The problem with the small-d 'democratic' approach to gun control is....

[friendly_iconoclast]

....that there are around 80 million gun owners in the US. This is a problem for those who claim gun control is popular, because

going strictly by group size (and not counting those who might be members of more than one group)-


There are more gun owners than there are African-Americans in the US.

There are more gun owners than there are persons of Hispanic descentin the US.

There are more gun owners than GLBT people in the US.


I know there are people that claim gun ownership is not a civil right- but many, many gun owners think it is and they have

the Supreme Court, President Obama, and most of Congress agreeing with them. Whether you agree with them or not, that's the way

they see it and they will probably vote for people and parties who would plausably look out for their interests.


The Republicans have treated these people as low-hanging fruit to be plucked at will come election time - and sadly, certain

Democrats have helped them by their fear and loathing of guns, gun owners, and gun culture.

[Kurska]

1. Very soon there will be more guns than people in America.

Guns obviously deserve the right to vote.

[xoom]

2. .. huh?

:shrug:

[whoneedstickets]

3. Once, a lot of American owned slaves. Therefore owning slaves was right.

The total failure of posters like this to engage any critical faculties is mindboggling.

Folks you are pawns in the fire-arms industries effort to maximize profits while minimizing responsibility.

Right wing politicians have been complicit in this because they do well when they can fill the minds of simpleton voters with fear of crime while ignoring the possibility that the policies they promote increase crime by making weapons more available.

Right wing academics and think tanks funded with money from gun companies produce 'research' which supports the claims of the gun industry that the logic of more weapons = more violence is somehow wrong.

This effort is not entirely different from the logic of tobacco companies.

Through their lobbying efforts gun groups and the Right wing politicians they own have been waging a campaign to re-interpret the constitution abandoning the long held principle that the right to bear arms was allowed for the purpose of forming state militias into a inviolable individual right.

If you look at who has been driving this, one can only be amazed that this positions attracts such support on an apparently progressive forum. One can only wonder if perhaps the same forces that profit from this trade, support the 'research' and lobby the right wing politicians haven't found some way of swaying our discourse too?

[PavePusher]

4. Feel free to Ratify a Constitutional Amendment to prove your point.

Just don't forget the Civil War that goes along with it....

[whoneedstickets]

5. Ah, the implied threat of violence from the gun crowd...

the NRA playbook, what page?

[PavePusher]

13. You tell me, I haven't seen this "playbook" you anti-Second people harp on about.

"threat of vilolence" - no. "prediction" - yes.

[friendly_iconoclast]

22. It seems your interlocutor is another believer in "TPoTEoTNRA":

"The Protocols of The Elders of The NRA". I'm not privy to its contents, as I do not know the secret gesture or the PSK to their

VPN.

(Added on edit) Whenever I see the phrases "NRA playbook" or "NRA talking point(s)", stuff like this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x577527

immediately comes to mind. Same mindset, different bugbear.

[PavePusher]

23. I keep being told I was supposed to have a decoder ring.

I guess I missed that meeting.

Or something.

[petronius]

6. So when you sweepingly claim that "the logic of more weapons = more violence" is correct,

and dismiss all evidence and data to the contrary as RW fakery, is that what you mean by engaging critical faculties? :shrug:

What I'm amazed to find on a liberal forum, quite frankly, is this authoritarian willingness to cast aside a chunk of the Constitution, ignore history, and abandon our principles of individual choice and freedom in this narrow arena. But perhaps I shouldn't be surprised - liberals are as prone as anyone to give up rights and liberties that they personally don't need or choose to exercise...

