Gun Control thread (merged many)

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by August

I'm sure there are plenty of Democrats and Republicans who would love to make this a party partisan issue but it's not. There are plenty of Democrat 2nd Amendment supporters and plenty of Republican anti-gunners.

Oh, I fully agree, I just used Reps and Dems as a place-holder name more than anything, it all boils down to individual senator opinion and/or the wave of emotion of the state they represent.
Certainly there's a big swell of anti-gun sentiment following Sandy Hook and I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that those in the anti-gun lobby have fully exploited the revulsion and horror at what took place that day for their political movement. Just as I am sure that those in the other camp would exploit a situation where an individual could have been saved by the use of a firearm.
What should concern any supporter of the second amendment though is the 'Chicken Little' effect, or the 'Boy who cried wolf' effect. Right now there are so many people reposting various scare stories about how the second amendment is going to be shredded by a government that is keen to strip away the rights of its citizens to exploit them that after you've read or watched one, you've pretty much watched or read all of them, it's a message that's being repeated over and over and over again and only the people who are shouting that message are actually listening to it.
In short, they're preaching to the choir, because all the moderates who these people are trying to rally have begun to dismiss these people as 'gun-nuts' and have stopped listening. Then, when the time comes, when that moderate support is needed, people will just stay at home and ignore the panicked cries of the pro-gun lobby. I'm not saying that it'll happen tomorrow, or even in the next decade, but if this level of emotion continues, then it will only serve to disinterest the moderates who are, at the end of the day, the key ground to any victory in a war when both sides have equal numbers.