What Have We Become?

[peckman28]

"Arrogance is no substitute for leadership"

No s**t.

Jesus, dude. Get with the f***ing program. No unity, no win.

Period. No. F**king. Win.

Is there some point you think you're making?

 

[ChineseAks]

Is there some point you think you're making?

made me chuckle

 

[Machodoc]

This mentality is what has gotten us to where we are today. I'm sure this is what people thought in the 1930s when the unconstitutional NFA was passed. In the 1960s most of the GCA of 1968 was supported by even the NRA....it would stop there. In 1986 the Hughes Amendment was reasonable too. In 1994 the liberals openly said the AWB was "only the beginning". This doesn't even cover the disasters that have happened in states like CA or NY, bit by bit. It's long past time for EVERY American to pull his/her head right back out their ass and stop putting up with this nonsense. You don't go looking to compromise with communist heathens who hate your freedoms and want them gone, you remove them from power, utterly discredit them, and don't give them a chance to ever go on the offensive against you in the first place. No other strategy is acceptable.

As far as 2A goes, we aren't going to be where the Constitution says we're supposed to be until I am allowed to walk into the local Wal-Mart and walk back out 5 mins later with an Uzi (complete with happy switch) and a 40-rd stick mag along with 1,000 rds of 9mm for my amusement whenever I please. ALL forms of gun control enacted by the state and federal governments need to be GONE. My use of weapons is not the government's business until I harm someone with them.

OK. I agree with all that you say about how things should be, so let's make it really simple:

How do you propose that we are going to accomplish those things? Don't give me "shoulda, woulda, coulda" about what went on in the '30s or '60s. Tell me how you propose to change things, right now, to be the way we'd all like them to be.

 

[crowleycr]

I will say we are in this together and that we should not surrender anything. We should work to take back lost ground.

That said i don't know what good this petition does. The White house Rodeo clown won't read it. He is in Petulant Frenzy because the congress didn't act the way he ordered them to in destroying more 2A rights. I signed the petition, just wish we had more tools at our disposal when someone poops in our cereal.

 

[peckman28]

OK. I agree with all that you say about how things should be, so let's make it really simple:

How do you propose that we are going to accomplish those things? Don't give me "shoulda, woulda, coulda" about what went on in the '30s or '60s. Tell me how you propose to change things, right now, to be the way we'd all like them to be.

A fair question. A lot of it is culture and messaging. We cannot afford to let the gun-grabbers take the moral high ground on any of this. They are immoral, we know it, and we need to effectively communicate it. Compromise with them is unacceptable; their path leads to confiscation in the end and compromise, at best, slows us down on that path. We need to pay attention to who we're voting for in the primaries, re-educate the people on the Constitution and why it's important, and demand that our founding document is adhered to. This last point stands far beyond just guns. With all the serious examples of why you shouldn't be trusting the government that have made the news lately, I believe now is the time to change a lot of minds. We incrementally lost our rights to the point we are at now, and I don't believe they can be regained overnight.

It begins by drawing the line where we are, and then reorienting ourselves towards going back on the offensive and forcing the Constitution to be followed as written. It's not a "living document", it is the supreme law of the land and it must be obeyed. If every citizen thought this way it would change things dramatically in this country. Since most people have never taken the time to sit down and read the Constitution, nor the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers, the beginning must be education. Informed people make much better voters/citizens than ignorant masses prancing around out there demanding their free "Obama phones".

 

[Machodoc]

A fair question. A lot of it is culture and messaging. We cannot afford to let the gun-grabbers take the moral high ground on any of this. They are immoral, we know it, and we need to effectively communicate it.

OK. I agree. And I also think that an overwhelming response via a petition is one very small part of taking the moral high ground.

But when you say that they are "immoral", keep in mind that they are not a small minority. Would you like it if someone told you that you are immoral? Would you believe it, and change your thinking ... or would you just get more pissed off and entrenched in your thinking?

Compromise with them is unacceptable; their path leads to confiscation in the end and compromise, at best, slows us down on that path.

