Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., answers questions after a Democratic primary debate hosted by NBC News (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
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As far as The New Yorker is concerned, extremism in advocacy of civilian disarmament is no vice.

[Elizabeth Warren] offered up a quotable sound bite—“Gun violence is a national health emergency in this country, and we need to treat it like that”—and talked about the need to “double down on research,” an allusion to how the N.R.A. succeeded, during the mid-nineteen-nineties, in effectively cutting off federal funding for gun-violence research.

Yet she was unwilling, even after Todd probed her a second time, to raise the possibility of policies like the mandatory gun-buyback program that Australia undertook two decades ago, after a devastating mass shooting, which was found to be effective in reducing gun deaths.

Gun-control advocates have made undeniable strides in this country over the last few years, but Warren’s caution on the issue was a reminder of how politically fraught the issue remains, at least in the eyes of some candidates.

– Michael Luo in 2019 Democratic Debate: Elizabeth Warren’s Caution on Guns

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100 COMMENTS

  1. Savvy politician (who can do basic math) doesn’t want to torpedo her chances with a radical,untenable position that will never make it into law (and would trigger a shitstorm of legal challenges), and wouldn’t be funded anyway? Color me shocked. Do these folks not realize what kind of numbers they are casually throwing about?

    • They don’t care. Be it by incrementalism, or by radical change, or every combination thereof, reaching the goals of The Narrative is more important than cost, divisiveness, or even lives.

      • True. An analogue for gun-control is the Temperance and Prohibition movement which starting with the collapse of the Whig party in the 1800’s was active influential well into the 1930’s when the constitutional amendment banning strong drink was finally repealed. Gun-control ain’t going away anytime soon.

    • When the moderator asked who wanted to outlaw private health insurance, her hand shot up immediately, so she’s clearly willing to go full retard.

    • It’s someone else’s money, what do they care…I read 17 trillion in reparations last night..keep talking Dems…Trump won’t need to campaign

      • Don’t forget Gay Reparations, which is gaining ground with many of them. If one probably cannot get away with declaring oneself black, there’s always gay.

    • “Do these folks not realize what kind of numbers they are casually throwing about?”

      Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Ultimately it doesn’t really matter. They think it’s a problem that can be solved with money and money is no object to them since they’re all believers in a hybrid Mercantile-Modern Monetery Theory concept of economics.

      That’s why they don’t bat an eye when estimates for “The New Green Deal” run as high as $92 Trillion over 10 years.

      • Good one. There is so much Newspeak nowadays we don’t even realize it. I wanna play too:

        “Department of Defense” – Department of We Will Bomb You If You Abandon the Dollar, Have Resources We Want, or Break Our Flying Robot Planes

        “Protect and Serve” – Protect and Serve the Sociopaths in Office

        “Border” – Imaginary Boundary on Map Wherein the State Claims Literal Ownership of Every Human’s Life and Property… Oh, And If You Cross It We’ll Put You in a Concentration Camp

        “Reform” – Screwed Up So Badly That We Should’ve Been Fired But We Have A Standing Army Of Revenue Collectors So We’re Just Going To Throw More Money at It

        “Gun Control” – Your Right to Peacefully Own and Carry Your Own Property Makes It Too Hard For Us to Murder You If You Don’t Comply With Our Every Tyrannical Whim

        • “…or Break Our Flying Robot Planes..”

          Now that is funny! about spit my Mountain Dew!

        • It wasn’t always that way. The DoD was once called the War Department, If I remember correctly.

        • “The DoD was once called the War Department, If I remember correctly.”

          The DoD did not exist prior to 1949. The military was administered by the Secretary of the Army, and Secretary of the Navy. The Army was called the War Department from 1789 and the Navy referred to as Department of the Navy. (1798).

          The US has not won a major war since creation of DoD.

    • But but but!! If I’m getting $1000, a month and my college bill that I already paid is paid off again what am I going to spend it on if they take away all those evil black things that that the fiendstein said we could hunt humans with?
      And I’m confused, I thought orange was for gun safety but now it is for gun victims per smallwell?
      Oh well, I guess I’ll see if shrinks are included in the free medical I’ll be getting. If I can get an appointment thanks to all the illegals pouring across the border and taking up all the slots.

