oldtexan wrote:One thing I forgot to mention is that I think it's important not to get ensnared in our side's propaganda, particularly from entities who stand to make money from our fear of more gun control. Of course it's easy to spot propaganda from the opposing side; we're predisposed to look for it. We're not as likely to see propaganda from our side as being what it is, which is an attempt to manipulate us and others. It's easy to believe that everyone on our side is honest, but the plain truth is that some folks on both sides use propaganda and distortion of truth to demonize the other side. The gun control advocates use fear of children dying to scare folks into supporting them. Some organizations on our side use fear of tyranny to whip us up. Some folks on our side tell us that anyone who proposes any gun control measure is actually concealing their true desire to confiscate all our guns so they can institute a totalitarian dictatorship and send us to concentration camps. I have no doubt some folks on the other side would like to get rid of all guns, but they are an unrealistic, politically isolated fringe. Just like there are different views on our side of the issue, there are different views on their side. It helps to look for manipulative, emotion-laden words in what both sides are saying; they use those to stir up easily manipulated emotions. Some folks on both sides are sincere and believe what they are advocating is good policy, and I'm sure there are lying, manipulative folks with their own selfish agendas on both sides, as well.
Oldtexan, I have nothing to gain financially by being alarmed, or by communicating my alarm at what I see happening......other than that of protecting the financial investment I have made in having purchased certain firearms which may or may not be banned down the road. Mine are not for sale, so I have nothing to gain by the current speculative pricing on guns and ammo. The only thing I have to gain by being alarmed and communicating it is the preservation of my right to buy whatever the heck I want to, when I want to, at a price made reasonable by the economies of scale.
I resent the HADES out of elected officials who seek to turn me into an instant felon for possessing something which is totally legal today. I dislike that people price gouge in response to the panic, but as an ardent capitalist, I totally understand it. They're not doing anything different from what happens on the stock market every day. It's Econ 101. You threaten the supply of something, whether it is oil & gas, or guns and ammo, and it will drive the price up. When there is a big freeze in citrus producing regions, the price of oranges as a commodity goes way up......but is an organic fluctuation in the market, not one that has been
engineered for the purpose of squeezing (pun intended) the public's wallets. In the case of guns, the fault doesn't really lie with the speculators—they're just trying to maximize their profit on a commodity that is threatening to become irreplaceable. The
major fault lies with those who create the artificial situation which leads to the speculative pricing. I call it "artificial" because it is not economically organic. It is strictly man made, and it is not done for speculative reasons, it is done to crush a liberty. When OPEC raised prices in the 1970s, it wasn't because some stuffed-shirt politician on a power jag was threatening to make gasoline illegal at the pump. But what that quisling Feinstein is proposing has nothing to do with the ability to produce a steady supply of firearms to the market, and EVERYTHING to do with
illegalizing the retail purchase of specific types of firearms........creating a whole new class of felons in the process.
The rules of this forum do not permit me to use the kind of language best describing the degree and depth of Diane Feinstein's evil depravity, or what I think of it. I've been a law-abiding gun owner ever since I got my first gun. I have never harmed anyone with one of my guns. I have never done a straw purchase, or made a firearm available to anyone outside of my direct supervision, or for an illegal purpose.
So, I get what you're saying when you advise people to be calm and to wait and see what is coming down the pike before getting our unmentionables in a twist, but my response to that is this: I want to make SO much noise about this, and I want
others to make SO much noise, that a female dog like Feinstein will think twice about actually submitting her bill for fear of having everything else she sponsors getting eviscerated in the Senate. Her state will continue to elect her no matter what, as long as she keeps running, because......well, because its
California. But maybe when everything she does is ineffective and she stops getting pork for California because the rest of the right thinking Senate will simply no longer "do business" with her, then maybe the commies in California will get tired of reelecting an impotent senator, and they'll replace her. There is literally NO difference between the degree of evil of what she is doing, and the evil of making pornography a required elementary school subject, or garroting everyone over the age of 65 to reduce Social Security outlays. If she were proposing a bill to require elementary schools to expose children to pornography, or to strangle everyone over 65, I trust that you would not be advising people to pipe down and wait to see what happens.......because either of those two possibilities would be so outlandish and outrageous that you would either have to laugh it off as preposterous, or start pounding the table with your shoe. There would be no real in-between. And if Feinstein had actually prepared a bill to require elementary school porn, or garroting seniors, and then she had actually posted the highlights of that bill on her senate website, you would not have the luxury of laughing it off as preposterous.
Well, I can't laugh off the notion of a Feinstein AWB, because she has actually posted the details of it on her senate website, and has repeatedly stated her intention to file it. It is as evil as the two other examples of porn and seniorcide, and the only fitting response is to pound the table with one's shoe. I'm not going to pretend like the threat isn't real, or that there is no possibility of at least part of it getting signed into law. I have too much invested, as a gun owner, and as a patriotic American invested in the Constitution not be extremely agitated about it. It's not about fear. It's about speaking out against tremendous evil, because all that is necessary for that evil to prosper is for people like you and me to do nothing.
(EDITED TO CORRECT A MISSPELLING)
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
― G. Michael Hopf, "Those Who Remain"
#TINVOWOOT