And somewhere between 70% and 75% still oppose banning guns completely - the point being discussed.
That's about as cross-party as an opinion gets in the US. 70-75% is a huge number and shows that guns won't be banned any time soon
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Another shooting in Murica
- Thread starter Roy1983
- Start date
That's about as cross-party as an opinion gets in the US. 70-75% is a huge number and shows that guns won't be banned any time soon
That's my point. It's clearly not the top agenda for voters and is considered far less important than taxation, etc. If it really had full public support it would be made into a bigger political issue.
Kandi1977
Garth Crooks
That's because a huge number of politicians are being bribed by the NRA to support their views.
No you responded to a point I made regarding stricter gun control stricter gun control, this was in response to your stating there is no public desire to change.
NRA contributions amount to around 1% of the campaign funds of the politicians they fund the most. The senator they contributed the most to (2016 figures) raised $15M in campaign funds - $12K of which came from the NRA.
It's not the funding that keeps politicians on side, it's the fact that they have huge numbers of supporters who can and will bring votes with them. Yes, the NRA are massively influential, but it's because they represent large numbers of voters far more than any financial contributions they make.
Which was in response to a comment to a post I made suggesting that trying to ban guns would not work.
I agree there's enough cross-party support to remove the most dangerous guns and that should be done. There's also a lot of cross-party support for better, safer checks on ownership - again, that should be a fairly short-term aim.
And nothing is being done on those even though this has been the public will for over a decade.
Kandi1977
Garth Crooks
The NRA goes to great lengths to defend their case. This is their spending in 2016:
CONTRIBUTIONS
$1,089,200
LOBBYING
$3,188,000 (2017)
$3,605,564 (2016)
OUTSIDE SPENDING
$54,398,558
That's over $60 MILLION! You can buy a hell of a lot "support" for that amount!
glasgowspur
Luka Modric
Banning guns and tougher gun control are not the same thing.
Polls showing a desire for tougher controls do not mean a will to ban them.
Polls showing a desire for tougher controls do not mean a will to ban them.
Which is all laid out for you to read if you're interested - they simply don't have the funds to buy politicians. $60M might sound like a lot to you, in terms of campaign contributions it not all that much. Dig around on opensecrets.org - it's all there.
Then you need to also take into account the financial lobbying that comes from the gun control side. Not as much - around $1.3M against $2.8M for presidential candidates last year, but not insignificant either.
Of course legalising drugs makes absolutely no difference. Except to make Scara's beloved Big Pharma companies even richer.
What does make a difference is routing drug users through the health system rather than the criminal justice system. Something Scara is less keen on. Instead he wants to "punish any drug-related crime heavily". A view popular with the American politicians on the far right. That seems to be working well, doesn't it.
Frankly Scara's defence of the NRA and his wish to solve mass shootings by increasing the number of over medicated zombies on psychiatric drugs in America from 80m to GHod knows how many is pretty disgusting. And aligns him with some of the worse of the alt-right.
I guess the only way he will change his despicable views is when "they pry them from his cold, dead hands"
If you're going to insinuate that "Big Pharma" is a bad thing and that them getting richer is also bad, you're going to have to define what you think "Big Pharma" is and why getting rich is bad.
Not at all. I think anyone with mental health issues (included dependency) should be treated by the health system. I also think people should be free to put whatever substances they want into their bodies - their body, their choice.
Where I do have a problem is when such a dependency becomes a cause of crime - that should not be allowed to happen. My belief that everyone should be free to do to their own bodies what they will is strictly limited at the point where it does damage to others. Everyone should be free to use drugs responsibly - we can't drink and drive, neither should we shoot up and steal.
I'm not defending the NRA. I don't agree with their objectives, nor do I believe they act in a way that benefits the US in general.
I do want to ensure that we are arguing from fact and not boogeyman stories that regularly spread around lobbying groups like that. The NRA simply doesn't have enough money to buy off politicians - that's a fact, and one that I've linked to this morning. It is a very strong lobbying group, and its strength comes from numbers - the same way democracy normally works.
If you don't agree with treating mental patients (and I know from experience that counselling is not enough in most cases - certainly not over the short term) then what do you think we should do with them? Leave them with dangerous, unstable conditions? Ship them off to Canada?
You either haven't read my posts or have failed to understand them.
I'm not supporting the position of the NRA, I just happen to have independently come to the same conclusion they have (as have some behavioural economists), that an outright ban on guns is both incredibly unlikely to happen and even less likely to work.
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Sometimes it's nice to have someone around whose opinions are more of an outlier than my own!
Parklaner81
Steve Hodge
Isn't this already banned? I thought that was the reason that college campuses are often seen as such soft targets for psychopaths?
awesome dawson
Mitchell Thomas
Those figures (if true) are completely insignificant. $60million in the US today will not buy you many votes. Trump probably spent more than that on those stupid red caps. Most lobbyists earn good money. Say $300k each that's ten lobbyists with credit cards paying to take politicians for steaks in DC. See how far $3m lasts in that sort of world.
I linked to a site earlier that publishes campaign contributions. The senators that the NRA support the most heavily get less than 1% of their campaign funds from them.
braineclipse
Steve Sedgley
Again, I'm all for spending more money on mental health. But expensive, slow and not always delivering the results everyone expects has mental health work written all over it.
I drive a car. I had to pay for my training, I have to pay for my insurance, I have to pay road taxes and toll fares. A gun owner in the US has to pay for...? What exactly?
The obvious, capitalistic approach seems to me to shift the cost of this to the companies and in turn to the consumers. Not leaving the bill for the government.
Simple solution. You want to own a gun, you need a license. You pay for the license and that includes a decent screening. You want to buy a gun or ammunition, a tax is added to enable government to enforce regulations and work to prevent gun violence.
Zero cost to the regular tax payer. If you're a gun owner you have to pay for that privilege.
Net cost for the government at worst zero. If the number of these very expensive tragedies goes down, as can reasonably be expected, the cost for the government and tax payer goes down. You get your wish.
I don't have an issue with those policies and I don't believe (based on polls posted above) they're all that far from reality under a strong Democratic government.
But there's still an issue for the next few decades of the existing ones, stolen ones, traded ones, etc. All the time criminals are willing to pay good money for guns, people will find a way around the rules in order to sell them.