Now that the gun control bills have been voted down and the politicians can concentrate on exploiting the bombing in Boston to really ramp up the police state the gun control advocates are crying in their beer. Fortunately they have decided to drown their sorrows at the local watering hole instead of doing so in private, which means we get to watch them in their drunken stupor. Although I enjoy The Verge’s technology coverage their political coverage, as with most technology news sites that venture outside of technology, is rather pitiful. After the news of the gun control bills failure to pass Mr. Sottek posted this story complaining about how broken Congress must be for gun control to fail:
As The Washington Post reports, support for expanded background checks looks very different outside the halls of the Senate; a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 9 in 10 Americans favor strengthened background checks, with strong support even among NRA members and gun-owning households.
This 90% canard has been touted by gun control advocates for a while. Statistics obtained from polls are always suspect but that sentiment goes double when polls are conducted by news organizations. News organizations usually cater to a specific crowd. For example, Fox News and The Washington Times tends to cater to self-proclaimed conservatives while The Washington Post and ABC News tend to cater to self-proclaimed liberals. Since the poll was operated by The Washington Post and ABC News, who cater to gun control advocates, I’m not surprised that they found overwhelming support for prohibiting private sales (which is what is really meant by “strengthening background checks”). Had the poll been taken by Fox News and The Washington Times I’d expect the opposite result.
In addition to selection bias the claim that National Rifle Association (NRA) members strongly support ending private sales is difficult to prove with any certainty since the NRA doesn’t release its member list. Claiming gun-owning households also support ending private sales is suspect because there is no way to reliably determine if a household has guns inside. In other words the information obtained about NRA members and gun-owning households is based entirely on information that was volunteered by poll takers, which tends to be unreliable. Another point I found laughable was the following:
The failure is particularly biting for many in light of the dramatic gun violence from last December, when 20 children and six adults were murdered in Newtown, Connecticut. Despite the broad sense of national consensus that followed the Newtown tragedy, it appears that the incident did not actually change anything about gun politics in Congress.
I find it funny that The Verge, Mayor Bloomberg, and Philip Rucker spend so much time demanding gun control after a school shooting but will raise little more than a periodic murmur, if they they even raise that, when the United States government continues its terror campaign against Middle Eastern children. The lack of consistency makes me believe that they’re not really sincere about wanting to protect children. Instead it appears that they simply don’t like non-state agents owning guns. The article gets more mind numbingly stupid:
Critics of the Senate’s failure to act cite influence from special interests, namely the NRA, which has stepped up its marketing efforts in recent months as tragedies in Connecticut, Colorado, and other areas have thrust gun control into the national spotlight. As part of its outreach efforts, the NRA won a sponsorship for NASCAR which renamed the Samsung 500 to the NRA 500 this April.
First of all the NRA wasn’t the only game stepping up marketing efforts. Gabriel Giffords started her own gun control advocacy organization and Mayor Bloomberg put millions into advocating for more gun control. In addition to that the NRA didn’t “win” a NASCAR sponsorship, they bought it. I’m surprised a news organization that makes money off of advertising doesn’t understand that sponsorships, another word for advertisements, aren’t won in competitions but purchased with money.
While politics seldom interests me anymore I find the reactions of gun control advocates, who do put their faith in the political process, rather entertaining after they lose. They whine that everybody supports their cause but Congress won’t obey the will of the people. In actuality the issue of gun control is hotly debated and Congress would rather expand its powers in less troublesome ways. Why waste time riling the serfs up by pushing gun control when you can offer buisnesses a lucrative deal where they can sell their customers’ information to the state without worrying about legal repercussions? Less people get riled up about expanding the surveillance state and it nets the state more power. Congress doesn’t obey the will of the people, it grabs for power over the people. Gun control gives them some power but there are much better ways of obtaining more power that involve less headaches. The reason gun control advocates haven’t achieved many victories as of late is because they aren’t offering Congress much of value. Like sponsorships, Congressional victories aren’t won, they’re bought.