Yes, fine, and my point is that this is a stupid thing for you to be arguing to death. For years there have been mainstream media stories of guns and ammo being in short supply because some gun owners being afraid that Obama would ban them (cites on request). Did these gun owners actually believe the stories? Who the fuck cares. Since Sandy Hook we have had all kinds of pundits and blowhards saying things like "when Obama comes for my guns I am going to stick them up his ass." (again, cites if requested). Do they believe that Obama is really coming for the guns? Again, who the fuck cares? The media is full of this shit and those of us who are paying attention are being deluged with this messaging. That, my friend, is what the OP is talking about, the constant hyperbole and how fucking moronic it is.
So the reason that McConnell is deliberately appealing to a vanishingly small minority of gun owners is because he is stupid. Works for me.
OP: “he was also going to take all the guns away”.
Article: “Obama wants to ban guns”
It’ll look kinda gay, though.
Definitely an unbiased, peer-reviewed source if I’ve ever seen one!
So, how to we define “gun nut”, if we are to even use such an injudicious phrase? And what sort of threat do they represent? If we are talking about guys who just love to acquire guns and drool over them in the privacy of their homes…well, so what? If we don’t see them or hear them, who cares?
Or is it the guy who “only” has one or two but hates Obama totally, and mutters darkly about armed resistance to tyranny (or, as they phrased in my youth, “treason”…) Who very well might pick another topic for his blithering hatred. Again, not much of a threat even if he follows through. Not a pleasant thought, to be sure, but hardly an existential threat.
Who are these people? How many are there? If we wanted to find out, how would we go about it?
So im in my bathroom… just havin a grand old time with my bottle of Complete Moisture Lotion just making sure i rub it in, then out of no where someone came out of no where and took my gun… so i shot them with the only thing i had left in my right hand then we got in the tub and before you no it we are both chewing on some sausage links. yummmy
Its been mentioned upthread, amongst other places, how the NRA got gun control religion when the Black Panthers staged their political theater of carrying guns openly in Sacremento. I remember it, I was in Berkeley at the time. Then, of course, people were talking about how the government was coming to take their guns. But it was a different bunch of people.
So, when is armed resistance to tyranny justified? In my opinion, then as now, the plight of the black man in America was onerous and hateful, and he had every right to resent and resist. Certainly more so in Mississippi than in, say, Minnesota. But armed resistance to the government of the US is treason, whether justified or not. So I had to ask myself the question, if I knew that someone like a Panther or the idiot stick Weathermen…if I knew they were planning a violent act, would I turn them in? Despite my sympathy for their cause, would I rat them out to the Man?
Yes.
From this perspective, “gun nuts” who mutter darkly about “resisting tyranny” have achieved a special category of asshole, the privileged oppressed. Fuck them all, and the horses upon in which they rode.
I remember a Nicraguan I met, who was hiding out in America. His English was better than my Spanish, but we managed a conversation. He wasn’t a revolutionary for ideology, his didn’t know Marx from a hole in the ground, though he was a hero to the Marxists who were hiding him and feeding him. If I fight them, they will probably kill me, he said. If I don’t fight them, they will still kill me, only slower, and my family as well. He didn’t make a choice so much as didn’t have one.
Maybe he was lying, maybe I was just another naive radical lefty, suckered by a Marxist. I don’t think so. * Via con Dios*, Roberto. I don’t know what became of you, but I hope you are old, and well, and pestered by grandchildren.
Great, so then please explain how you would justify banning assault weapons? If you can’t justify this infringement of my second amendment right then why do gun control activists keep bringing it up?
I think most of the regulatory stuff is good policy and I think some of it doesn’t go far enough (i don’t think Obama has suggested a national registry) but why throw this irrational assault weapon ban on there? If its just a ploy to give the NRA a “win” as we improve background check and gun registration then fine, I applaud Obama finally learning to give himself some room to negotiate. But right now it looks like an overreaction from ignorance.
Yeah there are some whackos out there but the majority of NRA members support closing the gun show loophole.
http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/html/media-center/baltsun_121509.shtml
Some on the gun rights side even support a national registry.
Like I said how would you physically change a gun to control its rate of fire?
What would you do about all the guns out there that already have capacity in excess of 6 rounds. (and why 6 rounds? Why not 5 or 10 or 2?)
I think we will get rid of the gunshow loophole. I would like to see a national gun registry and a licensing requirement that the government “shall issue” if you pass a test like a drivers exam.
Most of the ARs I see are full size, they are more powerful, they are more accurate and can store stuff in the stock if the stock is hollow.
I think my wife would think it is a better self defense weapon because it is a one shot stop firearm that she can handle reasonably well. She can’t handle a shotgun or a high caliber handgun very well.
But why does it have to be a good self defense weapon? Is there a self defense requirement to the second amendment?
Sawed off shotguns are restricted because shortening the stock makes them concealable. What is the rationale for restricting a collasible stock?
