Musings on gun issues and political labels

The left loves statist and government power, which it sees as the solution to every problem.

Problem: Privately owned arms are a rebuke to the ideal of overwhelming government power.

Solution: Get rid of privately owned arms and you get rid of another obstacle to government power.

My 2 cents.

It's a cultural thing, not a political thing.

A fine, as well as common, example of the way a single axis fails to adequately describe the range of political views. See especially Dr. (Jerry) Pournelle on the notion that two axes are both necessary and sufficient to uniquely define political views mapped on a plane.

It does seem to me that the left today - taking left as both a primitive and a fuzzy notion - believes what might be called "you really oughta wanta" and if you don't we'll make you approach to government rather than a consent of the governed approach. For my money the objection to an armed citizeny follows from the urge to control.

On the other hand there an element of society that seeks to enforce feel good rather than effective policies. People who don't care what works - when the fact may be more guns less crime -the thought of more guns still offends the hoplophobe to the point that banning guns makes the hoplophobe feel better even though the ban does not achieve the pretextual end of less crime.

In an alternative but not exclusive view: as Umberto Eco once said - loosely - "when your real enemies are too strong then it is necessary to find weaker enemies." Grabbing guns is a beautiful displacement activity for real action that imposes no immediate costs at all on the gun grabbers but shifts the costs to the folks who really oughta wanta and so achieves an aim of social control once again.

I agree with Jim, I think it's cultural.

I've taken a few "Anti-gunners" to the range and they always come away with a new outlook on firearms.

There are way too many people today who's only exposure to guns is through TV and the movies.

Politically I think it's clear that a "Republican" label is no more of a guarantee of gun rights supporter than the label "Democrat" guarantees a gun grabber.

I've been going under the assumption that the democratic party is the party of poor city dwellers and that city dwellers have not enough exposure to guns and too much exposure to crime. Getting a concealed carry permit doesn't make you feel safe in the face of a violent gang. Guns are often seen as killing machines and not life saving machines and thus carrying one is evil anyway. Also progressives tend to want to end war and violence whereas conservatives are more likely to know they have no choice but to fight wars. Concealed carry permits are one of the most dangerous trends against gun control because they bring more gun exposure to city dwellers. Concealled carry also demonstrates the counterintuitive fact that adding guns to a situation doesn't increase shootings.

The good news on the gun front is that we are winning the culture war. Gun ownership is steadily on the rise, as is the popularity of the shooting sports.

On the nanny-state front, the problem is that governmental bloat creates so many constituencies suckling at the teat that short of total collapse and/or massive taxation, there is no way to galvanize mass opposition to big government.

You confuse the historical use of the term "liberal" with what it has come to mean in our society. It now means government control to provide for the "needs" of "the people." The Nanny State knows best. The Left does not trust its constituency, much less anyone else. How can the Left trust its constituents with guns? Answer is, they can't.

Viewed this way, it is entirely consistent that Liberals would hate individuals owning the means to defend themselves. Protection of the people is solely a job for the government.

Actually, this is entirely consistent with the Left's view of the First Amendment as well. The First Amendment is wielded by the Left as a shield to protect the moral relativist, but as a club to silence those in opposition. Hate speech codes on our university campuses are proof enough of this.

I think there is some value in having a civilization-shattering cataclysm once in a while. Assuming it doesn't irreversibly destroy scientific progress, such disruptions force the bureaucratic fleas to fend for themselves while civilization rebuilds.

The unfortunate truth is that so long as we create governmental systems in which parasites can flourish, that niche will inevitably be filled and expanded until the system collapses under the accumulated burden.

>>There the assumption is that if the government has power, it will abuse it for its own political ends.

I fear that this assumption is no longer shared on the Left.

The Left seeks to implement unlimited good, and requires unlimited governmental power with which to do it.

The left does not object to arms, only the ones available to individual discretion.

In terms of personal liberty, the "Left" has has gone so far over to the left,
that it's come back around on the far, far right, and pushed the "Right" off to the left.


Parse that! ;-)

I agree that it is cultural and geographic. I grew up with and around guns, and also in rural western/middle America. I know several otherwise "conservative" political operatives who are not gun owners, not hunters, not into self-defense issues, and who only support the RKBA because it is perceived as a winner for the GOP.