  2. “[Elizabeth Warren] offered up a quotable sound bite—“Gun violence is a national health emergency in this country, and we need to treat it like that””

    You’re a fool if you think that threat is anything but serious…

      • Amen to that. Every time socialism has been tried, it has failed miserably. What makes these morons think that trying it again will result in a different ending. These politicos need to be imprisoned for treason..

  3. The pro-2A democrats in the west and midwest need to know what the leftists in their party are saying. They don’t believe that they want to take THEIR hunting guns, just the city/bad ones. I’ve heard them say, “Well, you really don’t need more than 2 guns anyway”.

    • They don’t exist; they may be gun enthusiasts, but they aren’t pro-gun. They aren’t naiive or uneducated, they simply care about other things (liberal things, and/or free shit) more than they care about their own gun rights. Frankly, disabusing them of their support for liberal issues is impossible. You can’t reason a person out of a position they weren’t reasoned into. Call a spade a spade, and cut them loose as a potential political ally. If we ever manage to win the gun rights war, they won’t try to oppose us, but they sure as hell aren’t going to lend a hand at any point, and will definitely provide direct or indirect support to those who do oppose us. Focus on people that aren’t total lost-causes.

      • Devil’s advocate: Why *not* put effort towards culture-flipping some bluer areas or some subcultures therein? I notice that every single time, it’s our side doing the caving-in. What can be done to make the forcible-disarmist side start wobbling more?

        If we can revive urban gun-culture, that might change the game.

        • “I notice that every single time, it’s our side doing the caving-in.”

          2016 presidential election seems to prove there are 3 million more voters against us, than for us. Politicians go where the votes are.

    • “The pro-2A democrats in the west and midwest…”

      There are no pro-2A Demoncrats, anywhere. Allegedly, there are Demoncrats who own guns. To test the thesis, ask any “pro-2A” Demoncrat if they are willing to use their firearms to overthrow, discipline, counter, or abolish a tyrannical government. If they refuse, deny, hesitate, equivocate, they are not pro-2A. 2A is specifically a check on government, other uses of the gun are secondary, and derivative.

    • Don’t they know that their “hunting” rifles with telescopic sights according to socialist beliefs are really “sniper rifles”? At least they will after the Dems all get rid of the “assault rifles” first.

  4. Civilians are government employees not in the military. They are not trying to disarm civilians. They are trying to disarm citizens. They are working to give civilians military arms.

    • That is not the definition of civilian.
      The Collins dictionary defines it as “anyone who is not a member of the armed forces”. Webster’s defines it more broadly with “one not on active duty in the armed services or not on a police or firefighting force.”
      In the US military, you are considered a civilian if you are not directly subject to the UCMJ.
      It has nothing to do with being employed by the government.

    • Chris, that makes no sense whatsoever. What about civilians that are not military and NOT government employees?

        • “We should use Citizen more frequently, it has more meaning.”

          Indeed. “Citizen” covers police and military.

          In the common vernacular, “civilian” means anyone not part of the relevant group; not an insider. American English is a sloppy language.

  5. Here is a compromise, the only compromise possible on gun rights. Full and total ban plus confiscation of all guns owned by Democrats.

  6. Can I play? So if “gun violence is an emergency,” then only people showing signs and symptoms of gun violence need intervention.

    • One of my favorite lines ever.

      If these progbot politicians still have souls, they sure aren’t using them. Might as well sell them for a few minutes of fame and a shot at the Oval Office.

    • yes please Democrats PLEASE run on a platform of reparations and gun confiscation. I am BEGGING you.

      they do tend to eat their own when it comes to adhering to the purest forms ideological obeisance, so they may actually shame themselves into that “corner”. please let it be so.

  7. Democrats: “Nobody wants to take your guns”
    NYT: “Why won’t Democrats be honest about taking guns?”
    The “nobody wants your guns” crowd is right up there with the “if you like your doctor” crowd and flat-earthers.

    • Every last one of those Leftists wants to ‘fix’ the healthcare they ruined last time…

      • They did fix it. They did so in a way that would make a total takeover the better option when the private sector”failed” and we have to “do something”.

