Gun debate muzzles the middle ground

[NineseveN]

The two sides in this [Second Amendment] debate behave like spoiled
children who won't sit at the table together and play nice."

-Peter Hamm
Spokesman for the Brady Campaign


"What the two sides don't acknowledge is that reasonable people can
oppose civilian ownership of machine guns or .50-caliber rifles so
powerful they must be shot using a tripod while still supporting hunting
and owning guns for self-defense."

-Rachel Graves


Gun debate muzzles the middle ground
By Rachel Graves
Christian Science Monitor
csmonitor.com
September 05, 2007
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0905/p09s02-coop.html


The NRA and Brady Campaign are locked in an antagonistic embrace that
creates gridlock on solving the nation's gun problems.

Two years ago, Florida enacted a law that allows anyone who feels
threatened anywhere to use deadly force. Today the National Rifle
Association (NRA) is shepherding similar laws through legislatures
across the country.

The so-called Castle Doctrine extended the notion of a man's home being
his castle to public streets being his castle. When the law first went
into effect in October 2005, the nation's most prominent gun-control
group, the Brady Campaign, decided to fight back. Sort of.

The Brady Campaign – understaffed, underfunded, and generally
floundering – missed the news of the law's consideration until it was
almost a done deal. In behavior typical for both sides in a war of
words, the gun-control group's inability to keep the legislation from
passing did not stop the group from using the occasion to ratchet up the
rhetoric.

The Brady Campaign put up a billboard in Miami that October, took out
ads in cold climates where people often take Florida vacations, and
handed out fliers at Florida airports – all warning tourists of their
possible demise on their trips to Florida beaches and Disney World.

The campaign got the biggest reaction in Britain and Canada, where it
fit perfectly into the notion of Americans as barbarians. A headline in
the British Birmingham Post read, "Going to Florida? Beware the
gun-happy locals."

Although Florida officials were unhappy about a potential blow to
tourism, the bigger upset was that the Brady Campaign's move played
right into the NRA's hands.

The dirty secret of both sides in the gun debate is that, without a
powerful enemy, they cannot woo supporters or raise money. They are like
boxers in a ring – propping each other up even as they try to get in
blows. They are locked in an antagonistic embrace that creates gridlock
on solving the nation's gun problems.

Of course, it is not an embrace of equals. The NRA has a $200 million
annual budget, while the Brady Campaign's is $8 million. Since 1990,
according to the Center for Responsive Politics, gun rights groups have
given $18.7 billion to political candidates, while gun control groups
have given only $1.7 billion.

In fact, no one knows whether shootings have increased in Florida as a
result of the Castle Doctrine because the Brady Campaign and other
interested groups cannot afford to have lawyers track the results.

Paradoxically, the NRA's Goliath status forces the group to work harder
to make people believe that it has potent enemies – a challenge to which
it has risen. The cover of one issue of America's 1st Freedom, one of
the NRA's several magazines, threatened that the United Nations will
seize Americans' guns, an idea that is laughably implausible. The NRA
also exaggerates the impact of other stock enemies, including the Brady
Campaign itself, the French, and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who
is trying single-handedly to curb the flow of illegal guns into his city.

After hurricane Katrina, officials tried to ban guns from the streets of
New Orleans and from temporary housing for refugees. The NRA halted the
efforts in federal court. Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's chief executive
officer, painted the attempts to check violence as proof that the US
government would take away its citizens' guns.

"To stop such civil disarmament – the greatest threat of all – will
require massive NRA member pressure at every level of government," Mr.
LaPierre wrote in his monthly letter to NRA members. "In these upcoming
battles, our battle cry must be REMEMBER NEW ORLEANS! Never, ever forget."

Certainly, most Americans would say that the shootings at Virginia Tech
should never, ever be forgotten either. But somehow, though school
shootings continue, though an average of 32 homicides are committed with
guns in the United States each day, though dozens of suspected
terrorists are known to have passed background checks to legally
purchase guns, the gun-control side cannot gain traction.

Instead the bluster and bickering continue. The warring lobbying groups
call each other "gun grabbers," "enemies of freedom," and "gun zealots."

"The two sides in this debate behave like spoiled children who won't sit
at the table together and play nice," admits Peter Hamm, the spokesman
for the Brady Campaign.

What the two sides don't acknowledge is that reasonable people can
oppose civilian ownership of machine guns or .50-caliber rifles so
powerful they must be shot using a tripod while still supporting hunting
and owning guns for self-defense. Americans can support background
checks on guns sold everywhere – not just by licensed dealers – without
putting gun companies out of business. The United States can require
registration of guns and proficiency tests for gun owners, just as we do
with cars, without making it impossible, or even difficult, for
law-abiding citizens to buy guns.

The name-calling and breath-holding have made us all forget that a
middle ground is possible.



*** Rachel Graves is working on "The Gun Follies," a book about the
politics of guns.

IMHO, there is no middle ground, and anyone suggesting that one exists doesn't care about rights, unless perhaps they're talking about their own rights of course.

[OneLungMcClung]

IMHO, there is no middle ground, and anyone suggesting that one exists doesn't care about rights, unless perhaps they're talking about their own rights of course.

EXACTLY.

And I love how the Brady campaign sees themselves as "reasonable". They have been one of the most Anti-American groups in our history.....attempted destruction of an inalienable right. I wonder if they would scream as loud as we do if one of their rights was curtailed?

They are from that mentality of "what do you need that for". They frighten me.

ETA: I'd give you a +1 but I gotta spread the love around first apparantly.