I am more of an Orwellian moderate who doesn't trust government or corporations, but realizes that unless we are going to figure out how 6.5 billion people can make it as subsistance farmers and/or hunter/gatherers, we have no choice but to endure organized government, corporations, and also organized religion (which is generally opposed to the RKBA, notwithstanding Luke 22:36). I would be an Anarchist were it not for the fact that anarchy generally results in a few powerful warlords running roughshod over the people in their unended struggle to eliminate their equally brutal, oppressive, and well-armed rivals.

I am vigorously free speech, rabidly pro-RKBA, mildly anti-abortion, against both unions and management (having realized that the leaders of both are just in it for themselves), and in favor of conservation instead of preservation of resources and the environment. I know that the Bible says a man should not sleep with another man, but didn't say a word about Lesbians. I know Abraham had more than one wife and wouldn't mind trying it myself if they were all hot and bi. I like beer, wine, and whiskey. And a good cigar once in a while never hurt anybody.

I think you are quite mistaken in holding that "There the assumption is that if the government has power, it will abuse it for its own political ends" was ever a lefist point of view. The end goal of leftists is total government power in a government run by leftists, to the exclusion of anyone else (i.e. especially "the people,") having power.

Prior to the point where leftists take control, shouting about governmental abuse of power is of course a necessary tactic, as is nuisances like multiple political parties, free and fair elections and all that. "Government abuse of power" is applied to issues where the greatest number of people can be convinced of the oppression of the (current, non-leftist) government, in order to facilitate a leftist takeover, especially in democracies.

Government oppression of private ownership of guns is not one of those issues that the left will sound off about tho, since those people who are oppressed are least likely to go for collective solutions. Allowing people to defend themselves means allowing people to be independent of government power to a significant degree.

Also, in the end game, the leftist government needs to control all those weapons for itself. Therefore, yammering on about "sensible gun control," registries, using the relatively rare massacre to spur anti-gun legislation and the like help set up society for ferreting out all those individualists with guns when the takeover comes. See, for example, Great Britain.

I agree with NOSKILZ, the left uses the First Amendment selectively. One only needs to look at the number of times they use it to protect them from our exercise of it. One cannot criticize someone's position because the person has a 1A right to that position, e.i. The Dixie Chicks.

I also think that the left's protection of 1A is largely due to the hold that the left has had over both the media and academia. Because they have control over two of the largest platforms for the dissemination of speech, free speech benefits them more than it hurts them. I think you will see more and more anti free speech positions taken if they lose control of those institutions. They do not receive a similar benefit from people exercise of 2A, if anything, 2A's restrictive force on government is detrimental to the big-government goals of the left.

It is both cultural and political.

Color me cynical, but I think the political is the "man behind the curtain", attempting to drive the cultural.

The cultural angle is driven by the political through incessant appeals to many logical fallacies. Anti-hunting, for example. Anyone remember "The Guns of Autumn"? -Argumentum Ad Misericordiam.

Anti-CCW. If jurisdictions adopt shall issue CCW policies, "...blood will be running into the storm drains of our streets...". And even going to the extreme of expelling kids from school for playing cops and robbers, and pointing fingers and shouting "bang". -Argumentum Reductio Ad Absurdum.

Of course, the Ad Hominem is ever present..."right wing gun nuts".

But I believe it is the leadership of the modern political left driving all this. It is about control. They will never be satisfied until everyone is living in a Soviet style hi-rise, disarmed of course, and next to public transportation facilities, so that the hoi polloi can get to their government approved salaried jobs.

That way, these self-styled "philosopher-kings" can enjoy life without putting up with clogged freeways, and enjoy visiting wilderness areas sans those grubby hunters, fishermen and campers.

It'll never happen. But they'll never quit trying.

Well CDR D, replace the Communist/Social "expert economic central planners" with the coming Green Dominion "expert environmental central planners" and you have a glimpse of what the New Left has in store for the world. What they purportedly wanted to do to "save the Workers" they now want to do to "save the Planet."

Well, as a 2nd Amendment defender and as someone more liberal than conservative, I agree with everything you wrote up until the last paragraph. I also have never understood why firearms have been seen as a liberal/conservative issue and why so many people are split upon it across those lines. It's bizarre to me.

But I don't agree with the last paragraph, at all. I know a lot of anti-gun liberals, and they don't have some general dislike or distaste for things "traditionally American" at all—it's just the guns. I think it's due to the "feminization" of popular culture, where we are taught that fighting or violence is "never the answer," when it quite clearly is often the ONLY answer. So being opposed to objects that have the capability of causing great harm and violence makes sense, to an extent, for someone of this mindset.