Compromise is also a strategy. If a friend is suddenly wounded and bleeding, putting a tourniquet or bandage on him isn't a cure. It's a compromise. In a situation like that, do you say that he shouldn't have been wounded, so you won't make the compromise of a temporary fix to keep him from bleeding out, or do you try to save him and reverse the damage of the wound through the slow healing process? Sometimes you have to deal with "what is", at least temporarily, instead of "what should be".

We need to pay attention to who we're voting for in the primaries, re-educate the people on the Constitution and why it's important, and demand that our founding document is adhered to.

OK ... what if your primaries offer only a choice between two candidates: both of whom are willing to let 2A rights erode (or disappear) in exchange for votes? That's often what we have, and we've had the line about "voting for a 3rd party is throwing away your vote" drummed into our heads for so long that most Americans accept that as a fact.

And, being realistic, if there's not a clear majority of Americans who feel the way that we do about the sanctity of our 2A rights (and there isn't), you can demand all you want ... and that's not going to get you any further than the antis demanding that all guns disappear.

This last point stands far beyond just guns. With all the serious examples of why you shouldn't be trusting the government that have made the news lately, I believe now is the time to change a lot of minds. We incrementally lost our rights to the point we are at now, and I don't believe they can be regained overnight.

BINGO! Now we are getting somewhere.

We incrementally lost our rights. Change is slow, and takes place over time, unless some "triggering event" comes along to persuade the public that a faster change needs to happen. Mass murders with guns are powerful triggering events that work against us. They are like avalanches that destroy all in their path. You can stand up against an avalanche and get buried, or you can get out of the way--survive--and then work to prevent them from occurring in the future.

But change in the other direction (in our favor) is also going to be slow and incremental unless there's a triggering event that moves the American public to decide that they need to support strict 2A rights. That's just how things work. Us demanding, and drawing lines, is no more realistic than the antis demanding that Obama wave a magic wand and make all guns disappear. We don't have a magic wand that will instantly convince the majority of Americans--who are, by the way, on the fence about 2A issues--that they should instantly become staunch 2A supporters.

"Drawing lines" and making demands makes us look, to those people, like we are fanatics. We need to educate them first, and we're not doing that very well.

It begins by drawing the line where we are, and then reorienting ourselves towards going back on the offensive and forcing the Constitution to be followed as written. It's not a "living document", it is the supreme law of the land and it must be obeyed. If every citizen thought this way it would change things dramatically in this country. Since most people have never taken the time to sit down and read the Constitution, nor the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers, the beginning must be education. Informed people make much better voters/citizens than ignorant masses prancing around out there demanding their free "Obama phones".

OK. I agree with your objective, but not your methodology. That's where we disagree. Now tell me, very specifically, how you intend to "go on the offensive"? If you mean getting off our asses and getting people into office who are not anti-2A, or would not compromise the Constitution, I agree.

"If every citizen thought this way it would change things dramatically in this country." Absolutely! But they don't, and demanding, or drawing lines, isn't going to change their thinking. It only makes us look separate from them and appear to be radical. We need to educate the American public ... bring them around to where the majority sees things the way that we do ... and then the majority will have leverage. It will be an agonizingly slow process, but that's what needs to be done. Unfortunately, we don't have any major movements to do that.

Unless you are working from a position of overwhelming power (and we aren't, unfortunately), demands are useless. You have to use persuasion.

 

[dancnr]

I don't want to be Debbie Downer here, but these petitions have been ignored en mass by the white house, they started them at 25k, then to 50k, and now 100k to respond. And they have ignored petitions from all across the political spectrum even when they have hit the required number of signatures or just given them a meaningless answer and moved on. I'm not saying we shouldn't sign it, but let's be realistic about what it is.

