Follow to Left Jab Radio to view segments here and here. It is good strategy to be up on what the opposition is saying, and how they are framing the issue. I am relatively happy Colin brings with himself all the baggage of the Brady Campaign’s past issues, because his rhetoric on the private sale issue is pretty much spot on, in my opinion. If I were arguing that position, he’s making all the same points and concessions I would be making. He gets considerably weaker when he has to pick up the Brady baggage and try to carry it.
I am also amused that even on a lefty radio show, you get a pro-gun caller when they start taking calls. The pro-gun caller was making the point that he shouldn’t have to go through a background check to get his own gun back when he turns it over to an FFL pawnbroker as collateral on a loan, mentioning that he was in favor of the background check system when it passed, marketed to the public as a way to screen felons, but that they were never honest with him, that it would make him have to undergo a background check to get back his own gun.
Our opponents like to tell us that gun owners support their agenda. I can promise you they don’t once they start to understand the details, and this is a prime example. Denying terrorists from getting guns sounds great, until they find out a buddy can no longer buy guns because his name is identical to that of someone on the list. Universal background checks sound great, until he realizes it will turn him into a felon by selling a gun to a long time friend without paying 30-50 bucks to do it through a dealer. The devil is in the details, as they say, and quite a number of gun owners are ignorant of the details, until they are forced to live with them. Why do our opponents think they have had no traction since the 90s? This is why.
“The devil is in the details, as they say”
And yet a certain someone has often said that we shouldn’t focus on the details, that we’re being too technical. We should just pass it with the all the good intents and let them sort out any issues afterwards.
The “pro-gun” caller made gun owners seem like a bunch of whiney half-wits. He was inarticulate and should have never called. Theoretically, the host was correct in stating that the caller could have been convicted of a crime in the time it took to get his gun back.
He could have called out Goddard on any number of his half truths or lies, like…
Why a ban on private sales when Cho got his weapons from a brick and mortar dealer?
Why reinstate the “AWB” when in the last ten years there has not been a surge in crime with so called “assault weapons”?
Why do guns and law abiding gun owners get the blame when the friends/family/school officials of the mentally disturbed do *nothing* about people like Cho and Loughner before things get to the point of them shooting people?
And I could go on….
I cringed when that “pro-gun” caller started talking because it was a win (with lies) for Goddard and hosts after they were done stating their positions regarding the pawn shop purchase.
If you’re gonna call up a show that has a bias against guns, has an anti-gun guest and is probably being listened to by a majority of listeners that are anti-gun or not informed on the gun issue, then you better explain your position simply and articulately.