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.
You’re still living in the Eighties, when one article from one guy from the monolithic Big Media complex could serve such a purpose.
Agree 100%.
Nope. Unfortunately I’m living in the here and now, where people who are ostensibly allies quite often prove to be enemies, and where over-optimistic appraisals need to be scrutinized very carefully as to their purpose.
Any confiscation will be “voluntary.” It will start by a campaign to make people feel guilty about owning certain types of guns. It will then expand to all guns. The state government will continue to use the guilt angle as they enact law that slowly squeeze the law abiding to freely give up their guns. Once in a while there will be a high profile event of confiscation, just to show that it can be done. To avoid a massive shootout, the rest of us need to give up our guns voluntarily. This incident will likely happen in a rural area where things can be controlled better. It would never work in a suburb because it is too hard to control and they would have to deal with neighbors coming to the aid of the target. Think Ruby Ridge.
Once a majority of guns have been collected, that’s when the boot comes down on those of us that refused to comply.
They have already started by demonizing certain types of guns like the AR. They have been setting up voluntary gun points in cities throughout the US. They are using mass media to make guns look evil. Kids are indoctrinated daily about how a civilized society needs no personal protection, 911 is their savior in a crisis. It is all too scripted to be accidental.
I think that's what they're after, what they think that they can accomplish this time.
It's still infringement and it is still a win for them.
They will not confiscate guns at the national level.
Not this time.
Baby steps.
OK, let’s assume for a moment that 90% of the 80 million gun owners in the country can be guilted into giving up hunting, giving up protecting themselves or their families, giving up on their Constitutional rights, etc., and turn in their guns.
That leaves 8 million legal gun owners.
Where will the personnel come from to go to their homes and businesses and take their guns?
Also, your guilt campaign idea is, with all due respect, ludicrous. We only reduced cigarette use by convincing people it would kill them slowly, and they’re going to be guilted into giving up weapons that will save their lives? We can’t even eliminate drunk driving after decades of ads focused on the damage caused by it and even a campaign that subtly implied it was OK to smack someone around if it kept them from driving drunk. What will be the ad campaign that makes a strong 2nd Amendment supporter give up his AR? “Look at this carnage caused by a mentally ill person who had a gun he legally never could possess. Since he did this to six year olds, you should give up the rifle you use to shoot tin cans.”
Um...no. Not happening. And please, don’t post back to me as if I said the libs don’t want to take our guns, I know they do, I’m just against coming up with scenarios they will not try and cannot try instead of figuring out what their real next move will be.
If you can find them. Bullet shelves are bare everywhere I go. Local shop that had magazines were selling them for $35+. I was fortunate to make some bulk purchases last week, since it looks like the run is on.
Gun banners, you lost the President, the senators, the social media, and now you’ve lost liberal LA mommies. You’ve lost everything. Again.
We need to work to make sure he's right.
Anyone dumb enough to be guilt-ed out of their weapon(s) is probably not bright enough to own one in the first place.
Just stocking up before the hoarders arrive?
What really, really pains me about your comment is that it is utterly believable and probable .... and that I would even think this to be true is almost unbelievable, except it isn't. We are living in strange, evil and desperate times, becoming more so every day.And if they ever do lose the narrative, why they’ll just order up another mass killing or two.
The advertising for the next psycho has already been published: "The record for killing schoolchildren by a single gunman at one time is 20. We will study the life and thought and trials of anyone who breaks that record, and make him famous."
They’ve done it once with F&F. Hundreds died as a result.
This school shooting could have been an Obama arranged event.
“Most likely scenario is a reinstatement of the assault weapon ban, outlaw magazines > 10, and close the so-called “gun show” loophole. They will not confiscate guns at the national level.”
I know in CO, there are a couple more big ones pending: (1) Banning online ammunition sales (would raise the cost of shooting hugely); and (2) Start requiring purchasers to prove they are not mentally ill—maybe a Doctor’s certificate.
Of course, #3 in your list is the big one. Right now, gun owners who think there is no gun registration are nuts. Every gun dealer has their Book. It records every sale of every gun they have ever made, who they made it to and their address. Most of the books are electronic now. Should the gvt ever want to do gun confiscation, all they would have to do is look in the dealer’s books. They would know the owner’s of 95% of the gun in the US.
The only ones who would escape confiscation are the private sale loophole buyers. Currently, you don’t have to go thru an FFL to buy a gun from a person in-state. Even many of them would be caught thru data mining. Online purchases of accessories and ammunition would expose them.
Sadly, I think you are correct
>> Let them try... quitter... and stay out of the way of Patriots defending Freedom!
Too many seem willing to concede defeat. Annoying.
Demoralization is a weapon of the enemy. Don’t get it, don’t spread it!
Well, it’s nice to read a feel-good, optimistic article now and again. I think it is mostly wishful thinking though. The left has the momentum on gun control at the moment. Remember that the demographics of this country are different now. We have a lot more Hispanics that don’t understand why a big, intrusive government is not a good idea. You’d think they’d look at the countries they came from and realize how bad socialism is, but these are basically the same people that kept a failed socialist government in power in Mexico for 70 years. The problem with what currently passes as the American public is that they see no connection between their votes and bad governance and policy.
I agree. Not getting mine. But there are those that will. I know them. I know liberals. They will never come at you straight. They will come at you from the back or the side. The goal is to disarm America. They are not above anything.
I think that every time one of these "mass" shootings happens. If not at Obunga's direction, at least with his tacit approval by the Brady bunch or similar. They know they have a green light: "by any means necessary".
Yeah. The offical story doesn’t seem to add up.
Heller said the weapon. Nothing about bullets. Liberals will do what liberals will do. Congress will pass an ammo tax and magazine tax. Or outlaw them all together. The law does not imply anything about functioning guns. Only the right to bear. Back in the day the law was written, most made their own ammo. The law does not imply what you said.
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