Beto’s campaign is floundering badly, and in his desperation he’s decided that completely reversing his earlier position could be a savvy political move:
I’d like to take a moment here and sincerely thank Francis for almost certainly single-handedly killing the chances of some new gun control measures passing through Congress, just at the precise moment that President Trump and Senator McConnell seemed to be going all wobbly on us.
What do you guys think of him though? Is the once-golden-boy of the Democratic Party now looked at like that crazy uncle that’s muttering nonsense to himself (like how they used to look at Joe Biden)? Or has he got his finger on the pulse of the bleeding hearts of liberals, giving voice to your deepest desires? Was he lying then or is he lying now?
Personally, I’m undecided about the practical advantages of broadly-defined-type-based gun bans, so from a policy perspective I’m like “Hmmm, still thinking”. But from a public discourse perspective, I think it’s a good thing to have a wider variety of opinions on gun-control measures openly discussed. I don’t want any constitutional and potentially practical strategies for reducing gun violence to be automatically taboo in the national conversation just because they’re not popular with gun owners.
You don’t think it’s got anything to do with the different constituencies he’s trying to calibrate his message to appeal to: Texans then and dem primary voters now?
Why do you believe he is acting in desperation? Why can’t it be that he really feels this way and has finally saw the light, and it’s not just some political calculation? Because your statement here doesn’t really allow for this possibility.
Assuming that there was ever a chance of something passing with the Republicans in charge in the Senate (HA!), why do you feel this would kill it? What’s the logic here?
If you want people to stop killing other people with the types of weapons O’Rourke wants to ban, it’s not crazy at all what he is saying. You make think he’s muttering nonsense, but that doesn’t make it so. Finally, if wanting people to stop dying because of guns makes me a “bleeding heart” liberal, so be it. If we are going to stop 40K or so people from dying every year in this country because of guns, we’re going to have to start banning them in considerable numbers. It’s the only way.
I tend to be more cynical about politicians not only him. I’d guess it highly likely he believed in confiscation back when he denied it, or more likely still doesn’t really care, just wants to get elected and his campaign is sinking to the point he might as well take a shot, any shot. But who really knows what’s in other people’s minds?
The point is how generally ridiculous it is when either politicians or people on the internet say ‘who’s talking about taking guns?!? we’re not saying that at all, you’re just paranoid from watching too much Fox News’, etc.
But, trying to think of it objectively, nothing you do that only applies to new gun sales is going to make a major difference for a long time. Guns last a really long time with reasonable care, could be centuries assuming only moderate use, and even ammunition can be usable for decades if stored properly. So it only makes sense, if you value gun rights lightly relative to the societal benefits you see from fewer guns, to want to also take (certain kinds, at least of) guns away from people who bought them legally. The reason not to say so is to avoid inspiring such strong anti-gun control feelings (votes, fund raising, etc) that it could spill over to preventing even half measures like banning sale of the same types of new guns. There isn’t really a principled reason to be in favor banning sale of X type guns but be against confiscation of existing X type guns.
But by the same token pro-gun rights people who see a slippery slope to confiscation are probably not being that paranoid actually.
Yeah. My (fairly neutral) opinion of O’Rourke hasn’t really significantly shifted in response to this particular rhetoric, but my (previously nonexistent) view of this turd Cain is strongly negative.
On a side note, I was also unfavorably impressed to learn about Rep. Cain’s sanctimonious Nyah-Nyah-Dead-Atheist response last year to the death of physicist (and atheist) Stephen Hawking: “Stephen Hawking now knows the truth about how the universe was actually made.” Dumbasses who would be totally incapable of understanding the work of a groundbreaking scientist or intelligently discussing his work with him during his lifetime leap at the chance to act smugly superior about him once he’s safely dead.
I am not a fan of O’Rourke. Don’t hate him. He’s just not my top pick in this Democratic field. But I do appreciate his evolution on guns and the fact that he was bold enough to say what has to be said more often, and embraced by American society as a whole.