 

[peckman28]

Machodoc: Compromising with them to sacrifice more of our freedom, but just not as much as they demand, is plain stupid and has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual restoration of our rights. If you're serious about doing that, rather than just surrendering more slowly, then we can have a conversation. What you have repeatedly been seen advocating is just plain ridiculous. The ultimate goal is no more gun control of any kind, yet you want to compromise with these morons and you justify it by using an irrelevant tourniquet analogy? Absolutely unacceptable. The true believers on the other side will never be convinced by logic, but they are few. Most of the people in this country really don't care too much about guns, and they are the target. If we look like fanatics to the true believers out there then so be it. They want to see a fanatic, they need to check the mirror. Compromise and accommodation with the enemies of freedom is, hands-down, the most foolish strategy to possibly follow short of full surrender.

 

[tall.guy88]

I signed. For the record, Im one of the 11,000

 

[Bob A]

(Re)-educating the public is desirable, but exceedingly difficult, given the incredible level of bias that exists in the media and academia. These folks go out of their way to label us as insane extremists. Oddly enough, when facts are viewed dispassionately, the shoe seems to be on the other foot.

In the short term, we have to rely on the courts, especially SCOTUS, where there seems to be a margin of hope. The recent loosening of CCW restrictions over he last decade is remarkable, and a very hopeful sign. This and the Colorado recalls seem to point to a rekindling of a spark in the political middle ground. People are tired of being whipsawed by extremists on both sides of the issues, and are beginning to realise that they're being jerked around by jerks.

The fact that 41 states are shall issue or free, and the streets are not running with blood, forces those with the ability to view things with an open mind to conclude that the vast majority of citizens are trustrworthy and law-abiding.

A problem is the information deluge, which makes it easy for the media to scapegoat; in a country with three hundred million people, violent acts involving firearms will always exist. Selectively spinning them into our living rooms keeps folks watching the screens between commercials. Good news seldom gets attention.

For immediate action, financial support of organisations which use the courts to fight for our rights is most pressing. Next would be finding and developing rational unbiased media outlets, be they reporters, bloggers, or people articulate enough to provide written arguments to newspaper editorial pages. Long term, at least in MD, would be the attempt to unseat the less reasonable members of the GA.

 

[Machodoc]

I don't want to be Debbie Downer here, but these petitions have been ignored en mass by the white house, they started them at 25k, then to 50k, and now 100k to respond. And they have ignored petitions from all across the political spectrum even when they have hit the required number of signatures or just given them a meaningless answer and moved on. I'm not saying we shouldn't sign it, but let's be realistic about what it is.

You are absolutely right about them being ignored. That's a given. I don't think anyone expects anything to change because of a petition--especially insofar as Obama is concerned. Yes, of course, he'll at best put out some sort of BS answer with the Biden spin on it.

But other members of congress watch the petitions that gain traction, and it's a way for them to see how voters feel about issues. There will not be any immediate change, and there may not even be a perceptible change, but every bit of a nudge in the right direction is worth taking.

Is that realistic enough? I don't think anyone around here has really expected any more than that. This tends to be a pretty realistic bunch, for the most part.

 

[Machodoc]

Machodoc: Compromising with them to sacrifice more of our freedom, but just not as much as they demand, is plain stupid and has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual restoration of our rights. If you're serious about doing that, rather than just surrendering more slowly, then we can have a conversation. What you have repeatedly been seen advocating is just plain ridiculous. The ultimate goal is no more gun control of any kind, yet you want to compromise with these morons and you justify it by using an irrelevant tourniquet analogy? Absolutely unacceptable. The true believers on the other side will never be convinced by logic, but they are few. Most of the people in this country really don't care too much about guns, and they are the target. If we look like fanatics to the true believers out there then so be it. They want to see a fanatic, they need to check the mirror. Compromise and accommodation with the enemies of freedom is, hands-down, the most foolish strategy to possibly follow short of full surrender.

Here's where our meeting of the minds breaks down, but I thank you for at least not reducing the conversation to name-calling, as others tend to do.

Just for the sake of argument, let's use some approximate numbers to make a point. These aren't exact figures, but they may be relatively close.

