In a country where the only thing odder than America’s obsession with losing weight is its obsession with preserving its supply of Twinkies, it’s easy to understand how confused we are here in Colorado.
In a Quinnipiac University poll released this week, a pretty good margin of the 1,206 Colorado voters polled said they oppose the state’s new gun control laws.
Damn straight. After listening to the geniuses on talk radio over the past year or so since 12 people were slaughtered inside an Aurora theater, it’s been clear that gun grabbers just don’t understand what’s really wrong with society. Any fool who can read the back of a Ram pickup knows that “guns don’t kill people; people kill people,” and “when guns are outlawed, only outlaws have guns.”
Small wonder that 55 percent of those polled in Colorado last week don’t want new gun control, compared to the 45 percent who do.
It’s a bigger wonder, however, how much of the state makes it home at the end of each day. You see, those same people overwhelmingly like one of the very gun laws approved by state lawmakers this year, and by a lesser ratio, also approve of a second one.
According to the poll, a whopping 85 percent of Colorado voters polled approve of the new law that requires that anyone seeking to buy a gun undergo a background check, not just those buying guns at Wal-Mart. An astounding 78 percent of Republican voters polled also approve of the law.
And the other gun law that got folks in Colorado Springs and Pueblo so mad that they recalled two lawmakers who voted for it? Colorado voters approve of that one, too. A slim 49-48 percent of voters polled approve of the new law that limits the number of bullets held in a magazine to 15. So how can voters hate, hate, hate gun control and love, love, love control of guns all at the same time?
Propaganda and packaging, dear readers. The snake oil salesmen at the NRA and Rocky Mountain Gun Owners are selling charged-up slogans and fear, knowing that it pays off when Colorado voters are too busy trying to keep the wheels on their jobs, school and lives to go beyond the Yahoo! headlines, TV sound bites and sidewalk protests.
This all makes perfect sense if you understand that in most cases, the people with best ideas are often the worst ones around to explain them. If you’ve ever listened to recordings of Albert Einstein, you know what I mean. So you get a handful of nerdy policy wonks out there trying to explain to the public the nuances and details of gun background checks and before you know it, you’re nodding off.
But if you have someone’s attention, and you ask them, “If we require people buying guns in stores to pass background checks, does it make sense to ask people buying guns outside of stores to pass those same checks?” almost everyone does and did say, “Yes, why yes it does.” Why? Because it does make sense.
And, “Is it dangerous to allow people to have gun clips that hold 20, 30 or even more bullets?” Voters answer, “yes, why yes it is.” Why? Because there is no reason for anyone other than a criminal, a terrorist or an obstinate gun nut to want a gun clip that lets them fire dozens of times without reloading. And if you can keep that voter’s attention long enough and stay on point without slipping into a monotone, they can see that neither of these laws has anything to do with trying grab anyone’s guns, they only have to do with common-sense limits in a country where mass-murder by gun is as novel as very bad weather.
So this is the big challenge for those running the show in Colorado: How can you make people understand what you’re really doing? If we allow the NRA to say that gun-grabbers are trying to snatch our hunting rifles, the rest of us have a responsibility to point out just what a load of crap that is. It has to be as easy as, “Do you think anyone but police should take a gun into a school?” “Do you think people who want military-grade weapons should have to register them and keep them safeguarded from thieves and terrorists?” “Are you afraid the government is close to running roughshod over the lives of Americans similarly to how the former Soviet Union treated its citizens?”
I agree with the rest of Colorado. It isn’t about gun control or losing weight, it’s about getting the message.
Reach editor Dave Perry at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com
“The snake oil salesmen at the NRA and Rocky Mountain Gun Owners are selling charged-up slogan…”
Selling to whom?
There are over 80,000,000 firearms owners in the U.S. in possession of some odd 300,000,000 weapons.
The NRA has, maybe, 5,000,000 members.
That’s 76 million (+/-) people that have nothing to do with the N.R.A. and aren’t particularly swayed its message.
The frustrations the reporter is struggling with will always haunt those that choose to or are lulled into using a bogeyman as an easy way to explain complicated issues.
“And, “Is it dangerous to allow people to have gun clips that hold 20, 30 or even more bullets?” Voters answer, “yes, why yes it is.” Why? Because there is no reason for anyone other than a criminal, a terrorist or an obstinate gun nut to want a gun clip that lets them fire dozens of times without reloading”
Have the law cover police as well and you will be taken seriously.
The only poll that counts is election day.
