Gun lobby is expert at preventing dialogue

[SecularMotion]

For all the dysfunction in our political system, a healthy pattern usually takes hold when a terrible tragedy seizes the nation’s attention.

Normally, we engage in a searching conversation over what rational steps can be taken by individuals, communities and various levels of government to make the recurrence of a comparable tragedy less likely. Sometimes we act, sometimes we don’t, but at least we explore sensible solutions.

Unless the tragedy involves guns. Then our whole public reasoning process goes haywire. Anyone who dares to say that an event such as the massacre at a Colorado movie theater early Friday morning demands that we rethink our approach to the regulation of firearms is accused of “exploiting” the deaths of innocent people.

This is part of the gun lobby’s rote response, and the rest of us allow it to work every time. Their goal is to block any conversation about how our nation’s gun laws, the most permissive in the industrialized world, increase the likelihood of mass killings of this sort.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/editorials/2012/07/24/gun-lobby-is-expert-at-preventing-dialogue.html

[Reasonable_Argument]

1. Limiting rights...

When a tragedy occurs leads to wonder things like the Patriot Act.

[GreenStormCloud]

2. How is dialogue being prevented?

There have been piles of editorial from the usual sources calling for more gun control. But when our side responds you claim we are stopping dialogue? Sounds to me like you want only one side of the argument - yours - to be heard.

[gejohnston]

3. one thing

This is part of the gun lobby’s rote response, and the rest of us allow it to work every time. Their goal is to block any conversation about how our nation’s gun laws, the most permissive in the industrialized world, increase the likelihood of mass killings of this sort.

not entirely accurate. One could make the make the argument on the federal level, but some provisions of our gun laws are stricter other places. Some of our states have laws that are actually stricter than some countries,

[TheKentuckian]

4. The prohibitionist line is that if the field is not ceded to them, that dialog is prevented.