Obama sets stage for ending gun lobby's con game

[SecularMotion]

WASHINGTON --The apologists for the weapons industry -- they pass themselves off as the gun rights movement -- demonstrate their intellectual bankruptcy by regularly contradicting themselves with a straight face.

On the one hand, President Barack Obama's modest initiatives to keep guns out of the wrong hands are denounced as an outlandish abuse of his executive powers. House Speaker Paul Ryan showed why the Republican far right has such faith in him by declaring that Obama's "words and actions amount to a form of intimidation that undermines liberty." Accusing a president of undermining liberty is a nice way of encouraging those who see him as a dictator.

Yet there was the National Rifle Association itself making fun of Obama's actions for being puny. "This is it, really?" said the NRA's Jennifer Baker. "They're not really doing anything." The same NRA put up a frightening online video declaring that Obama is "our biggest threat to national security." So a president who's "not really doing anything" is also a menacing tyrant.

This is an old trick on the part of those who will not budge, no matter how many Americans are killed by firearms. Their favorite ploy is to say that because there are already so many guns out there -- some estimates run to over 300 million -- no particular practical measure will do much of anything to stem the violence. It's hard to know the exact number, by the way, partly because the NRA and its congressional enablers impede gun research.

http://www.goerie.com/obama-sets-stage-for-ending-gun-lobbys-con-game-ej-dionne

[Duckhunter935]

1. kind of sounds like the controllers like you

This will fix everything and close the "gun show" and "internet" loophole when they know it does no such thing for private sales between two people residing within the same state.

Care to comment or discuss per the group SOP?

[GGJohn]

2. Blah, Blah,Blah,Blah, Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,

Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah,

Got any comment there SecMo?
You posted the story, it's good manners to comment, oh, wait.

[Puha Ekapi]

3. Hard to provide commentary...

...when you don't have an original thought rattling around in your noodle

[beevul]

6. LOL

[Nuclear Unicorn]

4. According to Mr. Dionne --

The utility of the President's EA is that it forces RKBA advocates to make contradictory claims, i.e. "the President is trampling out rights" versus "The President didn't do anything of substance."

So, once the contradictory nature of these claims is exposed it will supposedly undermine RKBA advocates, thus costing them public support.

And once that support has been eroded then gun control extremists can do what? Not petition for rights-trampling legislation?

It seems the issue isn't so much RKBA contradiction so much as it is gun control extremists' duplicity and bad faith debating tactics (born of having decisively lost the political argument).

[krispos42]

5. So, how goes your plan to con the American people into banning "assault weapons"?

What % of homicides do you guarantee will be reduced? And what will the penalty be if you're wrong?

I mean, you and I know the answer is "undetectable", but that's not that you tell the people.

[Eleanors38]

7. "Con job?" After Bellesiles' blowout?

[DonP]

8. C'mon, everybody knows Bellesiiles was totally jobbed by the "Elders of the NRA"

They got to the chief county librarians in the San Francisco area. Threatened all the board members for the Bancroft Prize.

Had embarrassing pictures of the board at his University doing naked keg stands and were going to publish them is they didn't revoke his tenure and fire him.

I heard they even kidnapped the children of his publishers and forced them to pull all his wonderful work of "research" because his findings threatened the NRA financial base from selling assault rifles online with no background checks to children.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

9. Let's get the STUPID CRAP out of the way first

Accusing a president of undermining liberty is a nice way of encouraging those who see him as a dictator.

Really? It is? Maybe I'm mistaken but I recall a few instances of a Democrat or three saying disparaging things about some Republicans. And really? Is there a "nice way" of accusing a sitting President of being a dictator? What's that? The article didn't say that??? Oh you're right! And neither did the Speaker. "Tyrant" and accusations of such accusations are just sensationalist journalism, otherwise known as being the class clown. As George Carlin has adeptly articulated, the job of the class clown is ATTRACTING ATTENTION TO YOURSELF.

An often repeated and rejected lie:
>> the NRA and its congressional enablers impede gun research
The truth:
>> Congressional RKBA advocates got a law passed against publicly funding gun control advocacy.
Being fair about allowing public money to be spent advancing gun-control would amount to also giving public funds to advance ideas that the NRA, SAF and other organizations support. I'm personally against giving tax money to either side.

The same NRA put up a frightening online video declaring that Obama is "our biggest threat to national security."

OTOH maybe that's just another instance of sensationalist journalism, first amendment and all they get to say stuff back when you take a swipe at them on national TV. I'd be surprised if they said nothing.


Now that the preliminaries are out of the way, I'll move on to my attempt at sensationalism. Here's an excerpt from the article linked in the OP:

This is an old trick on the part of those who will not budge, no matter how many Americans are killed by firearms. Their favorite ploy is to say that because there are already so many guns out there -- some estimates run to over 300 million -- no particular practical measure will do much of anything to stem the violence.

One point which may be inferred from this excerpt is that for some reason, there is some magic number of dead Americans that makes it okay to abandon protecting a right. Let me make this clear: the rights as expressed in the Bill of Rights derive from natural human rights. Those rights are eternal. Those rights are not subject to edicts from powerful politicians nor to the popular whims of a well meaning legislature. For those of you that think tons of restrictions, Constitutional or not, should be part of the Democratic agenda, I don't want to hear about gun nuts and the NRA when Republicans win elections.

Some pro-control folks will ask questions like 'How many more Americans will have to die before we're allowed to confiscate all your bullet spitting {penis reference} toys.' You control happy folks that imply with that question that we pro-RKBA types think rights can be negotiated using specious reasoning about tools used by law enforcement and criminals, by hunters and gang bangers, by rapists and by those who object to being raped and/or killed, I'm going to give my answer right now; all of them.