On handguns, tradition and radicalism
Gun show in Houston, Texas. Image from Wikipedia
I write a lot about the clash between traditional American culture — which tends to be conservative — and the rapid societal changes that have triggered deep anxiety and bitterness, particularly in rural white communities.
In broad terms, this axis defines the country’s culture war, far more than any red vs. blue or North vs. South paradigm.
The truth, which I think is irrefutable, is that our nation is changing with stunning speed in ways that have sparked a sometimes understandable backlash.
In a mere handful of decades, our concept “family” has been reinvented. Homosexuality has evolved from a recognized mental illness into a widely accepted version of “normal.”
The role of women in society has changed in radical ways, one of the largest shifts in the human paradigm in recorded history. Soon, the white community will be only one of many minorities in a truly diverse ethnic landscape.
Active Christians make up a smaller and smaller portion of citizens and the fastest growing “faith” group is made up of people with no religious convictions at all.
That’s a lot to take on board, especially since it’s hitting the “real” America all at once.
When my urban, progressive friends wring their hands about the conservative uproard against these changes, I remind them that America’s traditional culture is merely holding on to and defending values that were entirely mainstream just a few years ago.
But when it comes to guns, I don’t think this argument holds true.
When it comes to firearms, it is traditional America that’s changing, profoundly and perhaps even radically, in ways that are finally sparking real debate.
I grew up in rural America, and have always been a proud, unambiguous part of the gun-owning culture. I’ve owned firearms my entire life. My father and I were members of a shooting club at a range in my home town. We hunted whitetail deer.
While courting my wife — herself a holder of NRA merit badges for marksmanship — I hunted turkey and deer with my future father-in law.
One of my wife’s proudest gifts to our son (he was 13 years old at the time) was his first .22 rifle.
My brother Allen and I have hunted together since childhood, and he writes one of the best hunting and fishing blogs in the Midwest.
What we didn’t do? We didn’t own military-style weaponry.
In all my childhood and young adulthood, I don’t remember anyone owning assault rifles or high-capacity banana clips, or talking about the need for such weapons.
Guys owned shotguns for hunting fowl. We owned hunting rifles. Some men — not, by a long-shot, all — owned a pistol for home security, to protect their businesses, or for protection against grizzly bears, or for sport.
Through the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, when I was a kid and a young man, the loggers and fishermen and outdoorsmen I grew up around would have been baffled by anyone packing a military-style heat.
I remember in particular one of my friends bragging that his dad still had an old German Luger military pistol locked away in a drawer, a legacy of his grandfather’s service in World War II.
The idea was kind of shocking and exciting.
But if you asked me whether any of our dads would have advocated legalizing teflon coated “copkiller” bullets or fought for the right to use high capacity magazines, I’d say no way.
I’m not sure when the gun culture changed.
What I can tell you is that in the part of America where I grew up — Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and later Alaska — it didn’t look much like the gun culture that exists today.
Guys didn’t talk about the need to arm themselves so that they could someday resist their own despotic government. There wasn’t survivalist talk or talk of “2nd amendment” solutions to democratic debates.
I suspect the change came from the narrowing agenda of the NRA, which shifted from a mom-and-pop style hunter and gun-safety organization to a sleek, powerful culture war advocacy group that sees no room for compromise or nuance.
In their worldview, there are gun lovers and believers in the Constitution, and there are those who would confiscate every single firearm.
It’s a gun culture that leaves no room for people like me, who value sporting guns and believe in protecting gun ownership, but have serious moral and practical questions about the need for high-efficiency military-style pistols and assault rifles.
I suspect that at least some of the change also came from a growing population of American gun enthusiasts who don’t have strong ties to rural life.
There are a lot of suburbanites and urban folks who embraced the gun-show bang-bang culture that gets a rush out of hard-core hardware, without having been introduced to firearms through the common sense values of their fathers and mothers.
