Gun-grabbing Democrats and the bitter clingers
I wonder what polls Kamala Harris had access to that make her think the time was ripe for the “just do it” approach to gun control:
During last night’s Democratic presidential debate, former Vice President Joe Biden admonished Sen. Kamala Harris (D–Calif.) for promising to impose new gun controls by executive fiat if Congress fails to pass the laws she thinks it should. That gave Harris a perfect opportunity to explain how her 100-day plan for gun control can be reconciled with constitutional restrictions on presidential power. The former prosecutor not only conspicuously failed to do so but literally laughed at the question.
I actually don’t think most of the Democratic candidates believe that the type of gun control they advocate will do much if anything to reduce crime. They merely think that their constituents want it, and that it also is generally a good way to control/subdue the law-abiding majority of the people now and in the future.
But Beto O’Rourke had his own version of upping the ante as a gun-grabber when he said:
Hell yeah, we're going to take your AR-15. If it's a weapon that was designed to kill people on the battlefield, we're going to buy it back. pic.twitter.com/cCEWkG6y0X
— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) September 13, 2019
Neither Kamala nor Beto is anywhere near getting the nomination, although each was an MSM darling for a short while before they began to fade. Perhaps their gun-control statements during the most recent debate are some sort of Hail Mary pass for the two candidates, an effort to reach the Democratic base and surf its strong sentiment for gun-control-no-matter-what. They’re certainly not thinking of the general election at the moment, where these statements probably would hurt them. Of course, they can always disclaim them later on, knowing that the MSM would cover for the home team.
But neither Beto nor Harris will be the Democratic nominee, or at least they only have an infinitesimal chance of it. Thing is, their statements can become a rallying cry for the right, a chance to tell voters in the general that this is what all the Democrats plan to do when they get power.
And that would probably be a correct statement.
The following:
1. Democratic politicians with a successful record of containing street crime are highly unusual, and don’t include the two mayors who ran this year.
2. Because they don’t care.
3. The gun control discourse is a means to still the blame for violent crime with social segments they despise (rather than holding the perpetrators of street crime responsible, as a wildly disproportionate share of such people hail from Democratic Party mascot groups).
4. IOW, it’s a maneuver structurally similar to Bilbo-era race baiting.
Such extreme statements as Beto made are meant to push the boundaries of what is thinkable and therefore, possible, and serve to get the idea out of forbidden territory, and circulating in the public square.
The more this idea circulates, the more times it is repeated, thought about, and debated, the less extreme it will likely seem; it will—and probably sooner rather than later–no longer seem “extreme,” because it will have become a part of the intellectual landscape, the “new normal.”
Snow on Pine on September 14, 2019 at 2:42 pm said:
Such extreme statements as Beto made are meant to push the boundaries of what is thinkable and therefore, possible, and serve to get the idea out of forbidden territory, and circulating in the public square.
* * *
This observation has also been made about Donald Trump’s “extremism” about immigration, Israel, NATO, etc — he has moved a lot of “forbidden” topics out of the doghouse and back onto the table.
Now we’ll see what the public picks up; I suspect it will differ wildly by party/ideology, but at least things are out in the open instead of covert parts of their programs.
This comment & link dove-tails very nicely here.
sdferr on September 14, 2019 at 10:12 am said:
Ken Masugi, American Greatness mag: Pink Political Scientists vs. White Men
And never forget…Every D preening about on stage baring their fangs at the others is not just playing for votes, they’re burnishing their resumes for cabinet positions…and the inevitable “bucket of warm spit.”
Don’t count Kamala out just yet…so many intersectional boxes to tick…
If we get to this election without gunfire I’ll be surprised.
Thankful, but surprised.
The more this idea circulates, the more times it is repeated, thought about, and debated, the less extreme it will likely seem; it will—and probably sooner rather than later–no longer seem “extreme,” because it will have become a part of the intellectual landscape, the “new normal.”
Snow on Pine: That’s one way to look at it. Another is to view it as an unmasking of the truth behind gun control — Hell, yes we’ll take your guns — that Democrats have been able to sidestep with “Of course, you can keep your guns, we just want some commonsense measures to limit them.”
