In an email blast late Friday night, the Democrat party tried once again to rally its base around the message that “all we want is a vote on gun control.” The Democrats successfully used this same line last time there was a major gun control push following the Sandy Hook shooting. That was when the Manchin-Toomey background check bill went before the Senate where it was shot down (so to speak) in a very public and humiliating defeat for the Obama administration and the various gun control orgs. The problem with the Democrats’ message now is that it implies the majority of Americans and politicians want to see still more gun control, that the only thing blocking these “common sense” measures is Republican obstructionism. But that’s a lie . . .
The first problem with the Democrats’ message is that it doesn’t provide any specifics about what they want to do. They demand that we must do something to reduce “gun violence.” As I’ve said in the past, the Democrats believe that any new gun control measure (no matter how idiotic or ineffectual) is a benefit to society. Except life doesn’t work that way. Just because you fabricate a new gun control bill and give it a happy-sounding name doesn’t mean that it will have any impact whatsoever on the actual situation on the ground. This latest round of executive actions is a perfect example: the president didn’t make any substantive changes to current law, but the mainstream media is hailing the orders as a bold new step towards improved gun safety. Democrats have proven time and again with these gun control bills that they don’t care about substance — they only care about appearances.
That disregard for substance is something that keeps coming back to bite Democrats in the ass. Even my own True Blue family members keep demanding to know why the Republicans would vote down a “common sense” bill like the Toomey-Manchin universal background check trainwreck. I try to explain that the substance within the bill was atrocious — that it would have made everyday Americans into felons for sharing guns during range trips. That it would have turned same sex couples into felons for living with guns while not officially married. And that it wouldn’t have actually done anything to reduce “gun violence.” But they don’t care about the actual content. It makes absolutely no difference whether or not the bill would have any impact on the violent crime they wanted to stop. They cared about the title of the bill…and sticking it to those nauseating gun owners.
Problem #2 is the underlying assumption of public support. Democrats seem to believe that they’re in the majority when it comes to popular opinion on gun control. And if you stay safely within the lefty media echo chamber, things might indeed seem that way.
Rhetoric about the evil NRA and defeating the nefarious Gun Lobby plays well to that crowd because, as the Wall Street Journal reported, an overwhelming majority of Dems oppose the NRA. That same message doesn’t resonate well outside their echo chamber though. Republicans and independents mostly support what the NRA is doing, or at the very least, they aren’t as fervently opposed as are Democrats.
Beyond the NRA, the Democrats have a major problem with popular support for their measures. According to the latest CNN poll, 52% of Americans oppose any form of new gun control law. Going further, only 2% of Americans think that gun control is a real pressing problem. The Democrat party has lost steam when it comes to gun control as a focus of concern and public opinion has shifted away from them.
So long as Democrats continue to push this “flash over substance” authoritarian approach to advocacy, we’re going to keep running into this roadblock. Dems will continue to propose insane laws with no real impact on crime. Republicans will point this out and propose changes, or kill the bill outright. Democrats will then stomp their feet, screaming that the GOP is once again blocking “common sense gun reform.” Wash, rinse, repeat.
The way to move forward is with honest, thoughtful discussion, talking with stakeholders on all sides of the issue and coming to a compromise that everyone can agree on. That’s how Washington is supposed to work. It’s the job of the President to facilitate that process. But it seems like the Democrats would rather continue down the path of splitting the country in two, perpetuating an adversarial us-versus-them mentality, painting Republicans as evil and the NRA as the main force blocking “common sense” gun control measures.
That’s the reason Democrats aren’t getting a vote. When you decide that, rather than working with the opposition to craft an actually useful bill, you prefer to act by executive order and insult your opposition, things don’t tend to go your way.
So, throw a tantrum? Yeah that could work.
Pretty much. Except they throw a tantrum with Daddy Warbucks money…
I am sooooo ready for Shot Show. The whining of liberal is tiring, although I understand why TTAG covers said whining.
Dems throwing a hissy fit again? Somebody call the Waaahbulance.
