Gun Control is the Modern Temperance Movement

Im planning to be the Al Capone of ghost guns. I’ll hide my money better though.

“The results of Prohibition are well known.”

Less remembered is the reduction of alcohol related deaths, injuries and social issues. Had cars been more widely owned drunk driving would have fallen as well. There were positive effects from removing alcohol from every store but the country wanted to have a drink and the criminals obliged. Eventually the crime was used as a reason to pass the 21st. Prohibition is consistently painted as wrong in every aspect because it’s a rare even that an amendment is repealed. It’s also the model for legalizing every drug and illegal compound there is with promises of eliminating crime.

We The People have a long history of using problems to create results in other areas.

I’ll sit back and let the tomatoes hit me over these comments….

There is the “organized crime flourished” myth again. Organized crime existed and flourished in the US since the 1850s. The infamous 1919 “Black Sox” scandal was undertaken by organized crime. The increase in the murder rate in the early and mid 1920s was actually below the trend line. About the only thing Prohibition did was accelerate the nationalization and cartelization of organized crime. This actually reduced the level of violence after an initial surge as “surplus capacity” was eliminated.

I guess your also forgetting about the rise in deaths from “bad” and unregulated alcohol then since it was banned…how many folks, who wanted only to have a couple drinks on a Friday night, got poisoning from bath tub gin who otherwise would have just had a fun night had they been able to purchase a 6 pack of Bud light?

I’m not letting that go to the other extreme…I’m just illustrating that there might be another side your not looking at. Besides…. would you rather deal with drunk drivers or gang wars in your town?

The temperance movement alllowed “organized crime” to demonstrate how lucrative it was supplying something otherwise banned; then, like large tech companies buying little start-ups that have proven a product and market, the bigger thugs repealed the ammendment to put themselves in control of the loot(ing.)

Or did I take the wrong lesson from this?

“Had cars been more widely owned drunk driving would have fallen as well.” Or, better still, had cars been banned by a constitutional amendment like National Prohibition was automotive related death rates would have also been dramatically reduced. This, of course, is pure twaddle. National Prohibition (like gun control today) institutionalized coercive reform of a kind more familiar to totalitarian societies than to a free society like ours. The Temperance Movement spent decades attempting use assimilation as a form of social change. The problem it faced is that only part of American society agreed with its non-drinking goals. When assimilation failed, the movement turned to authoritarianism and coercion as a way of achieving its “reforms”.

Prohibition was a failure because, despite a constitutional amendment, most Americans simply refused to accept Prohibitionist ideology. In a free society, when upwards of 50% of the population refuse to obey a bad law, that law is ultimately doomed to failure. This is what happened with National Prohibition. A similar thing is happening with the Gun Control Movement’s increasing reliance on coercive reform (gun-confiscation, red-flag laws, etc.). This is happening because, as happened with National Prohibition, most Americans reject gun control ideology and prefer owning, keeping, and using guns.

Gun Control ideology also rejects the essential intent of our 2nd Amendment which sees an armed citizenry as being essential to preventing government tyranny. The connection between gun-control and tyrannical government is, not surprisingly, coercion.

The Temperance Movement offered to remove a vice from society that caused men to quit their jobs, beat their wives, and murder people. Basically all the stuff the modern gun control movement promised guns do more or less. The difference, the temperance people were right. We just didn’t have the discipline as a society to say no liquor. Now get me a root beer and tommygun!

* Ducks as godless libertines throw rotten fruit

Hey, if we never had Prohibition, we wouldn’t have gotten The Untouchables tv show with Robert Stack.

“Rico! Youngblood! Smash it all!”

It is an interesting comment on human behavior that laws do not control the demand for a product and where there is a demand, there will be a person willing to fulfill it. This is so basic that even children will follow this pattern. When Michelle O’s school lunch program removed condiments from the lunch room enterprising kids filled the gap!

https://freebeacon.com/issues/kids-create-salt-black-markets-in-cafeterias-due-to-michelle-obamas-lunch-rules/

It’s human nature and cannot be stopped.

Yes! And Bloomberg, Bernie and the rest of the Dems are hoping to ride the hoplophobic waves into political power. We don’t actually know if they actually believe their own bullshit! …except for “Shotgun Joe”. Don’t go near his porch or front door! Oh, and keep an eye out for “Minnesota Uncle Dick”!

No “right” to drink. Being armed is a RIGHT. I quit drinking 20 years because it was damaging my marriage. Quite the opposite with being a gun owner…

Both are examples of why letting women vote is a terrible idea.

There’s a quote attributed to Miles Davis the guy who transformed instrumental jazz a couple times in his career. (You can consider that good, bad, or indifferent. In all cases, he had some impact.)

Asked about why he had used drugs: “… because I liked it. Anybody who tells you different is lying.”
Why he quite: “… because it was gonna kill me.”

People do things all the time that they like, or need, more than what they give up. They say economics is the study of trade-offs. Really what’s the problem with Betty or Veronica? That it’s Betty *or*, *exclusive or* Veronica. The money, time and health you’re spending on doping up can’t go to something else. If you lose control, you lose even more. If you get too involved with sketchy people who come after you other ways, that’s another risk.

So, you can have yourself an argument about self-medicating with alcohol, till “the click that makes me peaceful”, or simply spending some blissed out time “wasted away in margaritaville”, or the experience of a little buzz n wine with dinner. Or the many studies now that report metered, moderate consumption creates a net health gain, statistically.

