Quote of the Day

To get rid of those guns requires confiscation. That requires a lot of law enforcement. If you like the War on Drugs or ICE’s immigration raids, you will love a War on Guns. To collect those hundreds of millions of guns will require many more cops, many more home searches by armed cops that could result in shootings, many more stops and frisks on the streets, and a great many more prison sentences for gun possession — a crime that is often under-enforced by blue-city and blue-state prosecutors because sentencing those offenders tends to lead disproportionately to jailing young black men. But if the guns are the problem and removing them is the solution, you need to act as if you believe those things.

…

What are you prepared to do? And then what are you prepared to do? If you’re not prepared for the dramatic escalation of heavy-handed law enforcement that a War on Guns would entail, then you’re not serious about one.

Dan Zimmerman
October 2, 2025
The Gun Control Industry Has Never Been Serious About What They’re Prepared to Do to Wage Their War on Guns – Shooting News Weekly

One can make the argument that Democrats originally just wanted to ban guns for blacks to enable the KKK. Then after the party was no longer dependent on the KKK to win elections they kept the gun issue because it would be inconsistent to switch talking points. Ultimately, they convinced their base that guns were the cause of crime. At that point they could continue to get votes by promising to “do something.” If they had actually been able to deliver it would have eliminated a reason to vote for them.

And, of course, a case can be made that the Republican party never wanted to actually eliminate all the repressive gun laws for similar reasons. If the repressive gun laws were eliminated, then their base would have less reason to vote for them.

Hence, for at the last ~60 years (since congress started debating what became GCA68), both sides used gun control to get votes and money from the common people. Yeah, I’m somewhat cynical at times.

Ironically, I think either side winning in a big way would have resolved it to my eventual satisfaction. A civil war over gun ownership probably would have resulted in a new government with private gun ownership a central point of the foundation of government. The pro-gun legislative rollback of GCA68 and all the state and local laws would be preferable, but the issue would probably fester for 100 years or more.

This is part of the reason I have been saying for years that I have given up on the legislative branch. It is only through the courts that we have a chance to get this mess cleaned up without bloodshed or a long fester. Neither major party is really serious about resolving the issue. It is their gravy train of votes and money.

The courts are glacially slow, but it does reduce the bloodshed and put a foreseeable end to the lingering political fester.