Talked briefly over the weekend with Chrissy Gephardt, daughter of Democratic Presidential candidate Dick Gephardt. She is working for her father’s campaign so I tried to offer at least one helpful suggestion: “You dad doesn’t have a prayer unless he becomes a pro-gun Democrat.”
Why does the rabble vote Republican? This question has been looked at in this blog before, in the posting entitled “Democrats = mediocrity; Republicans = lottery ticket”. It might be too much to ask Democrats to give up their devotion to mediocrity and pandering to public employee unions. But shutting up about gun laws would be a small change that would yield an enormous number of voters.
Why are gun laws so important? Consider Johnny Paycheck. He has no freedom of speech, at least if he wants to keep his job. He has no freedom of action; a hierarchy of managers tells him what to do all day every day. Johnny Paycheck has no wealth; all of his income goes for rent and payments on his SUV. He has no pension; his retirement mutual fund is being eviscerated by managerial looting at American public companies. Johnny spends about 40% of his income on various taxes so that rich people don’t have to pay taxes.
Why does Johnny support the Republicans then, the party of corporate looters and tax cuts for rich people? He expects rich people and the government to take away all of his money and freedom, regardless of which party is in power. The difference to him is that the Republicans will allow him to keep his gun, the one shred of personal dignity that he has left. The Democrats want to take away Johnny’s gun, his last vestige of personal freedom and manhood.
Perhaps if gun laws made a difference alienating half of America’s voters might be worthwhile. It would be nice to strip America’s underclass of their ability to perpetrate violence. But the gun laws proposed by the election-losing Democrats are feeble pathetic measures that serve only to annoy gun nuts.
You can have a powerful semi-automatic rifle… but it can’t look exactly like a military “assault rifle”. You can get a machine gun but you need to fill out some forms. You can buy a pistol but unless you fill out the right forms you can only kill 5 people with it before popping in another magazine. These then are the achievements for which the Democrats have sacrificed their relevance to American government.
Gephardt’s Web site doesn’t put the harassment of gun lovers #1 on his agenda but it is there and that is enough to lose him any election. His charming daughter is clearly ready to follow him into politics because she managed to ignore the idea without anyone liking her less…
Chrissy has taken a stand before; she is openly lesbian. And somehow because of the way she’s handled it, nobody thinks twice about it.
Then Howard Dean should stand a real chance, once he puts his gun-law position statement back up at his site: http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?pagename=policy_statement_civilrights_sensiblegunlaws
I read this with mouth agape. Maybe that’s because I’m part of the rabble, so please forgive the drool on your blog.
I am amazed at the crass and vulgar disregard you have for the great unwashed masses of the electorate. You loathe people who have been working to keep food on the table instead of pursuing their own enlightenment, and yes sometimes it comes down to a choice between those two. You oversimplify their situations to prove your pedantic points about the major parties.
You need to realize that you live in a world with these people, not above them. This group of folks you detest will be the very people who will restore power and Internet connections during and after the coming hurricane hits our coast. You may think you stand on the shoulders of giants, but in fact you ride on the backs of those that allow you the freedom to do what you wish.
I agree that the average voter is not well informed and has little ability to change their financial situation to stay ahead of the politicians who seek to extract money from them. I also agree that I don’t want people who are waiting with baited breath for the next season of Survivor to run the government. However, these folks are not single issue pawns that will follow whomever offers them the carrot of the gun.
While not a Republican, I can understand their laudable goals of self-reliance and individual responsibility. These goals naturally lead to a place where gun ownership is not only legal, but encouraged. The Republicans are getting this group you want the Democrats to pillage, but they are doing so honestly.
The next time you are hobnobbing with someone who has the ear of a powerful person in government, I hope you will do something more than propose a witty hypothetical. If a member of the teeming millions had five minutes with someone in power, the conversation would likely be about a real concern. They might talk about their job or their life and how it’s affected by Washington. That’s not only practical, it just might cause change.
Not bad for someone who is “frighteningly stupid”.
This is exactly the sort of idiotic sentiment that I cannot seem to grasp. How is it possible that one educated to the degree that Phil apparently is, can exhibit such complete bankruptcy in terms of common sense. I can, and have, mounted factual and udisputable arguments against this sort of elitist mentality in the past, but I find that once a person has achieved this level of ignorance that no amount of truth and common sense can prevail against a brain turned to mush. So I refuse to waste my time here.