Beto, with the complicity of the other candidates and the audience, has blown a big hole in that talking point. I say that’s all to the good. It’s going to be very hard to walk that back. Already I’m reading gun control advocates scurrying about in damage control.
But that cat is out of the bag now. The Overton Window has also shifted to “Democrats really do want to take your guns.” I think that favors conservatives.
John Guilfoyle:
I believe that in the original it was a “bucketful of warm piss.” A bit more colorful, and certainly easier to obtain than a bucketful of spit.
I had originally learned “spit” too, only to learn the truth much later on.
This is similar to the unmasking when AOC’s Chief of Staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, said of the Green New Deal:
“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal, is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all,” Chakrabarti said to Inslee’s climate director, Sam Ricketts, according to a Washington Post reporter who attended the meeting for a profile published Wednesday.
“Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing,” he added.
AOC’s Chief of Staff Admits the Green New Deal Is Not about Climate Change
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/aocs-chief-of-staff-admits-the-green-new-deal-is-not-about-climate-change/
I’ve argued this point about climate change with leftists and their response was always to pooh-pooh it as a bizarre wingnut conspiracy theory. That tactic has become much more problematic, now that the Green New Deal has reached presidential candidate status and Chakrabarti’s comment is on record.
I’m all for Democrats letting their freak flags fly.
“Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing,” he added.
He’s a lapsed computer programmer. He has the wretched excess of self-confidence of people who’ve never, by their own estimation, failed at anything.
So Robert Francis is going to call on LEOs in my county to knock on doors to confiscate firearms? Good luck with that Robert Francis.
Almost cut my hair
It happened just the other day
It was getting kind of long
I could have said it was in my way
But I didn’t and I wonder why
I feel like letting my freak flag fly
And I feel like I owe it to someone
–Crosby, Stills & Nash, “Almost Cut My Hair”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Lk2KHajp4Y
Even when I was 17 and loved CS&N, this sounded dumb. I felt a lot better when I cut my hair in 1973.
Of course, back then long hair was an unbelievably big deal. Just this morning at my work cafe, I ran into a retired UNM professor, with whom I’ve become friends, and he recounted his story of driving back from the 1967 San Francisco Be-In with other long-hair friends. They stopped at a honky-tonk in Mule Shoe, Texas (not making this up), sensed the bad vibes, and barely got out of town, escorted by a convoy of rednecks in pickup trucks. Shades of “Easy Rider”!
I give straight America a lot of credit that by the mid-seventies, just about everyone understood that long hair was a non-issue.
OT: The professor, I’ll call him M., and I are still feeling each other out. M. is an ex-hippie, retired humanities professor, but he’s not on board with the current SJW studies infesting academia. As he put it, he saw it coming, smelled the smoke and ran.
I asked M. for advice on setting up my minor at UNM. I know literature well and I’ve written a fair amount of poetry. Why not minor in that? Except I worry that given the politicization of the humanities, I might say something and be labeled a retrograde person.
M. shook his head sadly and said, “No, don’t do that.”
For him and me, being a hippie, as well as a classical liberal, was about freedom.
The Founders—with a lot of good luck, good generalship, their enemy’s bad luck, superior adaptation to and knowledge of the terrain, flexible tactics, including a little guerrilla warfare—had just barely won a war against the preeminent military power in the world of their time, and all were very well aware—many, I’d imagine, from up close and personal experience—of the powerful and close to overwhelming coercive power available to a country which has a “monopoly on force,” has a trained and well equipped standing army.
You’d have to imagine, then, that the issue of how to preserve their, the people’s new and hard won freedom, against a powerful government—down the road, perhaps against their very own government—was much on their minds.
Thus, you get ideas like this from Thomas Jefferson,
”What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms.” (Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, Dec. 20, 1787, in Papers of Jefferson, ed. Boyd et al.)
But see these quotes:
“All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns, that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party.”
– Mao Tze Tung, Nov 6, 1938“ *
Of the Waffengesetz (Nazi Weapons Law), March 18, 1938, Hitler stated at a dinner talk, April 11, 1942 “The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. … So let’s not have any native militia or native police. German troops alone will bear the sole responsibility for the maintenance of law and order.” **
It has always been one of the first orders of business for dictatorships in the making to locate and, then, to confiscate the arms in civilian hands that could be used to resist, to fight against that potential dictatorship becoming an actual dictatorship.
