WaPo: How gun control is losing, badly (in charts)

[friendly_iconoclast]

Last edited Fri Dec 13, 2013, 08:59 PM - Edit history (1)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/12/11/how-gun-control-is-losing-badly-in-charts/

This Saturday marks the one-year anniversary of the massacre at Newtown, Conn.’s Sandy Hook Elementary School. Twenty children, six staff members, shooter Adam Lanza and his mother all died that day. The killings reinvigorated both sides of the gun-control debate, but gun rights advocates maintained the edge they’ve had for years.

An impressive (roughly) 1,500 state gun bills have been introduced in the year since the Newtown massacre and, of those, 109 are now law, according to The New York Times. Seventy of the enacted laws loosen gun restrictions, while just 39 tighten them. And, though largely symbolic, some 136 bills nullifying federal gun regulations were sponsored in 40 states. In Colorado, two pro-gun control lawmakers were booted from office in historic recalls and a third stepped down in anticipation of a similar fight.

The nonprofit Sunlight Foundation, which promotes government openness and transparency, reviewed lobbying, spending and policies at the state and federal level over the years and, along nearly every metric, rights advocates have trounced opponents...

...Gun rights candidates and causes raised $29.4 million in direct contributions to candidates, parties, and PACs at the federal and state level. Gun control causes raised just $1.9 million, according to Sunlight-provided data from the Center for Responsive Politics and the National Institute on Money In State Politics. In seven states—Alaska, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Wyoming—no contributions whatsoever were made in support of gun control.

I think there are several other reasons besides money:

1. The public is a lot less accepting of security theater

Sandy Hook happened in a state that had already banned "assault weapons" to "protect the public"
The fact that such a law didn't work, along with other useless "beer keg" laws like magazine size limits

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=118&topic_id=362693

have not gone unnoticed.

2. Too many gun controllers went the culture war route after Sandy Hook

There were more than a few posters here at DU that called all gun owners child killers.
In other words, they went Teabagger on gun owners. Gun owners noticed, and decided there was
no percentage in trying to placate people like this.

3. The self-nomonated chief spokesperson for gun control is a richer, better-educated
version of Richard Daley who is as morally challenged as Ted Nugent and Wayne Lapierre

Nugent and Lapierre are awful human beings, but at least they haven't boasted about having
their own army that is wont to harrass and surveil brown people and Muslims.

I doubt Bloomie will have any qualms whatsoever about elbowing Gabby Giffords' new PAC
out of the limelight:

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/12/gabby-giffords-gun-control-pac-100778.html

Gabrielle Giffords sets up gun control PAC

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/12/gabby-giffords-gun-control-pac-100778.html

[Eleanors38]

1. No contributions from 7 states. Not even movie-star studded Montana.

The gun control outlook has always been an elitist proposition, and remains so by definition. For 45 years this group has occupied the newsrooms of the big dailies, the Big 3 TV, much of academia, the popular arts, and clergy; many in the Democratic Party, and a fair number in the GOP.
And yet, at no time did a grass-roots movement light off. The American people have gotten the measure of the "sides" and their respective arguments and have voted with their wallets.

I have no problem with measures to assure gun-owners are neither felons nor mental incompetents. I support reasonable exams to obtain carry permits. And yes, I support improved armed security at schools and other institutions to lessen the occurrance and casualties of mass shootings, though not the drastic measures suggested by Barbara Boxer (D) CA. But the mantra from the prohibitionists and controllers is first and foremost, bans.

[LAGC]

2. Yep, its a total non-starter out here in the Mountain West.

Colorado may flip because of the zealotry of gun control advocates. I fear the successful recalls were just the start.

It's a shame, too, because Democrats really can compete and win in many traditionally red and rural states.

But the gun control issue more than anything else screws us every single time. It just doesn't fly outside the beltways.

[virginia mountainman]

3. If it was not for the mainstream media, and a handful of elitists ..

Their would be no controversy about gun control... NONE at all..