Clinton: Here’s how you ‘patronize’ gun owners without being patronizing
This is just Bubba being Bubba, in a way no other politician today can quite manage. From Politico:
Former President Bill Clinton warned a group of top Democratic donors at a private Saturday meeting not to underestimate the passions that gun control stirs among many Americans.
“Do not patronize the passionate supporters of your opponents by looking down your nose at them,” Clinton said.
“A lot of these people live in a world very different from the world lived in by the people proposing these things,” Clinton said. “I know because I come from this world.”
So far, so good. Sound political advice, and seemingly genuine toward both the donors he’s advising and the people he’s advising them not to patronize. Toward the end of the story, however, we get this:
“A lot of these people … all they’ve got is their hunting and their fishing,” [Clinton] told the Democratic financiers. “Or they’re living in a place where they don’t have much police presence. Or they’ve been listening to this stuff for so long that they believe it all.”
“Don’t have much police presence” — OK, fair enough. That can be said about a number of rural areas. But “all they’ve got is their hunting and their fishing”? That’s not as bad as then-candidate Barack Obama’s bitter-clingers remark (also to Democratic donors) about religious and/or gun-totin’ folk. But it is, in my experience growing up in North Georgia around a lot of people who liked to hunt, an overwrought generalization at best and a bad caricature at worst.
Yet the real kicker here is the part about how they’ve “been listening to this stuff for so long that they believe it all.” Which is, of course, completely different from, say, wealthy coast-dwelling Democrats who have never held a rifle but have heard (on NPR) all about how anything newer than a musket can only be used to murder dozens of people at a time.
Yes, that’s another overwrought generalization. The point is that so many liberals love to be told they’re the only right-thinking people who consider all sides and then come to the only rational conclusion — which happens to be a liberal one, time and again — and no one is better than Clinton at making them believe that’s all true.
Which is, I have to admit, a gift. A rather patronizing gift, but a gift nonetheless.
– By Kyle Wingfield
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192 comments Add your comment
@@
January 22nd, 2013
12:36 pm
When ‘ya think about it, the regulations on sales is a boon for the gun dealers. With the prices up, I was gonna buy one from my brother or a friend of my nephew’s.
Do I still have time?
Kyle Wingfield
January 22nd, 2013
12:42 pm
MANGLER @ 12:11: I didn’t read his line to refer only to the most passionate supporters of gun rights. I read it to mean these supporters of gun rights are passionate, so there will be a real political backlash for patronizing them. That backlash was, after all, the main theme of his speech (according to Politico’s account of it).
bigguy
January 22nd, 2013
12:43 pm
Kyle,
Are you drinking the koolaid now? I don’t think a new system will solve anything. It would just be another opportunity for corruption, like everything else the government does. The only way to stop unwarranted killing is to take away the free man’s freedom…which they would love to do.
joe
January 22nd, 2013
12:43 pm
Clinton certainly knows how to twist situations to fit a square “cigar” peg in a “round” hole. Case in point, he taught us all how to “have sex” with “that woman” without actually having “sexual relations.”
TBone
January 22nd, 2013
12:44 pm
This massive deception with the objective of denying our Constituionally guaranteed liberties is the work of a political ruling class that has enjoyed a population eat up by inertia for some time. We have allowed this bunch of politicians on both sides to chip away at our liberty for security. Now they must find away to defang those in red states, the blue states have already rolled over. These ruling class elitists are not statesmen.
Hillbilly D
January 22nd, 2013
12:47 pm
Do I still have time?
Of course you do.
Doesn’t matter what they pass or don’t pass, nothing is going to change. There are obvious reasons for that but I’ll let everybody figure out for themselves what those reasons are.
md
January 22nd, 2013
12:48 pm
“Presumably, there are citizens who now, in complete compliance with the law, unwittingly sell guns to people who wouldn’t pass a background check for one reason or another, and who wouldn’t do so if private sales were subject to the same background checks.”
And my point applies to the buyers, not the sellers.
Those that want guns and can’t pass a background check will get them. Sure, it may make it a bit harder, but that won’t stop them is they want them. There are plenty of black market guns out there from folks that don’t follow the rules.
Shoot, our own gov’t has been known to put a few on that market……
MarkV
January 22nd, 2013
12:49 pm
The rifle used in the Newtown shooting, AR 15, falls under the federal definition of the term “assault weapon.” The point is not whether the Newtown shooting in all the circumstances would have been prevented, but whether a ban on assault weapons might prevent a similar mass shooting. There is no way to prove that it would, but there is at least a good chance that it might.
DebbieDoRight - A Do Right Woman
January 22nd, 2013
12:51 pm
The point is that so many liberals love to be told they’re the only right-thinking people who consider all sides and then come to the only rational conclusion — which happens to be a liberal one, time and again — and no one is better than Clinton at making them believe that’s all true.
