Democrats and guns
In this post, Kevin Drum (who’s never actually responded to my requests for a position statement on gun control) mentions gun control as an example of a failed social policy that liberals actually had the brains to back away from.
Shorter Kevin Drum:
Well, we can still think guns are bad.
But we need votes.
So, stop acting anti-gun.
October 30th, 2006 at 10:04 am
Yeah, you’ll notice that I just dropped another haymaker at the Bob dude who wants to argue that I’m some sort of radical libertarian or something crazy like that. 🙂
I do have plenty of socially libertarian viewpoints on a variety of social issues, but I don’t think of myself as a real libertarian. I still believe in way too much activist govt stuff. ;).
In any event, I think the point of Drum’s post wasn’t that gun control is wrong (he’s a true California liberal, so I wouldn’t ever count on that), but that sometimes the American public comes around to the liberal point of view, and sometimes it doesn’t. Gun control is clearly a place where liberals have been shown to be wrong, and the point Kevin and I are both making is that a good liberal abandons social policies that don’t work and saves his energy fighting for the ones that do.
That Bob maroon can’t seem to get that, and so he resorts to labeling me as a member of the black helicopter looney survivalist woodsy redneck beercan shooting backwoods Montana crowd (not that there’s anything wrong with that crowd…I like that crowd a lot…I just don’t pretend to be a member of it).
October 30th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
So-called “liberals” are shown to be wrong on their advocacy of gun control by the truly liberal (“liberal” is derived from liberty) gun carry laws in Vermont– they have none. One can freely carry a weapon in Vermont–no permit required, in accordance with the Bill of Rights and it has the lowest or one of the lowest crime rates in the nation. Criminals prefer unarmed victims and most politicians prefer unarmed peasants–disarmed by them.
And when there is gun control laws for the people, how is it to be enforced?– oh by guns , of course!