Mott, you are certainly allowed your opinion and we are certainly allowed to disagree with one another as we often have. Let me just address a few of the things I have bolded above. (I hope in order but this format is hard for me to use, especially on an iPad.)
The vilification of the NRA which Cypress and others try to do every time someone disagrees with their anti—semi-auto stance and the portrayal of the NRA in a negative light is a result of the Democratic party’s restrictive stance on firearms going back most recently to Bill Clinton’s “Assault” Weapon Ban. We (millions of gun owners) urged the NRA to push back against the ban. I filled out survey after survey as did millions of other NRA members making our concerns known. They do what we wanted them to do. So when ILA was formed, it supported pro-gun candidates. In Oklahoma (and other conservative states), many of those candidates were Democrats but on the national scene, not so much, if any. That, in the eyes of the news media and people like domer, Cypress, Desh, etc. made the NRA a Republican entity and deemed them deserving of vilification. If the gun rights had been supported by the left instead of the right the NRA would be as popular with them as the NEA is. Look at this table and see the balance of political contributions become unbalanced from 1990 to now. Ask yourself what has changed? The [liberal] democrats come down on the side of restricting freedom as far as guns are concerned (becoming more like our European friends) every time the discussion is brought up is what has changed since the late 80’s.
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/tot...e=P&cycle=2018
As far as wanting to do anything about gun violence or having “adult” conversations about gun violence I am all for it...and so are a lot of other gun owners. But when one side starts out with [see Cypress and domer’s posts in this or any gun thread] condescension the conversation isn’t going far. When one side says we want to ban this or that at the very beginning it isn’t going far. Yes, there are nuts on the gun owner’s side too but when the first thing said is that we need to ban (Warning, NRA phrase coming up) law abiding citizens from buying x, y, or z gun, stock or magazine or bullets the gun owners are going to double down.
The old slippery slope happens to be something that many of us gun owners believe in. All we have to do is look at other nations and see it. In many of them where they are now started with making firearm ownership very difficult for the average citizen. Restrictions grew from there. Many of us believe that the only reason such restrictions haven’t happened here is because of the pushback by gun owners beginning back in the 90’s. Are we wrong? One can’t prove what has been avoided or not been avoided.
And we do have a high percentage of firearm ownership. Once again, many of the gun owners believe it is because of the efforts of gun owners that this is possible. Why would we want to change that?
Here is where we agree. And there is always somewhere. This is what I want as well. The one “fact” though, that we don’t start with is the obvious one.
I do think there are things we can do with background check to prevent the Cruz’s, Roof’s, Holmes’ and such from getting the weaponry they have. That is where I start, not start by saying to Mr. Robinson (and other gun owners), “No, you can’t have that type of weapon because it was used to murder people.”
As for appeals to emotion, I love this man’s speech. But I’m a guy who likes to listen to sermons. I wanted to stand up and shout, “AMEN!” when I listened to this.
And seriously, isn’t appealing to emotion exactly what lawmakers do when they introduce restrictive anti gun measures right after a tragedy?
Gun Lesislation Dominates State Capitals After School Shooting
http://thehill.com/homenews/state-wa...kland-shooting
Isn’t that what the [liberally funded] march on Washington by the kids did? (I’m not opposed to them doing that either, by the way.)
But just like those gun owners who didn’t like these kids’ appeal to emotion, many anti gunners don’t like this mans speech because he is firing up the wrong side.
I applaud him and just wish his venue was larger.
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