Yeah but you will sound stupid when you talk about trying to restrict assault weapons.
Some liberals are as irrational about guns as some conservatives are about gay rights, minority rights, gender rights, human rights, taxes, economics, global warming, science, etc.
Their primary interest is not really relevant, they are jerking their knees. They cannot think rationally about guns.
What is their argument?
And do you think he would have been better of with guns in his efforts or without guns?
I wouldn’t. If I was trying to have a rational ‘you can own guns’ policy I’d say
‘You can have THIS gun. The Second Amendment Special. One of them.’
And 6 because i’m a genrous sort of guy.
But as we’re talking the USA not Magicland I wouldn’t even bother trying to do anything and arm myself against all the gun-toting, barrel-stroking nutbars out there. I’d reserve my ire for all the people wailing and moaning about yet another pile of dead kids without any intention of doing anything about it or politically penalising those who block measures.
Meanwhile I prefer living in a country where the police are winning the war against gun crime
Well, since he was resisting a vicious and murderous tyranny, “with” must be the only possible option. And since his situation is precisely identical to American patriots resisting the liberal jackboots of Obama’s gun grabbing Greenshirts, clearly precisely the same situation applies here in America!
I am stunned by your wicked rhetorical skills, and have no option but to reverse my positions forthwith in groveling surrender to your brilliance.
My point was that you can’t create as gun that can only fire once every three seconds. And how would you reconcile giving every home invader three seconds between shots to come at me?
I don’t think that Obama’s any sort of threat. He can’t even ride herd over a congress full of nutjobs but one day we may get a President like Dick Cheney and in the interests of national security, he may declare a state of national emergency and he may decide that in the interests of stability it would be best if his son succeeded him to office. Are you telling me that the Patriot Act and the code orange security alerts etc. didn’t remind you of how the government usurped democracy in Orwell’s 1984?
I don’t think it will happen in my lifetime but it has happened in the past and it can happen again.
There may not be that many people who believe that Obama wants to ban all guns, but if that’s true then I must be Facebook friends with every single one of them.
This might shock you as a gun nut, but there are ways to defend yourself without a gun. You guys are always saying that mass murders are acceptible if they don’t hurt gun rights, I am saying the ability of a home owner to shoot their intruder can be impugned if it means that no one will have weapons of mass slaughter on hand to kill school children in a few heartbeats.
Ways to defend your home include baseball bats, knives, hands and feet, pepper spray, and a big dog. Why are gun owners such pussies?
I always wonder why we let gun owners get away with “but I have a right to defend myself”. Why do you think guns are the only weapons in the freaking universe, you fucking pussies?
They LOVE to go on and on, whinging about how you can kill someone with toenail clippers if you want, but they need an AR-15 with 100 round drum magazine to defend their homes because you can’t adequately defend yourself with anything less. You can’t have it both ways.
Oh, but then when the debate goes along a different track, suddenly it’s about how gun owners are fools for clinging to their rifles to fight a hypothetical hopeless war against a tyrannical U.S. government in which most of them would be killed; nothing pussy about that. You can’t have it both ways.
Bottom line, you can create unflattering strawmen and pat yourself on the back all you like; all it proves is that you haven’t got the faintest clue how gun owners feel or what motivates them. Keep fuckin’ that chicken.
Actually I can have it both ways: Those guys are lying and living out a fantasy life where they aren’t just a big pussy who bought a gun and that they are rugged individualists. The percentage of people running their yap about how they would bug out and fight the federal government who would actually do it when time came to eat a drone strike sandwich is probably somewhere between zero and one percent. Walter Mittie was a pussy who imagined he was a badass spy, their fantasy life doesn’t make them not a pussy hiding behind a gun anymore than a LARPer nerd’s character makes him a Knight of Valor.
I’m not creating an unflattering strawman, would you like me to cite how gun owners both claim that you can kill anyone with any innocuous household object, AND that they need firearms to defend themselves? You know that they make both arguments which are contradictory, so go ahead and explain that.
Yes you can. Learn to shoot straight. Get some strong locks. Besides most of the rest of the world gets by without blasting away at sons, brothers-in-law rolling up drunk, passing japanese tourists and other assorted ‘home-invaders’ without being murdered in their beds by gun-toting maniacs.
I didn’t say it was practical outside of magicland anyway. As a nation your peculiar and disturbing obsession with firearms is too deeply ingrained. You are not going to do anything at all about and you are going to continue to see all the massacres and all the other deaths as a price worth paying.
I wish you’d all just drop all the hand-wringing crocodile tears when shit happens. Just admit it and stop wallowing. Instead, each time something like this happens the reaction is to go out and buy more bloody guns and flock to clutch the skirts of the NRA.
And I just wish when the next atrocity occurs the world media puts it at the bottom of page 5, shrug and move on.
I’m about to sleep. There’s a machete and arnis sticks in my room should anyone be stupid enough to break in. Goodnight everybody!