Underlining for irony is mine
No, because right after a tragedy like this is exactly when a laser focus on the issue is given by people who don’t usually care enough to be swayed to either side about it. Like it has been mentioned many times, after every gun tragedy those with a pro-gun bent like to cry foul and say that “this isn’t the time to talk about it”. Well, when is it? You’re against the kind of gun control that I am for, so when would you like to talk about it? Never? I don’t accept that as an answer.
To me, because the wounds are fresh, and because such violence has already claimed so many lives while being ignored by our legislators, now is exactly the time to talk about it. After 9/11, did people say that the wounds are too fresh and we much wait until the anger abates before we do anything meaningful? Anger is not always bad, and anger at an injustice is a good tool to feed a great desire to eliminate or curb that injustice.
I think pro-gun people like to wait, which is why the NRA shut down its public feeds, so that after the immediate grief and anger has subsided, they can do their dirty work of convincing people they actually need more guns without the bodies of the slain juxtaposed onscreen next to their rants
Would you agree that high emotions make for good legislation?
I would say they do not; and what I see here is an attempt to capitalize on heightened emotions due to tragedy to further a political goal. If your goals are so fine and so widely desired, why are unable to pass the legislation you want with out climbing atop a pile of dead children to do it?
Legislation is either good or bad on its own terms. The reasons it was passed aren’t that important. Some of the provisions in the USA Patriot Act would have been terrible law if they’d been passed in 1999 or 2003, for example. And it’s not as if a new law is going to be passed tomorrow since the rest of the year will be occupied by fiscal cliff issues and the next Congress be seated for another month.
One might as well ask why you’re unable to ask that question without making comments about piles of dead children, and why comments like that have become standard issue after every shooting spree. The answer is that the gun lobby is well funded, well organized, and extremely skilled at pressuring Congress and perhaps even more skilled at keeping its supporters in a constant state of panic that mass confiscation of guns is about to happen. (For real this time!) Which - even if some new gun control laws are passed - will not happen. All of which makes your comments about emotion deeply ironic.
So since the US seems to be having about 15 mass shootings in the past 4 years…
That’s about one every three months or so. I’m sure that nobody wants to create legislation based on high emotion. So we should probably wait about 4 months after any mass killing before considering legislation.
So… Never then. That sounds about right. Emotions will be running too high pretty much all the time, so there will never, ever be a good time to prevent mentally ill people from obtaining military-grade weapons with the ability to kill many people quickly.
So…why is it that the HCI et. al. have never been able to become “well funded, well organized, and extremely skilled at pressuring congress?” We’ll set aside whether anti’s are in a panic or what may panic them. Why is the gun control lobby politically impotent? Their high water mark was the passage of the assault weapons ban in '94. They had somewhat minor triumph a few years later when Bill Clinton issued an executive order banning the importation of several semi-automatic rifles. Otherwise? It has been an ongoing triumph for the pro-gun lobby. I will point you to how easily obtained legal CCW has become the rule, rather than the exception in most of the US.
Gun people are routinely portrayed at this board as stupid, paranoid, easily panicked, ignorant rednecks. Presumably, the antis must be none of those things. So how is it that you aren’t the ones getting your political agenda enacted?
Spoken as a lazy, liberal, vulgar, Godless hippy who hasn’t eaten any meat for 20+ years and who has never fired a handgun in his life, I seem to recall that a fattie pack o’ “feel good” laws were passed in the hysterical wake of another national tragedy, collectively called The Patriot Act (sounds like the name of a Randy Travis album to me) which turned out to be the best thing that’s happened to this fine cunt-tree since the mollyfocking 18th Amendment, right???
They don’t have an entire industry like the gun industry to fund them, for one thing.
Because money, passion and ruthlessness are better at getting an agenda passed than being in the right is.
I’ve never sat down to make a list of reasons, but I suspect there are plenty - some simple (the NRA already exists) and some complex (there is plenty of disagreement about how any new gun laws should work). And this doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not a different set of gun laws would be a good idea. Look at it this way: the Assault Weapons Ban, which ended almost a decade ago, did not result in the confiscation of any guns and a new AWB won’t either; Obama has stayed far away from this issue throughout his first term; and the Supreme Court has been ruling against gun control laws for years in cases like Heller. And yet the rhetoric on the right doesn’t reflect any of this: Obama expanded access to guns in some small ways in his first term, and the NRA continued to spout theories about his secret intentions and then gun sales went up again after he was re-elected. Does this perhaps reflect a shaky grip on the facts or a desire to not acknowledge them? The only change I’ve seen lately is the addition of the “this is not the time for a gun control conversation, you’re exploiting the deaths of innocent people!” tactic to their arsenal. Maybe it’s finally stopped working owing to the fact that it makes no sense, has worn pretty thin since there have been so many mass shootings in the last year, is kind of grotesque on its own and, as I noted, is entirely ironic.
