Can somone please explain to me, what in the world is happening here?

[geckosfeet]

Last edited Thu Apr 25, 2013, 12:03 AM - Edit history (1)

Mixed Reactions to Senate Gun Vote
Gun Control: Key Data Points from Pew Research

Gun Rights vs. Gun Control

Being a simple "gun nut and/or gun cultist and/or delicate flower and/or poorly endowed and/or gun fetishist and/or nutjob with a gun and/or fill in the blank with your favorite term of endearment," and having little understanding of all things math, I find all the lines and numbers somewhat confusing.












Just kidding. I have a graduate degree in engineering and I can see very well what is going on.

[bluedigger]

1. It's a mystery.

[pipoman]

7. Three million dollars?

Is that what that says? They gave $3 million and bought the entire congress and senate? Boy, those guys sure know how to stretch their dollars..Damn, I thought all this time these guys were spending a billion or more based on the claims of how deeply they had corrupted government..

[Hoyt]

31. When NRA Board stooge Norquist walks in, he's handing out NRA bribes, as well

as bribes from other right wing "causes."

[pipoman]

32. Hmmm..

what about these bribes? It only took the NRA $3 million to beat his...millions..?

Mr. Bloomberg started his own “super PAC,” Independence USA. Since mid-October, it had funneled $9.3 million into seven races for the United States Senate, the House of Representatives and statewide offices.

snip

Apart from Independence USA’s contributions, Mr. Bloomberg gave $2.5 million personally to dozens of other candidates for state legislatures (including New York Republican state senators who supported last year’s same-sex marriage bill), state referendums supporting same-sex marriage and even local school board races in New Orleans, Indianapolis and Oakland.

snip

“I’ve tried to support those candidates who support the things — try to make America better in the way that I think it should be,” Mr. Bloomberg said Wednesday. “Get guns out of the hands of criminals, improve public education. We supported through the PAC I think all four of the ballot initiatives on gay marriage. And all four of them passed.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/09/nyregion/bloombergs-campaign-contributions-yield-mixed-results.html?_r=0

[geckosfeet]

14. Sooo,,, the NRA lobby is buying public opinion?

[hootinholler]

41. Apparently.

Seems legit.

[MrScorpio]

2. We've got too many freaking guns in circulation in this country

Much of these sales are driven by abject fear.

That's paranoia in them charts.

[customerserviceguy]

23. The convergence is coincident

with the Obama administration. I'm sure there were millions out in the red states who simply thought that electing (and re-electing) him simply wasn't possible. Clearly, they've had to change their expectations, and attitudes about guns were bound to change as part of that.

[Common Sense Party]

33. Yes, you're absolutely right. There are far too many criminals, gang members, robbers, drug dealers,

punks and thugs walking around with illegal weapons. Let's do something about THAT, and then the allegedly paranoia-driven sales will drop like a rock.

[MrScorpio]

36. Yeah…

Riiiight.

[Common Sense Party]

37. Yeah. Right. I'm glad you agree.

Or, we can keep trying to limit the law-abiding gun owners and essentially do nothing to the supply of criminal-owned guns. Yeah, that'll probably work.

[MrScorpio]

40. Actually, I don't agree with you...

But this is a free country, you know?

So, go for it, baby.

[BootinUp]

3. The country is pretty much split on a number of issues

including gun control. Basically what has happened is that there is less and less intelligent public debating on issues like this one. The result is that people are confused, mislead by the politicians.

[Buzz Clik]

4. "I have a graduate degree in engineering"

My, my.

Don't I know you?

[geckosfeet]

18. I don't know. Do you?

[Buzz Clik]

21. Heh. Yeah.

By the, only geckos have geckosfeet, not poison dart frogs. Or is that a neon mole? I'm so bad at wildlife biology, particulary cave dwellers.