Pretty much stole a page right out of the liberal elitist playbook with the above, didn’t I?
While not a Republican, I can understand their laudable goals of self-reliance and individual responsibility.
Hmmm, "self-reliance and individual responsibility", that sounds like pretty decent goals. I am all for that.
But let me ask you this – just how "responsible" are you going to be when a 12 year old shoots his friend dead because you left a gun in your drawer? Sure you can go to jail for thirty years. But at the end of the day you can’t bring the dead back. So what good is your " individual responsibility" to the parents whose dead child you can’t bring back? Writing checks you can’t cash, perhaps?
I am strongly for individual responsibility. But I also realize there are limits to that concept. I can be responsible for paying my bills, I can be responsible for doing my job, I can be responsible for my own retirement, and other things of that nature. I can be responsible for all those things because at the end of the day I get to live with the consequences if I screw up – and no one else!
Are you advocating that any politician should sacrifice his principles to be elected or just Gephart?
Hmm… Surely you’re joking Mr. Greenspun! (With apologies to Richard Feynman)
I’m with Scott Palmer. Maybe the “rabble” has figured out that the Democratic Party is now full of armchair liberals who claim to care so very hard about them but who wouldn’t visit their neighborhood on a dare. Maybe Johnny doesn’t appreciate it when someone tells him he’s an moron 364 days a year, and then asks for his vote on the 365th. Maybe Johnny wants people to address his real problems instead of the ones they imagine he has… or the ones they TELL him he has.
Maybe Johnny wants people to address his real problems instead of the ones they imagine he has
Read problem huh? So not being able to buy an Uzi is a "real problem" while losing your job or social security because of $trillions deficit isn’t.
Yeah, that’s it. Vote with your gut not your head.
I mentioned this point in the “Democrats = mediocrity; Republicans = lottery ticket” post of a week or so ago and I am happy to see Philip addressing it. For better or worse this issue has contributed to the Democrats losing the South (and thus the nation) more than any other issue over the last decade. The Democrats could turn it around in a moment without losing their core base, if they only could find the will to do so.
As for Dean, where did his talking point on guns go? They were at http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?pagename=policy_statement_civilrights last week as one of the points. Not anymore. I would love to know the reasoning behind that change. As far as I am concerned, Dean still is (or was?) not pro-gun rights enough. Dean was still in favor of the so-called “assault weapons” ban from Clinton’s first term (yes, the one he passsed right before he lost both houses of Congress in the next election.). This law passed by only a few votes in both houses while Clinton was president and the Democrats held both houses. It clearly did not have the wide appeal that liberal Democrats now pretend that it did as they try (in vain) to entend it when it expires next year under total Republican control. Dean is the best Democrat as far as gun rights go presently, but he is still a poor compromise compared to just about any Republican. Dean is not going to help the Democrats recapture previous Democratic voters who fled the party. Maybe they will learn in time for 2008.
For myself, I would tend to agree with the statement “let’s discuss a real issue.” However, all of us looking down through the glass floor have our own ideas about what’s important to “those people” but in reality I’ll bet we have no clue. I’m as ignorant about blue collor America as the next guy, but I will say this…I am born and raised in the Northeast, but I’m married to a Texan (sounds like a country song!) Anyway – anyone who says that gun control is not a relevant or important issue to “the masses” hasn’t spent alot of time in the deep south or heartland of this country. I think Philip is right, most Americans are corporate slaves and in that environment, identiy comes from the ability to express your personal freedom. Believe me, gun ownership gets more to the heart of personal freedom than any other issue and it’s VERY important to many, many people.
I think it’s interesting that the ability to legally defend oneself with a gun is deemed important only to ‘blue collar workers’, ‘corporate slaves’, and the like. This is just the sort of categorizing and demonization used to marginalize the opinions of those of us who are pro-gun.
On the other hand, I’m surprised that some demographics that tend to vote democrat (notably women and African-americans) don’t support personal gun ownership more than they do. After all, it is the weakest and most disadvantaged of society that are most susceptible to violence, and who have strongest history of subjugation to a majority who aren’t interested in their welfare at all (think the jewish experience in western Europe before and during world war two). Logically, it’s these people who would be most committed to preserving their rights to defend themselves… yet this isn’t how it works out. I suspect this is partially due to emotional arguments against guns (think of the children!), and partially due to the lower-income experience of crime-ravaged communities as a result of gangs, the ever-failing drug war, and the ever-succeeding demand for drugs and easy-come acquisition of goods.
