I remember writing a while back, though I can’t find it now, that one reason the anti-gun movement could be dismissed as astroturf with very little in the way of a real movement behind it is because the big indicators of a true cultural struggle were absent. If there were real, motivated opposition, you’d see them attacking our core cultural institutions.
I’m sorry to say, but we’re starting to see that. Now, I do believe that social media has greatly enhanced the ability of a small number of determined activists to intimidate traditional companies who don’t really get social media. But in 2008, they did not have even a small number of determined activists. I believe we are seeing a resurgence of the gun control movement, and the time to get serious is now.
Yes, I am skeptical those poll numbers linked are so out of whack with what we’ve seen in the past even after mass shootings, but I’d note the shift here is almost exclusively women. I notice a few issues with this poll’s questioned, but it doesn’t look like the hatchet job I wish it did. To steel yourselves and start organizing. We’re going to need to all hang together over the next few months. It never hurts to start communicating with your reps.
I think you are correct. I was out circulating petitions for my local state rep (Republican) yesterday and today. A couple of neighbors immediately wanted to know if he took NRA donations and wouldn’t sign because of his NRA A rating. These are typical suburban Republican voters – not gun folks, but generally not hostile to gun folks and gun rights, either. I’ve had people give me flack about various positions by candidates before, but not like that. I’ll keep working on my neighbors – these folks did not know I’m an NRA member and were surprised that “a good guy” like me was one, and I don’t want to read too much into what two out of dozens of folks I talked with yesterday and today had to say, but I think we’re facing stiff headwinds.
The NRA doesn’t seem to be too concerned. For a pro-gun organization that sends its head honchos to talk more about non-gun issues than anything else I have to wonder. Also, where is the NRA Youth contingent?
Also, I hate to agree with John Kasich on something, but I think what we’re seeing today is just a collapse of social institutions as you might call them, as well as the impending collapse of the two party system:
https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/25/john-kasich-says-us-two-party-system-dying-predict/
Sebastian, you have talked about both of these things many times. What comes out of such a collapse could be scary, but with enough agitation from both sides, such a catalyst could hasten civil unrest.
The two-party system is baked into the election process cake.
What that means is the two-party system will stay, and what will change is the nature of one (or both) of the dominant two political parties. The evidence is already out there about how much the two parties have been transforming over the last thirty years.
Kasich just doesn’t like that the Republican party has moved away from his (true) core beliefs.
I hate to say it, but I am getting to the age where I am not really fighting for my rights any longer, nor even my children’s rights. My children are all over 30 years old. They are old enough to fight for themselves.
To tell the truth, I am tired. I have been fighting this battle and arguing with misinformed nitwits for over 30 years, and they still use the same old, tired talking points.
At this point, I am fighting for the rights of my grandchildren. There are times that I think if the Tide Pod generation doesn’t want the right to own firearms, and they want Socialism, what do I care? Why should I be fighting for rights that they do not want? Why should I force my values on them?
If the people who are 18-30 want to live like that, then let them.
I am tempted to sit back and enjoy my retirement, let them fight for themselves.
I understand being tired.
This country was founded in significant part due to the efforts of dangerous and wise old men that still decided to participate rather than sitting one out.
Sam Whittemore
http://www.badassoftheweek.com/whittemore.html
David Lamson
https://arlingtonhistorical.org/learn/prince-hall-cemetery/memorial-day-address-2005/
And of course, Poor Richard.
http://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/benjamin-franklin
Today its still old guys with nothing to lose pushing the envelope on behalf of all of us.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald_v._City_of_Chicago
Young Americans might surprise you: https://reason.com/blog/2018/02/19/gun-politics-is-where-the-easy-caricatur.
Most gun control was passed — or is modeled on laws that were passed — by prior generations, from 1900-1990 (in large part between 1910 and 1970).
Most of us are trying to unwind old laws enacted before our time, while trying to prevent new laws proposed/supported by Boomers.
Something to keep in mind.
Exactly right!
If the younger cohort is that much pro-gun rights, imagine how much more they might become as they grow older.
This has beem Shannon Watts/Bloomberg goal for quite some time. I did not even know about most of of these discounts.
Democratic/Progressive Activists are definitely more motivated this year as compared to previous years (except maybe 2013). They also believe strongly they will take back the House and Senate (because Trump) and may not be wrong.
Traditionally the NRA was only loosly affiliated with Republicans and going back to before Obama did back Democrats.