[geckosfeet]

27. Yes. You are bad.

[SunSeeker]

5. What happened is that in 2007 SCOTUS declared guns an individual Constitutional right.

That is when you see all the trend lines in those graph make a sharp jump away from gun control. Politicians quickly approved of that 5-4 horrendous 2007 Heller decision excreted out of the conservative majority's hind-side, adding to the propaganda that was already flooding the electorate that the 2nd Amendment protects an important individual right to have a gun...and voila, you have those graphs. It doesn't take an engineer to see that.

[geckosfeet]

11. Possibly. I know that is when I had a major shift and became more active in rkba.

Except I shifted towards the ownership side.

Heller is an infringement.

[pipoman]

17. Even so..

both opinions declared the right individual..they disagreed mostly on how much regulation is too much.

[SunSeeker]

19. What other opinion are you talking about? nt

[pipoman]

20. The majority opinion and the dissenting opinion in Heller..

all of the justices agreed on the question of individual vs. collective right..

[SunSeeker]

39. Wrong. Both the Stevens and Breyer dissents eviscerated Scalia's interpretation.

There wasn't just one dissent; there were two. But both the Stevens and Breyer dissents pointed out how the text and history of the 2nd Amendment, as well as 200 years of Court precedent, make clear that the 2nd Amendment protects militia-related, not individual self-defense related, interests.

[former9thward]

44. Untrue.

From Beyer's dissent: The Second Amendment says that: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” In interpreting and applying this Amendment, I take as a starting point the following four propositions, based on our precedent and today’s opinions, to which I believe the entire Court subscribes:

(1)?The Amendment protects an “individual” right—i.e., one that is separately possessed, and may be separately enforced, by each person on whom it is conferred. See, e.g., ante, at 22 (opinion of the Court); ante, at 1 (Stevens, J., dissenting).
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZD1.html

[SunSeeker]

45. Wrong. The individual right Breyer was referencing was joining MILITIAS.

As Breyer explained:

The question presented by this case is not whether the Second Amendment protects a "collective right" or an "individual right." Surely it protects a right that can be enforced by individuals. But a conclusion that the Second Amendment protects an individual right does not tell us anything about the scope of that right.

Guns are used to hunt, for self-defense, to commit crimes, for sporting activities, and to perform military duties. The Second Amendment plainly does not protect the right to use a gun to rob a bank; it is equally clear that it does encompass the right to use weapons for certain military purposes. Whether it also protects the right to possess and use guns for nonmilitary purposes like hunting and personal self-defense is the question presented by this case. The text of the Amendment, its history, and our decision in United States v. Miller[/i], 307 U.S. 174, 59 S. Ct. 816, 83 L. Ed. 1206, 1939-1 C.B. 373 (1939), provide a clear answer to that question.

The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia. It was a response to concerns raised during the ratification of the Constitution that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the several States. Neither the text of the Amendment nor the arguments advanced by its proponents evidenced the slightest interest in limiting any legislature's authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms. Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.

District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 636-637 (2008) [bold added, italics in original]


Scalia chose to ignore as surplussage the preamble to the 2nd Amendment that explicitly referenced militias. Breyer did not mince words about that sham:

Without identifying any language in the text that even mentions civilian uses of firearms, the Court proceeds to "find" its preferred reading in what is at best an ambiguous text, and then concludes that its reading is not foreclosed by the preamble. Perhaps the Court's approach to the text is acceptable advocacy, but it is surely an unusual approach for judges to follow.

District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 643-644 (2008)

[DJ13]

6. Much of it is probably driven by an increasing distrust of government

Lets face it, jobs declined, wages stagnated, and the "change" many voted for is still not happening, so they may have some reason to distrust the government.

When (if?) things start to really improve the support for gun rights will decline.

[JaneyVee]

8. What's happening here is those were taken in April 2012, before Sandy Hook, Aurora, & Gabby Giffords

[geckosfeet]

10. check the last link....

The uptick is there, barely.

On edit: wasn't Giffords shot in early 2011?

