In watching the division that plagues so much of our politics, it seems each side has had some victories, meaning each side has had some losses. The liberals have generally won the culture wars over reproductive health and sexual orientation and identity. Conservatives have largely won the battles over the economy and taxes. The situation could change in the long term, but those seem pretty baked in for the time being.
To the chagrin of conservatives, LGBT citizens are out and proud. The hit of the Winter Olympics is gay skater Adam Rippon. The best skating color commentary is from the clearly gay Johnny Weir, a former Olympian. Gay people are popping up everywhere to a collective shrug from everybody but the evangelical community. They’re not going back into the closet and the only way we’re ending gay marriages is through divorce, just like everybody else.
Conservatives have probably lost on abortion, too, though their efforts to curtail it are working pretty well in some areas. If we see abortions actually being outlawed, there will almost certainly be blowback from women that would have devastating consequences in the ballot box. While many people believe in some restrictions on abortions, most support access and that support has been relatively stable for the past 25 years.
On the economy and taxes, conservatives have generally won. Reagan introduced supply-side economics and that’s the model we’ve lived under for almost 40 years. We’re one of the lowest taxed developed nations and have been for a long time. Consequently, we’re stingy with our social programs, preferring that people pay for themselves instead of relying on the government for help.
We’ve also largely embraced free trade, though Trump is giving conservatives a bit of heartburn right now. For every job sent overseas, Republicans point to high tech jobs and affordable goods. Unions and others lost the battle to keep manufacturing jobs in the United States.
For that matter, the labor movement is struggling to survive in a country that rewards corporate CEOs and shareholders but doesn’t care too much about the plight of workers. While it would probably have lost influence with the decrease in manufacturing, the symbolic point of its slide began when Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers. The stagnation of wages has coincided with their loss of political clout.
The emerging fight is gun control. It’s an issue conservatives have won with the backing of the NRA. This time, though, might be different. The charge is being led by kids whose peers died in a mass shooting at school. The number of households with guns is shrinking and it’s just a matter of time before the outrage over people dying in mass shootings overcomes the fear of the NRA. With only 30% of households owning guns, that time may be now.
Urbanization has helped progressives win the culture wars and I suspect it will help them win the battle over guns. Gun culture is rooted largely in rural areas with lots of space. Urban and suburban families aren’t interested in banning guns but they’ll certainly support more restrictions. Rural populations are declining while urban/suburban ones are increasing. Support for more gun control has been on the uptick with shootings like Orlando, Las Vegas and Southerland, Texas. Parkland may push it over the edge.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
The main problem today with assault type weapons is that young loners have adopted them as a glamorous necessity when planning a mass shooting. They are part of the required costume including all black, military looking clothes and maybe body armor, if they can afford it.
Let us deglamourize these guns. Perhaps they could be colored shocking pink, or neon green. Maybe flowers could be part of the decoration.
Maybe you can think of more effective ways of removing the glamour that makes them such a necessity for social misfits contemplating taking out their misery on other people. Or, maybe we should address their misery before they buy that exciting gun.
Interesting observations. The “glamor” may not be the only reason for choosing the AR-15, but I’m for any change that would decrease its appeal. Pink and Flowers should certainly do it. Thanks.
I tried to stay out of this, I really wanted to; since what I see and think run counter to the conventional wisdom. But now I’m tired, so I say, “ban them.” DO SOMETHING! Ban them. Let Mitch McConnell get off his wrinkled ass and drag Paul Ryan out from behind his copy of GQ and ban assault rifles. Ban anything with a box magazine; interior or exterior. Ban any weapon of war (this includes muskets too since they were at one time a battle implement). Then when the next attack happens, and the next, and the next, we can look back at February 2018 and say “We did something.”
Because it will happen. This insanity will continue without even the slightest abatement well into the future. I’m not being pessimistic about it either; I’m being pragmatic. How can I do that without the help of a crystal ball or the wisdom of Job? I look at history.
Well over thirty years ago, in the spawning of Reagan and Reaganism, a movement had begun to foment itself and prosper among conservative pundits and strategists. “Government large enough to provide everything was big enough to take it away.” Attributed to Thomas Jefferson, an oft quoted ideologue of the ’cause’, but rarely it seems did he, so in fact produce such an utterance. But no one ever seemed curious enough to challenge it; just accept it and mass e-mail it to all of their like minded friends. Handcuffed to this notion was the hypothesis that government was growing exponentially; government was getting too big. There were too many laws, too many regulations, and the piece de resistance; big government was suppressing liberty and freedom and most detestably, holding corporations responsible for their actions to both people and the environment through over-regulation and taxation. That is the mindset and the politics behind this neocon uptick we are flush with at all levels and are currently experiencing. Guns of course have now taken the centerpiece on the table for debate. So while we are in the wake of the latest iteration of stupid people with guns, public outcry is aimed squarely at the banning of the implement with only a cursory glance to the behavior of the individual, the mindset of the individual, and influences that lent itself to the actions of the individual.