The interesting thing is that whenever you look at the crime statistics in western cultures that have tightly restricted private gun ownership, violent and property crime goes up, a lot. Areas where gun ownership rights are least restricted has little crime. Once the horse is out of the barn, so to speak, closing the barn doors just makes it easier for the criminals (who are already armed) to kick the ass of the farmer who’s now bereft of horse. If you were a criminal, wouldn’t you want gun control laws to be passed? Less resistance on the part of your prospective victims!
Wow, the horse-barn-farmer metaphor was the worst evar.
No one out side the military needs any kind of fully automatic weapon. And, limiting access with waiting periods and registrations is not a bad thing. How many people really “need it this afternoon” (except for use on that angry neighbor)? I think a better way to address the issue is to dramatically increase the penalties for “misbehaving”. How many kids do you think would show up for “show and tell” with a pistol if the owner permanently lost the ability to legally own any type of gun. As for the criminals they will get them and use them until the risk out weigh their perceived benefit. Double or triple the basic sentence if a gun is used.
I think your analysis of Johnny Paycheck is off by a little.
webwench —
re: women and blacks not being gun nuts — my feeling is they don’t think guns can save them from the big bad boogeyman trying to take away their “welfare” is because 1) the “majority” isn’t knocking on their doors waiting to take them to concentration camps as you suggest with your example 2) they understand that having a gun doesn’t make you safer from anything, notwithstanding your citation of a nonexistant crime study.
on the other hand, this is a free country and if the majority thinks its ok to have guns, so be it. i used to be pretty anti-gun but it really isn’t a huge issue that will change anything in a practical way. you can outlaw guns all you want but people will still get them. it is, however, pretty big for the gun nuts and i say let them keep their guns.
Al — Nice troll, but I didn’t suggest the majority are knocking on the doors of women and African-Americans to take them off to concentration camps, as you well know. And the ‘nonexistent crime study’ was cute and all, but serves only to highlight your desperation to avoid debating on the actual issues at all costs. Emotions are so much easier to argue from, because emotions require no research at all.
Uh… webwench, I’d really like to see a single study that claims that, say, Europe (where gun ownership is restricted) has a much higher rate of violent crime than the U.S.
Webwench tells us : –
> The interesting thing is that whenever you look at the crime statistics in western cultures that have tightly restricted private gun ownership, violent and property crime goes up, a lot. Areas where gun ownership rights are least restricted has little crime <
I assume this is the John Lott “More Guns Less Crime” meme that’s been rolling round the US for 5+ years. I believed it for a while. It’s a lie. Lott is a liar, deliberate & premeditated. A quick whizz over to http://www.prospect.org/weblog/ & look for “Lott” and/or Tim Lambert and that’ll be it. It’s not a matter of “liberal” politics, it’s Statistics 101.
Webwench tells us : –
> The interesting thing is that whenever you look at the crime statistics in western cultures that have tightly restricted private gun ownership, violent and property crime goes up, a lot. Areas where gun ownership rights are least restricted has little crime <
I assume this is the John Lott “More Guns Less Crime” meme that’s been rolling round the US for 5+ years. I believed it for a while. It’s a lie. Lott is a liar, deliberate & premeditated. A quick whizz over to http://www.prospect.org/weblog/ & look for “Lott” and/or Tim Lambert and that’ll be it. It’s not a matter of “liberal” politics, it’s Statistics 101.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-284.html
“The lay person who lacks the necessary econometric tools has no independent way of resolving the conflicting claims regarding the validity of the Lott-Mustard study and must wait for further publications and a scholarly consensus to develop on this issue, in hopes that one day we will all know the truth about what happened in the period 1977-1992 … At present then, lay persons cannot say whether shall-issue concealed-carry laws in fact deter violent crime. It is too early to tell whether Lott and Mustard’s findings will emerge intact from the intense scrutiny now being brought to bear on them or whether the critics’ position, that shall-issue licensing laws have no demonstrable effect on crime rates, will prevail.
Nonetheless, it is remarkable that while critics of concealed-carry laws argue that they will result in more deaths, more accidents, and greater mayhem, the social scientists criticizing the Lott-Mustard study are arguing only that the concealed-carry laws have no measurable or provable effect on crime–that is, neither a positive effect nor an adverse effect.”
