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Helsing posted:The Democratic party cannot be realistically expected to lead the charge on this. Political parties, even powerful ones like the Democrats, don't have the capacity to engineer widespread social change. I would say the problem here is that these popular movements no longer trust the Democrats. Really, they don't trust any aspect of the national-level political establishment, which is why they seem so aimless - they want to act out to express their anger, raise their issues, and influence the political dialogue, but they are intensely paranoid of being exploited and then thrown away by any political figure of real importance, so they refuse to work within the political system. And the Dems have earned that paranoia - in recent years, the Dems have given giant honking middle fingers to traditionally loyal political supporters like teachers, labor unions, civil liberties supporters, and anti-war protesters. Hell, many of the big recent popular movements - like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter - are basically uprisings by long-time Dem demographics feeling that the entire political establishment as a whole (particularly the Dems, who they actually expect to support them) is failing to adequately respond to or even really acknowledge their issues. Liquid Communism posted:discussing guns...is like a bat signal for shitposters. Shut up about guns. The Dems got into this situation by neglecting basically every major demographic of their base and rebelling against most of their traditional supporters, while pushing policies and platforms that are mostly virtually indistinguishable from those of Republicans, and completely abandoning the Democratic movements in many states to wither and die so they could focus more money on the presidential races - not by talking about maybe possibly putting common sense restrictions on your dumb single-issue that's already entirely dominated by a massive Republican lobbying agency anyway.
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Feb 10, 2016 20:52
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gobbagool posted:There's that common sense thing again. Sure, what are your common sense gun restrictions that would win the hearts and minds of any voter not already in the bag for whatever corpse the Dems run? Maybe this time it'll really be common sense based. I'm thinking restrictions on bandoleer size and fabric type, requirements for a certain type of footwear to be worn when purchasing firearms, some sort of signed statement promising not to murder anyone, just spitballing here, what do you have? Any voter whose "hearts and minds" are more concerned with gun laws (which they claim won't affect them anyway) than they are about civil rights, the economy, corruption and exploitation, or any of the other actual issues affecting America today probably weren't going to vote Democrat anyway, since the NRA is so far in bed with the Republicans it might as well be a pillow. I'm having trouble buying the fundamental assertion here - that there are a large number of people who are seriously in favor of minority rights, combating inequality, and so on, but voted against those things because they thought the right of rich white people to buy some particular flavor of firearms without background checks was more important than protecting the equality of black people, Muslims, and women.
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Feb 10, 2016 21:48
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blowfish posted:The average voter will vote against being inconvenienced, no matter how many people other he'd otherwise be in favour of supporting end up being oppressed. Sure. The problem is that the "gun control is killing the Dems" people expect me to believe that these people would vote for higher taxes on themselves to support poor people, affirmative action that helps minorities but not themselves, and other assorted progressive measures that involve sacrificing their white privilege and economic prosperity and even safety in order to help the less fortunate, but the possibility of experiencing mild inconveniences in the course of their gun hobby is the one thing they absolutely have to vote selfishly on? Bullshit. They'd still be voting Republican even if the Dems left the status quo as otbis and didn't push further gun control. Jarmak posted:Wait when did gun owners become not only solely white people but solely rich white people? Well, gun hobbyists sure as heck ain't poor
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Feb 11, 2016 01:25
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gobbagool posted:You've got this weird thing about judging people voting for their own self interest. Maybe that's something democrats should change. Recognize that human beings are, at the core, interested in their own well being, and shaming people because they don't score well in your tmblr classification/purity test isn't a great strategy for overall success. Hey, I'm not judging. You've got the right to be as selfish as you like. I'm just pointing out the logical flaws in "well there are a ton of people who vote selfishly on this one particular issue but I'm sure they'll heroically sacrifice themselves for the sake of others on all other issues". Jarmak posted:Actually a large number if not the majority of gun hobbyists are poor, it's like you've never been to a rural area in your life. Yeah, I'm sure there are a ton of people who come home from their second minimum-wage part-time job to agonize over whether to spend their food money for the month on yet another fancy rifle with all the accessories. Paul MaudDib posted:Like literally guys - the most progressive person in the Presidential race is totally OK with gun rights. Stop pretending that it's a litmus test. Look, I don't really give a poo poo either way about gun control itself. It's entirely inconsequential. Gun rights are one of the least important political issues I can think of in modern America...which is why I think people who think gun control is literally deciding the fate of elections are either dumb or full of poo poo. Claiming that gun control is hurting Dems because people run to the polls scared that the government is gonna take away all their guns makes about as much sense as claiming that Obamacare hurt Dems because death panels...except that, unlike the AMA, the NRA directly profits from convincing Americans that the evil government will ban gun purchases any day now (so buy buy buy while you still can!). Incidentally, I haven't heard of any serious proposal by a real politician to outright ban guns, ever. Liquid Communism posted:Guns are one of those issues where anyone with a knowledge base beyond 'watched Rambo a bunch' picks up pretty quickly on legislators who apparently have never even seen a gun trying to write laws about one. So what? Most legislators have never seen a joint either and anti-drug laws are often lovely, doesn't mean drug laws are inherently illegitimate and we should start selling cocaine over the counter. And drug laws actually affect a lot more people a lot more negatively than gun control laws - as gun control opponents often point out, most gun owners wouldn't be affected by the various gun type restrictions that get proposed anyway.
