Just one in four younger Americans believe the nation is headed in the right direction, and a majority of so-called Millennials disapprove of President Obama’s gun control initiatives, according to a new Harvard University poll …
…Â The pollsters said that reflected “disapproval with President Obama’s proposals more than with legislative results in Congress.”
Millennials don’t seem to have the same appetite for fighting culture wars that Baby Boomers do, and that’s could become an issue for both parties.
I agree. As a college student, I don’t see alot of support amongst my peers for gun control. I am glad for that.
There is a PBS poll on what Congress should do about gun laws at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know…on-guns/16826/
When I voted earlier today, out of 16K+ responses, 94% were saying…leave the guns laws as they are.
I doubt Obama and Democrats picked this topic to push for all the people calling for it. Something else motivates them.
Now:
Leave federal gun laws as they are (94%, 22,016 Votes)
:-)
Perhaps some insight might be gleaned from “Kids React To FPS RUSSIA.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZIQKWzA-zE
Remember, a lot of these kids grew up in the post 9/11 world being told that everything was a security risk and the cops were constantly chasing them from the parks for the felonious crime of skateboarding. These kids are much more libertarian then they are anything else.
Actual pro-gun Millenial folks will likely be as motivated as their older compatriots, it’s the issue and the activity not the age: the losers will be the already apathetic anti-gun rights side, they can barely muster double digits when they call out the whole team including the knee-jerk leftys on every issue.
It’s a good start, but we need to make sure we’re bringing them into the community, not just that they tolerate us. We need to get them onboard to poison the well for the next generation of gun controllers.
In a prior thread, a commenter (my apologies, I don’t recall the name the one used) mentioned being from Connecticut, and reported that there were several pro-gun letters to the editor of the paper he owned (if memory serves) in the week after Dannel Malloy signed the new CT infringements.
To that, I can add the following: I have first-hand knowledge that the same university at which Michael Bellisles landed as an adjunct is also in possession of an active and well-run student riflery and marksmanship club. :-)
And yet they mostly voted for Obama and other Democrats
They’ll learn. They *can* learn.
Once again it seems necessary to remind people that Obama didn’t win so much as the Republicans forfeited the election. Bush couldn’t complete a sentence and barely individual words, he walked into closed doors and waited for somebody to rescue him, he read out of an upside down book while the nation was under attack “because he didn’t want to scare the kiddies”, he lied about Iraq so he could abandon Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, he destroyed the federal budget … Bush was a disaster.
And his putative successor? A cranky old fart who appeared as if he might keel over at any moment, with his backup a dingbat whose only expertise was a half-finished term as small town mayor, and who couldn’t even tell Katy Couric what papers or magazines she read, or even make up a quick answer.
Contrast that with Obama, who could speak complete sentences even if he did like to use teleprompters, who voted against raising the debt ceiling, who said he would end the wars, who said he would end raids on medical marijuana, who said will sorts of anti-fascist things. He didn’t have much more experience than Palin, but at least he didn’t shrink from simple answers, and no one knew yet that he would break just about every campaign promise.
Of course Obama won. I think the fact that he only won by, what, 10 points?, shows what a landslide it was for the first black candidate.
To whine now about all the people who voted for Obama, or against McCain aka Bush III, is to forget what that election was really about — turning out the previous incompetent rascal and his sorry anointed successor. If it was a mandate for anything Obama, it was for all the campaign pledges he broke, and nothing else.
Not to say you are entirely wrong, but Bush never read a book upside down. Even snopes admits it: http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/bushbook.asp
so I guess u regret voting for Obama Felix?
No more than you regret spelling “you” out in full and using that comma.
Obama can READ complete sentences from a teleprompter. Big Deal.
When he’s unscripted he’s almost as stupid as Biden. Almost.
And speaking of Biden, I’ve never seen Anyone in politics that was a bigger buffoon than him. Joe is the one and only reason people have to want to Barry to stay in office, as the VP will then be President. We can only hope that if anything were to happen to Barry that Joe was also somehow removed from office.
Oh, please.
I’m no fan of Bush’s policies, but the other stuff just doesn’t wash. When someone’s every waking moment is being recorded by people who hate your guts and are going to make a highlight film of every misstep, Mikhail Baryshnikov can be made to look like Moe Howard.
Obviously this plays well to the credulous consumers of the media product, however. (The cretin above has obviously been successfully marketed to, for instance.)
So? Neither Obama’s first nor second elections had any real emphasis on gun control. There were plenty of issues that people considered to be more important and more pressing at the time than guns, so that’s what they voted on.
I wonder how gun control and optimism in gov’t have polled within this age group over time.
Have young people ALWAYS been opposed to gun control? Or is this unique to Millennials?