Interesting comment. I guess when one hears from Fox News, et al. (like I did last night), that Obama is a socialist, a marxist, AND a despotic tyrant, all at once and that is believed and parroted by so many on the right, that is totally different right?
Kyle Wingfield
January 22nd, 2013
12:52 pm
“Fully automatic weapons have been banned, without a federal firearms permit, since June 26, 1934. A lot of people are totally missing the point on that one.”
Yep. And those people, Hillbilly, are probably the most likely to tell the rest of us we’re ignorant about how it really is wrt guns and violence.
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
January 22nd, 2013
12:53 pm
WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Barack obozo delivered a direct, forceful inaugural address Monday, during which he promised the continuation of a large national government and socially progressive platform to a lackluster crowd who at times seemed more interested in their cell phones than his speech…….the crowd gathered on the National Mall failed to catch the emotional fever pitch. It remains to be seen what, if any, role the strong smell of the marijuana smoke in one part of the Mall played on the crowd’s demeanor.
I wish he’d just shut up to and I’m not even high.
Hillbilly D
January 22nd, 2013
12:56 pm
The ban on “assault weapons” reminds me of discussions back in the 1970’s about banning “saturday night specials”. All the hype in the press defined “saturday night specials” as being “cheap handguns”. Then Ted Kennedy came out with a bill which included damn near every handgun made, including a Colt Python, which was anything but a cheap handgun. If the bill had passed, it would have in effect been a handgun ban. A bit of the old Trojan Horse.
They’re not to be trusted, in my opinion.
td
January 22nd, 2013
1:03 pm
MarkV
January 22nd, 2013
12:49 pm
The rifle used in the Newtown shooting, AR 15, falls under the federal definition of the term “assault weapon.”
I am pretty sure that definition is no longer in effect since the old ban is no longer the law of the land.
MarkV
January 22nd, 2013
1:19 pm
td @ 1:03 pm
“I am pretty sure that definition is no longer in effect since the old ban is no longer the law of the land.”
And your point is?
JDW
January 22nd, 2013
1:19 pm
@Bruno…”Which would merely qualify them as being obnoxious jerks in most situations.”
Obnoxious maybe…true nonetheless…
“A libertarian (and, as such, nonpartisan) researcher, Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics and Political Science, conducted a study that was published by the journal Social Psychology Quarterly. The paper investigates not only whether conservatives are dumber than liberals but also why that might be so….The short answer: Kanazawa’s paper shows that more-intelligent people are more likely to say they are liberal.”
http://www.americanscientist.org/science/pub/study-are-liberals-smarter-than—conservatives
Logical Dude
January 22nd, 2013
1:22 pm
quoting the quote: Fully automatic weapons have been banned, without a federal firearms permit, since June 26, 1934.
Umm, if you can own it with a permit, it’s not totally banned, is it?
Then by that logic, Driving in cars is also banned, unless you have a drivers license.
(okay okay, I know it’s a silly comparison, but I wanted to be silly just this one time).
md
January 22nd, 2013
1:22 pm
The last ban was a bit comical and goes to show how silly some of our laws are:
“In the former U.S. law, the legal term assault weapon included certain specific semi-automatic firearm models by name (e.g., Colt AR-15, TEC-9, non-select-fire AK-47s produced by three manufacturers, and Uzis) and other semi-automatic firearms because they possess a minimum number of cosmetic features from the following list of features:
Semi-automatic rifles able to accept detachable magazines and two or more of the following:
Folding or telescoping stock
Pistol grip
Bayonet mount
Flash suppressor, or threaded barrel designed to accommodate one
Grenade launcher (more precisely, a muzzle device that enables launching or firing rifle grenades, though this applies only to muzzle mounted grenade launchers and not those mounted externally).”
Maybe I’m missing something, but can someone please explain to me why having a bayonet mount would turn any weapon into an assault rifle……
Not to mention if the magazine wasn’t detachable then it mattered not how many shells it could hold.
southpaw
January 22nd, 2013
1:31 pm
JDW @1:19
If you read a bit past the title, you find that self-identified liberals aren’t necessarily intelligent enough to describe themselves accurately.
“Kanazawa found that more-intelligent GSS respondents (as measured by a quick but highly reliable synonym test) were less likely to agree that the government has a responsibility to reduce income and wealth differences. In other words, intelligent people might like to portray themselves as liberal. But in the end, they know that it’s good to be the king.”
