IT DOESN'T MATTER
I'm not able to watch the hearing on guns, but it doesn't really matter. The lefties I follow on Twitter all think Wayne LaPierre is beclowning himself, and maybe he is, but whatever he's saying, the mainstream press won't excerpt the nuttiest stuff he says when it reviews the day's events -- it'll show much respect for his general theory of gun violence and highlight his areas of apparent agreement with the rest of us.
By contrast, the right-wing press will hammer away at alleged threats to freedom, and even (gently) rebut Gabby Giffords by saying something like, "Oh, if there'd been somebody with a gun at that mall, she'd never have been shot. (Of course, there was a "good guy with a gun" in Tucson, and he almost shot another Good Samaritan.)
The point is, mainstream-media coverage will be evenhanded, with maybe a moderate sympathy skew toward the gun-control side; outside MSNBC and lefty blogs, and maybe Piers Morgan's show, LaPierre and his GOP coat-holders will be treated with respect. And that's how most Americans will learn about this hearing, not from media sources that treat the gunners with the contempt they deserve. Whereas the GOP base will get its news from Fox and talk radio, which will show no comparable restraint.
And tomorrow we'll be right back where we always are -- with a pro-gun-control majority lacking all conviction, and a gun-absolutist minority full of passionate intensity.
Reason and empathy are always trumped by volume and fury, in the MSM.
ReplyDeleteThe squicky wheel gets the attention over the other quiet ones.
And, the squickier the wheels, the more attention it gets.
I don't think the anti gun forces are at all without intensity. I think the gun nuts are running scared. It is very likely that a registery and a lisencing system will come out of this and once that happens it is a very short step to the kind of gun control that the majority of the public says it wants: registration, lisencing, closing the gun show loophole, more responsibility from gun owners. The steady drum beat of information about just how many people are shot on a daily basis by accident is already changing the way ordinary people think about guns.
ReplyDeleteAnd the fact of the matter is that the gun lobby knows it: it must either increase gun purchases by a small number of owners to the saturation point or it will go under. This is explitly why they turned to marketing guns as a lifestyle issue and why now that that is failing them (not everyone buys viagra or diet pills) they are turning to marketing to children.
But in marketing to children they are barking up the wrong tree. Again: the situations in which guns seamlessly integrate into a rural landscape and are legitimately part of a child's play arsenal are dying out. Fewer and fewer people are rural, fewer grow up needing guns as tools or for hunting. So they are going to have to market guns to children as a lifestyle/2nd amendment fetish object.
Sure: a whole lot of people still will buy into it and buy their child a gun but a whole shitload of mothers are not going to buy it. Do you have any idea how quickly information about children shot accidentally by their grandfather/uncle/father's guns gets around the mommy network? Even pro-gun women are not pro OTHER PEOPLE owning guns and they are scared shitless of their children being shot by careless family members.
The hard core lunatics will never give up but by their very nature they are an endangered demographic. Recent polling of hispanics on gun ownership reveal that this fast rising voting population does not have any of the romance of gun ownership/fetish beliefs of the white population and considers itself and its children at risk from loose gun laws.
Demography is destiny. Guns will cease to have majority voter support in ten or twenty years, tops. They will be lisenced, regulated, and prohibited to ex felons and people with mental health problems and the relaxed laws on culpability for "negligence" will also be over.
. It is very likely that a registery and a lisencing system will come out of this
ReplyDeleteReally? Me, I'm 100% certain that neither of these things will happen. The most we'll get is a tightening of the background-check system, which I guarantee will still be full of holes when the dust settles. You may feel a lot of anti-gun energy where you are, but I'm not detecting it in the country as a whole -- an uptick of concern, maybe, but still vastly outmatched by the gunners' relentless rage.
And you may be right about the demographic argument, but it's like waiting for Texas or Arizona or Georgia to go purple ... drat, not this election cycle. Or the next one. Or the next one. A lot of people suffer while we wait, patiently, for demography to take hold. And maybe the righties will just find other hot buttons. After all, they survived the end of the Cold War.
ReplyDeleteJesus, now that I've had a pre-dinner drink, I can't believe I wrote 'squicky' when I was sober!!!
ReplyDeleteD'OH!
"Squeaky!"
OY!!!
Victor,
ReplyDeletereality is the cure of the sober ;-)
Republican social policy has devolved in to a paraphrase of Zardoz: "The Gun is Good. The Sex is Evil." And then the giant floating stone head vomits out rifles. The Republican Ministry of Culture should consider scrapping Atlas Shrugged 3 in favor of a Zardoz remake. Simpler talking points.
ReplyDelete