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                                            February  9, 2013


Supposedly, gun control groups are
succeeding now because they're more
moderate:

   http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/02/how-the-gun-control-movement-got-smart/272934/


   I would argue they're doing better
   because of a cultural shift: no one
   trusts the right to get anything
   right any more.


There's a lot of posturing about how
crazy the pro-gun crazies are, e.g.
they often seem to reflexively oppose
any tightening of gun regulations,
no matter how reasonable it might seem.

    I think that the "gun nut" reasoning here
    is that this is a slippery slope: if you
    give in on anything the opposition will
    feel emboldened to push for more.

    And isn't it true that the anti-gun activists
    would *like* to push even farther?  Really they
    don't believe in "the right to bear arms" at all,
    they're just keeping their eye on the polls and
    choosing to push for smaller things they can win
    (more consistent background checks, clip-size
    limits, etc).

    They're certainly no shortage of liberal bloggers
    happy to sneer at the Second Amendment and/or the
    pro-gun side's interpretation of it.



            This sort of maneuvering
            is actually very common,
            I'm not sure that it
            correlates with the left
            or right at all.

            It is something of a disease
            of the body politic:
            shot through with
            bargaining and tribalism.






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