A historical reminder for Prohibitionists of all stripes

[friendly_iconoclast]

Some of you may remember this quote as read by Peter Coyote in Ken Burns' excellent
mini-series Prohibition. It's from a speech by evangelist Billy Sunday given as the Eighteenth Amendment
banning alcohol was about to go into effect:

"The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile and children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent."

You may very well get the laws you want- but the effects you expect those laws to bring about
might be a different story...

[Fumesucker]

1. Exactly, we should do *nothing* because if we did something we might make a mistake n/t

[JoePhilly]

2. Almost no one is proposing a prohibition.

That's a red-herring.

[friendly_iconoclast]

22. The temperance movement didn't start out as the "enforced teetotaling" movement.

But it certainly became that, didn't it?

[JoePhilly]

27. Ahhh ... so because THAT happened, we must shrug and do nothing ...

Well ... ummm ... no. Not this time.

Either the gun advocates can HELP figure out how we limit civilian access to certain highly deadly weapons, or ... and this is the part that should worry you ... the rest of us should simply DROP you from the discussion of what to do next.

If you want to avoid a prohibition ... then you need to get engaged in a rational discussion on this topic ... or, you will be dropped from that discussion because you add no value.

The NRA has been able to stop all discussion in the past using the same tactic you are using. No more.

The American people have figured that out ... so now, you can either help find some sensible gun laws, or the rest of us will do it.

[friendly_iconoclast]

35. You're going to DROP the 20 to 25% of Americans that own guns from the discussion?

I think not.

More to the point, they probably think not- and they are mostly over 18 and vote at a high rate.
You lot can shout "NRA!" 'til the cows come home, but they represent at best 5% of US gun owners.

Good luck with convincing the other 95% percent that they are a threat to society and should just
go along quietly with what you propose because it's for the best, dontcha know...

[JoePhilly]

39. You seem confused ... since I did not say drop ALL gun owners from the discussion.

That's another great false NRA strawman.

We already know that the majority of NRA members support some restrictions. And so, many of that 20-25% are VERY WELCOME in the discussion.

However when the discussion starts, they scream, as you did ... that any such discussion is a SLIPPERY SLOPE TO PROHIBITION ... then they get dropped.

The small, but extremely vocal group who thinks any such discussion is unreasonable, provide no value to the discussion.

If they engage, they participate only to ensure that no progress can be made. And so we don;t need them (you).

[friendly_iconoclast]

48. You lot seem confused about the NRA and me. I don't dig them at all, and disagree with them...

...on several issues, most notably their being the de facto armed wing of the Republican Party and my
advocacy of universal background checks for all firearms transfers

I understand they're a useful shorthand for 'people that disagree with me', but as Mark Twain
is supposed to have said once: "It's not what you don't know, it's what you think you know that isn't so"

[backscatter712]

3. Sigh...

[99Forever]

16. Excellent response.

Might I use that also?

[backscatter712]

26. By all means! n/t

[99Forever]

28. Tanks, me likie! n/t

[friendly_iconoclast]

37. What? No "NRA talking point(s)"? -1 for insufficient use of...

..proper word magic.

[TeamPooka]

54. +100

[upaloopa]

4. You live in fear. You respond to fear and you

Promote fear.
Some of us are motivated be reason and not fear.

[Spider Jerusalem]

5. A reminder for morons: Drugs and booze are not guns.

[friendly_iconoclast]

18. But the culture war against those that use them are almost the same.

[Spider Jerusalem]

24. Not really, no

"culture war"? If there's a culture war, it's urban vs rural, people who grew up hunting, got an air rifle as kids and then a .22, were taught to shoot from an early age, who live in the sparsely-populated rural countryside, in the South, and the Midwest, vs people who live in densely populated urban areas where there's nowhere to hunt and no good reason to have a gun. It doesn't really help that a lot of those rural gun-owning Southerners and Midwesterners and Westerners are the descendants of violent Scots-Irish rednecks who've inherited a cultural distrust of government reinforced over generations in sparsely populated areas with weak government and police protection (and a lot of urban residents are descendants of more recent immigrants, or more recent immigrants themselves, from places with no history and culture of private firearms ownership).

