The NRA has Won.
Charles M. Blow asks “Has the N.R.A. Won?” Yes, they have, and it is time we liberals give up on gun control.
It is now fair to ask whether the National Rifle Association is winning — or has in fact won — this era of the gun debate in this country. Gun control advocates have tried to use the horror that exists in the wake of mass shootings to catalyze the public into action around sensible gun restrictions. But rather than these tragedies being a cause for pause in ownership of guns, gun ownership has spiked in the wake of these shootings.
A striking report released Friday by the Pew Research Center revealed that “for the first time, more Americans say that protecting gun rights is more important than controlling gun ownership, 52 percent to 46 percent.”
Look, it doesn’t matter the reasonableness of gun control measures. It almost always gets painted as some sort of tyranny, as if your Second Amendment rights are violated if you cannot purchase this Class 3 Scud Missile launcher.
I, and most liberals and progressives, including Senator Barack Obama, were of this mindset between 2000 and 2007. I remember very specifically Obama’s answers on gun control during the primary debates. He said, look, there is a constitutional right to gun ownership. Nothing is going to change that short of a constitutional amendment.
It is my opinion that one of the mistakes of his Presidency was the renewed push for gun control after Sandy Hook. What he should have done instead is address the nation and say….
“Today is a horrible tragedy, but it is a direct result of the Second Amendment. A citizen’s right to bear arms, protected in the Constitution by the Second Amendment, makes it extremely difficult to pass, enact and enforce any gun control measure. And it would be fruitless for my Administration to now lobby for common sense control measures, because those measures, no matter how reasonable, will be painted as an imposition of tyranny on my part and behalf, oppressing the rights of citizens rather than protecting them. So if you want to prevent future horrors like Sandy Hook, the responsibility is on you to begin a grassroots movement that will amend or clarify the Second Amendment through the constitutional process. Until then, there is nothing I, or anyone, can do.”
And like the Citizens United Decision, that is the truth. The only answer is a constitutional amendment.
Great points.
” it doesn’t matter the reasonableness of gun control measures. It almost always gets painted as some sort of tyranny”
Yes it is does. I think there are three reasons for this. The first is that the measures originate with those who, in many cases, do want to eliminate guns. Is it widespread? Perhaps not, but it matters not because the NRA has the brush and paints it that way.
The second reason is the slippery slope argument, which cannot be refuted except through the passage of time and demonstration that the predicted future did not happen.
Lastly, the paradigm shift has to be bottoms up and from within. Gun owners must be convinced that reasonable measures and necessary to the safety, security and well being of the nation. Efforts by those who are not in the gun club appears like someone trying to take away something from someone else, which is always, always resisted.
The first is that the measures originate with those who, in many cases, do want to eliminate guns.
Um, no. Sorry to burst your received wisdom bubble. Even if he NRA paints is that way is no reason for you to just repeat it as if it were true.
Gun owners must be convinced that reasonable measures and necessary to the safety, security and well being of the nation.
Right here is the problem. Gun owners and the effort to make any restriction on guns impossible is why stuff like this happens. These gun owners need to grow the fuck up and live as though they are in community and not 100 miles from civilization and surrounded by Indians. People get guns illegally because gun owners (and their minions) continue to support a very lax procurement regime that lets those who want to do something stupid get those guns.
It would be awesome if gun owners were required to have insurance of some kind, which would produce its own control scheme.
The NRA membership is more amenable to common sense gun control than the NRA would have us know. They keep the heat on in order to afford their huge administrative salaries and private jets.
Are not guns illegal in mexico. How has that worked out. Tens of thousands of murders by the drug cartels in the last 8 years. No one can stop the cartel violence because of the tremendous amount of corruption within mexican country and state and local governments, along with police departments and the mexican militia. If the citizens could own guns in mexico, then they could band together and fight back against the government corruption, and the drug cartels. But not to be, illegal to own guns, so, tens of thousands more murders on the way.
WTF? So stupid.
how would (more) Mexican citizens owning guns deal with the problems of corruption? are they gonna start shooting the cops?
Im just wondering if this thought went past “MOAR GUNZ EVERYWHAR!!!!!!!!”
No. MOAR GUNZ!! That’s pretty much it.
Reading Rusty’s post, I would believe that question marks must be illegal in the United States. :-). I hate the slippery slope argument. You rarely hear it crop up in any reasonable fashion against any other kind of law. Some examples of their logic applied to other areas:
“No speed limits because they’ll take away our cars next.”