Finally, I suspect that a lot of the change in America’s gun culture came through the commercialization of firearms, as manufacturers — who now clear $12 billion a year — worked to sell more and more high-end “cool” weapons.
The kind of guns that ravaged Aurora and Newtown and Columbine have much higher profit margins — and fanboy appeal — than you see for a serious hunting rifle or a practical shotgun.
So while on many issues, it is urban, progressive Americans who have moved into new, experimental, and sometimes nervous territory, when it comes to guns I think it’s fair to argue that conservatives are the ones who have changed.
While talking about the long-standing tradition of gun ownership and flying the banner of the 2nd amendment, they’re drawing lines in the sand that I’m guessing would have made little sense to the guys in the coffee shop in my hometown.
So here’s my question to those of you who see yourselves as gun rights advocates. When was the first time you saw people in your community owning (or desiring) these kinds of weapons?
When did you or your friends begin to see military-style pistols and assault rifles and banana clip-type accessories as part of America’s gun culture?
Paul, they have those guns at the slaughterhouse. Airpowered shot to the head and she’s down. No waste of meat.
WJ, maybe you should kiss my backside “cough”.
This is why we will never get anywhere on this. On one hand you have people that know firearms, aren’t scared to death of them, don’t make up BS “facts”, can see that the question is far larger than the just the 2nd Amendment, have the backbone to take responsibility for their own safety and security and haven’t resorted to ad hominem attacks, hyperbole and vitriol. On the other hand you have a bunch of people willing to assign “need” as the basis for exercising a right, looking for an easy answer, making up “facts” and that resort to attacks, insinuation, name calling and utter bull puckey every chance they get. And at least one of them is allegedly a professional journalist.
“Rural poor manage to buy guns for hunting. Urban poor could buy them for protection if they thought it was worth it, but they dont.” Please provide statistics proving this claim. I doubt you’ll be able to since in most states where records of this sort are kept, NY or Chicago for instance, the poor in the cities can’t get a permit! In other states where no permit is required no such records are kept.
Brian M, I appreciate your attempt to find the middle ground. The problem is you keep referring to “need”. When we start qualifying a right based on need- any right- then we have a real serious problem. No, I don’t need a 30 round mag to shoot a deer. But if I have a 30 round mag and never, ever commit any crime, misuse it any way, use it much at all- why is it right for you to ban it? We have cars and trucks that will go well in excess of 100 mph and motorcycles that approach 200 mph right off the show room floor. We know speed kills in cars, but we don’t ask people why they need one, we don’t do background investigations, fingerprint and photograph them. I may not need or even want a “banana clip” (wrong term BTW) to protect my home or business, but what right do you have to say I should be limited to a 3 or 5 round mag capacity when the burglars or robber may have not just illegal “banana clips” but a full auto weapon or where here may be 5 or 6 bad guys? And lets not forget that the AR platform (Bushmaster) is among the most popular hunting rifles these days. No, you don’t know about it and you haven’t seen it in Saranac Lake, I get that. Well, the whole world isn’t in SL Brian. You didn’t know about the guns you were looking at 30 years ago and you don’t know much about what’s popular today. You can check, the web is full of information. Why are they so popular? Same thing as with our Dads and grand dads- it’s what they’re used to. For the past 40 years every kid going in the service in the US has been shooting an M16 or variant. It’s light, it’s easy to shoot, it doesn’t kick the snot out of you and it’s fun. Your Dad probably loved his M1 or Springfield, a younger guys Dad loved his M14, now our guys are used to the AR platform. They know the gun isn’t “designed for nothing but killing people!!!” and they aren’t out there killing people with them.
As I said, thanks for at least trying. I doubt you’ll “get it” but maybe the light will flicker a little. You keep asking what limits we should have as a “moral and civilized society”. I don’t see much morality and I question just how civilized we are these days.