Some examples of the institution of “gun control” would include Turkey starting in 1911, the Communist/Leftist dictatorships in Russia (private gun ownership abolished in Russia in 1929) and China, Mussolini’s WWII Italy, first “registration” in the Weimar Republic and, then, confiscation by (also Leftist) Nazi Germany, Cambodia starting in 1956, Guatamala, 1964, Uganda, 1970, and, more recently, in Venezuela. ***
There are estimates of 300 million or more (probably a lot more) guns in civilian hands in this country—that total growing each year by leaps and bounds—and a likely 10 or 15 million of them are AR-15s, with likely hundreds of thousands of actual military surplus AK-47s, and their more recent civilian made clones and variants to add to that total.
I note that when asked about just how this “gun confiscation“ would work in practical terms, Beto and other Democrats refuse to directly answer this question, Beto himself mumbling something about how “citizens would likely be only too happy to surrender their “weapons of war” to the government.”
(I know it’s petty little point compared to the major Constitutional issues at play here, but just how much is the government going to pay you for the AR-15 that cost you, say, $700 bucks new, and that you spent another several hundred additional bucks on, “tricking” it out with all sorts of neat accessories?)
Let’s be very clear about an all too likely scenario that Beto and other Democrats are actually setting up here:
While this gun confiscation could be preceded by the requirement that people “register’ their guns with the Federal government (that’s Cory Booker i.e. Spartacus’ proposal), it appears that the government already has fairly complete knowledge of who has purchased what are, over the last several decades, likely the majority of guns in this country, because the government, the ATF, (gun dealers are also required to keep their records of these weapon purchases but, when their company ceases to exist, they’re supposed to turn their records over to the ATF) has the paperwork you are required to fill out to be able to legally purchase a gun from a gun dealer.
So, if the government just puts all the information they already have together—compiles a list of all the legal gun purchases/purchasers in the U.S.—it can systematically go down that list, confiscating those purchaser’s guns.
Or, perhaps they may also have other help.
Say, someone—your ex-wife, a ”nosy,” “concerned neighbor,” some guy at work who doesn’t like you, someone who objects to your politics, or something you wrote on the Internet, someone who might have ”heard” that you have some “dangerous“ “Black rifles” at your house, anyone who has some grudge against you, maybe just some a-hole “prankster” who thinks it might be fun to “SWAT” you, etc.—informs on you.
So, a law enforcement officer is sent to your house to search for (forget about the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protection against “unlawful search and seizure”) and to confiscate (forget any Fifth Amendment private property rights you may think you have) whatever weapons he considers “dangerous.”
At this moment in time, those on the Left say that it’s just the the AR-15s and the AK-47s that these Leftists have singled out and labeled as “weapons of war,” that they propose to confiscate, but I’m pretty sure that—if and when they get rolling—it will eventually be any and all firearms—so, I’m assuming that will be however many guns you have; all of them.
And let’s also be clear that—because this will be a huge, nation-wide project, and, thus, of necessity—it won’t likely be local, friendly officer “Bob”—just one officer who will lazily mosey up to your door and start a polite dialog—it will much more likely be a far less friendly and accommodating group of officers, and likely a heavily armed and armored SWAT team, arriving in an armored vehicle—and all business—who will be knocking at your door.
Or will they even bother to “knock,” but instead conduct a “no knock” raid”—bash down your door, throw in a few flash bangs, and charge into your house? Take a look at LIVE PD sometime for an education in how some of these raids are conducted.
The problem so obviously is that, in the face of all the government’s intimidating firepower, while some citizens my turn over their guns, many citizens will be defiant, and will not.
This will be a situation fraught with all sorts of danger—and the very real possibility of “mistakes”—for gunfire, and of people being shot, injured, and killed—and those who are most likely to be injured or killed are the people whose guns are being, in reality, forcibly being taken away from them, civilians, who are innocent, who have been convicted of no crime, and whose Constitutionally guaranteed Second Amendment Rights, and additions others will—by this confiscation—be taken away from them.