Social Media definitely amplifies mob psychology and protects echo chambers. Gun control has most always been about emotion, groupthink, and so maximizes bullying, censorship, and shaming. Thats all they got, so they gotta strike while things are hot.
Honestly when the dust settles, will any of the proffered laws reduce spree killing? Maybe the mental health aspect, but we dont have a magic brain scan to ID spree killers. Better security can only reduce the severity.
Short term, mob psychology drives the media. Long term, we need to wedge facts and logic into the conversation.
This is the result of Bloomberg’s effort to drive gun rights out of the Democratic party. Remember all the Dem primaries over the past few years he’s poured money into?
Today only 20% of rank and file Democrats will admit to pollsters that they own a gun, vs. 44% of Repubs. In the 70s the numbers were equal; by 2000 the Dems were down to 30%. Its become completely socially unacceptable among most Democrats to admit to gun ownership, even in an anonymous poll.
Today’s situation is the result of Bloomberg’s campaign to isolate gun rights into one partisan camp. The Blue Dogs are for the most part long gone. I suspect a few of the remaining Blue Dogish Senators will get swept away this election cycle.
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/06/22/the-demographics-of-gun-ownership/
https://www.dailywire.com/news/16244/study-republicans-have-way-more-guns-democrats-hank-berrien
If GOP keeps nominating people like Roy Moore and Todd Akin, not so much.
And yet, the Democrats can nominate outright Communists like Kamala Harris, Chris Coons, Claire McCaskill, and Bernie Sanders.
The media gives them cover though.
Joe, a comment like yours makes it hard to take you seriously. Sanders is an independent — more like a Democratic Socialist, really — and Harris is a liberal, as far as I know, while Coons is a moderate Democrat and McCaskill a fairly conservative one. As for terrible nominees, one currently occupies the White House, and the Republicans also own the disastrous years of George W. Bush and nominated the dimbulb Sarah Palin, who has since been eclipsed by the vacuous Donald Trump.
Also one thing to note in that CNN pole and a similar USA Today poll.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/02/25/poll-americans-support-tougher-gun-laws-dont-expect-congress-act/371104002/
“”By more than 2-1, 63%-29%, they say semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15, used by the Florida shooter, should be banned.””
In fact I didn’t find “assault” or “military” in this article. CNN is similar in their own poll question.
They’re now openly agitating for a ban on /all/ self loading rifles. And not even pretending the “Oh Assault weapons are scary and special”.
There’s several factors to take in I think.
One is that the Gun Control Movement and the media (CNN as a key example) got a group of young victims of the perfect age where they could be all but immune and the most sympathetic but still adult enough to talk.
And then pushed in the first week them wall-to-wall.
Culminating in that CNN “TownHall”. Where Sheriff Israel lashed out at the NRA despite his own massive failures. And he was allowed to do it.
So the mass governmental failures gave a big push to deflect and use this.
Then there’s some other timings. The accusations of Collusion on Russia/Trump seem to be falling apart and there’s a lot of anger.
And there’s still no closure on the Vegas shooting. No red flags, no answer as to /why/ that killer did it.
And not even a debate in congress.
My thinking is a lot of things (including the mid terms) have made a confluence of people who want SOME answer.
There’s also the /very/ worrying thing that the NRA can be blamed and get far more hate than a deputy who loses his bottle and stands by while children are murdered.
(Heck one of the victim speakers was interviewed /defending/ said deputy.)
Exactly this. People who weren’t even in the same building.
The media is pushing their narrative, because they think they have the momentum.
They don’t. This will only energize our side. This boycott will backfire. We will fight back and fight back hard. We know the playbook.
We don’t have sensational, kinetic events that generate motivation in the same way as the prohibitionist lobby. More importantly though, every organization that purports to represent gun owners fights defensively; offense is less than 10% of their focus. There are many state groups that insist they will not engage on federal issues. I think Wayne got 2 new 7 series’ in the time National Reciprocity has been languishing. I don’t know who at HQ got the AMG Merc, but it sure is a looker. It’s nice that they make enough money to not be commuting in beat up honda civics. Not sure if that money would have been better spent on say, lobbying but ok.
Honestly, I’m glad to have this “Frank and honest conversation†because it’s once again brought out the police statists hawking for door to door confiscation. Good. Let’s get that over and done with so we can identify these folks and get on with the serious talk.
The key understanding here is that very, very few politicians get the gun issue and even fewer are on our side. A hand full of the freedom caucus is it. The rest only vote the way they do for money and easy reelection. Now, they’re seeing that they can get reelected this year without NRA’s money. Or they’re seeing that the school shooting, rightly or wrongly tars the NRA with a political black mark.
