• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

CNN Townhall with Parkland Students, Rubio, NRA and others

I think the rush to pile on to Wrangor is a little much. Take a deep breath internet warriors.

That said, national politics, and especially a subject like gun control, is not tiddly winks. Effective advocates have to get their points across succinctly and powerfully. The NRA has ruled this arena for 30+ years and has gotten more radical in their absolutist views on gun freedom over time. Anyone wanting to take on the gun issue has no choice but to take on the NRA head on and it's about time someone did. The NRA has responded with some just frankly despicable messaging glorifying the guns that killed 17 kids (plus all the Sandy Hook kids, the 58 in Vegas...) and straight-out threatening anyone who disagrees with them. I think it is a perfectly legitimate message to tell politicians they need to back away from the NRA or face electoral consequences.

To put it another way - it is pretty hard for a politician to take NRA cash and have an A rating from the NRA and claim they want to have a good faith discussion about gun control. You can't even take a tiny step down that road without the NRA gunning for you (pun intended). Before they can meet anyone in the middle, gun owners and politicians have to first climb up out of that NRA foxhole.
 
AR-15 clones, even in semi auto, should never have been made available to the public. I think they started to gain popularity in the early 80's and popularity really ramped up after the first Gulf War, when everyone was looking at M4 Carbines and M-16s on CNN and wanted to go play potbellied soldier at the range or out in the pasture.

We are decades late in dealing with this. Nothing short of outlawing all semi-auto rifles and pistols (semi auto shotguns are a practical hunting need for wingshooting, though magazine capacity should be severely limited) will have much of an effect. Unfortunately that will never happen. A pump shotgun is all you need to defend your home. A snub revolver is a great conceal carry firearm. Long revolvers a blast to shoot at the range, but are slow to reload, which makes them impractical for a nutjob. Same thing for bolt action hunting rifles.
 
Brangus said:
AR-15 clones, even in semi auto, should never have been made available to the public. I think they started to gain popularity in the early 80's and popularity really ramped up after the first Gulf War, when everyone was looking at M4 Carbines and M-16s on CNN and wanted to go play potbellied soldier at the range or out in the pasture.

We are decades late in dealing with this. Nothing short of outlawing all semi-auto rifles and pistols (semi auto shotguns are a practical hunting need for wingshooting, though magazine capacity should be severely limited) will have much of an effect. Unfortunately that will never happen. A pump shotgun is all you need to defend your home. A snub revolver is a great conceal carry firearm. Long revolvers a blast to shoot at the range, but are slow to reload, which makes them impractical for a nutjob. Same thing for bolt action hunting rifles.
Click to expand...

I agree with this post, except I disagree that it will never happen. It may take a long time, but eventually there's going to be some movement on this that will lead to outlawing at least some of these weapons, probably with a buy-back program a la Australia.
 
Wrangor said:
Yes but demanding a choice between renouncement of NRA or resignation makes any discussion a non starter.

It is the same thing as pro-life demanding the renouncement of Planned Parenthood in order to discuss the legitimacy of abortion (many conservatives employ this very action). The pro-life and pro-gun control movements are extremely similar. Again - this is why I didn’t denounce the attempt to submit, simply just recognized it for what it is.
Click to expand...

I hear where you are coming from, but I don't think it is a very good comparison. If you defund planned parenthood (which is presumably what the endgame looks like if you are asking a politician to renounce the org), you are looking at many thousands of women losing access to health care, STD rates and unplanned pregnancy rates rising, maternal and infant mortality rates rising, etc, etc. Regardless of your feelings on abortion, there are real, unequivocal societal harms to getting rid of planned parenthood. But asking a politician to denounce the NRA, and presumably stop taking their donations, has no real consequence at all. The organization still exists. They just (hopefully) would stop having so much influence on policy.
 
 
avalon said:
Click to expand...

But the NRA is the one being bullied.
 
Deacon923 said:
I agree with this post, except I disagree that it will never happen. It may take a long time, but eventually there's going to be some movement on this that will lead to outlawing at least some of these weapons, probably with a buy-back program a la Australia.
Click to expand...

I'm also bullish, at least in the long run.

A timely op-ed today by former Justice John Paul Stevens:

Repeal the Second Amendment

For over 200 years after the adoption of the Second Amendment, it was uniformly understood as not placing any limit on either federal or state authority to enact gun control legislation. In 1939 the Supreme Court unanimously held that Congress could prohibit the possession of a sawed-off shotgun because that weapon had no reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a “well regulated militia.”

During the years when Warren Burger was our chief justice, from 1969 to 1986, no judge, federal or state, as far as I am aware, expressed any doubt as to the limited coverage of that amendment. When organizations like the National Rifle Association disagreed with that position and began their campaign claiming that federal regulation of firearms curtailed Second Amendment rights, Chief Justice Burger publicly characterized the N.R.A. as perpetrating “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”
Click to expand...
 
It's too bad Stevens has to go there -- his dissent in Heller lays out perfectly how the 2nd amendment does not mean what the gun nuts say it means. Should be no need to repeal at all, but here we are.
 
Deacon923 said:
I agree with this post, except I disagree that it will never happen. It may take a long time, but eventually there's going to be some movement on this that will lead to outlawing at least some of these weapons, probably with a buy-back program a la Australia.
Click to expand...

Australia has 24 million people, roughly the equivalent of Florida and Utah. US has 326 million people in 50 states with wildly varying political views. What worked for Australia won't work here, IMHO.
 
29594413_10156417628306800_2951493489766755762_n.jpg
 
DistrictDeacon said:
Plus school gun deaths are just a tiny portion of the issue. We shouldn’t just ignore the other 99% of deaths that won’t be prevented by arming teachers.
Click to expand...

True, I'm also strongly in the camp that if you increase the number of anything, the likelihood of people using that item is going to increase.

I see no reason why guns would be any exception to the above.

If I increase the amount of candy in a classroom, the amount of candy that kids eat in the classroom certainly isn't going to decrease.
 
Brangus said:
Australia has 24 million people, roughly the equivalent of Florida and Utah. US has 326 million people in 50 states with wildly varying political views. What worked for Australia won't work here, IMHO.
Click to expand...

Yeah I’m sure the aussies are all in lock step politically. :rolleyes:

The US is in the northern hemisphere and has summer in July. Australia is in the Southern Hemisphere and has summer in December. Their toilets don’t even drain in the same direction! Thus the situation is too different to even try
 
The NRA has actively worked to weaken the laws it says we should enforce. They aren’t good faith actors here. Their seat at the table should be forfeited.
 
Wakeforest22890 said:
True, I'm also strongly in the camp that if you increase the number of anything, the likelihood of people using that item is going to increase.

I see no reason why guns would be any exception to the above.

If I increase the amount of candy in a classroom, the amount of candy that kids eat in the classroom certainly isn't going to decrease.
Click to expand...

the whole purpose of the NRA is to help gun manufacturers sell more guns. arming teachers means more guns sold. simple as that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top