Go over to ENDO and watch this video.
The Talking points Ben Stein presents aren’t anything new. He’s mostly supporting pro-gun talking points of noting safe places with liberal gun laws, and dangerous places with sever restrictions (but is a smart enough guy to know that correlation is not always causation), “If Guns Were Outlawed Only Outlaws Would Have Guns”, and he even drops a variation of one of my catch phrases “If Guns Were Illegal as Murder, nobody would be Murdered with Guns”.
Still the power comes with WHO Stein is. He’s an OLD Guard Republican. He’s worked for Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. While I haven’t followed his personal position on gun control over his career, he represents the block of Republicans who have supported sever gun control in the past. Republicans supported GCA ’68, they supported the Brady Bill, they Supported the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, and they fought against concealed carry laws. Our last two GOP Presidential Nominees, John McCain, and Mitt Romney are ardent supporters of gun control and gun bans.
At camp last week I was discussing gun politics with a Tea Party guy from Michigan. He’s a 2nd Amendment supporter, but he really hasn’t spent much time following the issue, so he was interested in my views in gun control in America.
One of the interesting 2nd Amendment factoids is that if you discount US Presidents that fought in the Revolutionary War, when it comes to executive action the top two pro-gun Presidents are #1 George W. Bush, and #2. Barack Obama.
He was gobsmacked when I mentioned #2. But really it shows the political climate in America. Early Presidents didn’t think twice about gun control, the 2nd Amendment meant you stay away from personal arms, so the average farmer might be as well armed as the average soldier…and before we started keeping our armies in times of peace, they were often one and the same. Later Presidents lost sight of this and were able to justify controls because we had a government that carried guns for the good of the citizens. We had avid hunters and shooters in the White House, but they didn’t feel the need to press the issue, and we had presidents pushing incremental restrictions.
It wasn’t until the Federal AWB was found to be a total failure that Presidents have felt compelled to roll BACK restrictions. Even when they were marginally pro-gun George Bush, and stridently anti-gun Barack Obama. It just wasn’t an ISSUE for past Presidents (correct me if I’m missing some pro-gun Presidents of the past), so they didn’t take any action on it.
To see an old Guard Republican like Stein joining the fight really shows how the tide has turned.
I think a big contributer is the Shall Issue revolution.
The US went from like 10% of the population and a handful of states to 70% of the population and 41 states. That means that being able to carry a gun for no other reason than “Fuck you that’s why” went from fringe to mainstream.
And thus we had alot more people owning guns, carrying guns, and not for “sporting purporses”. Even in the May Issue states we’re seeing alot more people getting permits and carrying.
And with Stein we’re seeing that this view is slowly, very slowly percolating up.
Stein is also a man with a strong analytical mind. Anti-Rights true-believers (which is the majority these days, as the old hired-gun mercenaries have abandoned the ship as the money and support dried up) do NOT have analytical minds, they are driven by emotion and religious-life fervor.
People with Analytical minds have seen that things like gun control, or national socialism have been tried many many times and have achieved consistent, and deleterious effects. The science is settled and only the idiots want to make the same mistakes again.
Good point.
It certianly helps that the prediction of “blood in the states” with CCW has been made literally dozens of times. And has been disproven every single time.
We’ve recently seen it come down to the pathetic state where antis have to claim that Illinois is “special” or that Cheeseheads are an overly voilent and uncouth lot.
Similarly, nations that have banned guns have not seen a decrease in even “gun death” and have in fact seen an increase in overall crime, and if I recall, “gun crime” as well.
And since causation requires correlation, such evidence dramatically undercut’s the anti’s message.