What drugs are you on webwench? Must be good.
Guns are kind of like knives – simply a tool. No one says that butter knives should be restricted. Curved dagger switchblades are banned from most places, for a reason.
Cars are excellent weapons and no country really retricts there ownership – but their primary use isn’t killing other people. So when people say the “GUN” issue – I think it should really be called the “Weapons designed to kill people” issue, which could cover everying from nerve gas to UZIs.
Scott (way up there): Don’t assume that I have contempt for the average person merely because I use the term “rabble”. The growing disparity of wealth in the United States, in my opinion, requires that we abandon the vocabulary that was appropriate to the yeoman farmer days of the Republic. I’m not 100% sure what the right terms are. I prefer the simple “rich” but am drawn to “nobility”. For the average person I’m not sure whether “peasant” or “rabble” is more apt. For those in the ghetto whom we’ve written off (and replaced in the labor force with immigrants because it is easier than fixing their schools), perhaps we should borrow from India and use the term “untouchable”.
“liberal”, the Cato piece you reference is six years old. More data has been gathered and much learned about Lott’s research since then. See my blog for details.
Here’s an interesting quote: “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms…disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” — Thomas Jefferson (1764) — Quoting 18th Century criminologist Cesare Beccaria in On Crimes and Punishment
I don’t assume that you have contempt for the average person because you use the term “rabble”. I assume that you have contempt for the average person because you carefully and willfully created a gross cartoon version of him to fit your own personal theories about how the world works.
This entire conversation seems to be predicated on the assumption that the “average person” or “member of the rabble,” depending on your disposition, prefers a Republican in office. This assumption is certainly not obvious, and is arguably false. More people voted for Gore than Bush in the last election. This is a plain fact, even though electoral votes were in Bush’s favor for a variety of reasons.
Bush’s current approval rating is in a downward trend in the polls and was hovering around 52% last time I checked- not auspiscious. Conversations on these matters will look much different once a Democratic candidate is selected. There will be a storng Democratic candidate to stimulate debate instead of a parade of competing candidates.
Here is a question that someone could analyze concretely: what is the profile of the average person who votes Democratic vs. Republican? Philip believes for reasons hard to follow that the average person in the lower 50% of the income bracket (or rabble) prefers to vote Republican. This seems unintuitive, so it would be interesting if true. It would seem that a political scientist could answer this readily or perhaps someone knows of an analysis already done?
I would start with looking at geographic bases. The Republican base is in the middle of the country where there are relatively few rich or “noble” people by measure of income. The Democratic strongholds are on the coasts and in areas of high density. Areas of high density tend to the poorer side, and city dwellers tend to vote Democratic. This geographic bias was obvious in the last election where Bush won the heartland and Gore the coasts, but Bush won overall more states and benefitted from the bias the Electoral College creates.
I have to wonder though, with all this talk about rabble, what of the overall sophistication of the nouveau-riche…?
John Lott? Nah. I never put all my eggs into one basket, in case the basket proves unsound.
From outside the US, since US-only statistics always bring out the ‘yeah, but what about the rest of the world’ crowd:
A recent report by the Center for Defense Studies by King’s College in London, England, found that since 1997 – the year the British parliament passed a near-total ban on handgun ownership – gun crime in the UK has risen 40 percent.
From this article:
In summary, you’ll find that England is seeing its crime rise with increasing gun control; America is seeing its rate decrease with less gun control.
From the same article:
The moral of that story is that criminals keep their guns even when law-abiding people are forced to give up their guns.
As for other countries, twelve months after Australia radically tightened gun-control laws (gun owners were forced to surrender their guns), homicides are up 3.2%, assaults are up 8.6%, armed robberies are up 44%.
We have a lot of homicide, true, but we have so much less violent crime of other types that it more than balances out the statistics. When you look at all violent crimes (which includes rape, armed robbery, all types of assaults and homicide), the UK, Canada, and Australia all have the U.S. beat when it comes to violent crime. In fact, the UK is number two in the violent crime stats, behind only South Africa. Wow.
For other property crimes, the UK also has it worse than the US.
Switzerland and Israel have high gun ownership and low homicide rates; Russia, Brazil, and Mexico have low ownership or all-out bans on private guns, but extremely high homicide rates.
webwench, I corrected similar claims about crime increasese in Australia and the UK here.
Too bad you have to correct webwench’s actual claims and not just similar ones.