  8. This is an opinion piece by one of the Post’s writers in a section (The Current) designed to let the writers express their own views. No need to portray gun confiscation as the official Post position.

    • Isn’t he the editor of newyorker.com? Is the New Yorker Magazine also called the Post? (sincere question) Are you positing that the New Yorker Magazine as a whole doesn’t advocate similarly about the issue of gun control?

      • The New Yorker is well to the left of me regarding guns and other issues. But there is no need to claim that it has come out in favor of gun confiscation. That’s not what happened in this short article. My bad on mixing up the New York Post with the New Yorker.

        • I agree that assuming a group is monolithic is almost always a mistake. I would however guess it is a safe bet that >75% of the writers and editors for the New Yorker are pro-confiscation. I have never seen a pro 2nd amendment article in the magazine and since my ex (or 9 yrs) used to get it, I read more than a few issues. I used to live in the same small apartment building (in the 6th) as Jane Kramer once too. We did not get along even if we never did speak of firearms:-\

      • She is busy winning the hearts and minds of the people with the tyrants’ propaganda. Look at the ratio of likes versus dislikes. Her message [mental conditioning] got over 2 million views in 2 days. That’s what winning looks like.

        “Her” video used homosexuals and children as pawns to appeal to emotion. When they watch the video they believe Madonna cares so much about them and she is only trying to save them from the evil white heterosexual males with a big black gun. To them, this form of protectionism is love.

        The response from gun owners will be detrimental because they will respond with emotion too. They will be angry she made such a video. They will say stupid things that only make her video more powerful. They will provide more evidence that gun owners are crazy NRA members who only care about their precious toys.

        • I have to point out that this video was published on June 26, 2019. The Democratic debates are on June 26 and June 27. That’s not hopping on the bandwagon, that’s premeditated strategic action from the totalitarians/establishment.

          Madonna has been part of the inner circle for a long time now. She does what she is told.

  9. Guns save more lives than they take. If leftists were more honest (yeah, that’s an impossibility) they’d compare the number of lawful, defensive uses by citizens to the number of actual gun deaths. They ignore the stats intentionally because it kills their argument. They want us disarmed and compliant. We should never give in to their totalitarianism and we should insist that legislation is based on actual facts.

    • They love using stats to make their argument. Once they have to use world history, the human condition/nature and simple logic they can’t make a reasonable case for disarming the people. They have to throw out all kinds of numbers because numbers can be manipulated to fit their propaganda and it makes them sound so smart/informed. They like to “debate” purely by the numbers and they will manipulate human emotions.

  10. “National health emergency….”
    Considering who is doing the most shooting/killing to whom, I just think of it as post birth abortion.

    • Democrats are okay with a woman killing a baby before he/she is born into our wold. Republicans are okay with a man killing a baby after he/she is born into our world.

      That’s the United States’ culture of death. Abortion and war/violence.

      How is someone pro-life if they support war, executions, abortion, gun control, etc?

      A hippie vegan doesn’t want you to kill a chicken for food nor to use the chicken for its eggs, but they will support the killings of unborn humans (and likely gun control too).

      So, riddle me this, Americans.

  11. “Any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary” -Karl Marx
    Democratic Party views on gun control are not even leftist. They’re authoritarian and “pro safety”/ anti freedom. I know real leftists and we disagree on some things but they’re usually capable of having an intelligent discussion.

  12. These people always forget this is an amendment. Maybe we should just take away the New Yokers right to free speech? Same difference, is it not?

  13. I have it in mind, but cannot find the actual quote. Seems Obama once said something on the order of “We can’t let the constitution/law stand in the way of doing what is right”.

    We seem to be there, now.

    • He once complained the bill of rights was a ‘list of negative liberties’ …

      • “He once complained the bill of rights was a ‘list of negative liberties’ …”

        Yes; remember that one as well.

        Maybe it was a different anti-liberty politician who lamented laws preventing one from doing the right thing despite the law. At any rate, am seeing/hearing more and more politicians wanting to just waive laws (and the constitution) when it is convenient.

      • So did Ginzberg in a speech she gave in Eygpt. She was advising them on how to set up a Constitution and she advised to follow the Soviet model.

