Disturbing News on the "Gun Control" Front

[spanishjames]

And do you think a majority of "tactical" shooters, or the partisan chest-beaters at the gun show have?

Absolutely not, and that's precisely what I mean. Your 5% number is probably right. I'm just trying to say that the gun banning politicians, with the help of the media, try to pass their bills, believing the numbers are on their side. The media is doing their part by promoting gun control, and ignoring guns used in a positive manner. Since most people get their info from 15 second soundbites on the nightly news, it's easy to sway the general public to believe guns are evil, and therefore should be "regulated".

In other words, law abiding-gun owners, no matter what segment of the "culture", should stick together, and realize that an infringement on a right is an injustice, no matter what.

[spanishjames]

Of that 5%, you'd be surprised how many are "Fudds" or hunters.

Just curious what you mean by this. Do you mean most are or aren't?

[Tom Servo]

Many are hunters. Guys in the trap & skeet crowd have money, and they have the ears of politicians, particularly on the local level. Most want no restrictions on the 2A whatsoever. We alienate them at our peril.

[SPEMack618]

Just because Pop's shoots a Perazzi at the trap range and doesn't own anything more "tactical" than a Mini-14 doesn't mean that when he goes golfing with our State Rep he doesn't bend his ear about why gun control is bad.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

I heard Tom Brokaw and some reporter on the noise (news) proclaim how they are gun folks as they shoot the skeet.

Unless the skeet killer has other guns besides shotguns and shoots them - the odds are not in our favor about their opinions.

A study on 'hunters' showed them to be very negative to evil black guns.

[rickyrick]

My shooting skills was what got me into hunting. I was trusted by a guy and he just happened to see my shooting one day so asked me to start controlling nuisance animals at his ranch, pigs, coyotes, raccoons and such. I was a bit apprehensive but he insisted that I was the only one he wanted shooting around his livestock. I soon found myself in over my head, eventually, I learned and has become fun and rewarding. So, I don't like separating hunters from sport shooters.

[spanishjames]

Many are hunters. Guys in the trap & skeet crowd have money, and they have the ears of politicians, particularly on the local level. Most want no restrictions on the 2A whatsoever. We alienate them at our peril.

Just because Pop's shoots a Perazzi at the trap range and doesn't own anything more "tactical" than a Mini-14 doesn't mean that when he goes golfing with our State Rep he doesn't bend his ear about why gun control is bad.

If the above is true, and I believe it is, we're better off than I thought.

For the record, I'd like to correct the following sentence from post 26:
"Hunters don't care about 30 round magazines."

Should read:

Anti-gun politicians claim that hunters don't care about, nor need 30 round magazines.http://thinkprogress.org/politics/20...ips/?mobile=nc

[SPEMack618]

Pops likes to say he gets his fill of "assuault weapons" at work and in SEA, but he is still rapibly pro-gun.

Just kinder, gentler, media friendly pro gun. He generally looks lide an ad fromthe Eddie Bauer catalog when we go shooting instead of BLACKHAWK!. but the fact still stands that he, and I by extension, are pro-gun despite the lack of ARs and such from our collective armories.

Well, I have a WASR, but we don't talk about it.

We're all in this together.

[bird_dog]

A study on 'hunters' showed them to be very negative to evil black guns.

It's this kind of generalization that kills. What study?

Lots of my friends and co-workers are gun-guys and hunters. As am I. Consider that we as hunters (even guys who DON'T have EBRs) also have a lot to lose in the gun debate. Check the hunting magazines. The debate is going on there, too.

"Fudds" is a pretty insulting term. I think you'll find that a lot of THIS generation of hunter is well aware of what's going on in the country right now, and a high percentage are NRA members. I (and we) spend a lot of range time, not only shooting our Wabbit Killing guns, but also our pistols, our EBRs and other stuff because -- like you -- we enjoy the shooting sports as well as the killing sports.

Check the demographic of guys who regularly trap/skeet/clay shoot. Check the amount of money spent on good shotguns. I think you'll find something above the "redneck" stereotype if you look harder at it.

We're all in this together. I don't know ONE HUNTER who doesn't support everyone else's right to legally possess any kind of firearm they so desire.

If there is a study that says otherwise, it would be wise to check just WHO did the study. Undoubtedly an anti-gun group.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Bartholow, B. D., Anderson, C. A., & Carnagey, N. L. (2005). Interactive effects of life experience and situational cues on aggression: The weapons priming effect in hunters and nonhunters. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41, 48-60.

Every hunter you know is not a sample to claim generalizability. I can come up with a TX hunter who says he is happy to register all his guns to save the children. Nice guy - so anecdotes mean nothing conclusive.

There is clearly two gun cultures:

Wyant, B.R., & Taylor, R. B. (2007). Size of household firearm collections: implication for subcultures and gender. Criminology, 45, 519-546.

While there is overlap, you cannot count of the sports culture to be progun in the sense we've been talking about.

