It took a little digging, but apparently the NRA objection is a slippery slope argument, that once there are owner-ID locks, the government will ban all firearms that don’t have owner-ID locks.
There’s also a lot of herp-derp “I don’t understand it, therefore it won’t work / won’t be reliable” in the linked article, both by the author, and in a gun owner poll he cites. It’d be one thing if they were criticizing a specific implementation, but they’re asking people who know nothing about the subject whether a completely hypothetical system will work.
Mostly, though, I think it’s a knee-jerk reaction to change. The subset of gun owners they’re talking about find any change at all scary.
That’s because they don’t want the technology to prove itself to be reliable, because then the guvermint will take all yer gunz and make u buy them smartgunz and it’s just a hop-skip-jump to Uncle Sam having an universal “kill switch” to shutdown all guns anytime he wants!
Never mind letting the free market decide if there are actually people who want smartguns. Nope, clearly the only sane option is to intimidate the hell outta anyone who even considers making or buying these things - AMERICA FUCK YEAH!
Maryland dealer will defy gun rights advocates by selling nation’s first smart gun
The money quote:
Raymond said he’s on the “right-wing vanguard of gun rights” but is vehemently opposed to gun rights activists arguing against the idea of a smart gun — or any gun.
“To me that is so fricking hypocritical,” Raymond said. “That’s the antithesis of everything that we pro-gun, pro-Second Amendment people should be. You are not supposed to say a gun should be prohibited. Then you are being no different than the anti-gun people who say an AR-15 should be prohibited.”
It’s typical of the way the right has run off the rails during the last generation. There used to be a vocal, intelligent, and principled contingent in the Republican Party that would try to apply broad concepts like individual choice to the issues. Now, however, the US right has devolved into a “anything that promotes the things I like is good” position that’s a complete betrayal of what used to be their core values. The same people who decry the nanny state socialism of the left oppose letting the market rule on smart guns, or online poker, or any number of other issues that should be decided by personal choice. And yet they still claim to be the party of freedom. It’s infuriating.
I found this article interesting - Preparing for War in Indianapolis: Inside the NRA Plot to Terrify America
A recent Pew poll shows he is correct, that the propaganda campaign by the NRA & Co. has worked its free-market magic. Whereas as recently as August 1999, 46 percent of gun owners said they owned a gun to “hunt” and only 26 percent cited “protection,” now that number has been flipped on its head, with 48 percent citing protection and 32 percent owning for hunting purposes.
Military-style weaponry of every kind occupied almost every inch of the terrain to my left and right as I began the long trek down each aisle. Not your father’s hunting rifle, for the most part—although there were a few of those here and there—but the kind of arms you use to start a war. Fifty-caliber rifles, which can take down small aircraft. Assault rifles—rebranded “sporting rifles,” in case your sport might be decimating a small village in under a minute. High-capacity magazines of the variety used in so many recent massacres at malls, schools, and universities.
Of all the battles to fight… magazine capacity has a marginal influence on lethality. Reload times are trivial, it takes a shooter just seconds to swap one to the next.
Assault rifles—rebranded “sporting rifles,” in case your sport might be decimating a small village in under a minute.
Appeals to emotion are the lowest form of argument. Still, they define the gun-control movement.
propaganda campaign
That’s just smart politics. What would you have the NRA do? Surrender? Choose terms which put them at a disadvantage? Many in the gun control movement are opposed to gun ownership on principle, the NRA’s ever hardening positions are defined by that reality. They fear that giving ground here will embolden their foes - they worry that any ground they cede, they’ll lose forever. They look at an England and worry.
The biggest takeaway I had was how militarized it had become. I don’t like that in our police force either. Then again, I’m not a CoD player, either.
1999 is a curious date for a reference point. The fear-mongering didn’t really kick off until Obama was elected. I’m certain the shift toward modern weapons porn has far greater influences than the late-to-the-game NRA. They’re usually content to cash their checks until the tide turns.
