pro-gun liberalism

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Jaser,
I think Beretta has an absolutely valid point. I think his comment is directed at the assumptions inherent in our partisan divide. Sadly, many do see us that way. I don't see anything in his post implying he* approves of the perception.

Don't shoot the messenger. Instead, ask yourself how you can go about changing the perception. I'm a strong supporter of taking liberals shooting. Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness.

* "He" is an assumption on my part. Apologies if I'm incorrect.
 
Trust me, many people think the average gun owner is a Rush Limbaugh loving, evolution-hating fundamentalist whose just waiting to blow someone away when the black-helicopters land in their front yard. Rhetoric such as “From my cold dead hands” just reinforces the stereotype that much more, rather than the idea of rational people who just enjoy a safe, fun sport.
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I'm not sure what you are trying to say.
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What I think he is trying to say is that we have a bad image.

Unfortunately a great deal of that image is our own fault. We allow the rabid righties to be the most vocal of our community. Gun boards are a good example of this. Just look at some of the other gun boards. One had to revamp their entire political section because of the negative image they were portraying to the general community. They had allowed the righties to run their mouths for so long and shout down anyone who disagreed with their extreme views that the majority of gun owners were becoming turned off by the experience.

I have been involved in a disagreement or two with some righties on those other boards and during them my PM box would get filled everyday by people supporting what I said and saying that they wished they could say something back to these big mouths but they would just get shouted down by the same group and that the board staff would turn a blind eye to any abuse they received for disagreeing.
 
Good points guys.

Maybe it is something as simple as - (1) living like sheep all their lives and (2) never handling a firearm in any way? Maybe that is why they gravitate so much towards anti-gun philosophies?

Maybe it is just that simple?

It's such a foreign concept to me, (I've owned guns for all my adult life and shot guns before that), that I have a hard time putting myself in the position of a sheep who has never once even handled a firearm.

I'm sure it's got to be the same for alot of you guys and gals? It's just such a foreign concept for us to really understand in our "hearts" so to speak.

So, the anti-gunners become deathly afraid of firearms in an illogical way. And the anti-gun media just bolsters their illogical beliefs? Of course the media, to a very large extent, are just like the people I described in my second paragraph.

Maybe it is just that simple? And maybe it's just something I'll never be able to "feel" or truly "understand"? You get what I mean.
 
(1) living like sheep all their lives
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Wow. That's quite a claim. I certainly doubt that the mere fact of owning weapons makes one an "un-sheep" when you consider all the gun-owners who are intellectual sheep blindly following whatever nonsense is pumped into them by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hanity, Ann Coulter :barf: or at their church, rather than thinking critically for themselves and asking if this makes sense.

Of course to be fair, their are tons & tons of liberals out there who love to denounce our glorious leader, and talk about "open-minds", "thinking for yourself", and rationality but than cling to their "faith" in their ideas (such as "guns are bad") rather than bothering to think critically about it or accept that reasonable people can see it differently.

Ignorance and lack of willingness to think critically is ugly regardless of where it is.
 
_DUH_ democrats are against guns because Sarah Brady has managed to find 49 "case files" of incidents out of the 2 million ccw holders where people with CCW permits did terrible things. Okay, some of them just had their guns in gun free zones, but that's terrible too.

I mean if 49 out of 2 million step out of line, that's a good enough reason to ban all ccw. Right?

Molon Labe is starting to make more sense all the time........
 
PBP said:

What I think he is trying to say is that we have a bad image.

Unfortunately a great deal of that image is our own fault. We allow the rabid righties to be the most vocal of our community. Gun boards are a good example of this. Just look at some of the other gun boards. One had to revamp their entire political section because of the negative image they were portraying to the general community. They had allowed the righties to run their mouths for so long and shout down anyone who disagreed with their extreme views that the majority of gun owners were becoming turned off by the experience.
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I'm sure that's true, sometimes I cringe at some of the things I read here. Left and right.
I've been on boards where any conservative voice was ridiculed beyond belief. We all see things from our own perspective, my view is that the media and internet is overwhelmingly more left than right. If you feel like a minority on a gun forum imagine what it's like everywhere else. I think that might be why some righties get carried away. As far as this place goes, I don't see liberals getting shouted down but it's a minority view as far as I can see. Understandebly so since it's the left that wants our guns. I don't read many other gun forums but this one seems to allow for different points of view.