At least we can see who our true friends were.
We didn’t put the gun into the hands of the kook. We didn’t uber the kook to the school, we didn’t pull the trigger, and we didn’t sit outside while the kids were being murdered. We have repeatedly told elected officials that gun free zones kill people and we have kept trying to find some “other way†over the decades. We have doubled down on stupid, expanded gun free zones and only recently begun to roll some back at the state level but federal gun free zones have remained at current levels since 2009.
Our side has exclusively been made to pay the political price for the other side’s idealogical failure.
Gun free zones kill people and anyone supporting them openly doesn’t get my financial support, campaign support, and earns my political opposition.
But our side has a great deal of hypocrisy in this regard. We have too many on our side, all too willing to intro with “I’m a gun owner but…â€
Stop the stupid. End gun free zones and stop criminalizing self defense.
I think Wayne’s time is up. His CPAC speech was clearly off the mark, and Dana Loesch did the fighting for him. No Asa Hutchinson to trot out at the Press Club for the school shield program this time. No NRA Youth response. BTW has anyone visited the NRA Youth site? It’s atrocious.
NRA needs a Dana or a Colion at the helm. At best NRA is at gun culture 1.5 level now when it needs to be strongly amped up and ready to connect.
The numbers on 18-29 contradict what the recent polls say. Kids don’t want bans or to be told no. That works against the historic background of any prohibitionist movement.
Then there’s the fact that most of us just go to sleep once we win. We have Trump, but he needs to stay covered on guns.
Wayne’s time has been up for a while.
Wayne needs to leave NOW.
Totally agree. Wayne should be done. If they want to keep him running some ops, that’s fine. But we need a better head spokesperson. I like Dana, but I like Noir even better. I feel like he can articulate points better than her, but I’ll take either over Wayne.
I’d like to see Wayne retire soon. But for a lot of reasons I’m not keen on Dana Loesch being Wayne’s replacement. And it has more to do with who’s pulling her strings and setting her tone than a problem with her.
I agree with this. I’m really, really unhappy with the NRA’s decision to put people like Dana and Grant Stinchfield front-and-center and dial the KULTUR WAR crap up to eleventy. To the extent that the organization’s PR efforts are directed towards making liberals cry, it’s that much less credible as an advocate for civil rights.
Yup. And I have to admit that it makes me much less enthusiastic about making the extra effort for them. I find myself drawn to other interests more because they have more positive people involved and as the face.
Ditto.
The other thing I’ll say about it is that I think it’s strategically idiotic. There are still a fair number of pro-gun liberals out there, who if engaged can provide something of a moderating influence on the Democratic Party. I’m not saying that they’re going to keep Connecticut from electing five-alarm assclowns like Chris Murphy, but they can certainly help keep guys like Joe Manchin from turning to the dark side.
That’s if you engage them. If you do nothing but spit in their eye — which is what the Dana Loesch, Grant Stinchfield KULTUR WAR crap achieves — then you’re signaling to them that the NRA is a club for righties, and that gun rights are exclusively a conservative cause.
And that’s sensible only if you think the GOP is never going to lose another election. Anybody want to take that bet?
Bingo, no reason to go culture war.
Finally, someone willing to point out the elephant in the room, that none of the commentators actually work for the NRA!
We have got to start retaliating. No more Marquis of Queensbury rules. States we control should prohibit travel on the offending airlines and rental car companies. At the individual level, I am working on pulling my money out of MetLife where it has been for 20 years. Symantec is next.
The SJWs will move on to the next mob soon but gun owners will remember who insulted them. We need to weaponize this. Corporations need to feel the burn.
That’s a good idea. S&W almost went under after a similar boycott when they sold out to the clintons.
Actually, they did go under (twice I think). The name is still the same but the ownership is different.
These polls you mentioned… Are they the same polls that said Hillary had a 95% chance of winning in 2016?
Probably. I’m believing that during times like this, gun owners retreat and stop talking to media or pollsters…. so we get to know the opinions of people willing to talk to pollsters. The 2018 elections will be a bellwether. If the dems unexpectedly fizzle, and by fizzle I allow for them to make gains, just not as many as they expect… then I think we can declare a changed reality: polls no longer reflect actual public opinion.
Fivethirtyeight (who have an axe), pointed out that it wasn’t as much that the polls didn’t reflect public opinion as much as that interpreters of the polls read what they wanted into them.