Gun “control” is prohibition: they don’t like your reasons, don’t like the trade-offs you prefer, and don’t think it’s your business to choose. It’s prohibition: you don’t get to wield some choice, because you might make it wrong, even by your own standards. We can’t all be Miles Davis (or Larry Flint for that matter, who went cold turkey off the pain meds, when surgery eliminated the pain.)

But, it’s managing your own risk isn’t it? And is it your life to spend as you like, or is your life theirs to spend as they prefer? And guns, being arms, are a particular kind of agency that makes them more nuts than booze: the agency to decline their help. Drinkers deprived of alcohol haven’t lost their means to take care of themselves. When the helpful people want to “take care” of your arms, your money, your speech, they’re *also* taking away your means to advocate for yourself.

Gun control is prohibition redux, this time stepping on what would unwind it at the same time. Clever.

They are also using tactics from the anti-tobacco campaign by attempting to make pariahs out of gun dealers and owners while suing manufacturers. Watch how that went and you’ll see what the anti-2A tropes are attempting now.

Comparing the gun control movement with the temperance movement is absolutely correct. I’ve thought about it too. And It’s not about religion. There are plenty of atheists who want you disarmed. The early 20th century atheist progressives wanted to control people’s behavior as well. Their creation of the Government Welfare Industrial Complex, replacing private church charity, is a great example.
They want your guns replaced by the guns of a big city police department.

I have no problem legalizing all drugs. But we get to shoot the drug user dead. Just as we shot the drinker dead. When they robbed, raped, stole, broke into or vandalized private property.
The drug legalization crowd like to forget about that part. Intoxication is not an excuse. It’s not extenuating circumstances for breaking the law, and taking other people’s property.

Guns will be banned and meth will be legal.

Deal with it.

They’re not going to take away anyone’s beer. If you already have a beer, you can keep it. Common sense and all.

Cannabis needs to be legalized for adult purchase and consumption in the USA. It was once legal, and then put under the same, but worse, prohibition as alcohol. Yet cannabis is safer, and does not lead to the violence that alcohol produces in some people. Secondly, people who consume cannabis should not lose their Constitutional Second Amendment Right, or any Constitutional Rights. This is a government that is out of control, when they think they can take away the Constitutional Rights of any Citizen.
Cannabis prohibition has a dirty lobbyist history, which includes the Pharmaceutical industry, because they cannot make money from a plant, the Hearst company, because he did not want competition with his use of his trees for his printed materials, the Alcohol industry, because they do not want the competition (how democratic of them), and several other wealthy individuals who did not want competition with their industries. The gun lobby groups should also get behind the end to cannabis prohibition. Many cannabis users are also gun enthusiast.

Disagree – it’s nothing like a modern temperance movement. It follows the formula set forth and executed by statists time and time again – even well within the lifetimes of many, many living people (e.g. Khmer Rouge/Pol Pot – that was from 1951 through the end of the century). But that stuff isn’t taught anymore, people forget, and things are often repeated.

Temperance movement and Prohibition in the form of the 18th Amendment was ultimately repealed by the 21st Amendment is a good article, but leaves out several major parts that are still around today. The Temperance movement still lives on in the 21st Amendment by weakening the amount of alcohol can be contained in an alcoholic beverage, along with states and counties can vote to still prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages, and other things. So, in part if the gun control groups are able and might I say might be able to prohibit firearms in the US totally by some law or amendment and is repealed in the future our rights will still be watered down more than they are today like what they did in the 21st Amendment by weakening the 2nd Amendment more than it is now.

I think maybe there is a better lesson to be learned here. Let’s not forget that Prohibition was only made possible with the passage of the 18th Amendment and which then made Prohibition on alcohol consumption the “Law of the Land”. Then later this failed experiment needed to be corrected but could not easily be done with any act of the Congress or by presidential executive order. No Sir, this change required another constitutional amendment. And so it was not until with the passage of the 21st Amendment that the era of Prohibition finally came to an end. It is an accepted fact that an amendment to the Constitution permanently changes and alters the document because under contract law an amendment always over rides and “supersedes” the conditions and the terms of the original document. And so only via the amendment process can the Constitution be changed or altered. In like manner, the Second Amendment made permanent changes that over ride and supersede the original document and so regardless of what authority to regulate firearms is claimed under the provisions of the original document (Supremacy Clause and Commerce Clause), the new terms, conditions and the command directives of the Second Amendment over ride and supersede all that came before it. And so therefore, “the Right of the people to keep and bear arms Shall Not be infringed” remains as the Law of the Land and is not subject to any change or reinterpretation without first following the dictates of the Constitution and going through another formal amendment process… In other words, absent a constitutional amendment that specifically addresses the provisions and the very explicit directive of the Second Amendment, the Right of the people to keep and bear arms Shall Not be infringed stands and remains as the unimpeachable Supreme Law of the Land.

So why are we not making this argument in federal court when defending individual gun Rights???

There is a world of difference between having something forced on you by government and having something by individual choice.

Even if that something is ultimately better.

Except that it’s not. Sobriety is a good thing. Defenselessness isn’t. No reasonable argument can be made to force either, but don’t conflate the desire of having a sober society with that of having a defenseless society.