I think you're making a mistake of assuming that "the other side", i.e. the pro-gun control people, are a monolithic, single-minded organism with a single goal while "our side", i.e gun owners, are riven with factions who want different things and are willing to give up "this" in order to keep "that."Quote:
Originally Posted by ray1970
The reality is that there are just as many different factions on the anti-gun side as there are on the pro-gun side. There are absolutely those who would love to ban all guns in private hands. They are actually a minority though. There are a lot of people who support various gun control measures who are not hostile to guns and who are, in fact, gun owners themselves (I have several in my family.)
Lumping them all together as a bunch of gun-confiscating commies might be effective when you're "preaching to the choir" but it's not a very effective way to debate public policy.
I doubt that could happen in the lifetime of anybody on this board. Those who point to England or Australia as cautionary examples are missing the most important point: By the time draconian restrictions were enacted in those countries, total gun ownership amounted to a very small fraction of the population.Quote:
Well ain't bubba going to surprised one day when grandpappy's old deer rifle turns out to be a deadly sniper rifle and his favorite duck hunting shotgun is deemed a destructive device and his trusty 357 wheel gun is outlawed with every other handgun because they can be too easily concealed. Guess he'll be buying his meat at the grocery store and looking for some new hobbies.
It doesn't help that in England, in particular, hunting and gun ownership have always been upper-class practices and gun ownership amongst working class people has always been very low. By contrast, gun ownership and hunting have been popular in the lower economic classes in America since it was founded, primarily because of our frontier heritage. The yeoman farmer on the great plains NEEDED a shotgun and likely a rifle to provide food for the family and to protect against wild animals, bandits and Indians.
By contrast, in England the only one who "NEEDED" a gun was Sir Rodney Riche-Pigge, ESQ, Lord of the Estate and Duke of the Manor, to go hunting on the weekends while the proles toiled in the coal mines making him rich.
Even in wide-open Australia, private gun ownership was very low percentage wise (I think it was less than 10%, not sure the exact figures) and most of that was concentrated in the sparsely populated Outback regions.
By the time you get to that point, it doesn't really matter whether gun owners organize or lobby or whatever. Their power to affect elections is so small that from a political standpoint it makes them irrelevant which is why they get steamrolled.
That is not true of the US where gun owners and pro-gun households (which I would define as those who tend to vote pro-gun whether they personally own firearms or not) are a significant percentage of the population. I've heard estimates of 25% of households own guns and I wouldn't be surprised if it was much higher in some states.
Furthermore, our Federal system gives disproportionate voting power to low-population rural states where gun ownership tends to remain popular (the example being that Wyoming with 600,000 people has the same representation in the Senate as California with 30 million.) Since we have more low-population rural states than "urban" states, that again tilts the equation in favor of low population states.
There's another aspect of low-population states that also needs to be taken into consideration: In a low population state, the difference between a senate or gubernatorial candidate or even a representative winning or losing can be very small - in the low thousands or even hundreds. That means that candidates in those states need to tread carefully when it comes to sensitive issues like guns because it doesn't take much of a "groundswell" to boot them from office.
There have been various surveys showing the average age of hunters has been steadily climbing since the 1960's. Not nearly as many hunting licenses are being sold as there were back then either. The overall trend seems to be going away from sport hunting for a majority of the population.
Consider that as recently as the 1950's, a standard SitCom staple story would be "the guys go on a hunting trip" - showing you how "mainstream" hunting was back then.
Assuming that trend remains, we may well see the sport of hunting largely disappear (or become a very esoteric practice by a few die-hard hunters, like in parts of Europe.) When we get to that point, firearms ownership may drop to a low enough point that we may well see a push to largely outlaw guns nationwide but, again, I think it will take us at least 100 years to get to that point.
And a lot can happen in 100 years. ;)
