly innundated by the response from West Virginian’s. I still haven’t received a response to my email.
Gore’s campaign debacle is still too fresh to ignore. The Democratic leadership can’t afford to lose the Senate. With gun control, they’re flirting with disaster. Obama may face the last half of his term contending with a Republican controlled Congress.
![](http://i45.tinypic.com/505yxw.jpg")
As far as I am concerned, the advocates of more restrictions on firearms ownership have yet to even acknowledge their burden of proof of the efficacy of their proposals. That is, when we outlaw a previously-legal style of firearm and outlaw previously legal accessories to those firearms like 30 round magazines, what level of NET improvement in the public safety should we expect and at what NET cost?
The horrible Sandy Hook massacre started with the murderer shooting his own mother four times in the head while she lay in bed. So, please don’t insult my intelligence by telling me how the law would have stopped even half of the murders on that sad day. But people who propose laws also expect those laws will be enforced and enforcement costs money. They also expect that the new law will bring some concrete improvement in society.
How much money are we going to divert from, say raiding medical marijuana clinics, to hunting down people with newly-outlawed 30 round magazines? This is not an unimportant because with our trillion dollar deficit we can only allocate so much borrowing to fund new government programs. The Sandy Hook massacre invites, we are told by the media, three “national conversations” that the media like David Gregory hopes to control. Those are on firearms regulations, school safety and treatment the mentally disturbed.
The media and politicians appear to have chosen to hold the conversation on firearms first, so that must be the most important one. But when we start to deal with school safety and mental health, those items will eventually have budget impact as surely as night follows day. If we pass changes to firearms law that must of necessity divert expensive law enforcement resources, how much of our borrowing capacity will remain to fund improvements in school safety or mental health services?
And if, based on history documented below, that few of the estimated 100 million magazines in private hands are destroyed or turned in, what level of real public safety improvment are we to get for the money we must spend to enforce the law? Is this a fool errand, or are politicians just pandering to people who see and end to the failed war on drugs and are looking to fund a new (equally fruitless) war on something else? I am beginning to think the latter is sadly true, at least in part.
from:
Gun Restrictions Have Always Bred Defiance, Black Markets
For reasons of their own, most people, in many countries, defy anti-gun laws
J.D. Tuccille | December 22, 2012
In a white paper on the results of gun control efforts around the world, Gun Control and the Reduction of the Number of Arms, Franz Csaszar, a professor of criminology at the University of Vienna, Austria, wrote, “non-compliance with harsher gun laws is a common event.” Dr. Csaszar estimates compliance with Australia’s 1996 ban on self-loading rifles and pump-action shotguns at 20 percent.
...
Csaszar points out that, after Austria prohibited pump-action shotguns in 1995, only 10,557 of the estimated 60,000 such guns in private hands were surrendered or registered.
And when Germany imposed gun registration in 1972, he says, owners complied by filing the appropriate paperwork on 3.2 million firearms. This was a bit awkward, since estimates of civilian stocks were in the 17-20 million range...
...
The high water mark of American compliance with gun control laws may have come with Illinois’s handgun registration law in the 1970s. About 25 percent of handgun owners actually complied, according to Don B.
Kates, a criminologist and civil liberties attorney, writing in the December 1977 issue of Inquiry. After that, about 10 percent of “assault weapon” owners obeyed California’s registration law, says David B. Kopel, research director for Colorado’s Independence Institute, a free-market think-tank, and author of The Samurai, The Mountie, and The Cowboy, a book-length comparison of international firearms policies.
That one-in-10 estimate may have been generous. As the registration period came to a close in 1990, The New
York Times reported “only about 7,000 weapons of an estimated 300,000 in private hands in the state have been registered.”..
article link:
http://reason.com/archives/2012/12/22/gun-restrictions-have-always-bred-defian
bkmk
True. Good observation. I have noticed in my lib friends a tendency to dismiss the recurring dark realities of human nature by an appeal to evolution. My staunch lib friend at work firmly believes humankind will evolve into a weaponless peaceful race bent on creating new habitats for humanity, colonizing Mars and beyond. The Star Trek psychosis. But as a Christian, I don’t see human nature getting better and better, not without the miraculous intervention of God, and even then, only on His terms and His time table. I think that difference in vision is central to understanding the conflict between liberals and conservatives, and we would do well to address it in our conservative apologetics.
Indeed, it always comes back to your worldview and the assumptions that it’s based on.
If you haven’t read Sowell’s “Conflict of Visions”, I highly recommend it. Especially if you have your “Jesus eyes”, ie, see the world from a biblical perspective.
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