As far as the bad image thing goes, I doubt very many people read gun forums at all. I think it comes mostly from the media, its' willfull ignorance and agenda. That's why I support the NRA, it takes a large organized body to resist campaigns against our freedoms, because they damn well are organized.
 
Understandebly so since it's the left that wants our guns.

The left wants your guns and the right wants to set your religion and control what you do with your own crotch. Great choices. :D
 
A lot of liberals are closet gun owners, just as many are closet homophobes-look at how gay marriage has been outlawed in otherwise blue states. The Liberals are far more ruthless in "purging"
those who do not follow the "Party Line" and who engage in "Right Wing Deviationism". Liberals
who are pro life are also "struggleD against."
 
...the right wants to set your religion and control what you do with your own crotch. Great choices.
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That's a odd statement. Someone preventing you from worshiping Mr. Potato Head or bonking your neighborhood?
 
That's a odd statement. Someone preventing you from worshiping Mr. Potato Head or bonking your neighborhood?
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Anyone one should be allowed to worship how they choose and bonk whoever they want as long as bot parties are wiling and of age.
 
A lot of liberals are closet gun owners, just as many are closet homophobes-look at how gay marriage has been outlawed in otherwise blue states. The Liberals are far more ruthless in "purging"
those who do not follow the "Party Line" and who engage in "Right Wing Deviationism". Liberals
who are pro life are also "struggleD against."
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Certainly so. It's great how Barbra Boxer and Chuck Schumer get CHLs but for the rest of us........:rolleyes:

Although on the other side of the coin, I do certainly get a little smirk when some married, Conservative "Family Values" Homophobe gets caught being a both pitcher and a catcher. Ted Haggart and Larry Craig anyone?
 
keep up the stereotyping and it will be our demise

RKBA is not a party line issue when it comes to individuals who believe in multiple aspects of their rights. We do not need reasons for people to determine their not wanted on the RKBA side. Keep telling liberals they have to become conservatives to support gun rights and we will lose a few more supporters. Keep telling conservative they have to have an all or nothing stance for gun right and we will lose a few more. Soon there won't be enough from either side to keep RKBA an issue: it will be a distant memory.
 
Keep telling liberals they have to become conservatives to support gun rights and we will lose a few more supporters. Keep telling conservative they have to have an all or nothing stance for gun right and we will lose a few more. Soon there won't be enough from either side to keep RKBA an issue: it will be a distant memory.
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I've never heard either of those arguments put forward by anyone, although I see it consistently misrepresented here. We have had our rights to bear arms infringed upon with increasing measure over time, and pushed back here and there by monumental effort. It's only when people see how ridiculous and ineffective gun restrictions are that success
has been made, even then it isn't easy.

If you are a liberal and a gun owner you are in a conundrum, a conflict of interests. Do you value your inherent rights or do you prefer the government grant permission when and if it pleases them? Don't blame your delemma on conservatives. We didn't create the problem.
 
If you are a liberal and a gun owner you are in a conundrum, a conflict of interests. Do you value your inherent rights or do you prefer the government grant permission when and if it pleases them? Don't blame your delemma on conservatives. We didn't create the problem.
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The problem with this statement is that Conservatives are no better at valueing "inherent rights" (if even such things exist) then Liberals are.

Lets see alot of conservative supported the Patriot Act, a complete abomination with reguards civil liberties, conservatives love to interfere with my right to injest whatever substances I damn well choose (drug prohibition), and who I am permitted to marry.

Conservatives love to suppress the rights of labor, while simultaneously protecting vigourously the rights of non human legal entities (corporations).

Many conservatives want to suppress the rights of women to have an abortion in cases where the fetus is threatening her life. So threatening the life of another is ok, as long as it comes from within the womb?

Conservatives are constantly trying to suppress my right to freely choose my religion, by constanting trying to install Christianity as a state religion and instituting a theorcratic state.

Conservatives are no better on so called "inherent rights" then liberals are in many ways.

The 2nd ammendment is not a "liberal-conservative" issue, its a human rights issue, no group owns it anymore then any other group does.

I have seen elections in my state where the democratic candidate from the more rural areas supported 2nd ammendment rights much better then the republican from the more metro area did. The democrat got the NRA endorsement.

In my opinion if we want to solve this issue we need to stop making it a "liberal-conservative" wedge issue and make it a human rights issue, with both parties knowing that messing with the 2nd ammendment = lost election, to the point that neither party wants to touch it with a 10 foot pool.
 