[DonCoquixote]

59. in other words

You said
t doesn't really help that a lot of those rural gun-owning Southerners and Midwesterners and Westerners are the descendants of violent Scots-Irish rednecks who've inherited a cultural distrust of government reinforced over generations in sparsely populated areas with weak government and police protection

I humbly offer a translation"
England always treated the Celts like shit, and used the idea of Empire to placate them instead of actually integrating them into society.

"hey you annoying prats, quit bothering us in London! We already gave you Canada, Australia, North America, Africa, and India to colonize, all you have to do is kill the native brown people and remember to send us most of the bloody profits!"

Add to this that when America became independent, the colonization germ remained intact. In places like Canada and Australia, it died off, not because they were any less eager or able to do genocide, but because England let them become commonwealths, places that were still part of the Empire, but just had to bow to the Empire rather than kowtow to it the way the brown subjects do. Also,to their credit, many of them, though sadly not all, (as Stephen Harper proves) realized that Empire was a racket, and they really did not want to grow up like their old, bitter Mother England. Also, because their governments were younger, they were able to let a lot of British Colonial ideas simply walk out to pasture.

America did not break with Empire, and indeed, it's problem was that many of the "founding fathers" were people that were actually better at the Empire game than King George, the guy who died in the looney bin. George Washington started the French and Indian war, which is the only reason Le Quebecois are considered "Canadian." His reward was a tax on his tea, for which he said "Screw London, why should they get the profits when we do the work?" And of course, to this day, Imperialist still put on the wigs and funny hats, as if to claim kinship with the secular saints.

[Spider Jerusalem]

63. Not exactly

If you want some actual insight into what I'm talking about, try reading this, and this, and this, for a start. The people who settled much of the South came from a much more violent culture than most other British colonists, a more fiercely independent culture, and one more resistant to the imposition of authority; this is a culture that has persisted, in many ways, up to the present.

[Squinch]

55. Waaaaait a minute. You mean a gin and tonic is not the same as an assault weapon? Now I'm all

confusipated...

[Warren Stupidity]

6. Australia enacted strict gun control and they haven't had a massacre since then.

Your precious toys are still available in Australia, but they are highly regulated. Gun control works. We can stop having routine massacres if we want to.

The comparison to prohibition is specious.

[friendly_iconoclast]

19. Australia never had a gun culture like ours, or a culture war surrounding their guns.

[derby378]

21. Mexico enacted strict gun control and they haven't had a massacre since - oh, wait...

I might also add that Mexico's gun-control laws were imposed in 1967 by a tyrant. With blood on his hands, IIRC.

[Spider Jerusalem]

30. And Mexico is largely anarchic and run by drug cartels.

Thanks in part to the USA's war on drugs and American demand for their product.

[derby378]

52. I'm okay with legalizing marijuana - that would help make a dent in trafficking

But they can keep their damned meth. I have loved ones who almost threw their lives away because of that stuff.

[RomneyLies]

7. See post 87. eom

[Squinch]

56. Snort!

[Taverner]

8. Nobody is taking away your guns.

The President is discussing an Executive Order that helps ENFORCE existing laws, not taking guns off the street

[RomneyLies]

11. Shhhhhhhh!!!

We can't stop a a rihgt wing meltdown with facts now!

[green for victory]

9. prohibit,mandate,compel,comply? i don't think so...

[CalFresh]

10. So true.

Laws don't change people. It just gives the government the power to put you in jail when you don't change.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

12. Those Prohibitions were bad and ill intentioned but ours is noble and enlightened

Lather Rinse Repeat...