[JaneyVee]

13. OK, that's from mid march. Also, many of the laws that aren't in place people think are.

Like universal BG checks. Many people believe this is already law across the board. This is basically 50/50, which is basically the current state of affairs in the US. We are 2 separate countries at this present time.

[geckosfeet]

16. Depends on the states. MA has bg checks for all store purchases. And all sales

must be recorded with the state.

The issue is really building out the infrastructure. It isn't so much the politics. In general people are for bg checks - even most gun owners. 80% of the population support bg checks.

The dirty little secret is money. Congress would have to fund a massive infrastructure build to make universal bg checks feasible. To do that they would have to raise revenue (read that as raise taxes) or push an unfunded federal mandate - not sure how in the world that would work.

Anyway, point is they use the NRA and the pro gun lobby etc. as the bogey man. OK - forget that - it's simply that they don't want to/can't fund it.

[XRubicon]

24. Fail... nt

[geckosfeet]

25. burp nt

[Skip Intro]

9. People woke up.

Saw through the show.

[Alva Goldbook]

12. I saw this poll a few weeks ago.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57576248/poll-support-for-stricter-gun-control-wanes/

[SunSeeker]

15. And I saw this poll today.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/24/kelly-ayottes-approval_n_3147834.html

[XRubicon]

22. I have a graduate degree in engineering too and I see your data is a year old.

Nothing of note happened in the last year right?

On Friday, July 20, 2012, a mass shooting occurred inside of a Century movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, during a midnight screening of the film The Dark Knight Rises.

On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza, 20, fatally shot twenty children and six adult staff members in a mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School

[geckosfeet]

26. Sigh. fresher data in the last link. Read it.

Not "my" data. It's from the Pew Research center.

Congrats on being an engineer too.

[ecstatic]

28. The problem is, those lines don't take into account that people can be for both

gun ownership and gun control. Forcing people to choose which one is more important forces those who are not interested in a complete ban to choose "protecting gun rights." Also, the phrase "gun control" is very vague so the answers will be all over the place/misleading.

[RobertEarl]

29. September 11, 2001 happened

After 9/11 people saw that the government couldn't be depended upon to protect us like we all thought it should.

[abelenkpe]

30. Look at these fancy charts

To justify gun nuttery and fear of government.


Daily body count means nothing. Let's do nothing.


This post would be super popular on free republic.

[Common Sense Party]

34. This is your problem. To you, gun ownership = gun nuttery.

With that kind of attitude, you'll never get background checks passed.

Most of us gun owners would actually like to see that happen.

But, for some strange reason, we bristle when we are called gun nuts, gun humpers, gun fellaters, etc., ad nauseum.

Whatever you are doing ISN'T WORKING.

Whenever you finally figure that out, then some positive steps will occur.

[The Straight Story]

38. Are you talking about the daily body count from our wars and policies?

Oh....that's right. We trust bush and others in power more than your fellow posters.

Because they have that magical phrase 'I work for the government' attached to them.

I don't own a gun. But if I worked for the government I bet you that you would suddenly think I was the most trustworthy person in the world to own one - while 300 million others in this country you would be suspicious of just because they couldn't utter that phrase.

Less than 1% of gun owners use them in a negative way, compare that to the percent of people in government who misuse guns...but for some reason you trust them more with guns.

How does that work?

[geckosfeet]

43. I never visit that site. Do you?

On edit: and I am doing something.

[grahamhgreen]

35. People are scared of things like the end of Habeus Corpus, et al.. Also, violence is the govt answer

to most our issues.

Society is breaking down.

[geckosfeet]

42. I don't buy that completely. Society is always in continual state of renewal.

Some things die. Some things grow new.

We live in a time of amazing technology, health care advances, opulence and wealth. Granted there is great deal of inequality but by definition we live in an advanced society.

The sad truth of it is though, that the military gets all the whiz bang technology first. And we are always on button push away from global catastrophe.