Over eight years of observing the gun control movement, and trying to understand what motivates them, I’ve come to the conclusion that at the movement’s core, gun control is an attempt by power elites to keep firearms out of the hands of the lower classes. Of course, if you framed your movement that way, no one would buy in. So it is necessary for the other side to couch their goals in language where they look like heroes of the lower classes rather than people out to disempower them.
Ever expanding the class of prohibited persons to encompass people convicted or accused of ever more minor offenses is a logical strategy for a movement that has had very little luck with any other form of gun control. There’s a significant amount of ignorance among elites about what “domestic violence” can consist of. Most people envisage someone beating their wife, and certainly that does happen, and those people deserve to go to jail. But domestic abuse can, in some states, consist of something as little as grabbing a cell phone out of someone’s hand or pushing someone out of the way as you run out of the house in a huff.
Remember that lower class people don’t have money to hire lawyers in most cases, and can often be one vindictive ex-girlfriend away from losing their gun rights for good. Lower class people tend to have these kinds of problems more than the upper classes do. This is really a perfect issue for the gun control movement, because few people want to be seen standing up for domestic abusers, and fewer people understand how the law in these cases actually works to understand the wool is being pulled over their eyes by very deceptive people.
The more I have thought about the issue of trying to keep guns out of the hands of free people, the less I am convinced that such restrictions actually prevent harm from occurring.
Sure, it sounds like a nice idea to keep guns out of the hands of felons, the mentally ill, and anyone with ties to domestic violence. In practice, however, there are two problems with this:
First, a huge percentage of felons, mentally ill, and domestically “violent” people are actually mostly harmless: they’ll generally only fight to preserve innocent life. This is *especially* true as efforts have been made to expand the definitions of these three groups (for purposes of limiting gun ownership)!
Second, any free person (ie, not in prison or a mental institution) is going to have access to guns, knives, and other implements of harm, one way or another, and no law is going to prevent it. Thus, any law that attempts to take guns away from felons, the mentally ill, or domestically “violent” people, won’t actually disarm those who are out to cause harm.
Heh. This makes me think that, instead of trying to take the arms of someone who is the subject of a restraining order, perhaps a restraining order should come with a gun, and a couple of hours on use of said gun and a summary of the laws of self defense…
I’ve always said that gun control is based on the premise of keeping free people from accessing a legal product. What delusion they must have to think it could work when we can’t even prevent incarcerated people from obtaining illicit products.
“gun control is an attempt by power elites to keep firearms out of the hands of the lower classes”
I think that is partly true, partly false (I think gun controllers are a little more diverse than that). I think that a lot of gun controllers are bona-fide pacifists and anti-hunting. They just think if you take something away, people will not turn to other lethal objects of convenience. They cannot fathom that perhaps people are predatory animals capable of actually seeking other people out and planning murder. Take away the weapons, people will just stop killing and eating meat, mkay?
I also think that there is a third group: People who are just uneducated about the laws. I know some people personally who fall into this category. One or two trips to the range often cures that (“They did what in 2013? Boy I’d be pissed too.”). These people just don’t have a clue and think drug dealers buy guns from an FFL.
The good news, I think group #1 (elites) and #2 (pacifists) – the real leftists – make up not more than 25% of voters. The remainder can be educated.
Anytime you make generalizations on a topic, outliers can be pointed out. I’m speaking about the driving intellectual force that keeps the movement going, not necessarily addressing the core motivations of everyone involved.
The thing that gives it away is the rhetoric that says “anyone can snap.” They wnat to preempt the POSSIBILITY of harm, even if that puts people in the way of actual harm.
Wait, you actually think there is an “intellectual force”? lol. You are funny. Daniel Webster with his 5 data points that “prove” permits to purchase handguns reduced crime in MO is anything but an intellectual force.
I think you are essentially correct. It’s why you find both big government liberals and big government conservatives supporting extreme gun control.
But even some big government conservatives are beginning to clue in how corrosive gun control is to the rule of law and how gun control supports one of the greatest desires of the Left. For big government conservatives, gun control is a ‘meh, why not?’ issue. For most liberals, big government and otherwise, they see red when it comes to guns.
In my opinion the primary support for gun control comes from the basest emotional desires. The desire to control and punish enemies. The national debate on gun control is a main front in the culture war the Left is waging on the nation. The Left wants to see us gun people brought down and punished. They hate and fear us, and consider themselves our moral superiors.
But here’s the silver lining. We can finally kill off gun control by undermining what remains of public support. We focus on the casual gun control supporters, the casual low information Lefties who think gun control helps the helpless. We point out that all gun control does is take guns from the poor and the powerless, and keeps guns in the hands of the rich and the powerful. We attack gun control from the Lefty viewpoint of class consciousness!
As far as domestic violence, that claim can happen to anyone, and you are right: we are all just one vindictive ex away from getting ensnared.
I blogged a two part series when it happened to me last year:
Part one
http://street-pharmacy.blogspot.com/2014/05/trouble.html
Part two:
http://street-pharmacy.blogspot.com/2014/06/prohibited-person.html
I read your second link. Wow, you really found a prize in her didn’t you? Can you ballpark the expense it cost you?
Your story illustrates my fears of the ever widening war on men our nation seems hellbound on pursuing and in which gun control is acquiring a greater role.
I paid the attorney $1,800
I had to leave the country on an extended vacation so she couldn’t nail me for aggravated stalking, and that cost another $6,000. I don’t know if you would count that as an expense, since I did get to travel to the Bahamas and St Martin.
Isn’t it lucky for them that in many places the laws that were EXPLICITLY passed to keep guns out of the hands of “those people” have very elastic terms, so that anyone can be added to the group of “those people.”
And, I’ll point out that the laws that were supposed to keep guns out of the hands of her ex, also kept them out of the hands of Ms. Browne when she really needed them.
NY Penal Law 145.00 (4): A person is guilty of criminal mischief in the fourth degree when, having no right to do so nor any reasonable ground to believe that he or she has such right, he or she
With intent to prevent a person from communicating a request for emergency assistance, intentionally disables or removes telephonic, TTY or similar communication sending equipment while that person: (a) is attempting to seek or is engaged in the process of seeking emergency assistance from police, law enforcement, fire or emergency medical services personnel; or (b) is attempting to seek or is engaged in the process of seeking emergency assistance from another person or entity in order to protect himself, herself or a third person from imminent physical injury. The fact that the defendant has an ownership interest in such equipment shall not be a defense to a charge pursuant to this subdivision.
I wasn’t around in ’68, but seems the intent of the “no guns for felons” piece of the GCA was to setup a means for punishment. The modern gun control movement then expanded that concept as a government duty to prevent felons from possessing guns. That of course is a pipe dream with a steady course of infringements on good people to follow.