Posted on 05/01/2013 8:17:49 PM PDT by marktwain
After the defeat of the Manchin-Toomey background-check bill, and the subsequent demonization of the Senate, Senators Manchin and Toomey are reportedly back at work on bipartisan legislation addressing gun control. John R. Lott, author of the new book At the Brink, who has been researching gun policy for decades, talks about the state of the debate with National Review Onlines Kathryn Jean Lopez.
Kathryn Jean Lopez: Gabby Giffords has accused the Senate of being in the grips of the gun lobby. Is there another explanation for the defeat of the Manchin-Toomey bill?
JOHN R. LOTT: Yes, there is. The politicians were simply representing the voters in their districts.
The accusation that politicians were attempting to please the gun lobby at the expense of their constituents, which is based on the oft-repeated assertion that 80 to 90 percent of the public say they favor background checks, is simply not credible. The survey questions on which this statistic is based proved nothing more than that respondents wished to disarm criminals. The questions posed were about a hypothetical, idealized system of background checks, not about the actual legislation facing Congress.
A better survey was recently released by the Pew Research Center. It asked: What word best describes how you feel about the Senate voting down new gun control legislation that included background checks on gun purchases? Many voters were upset that the bill didnt pass, but a very substantial group were relieved. Overall, 47 percent were disappointed and 39 percent were relieved. Not surprisingly, opinions varied drastically across political affiliation. Among Republicans, 51 percent were relieved and 34 percent were disappointed. Among independents, the split was 48 percent relieved and 41 disappointed. In sharp contrast, only 22 percent of Democrats were relieved, while 67 percent were disappointed.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
———THEY HAVE NOTHING WITH WHICH TO BARGAIN.———
Au contraire mi amigo..... (a little frog mex lingo there) they have their lives.
The cost of taking guns should be measured in the number of antigun lives lost attempting to prevail. When an antigun person must count his own life as a cost of the effort, the equation becomes different.
The antigun effort must be made an offer they cannot refuse.
The process of change involves change....... it is a two way street
I’m with you 100% then. Let’s get a member of congress to inject a whole bunch of trivial yet legal sounding language and get it proposed as a bill.
Ultimately yes, BUT until there is an actual organized thinning (if that ever happens) then they don't and won't think that way. Look at the outrage expressed even on this forum for the actions of McVeigh, and even that extreme put no fear into government types because it was considered (and rightly) the actions of a single individual (or more precisely two individuals). Or for another example look at the Boston bombers. Does anyone really want to go down that path?
That's one problem. The other is whose lives? Probably 80% of the inhabitants of NYC are anti-gun. You can judge their attitudes by who they elect to represent them. Probably 80% of the citizens in the Boston area are the same, not to mention San Franciso, Chicago, Baltimore, etc.
You can't get them all. If upChuck Schemer, Carolyn McCarthy, Jerry Nadler, etc all perished in a plane crash tomorrow (we should be so lucky), in six weeks those same positions would be filled by idealogical clones of the late and thoroughly unlamented aforementioned scum. So unless the USA degenerates onto a bloody Bosnian style civil war with idealogical cleansings liberals executing conservatives and vica versa, we have to realize that there is a large fraction of the country's population who actively hate loath and fear guns and gun owners. They hold us in total contempt because we don't pi$$ ourselves at the sight of a gun.
SO while I agree in principle, the practicalities make that fear unlikely to be realized.
THAT, my FRiend, is the money line and cannot be said often enough! I hope you repeat that at least 4 times a day, if not more!!
(Can you tell I am in strong agreement with you?)
I suspect that there are more options but those are the most likely.
Oh very probably, but those were the three main endpoints that I could forsee, And I don't see them happening any time really soon; however, with the turd in the whitehouse polarizing the country as never before, it might come down to sooner rather then the distant future.
That's too tough. I'd give both of them a pass, based on their very painful, traumatic experience at the hands of a (Left-wing, let's remember) mental case.
Sarah Brady and Bear, same thing. We can be resolutely and granitically opposed, but understand why some people like the Bradys and Gabby Giffords would be passionately on the other side.
May I disagree with you both?
The basic problem is that the Republican Party's squirearchy is feckless, venal, and faithless. Their motives have zero idealism, zero good faith, and 100% lickspittle commitment to the agenda of selfish, powerful, invisible people who don't even bother to advance their own interests, but hire congressmen to do it for them while they skulk in the shadows, sneering at us.
Those interests do not include our rights and liberties, but instead putting us to work as churls at near-zero wages. Unaccountably, of course.
Americans can go on unemployment, the dole, or dumpster-diving.
What should we do about those that wish to take them away???
A lot more...
Ignore them.
THEIR’s is the uphill fight.
When they have no audience; the noise fades away.
Wjile you are stating it differently, you are, in essence, actually agreeing with neverdem's premise. He didn't go into the "shadowy" people angle, but he did get the gist of it in that the Republican Party has swerved hard left from its conservative principles. It doesn't matter, in the long run, whether it is Reince Pribus or "selfish, powerful, invisible people" behind the scenes, we still end up in the same place. The Republican Party doesn't amount to a shadow of its former conservative self as it attempts to woo "moderates" as a way back to the WH and control of the senate.
As we have long discussed at FR, as long as the Republican Party maintains its current course, it is unlikely to ever regain control of the WH or the Congress and its members will continue to abandon it as it has abandoned them!
Exactly, rational people don’t usually commit violent crimes in a manner that assures a 100% chance of being caught.
But no Saint Gabby is shot by a wackadoodle, ban guns.
A movie theater is shot up by a wackadoodle, ban guns.
A school is shot up by a wackadoodle, ban guns.
Hello? Hello? Are you there anyone? You’re missing the real problem. Violating the rights of every American because of a few nuts that should not be walking the streets, makes sense.
Corrupt old media, voter fraud, and now close to 50% on the government dole are the reasons the rats have, and will continue to hold power. The 50% is lost to any party outside the demrats, we simply do not have the numbers in what has become a massive welfare state funded by our taxes.
Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that...
Their target audience is based upon those that believe the next American Idol will be another repressed homosexual, and that the news after that will be how bad guns are to everyone except those agry white-men who cling to their guns and bibles...
You know...Those low-information idiots...
Just wait till the idea of “snitch” lines gets more traction...NY put one in...I think California is working on one that is going to work under the guise of protecting the mentally unstable, or somethig to that effect...
The ones paying attention and getting all the BS are those we really canot trust...
They are certainly not going away...
Living in a blue state I have a fair amount of Lefty friends and acquaintances and if there’s anything lefties and righties have in common is the belief that the other side really has it together and is winning the culture war while our side if falling down in the mud. That and the belief that the other side will do whatever it takes to win while our side softballs everything.
Do? Make sure every household has an M16, M1911, and a thousand rounds of high performance ammo for each. ...just as the Founding Fathers intended in the Militia Act of 1792. Each should be registered - not for confiscation upon construed pretext, but for call up when armed defense is needed.
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