Carl in Chicago points out a Brady presser that would seem to indicate that if HR 6691 is passed, that the mass of guns flooding into our nations capital will produce such an immense gravitational field that it will collapse into a singularity that will consume the city, followed quickly by the rest of the nation, planet, solar system, and known universe.
In short, they are freaking out because the laws in Washington D.C. will be substantially identical to most of the 50 states, with the exception that carrying a loaded firearm on your person will still be unlawful. This is the press release of an organization struggling to find relevance in a political climate that’s not favorable to their message. I can’t imagine how much it must worry the Brady’s that the original Republican bill was tabled, because the Democrats wanted to take credit for getting this done. And the Democrat bill was more pro-gun than the Republican bill! The Brady’s have to find relevance in this election, and they haven’t been able to so far. The best they’ve been able to get is “don’t tell me that we can’t uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals.” from Barack Obama, who also keeps insisting he’s not a gun banner. While there’s no doubt Obama is their man, most sensible Democrats are now aware that this is a losing issue for them.
UPDATE: Cam wants to know where the evidence is that this bill would change anything about carrying of firearms? Maybe the evidence went back to school with the Brady intern.
Wow. They’re going to need some serious scrubbing bubble action to make those pants presentable in public again.
Sebastian says: “…most sensible Democrats are now aware that this is a losing issue for them.”
I agree. Yet the few sensible ones that aren’t aware, and the senseless ones that have no hope of understanding the dynamic, will continue to push hard on gun control, using overblown and hysterical rhetoric like we see from Hamm. And for the most part, they will do so to their own demise. I really and truly believe that.
However …
I recently read Don Kates’ 1992 article “Bigotry, Symbolism and Ideology in the Battle over Gun Control”, available here: http://homepage.usask.ca/~sta575/cdn-firearms/Kates/bigotry.html
Kates sets the context for his paper with the following statement:
“Of course, disarmament is not the only possible control scheme. Nor is it espoused by all gun-control proponents. … But the anti-gun rhetoric remains the most important feature of the public debate over gun control. For it is the anti-gun rhetoric of so many gun control advocates that plays into the hands of their opponents. The gun lobby has proved effective in using that rhetoric to persuade gun owners that gun control is synonymous with “disarmament,” that this is what all proponents of gun control really have in mind when they propose any regulation, and that their agenda is inspired by the conviction that owning a gun is morally wrong.”
So among what I feel will be gun control initiatives in a post-Heller USA are the following: Registration schemes, licensing schemes, microstamping and projectile imprinting, and perhaps user-recognizing “smart-gun” technology. Perhaps there will be more. But right now, as Kates points out, the number of gun owners that resist ANY controls like these are HUGE. We are motivated, because we are so familiar with what these folks want and are capable of if given half the chance. Kates suggests that we no-compromise folks are a small minority among gun owners … but that the rhetoric and tactics of anti-gun groups reinforce our (unreasonable) positions of “not one inch, ever” and “from our cold, dead hands.”
What the gun banners “need” to do is quiet us by truly taking “gun bans” and other such things off the table. We’ve seen this move post-Heller, with their statements that “now that outright bans are off the table, the slippery slope is gone and we can all agree on reasonable restrictions.” We see it in Helmke and BHO when they argue that “we don’t want to ban guns or take them away”, and “we respect the tradition of the second amendment.”
But even if they are successful, it might take a generation or more to regain that trust among gun owners … to get people like us to truly trust that that they really, really don’t want to “take our guns away.” Can it happen? Sure, it’s possible, but they are a long way from that situation, and seemingly, getting further into their hole each passing year.
Sorry for the long post …
I recommend you read Kates’ article on bigotry, ideology, and the gun control mentality. It’s pretty thought-provoking (and he writes very well).
. . . .50 caliber sniper rifles accurate up to more than a mile and effective up to four miles . . .
Um–how can a rifle be “effective” at a range quadruple that at which it is accurate?
Carl,
Thanks for posting that! I’m trying to get a hold of Don Kates’ original book via Inter-library Loan, which he edited back in 1978 called _Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out_, i.e. speak out against restrictions. The forward was written by Frank Church (of the Church Commission in Congress in the late 1970s that took the CIA to task). I agree, Kates is very persuasive, and the book he wrote with Kleck, ARMED, very much influenced me.