An idea to fix the CA gun problem

[jnojr]

A "Democratic Gun Owners of CA" group. Its sole purpose would be to support pro-gun (or oppose the most virulently anti-gun) candidates in the Democratic primaries.

We know certain districts are (until redistricting) going to be represented by Democrats. Supporting rabidly conservative politicians in those districts is a waste of money. Supporting moderate Republicans in those districts is a waste. The best we can hope for is to have a Democratic nominee who may support tax-and-spend liberalism, believe in global warming, support an immediate withdrawl from Iraq... but who doesn't want to see more gun laws passed.

[dmckean44]

I agree. We need "pre-roosevelt" democratic canidates. No more socialism.

All the republicans have left the state anyway.

[vonsmith]

If you could find a Democrat with the "right" attitude that candidate would still have to get support from the Democratic Party. In our two party system those who don't tow the party line are largely on their own. I wish we had a three party system (with a credible 3rd party) that had candidates that could realistically win against better supported, better funded *big* party candidates. I don't see how this could happen in the current situation. I think we would have more luck converting Democratic voters to Republican voters. One way to do that might be to support Republican candidates that are more centrist and thus more mainstream. Today's conservative Bush-like candidates are scaring everyone including most Republican voters (myself included).


=vonsmith=

[Liberty Rules]

Yeah, you might want to ask Sen. Joe Lieberman about this.

It's likely to fail based on the current state of the Democratic party. It seems that only candidates who subscribe to the most extreme, idiotic ideology can survive their primaries.

Now the real solution is to repopulate the Democratic party with people who support different ideologies. But that doesn't make sense, does it.

And if you believe that George Bush and the current Republican congress are conservatives, then I suggest to you that you know not what you speak. No offense to you, vonsmith, but that's absurd. Just ask someone who voted for Ronald Reagan whether they think the Replublicans today are "conservatives".

We don't need more dinghy Lincoln Chafees and John McCain's, who are Republicans in name only. We need true conservatives who stick to their principles and provide leadership. Centrist mumbo jumbo is nothing more than asking for politicians that pander to the pollsters and the media. That type of pandering results in loss of gun rights because the average soccer mom doesn't care about whether you get to shoot an AR15 or not. Think about it.

[blkA4alb]

+1111 treelogger, plus how ever many 1s there are. I am democratic about almost everything except gun control. And those two don't seem to mix well. Its pretty sucky .

[linuxgunner]

I'm with you 100% on that. Liberals such as the great George Orwell have advocated gun rights. Democrats can do the same.

[EricCartmanR1]

Here is what I do.

This year I already took 3 "liberals" to the gun range as guest. Most people ban guns because they fear guns and we always hate what we don't know.

I live in NH where everthing is legal. Here just about everyone grew up with guns. They know how to handle and respect guns here. However, 3 miles south of me at the border of MassaChusekatstan the people fear guns. Therefore they ban guns. This year I have got 3 people to change their mindset about guns. They do not see them as bad things, but good things. There is 3 votes I just got. I plan to get more.

[hoffmang]

+1 - Opposing gun control with friends who you otherwise agree with on many domestic issues is a much stronger argument to them. I spend a lot of time trying to explain to soccer moms that gun rights supporters are opposed to new legislation for the same reason that pro-choicers are.

[linuxgunner]

There is a thread on that subject over on CaliforniaCCW.org:

http://californiaccw.org/posts/list/312.page

Originally Posted by CaliforniaCCW.org

I am very seriously thinking of starting a sub-forum here called "Democrats with Guns" or maybe something more humorous like "Dangerous Donkeys". There are many reasons to do it:

1. Our current CCW system is elitist, which should offend liberals

2. Many great liberals of the past, such as George Orwell, have been solidly pro-RKBA

3. Many individual liberals, including powerful Democrats, are gun-owners with CCWs

4. Democrats have the power in this state so if gun owners want progress we need to work with Democrats

5. Demorats often count women and minorities as their supporters. Both women and minorities could benefit from using effective tools for self-defense.

So I do want to start it. But to do that I would need some help doing Democratic outreach, and that's where the membership here comes in.

I would need people to locate good Democratic forums and other sites to promote our Dem forum. I can think of Democratic Underground as an immediate place, but there are many many other places. If people here think this is a good idea, please post in this thread to let me know that you'll do some work to promote the new forum. If we can get postings in about a dozen major Dem-friendly forums, I'll create the sub-forum here.

[m1371]

Originally Posted by treelogger

In my personal experience, some of these legislators don't actually have strong opinions on gun issues, in particular on gun control. They don't know either way. They simply parrot the party line, both in the propaganda about the grave danger of guns that has been fed to them, and the tendency towards regulating any problem out of existance. They think they know that guns are incredibly dangerous to society, because they have received a continuous stream of that news from their information sources. They also perceive that gun rights have become the exclusive domain of the republicans, and they are against them, simply out of partisan politics (the issue of my enemy must be evil).

Example: I was talking to the campaign aide of a pretty high-ranking democratic politician who is running for office (name withheld to protect my ongoing relationship with them). We talked about the 50BMG ban, and he thought that the 50BMG is intended as an anti-aircraft gun, and that is poses a grave danger to aviation. We know that this is one of the (quite nonsensical) arguments that was indeed made in the 50BMG debate. I corrected him on this misapprehension, and also mentioned to him that to my knowledge, the 50BMG has either never or only extremely rarely been used in any crimes in the US. He was amazed. He must have thought that people regularly shoot planes out of the sky with them. Another thing we talked about is the AWB. He mentioned that he had heard that a large fraction of policemen who are killed in the line of duty are killed with assault weapons. I explained to hims that this might be true, but due to a weird way of counting: anything with a full-capacity magazine was considered an AW during the AWB; officers are often killed by LE weapons (friendly fire, suicide, and loss of handgun in a scuffle); and LE weapons had full-capacity magazines, and were therefore considered AW. If you exclude handguns with full-capacity magazines from the statistic, very few officers are actually killed by assault rifles. He was very interested in my explanation. He was amazed when I told him that the crime rate (in particular the violent and gun crime rate) did not at all go up after the AWB sunsetted in the other states; he had thought that the rest of the US had become much more dangerous.

Anycase, my point is: Many of these politicians have an open mind, but have been fed one-sided information. If we engage them, talk to them, and in a polite way present the other view of the facts to them, they are likely to listen. We need to explain to them that there are lots of gun owners and shooters out there, and that many of these gun owners and shooters are not just white trash living in trailer parks, but have resources, brains, and interest to participate in the political process. They need to understand that currently there are a lot of people out there who are forced to vote republican, just to protect their gun rights, but would probably prefer to vote democratic (and maybe even support democratic candidates, through campaign contributions and volunteer work), if only democrats stopped beating up gun rights as a kneejerk reaction. And even if these politicians don't have an open mind, they might eventually understand that money and volunteers and votes talk, and that they may have to grudgingly concede gun rights, because that's the side of the bread that's buttered.

That right there just reinforces my belief that most politicians are flaming idiots being led by a select few with an agenda.

We elect these people to represent us, shouldn't they be capable of getting themselves spun up on whatever the issues are?????

You know, you'd think that the whole thing of "Ignorance of the law is not an excuse" would apply to those who are making the laws in the first place.

There should be some sort of counter-balance in place against politicians who continuously BS in order to pass legislation, like being booted from their elected position. It's an integrity issue and is a betrayal of those who elected them in the first place.