ETA: Graves' comment about banning MGs or .50 BMG ownership is a cop out.....Next it will be semi autos ("what do you need THOSE for"), then Hanguns ("what do you need THOSE for" or "they cause violence"), then non-registered weapons ("gotta keep track of em! They might be used for a crime").

She comes from the guilty until proven innocent if you own a gun group.

I read some of her tripe on the Christian Science Monitor. I got that funny feeling that I got when I watched the Democratic debate. Like I wanted to break something............,

[OneLungMcClung]

Again, from the OneLung Political Philosophy Institute:

Those who are afraid of guns and want them banned are usually of a political inclination (liberal) such that they are the first to die with the institution of a Totalitarian dictatorship. History has shown this time and again: the artists, civil rights believers, and liberal thinkers are the first to be rounded up and marched to the fields or the camps. As well, this group is rarely cognizant of the connection between that banning of privately held firearms and the subsequent rise of that Totalitarian government.

[Azzy]

Gun problem? Only problem I can see is the inability to read and comprehend the words "Shall not be infringed".

[PA_SIGpacker]

What the two sides don't acknowledge is that reasonable people can oppose civilian ownership of machine guns or .50-caliber rifles so powerful they must be shot using a tripod while still supporting hunting
and owning guns for self-defense.

What is so obvious is the author's misunderstanding of the facts. We would be very hard-pressed to find many crimes committed with legally owned machine guns or .50 cal rifles (legal or even illegally owned!). Last time I heard, you were more likely to get hit by lightning than shot by a legal machine gun or .50 cal.

Maybe this is stating the obvious, but obviously, eliminating legally owned guns has no bearing or impact on reducing the numbers of illegally owned guns, let alone reduce the amount of crime committed with them.

But of course everyone HERE alrady knew that!!

[GunLawyer001]

There will always be a "deadliest" legal firearm to ban, even after they ban the .50 BMG, the semi-auto "assault weapons" cheap handguns, powerful handguns, hi-cap mags, "sniper rifles", tactical shotguns, laser sights, telescopic sights....If you compromise with thugs who want to take what is yours, expect them to come back tomorrow for more.

Being reasonable and compromising with someone who wants to do something stupid will lead you to doing something stupid. If you want to go North to the pole, and your neighbor wants to get there by going West, if you compromise and head Northwest you don't get there in a friendly self-actualized manner, you don't get there at all. Either we have a right to bear arms, or we have the privilege of owning what 51% of Congress thinks is harmless. There's no middle ground. Suggest to these people that there should be mandatory licensing of journalists, or poll taxes with literacy tests, and see where they're willing to compromise on those rights.

Look to England for their model. Regulate, register, narrow the range of acceptable weapons, and eventually you can marginalize them to the point that nobody cares when you ban them all.

The same mindset that says "you can't have guns to defend yourself" also says "you can't hurt someone just because they are trying to hurt you." That's the deal in England and Australia right now, the people who deprive you of your guns don't care if you are killed by someone else, to them you are all a mass of undifferentiated sheep who can't be trusted, they want you all to be passive and obedient. There are no "good"or "bad" citizens, the killing of anyone is the same, whether it's a drug dealer shot by another drug dealer, a Boy Scout killed by a mugger, or a thief killed by a homeowner. The same view applies to government decisions in other areas, so that an imprisoned felon has the same chance at a kidney transplant as an honest working man, and government handouts like Welfare and WIC and Social Security are shoveled out to people without any moral judgments about drug addiction or hordes of bastard children.

[WhiteFeather]

There will always be a "deadliest" legal firearm to ban, even after they ban the .50 BMG, the semi-auto "assault weapons" cheap handguns, powerful handguns, hi-cap mags, "sniper rifles", tactical shotguns, laser sights, telescopic sights....If you compromise with thugs who want to take what is yours, expect them to come back tomorrow for more.

Being reasonable and compromising with someone who wants to do something stupid will lead you to doing something stupid. If you want to go North to the pole, and your neighbor wants to get there by going West, if you compromise and head Northwest you don't get there in a friendly self-actualized manner, you don't get there at all. Either we have a right to bear arms, or we have the privilege of owning what 51% of Congress thinks is harmless. There's no middle ground. Suggest to these people that there should be mandatory licensing of journalists, or poll taxes with literacy tests, and see where they're willing to compromise on those rights.

Look to England for their model. Regulate, register, narrow the range of acceptable weapons, and eventually you can marginalize them to the point that nobody cares when you ban them all.

The same mindset that says "you can't have guns to defend yourself" also says "you can't hurt someone just because they are trying to hurt you." That's the deal in England and Australia right now, the people who deprive you of your guns don't care if you are killed by someone else, to them you are all a mass of undifferentiated sheep who can't be trusted, they want you all to be passive and obedient. There are no "good"or "bad" citizens, the killing of anyone is the same, whether it's a drug dealer shot by another drug dealer, a Boy Scout killed by a mugger, or a thief killed by a homeowner. The same view applies to government decisions in other areas, so that an imprisoned felon has the same chance at a kidney transplant as an honest working man, and government handouts like Welfare and WIC and Social Security are shoveled out to people without any moral judgments about drug addiction or hordes of bastard children.

EXCELLENT POST

[Pa. Patriot]

Screw Ron Paul...

GunLawyer001 for PREZ!

[mrwildroot]

Screw Ron Paul...

GunLawyer001 for PREZ!

Count on my vote!
mrwildroot

[God's Country]

Ah yes the ole sensible "middle ground" or "common sense" argument.
I do believe the 2nd amendment addresses both of those rather nicely, thank you very much. Those that would prefer to divine what those words actually mean need only buy a dictionary (or a 3rd grade education).