The Democrats talk a good game but there party is like the wizard in the corner of the emerald city of oz. They don’t want you to look to closely because there message is built upon a foundation of sand. As long as the American people are distracted on meaningless B.S. they win. As soon as people pay attention they lose. That is why they push endless distractions, drugs and free stuff, to keep the inmates happy. Their greatest fear is an electorate that actually pays attention.
We don’t need compromise OR any more “laws”. We need to impeach this clown in chief.
Actually, let me make a point here; the people in Aurora got a vote; not only that but the elected officials got a recall vote that they lost but not before stripping people of their rights.
I have heard of CNN as the Communist News Network, but we may as well call them the Clinton News Network at least until November’s up. Perhaps 4-8 years after if we’re not careful. This seems to be little more than an attempt to drive fear and in turn scare the sheeple into voting their way during the election.
Tantrums work at the box-store Courtesy Desks. Throw a big enough fit and management will override the store policy that the employee quoted you three times. To shut you up, the manager will give you your way.
We are creating a culture of foot-stomping whiners.
Could not be more true.
If you really want to see such snivelling scheming in action, hang out at a major pizza franchise some night in a lower rent part of town. The calls come in from cheapskate, section 8 apartment-dwelling welfare cases ALL night with the same litany of complaints, as if they all read from the same skid row script:
“The pizza was cold, the sauce was watery, the vegetables were stale, the meats smelled funny, the crust was raw, the cheese was burnt. We’ve already eaten all of it, and washed it down with your flat Pepsi, just to be sure how horrible it all was, but we’re never ordering your disgusting, revolting, toxic pizza EVER again!”
What, you ask, could you ever do to earn their business again? “A FREE large pizza, with all the meats, double vegetables, extra sauce and cheese! Delivered right NOW, plus a Pepsi 2 liter, and a side of hot wings and cheezy bread, all at no charge!”
But, of course.
I had this discussion yesterday with a couple people including an Army Ranger. He asked why the background check was an issue. I gave him the details that had been added to the bill. Could not share a firearm on private property with a friend or loan them a firearm, or let someone at a gun range fire a weapon you were firing as all of these actions would make you/them a felon. These are very smart people and they had no idea that was in the bill. Now hopefully they will check this out before another bill is up for a vote.
One comment was that it may have been that some of these provisions were added by pro-gun control people to keep the bill from passing, I was pretty clear that was not the case and they should just look up Chuck Shumer’s comments on the bill. Hope I was reasonably accurate.
Ummm…Bury Soetoro spent his political capital on Odumbocare. Guns are mighty popular nowadaze. And a LOT of people are pizzed…
I think you hit it, especially that part about Obamacare. Zero had both houses of Congress, who knows how many Federal judges, and the whole of the major “news outlets” in his pocket–and all he did with it was pass that medical monstrosity. The gun-grabber should stop kissing his arse and remember that.
It wouldn’t matter if the AWB was reinstated tomorrow. The collectivist progs would demand more.
Revolvers, lever actions, bolt actions, muzzle loaders, Grampa’s ol Winchester etc, et al. All have to be registered, turned in, Australia comes to mind. And still it’s not enough. Hammers and ice picks, flat head screwdrivers, and razor knives are next.
It’s like Whack A Mole with these folks.
Standard progressive bullshit:
“We demand a vote!”
*voting ensues, their side loses*
“You’re being obstructionist!” or “Why do you hate children?” or “Politicians are cowards and they are scared of ‘the Gun Lobby/NRA!'”
*12 months pass*
“All we want is a vote!”
*rinse, repeat*
Yeah, well El Presidente also said if I like my doctor I can keep my doctor.
I’m done listening to anything that POS has to say.
They don’t really hate guns. No one but an imbecile can hate an inanimate object – especially one useful for self defense.
They just hate gun owners.
Gun ownership is merely the means to join in battle with people who think differently from them.
Im happy to oblige them.
Excuse me…..what vote?
No one deserves a vote on circumscribing the Second Amendment, no one. Well…they deserve a vote on a proposed constitutional amendment that amends the Second, but nothing else. We need to just stop talking about legislation, and push for no more compromise, no more “common sense”, no more nothing !