Whaddaya know - sometime over the course of a year and a half, he changed his mind.
Seems quite familiar - sometime over the past two or three years, I changed my mind in the very same way. Merely no longer selling assault weapons isn’t enough, given the millions of them out there: mandatory buybacks are a necessity to stop the slaughter. And like I keep saying, feel free to call me a gun-grabber, because you’ve been calling me one all along. What are you going to call me that’s any different, now that I’m actually for bona fide gun grabbing? Wolf, wolf, wolf!
An awful lot of Democrats have been waiting for a long time for candidates who aren’t going to go along with talking about whatever the media think is important that week, who are going to say, look, I don’t care what your issue du jour is, here’s what really matters." Gimme more, Beto, gimme more!
He’s no doubt been deeply affected by the many personal emotional interactions he has had with all of the victims in his district. I mean, if something like that can’t change a mind, what the hell could?
It’s completely unquestionable to me that his is not a cynical move.
Please do say it more often. For decades, Democrats have worked against the perception that any regulation of guns was just another step on the slippery slope to confiscation. Every time a Republican made that claim, the Democrats would rush out and say, “No, No! We don’t want to take anyone’s guns! We just want a modicum of common-sense regulation!”. And that’s worked, as about 70% of Americans are in favor of ‘common sense’ gun regulations. They just differ on what those are.
In one night, Beto O’Rourke destroyed decades of perception control by anti-gunners. Now, any time a Democrat says they don’t want to ban guns, someone will hold up a Beto T-shirt that says, “Hell yes I’m going to take your AR-15”, or quote the many Democrats who came out in favor.
By the way, the AR-15 is the most popular rifle in America. As such, it is absolutely constitutionally protected. Beto might as well have made up a T-shirt that said, “Hell yes I plan to violate my oath to defend the Constitution!”
I get the sense (at least, from the loud cheering for Beto’s remarks during the debate) that for many Democratic voters, Beto’s comments were at last a big breath of fresh air, where someone finally said out loud what they had been silently wishing for all along but that no other (D) candidate was going to say. *Finally *someone who wants the assault rifles confiscated.
Well, as with most tipping points, there was doubtless a long slow build-up to the deceptively sudden moment of tip. What O’Rourke did AFAICT was not so much moving the needle on the actual likelihood of a legislative ban as daring to articulate how much most Americans have come to distrust a lot of gun owners, and to consider them not sufficiently responsible to have completely uncontrolled access to such dangerous weapons.
I don’t see this as some kind of long-awaited slipping of the mask of “covert confiscationists”, so much as a snapping point for many people who have lost faith that compromise is possible. The newly adversarial stance is expressing a lot of frustrated (and frightened) Americans’ conscious loss of belief that they have a good-faith partner in gun-rights advocates when it comes to negotiating a path toward greater gun safety.
The feeling is not “Ha ha, yes we really are going to take your guns, we always intended to!”
It’s “We’ve stood by and watched all this shit happen as your desired interpretation of gun rights has gone on expanding and your response to mass shootings and other gun violence has always been perfunctory ‘thoughts and prayers’ along with demands for more guns. It’s finally dawning on us that you don’t actually give a crap about people being killed compared to your self-image as a heroic rights-defending patriot. Fuck compromise any more, we’re taking your guns away.”
Mind you, I personally don’t think that this mood of anger and frustration is the most constructive attitude for approaching discussions of deadly weapons, and it’s unlikely to make any form of abolition movement more practically effective. But I think it’s important to recognize that this is about a shift in most Americans’ attitude and a loss of their trust, not about a sudden revelation of what they were really meaning to do all along.
Probably so. I think we’re more likely to see rapid movement on so-called “red flag” legislation than on broad-based weapon bans. After all, guns don’t kill people, people kill people, and a large number of Americans are in favor of being more proactive in trying to identify and disarm the people who do. Of course, there are some constitutional-rights thickets to be negotiated there too.
