But in the Gun forum, I've discovered the most amazing, near unanimous opposition to anything I have to say about gun control. The DU users whom I've met there are just like the gun-rights folks we know and love on the blogs, the only difference is they claim to be Democratic and liberal. Bizarre.
Here's a typical example. This is a personal message I received from a certain Democratic Underground User named LAGC, entitled "Boy, are you ignorant.".
But at least you're not afraid to show it in the Guns forum!
Please do keep up the "good work" with all your shameless
blogspamming -- I know you're not an American, but your
extremist anti-gun rantings are certainly helping drive more
American Democrats away from extremist gun control positions,
and to stake out more centrist positions that acknowledge all
the legitimate roles guns play in our ever-evolving society.
The Guns forum definitely serves a good purpose, helping
Democrats see through the gun control bullshit and working to
deprive Republicans of an issue they've been successfully
beating us over the head with ever since anti-gun language got
written into the Democratic Party Platform.
Its only a matter of time now before we steal the wedge-issue
back away from them and get (and keep!) comfortable majorities
in Congress, that respect the entire Bill of Rights, and all
the freedoms it entails.
I know you're probably jealous of all our freedoms, being an
Italian and all, but feel free to visit America sometime --
even with all the guns floating around, you can walk freely
down most any city street without fear of being shot. Thanks
in part to the fact that so many law-abiding concealed-carry
permit holders are around to keep the hoodlums in check.
But carry on with your agenda...
And my response:
What's your opinion? How big of a group are democratic, liberal gun owners? Don't you find it odd that they would employ the same arguing techniques as their fellow gun owners who are mainly Republican and conservative?Thanks for the message. I'm developing a theory which you just helped me clarify. You guys are the Democratic version of RINOs. What you say and the way you say it is right out of the Republican bully hand book. You even have the delusions which characterize Republican and conservative folks.
"Its only a matter of time now before we steal the wedge-issue [gun control] back away from them [the Republicans] and get (and keep!) comfortable majorities in Congress, that respect the entire Bill of Rights, and all the freedoms it entails."
Good luck with all that, Man. Keep in touch.
What do you think? Please leave a comment.
The problem is that this is the perfect wedge issue.
ReplyDeleteMisinterpret the law, Provide some serious revisionist history, and hey presto.
People will vote against their own interests.
Although, I do wonder if there is the serious aspect of astroturf working there. See my upcoming post.
Here's another answer:
ReplyDeleteFor his film (Astro)Turf Wars, Taki Oldham secretly recorded a training session organised by a rightwing libertarian group called American Majority. The trainer, Austin James, was instructing Tea Party members on how to “manipulate the medium”. This is what he told them:
“Here’s what I do. I get on Amazon; I type in “Liberal Books”. I go through and I say “one star, one star, one star”. The flipside is you go to a conservative/ libertarian whatever, go to their products and give them five stars. … This is where your kids get information: Rotten Tomatoes, Flixster. These are places where you can rate movies. So when you type in “Movies on Healthcare”, I don’t want Michael Moore’s to come up, so I always give it bad ratings. I spend about 30 minutes a day, just click, click, click, click. … If there’s a place to comment, a place to rate, a place to share information, you have to do it. That’s how you control the online dialogue and give our ideas a fighting chance.”
Over 75% of the funding for American Majority, which hosted this training session, comes from the Sam Adams Alliance. In 2008, the year in which American Majority was founded, 88% of the alliance’s money came from a single donation, of $3.7m. A group which trains rightwing libertarians to distort online democratic processes, in other words, was set up with funding from a person or company with a very large wallet.
Sounds a lot like a page out of Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals.
ReplyDeleteIs there something wrong with that?
"The DU users whom I've met there are just like the gun-rights folks we know and love on the blogs, the only difference is they claim to be Democratic and liberal. Bizarre."
ReplyDeleteIf that's the case, then perhaps it is you who is the bizarre one.
Laci The Dog reminds me of someone who tries to argue that phrenology is a legitimate science.
ReplyDeleteI suggest you move into the 21st century, dear Dog. Heller is the law of the land now.
No, AztecRed, I'm the liberal and democratic one. They're DINOs.
ReplyDeleteMikeb, you may be a liberal, but you are of a different strain. You are a "liberal fascist" along the lines of Michael Bloomberg and George Soros as opposed to a proper, freedom-loving, "classical liberal" like the one you encountered.
