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Old January 13, 2001, 06:49 PM   #4
Monkeyleg
Senior Member
 
Join Date: January 25, 2000
Posts: 4,625
Bluesman, I think we've already seen HCI et al lose support for their proposals. But they just repackage them. In the late 80's they realized that support for restricting handgun ownership was waning, so they found the "assault weapon" bogeyman to sell. With people now not particularly concerned about violent crime (other than the spectacles of mass homicides), our anti friends need to package their proposals in terms of health and safety. Witness that the public discussion has moved from one of criminal use of guns to the "problem" of guns themselves. For us, a "gun problem" is either related to one not functioning, or not having enough of them. For our allies in politics, not addressing the "gun problem" is a millstone with three TV talking heads sitting on it.

I fear the public will never think the anti's have gone too far. I always point to the cigarette analogy. Thirty years ago it would have been considered conspiratorial to predict what we now have: cigs at over $3 a pack, of which over $2.25 goes toward taxes and smoking re-education; cigarette manufacturers prohibited from advertising their product, even putting their logos on race cars; an 800 number to call the Feds to report a retailer who sells a pack of cigarettes to someone who appears to be under 21; prohibitions against smoking in bars, hotels, restaurants, airplanes, and even in commercial 18 wheelers; bans on smoking within x number of feet of public and private buildings, and now a proposal to ban smoking in one's own apartment;
billboard campaigns, paid for by smokers, which depict smokers
as filthy slime; vice squad officers going undercover in bars to arrest smokers; bans on smoking in outdoor stadiums; bans on smoking on outdoor public property such as parks and sidewalks.

HCI is years behind the tobacco nazis, but I fear that the number of years is not that great.

Dick
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