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Feb 11, 2016 05:29
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Liquid Communism posted:Holding up drug laws a a shining example of how other goods should be handled is pretty reprehensible for a progressive.  Just because many of our current drug laws are flawed doesn't mean that the concept of laws regulating and restricting drugs is inherently illegitimate and that all drug laws should be repealed forever.Rent-A-Cop posted:I've had no fewer than three conversations in the last two weeks with friends and coworkers about eating ramen, taking out loans, or bouncing rent checks in order to buy guns. In one instance it wasn't even a new gun, just a slightly different version of a gun he already owned. I don't know where the idea that the rural working class are a bunch of frugal farmer types with lots of homespun wisdom comes from, but they are in fact just as dumb as everyone else and will gladly blow all of their money on shiny toys. I dunno why you people keep putting words in my mouth about people in rural areas being hicks or idiots or otherwise somehow different than anyone else. My point was that guns are a fairly expensive hobby, and I assumed minimum wage workers wouldn't be dedicating their lives to buying blinged-out guns with all the bells and whistles that cost more than they make in a month. All the gun owners I've met could very well afford to load their gun safe up with an arsenal and run down to the gun range to show it off to all their friends three times a week - they weren't champagne-sipping billionaires, but they were certainly well-off. Armyman25 posted:It's not so much that dropping the issue would get more people to vote Democratic, it's that it would motivate fewer people to vote Republican. Attempts to pass gun control fire up the Republican base and result in greater votes on that side while they don't do much to rally Democrats. Evidence shows that the Republicans get fired up about gun control regardless of whether there's a gun control bill being proposed. The thing that fires up the gun voters isn't gun control bills, it's the NRA - which has multiple vested interests in making sure that gun owners constantly feel like a gun ban is right around the corner, and is very good at pushing that view regardless of what the reality is. For example, in 2008 the NRA claimed that Obama was "the most anti-gun candidate ever", that he planned to totally ban handguns, that he would ban rifle ammunition, that he would require a federal firearms license for all gun ownership, and that he would close 90% of gun shops - among other claims. In 2012, they went even further, claiming that Obama intended to ban guns outright and repeal the Second Amendment, and asserted that Obama's lack of gun control initiatives in his first term was just a dastardly plan to lull gun owners into a false sense of sense of security. And this wasn't just helpless flailing - a year into Obama's first term, 55% of American gun owners believed that Obama would try to ban the sale of guns, despite the fact that he had been virtually silent on guns up to that point, other than signing a bill allowing for the carrying of guns in federal parks.
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Feb 11, 2016 15:59
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Liquid Communism posted:Why yes, I agree that in some parallel dimension where legislators did their research and wrote fact-based laws rather than trying to outdo each other in a race to be more ideologically pure and not 'contaminate' themselves with knowledge of their subject matter, they could write effective laws. I guess you're right and we should completely repeal all currently-existing firearms laws - and, while we're at it, all other laws as well, since as you've pointed out, it's fundamentally impossible for legislators to write "effective" laws. In case anyone can't tell, I do not literally mean this, and am just making a point about the heavy use of hyperbole in his and many others' anti-gun-control arguments!
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Feb 11, 2016 20:29
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Liquid Communism posted:Yes because 'legislators should not regulate a good without sufficient research to have a basic understanding of what they are seeking to regulate' really means 'anarchy in the UK'. That's a good reason to be against individual, specific gun control proposals - but it's a very bad reason to be against the very idea of gun control. Likewise, just because we have some bad drug laws doesn't mean the government is fundamentally incapable of regulating substances. Besides, legislators often pass deliberately bad or flawed laws on purpose - not because they're too stupid to understand the thing they're passing a law about, but rather because they're trying to trick demographic A into thinking they're oppressing demographic B, when in fact they're writing the law to minimize the real impact to demographic B. For example, financial legislation or taxes on the rich. Anyone who thinks those "loopholes" are accidental is a fool who's been thoroughly duped by their own politicians. go3 posted:the problem is while the GOP establishment is still fighting the Tea Party crazies the Democrats long ago surrendered to the nutballs like Pelosi who can't help but lick the third rail of gun control. Romney was a big gun control supporter and pushed several gun control bills. He supported the Brady Bill, and signed a permanent Assault Weapons Ban in Massachusetts. Before he decided he wanted to be President, he spoke proudly and openly about how he supported the "tough gun laws" in his state. But for some reason, a candidate with major gun control laws under his belt got the NRA endorsement, while the person who had spent the last four years in office doing jack poo poo about guns got smeared as a psychopath looking for an opportunity to ban guns altogether. It's almost as if it isn't really about guns at all, and that the NRA is just a Republican lobbying organization that feeds people lies in order to get them to vote R and buy more guns, regardless of the actual state of the issues.
