Are we tilting at windmills re: national gun laws?

[Warren DeMontague]

28. Yes. The truth is, Americans simply dont want government telling them what to do.

Thats why we'll win in the court of public opinion if they seriously go after roe v wade or let pence and his dominionist buddies try and outlaw birth control.

We win in the court of public opinion if the Gail Dines/Christian right alliance tries to censor adult sex and nudity on cable or the internet.

We will win in the court of public opinion if Sessions pursues a misguided crusade against immensely popular state-level marijuana law reforms.


Conversely, we lose in the court of public opinion when people think we're trying to outlaw sodas, and we sure as shit lose when they think we want to outlaw their guns.

Americans like their porn, they like their weed, and despite what the Christian right would have you believe, they like their reproductive choice. Yes. But in large number they also like their big gulps, and a lot of them- for better or worse- really like their guns.

We ought to stop poo-poo'ing notions of personal freedom, or approaching them on a case-by-case basis instead of a consistent ideological frame. Personally, I think it is INSANE that AR-15s are sold in sporting goods stores down the street from where granny gets sent to prison for 20 years because she had a plant in her basement to help her glaucoma. But I recognize that gun control on the federal level is a loser.

If we're going to drop it on the federal level- and we probably will need to- we should at least adopt the increasingly popular mantle of consistently standing up for personal liberty across the board in the process.