I was going to say something suitably manly and blustery like “election day doesn’t give me the right to protect myself, the Constitution doesn’t ‘give’ me the right to do anything, the right to defend myself comes from Gawd.” Then I stopped to wonder if I would’ve been able to get a concealed pistol license if communist progressives were the only elected in this state, and how much better I would feel if Romney were president instead of ObaMao (yeah I know Romney is no great advocate of the 2nd but still tell me you wouldn’t breathe at least a little bit easier…). So sadly I fear you are right. This is reality. We barter for our right to be free on every election day.
“We know of no other enumerated constitutional right whose core
protection has been subjected to a freestanding ‘interest-balancing’
approach. The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of
government—even the Third Branch of Government—the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting
upon. A constitutional guarantee subject to future judges’ assessments
of its usefulness is no constitutional guarantee at all. Constitutional
rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when
the people adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes)
even future judges think that scope too broad. . . . [T]he enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table.” – D.C. v. Heller, 2008
What part of YOU CAN’T DO THAT do you not understand?
America was built on individual rights, not collective needs. I don’t care if 99% of the people want to bring back slavery, punish hate speech with jail, and put fat people in a concentration camp, our Bill of Rights is above that. So unless you pass a constitutional amendment to outlaw the 2nd Amendment, we’re not going to give up, we’ll continue fighting just like gays fight for same-sex marriage (even though getting married is a privilege, after all, government doesn’t provide you with free Match.com accounts). So called “public safety,” is a lie, I’m not safe because some dumb Democrat passed some dumb law, I don’t even care about being safe, I care about being FREE. I’m not Mike Tyson, I’m not Bruce Lee, but a gun is a GREAT EQUALIZER, an 80-year-old man with a gun is stronger than a 21-year-old with a fist. Without guns? We end up with Knockout Games, it becomes a Darwinist anarchy were only the strong survive and everyone else perishes. Am I afraid of the government? Yes, anyone who has studied history knows people don’t learn from history and often repeat the same mistakes. That is why us gun owners often seem like we’re overreacting, better overreact now than wait until our guns have been confiscated and our freedoms have been taken away. Tell me, Coloradans, do you want to be like New York City? Did Bloomberg forget to tell you about his $430 gun permit application fee and how it can take 9 months to get approved to get a gun license (to keep a gun at home)? John Stossel is a celebrity, and he had to go through hell to get a concealed carry permit. This is a man who gets death threats, yet Bloomberg, who has 17 armed bodyguards, doesn’t want him to have one gun.
https://sellingthesecondamendment.com/stossel-ny-concealed-carry/
As a person who trains the disabled to handle firearms, enjoy shooting sports and/or be able to engage in safe self-defense. I will tell you that for some, the magazine in their gun is all the bullets they ever will have in a situation. With an upper limb disability (which 500,000 Americans have) there is no reloading. Since studies show that even trained police often only hit 20% of the time in stressful situation, you are condemning the disabled to only being able to defend themselves from one assailant.
For the same reasons that police do not use 10 round magazines and carry often as much as 50 rounds, citizens that wish to be equally prepared, should be allowed to do so. After all we live in those neighborhoods cops fear to tread alone, or those far flung areas where it takes the police an hour or more to respond. Who are you to decide how another person is allowed to responsibly defend themselves?
BTY those polls you cite are BS, unscientific push polls, I can see why you didn’t source them.
So because a university in Connecticut with less than 6,500 students polled roughly 1:4,000th of the population of Colorado, equates to the majority is somehow in favor of gun control?
Yes.
Take a class in statistical analysis.
Dave, 10s of millions of gun owners own magazines that hold more than 15 rounds and are not criminals, terrorists or mass killers. Please do us the service of injecting your ad hominem where the sun doesn’t shine.
Citizens are joining the NRA in droves! The people are not going to stand for the Socialist take over and the disarming of the law abiding citizen to protect the criminal. It’s time to prosecute the criminal and not the tool. The gun is used to save lives everyday!
200,000 women stop the rapist every year with their firearm! CDC says that up to 2 million people use the gun to protect their families every year as well. The police one poll say that the majority of police want more law abiding citizens on the streets with their guns!
The NRA are worthless scum. A good NRA member is one tht dies of cancer
Perry, I wonder if you write this garbage just to see who you can upset. As you should know, polls are only as good as the questions and the objectiveness of the poll takers. Tell me what you want and I can give you statistics to support your view. They would probably be incorrect but many of your readers don’t look past the surface. Additionally, you must have convinced yourself that you are wrong or you would use honest adjectives and nouns.