They noted basically that Hillary’s margin of victory was less than the margin of error in most polls. Extremely simplified this meant there were 3 cases – the polls understated Hillary’s popularity by the MoE (in which case she still wins), the polls were more or less right, (in which case she wins), or the polls were off by the MoE and overstated her popularity (in which case Trump wins by a squeaker). Which led to them saying Hillary had a roughly 66% chance of victory. 1 chance in 3 of an event, once, is a not-inconsiderable chance, ask any wargamer.
There are systematic problems in polling, but they increase the noise in the system. Badly designed/”push” polling is responsible for a lot worse.
A little perspective is needed. Obama was on a roll with his agenda. Sandy Hook was much worse in optics with 5-6 years old torn apart from rifle fire. Manchin and Toomey rolled over with the expanded background which was just a method to prohibit loaning guns to others so they could learn Once we knew that we got active and lit up the phones. That momentum was stopped cold.
Trump will not go along with bans.
On long term we need to normalize guns in schools Rifle teams, trap shooting Get the kids into shooting sports.
Exactly this. We withstood Obama and being blamed for 5 year olds being murdered.
This is different only because the media has teenage faces to push, despite them not actually being in the building where the shooting occurred. And the entire gun control movement has decided to use it to push for changes now. But we will withstand it again. We have Trump who thankfully isn’t to going sign anything bad.
The media is also more agressive now, because you have to remember; the Democrat Party wants Trump IMPEACHED.
The DNC and MSM are working hand in to rile up the radical left, all being funded heavily by the Democrat Party Billionaire Donor Class, through the likes of Bloomberg-Soros-Steyer.
I’ve been doing research on past polling data, and the support for stricter gun laws was MUCH HIGHER after the 2012 Sandy Hook School Shooting Masscre.
Our side still, in the present, must fight back against the anti-gunners with greater vigor now than back then.
It doesn’t hurt that we have so much factual evidence supporting our position as opposed the hysterics and ignorance of the other side.
And we have people like Ben Shapiro who speaks for our side, compared to clowns like David Hogg who speaks for their side.
I expect this will all wash out in a stalemate at the national level. But the Blue States are going to get holy hell rained down on them by the anti-gun cultists.
I’m not super worried about this galvanizing the anti’s enough to get major, culture altering federal gun control passed. What I am worried about is this being enough for the blue states to really clamp down hard on legal gun owners.
The differences between this and Sandy Hook are Trump, and the Deep State fear of losing more power over the people.
The First Bank of Omaha was the initial company to dump the NRA; when I think of Omaha, I think Warren Buffet, a big Dem donor.
The corporate reaction against the NRA seems coordinated, like the GOP-RINO call for Trump to quit the race after the Billy Bush tape. I would be interested to know who sits on the boards of directors of the formerly NRA-affiliated companies, and which of them are tied to Dem/Soros/Bloomberg interests, and which of them sit on each other’s boards.
“when I think of Omaha, I think Warren Buffet”
Um, why? I don’t see anything about him being connected to the bank when I do a quick search. Is there evidence he’s behind the move? Or is it just because he was born in Omaha? If that kind of loose association makes one guilty, then maybe I’m responsible for it all. I mean Warren Buffett is a cousin of mine through Mareen Duvall. And that same ancestor makes me cousins to the former leader of the Deep State, Barack Obama, too! And since one cousin was born in Omaha and another tried to push gun control once, clearly there are ties…
“I would be interested to know who sits on the boards of directors of the formerly NRA-affiliated companies”
I’m pretty sure you can look that information since a number are publicly traded.
Leftists were already dialed up to 11 because Trump. Conservatives not so much. Now with the leftists spewing incoherent hate, conservatives are starting to spin up too. But if Republicans cave to the media, that will let all the air out.
Georgia State Senate is putting the screws to Delta. Revoke their discriminatory policy and lose the jet fuels sales tax exemption they were about to pass.
Just wanted to let you all know, that this will be the defining issue of what will be (maybe already is) the countries largest voting block. The energy behind the Gun Control movement is massive, and growing stronger every day. We are organizing, raising money, and shifting public opinion. We will CRAWL THROUGH BROKEN GLASS to make sure NRA funded politicians are THROWN OUT of office like a bunch of disgraced drunks. We will never, ever stop fighting. But don’t despair, when Assault Rifles are banned, and your hearts are broken, we’ll gladly send you our thoughts and prayers.
Never heard that before in my decade in this issue. The most you’re going to get is a meaningless law we’re all going to ignore, just like in CT and NY. That’s at best. At worst, you’re going to see massive push back from the states where gun rights are important.
