The gender gap & gun rights

[IVC]

By your impossible standard, I and every gun owner who voted for Romney are thus opposed to ALL civil rights.

Voting is a package deal as you mentioned. You can support different rights based on your conscience, even though you have to vote for a single person. What some politician does or believes is different than what you believe.

I would keep abortion out of this thread. It tends to derail arguments based on how it's phrased by either side. It's controlling woman's body vs. baby killers. Neither is *entirely* accurate.

[IVC]

Personally, I'd rather have the option to choose open or concealed carry depending on things like weather, location, circumstances, etc.

You won't have that option. Open carry in downtown SF will never be acceptable. We need the right to carry and in such a way that everybody is happy, which happens to be concealed in large urban centers.

The really, really nice side effect is that this type of carry doesn't require acceptance by those who oppose 2A, just the lack of awareness that you're carrying.

[IVC]

And just what are you going to tell yourself when those who are opposed to firearms manage to get sufficient traction to make repeal of the 2nd Amendment possible? You claim this isn't about numbers. You are horribly wrong. It is all about numbers.

Exercising 2A is a very private affair. It's nobody's business what I do at home or what I keep in my pants. There is also no easy way to find out. Thus, there will be very little friction with exercising 2A which will make repeal virtually impossible.

If I accepted your position about numbers, then any guaranteed civil right would be no different than, say, seat belt laws or smoking in public. The Constitution must count for something, especially when we talk about protecting a potential minority. If anything, a continued attack on gun owners should elevate us to the "protected class" so we cannot be discriminated against institutionally.

Don't get me wrong, numbers DO help. It's just that there is a limit to what the majority can do.

[kcbrown]

Exercising 2A is a very private affair. It's nobody's business what I do at home or what I keep in my pants. There is also no easy way to find out. Thus, there will be very little friction with exercising 2A which will make repeal virtually impossible.

If I accepted your position about numbers, then any guaranteed civil right would be no different than, say, seat belt laws or smoking in public. The Constitution must count for something, especially when we talk about protecting a potential minority. If anything, a continued attack on gun owners should elevate us to the "protected class" so we cannot be discriminated against institutionally.

Don't get me wrong, numbers DO help. It's just that there is a limit to what the majority can do.

If, by "majority", you mean "greater than 50% of the population", then you're right.

But a "majority" that comprises greater than 75% of the states is unlimited in terms of what it can do under the Constitution.

And if you don't believe me, then you need only look at Prohibition, which was enacted through Constitutional amendment.


Your characterization of the exercise of the 2nd Amendment as a "private affair" is also very wide of the mark (if, by "private affair", you mean that it won't be visible to others). The most likely exercise of the 2nd Amendment is in public, for it is in public that the chance you'll need to defend yourself is at its greatest.


The government gets ever more meddlesome over time, and that is happening while the public looks on with approval. How many times have you heard "there ought to be a law..."? Have you ever said that yourself? Every time that is said, it is another person wishing for government intrusion. The number of people who truly believe that government should truly get out of our way so that we can live our lives in peace is vanishingly small. Indeed, very recently I debated someone who believes that the very purpose of the government is to control the public! You are absolutely right that the government has no business telling you what you carry, or in what way, or anything else of the sort. But the number of people who really agree with you is tiny.

People don't want real freedom, because it is scary, and because they can't stand the thought of someone else doing something they abhor, but which otherwise brings no harm to others. People who truly understand and value liberty are rare. You'd better wake up to that fact.

[SPROCKET]

If I accepted your position about numbers, then any guaranteed civil right would be no different than, say, seat belt laws or smoking in public. The Constitution must count for something, especially when we talk about protecting a potential minority.

Ask Japanese Americans how that worked out for them... A panicky public will happily throw us under the bus. You only have the rights you have power to defend. One form of power is popular support. The gun demographic is old,white and rural; all of which are in decline. If we don't tell the backwards amongst us to sit down and shut up, in 40 years the NRA convention is going to be 3 guys in a trailer in Idaho.

[kcbrown]

The really, really nice side effect is that this type of carry doesn't require acceptance by those who oppose 2A, just the lack of awareness that you're carrying.

The antis, through their lapdog media, will ensure that awareness of carry in public is high, so that, sans direct court intervention, it will require acceptance by those who oppose 2A in anti-2A areas.

[Trenchfoot]

I would keep abortion out of this thread. It tends to derail arguments based on how it's phrased by either side. It's controlling woman's body vs. baby killers. Neither is *entirely* accurate.