Perhaps the best assessment comes from Professor James B. Jacobs, Director of the Center for Research in Crime and Justice at New York University. Summing up the prospects for banning handguns in his book, Can Gun Control Work?, and he wrote:
“Prohibiting possession would require disarming the citizenry; whether done quickly or over a long period, it would be a monumental challenge, fraught with danger. Millions of citizens would not surrender their handguns. If black market activity in connection with the drug laws is any indication, a decades-long “war on handguns” might resemble a low-grade civil war more than a law-enforcement initiative. ” ****
Given all this potential for conflict, violence, and likely bloodshed, it’s not hard to see how such a nation-wide gun confiscation effort by the government could set off a Second Civil War.
* See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_power_grows_out_of_the_barrel_of_a_gun
** (“Hitler’s Table Talk 1941-44: His Private Conversations,” 2nd Edition, 1973, p. 425-6, translated by Norman Cameron and R. H. Stevens) cited in https://www.wnd.com/2019/02/hitlers-rise-to-power-eerie-echo-of-todays-left/ [Transcripts of Hitler’s secret table talk transcribed at the orders of Reich Chancellor Martin Bormann.] See also https://www.nationalreview.com/2013/12/how-nazis-used-gun-control-stephen-p-halbrook/
*** Here are some other examples where initial “registration” with the state led to and made it much easier for these states to later “confiscate” weapons—
**** This quote from https://reason.com/2012/12/22/gun-restrictions-have-always-bred-defian
New Zealand—revolvers for personal defense registered starting in 1921, list used to confiscate them all in the 1970s.
Canada—old weapons grandfathered in, but since registration, starting in 1990s, weapons are now confiscated upon owners death, with no compensation.
Australia—in 1996 used “registered” list to force the confiscation of more than 640,000 personal firearms.
**** In the wake of the recent Christchurch shootings, New Zealand legislators have now decreed a ban on military type rifles, and are asking people to turn in their military type rifles, but, according to reports, few have done so.
Horay!!
The system took a comment with a lot of included footnotes instead of rejecting the whole comment.
When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Period! And that’s why the Second Amendment must remain in force. Period!
Snow on Pine,
Read Unintended Consequences by John Ross. It is out of print but you might find a used copy. It is a work of fiction that details the nature of firearm culture in America and how a revolt against supression of the Bill of Rights, that starts small, and then spreads to include millions of citizens.
Keeping in mind Orwell’s words about politics and the distortion of language, this needs to be repeated again and again:
The government cannot buy ‘back’ anything it never owned.
From what I’ve read gun owners take a real bath on buybacks if they bought new. In Phoenix, AZ:
The city will hold three buybacks this month, offering $100 gift cards for every handgun, shotgun and rifle turned in, and $200 for assault rifles. The collected guns will be destroyed.
https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-xpm-2013-may-04-la-na-nn-arizona-gun-buybacks-jan-brewer-20130504-story.html
Gift cards, no less.
Even when I was 17 and loved CS&N, this sounded dumb.
My reaction to hearing many CS&N/CSN&Y songs today is to cringe. Woodstock? Cringe. “Get back to the garden?” Give me a break. (Yes, Jody Mitchell wrote it, but CSN&Y made it famous.) “Chicago” ? Ditto
Snow on Pine, I am surprised that with four links, your comment got through without any problem.Say what you will about Neo’s spamware system, it’s a lot better than Disqus.
You cited Hitler’s Table Talk. It is available for the downloading at the Internet Archive. Hitler’s Table Talk 1941-1944. Comments express some skepticism about its authenticity. But HItler’s talking about the affinity between Nazis and Reds in Table Talk is consistent with a 1920’s speech from Goebbels.
Gringo: I have mixed feelings about Mitchell’s “Woodstock,” but don’t cringe when I hear it. At the least it is a valid sixties document on the checkered hippie spiritual quest. There was plenty of silly, fake stuff to the hippie phenomenon, but deep down it was also an earnest attempt at personal spirituality, which reverberates to the present day.
The cheerful, rockin’ CS&N version became the Woodstock anthem. However, Mitchell’s version is something else — a wistful, almost mournful commentary with a bare, minor-key arrangement. It’s not a naive song as she sings it.
