What's gun control worth?

[nancylebov]

I've seen the theory a time or two that the Democrats could have won the 2004 election if they'd given up on gun control. However, I think everyone I've seen promoting that theory is against gun control anyway.

So, do those of you who are want gun control and who also would like the Democrats to win think that it could conceivably be worthwhile to give up on gun control, or is gun control a non-negotiable core issue?

On the other side, if Democrats said they were giving up on gun control, would pro-gun-ownership people believe them?

Comments

[avram]

I've seen the theory that Kerry could have won if the weather had been nicer in Ohio on Election Day. The margin was pretty close.

Anyway, even though I'm a pro-gun-rights liberal and would like the Democrats to ease up on guns, I don't know how much of an effect it would have really had in this past election. It's possible that, had the Dems not adopted gun control as a key issue decades back, we'd have a different political landscape today. That assumes there are a large group of voters who lean Dem-wards, but have gun rights as a hot-button issue. I've no idea what the actual numbers are.

[pnh.livejournal.com]

Like Avram, I'm more or less a "pro-gun-rights liberal," or at the very least, a liberal who thinks guns are an issue best handled on a more local level. The citizens of Harlem are strongly pro-gun-control, and the citizens of Montana are strongly against it; both have some pretty good arguments in favor of their positions.

That said, I doubt that the road back for Democrats consists of trying to strike wheedling bargains. People follow leaders. We have to get better at being for stuff, and framing it in stronger, clearer terms.

[malkingrey.livejournal.com]

The three big Democratic issues that seem to attract the most vehement single-issue-voter opposition are abortion rights, gay rights, and gun control. Of those three, I'd say that in purely practical terms the one that could most easily be dispensed with is gun control.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

I suspect many conservatives and/or Republicans would not be able to believe that a Democrat could possibly be for gun rights. If Howard Dean had been the candidate, Republican politicians and conservative commentators would have been yapping about Vermont's ultra-fascist gun laws.

That aside: According to every analysis I've seen, the area where I grew up should have gone heavily for Bush. Ulster County, NY used to be rural and is now micropolitan. But it went for Kerry. It's not exactly a typical rural/small city area; but by all the pronouncements, that either shouldn't have mattered or should have made it more likely to go for Bush.

[zenlizard]

>On the other side, if Democrats said they were giving up on gun control, would pro-gun-ownership people believe them?

What, the amercan public not believe a politician who flipped-flopped on what is supposed to be a "core" issue?

How often does that happen?

[avram]

Whenever GW Bush does it. Which is to say, just about every damn day.

"gun control" is a red herring

[bellatrys.livejournal.com]

It's a bogeyman, a Goldstein, there is *not* and never was the "ban all guns" majority on the Left that the NRA and Olin, makers of Winchester Ammo, pay for the world to believe and fear.

When I did a poll on the subject at Kos, out of 60+ responders, all of whom considered themselves liberals and/or Democrats, less than 15% were against *all* firearms all the time, and of those, only about 3 or four individuals thought it was the right thing to try to legislate their beliefs. The rest were about evenly divided between those who had guns and those didn't but didn't care about them and didn't mind other people having them. (With about 3 or 4 people saying "everyone should be able to own any weapon at all, unrestricted.)

The Right has managed to convince people of things which didn't happen, and that there were massive numbers of people on the left trying to legislate things that they weren't.

I first started noticing this in 1982 or 1983, in our jr high Scholastic, when they had a "he said/she said" gun control issue, and the pro-gun control person talked about how some weapons should be regulated and some persons should be regulated, just as with alcohol, and the anti-gun control person said "we can't let them take all our guns away the way the want to," and I (innocently) couldn't understand why the NRA spokesman couldn't understand what the Brady Bill spokesman had actually said.

The problem is not in changing what *we* say, but what *they* hear, when it comes to the terrified gun-clutching hunters - like the owner of the SUV with the bumper sticker that said, "Don't Let John Kerry GORE Your Guns! Bush/Cheney 04" next to an NRA sticker I once saw.

And to do that, you'll have to break through a jamming field they've been building for over a quarter of a century, in which every thing we say is automatically to be disbelieved, because we are lying liars who are trying to lull the American People into surrendering just a little of the 2nd Amendment, so we can yank it all away from them in one fell swoop and impose a socialist tyranny on the helpless citizenry ("just like the Nazis, who also were in favor of gun control.") Of course we'll *say* that we don't want to ban all guns from all users - that's just what we *would* say, being godless liberals.

Re: "gun control" is a red herring

[lightningb.livejournal.com]

As an example of this, note the response to Kerry's little goose hunting trip. He'd have been well advised to stay home.

The agenda on this issue is controlled by the frothing loons on both sides -- best to stay away from it. I'd say it should be considered as a local issue -- and force the folks who claim that illegal guns all come from Virginia or that legalizing guns leads to massive decreases in crime to document their claims.

Guns

[celticferret.livejournal.com]

I"m favor of allowing indivicuals to purchase guns. I would strongly urge gun safety classes. When children are in the home, appropriate precautions. All the banning of the legal sale of handguns means only people who purchase guns illegally are the ones who have guns.

I like the idea of the legal right of concealed carry. Ohio has some odd laws on the topic.

KG

Re: Guns

[dexfarkin.livejournal.com]

All the banning of the legal sale of handguns means only people who purchase guns illegally are the ones who have guns.

This is one of the classic misunderstood lines thrown up in anti-control laws. The core thing that would come from banning all handguns is less access to them and fewer handguns. Which in turn leads to drops in firearm related deaths.

The only statistically consistent fact that has played out all over countries with strong gun control laws is that gun control reduces firearm related crimes. Other crime rates have not been shown to consistently trend one way or the other as a result.

If you want to easy legal access to guns, you have to accept that you can live with the consequences. It's like access to anything that is dangerous. The more of it there is, the higher the incidents that it will be misused.