However, these people are NOT "tolerant" of oppressing women, killing gays or mandating religion, and I think you would be hard pressed to provide concrete examples of liberals defending actions like these—this charge is thrown around by the right quite frequently but I have never met any liberal who defends those aspects of other cultures even the slightest bit. Simply because I don't believe in forcing my culture onto someone else doesn't mean that I think their current culture is acceptable or preferable.

What is thought of as "liberal" or "left" is an easy way to decide what to think on political issues such as gun control. Liberals and leftists don't really want to think these things through or analyze them too much.

If there is gun violence the knee-jerk thought is to pass laws on guns. People of this sort are loathe to think it through and to ask whether a criminal who is willing to break more serious laws will obey lesser laws on gun control. They want a quick answer that will make them feel good, and more gun control fills the bill.

If anyone questions them or argues with them they can resort to a large panoply of slogans and cliches that leftist politicians have crafted for them and, in their own minds at least, win the argument.

For those too mentally lazy to think very hard about it gun control is comforting. It's just cool. You don't have to think. If anyone challenges you, just trot out the slogans.

There is a discussion of the Second Amendment over on The American Thinker. Here is a comment left by an obvious leftist type that illustrates the point I made above:

"I disagree that the Second Amendment guarantees the right of the individual citizen. It's a long held view that this is a collective right and in these times should be relegated ONLY to police and Naional Guard. I don't beleive in guns and I don't beleive that anyone needs a gun. For what? So you can kill your significant other, or a child? Times have changed. We aren't into murdering Native Americans anymore on the scale we did at the time of the Constitution. So why do we need guns? The Supreme Court, despite the Bush and Cheney picks has shown it has the sense to pass good rulings. I believe that the Supremes will rule in favor of the people and end this "individual rights" for carrying guns, once and for all. Fewer guns, fewer murders of children."

The poster at American Thinker, who identifies himself as Jeffery Pages, no doubt believes that the comment he left there, and which is quoted above, is very intelligent.

I always ask my liberal friends why they support draconian gun control laws despite their "belief" that under the present administration we are spiraling down into a police state. I just get a lot of blank stairs and then they mumble something about Iraq and "Bush lied people died".

If you are looking for intellectual dishonesty on the left just keep walkin'.....nothing to see here.

>The good news on the gun front is that
>we are winning the culture war.
>Gun ownership is steadily on the rise,
>as is the popularity of the shooting sports.

Cite, please?

Gun ownership may be increasing, but with a decreasing number of places to shoot (at least here in Colorado). Without access to places to actually shoot, gun ownership will become a "mile wide but an inch deep," eventually causing people to lose interest, or at least not care as much.

This is going to be a long-term problem for the gun culture, as demographics, economics, and geography will do what Sarah Brady and company could not.

I'm surprised that nobody has yet posted the explanation that I'm about to.

There have been two main "waves" of Gun Control in the United States. The first wave came in the 1930s and was an outcome of the prohibition era. This wave does not fit into current "liberal v. conservative" politics.

The second wave began in the 1960s and continues today. This wave can generally be characterized as a "liberal v. conservative" issue, with liberals falling onto the side of reducing citizen's liberty to arms, and conservatives falling onto the side of defending that liberty. The question at hand is "why has this become a 'liberal v. conservative' issue, and why did the two parties align the way they did?"

I'm not going to give any great credence to theories that state that liberals inherently hate liberty and conservatives inherently love it. Both political factions have shown the ability to selectively embrace and reject liberty as it suits their whims.

I think the reason for the current split is very simple; John F Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr, Robert F Kennedy, Malcolm X. The American Left saw a generation of its "best and brightest" snuffed out in a wave of political assassinations. It is little wonder that they came to see the firearm not as a tool of liberty but as a tool of intimidation and violence.

Once this kernel was planted, it was reinforced by two factors; demographics and two-party politics.

Demographics: One of the primary constituencies of the Democratic party is the uneducated urban voter. These voters, more than uneducated rural voters or educated voters in general, are directly impacted by gun crime. Taking an "anti-gun" stance enhances the party in the eyes of these voters.

Two-party politics: Because only two political parties dominate in the United States, issues tend to get split on sharply divided lines. Without third parties to represent more nuanced viewpoints, the American electorate finds itself split into either "pro" or "anti" positions on many issues. Once gun control became a Democratic Party position, it was only natural that gun rights became a Republican Party position.

That's my opinion. I believe that the current state of gun politics came around not due to any great philosophical distinction between the parties, but simply because the Democrats reacted naturally to a wave of violence that targeted them.

