What if the Cincinnati Revolt never happened (or if it did, the hardliners lost)

[gejohnston]

(or how JFK's and Truman's NRA became Ted Nugent's NRA)

For those of you too young to remember, this was the NRA convention where the hardliners took control of the organization from the hunters/environmentalist. The hunters/environmentalists were concerned with environmentalism as well as gun rights and sportsmanship. The hardliners accused them of being FUDDs and wanted to be a single issue organization and made it what it is today.
It started when the organization bought 37,000 acres near Raton, New Mexico, without a clear idea what to do with it. Some wanted it to be a shooting center, dedicated to shooting ranges. The other faction, the hunter/environmentalists wanted diversity and include camping, wilderness survival, environmentalism, and other wide-ranging concerns, in addition to marksmanship.

The question is, if the traditional hunter/environmentalists stayed in power, how do you think it would be a good thing for RKBA or where they in fact FUDDs that would have sold out?

[bluerum]

1. Would have been a good thing in my mind. Too many RW nutjobs right now.

I might even have become a member. As it is now I wouldn't give them a cent.

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. Define FUDD, please.

And let's see; on the one hand a diverse group of hunters, environmentalists, and target shooters; on the other side, a RW gun industry militia group.

Tough choice.

[gejohnston]

3. from the urban dictionary

Slang term for a "casual" gun owner; eg; a person who typically only owns guns for hunting or shotgun sports and does not truly believe in the true premise of the second amendment. These people also generally treat owners/users of so called "non sporting" firearms like handguns or semiautomatic rifles with unwarranted scorn or contempt.

Kind of like Ed Shultz or outdoor writer Jim Zumbo

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. Thanks.

So far as I can tell, nobody believes in the true premise of the 2nd amendment; they can't bring themselves to acknowledge that the phrase 'well organized militia' is even in it, or to realize that that private gun ownership as a bulwark against foreign invaders, Indian raids, or government oppression is hopelessly outdated and laughable.

The principle of self-defense against crime goes back in English common law for centuries before the writing of the constitution and was so accepted that it didn't even get a mention - it was a gimme. That said, reducing the cause of crime is a far more effective response to crime than keeping a pistol under the pillow.

The militia types who claim to be 2nd amendment purists are, IMO, those who are least in accordance with the true premise of the 2nd amend.

[gejohnston]

5. I don't know if that was the entire premise

but militia means a lot of things, including everyone. Although a decentralized military like Switzerland would be better than the empire so I certainly don't think that it is out dated or laughable. A more practical, and realistic examples, are the various state militias like Vermont's. Another example are the Canadian Rangers.
What you assume to be the true promise, has been argued before the SCOTUS twice. The first time in 1939 in US v Miller. The lower court ruled that the NFA did violate the second. The government appealed to the SCOTUS that basically that a sawed off shotgun was not constitutionally protected protected weapon because it did not have any military purpose and was a gangster weapon. Then kicked back to the lower court. Miller did not have council at SCOTUS nor have a brief so it was one sided. Miller passed away after that. In Heller, the issue was not individual right, but DC ban specifically. What that was five to four, the dissent acknowledged that it is an individual right not connected to a militia. So individual right was 9-0. Earlier decisions simply upheld local regulations like Texas v Miller 1894, different Miller, that upheld Texas' handgun licensing law at that time. Basically, that Miller was arrested in Dallas for having an unlicensed pistol.
While reducing the cause of crime is a good goal. Question is how. Not with the right wing running loose. Even then, competing interests regardless of party will never turn us into Norway or Switzerland. Neither will our culture and history. There are serious cultural issues we have to deal with. So in the meantime, the pistol under the pillow is the best answer. The idea that removing that pistol will magically reduce crime is absurd to say the least. One of the pillars of the enlightenment is the idea of self sovereignty and the individual right of armed self defense. Why many progressives embraces that part of Edmund Burke conservatism quite frankly astounds me. I find it naive and misguided. I also find the "self defense is bad and uncivilized mentality" morally offensive. Besides, it is scapegoating about forty percent of the country because politicians lack the courage or brains to deal with the real causes. Those people know and understand that, which is why they vote Republican on that issue. What pushes them even further are not only the slurs you see here about gun owners, but go to Think Progress or Crooks and Liars and you will find Free Republic Left but only the other are rednecks who drive pick up trucks and hicks. You know, working class people. The mods would delete it if I copied and pasted some of the crap. We allow our own to be as dishonest as the right without calling them out.
When these salt of the earth folks are not only seeing Rachel Maddow or Thom Hartmann embracing Bush's secret list after eight years of calling it for what it is. When some Al Qaida clown makes a video claiming you can legally buy machine guns at gun shows with no background check and the professional left treats it as factual, our side loses credibility. In another thread I explained to someone that the make NRA head explode video was bogus and the MAIG video of someone doing was either a fake or a felony, until I figured out that he had no idea what automatic weapon means. Finally I had to be rude and flatly tell him that it is a fucking machine gun. Nothing pisses me off more than ersatz liberals being as stupid and narrow minded and bigoted as the dimmest teabagger ever.
Stuff like that makes the average folk see our support for the march on Madison as shallow grandstanding for narrow political gain at their expense. A kinder gentler Walker. That is my cynical view of the world.

