History Meets Firearms

[SecularMotion]

Barack Obama's determination to enact a gun control measure in the wake of the Connecticut shootings could transform his place in history.

Success, which is anything but assured, given the lobbies arrayed against him and the many failures of such measures, could upend more than two centuries of American tradition. It also could boost the president into the pantheon of liberal presidents, placing him beside Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson as the principal progressives in modern American history.

--snip--

Obama lacks such an overarching template, and his signature achievements -- overhauls of health care and financial services to accompany a potential victory on gun control -- would be more modest in number than those of Roosevelt (scores of alphabet-soup initiatives in just a hundred days, not to mention the Second New Deal) and Johnson (a war on poverty, housing programs, grand civil rights victories and sprawling educational enterprises).

All that is true. But with a victory on guns Obama would deserve an exalted place not because he could match those who came before him program for program or initiative for initiative but because, unlike them, he would have achieved major liberal goals that had eluded his predecessors for generations.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/01/06/history_meets_firearms_116601.html

[Kolesar]

1. Fucked framing:

But a major gun control victory for Obama -- awarded an "F" by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence after signing 2009 legislation permitting people to carry concealed weapons in national parks -- would be the first significant abrogation of American rights in our history.

[gejohnston]

3. Do you think he should have

vetoed the credit card regulation bill because of that? The "pistols in parks" was a rider on a credit card regulation I'm guessing we both supported.
http://usgovinfo.about.com/b/2009/05/20/credit-card-bill-allows-guns-in-national-parks.htm

Personally, I would like to see unrelated riders and amendments banned from any legislation.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

5. Personally, I would like to see unrelated riders and amendments banned from any legislation. Amen!

[pipoman]

2. Nonsense

gun control advocates fantasy.

[sylvi]

4. I do not consider

It also could boost the president into the pantheon of liberal presidents, placing him beside Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson as the principal progressives in modern American history.

I do not consider the forcible disarmament of a citizenry, removing their last lines of defense, absent a guarantee of protection against both criminals and tyrannical governments, to be a progressive ideal. Particularly when evidence of such a guarantee diminishes almost daily. In fact I consider it regressive in the face of history being replete with examples of those in power seeking to expand and solidify that power through the same manner of disarmament.

[crazyrayray]

6. Curious

But what would gun control do? Would it take guns from criminals? More than likely not because, criminals don't abide by laws. In a survey I viewed but am unable to post, the reason that slowed criminals from committing crimes was knowing that a citizen may have or did own a gun and was worried about being shot. I think a ban on weapons would make the criminals feel safer. I hope that is not the intent of a gun control. Remember a gun has never killed anyone, there has always been a person behind the trigger. No weapon has the ability to fire without having the trigger, or control device pulled or engaged.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

7. Thanks for your service...

...and your thoughts here. Agreed.

"Though defensive violence will always be 'a sad necessity' in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men." - St. Augustine of Hippo