And I;m still waiting for any responses to the questions I put forth on the medias responsibility in stoking the fires in these whack jobs heads by not referring to these criminals as the animals they are, instead glorifying their actions, intentionally or not. And I’m also still waiting for any to address the post I made regarding the recent use of guns in self defense by men and women with children facing their death at the hands of criminals. Many here would take their ability to protect themselves away, killing them as sure as the guy that pulled the trigger.
“When we start qualifying a right based on need- any right- then we have a real serious problem.”
Not really, Rancid. The 2nd Amendment makes the right to bear arms sacrosanct (if you ignore the “well regulated part). But it absolutely does not make it a right to bear any and all arms that will ever be invented. A howitzer is an armament; it falls under the definition of “arms.” So do bombs, tanks and missiles. “Arms” simply means weapons. No one thinks that the 2nd gives them the right to own fully automatic weapons. You want to worry about a slippery slope? You lost that one a long time ago. You have the right to bear whatever arms the government and the courts decide you have a right to bear, no more, no less. The “right to bear arms” has been a qualified right for a very long time.
Taking these types of weapons away from law-abiding citizens will do nothing.
The politicians should be taking them away from criminals.
But they can’t.
So, they try to take them away from us.
Because they can.
Paul – see the Nate Silver link at the beginning. I dont know why Republican suburban males buy guns. I dont think it is to hunt – so they must think it is for protection.
My guess is that is what is known as “false sense of security”, where the key is that they (the white suburban Republican males) feel safer and it is the feeling that is most important. It may also be pure ideology. Its not rational.
Rancid – the statistics are that African Americans dont buy guns and rural people do buy them. The rest is speculation. But rural men traditionally buy guns for hunting, and people in urban centers dont hunt (but they do live in dangerous neighborhoods).
I understand that white Republican suburban men like to buy guns. The question is why? If its to protect themselves, why do they feel that need more than than people who live in inner city neighborhoods?
Having lived in inner city neighborhoods, I can say that I would never have had the nerve to take a gun with me while passing through a nearby drug corner. (where children got shot by stray bullets).
They buy them because powerful weapons make them feel manly, a feeling they apparently lack in the absence of high-powered weaponry. You’ve seen the ad featuring the Bushmaster, reading “CONSIDER YOUR MAN CARD REISSUED”? That’s what it’s all about.
(Well, that and the hokey pokey.)
Political hypocrisy.
When has Obama told his Hollywood chums to back off the use of violent weapons in movies.
Ain’t gonna happen.
“When has Obama told his Hollywood chums to back off the use of violent weapons in movies.”
Uh, JDM, can you name the Amendment that comes just before the 2nd Amendment?
Good video: Concealed Carry permit holders live in a dream world
It always amazes me when supporters of unlimited access to guns quote the 2nd amendment as saying “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” and ignore the leading part “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…”. Opps! It mentions regulation. Of course that is why they skip over it.
And then there is Kathy’s quote of Sam Adams that the Constitution “be never construed to authorize Congress….to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.” We are not talking about taking guns away from “peaceable citizens” in spite of all the misrepresentation by the gun lobby. We ARE talking about keeping guns away from those who are NOT peaceable citizens and who are prone to use them to slaughter peaceable citizens including children. Why is that so difficult to understand?
“….and haven’t resorted to ad hominem attacks, hyperbole and vitriol”. Statements like this from our conservative friends always makes me chuckle.
oops, lemme try to format that correctly!
this seems to me like a really important point in the debate. people like rancid (and in previous threads, arlo) keep making it.
i think the response is that, look, we ban all kinds of things which are dangerous. it’s perfectly normal and acceptable.
we ban many drugs. this impinges on the freedom of people who could use, say, cocaine responsibly. but the overall danger of cocaine to society outweighs that.
it’s not legal to own plutonium. same deal. and so on.
of course these are all analogies, and all analogies break down at some point. but to me they seem like pretty good ones. i don’t think we should go legalizing heroin. and i think it’s reasonable to ban assault weapons and/or high capacity clips.