[whoneedstickets]

7. Aside from Lott and Keck what mound of evidence do you speak of?

Since those studies have largely been discredited by counter studies and shown to have been funded by weapons manufacturers.

http://www.vpc.org/fact_sht/lottlink.htm

How do you account for the overall trend of violence and gun ownership across societies (except by pointing to a few exceptions like Switzerland somehow a right wing paradise despite the fact that almost none of the classic gun fetishists in this country would be willing to accede to the mandatory military service that citizens must perform thus making the comparison ridiculous)

[petronius]

9. Have you not observed the trends in violence and gun ownership here over the past

few decades? That alone undermines your claim that more guns --> more violence. Support your own logic, and examine it critically, before accusing the rest of the world of a lack of critical thinking...

[X_Digger]

10. No study required..

Unless you claim the FBI's UCR and DOJ's BJS is complicit in this conspiracy.

There are +120M guns in private hands since the inception of the NICS in 1998- http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics/reports

Yet crime (including gun use in crime) is down to levels not seen since the '60s.

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=kfa

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/preliminary-crime-in-the-us-2009

It's fairly easy to prove that more guns != more crime. That's not an endorsement of the inverse, by the way.


Regarding other societies, how was their crime rate compared to ours before they had comprehensive gun control? If you're claiming a correlation between violence / crime due to gun control, surely a comparison of say, London and New York from 1880-1900 would be apt, yes? (That was before either city had much in the way of gun control.)

Funny thing is, London still had a murder rate 1/5th that of New York, before gun control in either city. The same holds true for much of Europe. In the early part of the last century, gun control was more about stopping the fear of a home-grown Bolshevik revolution, rather than crime control- especially in the post-WWI period where you had large numbers of disaffected armed youthful soldiers facing staggering unemployment.

[Hoyt]

20. Many of the guns are going to those so obsessed they keep adding to their weapons cache.

There are lots of reasons for "lower crime rates" -- increased effectiveness of police (better surveillance); harsher sentences for those who use guns in crimes; until recently, improving economic conditions for most; lower percentage of the young (who are more likely to commit crimes)in population; etc.

A few more cowboys on the street ain't it.

And those that keep adding to their weapons cache and promoting more guns will just make the problem with guns worse down the road.

[PavePusher]

24. So, have you defined "cache" yet?

I won't know if I have one, until you tell me what it is....

[DonP]

25. Why do I get the feeling that if the crime rate ticked up 1/2 of a % ...

... the same people foaming at the mouth to deny that CCW or civilian owned guns in general have anything to do with a lower crime rate, would be blaming civilian owned firearms for the "skyrocketing crime rate"?

No proof of correlation or causality would be required because "it just makes sense" that those CCW people and all those guns are responsible.

Hell, as it is now, every time there is a crime with a gun or a negligent discharge it's posted down here as proof positive that guns are the root of all evil.

[Hoyt]

33. Every time a progunner shoots unarmed burglar in the back fleeing, it's cheered by progunners.

[oneshooter]

37. Sounds like your jealous. Project much? n/t

[oneshooter]

36. He doesn,t know what it means, just likes the sound of it. "cache" yea. n/t

[friendly_iconoclast]

39. I've got a definition of 'cache'- "One more gun than *I* think *you* should have"

[X_Digger]

29. So, it's "any day now"-ism, is it?

Nobody claimed that concealed carry led to decreased crime. Perhaps you missed me stating that: "That's not an endorsement of the inverse, by the way."

It's fairly easy to prove that more guns != more crime.

How far in the future is your crystal ball aimed, Carnac?

[Hoyt]

32. X-Digger, your post #10 says that -- and it's wrong and poor interpretation of stats.

Hope your ability to discern a real threat to you -- before you start blasting -- is better.

[X_Digger]

35. So.. reading comprehension isn't your strong suit?

Person A says the sky is orange.

Person B says the sky is violet.

I say, I can prove the sky isn't violet.

That does not mean I claim the sky is orange.



It's not rocket science.

Read more, knee-jerk less.

I said, it's easily disproven that 'more guns = more crime'.

That does not mean that I'm claiming that 'more guns = less crime'.

It's not an either-or dichotomy (outside of simple-minded heads, at least.)

