The GOP has always blocked the mildest and most popular gun control measures and it never comes back on them because the gun fanatics in red state America have far more political clout than their actual numbers warrant because of the inherent flaws in our “democracy.”
My mother is extremely anti-gun, to the point where she wouldn’t allow my father to bring his father’s WWII service weapons into the house when he passed. However, no matter how reasonable and universally approved legislation is that the Republicans block on gun control, she will be voting for them this fall.
It won’t cost them a single vote.
The Republicans will blame the Democrats for anything at all. If the Democrats don’t have gun control as an important plank, then they will not be doing anything either, and will rightly be blamed for that by those on the left.
Nicholas Kristof’s plan, in today’s New York Times, is to treat guns the way automobiles are treated. Everyone of the elements of his plan is popular with voters.
It still won’t matter. The country is gerrymandered so all the gun nuts have all the power.
This morning I listened to a Fox guest pretty much blame the parents, the border situation because the town was overrun with illegals and everyone in town was armed to protect their kids now they have to deal with a mass shooting on top of it all. Not nearly finished she had to mention the lack of bibles in schools, Americas moral failings and she ventured into Covid measures that isolated the elderly and the young and bleated on about a priest and his crucifix that apparently comforted grief stricken bystanders. I had to switch it off.
I would say the governors school safety action plan should be used to wiped Abbotts ass. It largely relies on law enforcement in schools gives a passing mention to mental health and lists all the ISD’s that have hired guns. Oh and all the cops on campus will get a free lunch in the cafeteria. I guess they’d be there to mingle and for the hero worship from the rotc club?
https://gov.texas.gov/uploads/files/press/School_Safety_Action_Plan_Summary.docx
…Like their representation in Congress is.
What we need is a managed dissolution of the US, red state America can be Yemen on the Gulf of Mexico and we can be a modern democracy, but incidents like these and how differently we react to them show that we are not the same nation and what we have now is not sustainable.
First: DO NOT call me a “Democrat”. I am not one. Neither am I a Republican. I am and always have been independent of any political party.
Yeah. Can’t talk about gun control, because that will lose the election. Can’t talk about reproductive rights because that will lose the election. Can’t talk about health care coverage because that will lose the election. Can’t talk about anything because that will “lose the election”.
What the FUCK can we actually talk about? Tell me.
I suspect in those cases a lot of the parents would be found unfit to be around guns.
Getting guns off the streets and fixing our gun fetish would be a loooong, slow process. But the first step has to be taken for it happen. Just throwing in the towel is unacceptable. But I imagine the Millenials and Zoomers are much more open to changing things. We need to play the long game. Like conservatives did on abortion.
Problem is, we have one political “party” that has turned this into another culture war and that’s all they have left when it comes to governing. If one of the two major parties fight for gun deaths, no progress will be made. When the GQP finally self-destructs, there will be a chance. But that assumes we haven’t turned into a fascist country by then.
After the Republican Party.
The media needs to start publishing pictures of the slaughtered. People need to see the result.
Actually, right now is a really good time to talk about reproductive rights, I think. In previous elections it was not, because abortion was the law of the land and unlikely to be overturned. Republicans have traditionally used the carrot of abortion bans as a way to motivate their base, so making the abortion issue a greater part of your platform - when the status quo was already in your favor - was probably a losing issue. However, the supreme court decision has changed that. The state of things has changed, and the carrot of getting abortion rights back is more motivating to the left than it was when it was the status quo. The democrats should absolutely run on abortion this cycle, and in general spin it up to be bigger than abortion and say that it’s basically the first time the supreme court has ever taken away icvil rights, and think about what they’re coming for next.
I’m not saying you can’t talk about anything important. I’m saying to be savvy about which issues you pick. Gun control has been a proven loser, time after time. It is not nearly as democrat vs republican partisan as you think it is. It is not the pressing issue of our time (we’ve had ten thousand people dying a year to guns for decades now, it’s not like it’s suddenly make or break in 2022). We do have actual pressing issues of our time, issues that need to be fought immediately or they will have far greater consequences, like the fascist coup and climate change.
