He was talking about “clinging” to guns as voting issue, not as a cultural or personal choice in general
Well, in that case, people who are gun owners have good reason to not want to vote for Obama. He supported the banning of all forms of semi-automatic firearms in Illinois (which, contrary to what some people think, is a state that has more cities in it than just Chicago, and a lot of rural people who are no doubt interested in keeping their guns without becoming criminals because a law made them illegal.) The NRA gave him a grade of “F” and called him “a true enemy of gun owners’ rights.” So, as a voting issue, I can see why they would “cling to guns,” and I doubt that it has anything to do with the fact that they’re losing jobs.
For what it’s worth, McCain also got an “F” from the NRA.
Sure, if people think being able to own a machine gun is more important than their own economic self-interest, they are certainly welcome to vote that way. It’s a rather shallow and self-defeating decision, though.
I think that the type of gun culture you’re talking about (the in-your-face, “cold dead hands,” NRA-bumper-sticker kind) is more of a response to anti-gun legislation than something that just spontaneously developed in America. I do not think it’s a response to economics. People tend to get more vocal about stuff when they stand to lose it.
Who ever said anything about a machine gun?
Obama was and presumably still is against all semi-automatic weapons.
I think you hit it right on the head there. This is something the Democrats need to watch out for, because it has bitten them in the past. And I say this as an atheist, non gun-owning Obama supporter.
No, there’s more to it than that. Something had to drive them to become so obsessive about guns in the first place. Most gun control legislation is too benign to provoke the kind of violent, anti-government sentiment that I saw. It also doesn’t explain the xenophobia, the racism and the twisted religionism.
I guess that’s just another case of the truth not being popular then. Those issues ARE minor.
What do you think that “something” was, then?
True. But he was asked for his opinion, not yours. He thinks the current economic conditions are relevant.
I look at what Obama said and I wonder if people really reacted negatively before the people at Fox News started telling them that they had been insulted.
To me he is saying that when people have gone without jobs for 25 years, it’s no wonder that they get bitter and think that no one of either party is going to help them. I don’t know about you guys, but I hear a growing skepticism about what the government can or will do to put our country back on its feet. They see the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer and health care costs going out the ceiling. They can’t sell their houses or get loans to pay for a place to live. Some big company executives have taken their pensions and on and on. So I don’t doubt that a lot of people are bitter.
It’s been my experience that when people lose control of their own lives they often try to control other people’s lives. That’s one of the reasons that sometimes middle-aged parents try to run their adult children’s lives. It’s one of the reasons why you will occasionally find meanspirited cops and teachers. Sadly, it’s also one of the reasons why people in fundamentalist churches try to make decisions about the private lives of other people. It gives them a sense of power in a situation where they feel powerless.
I’m not saying that the need to control and feel more powerful is the motive behind all fundamentalist beliefs. But it is behind some of them just like it is behind wife-beating. And some of the newer gun owners may have bought them for that same sense of empowerment. I saw it happen too many times in the inner city when a kid was bullied and he felt powerless. He went home and got his Daddy’s or his Mother’s gun and brought it to school.
That need not have anything to do with responsible gun ownership. Obama has not insulted them.
How does this not fit with what Obama said? This is what I brought away from his speech. It makes sense to me. I don’t think he is putting anyone down. I think he was answering a question with his opinion of what the truth of the matter is.
Republicans are really lean and hungry if they have to twist this to come up with something unpleasant.
Yet he apologized. What was up with that?
It’s partly that, I agree. But I think there are socioeconomic factors as well. There are people that are drawn to gun culture for the same reasons left-leaning college students are drawn to anarchy. It represents a sort of independence from government and–more importantly in this context–independence from the rest of society (as it exists). The whole “I’ll live on and defend my plot and you live on and defend yours” attitude is a symptom of this on one extreme, but it is present in other parts of gun culture, even the benign parts. Take hunting. To me, one of the joys of hunting is the feeling of doing something primal and independent from society. It’s also present in the self-defense ethos.
And there are members of the gun culture for whom those factors are not a dominant, just as there are anarchists who are just genuinely committed to the principles of anarchy. But I don’t think we can deny those kinds of social factors. And I think there’s a fairly straight line from feelings of xenophobia and economic insecurity to a desire for independence from the state and from social bonds. The right-wing militias often have some reason, racial or otherwise, why they think the existing setup is fatally flawed or why they feel the need to be prepared to exert their independence.
But I wouldn’t want to read that much into what Obama said. What I’m saying is debatable (armchair) sociology. I think he was saying something more fundamental about political science. He was saying that the big cultural factors get emphasized when the economy is shitty and when people don’t think voting on economic issues changes anything. That is an even more basic argument that seems difficult to assail.