Moreover reading into the poll details 49% of millennials want gun laws made more strict (only five points less than the total population), non-whites/non-hispanics overwhelmingly dislike the NRA, and on other issues the poll found that Conservative vs. Liberal millennial viewpoints were hardening and moving to the far left and right. Also remember that on the President’s approval numbers, a significant percentage of the “disapprove” folks are actually OWS types to the left of the president who are upset he isn’t being hewing further to the left.
If anything I think this poll shows the “two Americas.” Young people in blue states — especially if they are Black or Asian, based on this poll — hate gun rights and have no frame of reference to place it in other than murder and old white fudds, because those states are killing their shooting cultures and have been for a long time. Young conservatives are solidifying opposition to the current Democrat agenda on many fronts.
I know this is true for me. I am on the edge between Gen Y and the Millenial generation and a few years ago considered myself a moderate. I started to tack libertarian. Over the last four years I have moved towards the libertarian wing of the GOP, although I still consider myself non-partisan. The Democrats just have nothing to offer me: their vision for society is apparently Detroit or Chicago, where everyone has equal section 8 housing and food stamps amid a decaying infrastructure and craptastic economy with zero Constitutional rights. I have no illusions about the GOP but it will be hard to pull the lever even for a moderate Blue Dog like Sen Begich.
Likewise I know my peers who remained in blue states are generally tacking further to the left and think that Republicans literally delight in murdering babies.
There is not much common ground, and social media/the internet allows everyone to live in an echo chamber.
“Likewise I know my peers who remained in blue states are generally tacking further to the left and think that Republicans literally delight in murdering babies.”
Gee, that’s actually quite an odd choice of words. Too bad they must not read the news or anything. It’s generally not those on the right who are murdering babies quite like Obama’s pals at PP have managed to do upwards of 50 Million or so.
See the next paragraph regarding Echo Chambers…
There are some on the left blaming the whole Gosnell thing on evil Republicans. Mother Jones implied that it was Bush’s fault because federal regulatory agencies missed the crimes, and that the real story was home poor disadvantaged ethnic minorities were being abused by The Man. Large numbers of people believe this viewpoint and younger people are more likely to get their news from online outlets like Mother Jones (or The Blaze).
Wow, so some are blaming Bush for Gosnell’s atrocities? That takes a special kind of stupid.
Amen. Obama refused to vote for a ‘born-alive’ protection law while a state legislator, because he wanted perfectly preserved constitutional protection for murdering-babies (er, abortion). Abortion was made-up as a constitutional right, was regulated in all 50 states, and did not exist as a ‘right’ for 200 years. The RKBA is an explicit constitutional right, and has been ratified by every state entering the union, but Obama pretends like it’s as made-up as abortion.
“Obama didn’t win so much as the Republicans forfeited the election.”
If Millennials lean pro-gun because they tend toward anything that resembles what “libertarian” used to mean, they likely felt they had more to dislike from the Republicans than from the Democrats — and the RKBA is only one issue, for which Romney did not have huge credibility. Romney refused to distance himself from positions on social conservative issues that Millennials for the most part find abhorrent, or from groups that promote those issues. For Millennials, who to support was dictated by going down a checklist of issues and seeing who was more on their side with more issues. (Though of course, ignoring minor party offerings.)
Some confusion may enter this discussion because of the perverted definition of “libertarian” that has evolved. If Millennials are considered libertarian, it is probably closer to the classical definition than to what has now evolved.
With liberty comes individual responsibility. That is how the traditional libertarian wing (Ron Paul for instance) has always been in my mind.
I would hope the Millennial stance on morality (apart from their stance on government intervention) would be better than what I’ve seen so far. Otherwise, forget their views on guns, we’re doomed if what I’ve seen is the majority view of the next generation. Many seem to lack a sense of place, family, or religious identity, the sorts of things that the country’s founding had when the idea of constitutional liberties were first articulated.
The faith of our fathers (Christianilty, Judaism) gave us the spiritual motivation to confront the occultist Nazis in Europe and the aetheist Commies in Korea and Nam. Secular humanism, modern therapeutic deism, or whatever you want to call it, lacks a spiritual core, and cannot itself stand up to radical Islam, militant homosexuality, or other forces. As a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal explains, religious Pro-Life and RKBA are cut from the same cloth:
“Atop the quotable Barack Obama there will be this: “And it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”
“Everyone clings to something. But when it comes to criticizing unseemly political dependencies, it’s almost always liberals accusing them of clinging to positions and ideas that an enlightened society would have abandoned.
“But what do liberals cling to? Recent events have revealed two things. Gun control and abortion…”
WSJ Link
How about staying off my side with that $#!+?
Completely irrational response to a well-stated point.
Your judgment of what is “well-stated” takes a lot of the sting out of your opinion of what is “irrational”.
Happy/Lucky, I’m not going to say you’re wrong, because that wasn’t my point. But I think you have just given demonstrations of why Millennials didn’t vote Republican. I will only generalize by saying I don’t think Millennials hold the same worldview that you do. Of course, my perceptions could be warped by, being someone a few weeks to old to make it even to the Baby Boom generation.