Why does anyone here propose “working with” children who thinks guns should be entirely confiscated (from non-LEO)? The gun grabbers (and they are all liberals, statists, fascists, authoritarians) cannot envision any situation where a private citizen with a gun can do anything but kill someone unnecessarily (assuming the crazies believe there is something called “necessary killing”). Only in the movies do cowards have a bright moment when they stop being cowards.
No. Just No. There is no obligation to develop alternatives to evil. Just No.
Yeah well the Hughes Amendment deserved a vote too.
Rational people are waking up to a fact of life, you are your own first responder. Hence people who never really thought about the delay from 911 to LEO arriving is minutes, it only takes seconds for death/serious injury. They are thinking about it now and tooling up
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” – George Orwell, “1984”
For Leftists, rewriting or ignoring history to suit their own purposes isn’t just useful, it’s existential.
A progressively indoctrinated drone’s utopia: The right to vote, aggrandizing politicians; the right to sue, aggrandizing lawyers; the right to be a useless idiot, aggrandizing themselves; and absolutely no right to anything else whatsoever.
The problem is that more and more Americans identify as independents then anything else:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/166763/record-high-americans-identify-independents.aspx
Democrat and Republican numbers are shrinking, so their positions are becoming more and more extreme as the remaining faithful cling to their respected parties.
Democrats have shown anti-gun position is a long game. Slave states use the guise of states rights to infringe on citizens who lawfully want protect themselves in public. They continually lie to achieve civilian disarmament.
The only legal means to stop them is the vote or hash our constitutional right in court. Win against them, a new infringement is written into law only to drag us back into court. With unlimited taxpayer funds they repeat infringment again until they push citizens to the abyss. I fear it will happen before I’m gone and liberties fought for by those before us are gone.
This is simply the democrats distracting from their numerous political failures so the candidates don’t have to face them in the general election. They chose one of the most polarizing topics they could and doubled down.
How is this not racist? After a summer oeverything else bing racist and there is no mention of Roanoke or the Oregon college shootings. Is it because the shooters were known to hate white people and was out to hunt and kill them?
The families of Newrown, Aurora, and Charleston don’t “deserve” a vote on anything, any more than anyone else. Equal protection under the law, after all.
And my rights aren’t up for a vote – especially not for laws that would infringe my rights while having zero impact on criminals in Newtown, Aurora, Charkeston, or anywhere else.
Let Democrats go cry about this on over MSNBC on Rachel Maddow Show she small group people who watch her show only people buy in that crap.
One very minor argument:
This is how government is supposed to work
I’m fairly certain our government is supposed to NOT work. The way I read the Constitution it outlines a government where it should be damn near impossible to get anything done.
And I’m pretty sure this is a feature, not a bug….
(D)emocrats gave their votes by proxy to illegal aliens and Syrian “refugees”, those people are slated for deportation.
“AND HE MADE IT CLEAR”
Yes Yes he did. He hates guns, he hates guns owners and he wants to ban guns. Very damn clear.
A good motto to go on the tee shirts and buttons. “AND HE MADE IT CLEAR”
Voting got US into the mess we are in now.
Just saying.
And voting will get us out of it. This is how a great system works and ours is by far the greatest government in known history.
This is just the Democrats trying to make something significant of Obama’s failed Presidency and his recent inconsequential EO’s and EA’s relating to gun laws. It is more misdirection and propaganda. The DNC is dead broke, and they see a real chance they will lose the Presidency in 2016.
Look for more and more desperation moves, as the ice under Hildabeast grows thinner and thinner.
“a “common sense” bill like the Toomey-Manchin universal background check trainwreck. I try to explain that the substance within the bill was atrocious — that it would have made everyday Americans into felons for sharing guns during range trips.”
I thought the Manchin-Toomey amendment was limited to transactions at a) gun shows or b) pursuant to advertisements online or in any publication.
That is, the original bill was the train wreck, but the Manchin-Toomey amendment stripped all of that and completely replaced it with the gun show / advertisement language.
EDIT: the original bill:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-bill/649/text
Manchin-Toomey was SA 715, rewriting all of the original bill’s “Title I”
Progressives are happy to call for a vote if they think it will serve their purposes. Otherwise, not so much. Example: Obamacare. We voted for a Congress that would roll it back. That Congress voted for a bill to repeal it. Obama vetoed the bill. So much for the vote.