I don't believe you can remove abortion from the topic. The 2012 GOP party platform opposes abortion in ANY case, even to save the life of the mother. http://www.businessweek.com/news/201...-tax-deduction They complain about the so called "death panels" in Obamacare, but would impose a death sentence on a woman with a dangerous pregnancy without her or her husband's consent. It happened in Ireland just last month. http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/14/world/...rsy/index.html

In a case of rape, they want the government to force a woman to carry the pregnancy to term. So, you have a woman, pregnant without her consent, who now has her life upended by this pregnancy. The government will now force her to spend her money on prenatal care and doctor visits (because if the republicans can overturn Roe v. Wade, then Obamacare will be gone as well). Without insurance, costs are estimated at up to $25,000 just for the delivery. It gets even worse for a woman that is enrolled at one of our military academies, where pregnancy usually gets you kicked out. That rape pregnancy just ended her career, not to mention the "christian" schools out there that expel girls for getting pregnant.

So, it's not an exercise in semantics. This is about the government having the power to say who lives, and who dies in a situation like this, not the family. 2 women die everyday in the US from complications due to pregnancy, if all abortion was banned, it would be much higher. So if a woman votes based on that fact, I have no problem with it, considering her odds of dying during a complicated pregnancy is much higher than the odds of US citizens legitimately having to take up arms against the government. (my opinion)

[IVC]

The gun demographic is old,white and rural; all of which are in decline. If we don't tell the backwards amongst us to sit down and shut up, in 40 years the NRA convention is going to be 3 guys in a trailer in Idaho.

You've got three out of four wrong. The one you've got right is that white is in decline.

The gun demographics is changing as rapidly as the overall society. The society is aging (rapidly, to be precise) and rural areas are growing due to amenities in exburbs and telecomuting.

[IVC]

I don't believe you can remove abortion from the topic.

We are discussing guns, not political platforms of the major parties. Sticking to the single issue is what unites us. Introduce N issues and you'll have 2^N different groups bickering about their favorite non-gun topic.

[Trenchfoot]

We are discussing guns, not political platforms of the major parties. Sticking to the single issue is what unites us. Introduce N issues and you'll have 2^N different groups bickering about their favorite non-gun topic.

True, but when the question is asked why more women voted for Obama than the supposed pro 2A candidate, that is the answer. So, if 2A supporters want the GOP to win more elections, they either need to stop nominating candidates with such rigid views on sensitive matters such as this, or try to get the Dems on board with the 2A.

[SPROCKET]

You've got three out of four wrong. The one you've got right is that white is in decline.

The gun demographics is changing as rapidly as the overall society. The society is aging (rapidly, to be precise) and rural areas are growing due to amenities in exburbs and telecomuting.

Below is the percentage of US rural population. This has been trend occurring for the past 80 years. The only growth in rural counties has been from adjacent metropolitan areas spilling over into them.

[IVC]

So, if 2A supporters want the GOP to win more elections, ...

This is an important misconception. The 2A supporters want to be left alone and not have legislation introduced annually to chip away at their rights. The political party is irrelevant.

Many on these boards lean libertarian and you'll find supporters of both D and R. What we have in common is that we want our 2A rights.

[Meplat]

What I fail to understand is this devotion to somehow try to cater to women whose fundamental common sense is completely flawed.

There are some fabulous American women. As a voting block, they simply generally make my head spin.

The time to get them to have a proper set of values and interested in our community was a long time ago; not at the last minute when Obama and Feinstein are using the constitution an particularly the second amendment to light up a doobie and toke up or wipe their keester after a multimillion dollar White House dinner with foreign donors.

Any work to cater to women and change the message requires a bit more Effort . Overcoming the fearful, reactive emotional stereotype of guns in women, which in many of them is so ingrained with the thought of violence and machismo, isn't an easy effort akin to a band aid.

The rabid tone of some women on Calguns who somehow want the pro 2a to bend over backwards even more and somehow change or conceal the nature of the very gun owners who are their fathers, uncles, brothers, children, and friends is just ridiculous.

Most women in the coastline states don't get it, and no amount of work for them to get it will ensure they will.



So much of their worship for Barack is greater than the single point issue of 2a. The environment, saving the children, saving the whales, women's rights, how cool and handsome Barack is, education, birth control and Obamacare, the oppression of religion, equal work for equal pay, blah blah blah.

If they haven't voted with good reason by now, it takes quite a bit of work to get to vote your way- and they aren't going to anytime soon.

[IVC]

Below is the percentage of US rural population. This has been trend occurring for the past 80 years. The only growth in rural counties has been from adjacent metropolitan areas spilling over into them.

This is a *ratio* so it doesn't show what you need. The rural population is indeed increasing, just that the urban population is growing faster. That is qualitatively different from around 80 years ago when the rural population was decreasing. There is also an issue how "urban" and "rural" are defined...

[dave_cg]

This is a *ratio* so it doesn't show what you need. The rural population is indeed increasing, just that the urban population is growing faster. That is qualitatively different from around 80 years ago when the rural population was decreasing. There is also an issue how "urban" and "rural" are defined...

Yes, how do you define "rural"? Yuppie living on an acreage is, I suppose, rural by some definition. I'd rather look at where they get their money from as a better indicator of attitudes. Do they get it from corn and cattle the way my dad (and father-in-law) did, or do they have a job where you take your shower before you go in to work, instead of after you come home.