ReplyDeleteThere are far more liberal gun owners than anyone suspects. We're just not as vocal as our fellow liberals whose opinions on gun ownership are based on emotion rather than facts. There have been over 200 studies conducted on gun ownership in the U.S. in the last 30 years which indicate that gun ownership by the citizenry actually reduces violent crime.
ReplyDeleteThe premise of personal firearms reducing or preventing crime inherently assumes a philosophy of vigilante-ism rather than a society of law and law enforcement.
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't sound to me like a liberal point of view.
Further, gun violence, gun homicides, gun suicides and accidental gun injuries are all lower -- dramatically lower -- in countries where gun ownership is more restrictive.
dog gone, you mustn't paint all gun owners with the same brush. The point of vigilante-ism is irrelevant - licensed gun owners, liberal or otherwise, are not out trying to enforce laws or seek justice. They are also not the people committing gun crimes.
ReplyDeleteRelying on law and law enforcement to protect you and those you care about is an individual choice. My life's experience has shown me that it is a naive, if not irresponsible choice, as any cop will tell you that when seconds count, the police are just minutes away.
Being a liberal and accepting responsibility for oneself are not mutually exclusive.
Car accident and vehicular homicide rates are are dramatically lower in places where access to automobiles is more restrictive and people don't drown where there is no water. The problem lies with people, not pieces of machinery or pools.
Fouro, countries which have more restrictive gun laws do not have higher crime rates than we do here in the U.S.; someof themhave less. So the assumption that more guns equals less crime doesn't hold up,despite those studies you mention. In fact, crime has tended to be declining in most parts of the U.S., including in those states with stricter gun regulation.
ReplyDeleteSo if you are arguing that personal gun ownership reduces crime -- explain that.
Further, you write "licensed gun owners, liberal or otherwise, are not out trying to enforce laws or seek justice. They are also not the people committing gun crimes."
Again, factually inaccurate. There are plenty of gun crimes committed with 'licensed' firearms and by licensed gun owners. We note them here. Domestic violence with licensed firearms are among the most frequent, but I would point out to you that the Gabby Giffords shooting was by a man with a legally owned / legally purchased weapon, as was the ammunition. That is NOT an isolated incident.
We do not restrict firearms sufficiently, most notably with the lack of cooperation in providing names to the NCIS data base.
Your analogy to vehicles and to swimming pools is not a valid analogy.
Vehicles are not primarily designed to be weapons, and regulation - such as speed limits and drunk driving laws and seat belt requirements, when well enforced, DO make a noticeable difference in deaths and injuries. Restricting access to pools, including the requirements of fences around them, insurance for them, and responsiblity for having a lifeguard at them are all effective in reducing drowning deaths.
If you are relying on your own weapon instead of calling 911 or locks or other security measures for your safety, you are advocating vigilate-ism - taking a response to crime into your own hands rather than law enforcement.
When changes to Castle Doctrine and concealed carry laws, making them more liberal, not more restrictive, came up, in both MN and WI, law enforcement emphatically has opposed them. So, you might not want to quote cops here.
And you might do a better job of getting your statistics right. When you can explain the comparable levels of crime and the remarkably lower levels of gun violence in locations with the strictest gun regulation, I'd like to read your cause and effect reasoning.
You might start by addressing whether or not you consider suicide a crime, and then get into the number of instances of suicide by firearm, and murder suicides by firearm.
And do you consider injury and deaths by accidental firearms discharges, particularly where there is clear negligence in firearm security to be criminal negligence?
fouro, I'm always arguing with supposedly liberal gun owners on the DKos and the Democratic Underground. They are every bit as extremist and nasty as their Republican conservative counterparts. They generally resort to name calling and personal attacking very quickly. Often they don't even bother with the issues, once they find out I'm for gun control, they treat me like the enemy.
ReplyDeleteTo me those aren't liberal and democratic qualities.
You seem like a pretty reasonable guy, can you explain this to us? Why do liberal gun owners so often sound just like conservative gun owners, that is to say unreasonable, nasty, bullying and close-minded?
The problem is that Fouro sounds too much like your average gun owner to me, as opposed to a liberal one.
ReplyDeleteEven the name,fouro(.40) sounds biased toward the pro-gun side.
Sorry, AZRed, if you knew what you were talking about Heller-McDonald isn't a very pro-gun decision. And it does still hold the civic right interpretation quite alive in its dissents.
