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Where the Deuce is the Median Voter
Posts
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/143121/operation-gunwalker-if-you-do-not-think-this-is-fun-you-are-in-the-wrong-line-of-work/p1
I assume most folks here remember what you are talking about, but see how here you refer to allegations about padding statistics orignially, and now you are talking about it as a "stated goal"? Did some new evidence come to light?
If this is regarding the "nothing now" that has killed 4 people (your statement), then why are you suddenly going from saying "this is not really a party issue" to squarely blaming it on democrats. The situation, and link (which I enjoyed reading btw, well done), you provided is still not connected to any kind of Democrat Party attempt to take away your legal right to own a gun in any other way than "ZOMG this is must be a plot to take away my guns!!!!! The gubmint is coming!!!!!".
Until we have Democrats openly talking about taking away gun rights across the board, and proposing legislation to do so, screaming about your guns being taken away is a weak argument at best, and pathetic at worst. As someone pointed out: politics is a long term game. Which means nothing happens over night (especially not now), and you will have plenty of time to see any threat to your favorite right come into existence and grow into something dangerous if you pay attention. So in effect, wait until something is actually happening before you start screaming wolf.
There's alot of shit stated in the party platform. The vast majority of people don't know what's in party platforms if they aren't talked about.
It's a line who's sole effect is for one-issue gun-nuts to point to so they can vote GOP.
That's easy for you to say, because you don't care about guns. A lot of people do. If we're talking about appealing to the median voter, it matters. Because to a lot of median voters, it's a civil rights issue, just as much as DOMA or DADT. Only more so, because it affects them personally.
You can bitch about how those voters should be caged, or they don't matter anyway, or they'd never vote Democratic to begin with...but whether you believe it or not, this is an issue that turns states red. You think that "throwaway" line in the platform, along with the easy-to-dig-up positions of Candidate Obama, and the grandstanding of Democratic legislators whenever convenient, couldn't have swayed a couple thousand voters in Missouri in 2008? Or, I don't know, a couple hundred votes in Florida in 2000? Everybody who gives a shit about guns knows that's in the Democratic platform, just like anybody who gives a shit about gay rights probably knows (or has some idea) what the Republican platform has to say on the matter. If you don't know, your shooting buddy will tell you. Who told him? The NRA. Because you can bet your ass they know.
They don't talk about it? I just posted a picture of Carolyn McCarthy talking about it. They don't campaign on it? I've got Candidate Obama breaking out the "works in Cheyenne doesn't work in Chicago" line at the debates, right? Is that not the line that sits rights next to "we're gonna bring back the AWB" in the platform? And they don't try to do shit about it? You are not going to get me to believe that given the majority they needed, we'd not have seen McCarthy's legislation mentioned above introduced, and likely passed. They don't do shit about it because they don't have the votes to do anything about it, which is something a voter who cares about guns will consider when he's faced with the decision of whether to give them another one of the votes they need.
It's a "policy position" that almost exclusively exists to the only people paying attention: people who are really crazy about nonrestrictive gun rights
I know this is directed at me and that hurts me
Honestly though, I feel like the most important issue at this point lies on the economic scale of the whole graph. I think as of *right now* the median place is right of sane, and social issues won't really matter nearly as much as playing up to the whole Social Security reform / Paying for Obamacare / Paying down the deficit arguments that the right knows is resonating with the median voter right now.
I think you greatly underestimate the number of people paying attention. Outside of Boston, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle a lot of people pay attention. And not just the crazies.
It's an issue I have to think about every single time I cast a vote for a Democrat. I've actually had to consider, "am I going to give the Democrats the majority they'd need to pass a new AWB?" Luckily, at that time I was putting a new Democrat in a seat who I trusted not to vote for such a thing. Otherwise? I'd have rather seen the Republican keep the seat.
I can also tell you that I'd sooner see a Republican win than ever cast a vote for Carolyn McCarthy, Frank Lautenberg, or Dianne Feinstein. So, my "reasonableness" has limits.
Yes, they pay attention because to them (like apparently you) it's a HUGE issue. And to the other side of this particular aisle ... it's not. There's no NRA equivalent running around with huge political clout looking to limit gun rights. You are worried about a phantom.
To the point where you apparently actually considered "I'd rather the Democrats didn't get a majority".