Let’s leave what is “ironic” and other hipsterish concerns for later. Since I have been a politically active gun owner, the NRA has consistently held the position that the immediate aftermath of a shooting tragedy was not the time to draft legislation, your recollections not withstanding. It was one more thing that got mercilessly spun as pissing on the graves of the Columbine victims, for example.
This is an excellent example of exactly what I mean by heightened emotions not producing good legislation.
No, but they have people like you who should be willing to put some cash on the line when there are all these lives you could be saving. How much did you donate last year? How many times did you participate in a calling campaign? Did you hold, or even go to , any fund raising events? What, really, did you do other than complain on the internet in a most heartfelt manner?
No, let’s address what I was saying: you’re dismissing gun control advocates as emotional while ignoring the fact that the NRA does everything it can to keep its members in a state of panic. Both are appeals to emotion and neither has anything to do with the relative merits of their positions, so if you’re going to complain about gun control advocates being emotional, acknowledge that their opponents are more than happy to use emotion to keep their side motivated. And maybe don’t pepper your posts with references to piles of dead children.
You’re right. They’ve been very consistent in using a bullshit tactic to indefinitely postpone a conversation they coincidentally don’t want to have at any time, which is surely a matter of principle and not convenient self-interest. That would mean there’s been no change at all in anti-gun control rhetoric over the years even as access to guns has increased and Democrats have avoided the issue (Obama made no moves on gun control after the shootings in Arizona, Wisconsin, Aurora…) Look at it this way: if there were no mass shootings in the next two years, people who want stricter gun control laws would still support the same laws they already support. Do you think that in the event that happened, NRA would say “We’re happy to have this conversation now?” Or do you think they’d say there’s nothing to discuss?
Well, he constantly pontificates about what a perfect paradise “Europe” is, which is pretty impressive for someone that seems to have never visited this mystical, enchanted land.
Let’s stick to discussing the actual issue. Scumpup asked a relevant question; this is just off-topic personal snark that would be more at home in the Pit.
You know what? Let’s just take it as a given for right now that pro-gun people are the easily panicked cattle you say and that the NRA is mendacious and evil. You’ve got all the smart, good people on your side. You have all the accumulated grief of every mass murder putting fire in your bellies. Why are you unable to do more than complain on the internet? You never did answer that and I’ve heard a couple choruses now of your song about panic-stricken NRA members.
I don’t recall saying that (because I didn’t). Why all the straw?
You know, Marley23, I have a high general level of respect for you and it disappoints me for you to try a move this bullshitty. From this thread:
Okay? You mean none of that was meant to characterize NRA members as panic-stricken or the NRA as an organization of questionable character?
I am certainly questioning the character of NRA leadership based on the rhetoric uses, although that’s not the main thrust of my argument - but I did notice you haven’t disagreed with me that they use those tactics because I think you know very well that they do. I haven’t called NRA members stupid or cattle or panicky. I am suggesting they’re being misled because I think that’s true.
No, you didn’t use the word “misled” even once, or even any words of similar meaning. You used the word “panic” a couple of times, though. Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining, please.
As it happens, I am actually no great fan of the NRA. I resigned my life membership when Ted Nugent kind-of-sort-of threatened Obama a while back. While they are still a lobbying behemoth, I believe they lobby mainly to keep the laws at the status quo which ensures a long term stream of donations to the NRA. Okay? I’m not on “their side” as such.
Now, whether the members are misled or panicky or stupid or none of those things, and the NRA’s moral turpitude notwithstanding, why is the gun control lobby so politically ineffective?
If you insist on being offended, I can’t stop you - but if that’s the case I also won’t take that offense seriously. I never called anyone stupid, never called anyone cattle, and I think my other posts make it clear that I think these people are being misled by cynical hucksters rather than being idiot rednecks (another characterization you threw out upthread). We all have biases and being deceived isn’t a character flaw. Playing to people’s biases to scare them to your own advantage, however, is. Either way, my point isn’t that the NRA are a bunch of scam artists (for the record, they are): it’s that both sides are happy to appeal to emotion, so criticizing one side for that behavior is not reasonable. If you’re going to say that gun control advocates are climbing on tops of the bodies of dead children to scare or guilt people into supporting stricter gun laws, you should acknowledge that some gun rights advocates are happy to frighten people with images of a tyrannical federal government sending the army to confiscate their guns.
Like I said: there are probably a lot of reasons, including the NRA itself, the Second Amendment, American gun culture, the lack of widespread agreement on what better gun control would look like, and (as Der Trihs suggested) the fact that there isn’t a not-selling-guns industry. I’m not sure how much that really matters.