As I like to say, much to people like AzRed's annoyance, the civic right interpretation is the only one that withstands serious intellectual scrutiny.
Thanks,mikeb, you seem very reasonable, too. I would certainly agree that closed-mindedness and bullying are not liberal, democratic or for that matter, progressive qualities. To answer your question about why the self-proclaimed liberals you speak of so resemble their right-wing counterparts, I would return to your original question regarding the significance in numbers of liberal gun owners. Again, I would say that the vocal among them - the ones you are primarily hearing from - are fearful and unaccepting of any compromise in regard to gun laws. This may be the reason they are extremists, at least when it comes to gun ownership. And I'd guess that they're making statements based on emotion rather than fact.
ReplyDeleteWhen we stereotype, we see only people who want to abolish guns altogether on the left and gun-crazed fundamentalist rednecks on the right. Granted, these extremes exist, and they are both irrational and dangerous.
There are many educated, intelligent and PEACEFUL liberal democrats who interpret the Second Amendment to have been put in place to keep citizens from being subjected to tyranny. Can you imagine living in a country where only a military under the likes of Bush and Cheney had arms? Any open-minded liberal who has made an honest study of fascism and truly understands the mechanics of power would
I believe my point regarding violent crime was misunderstood, probably because I wasn't very clear, so I apologize to dog gone. To clarify, we're talking about crime in the U.S. and I said that the studies indicate lower crime rates in states where citizens are allowed to carry concealed weapons. There is no proven causal basis; however, the lower violent crime rates that dog gone cites, are believed by at least one scholarly analysis of the 200+ studies I mentioned to be due to shall-issue laws.
I personally am in favor of making the requirements for gun ownership more stringent. Specifically, anyone who carries a handgun should have a great deal of training and be able to demonstrate a high level of proficiency under stress. Unfortunately, I witness just the opposite all too often. I have more training and experience than the 22-year-old uniformed protector figure you are waiting for when you call 911. I would posit that you are better of in a public place where there is at least one trained, responsible citizen near you with a weapon if someone like that dipshit kid in Tucson shows up.
dog gone, I am not in the habit of misusing of fabricating facts or statistics. I don't really need to prove anything to counter your cherry-picked information. I spend considerable time training with law enforcement people so I am comfortable quoting them. I have also made a deliberate and objective study of this issue which has led me to reverse my opinion on the matter. You see, I used to believe much like you now do.
I know better than to try to change the mind of someone who believes that guns have no place in our society. I only hope that people on both sides of this issue will someday see past their ignorance and find some middle ground.
There nearly 300 million guns in this country. They will never go away. They are an intrinsic part of our society. My recommendation is to deal with it.
Wow, thanks for confirming my suspicions about you, Fouro!
ReplyDeleteThe insurrection theory of the Second Amendment is so blatantly silly that I probably shouldn't bother with addressing it.
Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494 (1951) is one of many aspect of US legal history that puts paid to the insurrectionist theory: "That it is within the power of the Congress to protect the Government of the United States from armed rebellion is a proposition which requires little discussion. Whatever theoretical merit there may be to the argument that there is a “right” to rebellion against dictatorial governments is without force where the existing structure of the government provides for peaceful and orderly change."
Anyone who has studied fascism knows that it came about by being lawfully elected, not through power grabs.
Education, not guns is the secret to fighting fascism.
German Gun control was not initiated at the behest or on behalf of the Nazis - it was in fact designed to keep them, or others of the same ilk, from executing a revolution against the lawful government. In the strictest sense, the law succeeded - the Nazis did not stage an armed coup, but were lawfully elected into power.
The 1928 law was subsequently extended in 1938 under the Third Reich (this action being the principal point in support of the contention that the Nazis were advocates of gun control). However, the Nazis were firmly in control of Germany at the time the Weapons Law of 1938 was created. Further, this law was not passed by a legislative body, but was promulgated under the dictatorial power granted Hitler in 1933. Obviously, the Nazis did not need gun control to attain power as they already (in 1938) possessed supreme and unlimited power in Germany. The only feasible argument that gun control favored the Nazis would be that the 1928 law deprived private armies of a means to defeat them. The basic flaw with this argument is that the Nazis did not seize power by force of arms, but through their success at the ballot box (and the political cunning of Hitler himself). Secondary considerations that arise are that gun ownership was not that widespread to begin with, and, even imagining such ubiquity the German people, Jews in particular, were not predisposed to violent resistance to their government.