[RaleighNCDUer]

6. My comment on 'outdated and laughable' is the notion that any

number of yahoos with semi-automatic rifles and Glocks (no matter how 'military' they might look) are going to stand up to a truly oppressive government that has no qualms about using military force agaiinst them. The entire Michigan Militia would last about 20 minutes against a battalion of Marines. Less, if the Marines have armor and air cover.

The technology has outstipped the militia concept - that's why the government opted to form National Guard units, as a state controlled military force that could counter a federal military if it had to. The guard has automatic weapons, armor, artillery, and air power.

The morons running around in the woods have delusions of grandeur.

I think you also misunderstood what I said about the pistol under the pillow. I acknowledge that self defense is a fundamental right, and its history has been codified since English common law of the middle-ages. I only maintain that it is a poor option, it is a last resort, and that it has been shown that a person is liklier to be shot with a gun that comes from his own household than by a criminal. Few people NEED to have a gun in the house. Fewer NEED to pack one around everywhere they go. And most people who feel they need one, actually need counseling more. That's not to say that nobody needs a weapon for self defense. Only that it is not the removing of the pistol that reduces crime - it is the reducing crime that obviates the need of the pistol. Remember 'In Cold Blood'? The reason that book and movie became a hit was because it was so startling - home invasion just didn't happen back then. (It must also be noted that the victims were shot by their own weapon, the father's hunting shotgun.) A strong, progressive economy will do more for dealing with crime than any number of guns.

Despite what many people in this forum may think, I am not fundamentally opposed to guns. I may not have been a very good Marine, back in the day, but I was good enough to qualify Expert with both the M-16 and the 1911 .45. And in all the years since then I have never felt a need to have a weapon in my home.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

8. Common ground:

- I also qualified, not with M-16 but with an M-1 Garand and carbine.

- Self defense...English common law...Blackstone's commentaries...

- Not everyone "needs" a gun...I hear you. I will say also that many shouldn't have a CCF, not because they don't have that right, not because they need counseling but because they lack the dedication to maintain themselves and their arms in a responsible condition.

Having $500 - $600 to spend on a Glock 27 or similar is a small part of what one should be prepared for. Ideally one should be prepared for at least once a month practice at a range. One should also take an annual refresher course of at least 6 - 8 hours dealing with situational response practice and classroom time on the required mindset and focus. These costs, both the financial and the dedication of personal time, far overshadow what is required to acquire the pistol.

Having said that, you are far off the mark in characterizing civilians as falling palely inferior to a government equipped force. The issue of morale cannot be overstated.

Today's military is an enlighten group. They are intelligent and informed. They will not be blindly shooting back at fellow citizens. Would you?

