I wasn't ignoring this post. Just wanted to give my reply the time it deserved.
Regarding gun control, and the neverending stream of lies from its proponents:
What were the lies and what did Obama try to do that he was initially hiding?
Obama is an astute politician and a smart man. He was smart enough not to openly push for new gun control measures before his re-election in 2012, because he knew how toxic the subject was, not just to him but every Democrat running for any office nationwide. Nothing (nothing!) gets out the R-line voters like an attack on gun rights.
His reticence was extremely frustrating to gun control proponents who were disappointed that he spent all of his first term political capital on health care reform, and none on gun control. In March of 2011, Sarah Brady met with the president and demanded some answers. "I just want you to know that we are working on it. We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar."
Even though he knew what a disaster gun control efforts would be for Democrats' election prospects, after Sandy Hook, he still misjudged the issue and made a broad push for federal level gun control that fortunately was a complete and unmitigated failure. On the bright side, the NRA raised a lot of money and got a lot of new members.
Obama's big lie, from 2008 until he won re-election in 2012, was that he didn't really want more gun control.
But those aren't the only lies.
Everything, EVERYTHING, that gun control proponents put forth is a lie, starting with their stated intent. It's not "common sense" regulation. It's not reasonable "compromise" that respects the 2nd Amendment and the rights of citizens.
It is a complete ban and confiscation of firearms. "Reasonable" and "common sense" regulations are simply the incremental baby steps they think are presently attainable. The goal is a total ban and confiscation. More on that in a moment.
Even you - a person I have a great deal of respect for, based on years of prior posts here - can't help but couch your argument for gun control in lies, both subtle and blatant:
You're actually forced to wait 5-7 business days for your AR-15 to arrive in the mail from grabagun (a real site). Unless a show is in town. Then you can get it now. Godd@mn brutal compromise.
You're lying in two ways here.
First, in your deliberate, calculated, and cynical strawman construction. You're pretending that our objection to new gun control is based on convenience; the implied accusation is that we're just too lazy and impulsive to to wait a mere few days, which is no big deal. In doing so, you pretend our actual arguments don't exist, and reduce gun rights to a trivial matter of whim and idle desire for toys.
Second, you lie with your claim that guns can be obtained mail order. I know you know that any firearm ordered by phone, mail, or internet must be shipped to a federally-licensed dealer, which must complete the background checks and paperwork. You can't get a firearm shipped to your home, unless you are a federal firearms licensee yourself.
The very first link on grabagun.com, the web site you sarcastically name, is their "ordering guide" and here's a screenshot (pay attention to step 5):
You're so irrationally and emotionally attached to your anti-gun position, to the point that you actually express contempt for me personally (your "godd@mn brutal compromise" response to my resistance to new gun control) and I'm a law abiding, responsible, productive, public servant. You and I have agreed on these forums many times over many social issues. And yet you can't help but angrily dismiss my position as whiny and childish. Why?
What's more, your choice to single out the AR-15 in your statement exposes another flaw common to gun control arguments: a fixation on cosmetic appearance. Most of the assault weapon bans in the United States are based on the presence or absence of nothing more than cosmetic features. An AR-15 is just a semi-automatic gun that fires a .223 rifle cartridge. It is functionally no different than any of a dozen kinds of varmint hunting rifles. But bans are based on "scary" appearance - the angle of the grip, the number of holes in the flash hider, etc.
There is
no rational basis for your (or others') fixation on AR-15 style rifles. They're the most common and popular rifles in the United States because they're inexpensive, accurate, low recoil, easy to use, and reliable. Despite their popularity, they are used in a miniscule number of crimes (less than 1%).
Hillary Clinton lies about gun control efforts too.
Like you, she resorts to cynical mocking and strawman construction:
Hillary Clinton said:
The NRA tries to keep gun owners - the ones who are members - really upset all the time so they can keep collecting their money, because they tell them that they're the only thing that's going to stop the black helicopters from landing in the front yard and people's guns being seized.
For good measure, she throws in a modern-day pre-emptive Godwin (substituting Iranians and communists for Hitler):
Hillary Clinton said:
You know, the NRA's position reminds me of negotiating with the Iranians or the communists.
So here she is, pretending that the NRA is the tool of gun industry (worse than communists and theocratic totalitarians!) and not the member-driven grassroots organization it really is. But the big lie is that she denies that the end objective is a complete ban of guns and forced confiscation. Because in her very next breath, she tells us more about "reasonable" gun control:
Hillary Clinton said:
Australia’s a good example, Canada’s a good example, [and] the UK’s a good example. Why? Because each of them had mass killings, Australia had a huge mass killing about 20 or 25 years ago. Canada did as well, so did the UK. In reaction, they passed much stricter gun laws.
[...]
