If they wanted a process that would keep violent felons from regaining the right to own guns, it would be in place yesterday.
When’s the last time a burglar broke into someone’s house, armed with a ballot?
The risks of restoring gun rights to violent felons should be obvious. The risks of restoring the right to vote to those same felons, a bit less so.
As you said the other day, one of these things is not like the other.
So when you made you claim you surely mean to say that not all felons can own guns, but only felons who:
Are non-violent,
when allowed by state law,
who get their civil rights restored following the process for their states,
and even then it is a long drawn out process:
That’s what you meant to say?
Were you hoping I wasn’t going to read your cite? Was that you plan?
We either trust these people to have their civil rights back or we don’t. If they’ve paid their debt to society and followed the laws of their state and the process to get their civil rights why shouldn’t it include all of them?
If that’s true, then you’ve lost. Utterly. The NRA is essentially ultra-powerful. Liberals have zero recourse against its implacable might and power.
Earlier, you identified youself as “we gun control folks”. If that is the group that you identify with, she is on your side. If you want to take this moment to disavow yourself from her group, call her out as batshit crazy and foaming at the mouth, the floor is yours…
Like it or not, she IS one of the faces of the modern gun control movement. I’d add Chuck Schumer, Michael Bloomberg, Joe Biden and a few others to that list as well. I can’t help who your “all-stars” are, but you need to recognize the fact they aren’t just some everyday joes with an opinion.
Look to 1994 when people just started talking about things that never came within a mile of legislation. How’d that work out?
Do you forget the multiple librul hissy fits after the Heller decision was delivered? Not enough Xanax in the world to calm some of your side down.
It’s really simple. Mind if I spell it out?
If you and I are having a tug-of-war, it might take awhile for either of us to win. But if one of us decides to pull in the same direction as the other, rather than the opposite direction, it’s no contest anymore. We move the rope across the line.
That doesn’t require that either of us be “ultra-powerful” or any of the other stuff you say.
Prepositions are important. This one’s the difference between “she is my side” and “she is on my side.” She is a U.S. Senator, of course, but she is still just one of 55 Democratic Senators.
No, they’re not. But even what they think is a long way from legislation.
I can’t even figure out what your point is.
Maybe, but we didn’t go into a “we have to block anything the GOP sends up, because of the Heller decision.” Which is pretty much what you’re saying here: because some bad people made some bad suggestions that never got very far, we can’t even support Manchin-Toomey, even though it’s much weaker sauce than the stuff in the OP of that thread you linked to.
Because there’s obviously more of a risk associated with restoring gun rights to people who’ve already committed violent felonies, than is associated with restoring the franchise to them. What are they going to do, shoot somebody with a vote for Lyndon LaRouche?
That’s a good one. Keep thinking like that. Just don’t be surprised that nothing gets passed as long as she’s still office. She is personally responsible for a good chunk of the NRA’s members.
What happened in 1994? Hmm… Oh yeah, an entire class of firearms was banned based upon they way they looked, not their impact on crime, not their “lethality” just because they looked menacing. That legislation started as simple conversations that were miles from turning to legislation that eventually turned to shitty law.
Those “bad suggestions” were amendments along with the M&T amendment. DIFI introduced her AW and high cap magazine ban and it lost 40-60. Lautenberg added his own high cap mag ban and it lost 46-54. These were not bad suggestions, they were bad law and treated as such.
The major difference in latest crap amendments and what you read in the thread I linked to is that some of the suggestions in that thread will actually have an impact upon gun violence, rather than the “weak sauce” (your words) M&T amendment, which would do nothing.
Since you insist on pursuing this little sidetrack… No. “overzealous” is a value judgement. More zealous than one ought to be, not more zealous than the next guy.
It’s fair to say NRA members might be more zealous than the average gun owner, not that they are, but “more overzealous” doesn’t really make sense grammatically, and it certainly does set up the debate as a choice between the lesser of two evils. The fact that some people can’t even see that says more about their own assumptions, politically, than anything else.
That is exactly what this whole thing is, the “two evils” being guns and gun control.
If they want to shoot somebody they’ll shoot somebody. Laws against gun ownership won’t prevent that. They can always just buy a gun off a streetcorner or steal one.
But what those laws will do is prevent them from lawfully owning a gun and using it for self defense and hunting and target shooting.
