Today's irony...

[seawasp]

... the current panic over OMG GUNS! is driving vastly higher sales of guns and ammo. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero.

Not that anyone couldn't have predicted this, but I find it very amusing. Along with the idiotic locations doing "gun buyback" programs that don't come close to offering the actual value of the weapons, so that gun dealers and other private citizens show up outside the buyback area to acquire the guns at higher (but still very nice) prices. Everyone wins except, of course, the government that wanted to REDUCE the number of guns out there...

Really, sometimes I think that behind the scenes the NRA and other groups are grinning from ear to ear every time one of these happens.

Comments

[eacole72.livejournal.com]

My husband is a life member of the NRA, a gift from his late father.

We're convinced that the NRA is now simply a mouthpiece for the ammunition industry (most gun manufacturers don't really like them, because they are bad for business).

[dragoness-e.livejournal.com]

This has happened every time someone in Congress mutters anything about "gun control" or "assault weapons ban". I mean really, if the people who make laws start saying things like "we ought to ban/restrict the sales of <favorite item>", of course people are going to stock up on <favorite item>.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

If I've got the stats right (and I may not) it looks like the big surges in purchases come from the same people; more guns, yes, but not more gun owners but rather larger arsenals in the basements of those who can be herded by the NRA's paranoid rhetoric.

Buy back programs work when you can't just go to the store afterward and buy the latest model; otherwise it risks turning into a "cash for clunkers" industry subsidy. That's the real problem, not the buy-back price. (Which isn't the replacement cost, no, but then again neither is the Blue Book value of your old Buick.)

-- Steve still can't make head-nor-tail out of American gun rhetoric. From the outside it looks like the Dancing Madnesses of Medieval Europe.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

It might help to know that there are indeed verbose insane people working hard to keep the noise level up.

[qinshihuangdi.livejournal.com]

I imagine it would be pretty difficult to figure things out from outside.

As best as I can tell, the /short term/ history of the reasons dates back to around the Civil War.

Then there is the issue of how much is oral history. Both me and seawasp are Americans, but as we are from different parts of the country, we've naturally tended to pick up different oral history, and our family histories and traditions probably have some major differences. America is large, and there can be a huge 'blind men and the elephant' effect.

Money and political benefit are huge amplifiers. I'd expect a significant amount of information sources accessible overseas are originally intended for internal argument. Root causes and background are not the most useful things for this. Depending, one might either want to ignore them or take them for granted. As far as marketing internal policy to those outside the country, depending on the faction one might either be happy borrowing the rhetoric popular in those countries or ignoring the issue entirely.

[kjn]

Given the very large, nay, pathological fixation of guns that is entwined with US culture, no matter what you do about the problem will drive something like this in the short term.

[muirecan.livejournal.com]

The weird tendency of people to think that other people won't modify their behavior in response to things is just odd. Its like they think the world works like they want it to not the more complex way it really does work. ::sigh:: Politicians particularly suffer from this disease. Riiiigggghhtt. People won't modify their behavior when you make new laws or change regulations. And in ways you didn't want them to. ::shakes head::

[dalesql.livejournal.com]

I've been waiting for a couple of years for a gun buyback program in my area. I've got a rusty immovable piece of metal that used to be a pistol that I found buried in a mud puddle at the range. Planning to turn it in for the fifty bucks or whatever they are offering.