Also, you don't seem to understand what the platform is, namely something that party faithfuls draft and then virtually no one ever reads. I don't know about the Republican stance on gay rights from the official platform, I know it from what nearly every single Republican official says, repeatedly. Republicans make it abundantly clear that homosexual Americans are and deserve to be second class citizens. Democrats vaguely discuss guns, sometimes, and half of that is Blue Dogs gushing about how awesome they are.
Not quite. People against those ideas like to read it too so they can find something to rage against.
Executive order 13581 which immediately allowed the ATF to make a requirement that the four border states now have to treat long guns similar to handguns in terms of reporting sale. Since the entire debacle is going to end up getting shot down in court for numerous reasons ill spare you the details as I am sure you can google it. Now would you like to move the goalposts some more to say "What have the Democracts actively done this month to show they are anti gun?" or admit that yes the D party has an anti gun agenda that puts off quite a few people from voting for them.
The Democrats have actively done more anti gun legislation than the republicans have done anti gay and anti abortion legislation combined. By your own argument "well I hear them talk about it" does not matter. Just what they actually manage to get enacted into law. The reason they do not talk about it is if they made a bit issue of it they risk disenfranchising a large number of their own voters. If they had the votes the legislation would be there.
Do we ignore McCarthy and 109 cosponsors of H.R.308? H.R. 591 and its cosponsors? Do we ignore President Obama meeting with the Brady Center as well as the NRA earlier this year to discuss future anti-gun legislation? I think you severely underestimate the amount of effort going into anti-gun legislation. Then again perhaps you are just not on the right newsletters. Do you know how I can get on the Democrats "Illegal shit we are doing right now to help undermine civil rights" and "Actions being taken on stated party goals that we do not want anyone to know about before it is to late because it will piss off our own base as well as rally the Republicans right before an incredibly tight election" newsletters?
How much time has to pass where only a couple members of a political party get to mention a controversial issue enshrined in party platform before a voter should assume that they have really changed their minds, and are not just avoiding the issue until they have the votes to pass said law? A week? A month? A year? 10 years? Is it ok if they only beat you sometimes?
Right now a there are a large percentage of moderate voters who have a vested interest in making damn sure the D's never get a majority in congress, the white house, and 60 seats in the senate. Silence is not going to change their mind.
Even if you do not believe the Executive order does say what I claim it says, it is the authority the ATF is using to circumvent the legislative branch of our government and enact new regulations that have already been voted against already this year. You have the president himself, this year, on record saying he is working on passing new gun control regulations. You have gun control bills dead in committee with 100+ cosponsors with D next to their names. What can you produce to show the median voter that gun control is not longer a D issue, has been dropped, and will never return as you claim that refutes all of this?
Uh, citation needed.
Even if you're talking on a state level, there not only has been a whole metric fuckton of anti-gay and anti-abortion legislation coming from the Republicans, but measuring my the scale of rights infringement the anti-gay and anti-abortion legislation is more repressive by several degrees of magnitude.
But yes, if you are an obsessive gun nut who considers the AWB to be a horrible thing, you're better off voting for the GOP. You're also not anywhere near a "median voter."
Opposing the bill to ban high-capacity magazines means you are more radical on gun control issues than Dick "Shot Some Dude In The Face With A Shotgun" Cheney.
Just thought that's worth pointing out in a discussion of "median voters".
Why don't you just link the articles yourself?
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums.
We are talking at the level Captain Carrot set, which is the Federal Level. Can you tell me any Anti gay, or anti abortion bills that have successfully been passed this year? As for the second, hate to break it to you but the "median voter" does not favor stricter gun control. Support for gun control is at an all time low, and continues to fall yearly. I mean after all, if you have any knowledge at all of firearms, or understanding of just how badly designed the AWB was it is really hard to defend.
Gun control is an agenda for uninformed voters. If the D's were smart they would drop it. Much like the far right has its god loving, and gay bashing the left has its gun grabbing. All three make about the same logical sense, but you can't convince people of things they "know". Not with facts, or a cluex4.
A) You haven't actually linked any articles for us to cherry pick or ignore
2) It's not his job to prove a negative
Do you feel the Democratic party is not either now, or at any point in the foreseeable future going to attempt to propose any new further anti-gun legislation? Bearing in mind the president has directly stated "I just want you to know that we are working on it. We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar." on the subject of gun control as of March of this year. Do you feel that McCarthy's bill currently lodged in committee with 109 congressional cosponsors is somehow an isolated incident or a mistake of some sort? Do you feel that in the 2011 party platform that lays forth their political agenda when it directly calls for more gun control that is in fact a typo of some sort, or a mistake?
