First the quote from Braden Lynch:
If the gun control advocates took no more action and disavowed themselves from all of the rhetoric about confiscation for 50 years, would they get closer to their goal? I worry that people would get complacent and our resurging gun culture might recede and ownership levels actually decrease.
Of course, they are hard-wired to hate our firearms which represent, and are actually useful in, resistance to their despotic designs. So, no they can’t back off, and I think that gun culture will still flourish because it is such fun and the need for it will never go away.
Now the image:
Translation: SEE? We don’t want to BAN GUNS! We want to restrict people OWNING guns!
Of course images like this, or recent pressers like this aren’t a concession on the old saw of gun-banning, but an understanding of the playing field. The NFA was originally supposed to include ALL handguns (hence why they went to such trouble to define long guns), and the Brady Campaign used to be called Handgun Control Inc. Their original plan was to ban all handguns from the American people. Only a bulk of the American people OWNED handguns and didn’t want them taken away or taxed. So the antis started focusing on “Assault Weapons” and the newer handguns that had “Evil” features and larger magazines rather than the single-stack pistols and revolvers that were the most popular handguns of the 60’s through about the 80s when the Wonder-Nine trend started up.
They were successful in the 90s with their ban on “Assault Weapons”, but of course this ban also inspired curiosity and brought a LOT of people into the fold for loving the utility of the so-called “Assault Weapons”.
Now they’re saying they aren’t interested in banning guns, instead they want to restrict people’s right to keep and bear them. (Bonus points for throwing in a poorly understood “Well Regulated” quote).
Still they aren’t coming around on “Assault Weapons” or even their longer-held desire to ban handguns. The antis fought to the bitter end in Chicago and DC gun bans. They have fought the last three carry bans in DC, Chicago, and Wisconsin with their all. Places like New York, California, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, among others, who all have some form of “Assault Weapons” Ban aren’t seeing any political pressure to back down.
No they still want to ban ALL GUNS, not just add the restrictions they’re asking for today. Hell they want NATIONAL “background check” laws passed that criminalize most gun ownership, but currently that is a political impossibility, so now they’re focusing on a state-by-state ballot imitative method, and pressuring state government, like we have seen in Colorado and Washington.
The end goal? Making gun ownership such a pain that fair-weather gun owners give up their guns (either by choice, or conviction) and the stalwarts have difficulty recruiting new shooters to the cause. If they can freeze gun ownership to just those who have guns RIGHT NOW, it’s only a matter of waiting until they die before the battlefield is clear to pass whatever laws they want.
Essentially in the earlier days gun control was being fought as an all-out ground war, with both sides slugging it out toe-to-toe. At first the antis were VERY successful of this tactic, but really after the high point in 1994 they started losing ground, and were forced to change tactics.
Now it it is a guerrilla war we’re fighting, with a much smaller force of stalwart anti-gunners doing pinpoint strikes then vanishing into the hills. This of course can be JUST as deadly, just look at Iraq and Afghanistan for examples. Now of course the insurgent forces in those nations don’t inspire the awe and fear that say the Axis Powers did in WWII, but what we must remember is just because their tactics have changed doesn’t mean their goals have.
Also if they manage to turn the tide they can start building up their forces again, until they again are staging an all-out ground war against us again, but how many would be on our side once we get there?
“Making gun ownership such a pain . . .”. I’ll go with that as the anti-gunners’ goals. Regulatory/bureaucratic smothering of property rights, malicious zoning, demonization of gun owners and lawful gun use, minimizing or ignoring the spirit and letter of the Constitution, etc. The campaign against tobacco may be a rough guide for some of their political actions.
I don’t have any doubt there’s been a conversation among them that runs something like: “Yeah, they’ll retain a technical right to keep and bear arms, but the practical hurdles to ownership will be nearly insurmountable.”
My small-time politicking experience tells me a lot of the anti-gunners probably started out with good motives. Ego, the lust for power at the expense of innocent people, Potomac fever, etc., are in the driver’s seat with most of them now.
I love how the antis twist and spin when we call them on that image — “Oh, so it isn’t ‘gun control’ you want but greater control of PEOPLE, right”?
They stammer and sputter it is about keeping guns out of the hands of the wrong people but can not answer how their proposed laws will actually do that.
Nor do they even try to answer how the proposals affect the law abiding more then the criminals; except for a vague “should be willing to put up with a few inconveniences”
Which is exactly their goal as you state — just keep making it harder and harder for people to exercise their rights. Anti-rights cultists, like MikeB302000, showed their hypocrisy when we called them on things like chlid pron (deliberate misspelling) or free speech……they want to make it harder for other people to exercise their rights, not themselves.
They should continue for some of their other wish list items:
We don’t want “safe storage” for guns, we want the people who own guns to be locked up.