Reply #144: important issue

[Two Americas]

There are not any "positions" on this issue, and Obama is extremely vulnerable on this. It surprises me to see how ignorant and short sighted people here are about this subject.

The Republican party use guns as a campaign issue, and Democrats pander to the anti-gun confiscation fanatics. It is a perfect example as to how we are misled by those who are supposedly our friends, and how we play right into the Republican's hands for nothing in return. They are not our friends. They are holding the Democratic party hostage, and that will end when we demand that it ends.

As Democrats, we should always be looking for, addressing and tackling the underlying political causes, the conditions that cause social problems. We stand for stronger communities, we stand for public institutions and public infrastructure, we stand for justice and equality, for jobs and education and we see that as the way to eliminate social ills such as gun violence. Yet we are suckered into a "for or against" guns debate with the Republicans - we are on their playing field and we are playing by their rules when we do that.

Calling for the elimination of guns is dealing with a symptom and not a cause. The power behind the right wing gun arguments is that they can say that there is a hidden agenda in anti-gun activism - confiscation. The organization that Obama is associated with is an extremist organization that is calling for confiscation, and doing it in a dishonest and manipulative way.

This is a worst case scenario for the general.