Well, there isn’t one universal dogma regarding the 2nd Amendment and why it’s useful. There are numerous discrete arguments that are made on behalf of its utility. But even the “defense against tyranny” people often are coming at it with a little more nuanced of a perspective than what you’re implying here. I mean, keep in mind that there are a great many adherents to the “fighting against the government/fighting against warring factions in some kind of catastrophic government-collapse scenario” who have, in fact, spent years, DECADES, in the military themselves.
These people aren’t mindlessly repeating talking points from Wayne LaPierre. I know guys who spent an unbelievable amount of their lives in combat arms positions in the military, being shuffled from command to command, deploying in hot conflicts, attending all kinds of schools and exercises and cross-training with other countries’ forces…living this life for a decade or more…and these guys will talk your ear off about how the US military sucks ass at fighting asymmetrical warfare and that in fact they WOULD be in serious, serious trouble if Americans took up arms.
We can’t just throw their perspective in the garbage because some idiot in Montana who’s lived in the same 25 mile radius his entire life and does nothing but listen to Mark Levin and post memes on Facebook all day long happens to make kinda-sorta the same argument, just from a really, really ignorant scatterbrained speculative standpoint.
You can deny that you’re like that, and I’ll concede that not all gun owners harbor fantasies of armed revolution, but pretending they don’t exist is dishonest.
Well, not so much dishonest as a rather poor tactic. Because you won’t convince me I didn’t have experiences I remember having.
There is almost always a move to ban firearms somewhere in this country. The notion that this is some conspiracy theory being propagated by the NRA is actually a conspiracy theory propogated by the folks who want to ban firearms.
Do you think the NRA is riling people up by telling them that someone is trying to pass legislation banning ALL firearms or are they talking about the actual attempts in many jurisdictions to ban on some firearms?
As we have already concluded on this board, assault weapons bans are stupid.
Some gun control folks have come to understand how stupid it is to ban firearms based on cosmetic features (or at least how stupid it makes them look) and now propose to ban all semi-automatic firearms (coupled with confiscation).
There has been a series of blue wave elections in Virginia since Trump has been in office and the Democrats here have decided that this means they have a mandate to ban semi-automatic firearms. Proposed legislation would ban everything from a Glock to an AR-15. This is bad for the Democratic party in Virginia. This might work in a few years when the Democratic party’s hold over Virginia is more secure but right now it is just telling people like me that we should vote Republican as soon as Trump is out of office.
I actually agree with adaher here, except that there is already a gun-owners org which thinks the NRA is too soft on gun control. So, there’s already a gun rights org out there waiting to step into the NRAs jackboots. Note the NRA wasnt such a reactionary org for most of it’s lifetime.
And note that the NRA is way low on the totem pole for money spent on lobbying. It’s not even in the top 100. (Health orgs are #1, and Pharma, with Big Tobacco being pretty significant) The $ the NRA spends hardly moves the needle. It’s that 5 million single issue voters.
It’s a ban on selling firearms, so yes it is. Lets not get into the that odd concept that unless a gun control las completely and totally bans the possession of every gun to everyone it’s not a “gun ban”. The people who wrote the law called it a “ban”.
Okay, so you think a ban on assault weapons is a ban on firearms in general. Do you feel that the ban on assault weapons banned anything else? Did it ban automobiles or computers or toasters?
That’s like saying open season on deer means open season on mammals, since deer are a specific type of mammal. All it means is you’d have to spend the rest of the discussion clarifying that you don’t mean hunting humans, if you insist on continuing to use “open season on mammals” because it’s “accurate”.