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“In polls, a slight majority of Americans consistently say that we need better enforcement of our gun laws. But there’s a problem with that: many don’t really know what our gun laws are.” That’s today’s pronouncement from Democrat pollsters Joel Benenson and Katie Connolly in the Paper of Record™. And it’s most likely true, generally speaking. Of course, you can say the same thing about 90 percent of our Senators and Congressmen, so we’re even, no? Not exactly. The pollsters’ point is not that most gun muggles don’t know a Bushmaster from a beach ball. It’s that most of America thinks we have tighter gun control laws than we do . . .

Caveat lector: the poll was taken by the Obama campaign’s chief pollster and was paid for by the DNC. And the op-ed piece in question is yet another installment in the Times’ sustained push for civilian disarmament nationwide. All that out of the way, here’s their lament:

A large number think that federal laws require a background check for every gun purchase and that they ban high-capacity magazines. If these Americans knew that we didn’t have such laws — laws they so fervently wish to enforce — their beliefs about the correct course of Congressional action might be very different.

If only these stupid rubes knew how lax and loophole-ridden our negligible gun laws are right now, they’d be marching on Washington, ready to knock down the doors of the Capitol and demand tighter gun laws. Right after they stopped in Fairfax first, just long enough to burn NRA HQ to the ground and salt the earth.

Of the 50 percent of people who prefer enforcement over new laws — over half of whom are gun owners — 48 percent told us that federal laws prohibit the purchase of a weapon privately or at a gun show without a background check, while 10 percent simply admitted not knowing the rules. In other words, about 6 out of 10 people who believe we just need to do a better job of enforcing existing laws don’t realize that those laws are far weaker than they think. And just under half of those who want better enforcement don’t know that military-style assault weapons are, in fact, legal.

See? Even the troglodytic gun owners don’t know what is and isn’t legal. Proof positive that civilians just can’t be trusted with dangerous firearms. 

The notion that all we need is better enforcement of our current federal laws has been a core argument of the gun lobby for years in its fight against sensible restrictions on guns in our communities. But that argument is a straw man. It masks the fact that many Americans don’t really know what gun laws are on the books and falsely construes that to mean they don’t want common-sense gun laws passed — when they clearly do. What Americans strongly believe, and what is at the core of the president’s reform agenda, is that with rights come responsibilities.

Sorry. Give me just a minute to wipe the coffee off the keyboard. Reading that mini-lecture from the president’s pollsters on personal responsibility caused a little nasal ejection. There. That’s better.

Let’s parse that last part a little. Americans want better enforcement rather than more laws. But they aren’t really clear as to the gun laws currently on the books. So because they don’t know all the gun control laws now in force, we need more of them. And they’re irresponsible for not knowing they have responsibilities. That about sums it up.

The beauty of the Second Amendment – actually, the whole Bill of Rights, when you stop to think about it – is that they’re individual rights. It doesn’t really matter what everyone does or thinks. Just because some dope yells fire in a crowded theater, that doesn’t mean I have to get a license to whisper annoyingly at the movies. Whether I know it’s illegal to yell fire or not. Where’s that bottle of Excedrin?

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58 COMMENTS

  1. The vast majority of American gun owners don’t need any laws to tell them how to behave and the barbarians and sociopaths don’t care about laws at all.
    If we need more prisons and asylums, build them, and fill them up!

    • If we stopped putting people in prison solely for choosing what substance to put in their own bodies, and/or for selling those substances to others, we would have the world’s largest surplus of prison space.

      • Of course, anyone who actually knows anything about drugs knows this whole “victimless crime” mantra of the anti government lobby is udder horseshit, but please continue

        • I know a thing or two hundred about drugs and I would say that the horseshit is using the word crime at all. I’m certainly not saying that three aren’t dangerous drugs out there, but drug use in no way constitutes a crime.

        • I don’t understand how some guy who grows pot in his home and sells it to a guy who likes to smoke pot after work is a crime with any victims at all.

        • Nobody ever picked up a bag of heroin and killed 20 kids in an elementary school with it. I think if you are going to trust people to be responsible enough to have easy access to weapons that make mass murder easy, you should trust them to be responsible enough to make their own decisions regarding the substances they snort, swallow, smoke, inject, or put up their butts. The Second Amendment is there to protect us from tyrants like you rising to power. Liberty is much more important than your stupid impulse to control others.

      • Always entertaining to hear from the potheads.

        Marxist institute socialized medicine. Must legalize dope.

        Korea launches nucs at US. Must have free pot for all.