The Australian government was able to curtail the supply and set a different standard for gun purchases in the future. It would be worth considering doing it on the national level
Obama also lies about gun control in the same vein, continually denying that confiscation is the goal, but saying things like this
Barack Obama said:
We know that other countries, in response to one mass shooting, have been able to craft laws that almost eliminate mass shootings. Friends of ours, allies of ours — Great Britain, Australia, countries like ours. So we know there are ways to prevent it.
So both favor the Australian model of gun control, which can be quickly summarized as follows: after the Port Arthur shooting in 1996, their government passed a law that instituted a mandatory buy back, aka confiscation in exchange for cash.
When such prominent gun control proponents as a sitting president and and his party's intended successor tell us their hope is
enact Australia-style firearm confiscation in the United States, how can you honestly pretend that confiscation is not really their end goal?
You can't, not without lying.
The next Big Lie of gun control proponents is that it's to protect the poor and minorities. All gun control is racist and classist. It began in earnest after our Civil War, in an effort to keep those uppity black ex-slaves unarmed and helpless to resist. To touch on a few other noble milestones of "common sense compromise" ...
The 1934 National Firearms Act effectively banned ownership of many firearms by poor and middle class people, because the $200 federal tax (over $3000 in today's dollars) was unaffordable in the midst of the Great Depression. Moreover, sound suppressors ("silencers") were on the NFA list not because they're dangerous, but because poor starving people were using them to illegally poach meals. Good "compromise" that was; infringe on the Constitutional rights of poor people because they're poor.
In 1967, the Mulford Act banned open carry in California because an organization of black men publicly, and peacefully, carried firearms for the purpose of self-defense and to protest the denial of their civil rights. Another characteristically proud moment for gun control. Pass a ban because a minority asserted and exercised Constitutional rights guaranteed to us all.
In 1986, the NFA was amended to close the national machine gun registry. Not because crimes were being committed with NFA-registered machine guns ... in the preceding 52 years, despite more than 240,000 legally owned machine guns in the United States, there had been exactly TWO crimes committed. (One of which was committed by a corrupt police officer.) What an achievement, to limit the rights of citizens for absolutely no purpose at all! Five decades, no crime - have to solve that "problem" with another valiant common sense compromise.
The 1994 federal "assault weapon" ban banned a wide variety of semi-automatic rifles based on cosmetic features, but not function. It was crafted by people who knew nothing about guns except that some looked scarier than others, and it was (of course) absolutely ineffective.
I could go on with a dozen more examples. The amazing coup of gun control proponents is that they've convinced the poor and minorities that gun control is actually for their benefit, when the last 150 years of gun control initiatives have been primarily aimed at poor minorities.
The last Big Lie of gun control proponents is the lie that they aren't useful to resist government oppression and tyranny, the very reason the 2nd Amendment was written in the first place. The typical strawman is that Billy Joe Jim Bob the ignorant racist southern redneck teabagger couldn't possibly resist the government's Army with its tanks and planes and helicopters.
But that's not how and where an armed populace can resist tyranny. Two examples, and I'll end this post.
During the (mostly ill-fated) Arab Spring, pro-democracy demonstrators in Egypt weren't being beaten, abducted, and murdered by the regular army. They weren't being chased by tanks and planes and helicopters. They were being beaten, abducted, and murdered by thugs in the night. Forceful intimidation was systemic and driven by political factions. Firearm ownership is severely restricted in Egypt; people could not legally own long guns, but some few had licenses for handguns. Notably, those neighborhoods where a few residents owned firearms were not targeted for intimidation. Mao Tse Tung was speaking of the communist party when he wrote "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun" but the truth is that even peaceful resistance depends on the demonstrators' ability to resist and deter intimidation.
The last example I'll give you is one that is actually pertinent to our election and this thread. Perhaps the most shameful thing the United States has done since the Civil War was the internment of Japanese Americans beginning in 1942. It was blatantly unconstitutional, plainly evil, and a terrible stain upon FDR's presidency and every American who permitted it to happen. How different might that have gone, if most of those Japanese citizens had been armed? Would FDR have dared order them rounded up? Maybe they wouldn't have had to abandon their homes and businesses. Why is this relevant today? Because Donald Trump
is making the same argument about Muslims today. How do you enforce a travel ban on Muslims without registration? I sincerely hope every Muslim in the United States goes out and buys a gun.
Gun control proponents have a lot to be ashamed of, if they could only quit lying to themselves and the rest of us long enough to honestly assess what they've done.
And gun control proponents wonder why we resist "compromising" on new "common sense" laws ... it's because we see their lies for what they are. There's no common sense to any of it. And each compromise is a small step backward, toward their thinly disguised goal of disarmament and confiscation.
Or not so thinly disguised:
Dianne Feinstein said:
If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them -- Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them all in -- I would have done it.
We agree about many of the republicans. The centrists like Kasich aren't the buffoons ruining the party though.
You're right, we agree on this ... and many other things too.
Someday I have faith that you'll let reason and logic dictate your position on gun control, and we'll agree on that subject too.