Are you kidding??? Fox News hasn’t been around all that long, and this is hardly something new.
If the Democrats are going to win this argument, they need to stop whining about being victims of Fox News. As an independent voter, I really get sick and tired of that refrain. The Dems need to grow a pair and make their case, not bitch about Fox News and how unfair everything is. It’s funny how the OP talks about conservatives crying like little bitches, when what I see here is the liberals doing exactly that.
I think, if you feel that the economy is fucked and nothing can be done about your jobs, and all politicians are the same in that regard, you might turn to issues like gun control, immigration, gay marriage, etc., thinking that those are real, quantitative issues which would help you to determine for whom to vote. I understand that point of view because my family members vote that way. They are afraid of immigrants and terrorists and so, they vote Republican, even though, upon questioning, they don’t truly agree with Bush or McCain on the economy AT ALL.
It depends on your priorities. I think that gun control/anti-immigration/gay marriage issues are red herrings, because no change is really imminent with any of that, and even if it were, it wouldn’t affect people’s lives the same way that the recession has.
I wish Obama had stated things differently. He’s spreading a message of hope. Give rural Pennsylvania voters a reason to vote for your economic policies over the Republican’s pro-gun/anti-immigration/anti-gay bullshit. Help them see the how their lives could be improved by voting for Obama, instead of demeaning their priorities.
Obama was pretty much talking “What’s The Matter With Kansas?” - saying how a lot of people can be convinced to vote against their own self-interest by hot-button issues. But while there’s some truth in what he said, he violated the first law of running for office - he told voters that some of their problems are their own fault.
That is a good point. But I’ll say this much: I think the biggest way in which economic problems will influence gun ownership is that the crime caused by poverty will cause people to want to defend themselves. Hence, they will want to buy a gun. For self defense, from the criminals, which are a product of the failed economy.
A semi automatic weapon (which means only that the weapon is self-loading, not that it is a “machine gun”) is much better for self defense than a single shot weapon. (Diogenes, since I think I recall you talking about your former military service, which would imply that you already know that, I trust that you weren’t trying to equate semi-automatic weapons with “machine guns.”) And since Obama is against semi-automatic weapons, those voters might indeed be “clinging to guns” out of economic fears, but NOT in the way Obama probably meant.
I don’t know. I have some thoughts but it’s only more armchair sociology. I do thing economic depression plays a significant role.
No, but I was being more rhetorical than literally addressing Obama’s gun policies. I think that something like NAFTA is a much more significant issue than regulations on automatic weapons, semi-automatics, “assault rifles,” trigger locks, waiting periods, what have you.
I think you’re absolutely right. It’s a shame we can’t have a candidate who wanted to help the economy AND didn’t want to turn me into a criminal for possessing a semi-automatic rifle.
I don’t think there’s much real potential or impetus for gun legislation right now, so it’s just hollow positioning, not a real threat. It’s still better than someone who wants to bribe you with liberal gun rights in order to distract your attention away from the fact that more and more jobs are being farmed out to other countries.
“Gun culture” in the US isn’t a a monolithic entity.
I used to go to a big shoot when I lived in Ohio - hundreds of people would come from around the country to dump lead into old cars, appliances, whatever anyone felt like bringing. There’d be camping out for 2-3 nights surrounding the event. It was primarily military rifle enthusiasts - we had everything there from people with WW2 vintage bolt actions to real assault rifles to gasp machine guns. Even miniguns.
Anyway, we’d camp and have cookouts and knock back beers and talk. There was definitely a healthy sentiment of distrust of government in that crowd, a lot of libertarian leanings. But the few times I heard someone trying to tell a racist joke or say something along those lines, they’d usually get shut up along the lines of “do you want people to think we’re a bunch of racist rednecks?”
These were hardcore “gun culture” people - probably an average of 6-10 guns each, lots of exotic hardware from custom-made (legal) full auto guns, vietnam bring-back AK-47s, mortars, tripod-mounted belt fed machine guns. And you’ve probably never met a nicer group of people. Pretty much everyone was polite, generous, decent - I felt much safer surrounded by hundreds of people with thousands of guns than I would in an average crowd at, say, a mall. There was a real sense of comraderie - not only were we the first targets of people like Sarah Brady, but we were often the targets of NRA card-carrying hunting-loving assholes who’d derisively say “what do you need THAT for?” as quickly as gun control advocates and who sell us out regularly. So we were about as hardcore as you could get as gun nuts, and yet there was very little in the way of what you were describing, and those people who did think that way were looked down on for it.
There’s probably a high rate of gun nuts among white seperatist assholes, but that doesn’t mean that there’s a high rate of white seperatist assholes among gun nuts.