        Comet on collision course for Earth. Pass the joint.

        yadda yadda yadda

        • I have never done drugs, and never intend to. That being said, as a proponent of individual rights, I am compelled to support ALL individual rights, not just the ones I like. I am responsible enough to own and operate firearms. That is an individual right. Your body is, by definition, under your individual ownership, and you should have the right to put whatever you choose into it. That is also an individual right. Whether I think that doing drugs is a good idea or not is irrelevant.

        • Neither of you two police state apologists know anything about freedom do you? You are exactly the same as the anti gun crowd, no difference at all, even with the snide attitudes. You yell and scream about the government taking the property you want, but encourage the government to take other people’s property you don’t approve of. And, the irony is completely lost on you.

        • Always entertaining to hear from the anal retentive control Nazi’s.

          Fascists institute socialized medicine….Must have more oversight and CONTROL.

          Korea launches nukes at US…Must expand Patriot Act and NDAA. Must have more CONTROL.

          Comet on collision course for earth…Force all US citizens to line up and drink cyanide kool-aid because we CONTROL freaks can’t let the last act of the human race be UNCONTROLLED!

          YADDA YADDA YADDA

          FOAD

        • For most of our countries history, we didn’t have significant drug control or gun control laws and then the big government statists started crawling out of the sewers and started passing drug and gun control laws in early 1930’s, along with bigger government.

          All the.control freaks that want more gun control and support the war on drugs are brothers in their sick need to control another persons freedom.

        • So you’re OK with Government sanctioned (& taxed) drugs but not pot?
          This despite the former being known to kill hundreds of thousands of citizens every year & the latter being used to actually improve peoples’ quality of life?
          I can only guess that in your strange world, alcohol & nicotine don’t count as drugs.

      • Which is why the judicial system, on behalf of their, AHEM. BENEFACTORS at the Prison Industry fill them up with NONVIOLENT OFFENDERS. They don’t make trouble.

        AND FULL PRISONS FILL POCKETS.

    • The members of both parties are very picky-choosy about which issues deserve total freedom and which should be governed by the state. Drugs, marriage, dogs, you name it. There are a LOT of folks on this board who are ideologically inconsistent and IMO therefore have zero integrity.

      Bill in IL: I am also in Illinois. Elgin area with lots of ties to S. Illinois. Where are you?

  2. This rube should thank his pals in the MMS. People would have a better idea of the laws if they were not continuely bombarded with lies; like the “fact” anyone can go to Bob’s Gun Shop and by a fully automatic weapon of war…

  3. i am really more interested in the other 50 percent of people, who prefer new laws over enforcement. How many of them know the current laws?

    • My thoughts as well. He should be careful using this argument – it is easily turned. I would wager that gun owners are, on average, more informed of the gun laws that the non-gun owners – they would have to be. If that is the case then his whole argument blows up in his face.

      • a lot of this is push-polling rhetoric too. for example, click through the the NYT survey and 59% favor “A ban on the sale of assault weapons” while only 50% favor “A ban on semiautomatic weapons with detachable magazines that rapidly fire a high number of rounds.”

        ok then!

  4. He’s absolutely right, people are grievously uninformed about gun laws in this country. And the NYT is absolutely responsible for so much of that in the last few decades, sure as shit ain’t helping.
    Kinda like this article.

  5. Didn’t Slo Joe say we don’t have the manpower or resources to enforce the laws we currently have so we need new ones?

  6. Unfortunately, just because your oppositon is moronic doesn’t make a fact said by them any less true.

    Nearly every non-firearms person who knows I carry has said “so, how much did your gun license cost?” . In my estimation, sheeple assume that if you need a background check to work at bank and ID to buy a cell phone, then ownership of a deadly weapon requires a government issued permit.

    I overheard a conversation last year at a commons area at my university regarding a VH1 episode on rapper TIs arrest on gun charges. The girls freak out because OMG, the guy had like MULITpLe gUnS!!! One of the guys in the party says he owns a hunting shotgun, and the same girl says “it’s different though, because its licensed…..right?”

    ***Sigh***

    • The world they wish was true trumps ANY and ALL data from the real world…

      Dreams come true, I know they do
      Because I wished upon a star
      At least I can wish it’s TRUE!!

    • “….and ID to buy a cell phone,”

      What?!!!!
      We don’t have that here in the UK, a control freak’s wet dream of a country.
      How the Hell did that ever get on the books in the US?

      • That’s just generally if you get on a contract and they give you a free or discounted phone. You can still buy a phone with prepaid service using cash, no ID.

        There are some countries I’ve been to where they wanted an ID for even a temporary sim card. So annoying.

  7. They can stuff their polls. The Bill of Rights protects minority rights against an angry mob. Mob rule was just as feared as totalitarians by our Founders. If their poll showed 90% of the American people wanted a total gun ban it still wouldn’t mean shite.