Let's say that the voting American public breaks down into three groups:

1. 15% people who are pro-gun or gun friendly.
2. 5% people who are rabidly anti-gun.
3. 80% people who really don't feel that they have a direct stake in either side of the matter.

If these figures are anywhere near accurate, it means that neither the pro, nor the anti, have the majority of votes necessary to decide an election. That makes the 80% who are on the fence (or simply don't care) open to be swayed by whatever forces are out there to put them into one camp, or the other.

Is that a fair statement? If so, let's look at the importance of that 80%.

At the moment, the events in CO and CT, along with other widely-publicized gun-related violence, has that 80% leaning more to the anti-side. The press hasn't helped, because they will report a case of gun violence in another country before they will report a local event where a gun owner was able to protect his or her family. That's wrong, of course, but it's a reality that we have to deal with.

What we need to be doing is to educate that 80% and reverse their leaning so that they come back over to our side. As another poster noted, that's going to be a really tough job. It's not something that can be done overnight, and we can't engineer a triggering event that would work in the opposite way of a mass shooting.

Now let's look at the "no-compromise" and "draw the line" approach. I truly do agree with the sentiment, by the way, but I disagree with the actual practice for exactly the reasons that this poster has articulated. Being viewed, rightly or wrongly, as "fanatics" and "gun nuts" is what we absolutely need to avoid.

So let's say that a MD resident decides it's their duty to God and country to defy the new restrictions that are about to be put into place. Let's say that they announce publicly that they are going to defy them openly, and the press gets wind of the story. They show a news clip of the guy brandishing an illegal weapon and challenging the LEOs to come and get it. They are drawing the line in the sand (as some have advocated doing elsewhere on this board ... what I mean when I talk about "chest thumping").

Now let's take this worst-case scenario a little further, and say that the LEOs respond to this challenge by knocking on the door with a search warrant, and the fellow, not willing to compromise by letting them serve the warrant on him, shoots a couple of LEOs. The cops eventually take him out, and the press adds his name to the list of nuts who used a gun to commit a violent crime ... only this time, it's one who did it in the name of "drawing the line to preserve 2A rights".

He's drawn the line, for sure. He's also created a couple of widows, several orphans, and he's also caused about 250 million people to have another reason to become anti-gun ... people who don't have a clue why preserving 2A rights is essential, or even what they are, because they were educated in the American public school system.

This is why we have to not only be right, but also be smart, highly persistent, and patient.

 

[MedInfantry]

Personally I hadn't heard anything about the petition until today. I've signed and shared link on FB.

 

[Mooseman]

I had to sign up for a whitehouse.gov account to sign this petition. I did not want to do this but I did it anyhow.

 

[dancnr]

You are absolutely right about them being ignored. That's a given. I don't think anyone expects anything to change because of a petition--especially insofar as Obama is concerned. Yes, of course, he'll at best put out some sort of BS answer with the Biden spin on it.

But other members of congress watch the petitions that gain traction, and it's a way for them to see how voters feel about issues. There will not be any immediate change, and there may not even be a perceptible change, but every bit of a nudge in the right direction is worth taking.

Is that realistic enough? I don't think anyone around here has really expected any more than that. This tends to be a pretty realistic bunch, for the most part.

Thats a very good point

 

[r3t1awr3yd]

If it makes the OP feel better, I signed it.

 

[Storm40]

our problem is not that our message is wrong, it is not that we are in the minority, it is that the anti-gunners have the thing which we do not - immediate, full access to a complicit media and full support from them and their 24/7 news cycle. They control the "facts" and they never have to issue a correction.

they are wrong, they are in the minority and it is their message and ONLY their message which gets *effectively* played. Every fringe case is used against us effectively. Every psycho is morphed magically into EVERY gun owner, whom "we all know" is just a ticking time bomb, ready to snap. Our edge cases - where guns are good, mmmmkay? - are buried, left unreported and off the major news networks. That gives THEM a big edge in apparent credibility and undermines ours - regardless of the facts involved. I don't think we can win if we stick to traditional big media, given the cards stacked against us. I don't have any ideas on how to change that.