I’m not laying this at the feet of conservatives per se. But as this movement grew, people quit looking to government for redress of grievance; they began to see government as the cause of the grievance. They feared government to the point that people felt the necessity to arm themselves as patriots did of the past in order to preserve their liberty and their home. People who stood up to government were viewed as modern Robin Hoods; the minutemen who spat in the face of governmental oppression and tyranny against the people. The greatest fear mongering rhetoric of all time and no one was seeing it as that. No jobs? “Too many government regulations.” Jobs off-shored because of high wages? “Blame the unions and organized labor for not being competitive with cheap third world labor.” Tired of seeing your taxes going up as a manifest distribution of wealth to those who just wouldn’t work? “Blame the socialization of domestic policy on the politicians who were just too liberal and trying to make the United States a blissful utopia for all.” Along with the rhetoric came sobering examples of those phrases; Waco and Ruby Ridge are two that come readily to mind. The NRA, as the new cheerleader of the new breed of patriot and firearms manufacturers, were all too willing to meet the demand of those who needed to feel safe from the tentacles of government oppression. But then, there were just looking to make a buck. Off sales on the one hand and off memberships on the other.
Then in the mid-90’s with this movement now well into it’s second decade and continuing to snowball, people willing to use these semi-auto military style weapons was beginning to grow with alarming frequency. Th time for talk was over; this demanded action. In response to, along came a ban list. We’ll remove these implements of death from our streets and we will all be safer for it (more government oppression and a stripping away of rights). We also decided as a society and at the urging of the mental health professional community that we needed to treat those who are mentally infirm in places other than long term care facilities. What’s wrong with community-based treatment and doing away with mental health facilities and beds? Why, nothing at all!!! These poor people have been ostracized, stigmatized, and marginalized for too long (and in reality, perhaps they have). Having just implied a seeming connection between the two, I am reasonably certain that no connection exists; it’s just tad ironic that the two are contemporaneous and that association is the basis with which we find ourselves at odds this day concerning future policy.
In 2004 of course, we saw the lifting of the assault rifle ban. Sales began to soar. People began to stockpile weapons and ammunition post 9/11. There was a perceived view of anarchy in the wake of global terrorism and it could possibly manifest itself domestically. We also began to see people who would normally not have access to these weapons obtaining them. In this same 2-3 decade time span, we saw laws aimed at cooling off for those who may hastily purchase a firearm in order to settle a score. We saw a clamor for universal record checks. And a supposed ‘gun show loophole’ was discovered whereby a private citizen could buy a booth and sell their personal property, e.g.; guns owned by them, at these shows to any individual with the money. No background check necessary.
Moving ahead, we see the rise of the Libertarians. The Tea Party Patriots. A sudden surge around 2008 (just as it did around 1994) of right wing extremist groups and racist themed gangs. Again, contemporaneous with the election of the nation’s first African American President (which I don’t think is random coincidence). But still the underlying theme is big governmental oppression, too many regulations, too many laws, and too many governmental agencies.
The body count began to grow and it hasn’t slowed but accelerated. So here we are, February 2018. Which brings me back to my earlier statement; ban them. Please ban them. And when the assaults continue and the causality continues to be focused on the wrong dependent variable, perhaps some eyes and minds will open as to what the real cause is along with the social construct that has produced it.
That is why banning weapons will not stop it. You can’t stop decades of social restructuring with the banning of a product. You can’t go around and seize those weapons that are already out in the public because you can’t make ex post facto laws…but that is another discussion entirely.
The hue and cry to ban something is simply a manifestation of the progressives’ refusal to accept or assign personal responsibility.
You are wrong. I am assigning responsibility to everyone who hides behind the Second Amendment to protect the right to own an AR-15, or any type of semi-automatic weapon used in the mass murder of others.. I also do not excuse those who use that weapon to commit murder.
Equating a desire for gun safety with banning guns is a simplistic way to condemn others, not to mention quite illogical. It eliminates any chance to discuss what forms of gun safety might be achieved if our elected officials were not so scared of the NRA and/or in need of its financial support.
Cars, in the hands of drunks or drug addled people, or even a seriously poor driver, can become lethal weapons. As a society we try to impose licensing requirements that guarantee some minimal level of competence, we take driving privileges away from those found driving drunk or on drugs, and we require insurance. None of those precautions prevent accidents, but they demonstratively diminish the likelihood of them. Yet any effort to require gun safety rules is seen as contravening the Second Amendment. Hogwash. Or as the students in Parkland said a couple of days ago. I call BS.
If I may point out something here Norma. True, you are required to have a license, to go through Driver’s Education, carry, at a minimum liability insurance for your own ordinary negligence. And there are sanctions for when you behave badly behind the wheel and if you behave badly enough too many times, they’ll take your car from you. But none of those things mentioned are required for you to purchase an automobile. You have show proof of insurance to obtain your driver license for the first time in this state. You have to pay the sales (road use) tax and the county personal property taxes. But as far as a driver license is concerned, you don’t need one; not until you get stopped that is. But you can buy a car without doing any of that. You can drive up and down the road at your leisure. There is no background check or waiting period. But the state does make an attempt to ensure that you operate that vehicle responsibly; either through compliance or sanction.