[Fumesucker]

13. President Obama believes in prohibition

Indeed, the administrations profound support for prohibition was reiterated just the other day.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

15. Some here clearly do

[DanTex]

14. Is this about the prohibition of child porn? Are you saying we should just allow it?

Prohibitions never work, so what's the point? Is that the argument?

[friendly_iconoclast]

17. Child porn is nowhere near as popular (thank YHPOC!) as guns and booze.

[DanTex]

23. It might be, if it wasn't, umm, prohibited.

The problem is, once you concede that whether a certain prohibition succeeds depends on the thing being prohibited, your entire argument is out the window. Because, to believe that the market for guns and the market for alcohol, on either the demand or the supply side, are even remotely similar, would require an unfathomable level of stupidity.

That's the problem with NRA talking points -- you can't think about them very hard or they vanish.

[friendly_iconoclast]

31. I rather doubt 20-25% of the population would be into child porn.

I'd also point out that child porn in and of itself is harmful, as children are harmed in the making of it
It's perfectly possible to own guns without harming anyone or anything (save your finances and your hearing),
and indeed most gun owners do not harm anyone

Of course, the anti-gun culture warriors are quite unwilling to acknowledge that and prefer some vague
reference to a supposed 'moral harm'- hence the strenuous efforts here and elsewhere to paint gun owners
as murderers-in-waiting and/or RW militia types.

[DanTex]

38. Wait, wait, wait, I thought the OP was against "prohibitionists of all stripes"!

So now there are a whole bunch of conditions that you want to take into account to determine which prohibitions are good and which are bad! Wow! Careful, you're straying far from the NRA talking point here.

And the big problem, as I pointed out in my last post, is that the more caveats and nuances you add, the weaker the argument gets. Because guns and alcohol are completely different at many different levels. The "prohibitions are bad" talking point doesn't work any more if you expose it to logic.

[friendly_iconoclast]

41. I am neither for nor against. I point out they rarely turn out they way they are supposed to.

Yeah, yeah, I know- this one will be different as your strength is as the stregth of ten, yadda yadda yadda...

And "NRA talking point"? That little bit of attempted word magic is particularly irrelevant here
as I have no truck with the NRA. You might wish to speak with the management here,
as your search function appears to be broken...

[DanTex]

46. What do you mean "they"?

The prohibition on child pornography is going pretty well. So is the prohibition on asbestos, and leaded gasoline, and thalidomide. And the prohibition on (newly manufactured) machine guns. Not to mention Japan's gun prohibition. Or the UK handgun prohibition. Etc.

You know, you still haven't made a single argument against gun control. I know you really, really hate prohibition of alcohol, but that is absolutely irrelevant to the gun debate.

[friendly_iconoclast]

49. I rarely drink, gave up on cannabis long ago, and own no guns.

Shit, I don't even use tobacco. Anyway, there never were tetraethyl lead, asbestos, or thalidomide
'cultures' in the US. Prohibting them was never going to be controversial, save for those making money off them

There was and still are fairly robust drinking and gun cultures (and a cannabis one, too) in the United States.
The alcohol and cannabis prohibtions were as much cultural warfare as public health concerns (see
Harry J. Anslinger, Fredric Wertham, Wayne Weaver), and those particular Prohibitionists were
certain that their bete noirs were going to disappear as well. How'd that turn out?

I don't see any postulated gun Prohibtion turning out any differently. Having said that, I will add that
I see little, if any chance of one being enacted.

[DanTex]

51. Yes, we know that you really hate prohibition.

Again, guns and alcohol have nothing to do with each other. Other then the fact that both are forms of "prohibition", there is nothing in common between gun control and alcohol prohibition. Well, that and the fact that you hate both of them.

But there is not any logical reason to think that gun control would fail for any of the same reasons. Like I said, both the supply and the demand are drastically different. You might as well argue that prohibition failed and therefore we shouldn't try healthcare reform either...