The problem when it comes to basing your crime statistics on victim self-reporting, as you prefer to base your conclusions on in your site, is that results from those surveys are so subjective — you’re relying not on one published definition of what constitutes a crime, but on hundreds or thousands; as many definitions as there are people represented in the survey. Self-reported victimization claims gathered this way are subject to no corroboration, no sanity checks, no level of proof whatsoever, and introduces an insane amount of skewing based on the biases or wishes of the responders. Pitfalls of this type of survey are well-known. At least with law-enforcement-gathered crime statistics, you have some assurance of consistency and sanity. I see your source data as being less reliable than the source data of the statements I quote.
webwench tells us : –
> At least with law-enforcement-gathered crime statistics, you have some assurance of consistency and sanity.
OK. What’s the law-enforcement-gathered number of prison rapes per year?
If the number is sufficient to merit the Presidential attention it’s just got, you may have a point. If not, not.
Victim surveys are the preferred statistic for a host of reasons. The proportion of self-important over-reporting hysterics and self-deprecating under-reporting stoics in a population is more likely to be uniform than a) the clerical competence of police incentivised to under and over-report certain crimes to meet inane performance targets and b) the competence, assiduity and capability of police to investigate crime where the victims are very largely the unheard.
I donno Phil. If it were the case that the rural heartland were so swayed by a personal liberty issue, why is it that Republicans seem to be winning on the abortion topic? That seems like another personal liberty that the Democrats are on the wrong side of, from a rural heartland perspective. Why is it that Democrats can’t come out of the closet on legalizing weed? Instead of grand theories of liberation psychology, attitudes about firearms probably have more to do with the prevailing social mores of a place. In the South, the firearm has a place as a hunting implement, trophy, anxiety-analgesic and more.
Isn’t gun-nuttery a vote-loser for female voters? What’s Joanne Nickeled & Dimed’s e+mpowerment fantasy Phil?
(if I may step in and be so bold in answering a question directly addressed to Philip)
“Isn’t gun-nuttery a vote-loser for female voters?” – Dave heasman
No. Of course not. If the Democrats laid off the guy issue do you really think they would lose the female vote? Or the black vote? Or the latino vote? No chance, all parties have a bigger stake than that in the Democrat party. They only have the rural, southern white male vote to gain back. The gun issue is an issue that the Democrats can stand to change direction on, unlike the abortion issue, gay rights issue, environmental issue, (and many more), etc. where they stand little to gain and much to lose from their existing voters.
Please note, that this whole discussion has been about the political ramifications of the Democrat’s plank on gun control. It has not been a discussion on why or why not a person should be allowed to have a semi-automatic knockoff of an AK47. Maybe you should be allowed to have one, maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe the 2nd admendment to the Constitution even forbids the goverment from telling you that you may not, maybe the 2nd admendment only applies the organized army and state militias. IT DOESN’T MATTER. For the purposes of this discussion what matters is the political ramifications which can at least be measured, not the morality of gun ownership, which is unknowable. I think the Democrats screw themselves with this one and I am unhappy because I would like another party that I can vote for. As of right now I have to hold my nose and vote for Patriot Act Bush again. I’d rather have a choice. Even Howard Dean does not support gun right enough to be a viable choice.
Phil –
Have you considered running for President? Sounds like you have all the answers.
Cedar
I agree, Cedar. Phil, you sound like a very arrogant, pompous “you know what” who is a know-it-all. You act like you are the righteous one and that the rest of us must not have any brains. The funny thing is, you are wrong, and it’s sad that you think you’re right.
The idea that supporting reasonable gun laws is somehow the equivalent of political suicide is totally ludicrous. I am convinced that a minority of citizens in this country actually own guns, but the gun lobby and the NRA use tactics of fear and intimidation to ensure that no reasonable gun control initiatives are even brought to the table, much less ennacted. I am not speaking of hunting rifles, but of easily purchased and concealed handguns. Many guns which are purchased for “domestic protection” end up accidentally killing and maiming children; are used to settle domestic disputes; or are stolen, ending up on the black market, or in the hands of criminals. Thousands of murders occur in this country each year as a result of handguns. If you want to see the benefits of strict gun control in a civilized, democratic society, look to Canada and Europe. If you want to see the other side of the coin, look at Afghanistan, Iraq, or any number of African countries. I just wish any politician or party had the guts to take on the gun nut lobby, and show them for what they are.