        Technically she and Obama are both correct. Our BoR is, in fact, a set of negative liberties, that is a list of things the government “can’t” do to you. A set of positive liberties is what the government must do for you. The latter is how the Soviets wrote their constitution which didnt work very well and was retardedly long.

        It also had the nasty side effect of ensuring Party control.

        Makes you wonder why Lefties want something that they know doesn’t work for the people and only really has an upside the party that writes it in terms of cementing their power… I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

        • She did specifically mention South Africa as an example, I think some others too but I may not be recalling that correctly.

          Post 1924, within polisci circles, they’re all generally considered “Soviet Model” if they’re “positive rights” based since that’s the 20th Century model they all are “based” on and “try to improve”, as the Soviets did in ’36 and ’77.

          No one really wants another ’36 though because that’s the “Stalin Constitution”.

  14. To whatever Libitards may see this.
    Gun related deaths no matter how they happen are such a small number of the daily deaths in this country that they really don’t even count statically. Other then making noises in the media. Most Americans don’t even care about guns in general. They hardly even come up in polls percentage wise.
    Do we as a country really care if its criminals killing each other. NOPE. Or if they are for the most part kids in gangs killing each other. NOPE. Its criminal against criminal.
    Yes occasionally a civilian gets killed or murdered. A good friend of mine was killed in a robbery 30 years ago.
    Are we asking for Car Control or driver control?? How about drowning in pools. Do want to have pool permits??
    Or best yet. How about Doctors making boo-boos. They kill more each year then almost any major disease. Yet we don’t put them in jail.
    To the Libitards out there.
    Shit happens.

    • Don’t you have to get permissions to dig for a pool? Don’t you need permission to drive a vehicle? Don’t you need permission to be a doctor?

        • Arguing the U.S. Constitution is arguing against human rights. Civil rights can be legislated away with amendments and democracy. You doom yourself when you argue the Constitution gives you rights or is your permission slip.

          “Shall not be infringed” can be written out. Those words came from men, other men can change them. My human rights will always be my human rights even when I am in a cage. I will still have that right when Republicans enforce infringements on felons to prevent them from keeping and bearing firearms.

          You could take my property. You could take my liberty. You could take my freedom. You could take my life. You will never take my humanity.

        • Oh humanity can be taken as anyone in a genocide can attest to. We have very little preventing full blown tyranny and that has been the case for most of our history. Now as to words being mere words you are quite right. But what they represent is something we are not yet ready to give up on which gives those who seek power pause. Felons gave up their rights, may not agree with the idea of letting those that can’t be trusted to own guns or vote to live in society but that for the moment fits due process. Back to the original points doctors and drivers are not included in fundamental protected liberties and are an apples to oranges comparison.

        • You can’t turn me into an animal. You could refer to me as one. You could treat like one. I am still a human. You could belittle me and dehumanize me in your mind and in others, that won’t change the fact I am human.

          If you want to pretend the U.S. Constitution gave you anything or protects everything, then let them vote away your human rights without your bitching, as that is their civil right as citizens. Let them convict you of weapon crimes, give you a long term of mandatory imprisonment and take away your rights after you have served your time in a cage like an animal. You will be forever punished because you owned something like a bump fire stock.

          When the human right of self preservation is removed from the U.S. Constitution will you complain that you can’t exercise your human right to protect life, liberty and property with the force of arms? Or will you argue that it’s not in the law therefore it doesn’t or shouldn’t exist?

          Do you have a civil right to have children? Where in the Bill of Rights does it say you are allowed to father children? Where does it say you have a human right to produce offspring? Can we write a law to sterilize people and license the ones we don’t? In the manner communist countries like China did.

        • @user, so many here either don’t understand this, or post here to intentionally try to obfuscate this.

        • “@user, so many here either don’t understand this, or post here to intentionally try to obfuscate this.”

          Congress shall make no law….

          So much for absolutism.

        • User1 is right and wrong at the same time and, interestingly, for the same reason.

          Yes, the Constitution is just words on paper, well, parchment really, but fuck that level of technical detail here.

          From a pure logic perspective that’s all it is and yes, it can be changed or voted out of existence or negated by being ignored.

