Kind of old but not too dated.

[gejohnston]

It is the best opinion piece explaining why Dems should end the war on guns I have found to date.
For example:

Although gun rights and social conservatism may appeal to the same kinds of people, they are actually two opposing ideas. To hold them both smacks of a citizen who does not really value liberty at all, but wants a government empowered to enforce his or her values on everyone else. How is this different from the way gun-control advocates want only their values respected?

Glad to see someone who shares my view that extreme controllers/prohibitionists are no less authoritarian than social conservatives.

http://www.hcn.org/issues/40.19/why-we-all-need-the-democrats-to-abandon-gun/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=

[ileus]

1. K&R'd thanks for sharing....good read, spot on.

[Hoyt]

2. Don't care much for writers like Herring who want us to suck up to NRA. He is right that

". . . . . . . the Republican party remains the party of the gun owners, . . . . . ."

As far as I am concerned, let those for whom guns are so important in their life stick with Perry and other TParty callous bigots.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

3. gee -- thanks but, uhm

NO THANKS.

[gejohnston]

4. I was thinking more like Schwitzer

I look at it as getting gun owners back to these guys.

Gore Vidal, J.F.K., and Tennessee Williams

I'll stick with Brian Schweitzer thank you very much. If you want to keep hanging out with Rudy Giuliani, Bill Bennett, and the Republican Brady Bunch, fine.

[iverglas]

6. Hal Herring

-- the author of the opinion piece -- does in fact portray himself as being in the long line of great "sportsmen" like ... Teddy Roosevelt (who I always thought spent his time despoiling the wildlife on several continents).

He doesn't have good words for the NRA or the Republican Party and he does support Obama administration wilderness initiatives, on just a very quick read.

But his bias is too obvious when he offers only a stereotyped, absolute crap depiction of gun control advocates (quoted in my first post in this thread).

As a would-be opinion leader, he is the one who has the onus of informing the public accurately and honestly when he offers up his opinions, and that is what he has completely failed to do, and in fact done the opposite of.

[gejohnston]

8. not as bad as your

stereotypes of gun rights activists being misogynist throw backs. From my personal experience, I found his stereotypes to be more accurate than yours.

[era veteran]

10. Mr. Williams has an unlearned method of shooting

Sort of worried about his shoulder there. Cocktail on the table.
Great image, I had never seen it, thanks.

[iverglas]

5. yeah, that isn't bullshit demagoguery at all

Those who believe in gun control often hold enormous prejudice against those who don't. But there are already reams of laws pertaining to the use, abuse, purchase and sale of firearms. What new regulations would the gun-controllers create, and how would they work to address the problem of gun violence? Do they want to prohibit private ownership of firearms altogether? Many would like to ban handguns, without considering just what this would entail, what inequities of power would result, and what new, potentially dangerous, powers would have to be awarded to government to accomplish it. Like activists who want to ban pit bulls, the gun-control advocates remain relentlessly unspecific about what they hope to achieve. It has become clear, too, that these advocates hold a double standard regarding the U.S. Constitution: The First Amendment is vital to the health of a free nation, as is the Fourth, but the Second is respected only by the un-evolved and the violent. Only the parts of the Constitution that their side respects are valid, in this view.

One wonders how he sees his monitor through the straw.

He seems to have had no problem figuring out how to find out what gun militants say:

According to Dave Workman, the senior editor of GunWeek, a publication of the Bellevue, Wash.-based Second Amendment Foundation ...

Odd how all he had about the other side were bullshit rhetorical questions, eh?


And I mean, what more unbiased opinion could one ask for?

http://www.hcn.org/author_search?getAuthor=Hal%20Herring&sort_on=PublicationDate&sort_order=descending

The expression "hand-wringer" does come to mind here ...

[gejohnston]

7. What straw?

He is asking relevant questions that should be asked that are relevant to US gun politics. Are they relevant to Canadian gun politics? Maybe. Quite frankly, the only think I have seen are bullshit logical fallacies peppered with smears and tear jerking for seasoning.
unbiased and opinion is an oxymoron.
As for hand wringing demagoguery.....just what the hell is a gun militant?

[iverglas]

9. give it the old college try

What new regulations would the gun-controllers create, and how would they work to address the problem of gun violence? Do they want to prohibit private ownership of firearms altogether? Many would like to ban handguns, without considering just what this would entail, what inequities of power would result, and what new, potentially dangerous, powers would have to be awarded to government to accomplish it. Like activists who want to ban pit bulls, the gun-control advocates remain relentlessly unspecific about what they hope to achieve.

If he really really really wanted to know what regulations gun control advocates advocate, I think he probably has a telephone and an internet connection and he could have asked a couple. He had no trouble finding a gun militant to ask.

Instead, he made shit up. "Do they want to prohibit private ownership of firearms altogether?"

I give up; who are "they", for starters? Is there some serious individual or organization advocating that private ownership of firearms be banned altogether? A person or organization, say, with the same public presence as the one he quoted from the gun militant side and his organization?

I'll answer that rhetorical question of my own: NO. So why is he asking his?

If he wanted to know what new regulations gun control advocates would create, ALL HE HAD TO DO WAS ASK ONE OR TWO.

Of course, the first thing he would have done was not use a bullshit bit of demagoguery like "gun controllers". Did he use any similar tell-tale terms for his "gun-rights advocates"? Well, that's one right there -- the whole "gun rights" garbage tells the tale pretty clearly.

The column has a veneer of genuine concern that is totally refuted by his refusal to be remotely honest about gun control advocates' positions -- the very positions that he is telling the Democratic Party to abandon! What sense does this make, exactly? WHAT is he telling the party to abandon? Something he chooses to portray himself as having no clue about?

Hand wringing, I thought you might know, is the practice of bemoaning what a person or organization is doing, for its own good, when one does not have its best interests at heart at all. Cf. crocodile tears.


just what the hell is a gun militant?

The word that applies here, of course, is "disingenuous".