Why Second Amendment Supporters are Winning

Graphic from Rocky Mountain Gun Owners on the Colorado Recall

In The Atlantic, Molly Ball writes a thoughtful article about the recall elections in Colorado, and the effects of those elections on citizen disarmament efforts.  Titled  "The Death of Gun Control" it is a somber article with the clear assumption that those who push citizen disarmament are on the morally correct side:

Among gun-control campaigners, recriminations are flying behind the scenes about the strategic missteps that allowed Tuesday's recalls to slip away. But many are convinced that the damage will be limited. Matt Bennett, a veteran gun-policy strategist and researcher now with the center-left think tank Third Way, pointed me to a poll that showed that even recall supporters still favored gun background checks; it was Colorado's ban on high-capacity magazines they revolted against.

But panicky lawmakers are unlikely to make such a fine distinction. All they'll see is a fight between Bloomberg's lofty promises and the creaky old tactics of the NRA, and the NRA won.

The reason that the disarmament lobby lost, though, is not contained in the article.   Molly Ball is incapable of writing it, because it discredits her assumptions about the basis for the lobby.  The reason the disarmament lobby lost is because their policy is bad policy, and because the more people know about it, the less they like it.  The new media has allowed ordinary citizens to reach almost as many people as does old media such as the Atlantic.  From the comments on the article, spencer60 writes:

I only wish that this one election was really 'the death' of the gun control industry. This failed and discredited, ex-hippy dogma needs to die.

It has no rational basis, and it's legacy is one of needless death and suffering by innocents prevented from defending their own lives, and those of others.

The gun control industry itself is funded and directed by a few elite billionaires like Bloomberg and Soros. It's staff is a bunch of highly paid lobbyists, lawyers and 'advocates' clustered around D.C. and various state capitals. 

The gun control industry has been trying to eliminate the Second Amendment rights of American citizens for almost 40 years now, that's two generations of law abiding firearms owners who've had to fight against this plague.

They are liars who say they 'believe' in your firearms rights, then try to strip them from you in any way they can.

They say they support your right to defend yourself, while trying to repeal the concealed carry and 'stand your ground' laws that allow honest citizens to actually do so. 

They say that they support womens safety, while trying to eliminate the one tool that can reduce the odds of being raped by factor of 10. 

Unfortunately, the gun control industry, their lobbyists, and their lapdog media are just like cockroaches. 

You can shine a light on them and they will scatter. But they never really go away.

Spencer60's comments destroy Molly Ball's assumptions about citizen disarmament.  Anyone who seriously looks at the data comes away with the same conclusion: citizen disarmament has no rational basis if you accept its stated purposes.   A rational basis for it can only be found if you accept unfounded, unstated assumptions about reality that have not stood the test of real world implementation.

Here are some of those assumptions:

The state is a beneficent entity that will never turn against its own citizens.

Guns in the hands of ordinary people result in higher crime rates, particularly homicide rates.

The only benefits that guns offer society can easily be achieved with high levels of regulation and control by the state, and significantly lower levels of gun ownership.

Defense of self and home by armed citizens is such a rare and unusual event that it is overwhelmed by the increased crime resulting from more gun ownership.

And, of course, the ultimate result of such assumptions:

Any regulation or law that reduces the number of guns outside the control of the state, or which makes it more burdensome for citizens to acquire, own or use guns (which amounts to the same thing) is a public good.

The real problem for those who promote citizen disarmament is that all of the above assumptions are false, and have empirically been shown to be false in the real world settings in which they have been tried.

Ordinary citizens who know this and can show it outnumber those who advocate for citizen disarmament by about five to one.  The new media give them a way to disseminate  that information.

That is the real reason for the death of gun control.

 ©2013 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.