[gejohnston]

10. one correction

about the National Guard, they are trained and equipped by the feds, and can be federalized with a phone call. Bush's over use of them in Iraq was part of the reason Katrina was was what it was, the LNG was in Iraq. The Air Guard units are stuck with what the feds gives them. When I was a McConnell, the KANG had B-1s, which are worthless to a state governor. That is a flaw with the total force concept.
The study you cite was funded by the Joyce Foundation.

[cleanhippie]

12. It's only laughable if you think Marines are going to fire on their own citizens.

Sure, there may be a few, but in MY 21 years of Naval Service, this conversation came up a lot, and the consensus was that offensive action against Americans on US soil would be an order that never got carried out.

[beevul]

47. Outdated and laughable?

Only if you yourself set the parameters. "versus a batalion of marines" for example.

Have you forgotten what one sniper did here in America?

Malvo and mohammed didn't proceed by the parameters you conjured up.

What makes you think anyone else would?



When we erase your parameters and substitute for them, things we actually have examples of, and multiply it by a thousand, or two thousand, or 5 thousand, it paints an entirely different picture than you'd have everyone see.


Technology becomes far less useful than you would have everyone believe, in a war whos operating principle is assymetrical warfare.


Do you really need someone to point out iraq or viet nam as examples?

[lawodevolution]

9. Why do you think the dependent clause is the most important par of the 2A?

A dependent clause like "a well regulated militia vein necessary to a free state" can't govern the independent clause: "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"

The independent clause is the main idea with the dependent clause being the opinion of the writer.

[PavePusher]

14. Please explain, referencing grammer, history and context, how that phrase is a limiting condition.

No-one else has managed to do it convincingly...


ETA: "That said, reducing the cause of crime is a far more effective response to crime than keeping a pistol under the pillow." Except, of course, when a crime is happening to an individual, right now.

[eqfan592]

18. Not to mention...

...there is no causal evidence linking availability of firearms to increased crime rates.

[Hoyt]

20. Lots of reasons for crime rate, How do you know crime rate would not fall with a lot less guns?

It might just be half as much as it is now, who knows? I'm sure those dreaming of their next gun acquisition will find a thousand rebuttals.

[eqfan592]

21. lol, are you serious???

First of all, there is the falling crime rate over the last decade and a half in spite of the dramatic increase in the number of firearms owned. Secondly, there are other nations out there that we can point too that demonstrate the lack of a causal link between the two.

So yeah, there are rebuttals. Extremely solid ones in fact. But you choose to ignore them in spite of the fact that they've been posted in this very forum time and time again.

[Hoyt]

22. Crime rate has fallen because of aging population, tougher sentences, better surveillance, etc.

More friggin guns haven't done anything in that respect. In fact, most gun purchases are just the same ole gunners buying more and more to fulfill their insatiable gun needs.

[eqfan592]

23. Yet again another major reading fail...

...I wish I could say they weren't so common. You'll have to be so kind as to where I said that I thought the increase in firearm ownership was the CAUSE of the decrease in crime. But hey, nice try at yet ANOTHER dodge.

[Hoyt]

35. You guys keep repeating the same ole implications. Then when called on it, say I didn't say that.

If you think it has no such impact, then quit posting the BS.

[eqfan592]

43. Ok, let's clear this up right here.

You make a claim that more guns = more crime. I make a post where I CLEARLY state that I don't believe there is any causal link, and in fact no correlative link either because the statistics show that we have more guns in the nation now but less crime. YOU then make the jump to say that I was somehow implying a causal link when I have clearly stated MANY TIMES on this forum that I did NOT believe any such link existed, and that the stats were ONLY being posted for the purpose of DISPROVING YOUR SPECIFIC CLAIM.

So you tell me exactly how the hell somebody is supposed to counter your argument that more guns equals more crime without showing the stats that show there isn't even a CORRELATIVE link, much less a causal link, that could lead one to support that position. Because I'm sick of people like you tossing up the same tired old straw man every single time those stats our brought up. Your intellectual dishonesty seems to know absolutely no bounds at all.

