The Death of Gun Control

Gun Control is dead, at least this article, and Bill Maher say it is dead.  A sentiment that I fervently wish is true, but I'll wait for confirmation.

Classical gun control has been diffacult to sell in the political marketplace lately, however, and there is a reason for this. The gun control movement cannot gain traction because of this: trust.  We gun-rights advocates do not trust the anti-rights side at all.

The history of gun control laws is to set up a legal framework to regulate some aspect of gun ownership.  It is modest at first, and maybe everyone agrees that it is "reasonable".  But later, usually after some horrific shooting event that that the previous regulation failed to stop, the previous framework is expanded to include more types of guns, or to exclude more types of people, newly defined to be criminal enough to deny firearms. We are seeing this play out in the California legislature even as I write this.  A bill, SB 374, that would ban an entire class of firearms, awaits Governor Browns signature. This bill expands the definition of "assault weapon" to include rifles that were never intended to be included in the original assault weapon category, rifles that have no military resemblance at all, rifles that anywhere else in the United States are considered ordinary sporting and hunting rifles.

History has also shown that the anti-rights side of the issue does not know what the word "compromise" means.  To the anti-rights side "compromise" means "shut up and give me every new regulation I want, and just be glad I left you something".  That is not compromise, that is a dictate.  An example of true compromise might have been this: vote for Manchin-Toomey background checks, and our side will support National Concealed Carry Reciprocity.  Compromise: each side gives up something to get something they deem valuable in exchange.  The anti-rights side does not understand this concept.

From my reading of the bill text, Manchin-Toomey was not the stinker that the NRA claims, but that is not the point.  The point is, the anti-rights side has acted, and continues to act as if their point of view is the only point of view that matters.  They act as if the tens of millions of gun owners in this country should not have their concerns, needs, and desires accounted for in any legislation. They act as if gun owners do not, and should not, count.

If we gun-rights advocates have learned not to compromise, to never give an inch, it is because we have learned it from the gun-grabbers.