    • If 90% desired such a thing it would likely still happen. People interpreting the Constitution as it fits the situation would easily encompass that sort of “progress” and encourage a change in the document. But if 90% desired a gun ban I don’t imagine there would be nearly as many in circulation so its a moot point.

      My point is that inciting masses to panic and embrace legislation IS a tactic in play, whether its against the rules or not.

    • thats exactly the problem with even barack’s logic.

      His fabled “majority” can piss off when it comes to my constitutional rights.

      Im sick and tired of this “majority rules” “might makes right” crap that has so ironically been hard pressed by the left lately.

      My right to bear arms was partially created for this exact reason: to protect myself from the majority.

      • I have no problem with that point of view. The problem arises when the rules of engagement change mid battle and they try pulling the rug from beneath us.

        The rights remain inalienable but not uncontested. This is merely one of many angles that we have to watch for.

  8. From the Violence Policy Center website:

    “The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun— can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. In addition, few people can envision a practical use for these weapons.”

    What they mean:

    The American public is generally ignorant about guns, so we can lie to them very effectively by equating “ugly” rifles like the AR-15 as “the same thing as the Army M-16”, after all they look alike, don’t they? That is enough “proof” for these stupid people. The “confusion” of the public about guns is not to be eliminated by telling them the truth. That would ruin our plans to advance our goals for more useless “gun control”. We must cultivate this public ignorance about guns, and exploit this ignorance as much as we can, to fool the public into thinking the way we want them to think.
    We can stress the point that these guns are not good for hunting, which is what most urban citizens think of as the only “good purpose” for guns. We will ignore the fact that the Armalite Rifle 15 (AR-15) was marketed as a “varmint rifle” for hunting woodchucks before it was adopted by the Military and re-designed to allow “machine gun” fire. Of course we will not mention any other “lawful uses”, such as target shooting. Just keep repeating, over and over, “Nobody needs a machine gun to hunt deer”.

    For our part, all we can do is show the truth to those who have been lied to. Show them how they were duped, who was doing all this deceit, and why they were lied to.

      • Agreed.
        There’s “nothing to be done” about the True Believers. I don’t think those who have been bullsh!ted blind by those TBs are going to like them very much, once they see how they were played for fools.

    • ” We will ignore the fact that the Armalite Rifle 15 (AR-15) was marketed as a “varmint rifle” for hunting woodchucks before it was adopted by the Military and re-designed to allow “machine gun” fire.”

      Not at all true.
      The ammunition used in the AR was developed from a varmint round but the rifle itself was designed from the outset for military use & with a fully automatic function in place right from the drawing board. It is a “product improved” derivative of the AR10. The semi automatic version of the AR didn’t appear until 1963, well after the USAF had acquired the AR15.

      • Perhaps my memory was faulty, but I could have sworn I saw a 1/2 or full-page ad in The American Rifleman long before the M-16 was in military inventory.

      • I did some research, and have an apology to offer.

        From : American Rifleman, U.S. M-16 by Martin K. A. Morgan, 06/22/2012
        “Soon after the [ARVN] tests in South Vietnam, [1962] the U.S. Air Force officially adopted the rifle [quantity unspecified, for Ground Defense forces?] followed by the U.S. Navy, which ordered a small number of rifles to arm its SEAL teams.”
        “Despite being described as “the best individual infantry weapon ever made” in 1965, the XM16E1 [still experimental, not adopted] began to exhibit catastrophic problems in 1966.”
        “On Feb. 28, 1967, the XM16E1 was standardized as the M16A1 rifle at the height of the jamming epidemic when troop confidence in the rifle had reached an all-time low.”

        If, as you said “The semi automatic version of the AR didn’t appear until 1963, well after [late 1962?] the USAF had acquired the AR15”, then the semi-auto civilian version of the rifle would have been available and advertised as early as 1963. That would be 2- 4 years before the widespread use (“official adoption” in 1967) of the M-16 in our Military arsenal.

        As you pointed out, I falsely assumed that the semi-auto civilian AR-15 preceded the development of the full-auto capable military version. That was based on recollection of an ad, aimed at varmint hunters, long before the field testing of the new weapon in Vietnam became common knowledge – in my case, when the problems caused by ball powder were publicized, some 3 years later.

        I appreciate your input and criticism. I modify my interpretation of the VPC statement accordingly, to the following:

        We can stress the point that these guns are not good for hunting, which is what most urban citizens think of as the only “good purpose” for guns. We will ignore the fact that both the AR-15 and M-16 use a “varmint” cartridge, civilian developed for hunting woodchucks before it was adopted by the Military. Of course we will ignore any other “lawful uses”, of the AR-15, such as target shooting. Just keep repeating, over and over, “Nobody needs a machine gun to hunt deer”.

