Sebastian has often cited the temperance movement as a model that many of the modern gun control proponents seem to be latching on to in an effort to restrict rights. Well, it looks like Bloomberg has decided to go down that path, too.
He plans to use grants from the Obamacare in order to push and agenda with a goal of “reducing alcohol retail outlet (e.g. bar, corner store) density.” He wants to ban advertisements for alcohol products and bars on the transit system, as well as retail settings such as stores and restaurants.
I always point out they are anti-freedom not anti-gun. They don’t like guns, but they’ll ban anything they don’t like if given a chance.
Weer’d, I think some of them are just anti-gun. Take Jadegold for example. In response to the temperance movement, I’d bet he’d use the same arguments we use as to why he wants easy access to high-alcohol craft brews by Dogfish Head.
Hmmm, Chuck Cowdery and the Distilled Spirits Council on the topic:
http://chuckcowdery.blogspot.com/2012/01/discus-applauds-bloombergs-commitment.html
It could be that Bloomberg is doing CYA, but who knows.
Just caught this out of moderation. Here’s the problem I have with that defense of Bloomberg. He may not have personally drafted the plan, but the staff in a bureaucracy under his administration did draft it. It may not have gone into effect, but that is likely due to the fact that it was released by the Post so early in the process. So the defense from the kid with his hand in the cookie jar that he didn’t actually have his hand on a cookie yet, and he swears that the only reason he put is hand in there was because of a bet from Jimmy next door, well, that doesn’t really fly with me. It really doesn’t convince me when the kid (or Bloomberg, in this analogy) has a history of stealing everyone else’s cookies for the last several years.
Note anything THEY don’t like. This is also why there are a bunch of “I’m a gun owner but…” people in the anti-rights movement. They’re ok with banning pistols and semi-auto rifles…just so long as they get to keep their mauser-action deer gun, or their heirloom grade O/U skeet gun.
This is also why they get royally pissed when we bring up “Auto Deaths”. We can’t compare cars and guns because THEY OWN CARS!
They wouldn’t want to give up their 4th or 1st Amendment rights…but they’re sure fine with doing all they can to make gun owners shut up, and demanding we have our homes searched on the off chance that we’re selling guns on the streets.
Note these are also the same people who ban fast food restaurants…mostly because rich people like them are too good for Arbys!
It is, unfortunately, much easier to pass laws than to change public morality one person at a time.
To be fair, intelligently written laws and public campaigns can influence individual morality. One of the interesting aspects to the temperance movement was that when it started, it did make real changes in how people regarded alcohol. Rorabaugh’s The Alcoholic Republic points out that the dramatic decline in absolute alcohol consumption per capita between 1830 and 1840 was because of widespread efforts to make people aware of the dangers of intoxication. (Temperance originally referred not to total abstinence, but drinking only in moderation.)
There is a parallel between this and the dramatic changes in proper gun etiquette that come out of NRA’s safety programs from the 1940s onward. Look at the pictures of pistol teams from the 1930s, with all the pistols pointing at the camera!
Once the low-hanging fruit has been grabbed for any public persuasion campaign, the temptation is strong to start passing laws as a method of coercing those who are not persuaded into improving their behavior. To the extent that coercive laws do not make other problems more severe, they might be justifiable if they actually substantially improve public health and safety.
The difficulty is that you have to recognize when you have reached the point where you have gone as far as you can go without laws that produce as many problems as they solve. The more fanatical someone is about a problem, the less likely they are to recognize that their solutions are worse than the problem.
Agreed. “anything they don’t like” is the key. But then there is a special breed like Feinstein and Dog Gone who like concealed carry… for them.