I saw an article today poking fun at LaPierre’s doomsday speech about the importance of the next presidential election. He had the same one last time before Obama was re-elected. What a joke.
Whereas the NRA is well known for it’s calm, well-reasoned approach to responsible gun ownership.
Most cases where people have managed to halt a massacre involved rushing the guy while he was reloading.
I knew this was going to happen. People setting traps just so they can kill someone who wanders into their baited trap. If this guy gets away with murder it will mean my neighbor could shoot me if I go over to see why the garage door is up, then shoot and kill me claiming it was self-defense from an intruder. I use my neighbor as an example because they are very angry, aggressive people who think the world is out to get them (the ones who threaten us because they consideer our nice little Mulberry tree is too ugly for their liking). This is very similar to this case: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/29/minnesota-homeowner-kills-teens/8480047/
The problem here is I see this getting worse not better, and some gun advocates trying to get the law weakened even more so people can shoot anyone who steps foot on their lawn. What’s worse? IN the case of the Minnesota guy, he would have gotten away with it if not for the recording.
olaf
3358
Or law abiding citizens having their own guns being able to stop the threat. Massacres involving firearms take place in ‘gun free zones’.
While I see what you’re getting at, the NRA is another victim of the polarizing influence of the Far Right: more strident, more belligerent, unwilling to negotiate or even contemplate changing its position on anything. I can’t even conceive of the modern NRA supporting gun-control laws like it once did.
And as I think has been discussed in this thread before, I’m uneasy that what’s ostensibly a non-profit advocacy group has morphed into a lobbying & marketing arm of the firearms manufacturers in all but name. I look at the NRA convention and wonder who are they really serving: gun owners or gun sellers?
Nothing better for gun sales than a Democrat in the White House. Getting a black Democrat in there must’ve been like Christmas coming twice!
Are you sure about that? Among the 25 deadliest US mass shootings, I count 13 suicides, 5 killed by cops, and 7 arrested (1 was shot in the back by a civilian, 2 are described as surrendering or “arrested without incident”). Even if the other four arrests involved “rushing a guy while reloading,” that doesn’t sound like “most cases” to me.
What part of “smart politics” confused you? If people don’t have all the facts, they can’t make good policy decisions, which means YEEHAW FREE GUNZ 4 ALL!!1!
You may have swapped “smart” with “ethical.” :-/
No, because in the absence of data, the only smart thing thing to do involves probationary principal when are not significant uses other than “shooting other people”. (So…basically everything except single-shot rifles and shotguns, really)
It’s a public safety issue, after all.
(I’m quite willing to look at the data with an open mind, but it should be studied)
WTF is wrong with so-called “Gun activists”? Do they want any idiot to be able to fire a gun? Do they like having children shot in their homes by parents who forget to put it in a safe? Do they like stolen firearms being ueable? http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/maryland-dealer-will-defy-gun-rights-advocates-by-selling-nations-first-smart-gun/2014/05/01/564efa48-d14d-11e3-937f-d3026234b51c_story.html?wpsrc=AG0003336
Article updated with new headline: Maryland dealer, under pressure from gun-rights activists, drops plan to sell smart gun
Be sure to watch the video… especially the rant he starts around 0:42.
Sounds like gun-rights activists are basically terrorists.
This might be hard for you to believe, coming from a land with (presumably) saner gun laws, but in the wake of McDonald v. Chicago, the legal winds have shifted against gun-control laws. SCOTUS basically upheld that while state & local gov’ts can regulate firearms, they can’t ban them outright.
So my knee-jerk cynical response to the NRA’s opposition to better research on firearms is they don’t want any pesky facts to turn up which might contradict their propaganda and FUD. They think they have the upper hand right now, why potentially jeopardize that by rocking the boat?
Color me completely and totally unsurprised by this abrupt 180 in the wake of entirely predictable behavior from far-right gun nuts.
