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this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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I just wish Dems would stop trying to ban any guns, and not because I'm against gun control, but because it's a losing issue. It's never passing through this Congress, and if it ever did, the Supreme Court would strike it down. Given that that's fairly undeniable, why lose the people who organize and vote on this issue alone?
This has been said about many issues in the past. Effecting change isn't easy but giving up doesn't help. Americans support gun control. Only our crappy political system stands in the way.
On both sides, Republicans block any gun control, and Democrats only propose useless legislation
What do you think the other person meant when they said, "It’s never passing through this Congress, and if it ever did, the Supreme Court would strike it down."?
You know, that's exactly what people said about Roe v. Wade and about banning abortion.
Turns out that you can keep losing on an issue for 50 years, yet winning only once will drastically change the trajectory of the entire issue.
That's the opposite situation. Pro-life voters and pro-gin voters are the 2 largest single-issue voting groups in the country.
Look at it this way. If you swapped Trump and Biden's positions on abortion but changed nothing else, how many pro-choice Democrats would have voted for Trump?
Basically zero, right. Meanwhile, millions of pro-life Republicans would have flipped because abortion is the singular issue upon which they base their vote.
Guns are in the same boat. Hundreds of thousands of voters vote strictly based on their love of guns. There's no political advantage in the general election for being anti-gun, and the Dems are sacrificing a whole lot of seats to fight this losing battle.
I thought we resolved that with the end of Prohibition?
Yeah nevermind that the constitution says "shall not be infringed"' If abortion rights were in the constitution there would be no way of banning it, just as it is with firearms.
Actually it says that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.* It says nothing about procuring them. Banning gun sales is totally on the table. Plus, "arms" is kinda a funny word. It doesn't mean just guns. Yet most people would agree that I shouldn't be allowed to build bombs in my basement. Isn't that a violation of the second amendment?
Imagine just for a second, that they drop the issue and gain control of all 3 branches and then actually do something about it rather than constantly struggling to win because of single policy voters.
The only thing tougher to imagine than dems winning supermajorities and all three branches is the dems doing something with it. Hard to imagine the people who fund splinter dems like Manchin wont just do the same thing to a dozen dems instead of two.
Seriously. Pivot to mental health funding or something. At least that has a chance of passing and even if it doesn't cut down on shootings it will still help people.
It's also a lightning rod issue that turns more voters away than it attracts.
Sure there are staunch anti-gun people under the Democrats' tent but they're not the kind of people who will vote Republican if the party suddenly scaled back or ended its decades long futile efforts at gun bans.
On the other hand there are a ton of white working class voters on the suburban-rural fringes of swing states who would absolutely at least consider a Democrat if the party wasn't so easily cast as "gun grabbers and job killers who only care about minorities".
You get a pro-union, pro-legal-gun Democrat on a ticket who speaks on issues affecting rural whites as much as they do urban non-white voters (who are equally important), and you'd have a winner in many of these areas where they've been quite red, but not so rabidly Trumpy as other areas.
Even moreso if that's a change that happened at the party/platform level.
I feel like from a campaign strategy standpoint, guns are just a lose-lose for the Democratic party. Playing to a base that would be loyal anyway for other reasons, even if the party dropped that position completely (which would not only eliminate a deal breaker issue for rural Democrats but also eliminate a cornerstone of the GOP platform in "protecting the second amendment"). Unless they did a complete about face and suddenly became as cozy with the NRA as Republicans, anti-gun voters might be upset, but they're still voting blue.
After all there's still abortion, electoral reform, racial justice, the environment, education, foreign policy, infrastructure, legal weed, LGBT rights, healthcare, and a host of other issues where the Dems are still their people.
Same thing with abortion and marijuana on the other side. If Republicans could lighten up on that stuff Democrats would never win an election again.
It cuts both ways.
I'd be fine with changes to all manner of healthcare and insurance coverage, including single payer.
Plus if they focused on mental health and preventive measures they could maybe bring over some fire arms enthusiasts, who otherwise vote republican or atleast get them to not vote.
Mind you the effectiveness may be scattershot at times since its alot easier to get the guy going postal than it is to get the an ideologically motivated shitbag.
Republicans block efforts for increased healthcare of any kind let alone mental health. They also block preventative measures like red flag laws.
What do you propose? Just accept the massacres?
Advocate for shit that would actually change things.
Enforce our ban on domestic abusers owning firearms. We already passed it, but no one enforces it. It would eliminate a huge chunk of gun violence in the nation, but its not as appealing to the mob as the "assault style" ban.
I guess I'd ask you the same question. I don't have a proposal because I don't think any of it will make it through Congress. And if it somehow made it through Congress, the Supreme Court would strike it as unconstitutional.
Short of voting out these members of Congress and balancing the court, there's no hope of reform. So drop the issue to appeal to more voters. Win more elections, balance the court, then you're in a position to effect change.
Also, AWBs are pretty useless. They tend to grandfather in existing weapons and they exclude handguns, which are the weapon used most often to commit murder. Magazine limits, which were in the 1994 law, were the only piece to show a genuine reduction in violent crimes.