General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The CDC study on guns...shut down. [View all]Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)"Long after you're gone from here I won't be..."
Been here since 2006, and was told that stuff then. See my profile.
You need to re-examine your position. "Gun-control" wasn't even mentioned in the Democratic Party Platform until the Zombies had charted all their biggest hits (1968). If you would drop some of the passion, it would be worth a discussion as to why "gun-control" suddenly cropped up at this time (not that there weren't attempts here and there before, esp. in the antebellum and Jim Crow South). The most curious thing I find about the gun-control outlook (it is hardly a movement given its lack of popular base/activism) is that it wouldn't have any legs at all if it weren't for MSM's almost uniform advocacy of its ideology. But that doesn't explain the motivations for the outlook.
Some say it was the assassinations of the 60s; others, including some early gun-control proponents said otherwise (to their credit), that in reality the 1968 GCA was a thinly-veiled attempt to keep guns out of the hands of blacks, but not to encroach upon the "well to do's" ability to arm themselves (there were, of course scores of major "inner city" riots in the latter 60s). The Jim Crow foundations of gun-control have been well-documented. But even this cannot explain all the motivations.
Some believe that after the Civil Rights era, there was a burning resentment toward Southern Culture (On the Skids!), and a wider resentment toward white males in general, and the best way to get at them was through disarmament (this outlook is seen in a significant number of "feminist" writings in the 70s and 80s, esp. regarding hunting).
Perhaps also, this was a period of MSM's highest power and its concomitant ability to shape national issues (something collapsing with the new social media), and gun-control was seen as a "quickie" social issue and would somehow move this country toward a "new man" of more benign beliefs and actions, all of which would reflect well on the Fifth Estate's power in a democracy. Of course, the "quickie" turned out to be a political nightmare.
Then there is always this country's fascination with prohibition. Gin, Guns, Gays, Ganja, Abortion and the new kid on the block, tobacco. We don't seem to learn much from using prohibition as social policy.
What do you think?
I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of the NRA. ("You may be seated."