 

[JailHouseLiar]

Can you be more specific about what you are saying? I'm not at all certain what you are talking about. I'm not in a position to volunteer to negotiate the surrender of anything ... whether I wanted to, or not.

I am all in favor of keeping firearms out of the hands of criminals, and I don't think that submitting to reasonable background checks is too high a price for us to pay to accomplish that (it takes about 5 minutes where I live). I'm a very staunch believer in the U.S. Constitution as being THE BASIS OF LAW in our country.

I recall saying something about a group (including you?) of guys thumping their chests about what they would do if certain of their rights were taken away (laws enforced), including hiding out in their bunkers and fighting to the finish. I pointed out that, realistically, none of those people were going to do that, and that it wouldn't accomplish a thing if they did. At the same time, I made at least one proposal about how the issue could be played, using the current rules of the game instead of chest-thumping claims that would never be carried out. Just because I look for legal (and constitutional) solutions, rather than making hollow threats about what I'm going to do if the rules don't suit me, doesn't mean that I agree with those rules. Some people have to frame the world so that anyone who doesn't agree with them 100% is their enemy. I'm not one of those people.

We are a country of laws, for better or for worse, and just because I might suggest a legal remedy, or even a compromise, to a political situation instead of blowing hot air about how I'd be ready to shoot it out, doesn't mean that I am not in favor of preserving our gun rights. I think that MD citizens are getting screwed. No doubt about that. But it's the voters and politicians of that state who are doing that, and any talk about armed defiance of the law is absurd. You aren't going to do it, nor are the 3-4 others who were making loud boasts about how they would do that.

I don't live in MD, even though my family was among the founders of the Calvert colony. I am about 1/4 mile from the state line, but I'm under a far more reasonable set of laws than MD has.

Are you making an effort to launch a slate of pro-2A candidates to take back the rights of MD citizens?

When I hear the word "compromise" it suggests to me I give something to get something. When I hear gun grabbers use that word, I imagine they wanna grab all the guns and a "compromise" is letting them grab some of the guns/mags.

Put National Concealed Carry on the table and we'll talk.

For me it's easier to move than fight to the finish and I agree, the media will play it up as another gun nut gone crazy, so it will hurt more than help. However, I've given up plenty and not willingly and received zero in return. That's not compromise as I define it. So I'm not willing to give a single thing up at this point.

 

[Ab_Normal]

Like Obama would listen anyway. Besides this is something that is left up to congress according to the Constitution:

Article. I.

Section. 8.

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations

 

[Machodoc]

our problem is not that our message is wrong, it is not that we are in the minority, it is that the anti-gunners have the thing which we do not - immediate, full access to a complicit media and full support from them and their 24/7 news cycle. They control the "facts" and they never have to issue a correction.
[...]
That gives THEM a big edge in apparent credibility and undermines ours - regardless of the facts involved. I don't think we can win if we stick to traditional big media, given the cards stacked against us. I don't have any ideas on how to change that.

You don't steer a ship from the outside. You need to be onboard it. Want to know how the pros change the direction of a movement? They do it from the inside. Think about that. Members of two polar opposite groups standing around yelling at each other, making threats, etc., has never changed a single opinion on either side. It makes them feel more martyred ... and therefore more resolute. Extremists at either end tend to be in the minority, and seldom effect change. They usually just end up making those in the middle feel uncomfortable.

What works is to move the majority in the middle over to one side enough that they are willing to give support, and that takes persuasion ... not angry demands.

What we need to do is persuade those in the middle to not see us as fanatics who are one missed med away from hunkering down in a bunker, but reasonable friends and neighbors just like them ... only ones who have very good reasons for owning firearms. In short, we need to capture that middle ground by showing how what we believe in is for the children and for the good of American citizens as a whole. That's a tough job, because it requires educating people who are already tending to lean in the other direction, and because our educational and media systems don't carry our message.