Camille Paglia included “Woodstock” as the only rock song in Paglia’s anthology, “Break, Blow, Burn,” containing 43 of the world’s best poems by her estimation.
Boy, couldn’t Stephen Stills cook on the guitar! It’s not well-known how good he was.
He was also the guy who did 16-hour days in the studio getting that flawless yet organic CS&N sound.
“The Overton Window has also shifted to “Democrats really do want to take your guns.” I think that favors conservatives.” – huxley
That’s an interesting observation.
We know that shifts to one ideological extreme (moving the OW left / right) can generate an equal and opposite reaction to move it back to the right / left, so maybe each move of the Window does incorporate “wins” for both sides.
Or, visualize the window with one faction on one side of the wall, and the other faction on the other side, looking at each other.
What moves left for the Leftists, moves right for the Conservatives.
I’ll have to think about this some more.
I would love more audio, and would really like a daily video like the ones Scott Adams does on Periscope and Twitter
Neo delivers the sort of insight that is extremely valuable at this time in our history. Delivering it audibly and visually would dramatically expand her audience.
Here is Scott Adams yesterday:
https://www.pscp.tv/w/1DXGypBWWaZKM
https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1172872665314365441
Maybe it shouldn’t be a livestream, at least at the start.
Neo is probably not an experienced stand-up presenter, but presentations like those posted on YouTube, that could be audited prior to being posted, would be great.
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Beto really stepped in it now
Beto: we’re going to outlaw weapons of war and have mandatory buyback
Response: but if people don’t give them up, won’t you need police go door to door and confiscate them
Beto: no, no, no, law abiding people will give them up voluntarily
??? But if they’re law abiding citizens then why do you need to confiscate their weapons???
That question isn’t being asked of him, or any Democrat.
“It has always been one of the first orders of business for dictatorships in the making to locate and, then, to confiscate the arms in civilian hands that could be used to resist, to fight against that potential dictatorship becoming an actual dictatorship.” Snow on Pine
To quote INSTAPUNDIT, “Inside every progressive is a totalitarian, fighting and screaming to get out.”
Hi Gringo,
Minor quibble – it was *Joni* Mitchell. Yep, lots of her stuff sounds silly or too idealistic these days, but listen to “Raised on Robbery”. She managed to absolutely nail the experience of the average guy just trying to kill a couple of hours and have a beer or two, except that…
Sorry, no spoilers.
The NRA is certainly energized — yet it seems there might be some gun control policy fire in all the smoke.
Mao was right about power coming from the barrel of a gun. I claim that democracy supports people having guns, and supports majority rule — one man, one vote, one target with their gun. Majority of guns wins.
The gov’t will virtually always have a majority of the guns, unless some other gov’t (like the USSR supporting N. Vietnam after the ’73 Peace Talks) is supporting anti-gov’t fighters.
I’m hoping.
And thinking it might be about to happen.
To talk about arming more teachers, and having armed folk at schools, to stop crazies with guns.
The Mormons recently went the other way, calling for no Mormons to carry any firearms to their churches, with some cop exceptions. That’s not the right way to go.
When seconds count, cops are minutes away.
Zenman on September 15, 2019 at 9:15 am said:
Beto really stepped in it now
…??? But if they’re law abiding citizens then why do you need to confiscate their weapons???
* * *
Center hit.
They don’t talk about it because then their policy positions make no sense at all.
I suggest a paraphrase of the usual meme, which explains what happens if Beto’s claims actually occur (they won’t), because it’s a tautology that law-abiding citizens who don’t turn in their guns become outlaws by statute (which is one of the goals of the Left, of course).
When guns are outlawed, outlaws will still have their guns.
This could backfire on the Dems in a spectacular way. The people who want gun confiscation are already going to vote Dem. I don’t wee them gaining many more votes from this.
Minorities own guns, too. Blacks, Hispanics – even Asians! I see them at the range. And this is one of the few issues – similar to abortion – that has the power to change minds about what party to support.
I just donated to the NRA. They asked for an e-mail address; I provided “info@betoorourke.com”.
Here’s hoping others do similarly. I have my issues with the NRA, but they’re on the right side here.