Walker: “Uh, JDM, can you name the Amendment that comes just before the 2nd Amendment?”
A hypocrite is someone who says one thing and does another.
You correctly point out that Obama is not denying anyone their 1st amendment right to make movies where guns that hold 30+ bullets in their magazines kill people, presidents, children, women, etc.
I guess you are also helping me establish the point that it is hypocritical of Obama to deny others their 2nd amendment right of owning guns with equal amounts of fire power.
Gee, Walker, I guess to walked right into that one.
“I understand that white Republican suburban men like to buy guns. The question is why? If its to protect themselves, why do they feel that need more than than people who live in inner city neighborhoods?”
I would guess that white suburban males (democrat and republican) buy them for the reasons we have been hearing. Me and Cuomo and Romney and Harry Reid and John Kerry and others own them for reasons other than self protection. Right? Not a big mystery.
James, I am sure you understand that the supreme court has ruled several times on the second amendment.
They have said that:
“that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess and carry firearms.”. (several sources)
Forget the militia thing. The evolving document has gotten rid of that. You may not like it but that is where we are.
They have also said that certain restrictions are okay. So no “unlimited access” but you have to find a different argument.
“They buy them because powerful weapons make them feel manly, a feeling they apparently lack in the absence of high-powered weaponry. You’ve seen the ad featuring the Bushmaster, reading “CONSIDER YOUR MAN CARD REISSUED”? That’s what it’s all about”
I have never considered owning any such gun. But this comment makes me think that maybe we have moved beyond the idea of banning high capacity clips and the like. This is about some other strange restrictions on some “manly” behaviors that need to be curbed.
No, Paul, it’s not about curbing “manly” behaviors. It’s about recognizing as a society that what you buy is not what makes you manly, and that manliness is not about violent weaponry. (In other words, I’m not talking here about legislation, I’m talking about the cultural side of the problem.)
So, of course everyone has seen the latest school shooting.
And an unarmed teacher stopped the gunman by talking to him, not shooting him.
http://www.examiner.com/article/teacher-stops-school-shooting-police-say-many-lives-were-saved
Of course talking ( and blogging ) is feminine behavior.
Paul – it’s only the white suburban republican males who are the gun owners not the democrats living in the same neighborhood,
The big question is why we can’t approach gun safety from a rational problem solving point of view. Current Republican ideology is that “gun rights” take precedence over “child safety”. Strange values.
“I guess you are also helping me establish the point that it is hypocritical of Obama to deny others their 2nd amendment right of owning guns with equal amounts of fire power.”
JDM, there is no 2nd Amendment right to “guns with equal amounts of fire power.” There’s just a right to “bear arms.” It is well established that limits can be placed on what weapons private citizens can own– no full automatics, no tanks, no bombs. “Arms” means weapons. Theoretically, the “right to bear arms” could be satisfied by allowing knife ownership. (I’m not saying we should go there. I’m just sayin’)
But it absolutely does not make it a right to bear any and all arms that will ever be invented.
Wait a minute Walker. I thought society had to change with the times.
Walker says:
January 11, 2013 at 7:58 pm
“When has Obama told his Hollywood chums to back off the use of violent weapons in movies.”
Uh, JDM, can you name the Amendment that comes just before the 2nd Amendment?
Thank you Walker, you just made my argument for me. You’re bring a hypocrite. The 1st Amendment means the President and Congress can’t even ask Hollywood to lower the violence level but the 2nd Amend is entirely open to restrictions of all kinds. Complete, total hypocrisy.
And FYI- cannons, bombs, howitzers, tanks are not “arms”. “Arms” in the Constitutional sense have already been established to be those small arms similar to those used by a nations military or for sporting and self defense purposes. That was hashed out back in the 1930’s IIRC when the first national firearms act came out. The point we are arguing is what is “reasonable” and effective.
Peter, if the statistics are that urban blacks don’t buy guns then why are so many urban blacks shooting each other? What? They point their fingers and go “BANG!” and the other guy falls over?