If states want to have their own laws about how felons regain their civil rights after serving their time I’m fine with that. It shouldn’t be easy, but as your own post states, it’s not easy. What’s the motivation for the governor of MA or CA to grant someone their right to own a gun back? If they do that and a crime is later committed they are going to get the fallout.
I wonder if the NRA is going to boycott Busch beer now.
The NRA processing time for new members tripled at one point because of how many people were applying for membership. I remember an NRA article celebrating the large population of new gun owners and telling long time gun owners that they should be patient with the shortages and to be nice to the newbies.
That was my impression.
I think they are all about a specific vision of the second amendment and even if their membership numbers fell, unless there was a change in the leadership, their policies would not change.
[quote=“RTFirefly, post:62, topic:656510”]
I’ve been in a lot of gun threads, but I’ve yet to see any that don’t involve more guns, arming more people.Speaking of blatant misrepresentations.
[QUOTE]
I’ve been proposing licensing and registration for a while now… Of course the logical companions to those rules would be pre-emption of local and state rules and a national carry permit.
What percentage of guns used in crime do you think wer purchased at gun shows? Sure we should close it but without any record of who owns which guns (or sting operations), how the hell do you know if a private citizen has sold a gun without a background check?
Baucus voted for the 1994 AWB and almost lost his senate seat over it.
I see your cite from the Bloomberg organiztion but no link to the poll itself or the methodology. Are these things important or can I just take that 79% number and say that Montana supported this bill?
I was a little disappointed. I think gun violence is an issue, there are almost as many people who die from gun violence as there are people who die from car crashes (30K versus 40K). Licensing and registration are clearly constitutionally permissible and has a history of working, instead they went with a constitutionally questionable bill that has a history of making no fucking difference in the body count.
She is certainly the standard bearer for your side. Her sentiments were at the forefront of the anti-gun push and Obama had adopted much of her approach. Next time choose more carefully.
Success has a thousand parents, failure is an orphan so right now DiFi is an orphan. The recriminations within the anti-gun crowd right now are not only directed at the evil NRA, a lot of it is directed internally at people like Di-Fi.
What pro-gun legislation has the anti-gun side let slide without tizzying? As far as I can tell, the most significant pro-gun legislation was passed in 1789 when they adopted the constitution. I can’t think of very many pro-gun laws that were passed after that (I suppose the law clarifying that gun manufacturers are not responsible for the criminal acts of others any more than knife manufacturers are responsible for the criminal acts of others, is pro-gun but it seems directed at cutting off frivolous nuisance lawsuits).
You realize that not all felonies are violent felonies right? But I generally agree with you that we should severely restrict the ability of even non-violent felons to own firearms.
She was the standard bearer for your side for the critical weeks when a comrpmise could have been reached. Next time choose more carefully.
Laws against anything will fail to entirely prevent that thing; that does not make the laws useless.
And THIS is the problem. You are assuming that guns are evil.
One thing I’ve heard of that’s a potential divisive issue is product safety and liability. If the issue is liability for a manufacturing defect, gun manufacturers are going to be on one side and gun owners are going to be on the other.
RTFirefly: You seem to underestimate the power of tribal appeals.
Der has it nailed. The NRA is composed of delusionals, gulls, and a small number of gun manufacturers. It is controlled by the manufacturers and the delusionals. Today, 3/4 of the current and former NRA membership supports background checks for example. Not only does the NRA oppose this measure, they promised that they would include such a vote on their scorecard. In other words they lobbied to keep guns in the hands of lunatics and criminals. They could have taken the passive route, but they decided not to. PolitiFact | Lee Leffingwell says polls show 90 percent of Americans and 74 percent of NRA members support criminal background checks before all gun buys
This site pegs NRA membership support of background checks at 57%:
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/04/18/1886811/morning-joe-host-shames-senators-who-killed-gun-reform-were-the-90-percent-and-were-going-to-win/
The evidence is incontrovertible: the NRA is an industry lobby that poses as a human rights organization. Its membership is composed of loons, gulls, paranoids and those of weak disposition.
NM
Cite?
I was once an NRA member. I run in circles with loads of NRA members. Which of us are overzealous? I falsify your assertion all by myself, and to reinstate my membership I need only pay minimum dues, around $20.
nm