The only "well regulated militia"

[krispos42]

31. That's YOUR interpretation of original intent...

...which requires, as previously discussed, tying militia membership to the right to own guns. Of course this is ridiculous; if I'm in an organized militia then the government will ISSUE ME a rifle! So I don't need the right to own private guns to be in an organized militia because they'll throw an M-16 (or a machine gun, or a rocket launcher, or a grenade launcher, or whatever) at me when I show up for duty.

Welcome to the modern world of guns. As the country becomes increasingly urban and suburban and less rural, and as technology advances, the purposes of and types of guns that are sold shift. Walnut-stocked bolt-action rifles for hunting have been overtaken by plastic-stocked semi-automatics for self-defense. Iron sights and fixed-magnification scopes have been replaced by variable-zoom scopes and red-dot sights. Attaching lights to guns is now common to the point that guns have built-in attachment points for them, replacing a Mag-Lite and a couple of hose clamps.

And I'd like to note that you're upset that the 2nd Amendment is being interpreted for the modern era. I'm pretty sure that here on DU we've spend a lot of time being pissed at Originalist Supreme Court justices like Alito and Scalia.

It's beautifully ironic that the gun-controllers are now "conservatives" in the non-political sense, trying desperately to stand in the way of advancement and longing for the "good old days".

Gun controllers have won the popular vote in 7 of the last 8 presidential elections.

Yeah, except that's not how elections are won, sadly. Both sides know this going into it. And if the rules were different (say, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact gets put into effect) they they would have campaigned differently. Different strategies for media, door-knocking, rallies, etc.

Gore lost in 2000 by 537 fucking votes in Florida and he lost his HOME state, largely on how Third-Way Democrats pandered to the Democratic base by starting a culture war about "assault weapons" and related hysteria. If 270 Floridians had voted for Gore instead of Bush the Least, we probably wouldn't have had the September 11th terrorist attacks, the Afghanistan invasion and occupation, or the Iraq invasion and occupation. This would have saved tens of thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani lives.

But no, your side had to make a giant fucking production over pistol grips being on rifles because reasons and such.

Dolt45 won in 2016 (304-227 EV) because of this:

Mango Mussolini won Michigan by 10,704 votes (16 EV)
Donnie Two-Scoops won Wisconsin by 22,748 votes (10 EV
Fanta Menace won Pennsylvania by 44,292 votes (20 EV)

That's 77,744 votes that made 46 EV for Dotard.

So if a mere 38,875 people had voted the other way the election goes 258-273 and we have President Clinton in her second fucking term and HER three picks for the Supreme Court!

38,875 people out of 13,940,912 votes cast. That's 0.28%. Is it entirely beyond possibility that the hysterical falsehoods, pandering, and demonization that makes up the signature gun-control effort of the gun-control movement over the last 30 years convinced 0.28% of people in those critical states to pull the lever for Donald-Fucking-Trump?

And let's not forget the losses of the House and Senate in 1994, and how it's been a seesaw since. Or the state legislatures!

Here's some nice graphs for you to look at. Point to me how gun-control is moving Democratic into positions of power at the state level. because you can't!



And there's a graph on here I can't link to:

https://ballotpedia.org/Historical_partisan_composition_of_state_legislatures

Let me give you a clue about the signature gun-control effort your side keeps pushing, because you need one.

It's bullshit. 5% of gun-related murders are done with rifles. All rifles. ALL RIFLES. The "assault weapons" you want to ban are a subset of "all rifles". So, the dreaded "assault weapon" rifles are used for... 1%? 2%? 3%? 4%? of all gun-related murders. That means that even if you passed the fucking ban that is so near and dear to your heart the POTENTIAL lives you save are statistical fluctuations.

And that's making the impossible assumption that the people that were going to buy an "assault weapon" just went home and pouted on Freeperville instead of buying a non-assault-weapon AR-15.

And that also has to take into account that there are already millions of "assault weapons" already privately owned. Because guns are durable goods. So stopping the flow of new "assault weapons" into circulation a) doesn't affect the ones already owned, and b) doesn't affect the buying of "almost assault weapons" that are already selling well in states that have an AWB in effect.

But I want you to pat yourself on the back, because while you're political priorities aren't doing a thing to stop either crime or the root causes of crime, the Republicans that are in power because of your political priorities have managed to kill more people in 18 months from Covid than all the people murdered with rifles in the the US since 1900.

Gun control does not address the root social problems that cause crime, but it does keep progressives from being anything about them. Which was probably the intent of the DLC and their supporters: keep the rich rich and the poor poor but in a new way that won't work but that we can bamboozle people into thinking it will.

Back in the late 60s and early 70s, progressives were able to give women control over their reproduction by making the IUD, the birth-control pill, and abortion cheap, easy, and widely available. And they removed lead from a whole bunch of consumer products, including gasoline. By making fewer unwanted children and not giving people lead poisoning, a generation later the crime rate dropped by half. HALF. Robbery. Rape. Murder. Home invasions. Car jacking. Assault.

HALF!!!

By addressing the root cause of social problems, we controlled crime far more effectively than any gun-control bill or crime bill or police crackdown or War on Drugs.

But we've stalled on this issue, because REPUBLICANS are in charge. And why are they in charge?

Hmmm... perhaps it's because when gun-control advocates make up shit that sounds good to the non-gun-owning liberal base, the gun-owners can see through the misinformation. I know it's shocking to contemplate but people that actually OWN, USE, and READ ABOUT guns don't believe that a protruding pistol grip is something that makes a gun so deadly that needs to be banned. And even more shocking, they get pissed and vote Republican when Democrats pass laws based on bullshit.