“No business permits because they’ll take away our businesses next”
“No mandatory schooling because they’ll follow with mandatory work for the state”
The list could go on. I disagree with surrender. We need to fight it more, every day, more publicly, and not just when a bunch of innocent kids get mowed down. They only win when the opposition is silenced or gives up.
Their insane rhetoric is driving gun sales, driving paranoia, and most likely, driving the violence.
Maybe they are like a baby throwing a temper tantrum… if we just say “fine, you win! no more secret gun confiscation plan”, they’ll just shut up.
The gun issue is similar to the healthcare issue in one large respect. Nearly every other western/first world/modern/advanced nation has figured it out. But here in the US we pretend that they haven’t.
On guns particularly, Australia is probably the best example of solving the problem. We just like to pretend that the problem is intractable even though the smart kids finished the exam already and have moved on.
I’m for law abiding people being able to own guns. The thing that bothers me and probably many others is that the face of gun advocacy is these angry paranoid right wingers who behave in an aggressive and belligerent manner who want to have total unbridled access to any kind of weapon anywhere anytime. Most of the gun nuts appear to be just the kind of paranoid selfish violent psychotics who shouldn’t be walking around with weapons.
I’m sitting on an airplane completely stripped of my 2nd amendment rights. Stop the Tyranny!!!!!
It’s true…letting the stupid rednecks win this one is one of the reasons that the world thinks Americans are all stupid rednecks.
A serious question: I don’t perceive, over the past year, that the NRA has won anything. Before you pounce, consider two issues:
1) The NRA’s perceived willingness to compromise by the more conservative and politically active gun rights folks (take the proposed psychiatric legislation one or two terms back in DE) is actually causing the organization to bleed members to the more radical Gunowners of America and National Association for Gun Rights. Although it may not yet have penetrated to the MSM yet, the NRA is no longer (I can’t resist) calling the shots on gun rights strategy. Ironically, as an organization, the NRA in 2015 has rarely been weaker, because it used to be almost the exclusive spokes-organization for gun rights, and it is not any more.
2) I really think there is a second variable involved here: attention given to police shootings over the past year or so. My own (admittedly subjective) read is that for whatever reason at least since Ferguson examples of police shootings/violence have had more staying power as stories in the American consciousness than even Sandy Hook did.
A piece of completely anecdotal evidence: I spent some time discussing the weekend shootings at DSU with my students, several of whom were within less than 50 feet of the incident. Except for the one young lady who was so close to the shooting that she actually saw it happen, most of them were more terrified of the police response than of any potential for getting harmed by the shooter. What they said happened was that when the police were attempting to disperse the crowd, the students and their families weren’t moving away fast enough to suit the officers. So several of the officers began to threaten that they would begin pepper-spraying the crowd if they didn’t move faster (these threats not attributed to DSU police but on hired officers from nearby jurisdictions), and were only prevented because DSU’s Police Chief was on the spot and overruled them. But I found that whole reaction by students interesting and disturbing.
My point is that maybe there are other elements driving some of these poll results aside from the NRA propaganda.
Steve, your last 2 points are particularly disturbing, given the NRA’s wet-dreams scenario is that people will have to use guns against the government…. or in this case, the government’s enforcement arm, the cops.
They have been screaming for years that Americans will need to kill other Americans and now a thuggish police force is dumping gas all over that tinder pile.
ben
Your second point is well-taken; I think your first is a bit off the mark.
I think the NRA had traditionally catered to about five different constituencies, of whom political activist gun owners and government resistors were only two, and composed between them maybe 15% of the organization’s membership. However, they were the most vocally strident and occupied a far higher percentage of leadership positions than the stats would suggest (often the case in large organizations–activists tend to be more radical and more willing to “serve”).
Within the NRA there is sort an an internal non-debate (as in the sense that guys often discuss things without really discussing them) going on, and the more radical activists are splintering off from the parent organization. Kind of parallels the Tea Party within the GOP in organizational senses…
This is getting missed in most reporting and by most gun control advocates because (A) they never understood the internal composition of the NRA in the first place; and (B) they have spent their entire lives equating all “gun rights” policy and public relations as emanating from the NRA. I’m not sure how this is going to shake out ultimately for the country, but I can tell you that the NRA itself (as the monopoly spokesman for gun rights) doesn’t feel like it’s winning anything…
I am glad that the antigunners finally admit that we have won. Now maybe they would tone down thir disarmament rhetoric of: “omg it’s those gunzzz!” and work to a common solution on reducing violence in America. Ie, more guns in law abiding people’s hands prevent and deter violent crime.
If any “disarmament rhetoric” was left to tone down, I’m sure it would be.