If you are a liberal and a gun owner you are in a conundrum, a conflict of interests. Do you value your inherent rights or do you prefer the government grant permission when and if it pleases them? Don't blame your delemma on conservatives. We didn't create the problem.
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See, this statement suggests that a liberal can't simply be in favor of gun rights but liberal on other issues. Which is the kind of erroneous thinking you get into when you try and simply what is a multidimensional spectrum of political views into a simple one-dimensional measure, "liberal" or "conservative."

Neither the Democratic nor Republican platform or candidates can actually represent the wide variety of views that individuals hold. Once you realize there exist gun owners, even gun rights activists, who feel the same way about voting Republican (in general) that you would (in general, based on your posts) feel about voting Democratic you'll have taken a step in the right direction.

The 2nd ammendment is not a "liberal-conservative" issue, its a human rights issue, no group owns it anymore then any other group does.
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I'll suggest that you may have gone a little overboard in other parts of your post, but this part is sound. Also, it's important to note that "liberal" and "conservative" don't necessarily equal "Democrat" and "Republican," and that one can be quite "conservative" on one issue and extremely "liberal" on another. People can hold dozens of strong political views, each one falling at a different location in this liberal/conservative spectrum. The final vote will generally have to be a one-dimensional choice (two-party system) but the "math" they do to make this decision can be quite complex and multi-dimensional.
 
The problem with this statement is that Conservatives are no better at valueing "inherent rights" (if even such things exist) then Liberals are.

Lets see alot of conservative supported the Patriot Act, a complete abomination with reguards civil liberties, conservatives love to interfere with my right to injest whatever substances I damn well choose (drug prohibition), and who I am permitted to marry.
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How has the Patriot Act infringed upon your rights if you aren't calling Achmed's Pipe Bomb factory in Tehran? Given today's technology it is impossible to stay on top of communications otherwise, people aren't limited to land lines that can be wire tapped.

I'm not aware of protected Constitutional right to do drugs. Society has decided its' safety and future is more important than your desire for drugs so it isn't legal, have a drink instead.

I'm also not aware of any Constitution right that demands government to legally recognize any same sex marriage. Marriage has been part of man's history for a reason. If you want to change it, you are progressive, not libertarian. Conservatism says don't fix it if it ain't broke.
Conservatives love to suppress the rights of labor, while simultaneously protecting vigourously the rights of non human legal entities (corporations).
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I have no idea what that means. Those entities are built and owned by people. You are saying they should have no rights? What right does the worker not have?
Many conservatives want to suppress the rights of women to have an abortion in cases where the fetus is threatening her life. So threatening the life of another is ok, as long as it comes from within the womb?
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I have no idea where you got that from either. I know of no one that supports that view.
Conservatives are constantly trying to suppress my right to freely choose my religion, by constanting trying to install Christianity as a state religion and instituting a theorcratic state.
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Examples would be nice since I don't share your delusion. Seems like the trend has been going the other way to me.
The 2nd ammendment is not a "liberal-conservative" issue, its a human rights issue, no group owns it anymore then any other group does.
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That's what I said and added that it isn't the conservatives that threaten it. They don't own it, they fight for it. Liberals fight against it.
I have seen elections in my state where the democratic candidate from the more rural areas supported 2nd ammendment rights much better then the republican from the more metro area did. The democrat got the NRA endorsement.
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Now you are confusing ideology with party affiliation.
In my opinion if we want to solve this issue we need to stop making it a "liberal-conservative" wedge issue and make it a human rights issue, with both parties knowing that messing with the 2nd ammendment = lost election, to the point that neither party wants to touch it with a 10 foot pool.
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Since I don't agree with your assumptions and your argument is based entirely on them, I can't agree with your conclusion.
 
See, this statement suggests that a liberal can't simply be in favor of gun rights but liberal on other issues. Which is the kind of erroneous thinking you get into when you try and simply what is a multidimensional spectrum of political views into a simple one-dimensional measure, "liberal" or "conservative."
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Sure they can be, I'm saying it's a conflicting mindset. They are saying they want government to consider the Constitution written in stone for all time on their pet issue but make it a matter of discretion for everything else. It's inconsistent.
Neither the Democratic nor Republican platform or candidates can actually represent the wide variety of views that individuals hold. Once you realize there exist gun owners, even gun rights activists, who feel the same way about voting Republican (in general) that you would (in general, based on your posts) feel about voting Democratic you'll have taken a step in the right direction.
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Both parties are diverse but if a conservative wants to limit guns from private citizens then they are at odds with the core beliefs of their ideology and just as inconsistent.
 
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