Besides - how many of these reforms are you going to pass when you lose the election?
Get elected first. Focus on the issues that will win you voters, avoid the issues that will repel them. Notice that I’m not saying anything about what you do after you’re elected, I’m not saying what your policy priorities would be, I’m saying what your strategy should be to get elected. It’s amazing to me that you guys really don’t get this part. “What’s a good strategy to win elections” and “what should we do policy-wise once we’ve won” are two separate questions.
How about improving the economic interests and quality of life of the average person? People are getting squeezed so hard right now they can’t even make it by, and you could make such an easy issue of it, but instead you’ve decided to run on the same old divisive issues that drive people away from you.
Ah, yes, Paul Gosar, the man so despicable his OWN FAMILY has begged the public not to vote for him.
Yeah, and it wasn’t like it was his second cousins, his close immediate family.
We’ve done this to death. There’s no such thing as “blue state” or “red state.”
What there are is urban/suburban and rural. The rural part of all 50 states is hard red. The urban part of about 48 states is hard blue and the other 2 states’ urban areas are dark purple. Suburbia in all 50 states is varying shades of purple depending on their local SES and the overall tone of the state they’re in.
We can no more separate the USA into red & blue physical regions than we can geographically separate the Ford drivers from the Chevy drivers.
We’ve done this to death, what you say is nonsense. Red state is where they don’t wear a mask to troll the libtards and vaccines make you gay. Red state is where children are sacrificed to the second amendment. Red state is Alabama, Mississippi, West Virginia and other third world shit holes.
This kid has kind of already thought of that.
It is unreal to me that people are still living in a fantasy world where they will be the “Good Guy with a Gun” and need a Thunder Death Stick to defend themselves and their own. It didn’t do much good for the security guard in Buffalo, the two police offers in Uvalde, and the countless other instances where having a gun not only didn’t do any good but actually for the “good guy” killed. The Texas “solution” is we should arm the teachers (and probably cashiers, pastors, etc.). It is so dumb.
But you know, it wouldn’t bother me so much if they would at least own it and have the guts to say that the death of children is irrelevant compared to their right to have a gun, and no amount of death will change that. Because they know its true.
The homicide rate in NYC is about 2/3 of the U.S. average and 1/9 of the rate in Philadelphia.
Moderate gun control could be sold as needed to keep the police from being outgunned.
Eric Adams could say this and easily defeat Trump.
But such a centrist not-long-ago Republican couldn’t win Democratic presidential primaries.
And the Supreme Court seems about to outlaw NYC’s gun laws. Women will be able to travel to NYC for a safe abortion, except that NYC may no longer be a safe city.
And that people who should not have guns, do not.
Not a small number of people who brag about how they conceal-carry are HOPING they will have a chance to use their weapons. And those are precisely the people I wouldn’t feel safe around. Most police officers never pull, let alone fire, their own guns, and when they do, it’s usually to shoot an injured animal.
BTW, at least in the U.S., a huge percentage of the guns obtained in buy-backs are no longer working. They’re also controversial, especially among the ammosexual crowd, because they think it’s “taking away our weapons.” No, it’s not; it’s people selling them who don’t want them any more, and it’s nobody else’s business.
I don’t own a firearm, nor do I want to, but I respect the right of people to do so, as long as it’s for the right reasons.
Here’s Beto O’Rourke at the press conference, uncensored (and he wasn’t the one using profanity!).
Enough is enough.
The nutbars are a tiny minority.
If we get the Democratic voters out of their seats to actually vote, the GOP is history.
We need to play this as follows “The Democrats want gun laws that will protect good, law abiding gun owners. The GOP wants to protect the right of felons and killers to have access to guns.”
We can on both. We can’t make either one the whole and entire platform
That could also work.
No. They are not.