History doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes; lessons from 2004 re: the gun issue.

[benEzra]

130. See, smearing the quarter of Dems and third of independents who own guns like that...

is part of why it's so hard to have a civil conversation on guns. Gun control advocates don't often debate things like rifle handgrip shape legislation or carry licensure or pre-1860s capacity limits on their merits, they mostly just call us names and tell us to STFU.

The problem with that is that when gun-owning Dems/indies get shut up and kicked to the corner, it turns the discussion on guns into an echo chamber dominated by the loudest voices calling for prohibition. And within that cloister, impractical, quixotic, or downright counterproductive positions start to sound reasonable and end up dominating the party's message on the subject.

Case in point, there is a thread right now in the Guns and RKBA forum wherein a gun-control advocate is seriously advocating the banning and confiscation of all self-loaders with detachable magazines. That's 75% of civilian guns right there, without even getting into the bans on pumps and high-powered bolts and revolvers that the gun-control lobby keeps demanding. Case #2, the NY SAFE Act. Case #3, the magazine confiscation just passed in California. We're talking legislation that even Europe and Canada have rejected, but you think it's not only reasonable and achievable in the United States, you think it's relatively noncontroversial.

As to the slinging of racial stereotypes, a concealed-carry licensee was murdered a few months ago by an out-of-control police officer, and the killing made national news. And it doesn't even seem to click with the namecallers and mudslingers that the victim was one of the CHL holders and gun owners that you gleefully demonize day in and day out, because he had the wrong color skin to fit your stereotypes of what a gun owner looks like. Your leaders speak up in support of Michael Bloomberg putting tens of thousands of innocent African-Americans and other minorities in Rikers for pocketknives that aren't even illegal in NY, defended the killing of Jose Guerena and countless others, and defend making simple magazine possession a crime equivalent to rape or luring a child (NY SAFE Act), because "Weapons Are Evil And People Who Own Them Have It Coming", or something.

That is not only counterproductive to the cause of violence prevention---assuming you give a crap about *that*, as opposed to simply sticking it to people you dislike---but it's also damaging to the party at large.