Carrots position is that the Democratic party has completely abandoned gun control now and forever because he has not heard of any Democrats talking about it. Would you say that position is true and how would you prove said position is true to voters?
Again, you haven't actually linked any articles for us to cherry pick or ignore. I'm not going to spend time looking up a very specific bill, especially not after the last EO you referenced turned out to not be related at all to gun control. If you know what bill it, provide us a link
Again, not our job to prove a negative and we will not be doing your job for you. If you know of something that counters Carrots claim, link us to it.
If you cannot answer simple yes, or no questions I do not see what we have to discussion. If you would like to disprove something how about the quote from the president above. You can start there. You can also Disprove McCarthy has a gun control bill in committee (HR 308) or that the current democratic platform does not list reinstating the assault weapons ban. http://www.democrats.org/about/party_platform Page 50, halfway down.
Your turn.
You do realize gay marriage is banned at the constitutional level in a majority of states, right? That's a pretty significant amount of anti-gay legislation. There have also been a HUGE number of anti-abortion laws passed in the states since the 2010 election. Several states have done very, very clever (evil, but clever) things like using arbitrary size regulations to essentially ban abortion. A judge did overturn the version of that the Kansas legislature passed. Plenty of other states, like Texas, tried to force invasive medical procedures before an abortion could be performed. Some of those have also been struck down, for now. You can point to a few cases of Democratic legislatures actually passing bills on gun rights, but very few, mostly at the municipal level. When the Democrats had the House, 59 Senate seats, and the White House did you see any actual action on this issue? No. When the GOP got control of state houses did they move to remove union rights, restrict access to abortion, and fuck over the gays? Yep. (North Carolina's got it on the ballot I think this November, possibly next November)
Elected Democrats are not interested in re-fighting the gun battle. I don't think Pelosi/Reid even brought anything to the floor. Elected Republicans are VERY interested in working to restrict abortion rights and gay rights. See also the DADT vote, who says what about the prospects of a DOMA vote, the New York gay marriage vote (obviously with a couple asshole Democrats and heroic Republicans, but that was a mostly party line vote, with Democrats siding with gays, etc. You're just wrong about this, because this is your major issue and you need someone to castigate even though you've already won. There are no, and will be no, meaningful restrictions on gun rights right now or in the intermediate future. The end.
There are currently VERY meaningful restrictions on the right to a legal medical procedure and for gay Americans to enjoy the full rights and privileges of their straight colleagues. And an entire political party who would like to further restrict the availability of abortion and curtail the hard won rights gay Americans have achieved.
EDIT: Alternately, if gun control were a big issue in Democratic politics, you would expect we would have seen a lot about it during the Democratic primary in 2008. It would have been a major issue the candidates had to weigh in on and were asked about in every debate. Kind of like gay rights and abortion rights are in the Republican primary right now. And yet, no one ever brought it up to appeal to the massive Democratic gun control voter base you seem to think there is. I wonder why no one tried to win those votes?
Notice how I'm using links here? It helps to actually do this when trying to make point instead of referencing a quote you made in the middle of a previous post that's not separated out of the paragraph or using quote tags.
So, Obama dropped into a meeting and made a comment to this Brady fellow. Thats it. No press conference, no buying airtime to tell the public about how he wants to reinstate the AWB. He may want to, but it's certainly not even close to the same level as the anti-abortion or anti-gay legislation would compared it to.
Again, you wanna debate something like that, you actually have to link it. If it's important enough to your point, it's important enough for you to find a link to it.
Also, I don't think any kind of gun control legislation has actually made it to a floor vote while the dems have been running things, which run directly counter to your idea that it's a Big Deal for Dems
That's from 2008. I can't even find a direct link to it on the Democratic Party website. Googling it brings it up of course, but the only thing I see in there is about the AWB, which Obama talked about back in 2009; basically it's not currently worth pursuing.
