The US has had a significant reduction of gun deaths during the same time which hints at a larger reason, not strictly the legislation that was passed in Australia. No laws were passed in the US, nothing banned, yet homicides involving firearms dropped significantly. I’ve heard everything from the baby boomers aging, to the removal of lead in gasoline.
The results of the legislation before and that passed in 96 are completely unacceptable to the average NRA member. Entire classes of firearms are no longer available, licenses to own guns are at the discretion of local authorities based upon perceived need, etc. Those are exactly the NRA’s worst fears about doomsday. Not being a gun owner, it’s easy to understand why you don’t get it.
Actually, its so they can sell more memberships. I think I mentioned that earlier. If there was not a threat to firearm ownership in the US, the NRA would cease to exist.
It is a notable improvement without a law being passed, nor a gun being banned.
I was just wondering if you were really into this discussion or making things up. Yes, the NRA lies and exaggerates to instill fear into the members and would be members to bring in more funds. They are not unique in this endeavor.
Yes, the NRA lies and exaggerates to instill fear into the members and would be members to bring in more funds. They are not unique in this endeavor and I hope we are done with this discussion. Thanks for the cites.
Thanks for letting me know, and for staying with this.
Wasn’t there a gun ban of some kind introduced around then?
I’m kidding, mostly. Besides the possible reasons that you mentioned, there was also an increase in police numbers to combat rising crime, as well as a healthy economy that enabled young men to find jobs instead of turning to crime. Without any numbers, it’s impossible to say if the ban had much to do with it. (I notice that the decline coincided with the Bill Clinton presidency. I hadn’t realized that a reduction in violent crime happened on his watch.)
I take your point that it happened without more gun controls (assuming the assault weapons ban had no effect), but the decline stopped in about 2000 and the rate has held steady since then. The U.S. is still the runaway leader in gun deaths by a country mile with no indication it’s going to improve. Getting the rate down lower will take more than hoping for a lucky convergence of events that we don’t understand.
Seems like a small price to pay for preventing the slaughter of innocent people on a semi-regular basis. It’s easy to understand why you, an NRA member, don’t get it.:rolleyes:
Nope. It’s already been established that their worst fears are the end of individual freedom in this country, the tyranny of King George and blah blah blah. What you describe isn’t within a light year of that, not even blah blah blah.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but I have a bolt-action .22 that I got for my 13th birthday from my dad as a kind of rite of passage. I shot lots of gophers and rabbits with it along with my likewise-armed friends and hunted ducks and upland game birds with a borrowed shotgun. I have some good memories from those days, but after shooting a jackrabbit that ran away trailing a bloody hind leg, I packed the .22 away for good, except for one time 30 years ago when I was invited to a target range. If the government ever had cause to ban .22’s, it would be no loss to me.
So, been there, done that. Why again do I not get it?
I gathered those links after my first post in this thread, thinking for sure I’d be asked for them. When I wasn’t, I took that as tacit acceptance of my post, so I was a bit suspicious when you asked for them after all that time.
I’m not going to take the NRA’s word for it, so you’ll excuse me if I’m not finished with this discussion. I’m keeping open the possibility that they’re not being truthful, to put it politely. More bluntly, that seems to be their modus operandi. It didn’t take very long to collect those quotes I linked to. You can’t swing a dead cat around the interwebs without hitting one.
Also, why does the NRA have to lie and exaggerate so much, and create demons for gun owners to hate, in order to sell memberships? If they can’t sell them honestly, they must not be worth much to begin with. Or is there another reason?
It has continued to decline since 2000 albeit at a slower pace.
I showed you the numbers. Once more if someone wants to get tough on guns, AW’s are not the way to go.
No bubble burst at all nor a real surprise. Somebody has to own all 300 million+ firearms in this country. You couldn’t care less if you had the rifle or not. While you have a gun, you certainly are not included with those of us labeled as gun owners and blamed for everything that is wrong in this country. See the term FUDD
As HD said, there is no organization out there that does a better job of defending gun owner rights. Not even close.
Just like pro choice groups tell us that every candidate with an R next to their name will overturn Roe v. Wade and the Hillary shills remind us that Trump eats babies for breakfast with a side of Mexican immigrants, the NRA participates in campaigns to frighten their base to keep people involved instead of complacent.
Ah, now I’m No True Gun Owner. That’s quite a difference from not being a gun owner at all as you presumed, but apparently enough to make me the enemy. Your numbers just dwindled considerably. “True” gun owners must make up an even smaller minority of the population than I thought.
Getting back to presumptions, that “definition” has a couple of doozies. A 5-4 split ruling on Heller that could be overturned by just one other judge hardly makes it a “true premise of the Second Amendment” as if it’s ordained by God Hisself. The SA’s imprecise wording makes it open to various interpretations, none of which will be “true”. I would also point out that not all owners of handguns and semi-auto rifles are on your side. I can think of at least two handgun owners–you know of them as well–who want tighter controls on guns, and I’m quite confident that they don’t treat themselves with “unwarranted scorn or contempt”. I guess that doesn’t make them Fudds, but I’m sure True Gun Owners will come up with another demeaning name for them. But it does make them and other like-minded handgun owners No True Gun Owners as well, which reduces your numbers even more. If we stay at this long enough, you guys might disappear altogether down your own wabbit hole, ha-ha-ha-ha.
Boo-hoo-hoo and cry me a river. When True Gun Owners perpetuate the lies and gross misrepresentations about the opposition, in the name of Freedom yet, they can’t expect fawning admiration from their opponents. Or, for that matter, from their own kind when they’re thrown under the bus and intimidated with demeaning labels because they don’t pass the rigid purity test (thanks for enlightening me on Fudds; it really helped to reveal the True Gun Owners’ attitude). Your version of freedom looks more like one authoritarian wolf with a gun telling the other who gets to eat the lamb since, as Wayne LaPierre himself said, the guys with the guns make the rules. Your persecution complex is lost on me.
In this thread, you’ve gone from questioning that the NRA lies, to acknowledging that they lie but only to sell memberships, and now you say they lie to defend gun rights. I’d say that’s progress.