First off, the "Right" vs. "Left" distinction is NOT about "freedom" vs. "tyranny." It's about two diametrically opposed philosophies on human life and society.

Right-wing looks to tradition. Left-wing looks to innovation. By this measure, firearms are part of American tradition, and thus must be surplanted, if for no other reason than to undercut America, the biggest obstacle to their agenda.

Right-wing looks to realism. Left-wing looks to idealism. By this measure, firearms as the means of violence, the underriding element of all
earthly power, must be eliminated. First, eliminate them in private life, then ultimately in public life in the "stateless utopia."

Right-wing emphasizes nature in regard to events. Left-wing emphasizes nurture in regard to events. By this measure, the thought is that gun control will lead to changing how people think, so they will not be violent.

Right-wing emphasizes a person having a loyalty to society (that is, the traditional and natural authorities and structures). Left-wing emphasizes a person having a dependency on society (and the breaking down of the traditional and natural authorities and structures). By this measure, making violence the exclusive prerogative of "the State" makes the people dependent on the collective for the most basic of needs--self-preservation.

The ultimate goal of the Left--the "stateless utopia"--cannot be accomplished without gun control. As long as people can protect themselves, they will hold a certain independent streak that will lead them to resist Leftist-Social -ist intrusion. They will appreciate the concept of property, both for individuals and families, as well as for peoples and nations. And the very essence of "arms"--violence--will continually remind people of the reality of the Universe: Violence rules, and this one fact undercuts the entire agenda.

Previously on this site was an article talking about how the Brady Bunch may lose funding if SCOTUS comes back in our favor, because their limited aims will no longer be seen as practical stepping-stones to their true aim. Remember: The ACLU, which defends to the hilt every conceivable liberty which might be used to tear down tradional American/Western, etc., culture, but which opposes private ownership of firearms, was founded with the express purpose of promoting Communism. "Personal liberty" is not the issue, but rather a tool to an different end.

Of course, one can readily find Right-wing uses of gun control, such as an effort to prevent violent overthrows of those traditional authorities and structures. But for the Left, violence creates a philosophical dilemma. Even as they use it in militancy, they must say they do so for the ultimate establishment of a violence-free society. The Right, on the other hand, can openly acknowledge the reality of violence in the Universe, and need not make any such idealic claims. Both sides might pursue gun control, but only the Left actually needs it.

Not long ago an acquiantance of mine was talking with a friend who is an urban-dwelling newspaper reporter ( i.e., a "Liberal" ).

My acquaintance asked, "What are you going to do when we have nine - zip on the Supreme Court?

The reporter: "Why . . . why, we'll rebel!

"With what? was my acqauiatnce's retort.

Haha ... "With what?"

Precisely. Like Call Me Ahab said,

"I actually believe that the pen is mightier than the sword…but the pen needs the sword as well. You see, there are people who don’t like the pen, and they have lots of swords, so when they come to silence the pen you’re going to need a sword of your own."

Wasn't it the Japanese Samurai that had the saying "Pen and Sword in accord"?

the main reason many "left" minded people side with the anti-2nd amendment crowd is because the NRA--as the most high profile of the gun rights groups - has followed an agenda that seeks more than gun rights by supporting politicians against other issues the left--or moral relativist--support. Unless the gun rights people reach out to these people we will eventually lose all gun rights.
A decision must be made to make the 2nd amendment THE most important issue in endorsements and support for any candidate for any office or governmental position--dispite their other leftist ideas.
That's tough. But that's the bottom line.

In example: I used to watch NRA News. No more.
I got sick of the muslim hate baiting...Israel
is always right...pro war foolishness the hosts
trafficked in. It was an insult to any thinking person. I support the 2nd amendment...but not all
the other crap some minded pro gun airheads promote--using gun rights as their ticket.
Eventually such stuff will cost us all our rights

"When fascism comes, it will be disguised as a liberal."

That's what's happening: Disarming a population is a fascist idea and necessity, but the only way to get it accepted is to cloak it as a liberal.

Then, whoever opposes the "liberal" becomes a "right winger."

We managed to let them get control of the definitions.

The revolution will come faster if the brown shirts and police are the only ones with firearms.

Is is ironic when an ignorant leftie accusingly tosses around the "Nazi" or "fascist" label at a right-leaning person. I've seen it many times on various blogs and on-line discussions.

Gun Control and American Liberalism are perfectly consistent. They are anti-family, anti-life.