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It is stopping. Gun sales have gone through the roof since 9/11; I've seen reports ranging anywhere from 50% to 500% higher (though obviously the latter number is too wild to be believed). And studies consistently show that once someone becomes a gun owner, gun control almost always becomes one of their top three make-or-break political issues. In the 2000 election, 47% of the people that bothered to vote were gun owners. That's why Gore, and the DNC in general, never brought up the gun control issue at all during the campaign; they knew that every time it came up, they lost votes. And if Gore's name hadn't already been synonymous with the issue in the eyes of so many people before the campaign started, he probably would have won. The only place gun control has any momentum at all is in the most liberal of states, like New York (where it's already so repressive that there's not really any further they can take it) and California, where Grey Davis just signed a new gun control bill into law yesterday. And even there people are speculating about whether or not he just gave a major boost to the GOP by doing so. Everywhere else the pendulum has already been swinging in the other direction for over two years.
The problem with that logic is that motor vehicles are not specifically designed as killing machines.
In the context's of the VPC's argument, it works fine. This guy is trying to blame Barrett for the fact that the US GOVERNMENT bought some rifles from them - 25 whole guns, ooh ahh - and then gave them to the rebels, one of whom eventually went nuts and turned on us years later. It's exactly as stupid as trying to blame a car company for making a product eventually used as a getaway vehicle by a bad guy.
posted by aaron at 9:39 AM on October 16, 2001
Nothing. That's why you can buy all sorts of bacilli and other fun stuff from biological supply houses. And the ones you can't get, you only can't get because merely possessing them presents a direct threat to public health.
Nice try, though.
posted by aaron at 1:21 PM on October 16, 2001
Like you presume we are deluded simply because there are more citizens living in countries that have banned guns than in those that haven't?
posted by aaron at 1:24 PM on October 16, 2001
Wearily for the record, since people have been quibbling about the small arms of choice around the world: hundreds of thousands of M16A1s have gone to war zones around the world, including to the Bosnian Muslims; those Stinger missiles toted by the Taliban started life in the US; and when guerrilas have wanted the easy maintenance that comes with an AK-47, the US has been only too happy to provide:
The "secret" U.S. arming of various mujahideen factions fighting in Afghanistan against Soviet invaders began in 1979. Before it ended in 1991, the CIA had shipped, via Pakistan, some 400,000 AK-47 assault rifles; an undisclosed quantity of Stinger portable anti-aircraft missile launchers and missiles; vast quantities of Italian-made anti-personnel mines; 40-50 Swiss-designed anti-aircraft guns; Egyptian mortars; "Blowpipe" surface-to-air missiles from Britain; 100,000 Indian rifles; and from Turkey, 60,000 archaic rifles, 8,000 light machine guns, and more than 100,000,000 rounds of ammunition.
It's like Gun Nut Heaven. And of course, the right to keep and bear arms has done wonders to protect ordinary Afghans from the dangers of a fascist state.
posted by holgate at 2:32 PM on October 17, 2001
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posted by Loudmax at 12:53 AM on October 16, 2001