And the reason you keep arguing against prohibition of alcohol is because you can't make a coherent argument against gun control that has anything to do with guns.

[Squinch]

57. So the badness of the prohibition is dependent on how popular the prohibited item is?

That pretty handily contradicts your own OP.

[snooper2]

20. I don't think keeping dogs off the liquor will really hurt us any....

Somebody needs to watch out for them-


http://www.youtube.com/user/hahatv?v=BhQgLxZbNUs

[RainDog]

25. moderation in all things n/t

[friendly_iconoclast]

45. True. The gun Prohibtionists will "represent" all gun control advocates, just as...

Ted Nugent and the guy that threatened to shoot people that violated his Second Amendment rights
"represent" all gun owners.

[Berserker]

29. Thank You

For posting this

You may very well get the laws you want- but the effects you expect those laws to bring about
might be a different story...


Bravo!

[friendly_iconoclast]

42. Not only do they forget history, they forgot Santayana:

"Those that forget history are condemned to repeat it"

[bongbong]

32. I know what you'e talking about

Just look at how unsuccessful the 1934 law banning fully automatic guns was, and also how many other gun-banning laws came after it.





You Delicate Flowers and your CTs. Hilarious and pathetic - at the same time! Quite an accomplishment.

[alcibiades_mystery]

33. Well well well

Looks like we've gone from "It'll never happen ever ever evwer so say whatever you want gun grabber!" to "You may very well get the laws you want."

I'll take it!

We'll deal with the implementation as it comes, despite the noxious and juvenile threats of the gun nuts.

[friendly_iconoclast]

36. I'm sure that the 80 million gun owners in the US will be perfectly happy to...

...criminalize themselves once they see the light of sweet reason.

[JoePhilly]

40. You are going to need a lot more Straw.

[friendly_iconoclast]

43. Yeah yeah, we know- "*This* one will be different!"

[JoePhilly]

44. I find if you keep the TV turned down low enough, you can hear the Helicopters

about 2 minutes before they arrive.

[friendly_iconoclast]

47. I rather doubt it will happen, personally. You might, however, wish to have a word or two...

...with your 'allies' (for want of a better term) here at DU who advocate for just such a thing.

[Warren Stupidity]

53. Most, 99%, will be fine with any new regulations.

But a few extremists will go down with their cap pistols blazing.

[RomneyLies]

58. And some of the extremists

will have meltdown posts on DU before they go down cap pistols blazing.

[Warren Stupidity]

60. They already are over the NYS law.

[RomneyLies]

61. Looks like there will be a lot of 'em PePpeReD soon.

[maxsolomon]

34. Slipping and sliding down the slippery slope! Just one step & it's all over!

Even Prohibition had exemptions - manufacturing processes, sacremental wine. Try again.

[EOTE]

50. I know. Machine gun prohibition turned out so fucking awful, right?

I cried during Sandy Hook when I thought to myself "If only Adam Lanza had a machine gun, he would have surely been stopped by a much better, bigger man with a machine gun and those kids would be alive today." Oh wait...

[TheKentuckian]

62. Machine guns were never owned by many, nothing like semi-auto proliferation.

I suspect a ban on private ownership of jet fighters would work out too, no numbers to contend with in legal hands to start.

The 1934 ban almost exclusively impacted gangsters not law abiding citizens, this an order of magnitude heavier lift, impacting a far broader swath of the population and even with that there was no actual ban, folks own such weapons to this very day.

[EOTE]

64. Ahhh, so it's only because of the proliferation of semi-autos that this wouldn't work.

So if many more people owned machine guns in 1934, THEN the machine gun ban wouldn't have been a good thing. Yeah, that makes plenty of sense.

[TheKentuckian]

65. Common use is a threshold whether you like it or not, has ZERO to do with "good",

[EOTE]

66. Common use is a bullshit indicator of whether or not something should stay.

Slaves were "common use" as well. I guess we should have stuck with that grand ol' tradition. What a foolish comment.