[JWT]

Gabriel Giffords and her husband are now speaking out on gun control. The fact that she was a shooting victim will give her more press, and perhaps percieved credibility, than some of the other anti gun voices.

They do mention that both are gun owners and not against gun ownership. As i read her comments she's advocating background checks for all gun transfers and a limit on magazine capacity.

Those are both things that I can conceive happening. Not that I support them. I just think they're possible.

[meanmachine1961]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4Rmo...yer_detailpage

Here is a video from youtube that tells what can happen when your rights are taken away.

[bird_dog]

While there is overlap, you cannot count of the sports culture to be progun in the sense we've been talking about

And neither can you count on the non-hunters, as others have suggested. You're right that my sampling of people is small and unscientific, but that doesn't eliminate that we are indeed progun in EXACTLY the sense we're talking about.

If you'd like to call us two separate groups, that's too bad, but let's go with that and perhaps agree that both of those groupls contain thousands of individuals with their head in the sand.

Thanks for posting the study. The study itself (Wyant, B.R., & Taylor, R. B. (2007). Size of household firearm collections: implication for subcultures and gender. Criminology, 45, 519-546.) admits this is just an implication. Which is in essence, a generalization.

Good discussion, nonetheless.

Joel

[colorsman]

I have put on my Edgar Cayce hat and have seen the following happening over the next four years:

Congress will pass an assault weapon ban more encompassing then the Clinton era ban

This is all the Obama administration will need to issue executive orders , with the consent of a cowering congress, on firearms covered by the act.

1) Ban the manufacture of these firearms
then
2) Ban the commercial sale of any existing firearms / parts / supplies
then
3) Ban the private sale of any existing firearms / parts / supplies
then
4) Require all persons wishing to purchase any firearms or ammunition to obtain a “Firearms Owners License” similar to the Michigan Firearm Owner Id Card.
then
5) Begin to tax ammunition on the level that cigarettes are taxed
then
6) Encourage state and local governments to add additional taxes on ammunition
then
7) Begin an excise tax on all firearm sales (which will increase over time)
then
8) Require manditory registration of all firearms
then
9) Order that owners of firearms listed in the ban to turn in these firearms to the government (they will not need to come after the guns as a law will be passed that says something along the line ‘possession will be a felony in involving serious prison time’). Attrition over time will take these firearms out of circulation.

The Supreme Court already has four rabidly anti gun judges on the bench. Obama will be adding at least two more during his administration. Any gun case fighting the above that appears before this new court will lose.

[MLeake]

Tom Servo, I do not wish to alienate hunters and skeet shooters. However, past history has shown that "Fudds" are a very real subset that we should proactively engage.

Note that I said, "engage," not "insult," so I would suggest we use some term other than "Fudd." Maybe "Traditionalist" or something on those lines.

A glaring example of the type would have been Bill "No honest man needs more than ten rounds in any gun" Ruger.

Should we insult or demonize these guys? No, as it would not be productive. Should we try to change their way of thinking, before the referendums and bills start flying? Most definitely.

This is not a minor issue.

[Tom68]

I just finished reading US Rep Gabby Gifford and husband Mark Kelly's op-ed on this very topic:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinio...ntrol/1816383/

my two takeaways: First, they have two guns at home in the safe, so they do not advocate an outright ban on all guns (did not state what type of firearms, but I'm guessing EBRs are not part of their collection), and second, she/they see the NRA as a malevolent lobbying group which does not reflect the attitudes of their members. A divide and conquer strategy, which I have seen a great deal of over the past several weeks.

They specifically address extended capacity magazines (actually referred to as 'clips')... and no specific number of rounds was included in this description, but other than that, I noted no specifics of a proposal. It was simply advocating a "common sense approach", which I also have heard/read much of from the last few weeks. It is essentially a preaching to the anti-choir and the message, to me at least, is "do something...anything".

Now, I mean no disrespect to Ms. Giffords nor her husband, and take nothing away from the tremendous challenges that she has overcome and the brave nature of her recovery. I have the utmost respect for what she has been through. However, her unique experiences qualifies her beyond most to make such an impassioned argument, based on emotion... and her message will be well received by many because of her unique qualifications. The open ended nature of her proposal lends weight to the anti-gun crowd to push for every limitation short of a total ban on all guns... once again, based on emotion. I mean, during this day and age, who could possibly be against her?

The answer is much of what we do here on this very board: separate the emotion from the discussion and deal only in facts. The fact is that more laws only apply to those who respect the law in the first place. We outlawed larceny a long time ago but that hasn't made a big difference. Just be advised that more arguments will be made by others with similar experiences (Sarah Brady and Carolyn McCarthy are two examples, although their experiences are in the more distant past which reduces the effectiveness), and our only hope is to not be drawn into unwinnable debates based only on emotion, because with the proliferation of low-information voters, an emotional message is the most likely to take root.

another point, taken from another thread... is that as a community we must police our actions and words in order to represent the honest and law abiding citizens we are, because when MSM "news" outlets want to get the "other" point of view, you can bet they will be looking for the most uninformed, unintelligent, and profane person they can find to represent our point of view. We gotta vote those types of folks off our island.