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Feb 12, 2016 07:53
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Liquid Communism posted:This is, I note, why I have never suggested a blanket ban and repeal on all gun laws. Much of what we have on the books works, and would work better if the BATFE and DOJ would do their duty and actually enforce it. I suspect you get the impression that I am, though, because I do not subscribe to the present narrative that disarming the populace and abrogating their (as we keep being reminded by the GOP) Constitutionally protected rights is either Common Sense or invariably a good thing regardless of the details. What narrative? I don't recall any serious, mainstream politician pushing for a total national gun ban. Not even Mitt "I don't think people have the right to own assault weapons" Romney.
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Feb 12, 2016 14:22
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Crowsbeak posted:At best as many 1/4th of the base does and they'll support the dorms anyways for standing up for social democracy. Polls I've seen suggest the number is closer to 3/4ths, and the second part of your statement is straight-up horseshit. Since when did outright making poo poo up become acceptable in D&D?
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Feb 13, 2016 21:15
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Liquid Communism posted:Lol you're convinced the base will rally more for gun control than social issues. Plenty of people in this thread have suggested that there are a bunch of people out there who are Dems on social issues but are refusing to vote Democratic because they care more about gun control than about social issues. Now you're saying that all current Dem voters won't be affected by dropping gun control because every current voter cares more about social issues than gun control. That just stinks of having it both ways - dropping gun control will help because the Dem base cares more about gun control than social issues, but it won't hurt because the Dem base cares more about social issues than gun control?
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Feb 14, 2016 17:33
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blowfish posted:lol you confuse the democratic and republican base No, someone literally said that there are a bunch of people who would vote Democratic if it weren't for gun control, but vote Republican instead even though they supposedly disagree with the GOP on everything except guns.
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Feb 14, 2016 21:26
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Liquid Communism posted:This is, I note, why I have never suggested a blanket ban and repeal on all gun laws. Much of what we have on the books works, and would work better if the BATFE and DOJ would do their duty and actually enforce it. I suspect you get the impression that I am, though, because I do not subscribe to the present narrative that disarming the populace and abrogating their (as we keep being reminded by the GOP) Constitutionally protected rights is either Common Sense or invariably a good thing regardless of the details. What narrative? I don't recall any serious, mainstream politician pushing for a total national gun ban. Not even Mitt "I don't think people have the right to own assault weapons" Romney.
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Feb 14, 2016 22:33
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Liquid Communism posted:At that point you have to go with the President -wanting- to ban guns that are statistically very unlikely to be used in crime out of either fear or a desire to punish gun owners, or with the idea that the President is so poorly informed on the issue or ill educated in statistics that he actually thinks this will be an effective measure to reduce homicides. Or he's trying to look tough on gun control in the eyes of people who are poorly informed about guns, while in reality pursuing policies that do not affect the vast majority of gun owners (keeping in mind that the vast majority of gun owners just have a handgun or two, not an arsenal of hobby weapons). I can't understand how anyone with the slightest understanding of modern politics can be naive enough to look at an apparently ineffectual regulation a politician is pushing and blame it on "stupidity" rather than "trying to look like they're doing a lot about the thing, when they're actually doing as little about the thing as possible". Do you also think that ineffective financial regulation and flawed tax codes that give rich people the advantage are just accidents created by incompetent politicians who don't know any better? If a politician pushes a regulation that would not affect the vast majority of people who do or own the thing the politician is supposedly trying to regulate, then that is almost always a deliberate and intended "flaw", rather than stupidity. Doesn't really matter anyway, since 2012 demonstrated extremely clearly that gun owners vote Republican regardless of the actual policies of the candidates. The fact that the gun lobbies supported Romney over Obama in 2012 and the gun hobbyists followed that lead is a pretty clear proof that actual gun policy doesn't matter anymore, and hasn't in a very long time. SedanChair posted:Nobody is saying that dropping gun control would swing an election, only that it would begin the slow process of signaling to rural whites that Democratic leaders do not see them as yokels with one tooth and overalls, but no shirt. Of course since Democratic leaders do think that, there probably is no point trying to pretend they don't--their passive-aggressive contempt will manifest in plenty of other ways. No, it really wouldn't, considering