The Third Reich did not need gun control (in 1938 or at any time thereafter) to maintain their power. The success of Nazi programs (restoring the economy, dispelling socio-political chaos) and the misappropriation of justice by the apparatus of terror (the Gestapo) assured the compliance of the German people. Arguing otherwise assumes a resistance to Nazi rule that did not exist. Further, supposing the existance of an armed resistance also requires the acceptance that the German people would have rallied to the rebellion. This argument requires a total suspension of disbelief given everything we know about 1930s Germany. Why then did the Nazis introduce this program? As with most of their actions (including the formation of the Third Reich itself), they desired to effect a facade of legalism around the exercise of naked power. It is unreasonable to treat this as a normal part of lawful governance, as the rule of law had been entirely demolished in the Third Reich. Any direct quotations, of which there are several, that pronounce some beneficence to the Weapons Law should be considered in the same manner as all other Nazi pronouncements - absolute lies.
So, you have now moved into the realm of silliness, fouro, not reality.
And not very persuasive.
Also, try to back up your claims with facts. What is the one scholarly analysis of the 200+ studies--John Lott's or Gary Kleck's?
Give me a break!
hmmm... as I recall Bush and Cheney were lawfully elected into power...
ReplyDeleteAnyway, well done, Laci The Dog. Touche.
Undoubtedly, you've read both Lott's and Kleck's treatises (which is more than I can claim) and have come to an educated and objective conclusion about their irrelevance.
I seem to wasting my time here trying to explain that liberals can indeed own guns without being extremist gun nuts and without hurting anything other than your feelings.
I sincerely wish all the best for all who contributed, and thanks Mikeb for hosting the forum for this discussion, though I haven't found it to be very open-minded or looking for any rational middle ground.
Cheers
Fouro, liberals and others can be gun owners, yet still accept the need for registration.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, Heller-McDonald allows for reasonable regulation, which includes registration and background checks for sales. In addition, Heller-McDonald has also said certain firearms are not appropriate for civilian use. Lower courts have held this means machineguns and assault weapons.
Robert Levy, the person who bankrolled these litigations for the Cato Institute, also favours prohibition of expanded capacity magazines.
So, we can be open minded, but you had better come up with some persuasive facts and arguments to do so, Fouro.
4-0, I didn't cherry pick anything, and I think you'll find, as is the case with Laci, I am rather well informed.
ReplyDeleteI quoted the combined Law Enforcement Agencies of MN and WI testifying in front of their respective state legislatures. They were unanimous and consistent in opposing the loosening of concealed carry laws and castle-doctrine. They specifically felt that it made law enforcement more difficult and dangerous. That trumps your anecdotal experience with law enforcement.
Further, while crime may have gone down in some jurisdictions with looser gun regulations, gun violence has not. A study of gun use in the 1990s, by David Hemenway at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, found that criminal use of guns is far more common than use of guns for self-defense. That study has been confirmed by several other subsequent studies.
So, when you have read these, get back to me about how you have an informed opinion.
Fouro, could you please share with us these wonderful and enlightening bits of research that helped for your opinion?
ReplyDeleteWe are truly curious as to what you have read that led to your conclusions?
Fourso sez:
ReplyDeleteas I recall Bush and Cheney were lawfully elected into power
And they left office and were replaced by Barack Obama--Your point, Fouro?
Thanks fouro for this one.
ReplyDeleteI personally am in favor of making the requirements for gun ownership more stringent. Specifically, anyone who carries a handgun should have a great deal of training and be able to demonstrate a high level of proficiency under stress. Unfortunately, I witness just the opposite all too often.
Currently, there is no Democratic President that has taken away firearms. But during the Katrina disaster in New Orleans, FEMA and Blackwater (AKA XE), under the guidance of the Bush Administration, ordered the State of Louisiana to confiscate all firearms from homes. The confiscation was not just from homes affected by Katrina, but homes who were not affected by the rage of the hurricane.
ReplyDeleteThe issue is this may be the ideal pitching wedge problem.Misread regulations, Supply a few severe revisionist background, and also hi voila.Individuals will certainly political election in opposition to their very own passions.Even though, I really do question when there is the intense part of astroturf operating right now there. Observe my own forthcoming submit.
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