[PavePusher]

42. Still no definition. I'm shocked..... n/t

[gejohnston]

11. VPC lied to you

Show us the studies, the peer reviewed studies and the comments written by those peers. There are not any.
I read the shill pot shots at Kleck, funded by the Joyce Foundation. They did not discredit him at all. If you read them closely they disagree only to degree.
Kleck's is peer reviewed research. His work was funded by him and maybe Florida State University where he is a professor of Criminology. Go to the Florida State University website, find his email and ask him. In 1993 his first book on the subject, Point Blank, won him the Michael J. Hindelang Award for being "the most outstanding contribution to criminology" from the American Society of Criminology.
Since you made a baseless claim about Dr. Kleck, care to provide evidence that his work was funded by the manufactures or NRA? Hersey from VPC does not count, since they have a reason to lie and often do.
Trying to explain academic research standards to antis is like trying to explain carbon-14 dating to a room full of creationists.

[one-eyed fat man]

12. Whoa there!!

"....willing to accede to the mandatory military service that citizens must perform..."

"Why are we here? Because, we don't mean squat. We are second rate citizens. What about all the other people whose kids don't have to fight the war? Let's face it boys, we're the hicks, the spics and the niggers. That's why we're here." -- Private Danny Purcell

It is the legacy of career Leftists since the Sixties that military service is beneath them and to be assiduously avoided. Whether of the generation who fought it or those born after it, the Vietnam War remains the war we lost. It remains a cauldron of debate over its conduct. What emerged from that war, however, was an all-volunteer military, a warrior class.

Those elite Ivy League schools that produced the Air Corps and Naval aviators, the submarine and PT boat commanders, the OSS agents dropped behind enemy lines, the heroes of World War 2 now ban military recruiters from their campuses.

"As I watched the platoon joke, clown, and ramble their way through the holiday dinner, I couldn't help but think about the country that had produced them. These were the men in the flesh that society only celebrates in the abstract."

"The NCOs had served in the army long enough to stop caring about the whims of the American culture they protected so effectively; the troopers were just removed enough to not fully recognize how the same society that reared us had detached itself from us the day we signed our enlistment papers. In a voluntary military, we fought FOR the nation, not with it." -- US Army Captain, 2007

Americans, most of whom do not know anyone in the military, have not had their lives personally touched by the Mideast conflicts. The Army is at war while America is at the mall. The way of life they are fighting to protect has barely been altered as they put their lives on the line every day in a combat zone or service in any of the branches.

With the professional Left's smug short-sightedness by default those in the military are as unlike them in outlook as possible. Most career soldiers, even the progressive ones, tend from center to right. Don't be surprised when they come to the conclusion that it's not worth bleeding for someone who hates you.

You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country," when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
But Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!
- - Rudyard Kipling

[ProgressiveProfessor]

18. If you quote the VPC, you have no intellectual integrity

They really are that bad

[chibajoe]

15. If by "a lot" you mean about 1.5% of the population, then I guess your definition of

"a lot" differs from most people's. By comparison, over 32% of the US population owns guns.
Talk about a failure of critical faculties. :eyes:

[aikoaiko]

16. critical thinking indeed.

The OP is making the case that the civil liberties of non-majority groups should be protected.

Ultimately slavery was judged to be a violation of the slaves' civil liberties and, therefore, slave holding was not protected.

Slavery in and of itself was judged harmful in all cases. Keeping and bearing arms is not harmful in and of itself.

Speaking of pawns, you appear to have drank from the kool-aid well from those who seek to drive a wedge among left-leaning folks.

[whoneedstickets]

28. If you find any left leaning folks defending guns let me know.

i have yet to find any on this forum despite searching for Non gun posts among the local gun posse.

[PavePusher]

30. So, you define "left leaning" as "against guns"....

How very fucking noble of you to spell it out for us.

[aikoaiko]

34. You've already met one. I am left of center and I vote Democrat. I support the RKBA.

Your search is over.