James- if we were truly after the non-peaceable citizens then we wouldn’t be pursuing the gun, we’d be pursuing the non-peaceable citizen! An it has already been explained that there are 2 parts to the 2nd Amendment and links have been provided to case law and laymans explanations on how it works.
“”They buy them because powerful weapons make them feel manly, a feeling they apparently lack in the absence of high-powered weaponry. You’ve seen the ad featuring the Bushmaster, reading “CONSIDER YOUR MAN CARD REISSUED”? That’s what it’s all about”
Well gee golly! I guess we’d better start looking at every single bit of advertising that appeals to male interests like fast cars, football, guns, chainsaws, etc. And girls! We better de-sex all advertising. And then we’d better be fair and go after all the womens advertising that appeals to their female nature. I mean, really, do I need to see Cosmopolitan int he check out isle advertising “100 ways to drive your man MAD!!!” It must be women making all these white males MAD!!! that’s causing them to allegedly buy guns. Sheesh!
Peter Hahn says:
January 12, 2013 at 8:31 am
Paul – it’s only the white suburban republican males who are the gun owners not the democrats living in the same neighborhood,
Another allegation based on what? Provide the stats to back it up.
Yes Knuckle, I saw that. Good for him. When you can provide a 100% surety that talking will stop every nut out there then we’ll have an answer. Until then your right to “feel safe” does not trump my right to “feel safe”.
It’s about recognizing as a society that what you buy is not what makes you manly, and that manliness is not about violent weaponry.
Now we’re looking at a gun owner’s intent or motivation?
If a conservative dared to do this with why women have abortions they would be crucified.
Liberals want to create there own version of a sterile society, which is what they accuse Christians of doing. You may think you are leaving the religion part out, but you’re toting your own religion of what is best for everyone.
So Kathy, you want private U.S. citizens to have the right to own nuclear weapons?
The Constitution has to change with the times. That’s why the Founding Fathers that you so revere created a process for amending the Constitution, and they gave the Supreme Court the power to interpret it.
We’re talking about limiting every individual’s access to weaponry that’s designed to kill the maximum number of people possible.
WJ, can I apply this to abortions, too? Abortions are legal. And some of us don’t like the number of babies being killed.
So Kathy, you want private U.S. citizens to have the right to own nuclear weapons?
If it fits in a holster, yup!
(sorry, but a dumb question deserves a dumb answer!)
“”Arms” in the Constitutional sense have already been established to be those small arms similar to those used by a nations military or for sporting and self defense purposes. That was hashed out back in the 1930’s IIRC when the first national firearms act came out.”
Rancid, you’re making my point for me. The first national firearms act established limits on the 2nd Amendment.
So far as I know, the right to free speech has not been interpreted by the Supreme Court to allow the government to dictate what may and may not be put in movies in any broad sense. I can’t believe that you would want the government to have such powers. Is that what you’re calling for?
And incidentally, the 1st Amendment isn’t absolute– you can’t make kiddy porn or snuff flicks.
Kathy –
I inhale once deeply before going into the gun violence vs. abortion realm – they are two different issues, with two different sets of complexities, and I generally feel that people cross these wires, consciously or not, as a way to obfuscate rather than enlighten.
But I think there is, actually, one place where parallels exist.
Polls show that most Americans think that abortion should be legal and safe and available in broad terms, but they also want restrictions on certain kinds of specific procedures, involving late-term pregnancies, very young pregnant girls, and so on.
And many states have implemented rules of that kind.
It’s also fair to say, I think, that many Americans would support more spending to offer women options to abortion. Safe houses, affordable medical care, more fluid adoption procedures, etc.
Hillary Clinton — who is avowedly pro-choice — famously said that abortions should be “safe, legal and rare” and supported the ban on late-term abortions, so long as the health of the mother is safe-guarded.
It seems like this approach might also work with firearms. Protect the broad principle of gun ownership, but work as a society to limit the particular weapons that are problematic on moral and practical levels.
