Why the Left hates Gun Shows

[HorseSoldier]

Carolyn McCarthy ran for Congress for one reason: gun control.

So she's working her way towards a 20 year career in Congress and basically has perilously close to utter failure to show for it?

 

[dodge]

They can't control what everybody at gunshows are doing and they don't like that.

 

[JShirley]

Albert,

Welcome to THR.

I have no idea what you meant to say. As I said, the problem is people trying to dictate what others "should" do.

John

 

[Diamondback6]

How/when was she alienated?

Her "Quits" article (she used to be director of Utah Gun Owners Alliance) is very difficult to find and Gun Law News seems to have dropped it, but similar sentiment can be seen here:

http://www.armedfemalesofamerica.com/takingaim/mostgunowners.htm

It appears to have been about '05-'06 timeframe... do a search on Thompson's name at KeepAndBearArms.com's news archives and you'll see a nice list of articles, and I would argue that to have pushed such a forceful and articualte advocate away is highly visible proof of how the gun community is frequently our own worst enemies.

 

[Mark13]

It's true that the Democratic party is not anti-gun. At the national level, and among the Democratic party power brokers, however, they are working to eliminate the private ownership of firearms.

Back to the thread title, the left does not hate gun shows. They hate institutions they cannot control. They are totalitarian socialists. If, through universal background checks, they could control gun shows, you would never hear about gun shows as an issue again.

Totalitarian socialists hate freedom. It's not just the second amendment they want, it's all of our rights. Anything that gets in the way of them imposing their socialist utopia is attacked.

 

[Ignition Override]

Mark13: That's an excellent summary.

 

[Sam Cade]

I am always amused when folks start throwing around the "socialist" label and applying it to the US Democratic party.

Guys, They aren't socialists. BOTH political parties are right wing authoritarians.

One of the things I find most annoying about political discussions in the US is the idea that the struggle here is between the left (as represented by the Democratic party) and the right (the Republicans). To describe it as such is to drain those political labels of any historical and political meaning and make them merely synonymous with two ends of a very narrow spectrum.

When measured against its historical meanings, what the US has is a center-right party (the Democrats) and a radical right wing party (the Republicans). The idea that Barack Obama is a radical left-wing socialist is to distort the political and economic tradition of socialism by tarring it with the kinds of pro-oligarchic policies that he advocates.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2012/05/29/the-democratic-party-is-not-the-left-in-us-politics/

 

[JShirley]

Look, the bottom line is pretty simple: freedom is good. Freedom includes the unrestricted, or least restricted right to own and bear arms.

The totality of freedom is too much for any board to address. THR's focus is on gun rights. Our mission is to unify gun owners, and a strong part of our mission is showing new or prospective new gun owners how rational most US firearms owners actually are. Fostering a welcoming atmosphere is part of that approach. Throwing out charged political labels and scapegoating doesn't help us, and can hurt us by alienating reasonably open-minded people who are here to find out more about guns or gun people.

I think this is pretty simple, and I am baffled by members who don't get it, but you should. THR will aggressively enforce this welcoming atmosphere, and any of you who can't help alienating people who could be allies need to find other places to go be our own worst enemy. And you should be ashamed of yourselves, but if you don't get it, you won't be, and if you do, you can just change your tone, and skip the guilt.

John

 

[AethelstanAegen]

Before you move on in this thread and go back and read JShirley's post above. It's worth reading twice and really try to understand and absorb what he's saying.

 

[michaelbsc]

Make no mistake, Barack isn't coming for our guns. Washington is coming for our guns. And they have been since 1934.

Get that through our collective heads. This is one place where collective thinking helps us.

Heck, I have one friend who thinks Barack might have stock in gun companies. How the devil do I know.

What I know is that the number of safe Senators and Representatives that won't vote against us if we aren't pounding on their phones, faxes, emails is astonishingly small. I think I have enough fingers and toes.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease applies here. So squeak. *LOUD* and *OFTEN*.

 

[JustinJ]

Gun rights have no future if married exclusively to the Republican Party. Each can feel however he wishes about other political issues or the reasons behind the the state of the GOP but white republican men can not preserve gun rights on their own for the foreseeable future. Rather than alienating we must start appealing to people of different political persuasions, cultures and ethnicities. The extreme right wing conspiracy theorists do more harm to the future of gun rights than the Brady Campaign could ever dream of. When Larry Pratt goes on a talk show where they discuss lunatic theories of Obama raising an army of blacks to attack whites stereotypes of gun people as being racists lunes are reinforced and countless people are turned off from having anything to do with the gun community.