I see no reason that those criteria be transferred to the realm of weapons ownership. The sad thing I see in that is that parents, typically fathers, once taught their children the qualities of responsible firearms use and ownership without the necessity of government requirements to do so. Parents were a little more responsible it seems then than they are today…and stricter when and where they should be.
But we don’t ban certain kinds of cars either on the basis of danger to the operator, danger to the public, or both. Why would someone want a 700 horsepower Dodge Hellcat or Corvette Z07 that is capable of doing 190mph plus? Because if they have the money, they can get it. Most people that I know that own semi-automatic weapons or full auto ones for that matter (despite what they’re saying on the news, it is still legal to own a fully automatic weapon) find a certain symmetry and appeal to the design, the function, the way it works. Not that fact that it shoots ‘x’ number of times without reloading. That is simply a feature. But they buy these weapons, for the most part, for the same reasons as the person buys the aforementioned car. They have the money and they can. Some people would never consider plopping down $25k for a shotgun or a belt-fed machine gun. On the former, it was more a piece of art than a weapon and one would have to be close to crazy to actually shoot something like that. The belt-fed MG, is more of a novelty than anything else. It’s too heavy, to cumbersome and too expensive to shoot a lot. It’s not hard to drop close to $1,000 bucks in one afternoon just firing the thing on the range. But it has a novelty to it since not everyone can or does have one. Much the same is true of the Dodge or the Corvette I suspect.
And you are very correct when you talked about the inherent nature of machines being dangerous…or deadly. Car, gun, chainsaw; all can maim and kill when used carelessly, recklessly, feloniously.
Some way, some how, we have to take the lust of killing innocents away as being something, for lack of better adjectives, appealing and desirable to do.
You are wasting your time. People like her (and most commenters here) operate on emotion, not on reason. Must ban something, BUT only things they don’t like.
Bill…I don’t think so. Norma has always proffered well reasoned and rational points of view. While we may not agree on all points, a forum for the presentation and defense of those ideas is certainly crucial to our notion of a Federal Republic, so I can’t find fault in what she has to say.
It’s sometimes easy to overlook when there are those that come here just to stir the pot and regard themselves sly and clever in the process. The reality of them being a legend in their own mind completely sidesteps their ability to understand anyone else.
We have to be able to hear one another in order to understand one another.
Correction to the response I wrote; 2nd paragraph 1st sentence. It should have read, “I see no reason that those criteria can’t be transferred….”
Did a gun or the NRA scare you when you were a child? The anti gun people started with the idea of an all out ban and confiscation, ala Australia. They found that that would not fly so they tempered their rhetoric. They found that any type of overt bans or restrictions on people’s consitituional rights would also not fly. SO now they hide their goals under the guise of gun safety. They have not changed their goals one iota and you either are living in denial or are not being honest.
Thomas, how come You and the Media are taking a win at any cost without providing a simple and observable question on this issue? If over the past 40 years, gun violence in the US has declined by half and during that same time gun violence in schools has increased, why? The population in the US during that 40 years has increased and so has firearms sales and ownership all while gun violence decreased. So what in the Education system is causing all the violence?
The media is the problem in the US. Long ago they stopped reporting news. Now they make news and push an agenda. The agenda of those uber rich who want their beliefs force fed to the peasants that they see as deplorable.
I think what is happening in Florida is the most despicable thing that the anti-gun group has done (and that is saying something). Taking impressionable children who are grieving and emotional and giving them prewritten “statements” to read, that many of them don’t even understand is lower than low. As the anti’s have already prepared statements and legislation shows that they are just waiting for something to happen to stir emotion to further their total ban and confiscation end game. These activists and politicians could not care less about the loss to the parents and the children they are using. They are just pawns to push their agenda.
Remember gun control has nothing to do with guns. It is about CONTROL.
Thomas:
Pretty much agree with all you say on this.
But I do want to underscore one aspect in the picture you paint.
You said …..”the labor movement is struggling to survive in a country that rewards corporate CEOs and shareholders but doesn’t care too much about the plight of workers. While it would probably have lost influence with the decrease in manufacturing, the symbolic point of its slide began when Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers. The stagnation of wages has coincided with their loss of political clout.”
But what group most tipped the scales in the GOP’s favor in national elections held in 2014 and 2016? Why, it was workers–disaffected manufacturing workers in the Rustbelt (OH, PA, IN, WS, and MI) Too many of them opted to swallow Trump’s claims and lies about bringing back jobs and bringing up wages. It’s worth noting as examples how Carrier and Ford have in fact sent too many jobs—jobs that campaigner Trump insisted would be staying due to his direct intervention—out of the country.
Just noting the gullibility of those Trump voting workers.
A tribute to the workers insistance on voting against their own best interest
Thomas, I hope you are right that Parkland will move gun control forward, but I would not bet the rent on it. I do believe gun control is coming. It is a matter of time, but I don’t believe it is here yet. I hope I am very wrong.