[Katya Mullethov]

51. Knowing no bounds and completely unencumbered

by the thought process

[Hoyt]

52. Again, we don't know what the crime rate would be without so many guns. I think it would be less.

Your need for guns, knows no bounds either.

[gejohnston]

53. based on the experiances of UK, Canada, and Jamacia

your choice is nothing (Canada)
and has gotten worse (the other two) that is not to say that the laws made it worse, just that the result is not what everyone is hoping for.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

54. You say, "I think it would be less."

You then use that theory to justify expanded gun control. Due to the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, we cannot conclude that an event which follows another is necessarily caused by the first.

We don't even have that here. Had crime increased as gun ownership increased then maybe.


But if someone else found a statistical inverse correlation between average skirt length and murder rates, the odd correlation would be only that, an odd correlation. There would be no justification for outlawing mini-skirts.

[DanTex]

25. This is a good point.

The rate of gun ownership per household, or per individual is actually down. The GOP/NRA always talk about the total number of guns in circulation, but the numbers that matter are gun ownership rates.

According to the GSS, household ownership is down from over 50% to 32%. Personal ownership is down from 30% to 21%.
http://www.vpc.org/studies/ownership.pdf

But the gun ownership lie is only one of the many coming from the right-wing on this issue. The bigger lie is that there is "no evidence" that further bringing down gun ownership would reduce violent crime even more. This has been discussed thoroughly on this board, and you are on the side of the vast majority of experts who have actually researched this issue. On DU Guns, the majority is not familiar with the academic research on the subject (or chooses to ignore it).

But in the real world, serious, knowledgeable people share the view that less guns would result in less crime.

[eqfan592]

26. Actually...

...given the fact that many gun owners are inherently distrusting of pollsters, there is a great many of them that refuse to answer questions about their firearm ownership honestly.

Besides the polls, what other evidence is there that the gun ownership rate has actually declined?

[DanTex]

27. LOL. Ignoring facts once again.

Do you have any other move besides sticking your head in the sand? Funny how you never seem to present any evidence of your own, you just deny study after study. Wonder why that might be...

This data comes from the general social survey:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Social_Survey

The survey is repeated every two years using the same methodology, so that even if there is overall bias in one direction or another, the intertemporal comparisons would not be biased.

Of course, I would expect nothing less than for you to dismiss yet another piece of evidence you disagree with offhand.

[eqfan592]

29. Lol, do you have any other move besides being insulting?

Seriously, I asked you a very simple question, and you come back with more of the same "head in the sand" bull shit. I HAVE actually provided evidence before, you just didn't like it so you ignored it, which is pretty much your MO.

So basically what your saying is you have no other evidence than a survey that, in the end, relies on the majority of people being truthful in order for its results to make any sense, and with one of the questions being of the sort that a fairly large segment of the population would rather not answer truthful to a government agency due to fear (irrational or no) of government tracking. Does that about sum it up?

[DanTex]

31. Let's try this one more time...

The survey is repeated every two years using the same methodology, so that even if there is overall bias in one direction or another, the intertemporal comparisons would not be biased.

You know, I'm sure it's fun to find silly ways to dismiss everything and then pat yourself on the back. But, just once, instead of trying so hard to ignore evidence, you might try and learn something from these academic studies that you so despise.

[gejohnston]

33. are different people doing the survey? and

do they release their methodology?

[DanTex]

37. Dude, the General Social Survey from the National Opinion Research Center is not out to get you...

I would point out that social scientists hold it in pretty high, regard, but knowing your opinion of anything academic, I'm not sure that would make you trust it more or less...

[gejohnston]

40. No just anything with

VPC, Joyce Foundation names attached to it.

[eqfan592]

41. Ya know, Dan...

...there is a hard lesson that you have yet to learn, and that is the fact that simply because people are able to punch holes in your pet studies doesn't somehow mean that they hate the scientific community. In fact, more often than not when punch holes in your studies, the punching is being done by referencing OTHER academics that did the punching themselves! Of course, you choose to ignore this and play like it never happened, or that people are just burying their head in the sand (ha!), but that doesn't alter the reality of the situation.