Have these people ever though practically about gun control:
Will guns be MORE controlled or LESS controlled if restrictions on benevolent legal gun owners become onerous and disagreeable enough that they they choose to be benevolent “illegal” gun owners rather than disarmed?
Remember that in the UK and AUS, only a minor fraction of the legally owned guns were surrendered after their bans. Now their guns are owned and traded in an illegal (and largely benevolent) market which the state has NO insight into. There is no infrastructure for trading an illegal (benevolently owned) gun so there is no background check or control whatsoever. This increases the ability for a malevolent actor to get a gun because it’s increased the inscrutable illegal market supply.
The democrats create dangerous situations by demonizing groups and individuals. Their kooky followers are emotional train wrecks one Zoloft dose away from complete disaster.
Be careful what you ask for. Ok. Let’s have a vote.
1. On National CCW reciprocity.
2. On repealing NFA.
3. On making public gun free zones illegal.
4. On abolishing the BATFE, TSA, and the IRS.
I like our chances right now.
Or they might decide to actually prosecute the drug dealers and criminals who cause more than half of the firearm homicides in the US. You know: criminals.
We should be demanding to know why they’re not trying to prosecute actual criminals.
Take out suicides, gang/drug wars and self-defense shooting and with 312 million people or more of the population of the USA the actual amount of gun deaths is very small.
Take all those statistics and take the amount of law abiding citizens involvement in gun deaths and those are such a small number that it is statistically almost non-existent. Texas CHL holders are less likely to commit a crime than the police themselves.
You’ll never see those statistics on an anti-gun campaign of any kind. They ignore reality, they feel it so it must be true, feelings are more important than facts. The sad part is that very learned people that sit at the highest courts believe it also. That scares the hell outta me.
I suggest to everyone before you take a stand either way, before your mouth opens and your opinion comes out read. First read the writings of Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, read the writings of people like Blackstone. Pick up the Constitution and read that in context of what the people that wrote it meant. Read the 2A and realize they used a common instead of a period.
Once you have done the work and know what everything really means form an opinion. If it’s anything other than the fact that the founding fathers meant for all of us to be armed, trained to use those arms and without any type of government interference (Shall not be infringed). If you do not understand they knew and history has proven that the first way to start the total control and enslavement of a population is to take away their ability to defend themselves. If you do not understand it is a universal right not granted by anyone, not even able to be granted by anyone or entity, that in fact it’s for all humans to have the right and means to defend themselves, that the “Castle Doctrine” and “stand your ground” is in fact not a right to be given but a human right. That it is your duty to be trained and armed and to overthrow your government if it becomes tyrannical and is not representative of the people. If after reading all that information you think people should not be armed and do not have a right to be armed I say move out of the USA and live in one of these superior un-armed countries and have a nice day, you do not deserve to be free, you do not understand what true freedom is, it’s that simple.
The problem is ignorance. The schools no longer explain the virtues of a free society and what our country means. The school system was taken over by the same people who promote gun control . Our colleges promote radicalization and anti-american teaching, the proof of that is in Obama and Clinton themselves. Both were born out of the ultra-liberal communist socialist radicalized college experience. They believe any lie, any wrong doing on their part is rationalized as being a good thing if it furthers their cause. Their cause being the true calling for humanity as they see, them being the ruling party.
The democrats as they are right now represent everything the founding fathers stood against and rebelled against. They are no longer a viable political party and their beliefs are as anti-American as any 20th century communists were. In fact they are the driving force of a new civil war, they have set race relations back 50 years. they have bankrupt the country finishing off the dirty deeds of Bush & Cheney. It was so easy for Obama to spend 500 million dollars of the taxpayer’s money on mental healthcare, fine but we are 3 trillion dollars in dept. Where exactly is the money going and where is it coming from Mr. Obama?
In closing I’ll again say, read and read some more. The men that designed this countries government meant for us to be truly free and the government be of the people and for the people, all the people. The only way to insure that is to have the ability to protect those rights even if it means death. Give me liberty or give me death!!!! I will not idly stand by while those rights are slowly chipped away. We are now at a turning point, the scales have tipped out of our favor and the next step is either enslavement or action. You all must choose for the good of our children.