Why Would Anyone Oppose Reasonable Gun Restrictions?

State and Federal Legislators are trying to rush gun restrictions into law before the memory of Sandy Hook fades. It’s important they capitalize on fear, paranoia, and the innumeracy of the pubic before people lose interest and turn their attention to something else.

Many of the restrictions seem reasonable, like background checks, licensing and tests for mental competency. But even the most reasonable restrictions must be opposed, and opposed vehemently, for one very good reason: We know how nannies work. We have already seen their master plan in action.

When anti-smokers asked for, and received, a law mandating smoking and non-smoking sections in airplanes, there was little objection. It was a perfectly reasonable request. After it was in place for a while, they asked for, and received, a smoking ban on flights of less than two hours. That also sounded reasonable.

Imagine, back then, someone raising the following objection: “Folks, if you put this in place, it will eventually lead to a jihad against smokers. Smoking will be banned everywhere. Businesses will be prohibited from providing rooms where their employees can smoke. You won’t be able to smoke in a bar, fer chrisakes. When smokers obligingly go outside to smoke, nannies will complain they’re standing too close to the door, so laws will be passed forcing them to stand fifteen feet from any door or window. Then thirty feet. Smoking will be banned in parks and beaches and in private vehicles. Entire universities will prohibit it anywhere on their campus. People will be banned from smoking  in their own homes.”

Anyone making such a claim back then would have been brushed off a loony, but that’s exactly what’s happened. The nannies got one rule, one seemingly reasonable restriction in place, then paused while people got used to it. Then they demanded another restriction, got it, and paused again. Then they did it again, and again, and again. It took them fifty years of baby steps to get to where they are now, and they’re still pushing for even more restrictions.

The anti-gun lobby does not want anyone but the government to own weapons. That is their end goal, but they’re not foolish enough to try to reach that goal immediately. Few of them will even admit it. Ban all guns? Naw, not them. Never! All they want is to make them safer, or to make sure they’re registered so the government knows who has what, or to make sure that mentally unstable people can’t get to them, or to make the magazines smaller, or to limit guns that look scary. That’s all. Simple. Reasonable.

Baby steps.

The general public examines their current proposals, thinks about them, reacts to them, and many people support to the ones they think are reasonable. They think that once those reasonable restrictions are in place that will be the end of it. They assume that anyone opposing such things must be come kind of foaming-at-the-mouth gun nut. (And to be fair, there are a few honest-to-goodness foamy gun nuts involved in the conversation.) They are either unaware of the nanny master plan or think that it’s different this time.

It’s not. It never is.

So when people resist any attempts at any restrictions, restrictions you think are perfectly reasonable, don’t assume they’re just some violent whack-job that wants everyone to carry RPGs on the street.  They may be people who have looked at the numbers and seen that violent crime is lowest where gun ownership is highest. They may be folks who have studied history and learned that the first thing any tyrant does is disarm the public. They may have concluded that the eleven thousand gun homicides every year in the US are outweighed by the hundreds of thousands of crimes prevented annually by gun-wielding citizens. And maybe, just maybe, they know and understand how nannies of all sorts work, and so understand the importance of opposing any restrictions they want, on anything, ever.

It’s the only reasonable stance to take.

 

8 Comment(s)

  1. So, here’s a question for the gun fearing public. What is scarier in the hands of an untrained individual.

    A fully automatic assault weapon with 30 round clip?

    OR

    a 12-gauge shotgun with an 8 shell clip and 00 buckshot load.

    Full auto is not nearly as scary as it sounds. There is a reason that the military removed full auto from M-16s. Highly trained men were blowing through lots of ammo without killing anything.

    An anti-gun idiot was on a local talk show recently. He stated that he would much rather potential mass killers have shotguns than really dangerous weapons like the AR-15.

    I was going to mention numchukas but wiki tells me that those are banned in many parts of the world. I guess I need to start using a cane….

    brad tittle | Jan 15, 2013 | Reply

  2. http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/01/gun-lovers-freaking-out-about-price-gouging?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Motherjones%2Fmojoblog+%28MotherJones.com+%7C+MoJoBlog%29

    How hard is it to understand __ THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS PRice gouging…

    That is unless you get the government involved. Major League Baseball, Liquor and Obamacare?

    brad tittle | Jan 15, 2013 | Reply

  3. This is a perfect example of the slippery slope. In 94, the NYS government made a law that limited mag capacities to a not particularly unreasonable 10 rounds. It passed because “well, who needs a standard 13-round mag anyway?” They even sweetened the deal a bit by allowing pre-94 mags to be grandfathered in.

    Only now, they aren’t grandfathered, they are banned, and the government has the right to conduct a warrantless search for those pre-94 mags, of which there are hundreds of thousands in the state. So you can stand up for your rights, and become a felon, or realize you got screwed by your government again.

    This time, they are limiting magazine size to a completely unreasonable 7 rounds, but hey, that’s only a small change from 10, right? And it’s OK anyway, because they’ve sweetened the deal by allowing pre-2013 mags to be grandfathered in, right? It’s not like we have any proof that this is just another step toward a more aggressive goal, right?

    All this despite the fact that you can make a magazine in your basement with hand-tools, and they aren’t tracked or serialized, so there’s no way to stop illegal ones from coming into the state, but since I obey the law, my family is less well defended than they would otherwise be, and the criminal will still have the same capabilities….

    Blaise | Jan 15, 2013 | Reply

  4. I went to a birthday party last week for my son’s friend. While the kids played, the host showed off his gun collection. It contained multiple HOME-MADE guns, ranging from a muzzle-load pistol, to a semi-automatic rifle. He made these in his barn.

    Kevin | Jan 23, 2013 | Reply

  5. While that requires skills and tools that most people don’t have, that’s changing too.

    3D printers will be able to print guns and gun parts, of any sort you want, with no serial numbers. They’re not quite there yet – guns made that way tend to fall apart after several rounds – but people are working on it, and will doubtless have it solved in 2-3 years.

    Dave Hitt | Jan 23, 2013 | Reply

  6. My only point of disagreement: It did not take the anti-smoking Nazis fifty years to render smoking ‘verboten.’ Fifty years ago was when they were merely wanted health warnings on cigarette packs. The smoking restrictions didn’t really start until the 1980s, and by the late 1990s, most of the ridiculous anti-smoking controls in our society had become the established norm.

    Kevin Tuma | Jan 23, 2013 | Reply

  7. Thanks for the correction, Kevin. The in-flight ban on short domestic flights stated in 1983, which was 30 years ago. And while the most onerous restrictions happened in the 90’s, the NNs are still progressing in their war on smokers. Just when you think they can’t come up with anything more ridiculous, they do.

    Dave Hitt | Jan 23, 2013 | Reply

  8. Let’s not forget 3rd hand smoke.

    brad tittle | Apr 10, 2013 | Reply

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