          However, humans are not purely logical creatures. Here I’m going to snag some wisdom from St. Augustine. We’re also heavily emotional. We attach emotional significance to what Augustine called “signs”. Signs can be words written or spoken, pictures, flags, hand signals whatever. No matter what they are specifically they all have something in common: they’re what we use to signal an idea and ideas are something we have very powerful emotional attachments to.

          The written word holds far greater sway with people than does the spoken word. Part of this is in that we can prove things were stated or agreed to by producing the written document. Part of it is also the way that we tend to view written language as less transitory than spoken language. But I digress, the point is that we use words to signal ideas to which we have an emotional connection and the more “permanent” the words the more emotion/significance we tend to attach to them.

          You can see the way this works in the modern world at a car dealership. They will often ask you to initial something before they take it back to the manager. They’ll saying something like “OK, so if I can get this payment down to $275 a month, will you initial here that you’ll take the car today?” then they’ll come back and say “Oh, well I could only get $295/month”. BUT they’ll point out that you initialed. Now that initial isn’t legally binding in any way and they changed the agreement after you initialed the paper so WTAF is this shit? It’s a guilt trip. You initialed something, you feel like you made a promise, one you believed in strongly enough to actually write something down legally binding or not. Your WORD means something to do you. You’re not a dishonest fuck are you? Of course not, so you should take the car. This greatly increases their ability to guilt trip you if you try to back out even though they changed the deal and this isn’t what you actually agreed to.

          The fact that this tactic works tells you something about the power of the written word.

          So yes, the Constitution, physically, is what it is. However it’s also a sign of something that people have strong emotional attachments to. As such, being written, taught and generally at least kinda-sorta known to exist means that it has real power in the real world. That gives us ground to fight on. The Left understands this, which is why they constantly try to undermine the Constitution by suggesting that it doesn’t say what it says. If they can change the emotional connection they can win.

          We can play that same game. We should. We don’t. Stop letting these motherfuckers pick the ground we fight on. Read some Sun Tzu and start looking for ways to force them to fight on ground of our choosing. Don’t pick the hill you want to die on. Pick the hill you want to mass the fuck out of these assholes on.

  15. If that happens we WILL go after magazines so they can see what it’s like to have people going a part of the Bill of Rights. New Yorker, Rolling Stone, the Washington, media that doesn’t tell the truth. CNN may finally kill itself.

    • Gotta protect the people from those dangerous 30+ page magazines they might start to read books. We need to take the common sense step of limiting magazines to 10 pages and remove scary assault word features. While we are at it we really should build a searchable database of magazine readers and let doctors evaluate them to see if they are dangerous readers before they are permitted to read.

      • “While we are at it we really should build a searchable database of magazine readers and let doctors evaluate them to see if they are dangerous readers before they are permitted to read.”

        Are you aware how close you are coming to being “one of them”? It can be risky to parody the anti-gun crowd (believe me, I know). It seems to get easier over time, which should be a warning.

        Nicely done.

        • Coming from you that is terrifying and thank you. I was going to reply to user1 again but yeah that one was going to a dark place.

        • “I was going to reply to user1”

          Happy to be of service.

          Actually liked his satiric nonsense about books and readers, and was pulling his nose about going too far. (although I sometimes suffer headaches for days after some of my silliness).

        • When you act like something for a long time you become that thing.

          If a person goes around acting like a communist most of the time, how are they not a communist? If you are “law enforcement” and you act like a jackbooted thug everyday, how are you not a tyrant just following orders?

          You see a lot of trolls become bad people [assholes] when they try to own/trigger the libs everyday with their memes. They become the people they don’t like, just a different flavor.

        • “When you act like something for a long time you become that thing.”

          Which may explain why actors no longer act, but adopt their role as themselves.

          When digging at the oppo, I try to sound close, but so ridiculous that even the libs wouldn’t write such things. Have also been trying to pick my moments, rather than looking for every opportunity. That is my defense against just becoming a blithering idiot at all times.

      • Your hat doesn’t have enough tinfoil.

        ebook library, browser history, online purchases, n search log? Location history (determined 3 different ways.)