[petronius]

38. Civil liberties and individual rights (especially that of self-protection) are liberal values

Much more so than the anti-rights, anti-freedom, gun control positions espoused by some of the more authoritarian visitors to the forum...

[gejohnston]

17. hate to break it to you

but Dr. Kleck is a liberal Democrat.

http://www.law.fsu.edu/faculty/gkleck.html

http://www.vcdl.org/new/kleck.htm

http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/p/faculty-gary-kleck.php

[spin]

26. More guns does not equal more crime.

While the sales of firearms in our nation have skyrocketed in recent years the violent crime rate has fallen.

Gun Owners Buy 14 Million Plus Guns In 2009 – More Than 21 of the Worlds Standing Armies
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 11:43 AM

Washington, DC --(AmmoLand.com)- Data released by the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) for the year reported 14,033,824 NICS Checks for the year of 2009, a 10 percent increase in gun purchases from the 12,709,023 reported in 2008.

So far that is roughly 14,000,000+ guns bought last year! The total is probably more as many NICS background checks cover the purchase of more than one gun at a time by individuals.

To put it in perspective that is more guns than the combined active armies of the top 21 countries in the world.
http://www.ammoland.com/2010/01/13/gun-owners-buy-14-million-plus-guns-in-2009/

So if more guns caused more crime the violent crime rate would have increased, right?

FBI Says Violent Crime Rate Down Again
WASHINGTON, May 24, 2010

CBS/AP) The violent crime rate in the United States went down in 2009 for the third year in a row and the property crime rate fell for the seventh consecutive year, the FBI reported Monday.

The decline last year amounted to 5.5 percent for violent crime compared to 2008 and the rate for property crime was down 4.9 percent.

It's the third consecutive annual drop in violent crime and the largest percentage-wise, reports CBS News correspondent Bob Orr.

***snip***

According to the numbers, all four categories of violent crime declined compared to 2008 - robbery, murder, aggravated assault and forcible rape.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/24/national/main6514022.shtml

Note that I am not saying that more guns caused crime to decrease. There are too many factors that effect the violent crime rate to say for sure what the cause of the decrease is.

The point of the OP was that it's foolish to alienate gun owners when they compose such a large segment of the population. I know many gun owners who believe in many of the same ideas that we advocate here on DU who will NEVER vote for a Democrat as they fear that doing so would endanger their often considerable investment in firearms, their enjoyment of the shooting sport and their perceived right to use a firearm for legitimate self defense. Most people who oppose gun ownership are serious about implementing strong control but because they have no investment to lose, they are far less likely to show up at the polls and vote than gun owners.

I hate to point this out, but there are far larger problems in this country than gun control. If our party were to stop pushing for "feel good" laws like another ban on assault rifles we might be able to attract gun owners to vote for our candidates rather than Republican candidates who will run this country into the ground and destroy the middle class.

[bluerum]

8. Err. Whut?

Democrats help republicans by taking positions on issues?

And republicans help democrats by taking positions on issues.

It kind of evens out.

[jpak]

14. That's a broad brush to be painting Dems with...

and justifies all the stupid unfucking popular GOP/NRA gun-everywhere-all the-time BS going on in state legislatures.

yup

[Hangingon]

19. This guy is so carried away with name calling that I cannot

understand the meaning of the post.

Yup

Yup

Yup

[friendly_iconoclast]

21. Try again. I said "small-d 'democratic'", not "Dems".

And the pursuit of further gun control is by no means exclusive to big-d Democrats.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

27. it is a true brush and justifies nothing. yup.

remember your Billy Yanks.

[Logical]

41. You are losing this battle. Face it! n-t

[RSillsbee]

31. The problem with the small-d 'democratic' approach to gun control is

1.It loses elections

2. It doesn't work

Need I say more?

[friendly_iconoclast]

40. Why do some act surprised when members of a group vote in their own percieved interest?