[Ike666]

The disturbing finding from the Bartholow et al. (2005) study was this:

"Experiment 2 revealed that pictures of hunting guns were more likely to prime aggressive thoughts among nonhunters, whereas pictures of assault guns were more likely to prime aggressive thoughts among hunters."

It is a complex study to be sure, but I think you fundamentally misunderstand behavioral science research when you arbitrarily discount the results based on a semantic interpretation of the word "implications" from the study title.

These are substantive differences in a methodologically sound study. The "hunters" group included both hunters and target shooters and the "non-hunters" group only people who had no prior experience with firearms.

The non-hunters primed for aggressive thoughts just by viewing a picture of a hunting type firearm (shotgun or bolt action rifle). In other words, what we on TFL would generally find an innocuous firearm spurred the naive, non gun experienced person to aggressive thinking. Or, they associate innocuous firearms with aggression.

Not so for the hunter group (remember, both hunters and target shooters). However, they clearly associated an EBR with aggression.

The net of it is that even people experienced in firearms use/ownership have a proclivity to associate EBRs with aggression, and the naive, non-hunter group is similarly triggered even by weapons whose primary purpose is sporting.

In terms of winning hearts and minds in this debate, we should not assume that just because someone hunts or target shoots, and generally supports RKBA, that they will also stand against proposals out of the Biden project.

I think that on this list we suffer too much from an insular view of the world around us. We are a minority and we are about to face the tyranny of a majority in a democratic process.

[Tom68]

sorry JWT for the near duplicate post. I started typing this quite some time ago and got sidetracked and posted without checking for updates first. Seems you and I regarded the article in a similar fashion.

[Ken - Oh]

I just finished reading US Rep Gabby Gifford and husband Mark Kelly's op-ed on this very topic:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinio...ntrol/1816383/

I read that and it just made me mad.

Criminals and the mentally ill can easily purchase guns by avoiding background checks. Firearm accessories designed for killing at a high rate are legal and widely available. And gun owners are less responsible for the misuse of their weapons than they are for their automobiles.

Her logic totally fails me.

I want to say more but I'm afraid to do so.

Forget the boogeyman of big, bad government coming to dispossess you of your firearms.

Yes, please forget reality, it gets in our way.

So sad, so very, very sad.

[Tom68]

Ike666, you wrote :

"However, they clearly associated an EBR with aggression."

Just think of some of the images portrayed by the media in the past two decades. I instantly recall the-- I believe it was the Stockton schoolyard massacre in 1989-- remember how the news showed endless images of the AK-47 and bayonet with the chalk drawn around it?

Someone correct me if i'm wrong, but there hasn't been a great deal of deaths by bayonet in the past century... but a ban on rifles with a bayonet lug was included in the Clinton AWB, I presume, is because feelers had been exposed to that very image, and it looked so downright menacing... scary.

That's the power of mass media, if they can condition even gun enthusiasts to develop an adverse reaction to the image of their choice. Expect a whole lot more of it, because I believe that many feel the time to strike is now when emotions are running high. And, at the risk of repeating myself, emotion is what they have most on their side right now. They are all for banning things that "look scary".

[Ike666]

Tom:

In essence that is what the research is saying - keep using even a plain, vanilla profile shot of an AR-15 and you will generate the association with aggressive behavior.

The media understands its medium. The images are not coincidental or casual. They are purposive and intentional. And moreover, likely to be effective with the non-overlapping hunter class of firearms owners (those who don't also own for self-protection).

You may have noticed of late that many of the manufacturers have been trying to break this association by reframing AR-15 platforms as "modern sporting rifles" and getting away from dark/black finishes. I even think they were making some headway with the purist hunters until Newtown snatched them back.

[MLeake]

1984 or A Clockwork Orange, anyone?

[Alabama Shooter]

Bartholow, B. D., Anderson, C. A., & Carnagey, N. L. (2005).

That study is nearly eight years old, probably the data was collected during the last ban? Likely well over twelve million AR rifles and an ungodly amount of commie rifles have been sold since that time in the US.

Most of the people I associate with are over 40 and nearly all of them hunt with ARs (the ones that hunt) of some description except when a shotgun or .22rf is called for.

I would say the days of Zumbo are either mostly behind us or in front of us. Still there is that perception based bias among some people out there.

[rickyrick]

So the goal is to out spend the NRA, very disappointing.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

We haven't empirically test the gun culture split recently. I'd bet folks are on it.

However, not ignoring the past research is foolish. My point is that recently we've heard a great number of folks come forward as prohunting and then for gun control.

There have been massive efforts to 'normalize' EBRs - calling them modern sporting rifles, etc.

Will that work? Did it work for a bit but reversed in some minds by Sandy Hook - we don't know.

Is there overlap of hunter/SD - yes - my skeet teacher was a progun in my sense fellow. But are all?

We shall see.