So yes, while it is in the "current" party platform (that no one can easily find on the website), I feel that based on the actions of the party over the last 3 year since it was written, it has not been a major issue for the party. If it had been on the same level as the anti-aboration/gay legislation, as you claim, I'm sure we would have seen/heard something about it during the time when the dems had more control of the houses of Congress
Hey, you goose. Notice how I left all of your post intact up there? How about not cutting out half of my fucking posts next time you quote me. The new forum software makes this hella easy compared to the old vbulletin and there really is no excuse.
Unless you goal was to make yourself look like a goose. In which case, bravo
I gave you the Hr number, what exactly more do you need? So your position is that as long as the dems do not actually manage to bring a bill to the floor from committee they remain a pro gun organization?
That is their current party platform, they have not issued any updates or retractions.
We are not arguing that it is a major issue. Nobody is saying that right now the democrats are pushing hard for anti-gun legislation. The position that you have chosen to defend is that the Dems have completely dropped anti-gun legislation from their platform, reversed course, and are now a pro gun organization. This is communicated to their voters via their sort of not talking about gun legislation, except when they do.
I tend to cut anything I'm not responding to. Helps on clarity and legibility. Now if you would like you can answer the many yes or no questions i asked you before. Feel free to explain your answers if you feel a simple yes or no answer is insufficient.
All of that is at the state level. Nor do I disagree with you. However Carrots position is that My argument is in direct regards to that. In order to prove me wrong you would need to produce one Republican sponsored bill that made it all the way into law directed against gays. It has not happened. Carrots argument is flawed in the same way mine is. Currently our government is so divided that even passing popular measures is a pain in the ass. Trying to pass something unpopular is impossible. The claim is that since the Dems have stopped talking about it, sort of, that they are no longer anti-gun. While the Republicans who continue to talk about being anti gay are obviously still anti gay because they still talk about it. Despite legislation on the issue currently being impossible.
We are not in disagreement. Once again i completely agree with you. The position I am fighting against is the claim that Dem's have completely given up on the issue. It is not politically viable right now, and I cannot forsee it being viable in the intermediate future. However after the 2012 elections who knows what the political landscape will look like. We are not arguing that the Dems have dropped the issue for now, everyone agrees on that. The problem is some people seem to think for now is forever and that people who feel strongly about the ownership of firearms should feel comfortable giving them enough control of our government to enact gun control because apparently they wont and we should trust that solely on the basis they are not talking about it right now.
Because even among Dem's it is a niche issue. They do not bring it up because it is far more likely to lose them votes, than win it.
*As a personal note I am pro-gay marriage and pro-choice. Any above statements should not be viewed as favorable toward the Republicans continued support of gay bashing or telling women what to do with their bodies.
I think Mcdermott did a wonderful job explaining why centrist pro-gun voters have a hard time trusting the Democratic party to not enact future anti-gun legislation. Perhaps you could explain why they should feel comfortable now in voting Democrat despite the above examples indicating it remains part of their long term agenda. You cannot expect any voter to believe a platform of "dont worry, we do not have enough votes currently to violate your civil liberties, so vote for us so that we can have enough votes to do it!"
I'm trying to figure out if voting for ANY party / individual based upon only one issue is silly goosery.
For example, voting for democrats only because republicans want to overturn Roe V. Wade. Because I've heard many people say they voted for Democrats because of the issues with Roe and supreme court justices.
This is generally the extent of the pro-gun argument, though, right? Bring up some ridiculous and obvious conceit and spin it like it's a repeal of the Second Amendment?
"First they limit our use of fully automatic truck-mounted laser-sighted .50 cals with irradiated rounds and banana clips by keeping us from leaving them unattended near elementary schools, next thing you know they're taking away our hunting rifles! It's a slippery slope!"
I actually support gun rights and concealed-carry laws, but I'm not going to pretend the typically-Democratic arguments for limiting 2nd Amendment rights are in some way on the same level as the irrational and unsupportable anti-gay/anti-abortion legislation supported by the right.
I'm still trying to remember the police state that apparently existed from 1994 to 2004. In fact, I'm trying to think of a case where a person we would want owning guns was inconvenienced in the very slightest due to the awd.
Well, some people will bring up Waco and Ruby Ridge.
Those people are morons.
In 2000, Alabama had a ballot initiative removing the law against interracial marriage from the Alabama Constitution. 545,933 voters(40% of voters) voted against it, estimated at approximately 50% of whites. Essentially the same thing happened in 1998 in South Carolina.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+