The NRA paradise is here.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The biggest mistake the gun control lobby ever made was pushing for generally ineffective and not much more than symbolic legislation like the Brady Bill and Assault Weapons Ban or defending things like the DC handgun ban. This allowed the NRA to basically win the debate by using this as proof gun control doesn't work. The fact that there has been virtually no effect whatsoever on gun crime before and after the expiration of the AWB doesn't necessarily prove that a better worded less loophole filled law wouldn't have an effect on reducing gun crime, but because of that fact you now have plenty of people believing things like "Well I don't really like guns but I don't see the point in tightening the laws against them because doing so doesn't work in reducing crime." Similarly the reasons why DC couldn't simply couldn't ban handguns and expect it to work are quite obvious, but the fact that the gun control lobby pushed so hard against repeal of that and bothered to fight the court challenge kind of discredited them in the eyes of the swing voter, including many people who don't ever want to buy a handgun but would see banning the sale of them in their own state to be pretty silly.

Now I don't think anecdotes like this either are a good argument for gun control, but the fact that the gun control lobby has to resort to them instead of stats is telling. They can't defend the failure of basically every gun control law in the last two decades or that they've already cried wolf too many times (I remember Brady/Million Mom press releases before the expiration of the AWB about how if it was allowed to expire the streets would flow with blood and all that, doomsaying that was about as accurate as the Y2K doomsaying.) One could make a case that had more to do with them being bad laws, rather than all gun control laws being bad laws, but like it or not it's the reason the NRA won the debate and why the public isn't going to accept "more gun laws = less crime".

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The biggest mistake the gun control lobby ever made was pushing for generally ineffective and not much more than symbolic legislation like the Brady Bill and Assault Weapons Ban or defending things like the DC handgun ban. This allowed the NRA to basically win the debate by using this as proof gun control doesn't work. The fact that there has been virtually no effect whatsoever on gun crime before and after the expiration of the AWB doesn't necessarily prove that a better worded less loophole filled law wouldn't have an effect on reducing gun crime, but because of that fact you now have plenty of people believing things like "Well I don't really like guns but I don't see the point in tightening the laws against them because doing so doesn't work in reducing crime." Similarly the reasons why DC couldn't simply couldn't ban handguns and expect it to work are quite obvious, but the fact that the gun control lobby pushed so hard against repeal of that and bothered to fight the court challenge kind of discredited them in the eyes of the swing voter, including many people who don't ever want to buy a handgun but would see banning the sale of them in their own state to be pretty silly.

Now I don't think anecdotes like this either are a good argument for gun control, but the fact that the gun control lobby has to resort to them instead of stats is telling. They can't defend the failure of basically every gun control law in the last two decades or that they've already cried wolf too many times (I remember Brady/Million Mom press releases before the expiration of the AWB about how if it was allowed to expire the streets would flow with blood and all that, doomsaying that was about as accurate as the Y2K doomsaying.) One could make a case that had more to do with them being bad laws, rather than all gun control laws being bad laws, but like it or not it's the reason the NRA won the debate and why the public isn't going to accept "more gun laws = less crime".

Well do you think that there could be gun laws that are designed better, and if so, how?

In the US? Probably not. The gun culture I find pretty ridiculous, but it can't be legislated out of existence. It'd be just as much a failure as the War on Drugs.

In any case, as I've said before, my point is posting these things is more because I dislike the arguments that the anti-gun control people come up when these stories are brought up than to push for any specific gun laws. Their arguments are faulty and radical. I'm not necessarily pushing for any particular law. I mostly just disagree with the notion that more people walking around with handguns = a safer, better society. I'd be fine simply with repeal of the Stand Your Ground laws (which aren't even about the right to keep and bear arms), the freezing of the status quo in terms of actual gun laws, and the reopening of federal funding for gun studies.

See if the gun control lobby actually pushed for things like that, rather thing things like reinstating the AWB, they might have more success.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Actually if you look at Gallup's polling on this over time, something like a national handgun ban, assuming it could survive the courts, would've actually been plausible in the past, it had majority support in that supposed conservative dream era of the 50s and was around 50/50 as recently as the mid-70s, at the very least pre-Brady Bill they could've at least greatly tightened the standards for who is allowed to buy handguns (think of what Tender said you have to pass in Austria to get one) or at least staved the trend of states allowing concealed carry (which is actually a rather recent phenomena). I'm not saying such things would in fact reduce gun crime, but they aren't as obviously discredited as what was tried in the 90s.

But because of the failure of what was attempted, you now have to deal with a playing field where even suggesting banning private ownership of handguns is considered as fringe as abolishing public schools and a majority of Democrats in most state legislatures will vote for concealed carry laws.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

My other big issue with the gun control lobby and why I can't take them seriously is they don't seem to understand what they are proposing restricting. Take Carolyn McCarthy's "a shoulder thing that goes up" comment. It's amusing at first, but when you consider that she was sponsoring a bill to ban what she described as that, and then when you think about all the Congressmen talking about SOPA admitting they didn't really know what was in the bill but backed in anyway, and you can see why this is not a desirable or a minor thing.

For another example note that California has laws banning the sale of at least two models of firearms that do not exist. Now such bureaucratic errors are actually not uncommon (my favorite example being how the UN Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia indicted a fictitious character.), but it's clear such bills weren't being thought out and it was just a knee jerk "We hate guns!" sort of thing. Like we all know people proposing stronger restrictions on auto emissions and what not aren't as ignorant about cars. So the gun control lobby reduced themselves to a joke, and that's why I can't have much sympathy.