–Brian, NCPR
“if we were truly after the non-peaceable citizens then we wouldn’t be pursuing the gun, we’d be pursuing the non-peaceable citizen!”
If we were truly after unsafe drivers, then we wouldn’t require safe drivers to wear seat belts. Where is it written that we can’t make reasonable regulations to promote public safety?
I don’t know what living in a dangerous neighborhood means. I guess it has more to do with perception than with reality.
I’ve lived in NY’s Lower East Side and in the Bronx, and never worried for my life. I’ve walked the streets and rode on the subways in all parts of the City at all hours of the day and night and never felt threatened.
No matter where you live, if you feel the need to own a gun for self protection, in my opinion, that is your choice and I couldn’t care less. But I would suggest your best weapon of choice would be a handgun (.38, .44 or 45), not an assault weapon, and don’t have a problem with that as long as it was/is purchased legally after a background check.
So what is my point? What would I like to see (although ultimately I really couldn’t care less)? I would like to see background checks be universal and nationwide for all purchases in a store, at a gun show and on the Internet. I would like to see clips for automatics and semi-automatics be limited to 5 or 10 rounds at most. If you had these as laws, the whole argument over assault weapons become next to meaningless.
Final note. To those who talk about protecting themselves from the government, you are nuts. The US Military is never out gunned. To those who have such thoughts, I wonder about your mental condition and your mental fitness to own any firearm. Are you really crazy enough to think you have the nerve and ability to go to war against a Marine?
By the way, my life was once threatened, not by a gun but by a knife.
I don’t remember what I said but I must have said something that really po’ed some guy because the next thing I knew a switch blade was at my throat.
Happy to report I and a friend were able to convince him it would be a really bad idea to slit my throat after 5 or 10 tense minutes.
After that event (no, I did not call the cops) I would sometimes see him on the street, say hi, and he would just look away and walk on by.
Would that be the same Hillary Clinton who also famously said, “I have met thousands and thousands of pro-choice men and women. I have never met anyone who is pro-abortion. Being pro-choice is not being pro-abortion. Being pro-choice is trusting the individual to make the right decision for herself and her family, and not entrusting that decision to anyone wearing the authority of government in any regard.”?
She obviously feels very strongly that government should not infringe on individual liberty, even individual liberties that are not constitutionally guaranteed.
I neglected to add that I agree completely with the concept that government should not infringe on individual liberties, especially those that are constituionally guaranteed.
“To those who talk about protecting themselves from the government, you are nuts. The US Military is never out gunned. To those who have such thoughts, I wonder about your mental condition and your mental fitness to own any firearm. Are you really crazy enough to think you have the nerve and ability to go to war against a Marine?”
Not that I think it’s relevant, but since you mention it, how’s that working out in Afghanistan?
Original Larry –
Your sentence “Not that I think it’s relevant, but since you mention it, how’s that working out in Afghanistan?” gets at the inherent contradiction and moral thin ice that many conservatives navigate on this issue.
You want to sound mainstream by saying “not that I think it’s relevant.” But you also want to make the point that armed resistance to the American government (you cite the situation in Afghanistan) is a question worth airing out.
The problem, of course, is that the vast, overwhelming majority of Americans think that taking up arms against our own military is a sickening idea. We oppose tyranny not by arming ourselves like Afghani militants, but by participating in a free and fair political process, by winning (and sometimes losing) elections.
This flirtation with the idea of using guns as a bulwark against tyranny — which translates inevitably into an argument for taking up arms against our own service-members — is a non-starter.
Not because suburban dudes with Ak-47s wouldn’t stand a chance against Special Forces, but because we are a strong, vibrant and confident democracy and we don’t flirt with political violence as a means of solving our domestic problems.