        • I think there’s every reason for US citizens to own an AR15 – “enemies foreign & domestic” pretty much covers it & I personally use one to shoot competitively when in the US (though that isn’t a meaningful reason to have one).
          As far as I’m concerned, any sane, law-abiding citizen (including a lot of convicted felons) should be able to buy whatever kind of small arms they care to own.

          I’m still no great fan of the AR15 though & much prefer the L1A1/FAL:-)

        • I’m not much of a fan of the AR-15 either.
          I was issued, and fired both annual qualification and competitive matches with the M-16A1. I also had the good fortune to fire the National Match version of the M-14 in competitive matches.
          I never felt comfortable with the M-16, except in the offhand position. Then there was the real problem of flexing the barrel with a tight sling in prone. The mild recoil of the M-16 was a mixed blessing. You can get into bad habits shooting an M-16 that will not be forgiven when you switch to an M-14.
          Like many of the “old salts”, I came to view the M-16 as the “buck Rogers gun”. I long considered buying one to get that low-recoil advantage, even if I don’t like the design, if I ever went back to competitive rifle shooting.
          Looking at the situation today, with prices and wait periods out of control, I may do some rifle shooting this summer, with my CMP M-1. I’ll live with that .30/06 recoil.

  9. These people are sketch. Shouldn’t they be working on providing free coffee & donuts for the criminal safe zones? Maybe they could have special advertising”please come to our store for your next robbery” you will be safe here, no rotten gun owners to put a crimp in your magnificent line of work. I put it down to jeolosy, how can you sell being slaughtered when many people protect themselves & are not in danger. Hint, you cant & need to make everyone a helpless sheep, Randy

  10. 60% of gun owners contacted (accidentally) hung up on the pollster. 40% lied to the twit.

    A major problem with all telephone poll is that no workable way to contact those that only respond to cell phones and then only to calls they recognize. You call a landline at Monday 10pm and you get an “unemployed” person sitting at home watching a leftwing yapshow on TV

  11. How about this as a compromise to universal background checks.

    Just write a law that ALL sales at GUNSHOWS require a background check, and provide paperwork(on website) and a telephone number for people to do that. You must also copy their ID. Then require sales of firearms from an internet listing like armslist or forum classified be done at an FFL like a gunsmith. That would eliminate their concern for criminals being able to find guns without a background check, but not infringe on any of us that may lend a firearm, gift to family or sell it to a buddy, or sell amongst our gun clubs, having the guns in our house with roomates while we’re away on business etc…

    I think this would only be a hassle for people in desperate need of money or moving to a commy state looking to offload their collection.

    • I fail to see where the compromise comes in? There is no give and take in your proposal, only give.

    • +1
      That’s why the term “handgun” was so widely adopted in the media. They were too frequently embarrassed by their ignorance on that point.

  12. The only lack of responsibility I’m witnessing thus far is when uninformed politicians and “community leaders” try to force uninformed legislation on law-abiding citizens without even asking their opinion on it first.

  13. “Of the 50 percent of people who prefer enforcement over new laws — over half of whom are gun owners — 48 percent told us that federal laws prohibit the purchase of a weapon privately or at a gun show without a background check, while 10 percent simply admitted not knowing the rules.”

    Sooo, 50% of the folks prefer enforcement over new laws. Of that 50%, half of them are gun owners (52%) = 25% of those surveyed. Of the fifty percent above, again almost 50% (48 percent) do not know the laws = 25% of the total survey.

    This to me means that the 25% that own guns know the laws (52% of the 50% above)….. Their point?

  14. Another example of why America is over regulated and legislated and these regulations and laws are too complex for not just the average person, but almost everyone to understand without devoting considerable time and energy to understand and comply, for example, the tax code also.

    If we could have Constitutional carry in every state, “reasonable (i.e. pro 2A)” background checks for everyone except an immediate family member for firearm purchases only, abolished “gun free zones” while leaving it to everyone to post whether they permitted firearms on their property, and “reasonable (i.e. pro 2A)” regs for NFA items, then surveys like this would have some meaning.

  15. What gets me is the utter hypocrisy of these politicians; they pooh-pooh the concerns of US citizens because according to them, most don’t know or understand gun laws, yet happily admit that most politicians don’t even READ let alone study any & all firearms Bills that they vote on.
    Perhaps there ought to be a test for each & every Bill, where the politicians have to show at least SOME knowledge of what it contains in order to be eligible to vote.
    Make it that 33% of eligible legislators must cast a vote for any Bill to progress & 90% of dumb laws would never see the light of day.

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