[eqfan592]

49. You can take it however you want.

You can be intellectually dishonest as you are right now and act like youve never been linked any papers before on this forum. That's pretty much the norm with you, hence my refusal to continue this discussion.

[eqfan592]

39. lol, you really are laughable.

I mean seriously, you couldn't possibly be projecting harder even if you tried. As for your quoted statement, that is not actually and entirely factually correct. If the increase of gun owning population were among those who particularly were less likely to answer the question truthfully, or if the number of past gun owners who may have answered truthful declined from year to year (and given the behavior of folks like yourself in certain prominent positions in both politics and the mainstream media, it is not unreasonable to think this is possible) then the survey may still show a decline from one survey to the next when in fact the opposite was true.

I believe criminologists Daniel D. Polsby and Don B. Kates speculated on this topic. Perhaps you should take a look at it.

There is some reason to doubt the main findings of this research, however. From an early 1994 survey, one learns that 53% of households contained a firearm; a survey later in that same year found only 34%. (Ibid.) Results so disparate<21> naturally raise questions about the adequacy of this methodology. Indeed, beyond their erratic results, there are both good theoretical reasons and ample empirical bases for believing that poll results understate the true number of firearms-owning households; see the exhaustive discussions in Kleck, 1997: 64-68 and Kleck, 1991: appendix 2. Most obviously, many years of debate over proposals to ban certain kinds of firearms and place new and much stricter conditions on possessing most others may induce gun owners to lie to strangers inquiring about household possession of firearms. And over this same period of time, much of the mass-media has indulged in the habit of stigmatizing firearms and firearms ownership, so that many gunowners might come to think of their weapon as a sort of guilty secret, like a pornography collection or a cache of marijuana, to be denied and lied about rather than openly acknowledged. Whatever the reasons may be, insofar as dissimulation can be verified, it has been. Where poll results could be checked against gun registration or permit records, up to 12.7% of respondents who had a registered gun or a permit nevertheless told poll takers that they did not have firearms in their households.<22> The extent to which dissimulation by survey respondents can be verified in this manner is limited because very few states require gun registration or a permit to buy or own a gun.<23> If 12.7% of respondents whose gun ownership is officially recorded nevertheless deny it to poll takers, it is fair to assume that an even larger percentage of gun owners in states where there is no record of their ownership do so.

From LONG TERM NON-RELATIONSHIP OF WIDESPREAD AND INCREASING FIREARM AVAILABILITY TO HOMICIDE by Don B. Kates* and Daniel D. Polsby. I have yet to locate a free version of this (this an excerpt of the paper that was printed somewhere else), but if somebody else has a link, feel free to post it.

[DanTex]

44. I suppose you have some evidence that gun owners have become more paranoid over time...

Not sure what that paper you are citing actually says, but here's a paper that's actually available on the web, and concludes, among other things, that:

My findings demonstrate that changes in gun
ownership are significantly positively related to changes in the homicide
rate, with this relationship driven almost entirely by an impact
of gun ownership on murders in which a gun is used. The effect of
gun ownership on all other crime categories is much less marked.
Recent reductions in the fraction of households owning a gun can
explain one-third of the differential decline in gun homicides relative
to nongun homicides since 1993.

http://econ.arts.ubc.ca/nfortin/econ495/dugganjpe98.pdf

[eqfan592]

45. Yes, because us shooting back and forth...

...with links to published papers that support our individual positions is really going to get us somewhere, isn't it? Especially since it's been done about a dozen times already on this forum with you to literally no avail in any direction.

[DanTex]

46. I'll take that as a no.

It's not even clear what the paper you cited actually says, and yet that one paragraph you found is enough for you to discredit the GSS, which I guess you had never heard of until now (shocker!), but is considered one of the best sources of demographic info around.

True, neither of us have changed our opinions. But, hey, at least now you know about the GSS.

Moreover, if anyone else is paying attention, now they are aware that the "increased gun ownership" is an NRA lie. Unless, of course, they buy into your unevidenced assertion that the entire survey trend can be explained by a massive increase in paranoia.