that the Democratic party as an institution basically abandoned rural white areas after 2006. However, the reason they did this was not out of contempt, it was because they wanted to they wanted to maximize their short-term return on campaign dollars, and therefore cut out regions where their 2008 chances weren't great in order to focus more dollars on flipping purple areas. Long-term, of course, the effect is negative and I don't really approve...but to be fair, I can't blame a black candidate for not investing a whole lot of effort into building his political support among rural whites in the deep South. Besides, aren't you the one treating them like overall-wearing yokels? It might shock you to hear that guns are not the only political issue that rural whites care about. There are government policies which affect rural whites' lives far more deeply and importantly than how many attachments they're allowed to stick on an AR-15. anne frank fanfic posted:2009: Entire country gives a supermajority to Democrats since the republicans had been so bad the past 8 years. They could've done anything except touch guns and they'd be the power for the next decade or so. "Trust us, we won't touch guns as soon as we get into power" was the rallying cry to wary voters. Is this satire or something? I can't tell
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Mar 1, 2016 17:06
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Helsing posted:The real problem, though, is that Sanders won't win. So where does that leave his supporters, and the Democrats more generally? Do the Bernouts launch another bid to seize control of the presidency in 4 or 8 years? Do they focus on taking control of state partys or down ticket races and nominations? I honestly don't know, but that to me seems like the more relevant conversation to be having. Instead of vesting too much hope in individual candidacies or campaigns I'd suggest that the progressive left in America should be focusing on actually creating an institutional basis that could plausibly take control of the Democratic party rather than merely being co-opted by it. How exactly that is done is impossible to predict in advance, but there are numerous 20th century examples of how particular demographics or interest groups have seized control of political parties and re-purposed them to new ends. So perhaps looking to some of those examples, such as Goldwater and McGovern, would be a good first step. The question is "where did the DLC types come from"? The answer, as far as I can tell, is that Clinton built the current Democratic party establishment from the ground up. When Bill Clinton left office, he was the first Democratic president to be elected to and serve two full terms since FDR, and the first Democratic president to spend more than four years in the White House since Lyndon Johnson. Granted, Democratic congressional performance has been generally better, but Clinton had a huge effect on the modern party, and there's a reason the party is full of Clinton alumni and former Clinton staffers who faithfully follow Clintonian policy. Having a friendly President in the White House appointing people to real positions does do a lot to build groundwork and populate the ranks of experienced Democratic staffers with your own loyalists.
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Mar 1, 2016 21:01
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Ah yes, I too remember when Obama tried to ban all guns, which only rural poor people have any interest in. Fortunately, the Republican champion Mitt "gun-freedoms-lover" Romney was there as an alternative to the evil evil freedom-hating Democrats, so freedom triumphed. Somehow. Even though B Hussein "gonna ban all the guns" Obama won two elections in a row, the total ban on all personal firearms that gun lobbyists and hobbyists have forecasted for the past eight years has failed to pass, which is clearly proof of the Democrats' diabolical scheme to ban guns!
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Mar 7, 2016 18:02
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DeusExMachinima posted:You don't have to literally ban 100% of all guns 5eva in order to warrant the full brunt of the NRA steamroller. Not banning any guns at all, on the other hand, seems to make absolutely no difference in where the "NRA steamroller" points itself. For that matter, actually successfully banning guns doesn't seem to matter much either! It's almost as if actual facts have no effect on the political outcomes of the gun "debate", which exists mainly to manipulate low-education voters by openly lying to them, and therefore the actual details of a politician's or party's position on guns are entirely irrelevant - just as the specifics of Obamacare didn't get in the way of the "DEATH PANELS" hyperbole. quote:Your hyperbole doesn't have much to do with what I said anyway. Gun control is often perceived as an identity issue (and just as often delivered by its proponents in such a way, rhetorically) by rural folks whether or not they're the only gun owners out there. Honestly, I don't necessarily buy the assumption that gun control is really a primarily rural issue. It's commonly stereotyped as such, and there's no shortage of lovely articles from some lazy reporter who went out to a small-town gun range to tell us all about how those wacky exotic rural people think, but what little data there actually is suggests that perhaps it isn't the sole factor or even necessarily the deciding factor, as the stereotype suggests. The reason people oppose the War in Drugs isn't because they're morally opposed to criminalizing the possession of an item.
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Mar 7, 2016 21:10
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