        Tagging that to an identity isn’t hard…

        Your phone n PC each have several unique serial numbers, divulged by the gizmo on demand. Your browser setup is itself a decent-quality signature. And buried in the noise about wannacry n the other isolation-breaking hardware defects — in all Intel n most AMD chips for a couple decades-ish — is the Intel management architecture: its own full-function computer inside the chipset, underneath anything you might load and control.

        Let’s not talk about the wireless hw n sw stacks. Maybe mention that mandated 911 location service is always on n unavoidable; down to 10 yards or less. Lovely pair of demonstrations by MIT, n the German tech press a couple.hears back, building a profile n track history from first-pass what they could easily grab in transit.

        But, “smartguns” are an entirely benevolent safety feature. (I’ll consider whether they’re a net gain when a major military used the. Still waiting…)

  16. Ok, show of hands, (sorry NBC), how many people think the first ammendmant’s being abused way more than the second?

  17. Not going ro wade through 70 comments(busy today) but republitards like little Marco & Donnie have both advocated red flag confiscation. With “friend’s” like that…😫

  18. Gun confiscation is becoming popular. People keep thinking it’s the death sentence for a democrat victory…. it’s not.

    The answer is in demographic changes. In 25 years, Joe Biden type of politician will be the conservative candidate and we will be hearing that we have to vote for him because he’s the lesser of two evils and he only wants to confiscate our guns instead of confiscating them, taking all our money and putting us in prison.

    People really need to wake up to the demographic changes in the U.S. and stop pretending that it will all be ok.

    There is a reason for the democrats wanting open borders.

    Leftism sells in environments with universal suffrage. It just starts with smaller doses in the U.S. but the end result is still horrible.

    • And that boys and girls, is why they call it the hundred year goal. Although, the way things are going, they’ll accomplish it in half the time!

    • All Americans have to do is look at Europe. Europeans are not like Americans. The Europeans that didn’t want to live like that any longer escaped to find a better place and changed their identity.

      Now the Europeans are coming back to take over but this time they aren’t using physical force outright instead they are winning hearts and minds over time. The battle is of the mind not the body. They have conquered the educational system and media creation. They are winning overwhelmingly.

      Democrats out number Republicans. Most Americans support some form of socialism and call for more. Majority of Americans are reliant on others. The environment is properly set for a transition into communism. There is very little active resistance to stop it.

      Republicans don’t want to admit they are being defeated quite easily by soy boys. It’s embarrassing that an armed combat veteran would be defeated by a 19 year old skinny soy boy who has never been spanked in his life. Sure, the veteran could do a lot of damage if the war was physical, but we are not in a physical war against soy boys with pepper spray. They never have to fire a shot to destroy a country. Whenever you fire one they will label you: a terrorist, a domestic lone wolf terrorist, a white nationalist terrorist.

  19. I’m relatively sure you all have seen this one:

    https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/this-cake-is-the-best-way-to-explain-gun-control/

    And, when gun control nuts blather about our “refusal to compromise”, I usually point them at this. But there is a lesson here for US. We have compromised, to our detriment. No rational person can argue in good faith that the 2A isn’t being compromised on the daily. I won’t say it is all our fault, but a lot of it is. By trying to be “reasonable” (background checks, waiting periods, the execrable “assault weapons” ban, etc., etc. et ad nauseum cetera), we have signalled weakness and a willingness to allow our rights to be infringed.

    I wouldn’t take a bump stock if you offered me one for free, but any prohibition of them is simply unconstitutional, period. Suppressors should be sold over the counter – hearing damage is a real thing to military, first responders and hunters (thankfully, on the range, it is not an issue to wear hearing protection, but a soldier can’t exactly cover up his ears while on patrol). WHY are fully automatic weapons (manufactured after 86) illegal??? We KNOW what the Founders intended – they issued Letters of Marque and Reprisal to private citizens captaining full-blown warships. MANY individuals and communities owned cannons in the Revolutionary War.

    I’m tired of this bullshit. What part of “shall not be infringed” do you not get?????

  20. Might it possibly reflect some respect for, understanding of basic civil rights, as spelled out in the U.S. Constitution? One wonders.

  21. “Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press and a disarmed population.” James Madison

    They have two of the three.

    Be Prepared !

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