[X_Digger]

55. Here's one for you..

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7610216

The validity of self-reported data on the presence of guns in the home obtained in a telephone survey was assessed in samples of households where a hunting license had been purchased or a handgun registered.
...
The proportion of respondents who reported that at least one gun was kept in their household was 87.3 percent among handgun registration households and 89.7 percent among hunting license households.

Add 10-15% to any figure you hear. This study data was collected before the 1994 Assault Weapon Ban, so I doubt people are *more* forthcoming with ownership numbers now.

[RaleighNCDUer]

28. ...inherently distrusting of pollsters...

yet, when 'I' say many are fucking paranoid, I am reviled.

[eqfan592]

30. Paranoid for different reasons.

You think they are paranoid simply because they own guns in the first place. I'm saying many are paranoid of government tracking and confiscation, something which actually has happened both here and elsewhere.

[RaleighNCDUer]

34. And I posit that irrational fear of your neighbors and irrational fear

of the government are one and the same thing.

[eqfan592]

42. Well you'd be wrong.

But that's ok, I doubt it'll make any difference to you.

And to be frank, there is nothing inherently irrational with not trusting the government 100%. It's all a matter of degrees. I trust my neighbors just fine, but I don't trust the government as far as I can throw it. After 8 years of Bush and Co I honestly can't believe how the hell YOU seem to trust them so damned much. I'm not saying "the government is out to get me" or anything like that, only that I think it is foolish to trust an entity with as many issues as our government has 100%, especially when the political winds are so very fickle, and with as much corporate money there is flowing through the system.

[PavePusher]

50. "distrust"=/="paranoia". At least, not in the dictionaries I have access to. n/t

[gejohnston]

32. VPC?

Do you have a paper on carbon-14 dating from the Creation Science Museum?

[DanTex]

36. VPC wrote a press release based on data from the GSS

http://www.norc.org/GSS+Website

GSS has nothing to do with VPC, it's a general social survey that gets performed every two years.

Although it is considered scholarly work, which I know you hate, so I have no doubt you'll find some way to dismiss it as part of the academic anti-gun conspiracy.

[gejohnston]

38. I love scholarly work as long as it is scholarly

and propaganda dressed up as that. Of course you knew that. Since you can not defend them on their own merits, you accuse us of being anti intellectual. Which is ironic considering that our challenge to the studies were on their methods and results outside of the press release. Intellectual challenge. Instead, you do the anti intellectual thing and play amateur shrink and call us head in the sand dolts.
I find it odd that VPC is the only place you found it. Kind of like scholarly work that is reprinted from peer reviewed journals to pro gun sites that you decry. You never discuss them on their merits.

[GreenStormCloud]

17. Humanity is NOT perfectable. There will always be criminals.

Even in the best of socities, some people are simply evil. It is for those that a person should be able to defend themselves. For me, that means I keep a gun on me.

[PavePusher]

13. To be fair, Zumbo changed his views after his unfortunate incident.

I don't know if his career has fully recovered....

[onehandle]

7. Well it did, and the NRA is now just an election tool for conservatives and corporations. nt

[gejohnston]

11. wow we agree on something nt.

[PavePusher]

15. Any Democrat may accept the Second Amendment as meaning what it says at any time....

and thus gain the endorsement of the NRA. Nothing is stopping them but rejection of truth and reality and trusting the Citizenry.

[eqfan592]

19. They are also the largest organization out there promoting..

..firearms safety and training classes. Having taken several and seeing first hand the good that can come out of them, I have no issues supporting the NRA in this one specific venture.

[GreenStormCloud]

16. If that had happened, the the Second Amendment Foundation would now have 4.5 million members. N/T

[benEzra]

24. Yup. (n/t)

[beevul]

48. The usual suspects would hate SAF as much as they hate the nra.

Show me one organization that stands in the way of unreasonable gun control that they don't or wouldn't hate.


If it is an effective organization, and able to prevent their anti-gun agenda, it will be hated for it, plain and simple.

And for that reason.

Not that most of them have the capacity of honesty required to admit it.