–Brian, NCPR
Nobody’s flirting with political violence or advocating armed resistance against the US military. You know as well as I do what I’m talking about: objecting to those who ridicule ideas they don’t agree with. In a country that was founded on the very principle that Pete Klein ridiculed, I think it is appropriate to remember that neither the need nor the means of people defending themselves from government is always as far-fetched as it sounds. It happens every day, all around the world. You want to get all huffy about it, fine. Why miss a chance to criticize those who don’t agree with you; after all, it can’t happen here, can it?.
Larry –
Yes, I want to “get huffy” with people who suggest taking up arms against America’s elected, democratic Federal government — in veiled and direct ways.
I want to “get huffy” with people who conflate armed rebellion against an oppressive undemocratic power (the British crown) with armed violence against a freely elected democratic government.
I want to “get huffy” with those who romanticize assault weapons and other military-style hardware as a form of political expression.
I don’t, in fact, view political violence as far-fetched. In fact, it’s common in America.
We’ve seen presidents of both parties, activists, doctors, gay people, labor leaders, corporate leaders, members of congress, and many others murdered or maimed in the last half century.
So when I “get huffy” about it, I’m reacting to a real, existent trend in modern conservative culture that flirts with dangerous ideas like “2nd amendment solutions” at the same time that people are dying.
–Brian, NCPR
The interesting thing about guns being a bulwark against tyranny is that we see right now that it does work. I have heard that it is insane to think that your gun is going to protect you from the US military.
Well the individual guns owned by individual herders and tribal people in Afghanistan have held the most powerful military in the world to a draw after 11 years.
Our experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam, would certainly show that an armed citizenry is a very effective force against any military.
You think conservatives are on “moral thin ice” because they talk about things you don’t like? Where then does that leave liberals? Over one million abortions take place annually in this country; they aren’t just talked about. It sure doesn’t leave liberals in possession of the moral high ground.
Lets not talk about abortion.
No? Why not? Is the ice too thin?
“We oppose tyranny not by arming ourselves like Afghani militants, but by participating in a free and fair political process, by winning (and sometimes losing) elections.”
Amazing sentence Brian! One I will be quoting for quite sometime.
One solution to this that I have not heard proposed yet is to simply re-classify these Assault Weapons and Assault weapon accessories as Title II weapons.
That would avoid the politically toxic “banning” of the weapons, while possibly achieving the same goal via heavy restrictions on them. It would also – and this is oh so important – educate everyone about the fact that we ALREADY heavily restrict weapon ownership.
That latter part is so important because it annihilates the silly and uninformed second amendment arguments we seem to be hearing lately. Fact is that right now you are NOT allowed to own any kind of firearm, firearm accessory, or weapon that you want.
Rancid -“Paul – it’s only the white suburban republican males who are the gun owners not the democrats living in the same neighborhood,
Another allegation based on what? Provide the stats to back it up.” I gave the source of the stats at the beginning of the thread – from a statistical study reported by Nate Silver. You may find the data counterintuitive.
Those “stats” also show that people living in high crime neighborhoods – African Americans – have the lowest rates of gun ownership. Yes these are the neighborhoods where the bad guys shoot at each other. These are also the neighborhoods where the people are demanding the most stringent gun laws, because their children are getting killed by stray bullets.
Unfortunately, a bunch of old white mid-western suburban republicans are blocking their efforts to protect their children. Whats worse, they are now naively suggesting that the good-guys – even the children – should arm themselves.
“Well the individual guns owned by individual herders and tribal people in Afghanistan have held the most powerful military in the world to a draw after 11 years.”
Yes, but Afghanis have been at war forever, and they live in a very difficult land that they know inside out. And it’s not like they’re winning. I think our suburban weekend gun range warriors would be in for a nasty shock. Besides, what percentage of Americans do you think would join in an effort to overthrow the government? My guess is that your armed resistance would be a mighty small fraction of the population. Afghanis have tribal loyalties going back generations. And the idea of taking up arms against other Americans is, thank god, repugnant to an overwhelming portion of the American people, yourself included, I imagine.