Kyle Wingfield
January 22nd, 2013
1:34 pm
More about that paper JDW cited @ 1:19, via the Time article linked at JDW’s link:
“What’s new in Kanazawa’s paper is a provocative theory about why intelligence might correlate with liberalism. He argues that smarter people are more willing to espouse “evolutionarily novel” values — that is, values that did not exist in our ancestral environment, including weird ideas about, say, helping genetically unrelated strangers (liberalism, as Kanazawa defines it), which never would have occurred to us back when we had to hunt to feed our own clan and our only real technology was fire.” (emphasis added)
Well, if you define liberalism in a way that inaptly defines conservatism, and which in fact flatters liberalism, there’s no telling what sort of results you’ll get. It is worth repeating, for the umpteenth time: Conservatives do not object to “helping genetically unrelated strangers”; we believe centralized government planning is not always or even often the best way to do this.
Then there’s this:
“Kanazawa found that more-intelligent [General Social Survey] respondents (as measured by a quick but highly reliable synonym test) were less likely to agree that the government has a responsibility to reduce income and wealth differences.” (emphasis original)
In other words, if you don’t define conservatism in a way that’s flattering to liberalism, it would appear the “more intelligent” crowd actually identifies with at least one key conservative principle.
But look on the bright side, JDW: You’ve totally proven my original point about liberals’ love of being told they’re intrinsically more thoughtful and rational than conservatives!
JDW
January 22nd, 2013
1:36 pm
@Bruno…”I prefer to look at the big picture, Kyle. We live in a country of approximately 320,000,000 people in which the average life span is about 80 years old (numbers rounded for convenient calculations). Which means that approximately 4,000,000 die per year. In such a context, 20 deaths is pretty insignificant, and shouldn’t be used as a stand-alone motivation to change the law. ”
Not really. First off there were 2.4 million deaths in the US in 2010. Of those only about 20,000 were children between the ages of 1 and 19. In 2008, 2,947 children and teens died from guns in the United States and 2,793 died in 2009.
That means guns kill about 14% of all children and teens that die in the US every years…that is not “pretty insignificant”
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/deaths_2010_release.pdf
childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publications/data/protect-children-not-guns-2012.pdf
@@
January 22nd, 2013
1:38 pm
A bit of the old Trojan Horse.
They’re not to be trusted, in my opinion.
Legilative creep can serve as an entanglement to law-abiding citizens. At some point, it wouldn’t surprise me if any weapon used in an assault could be labeled as one.
Hillbilly:
Did you watch “An Ultimate Guide to the Presidents” on the History Channel?
For someone (me) who’s never been a history buff, other than what was taught in school, it was very enlightening. They still portrayed Lincoln as some champion of the oppressed. I’ve explored the truth about Lincoln. He wasn’t a champion of the oppressed…more like the oppressor.
Now Calvin Coolidge? A man of few words, but when he spoke…it was worth a listen.
td
January 22nd, 2013
1:40 pm
MarkV
January 22nd, 2013
1:19 pm
td @ 1:03 pm
“I am pretty sure that definition is no longer in effect since the old ban is no longer the law of the land.”
And your point is?
My point is that there is not currently any Federal definition of an “Assault Weapon”.
Cletus
January 22nd, 2013
1:40 pm
I’m guessing that most of those women I see waiting in line to buy a purse size pistola @ the local gun store and the gun shows aren’t into hunting and fishing, Bubba.
When you’re an ex-President who has lifetime 24-7 Secret Service protection it’s probably easier to ridicule the unwashed masses who have to provide for their own safety.
Del
January 22nd, 2013
1:41 pm
Assault weapon is the label that the anti-gun people typically like to use. An assault weapon is really a rifle that can both fire in semi-automatic mode or in a fully or partially automatic mode. A capable gun smith can build a dual mode AR-15 or AR-10. Banning firearms only creates a black market for such weapons. Obama’s proposals are purely political.
JDW
January 22nd, 2013
1:45 pm
@Kyle…”Conservatives do not object to “helping genetically unrelated strangers””
YOU may believe that but the run of the mill “Conservative” of today does not. Nor did you last Presidential candidate (re: the 47%).
As for the rest of the spin…let me expand…
“Kanazawa’s paper shows that more-intelligent people are more likely to say they are liberal. They are also less likely to say they go to religious services. These aren’t entirely new findings; last year, for example, a British team found that kids with higher intelligence scores were more likely to grow into adults who vote for Liberal Democrats, even after the researchers controlled for socioeconomics. ”
In my book if you say you are a liberal and vote liberal you are liberal. Even if you can find an isolated data point or two.
TBone
January 22nd, 2013
1:45 pm
@ JDW That wise old “liberal”, Ben Franklin said something to the effect that it may be better to be thought of as foolish than to open your mouth and prove it to everyone. Based simply on observations, I think the left leaners go out of their way to presume some sort of intellectual superiority as a means of self-security. Anyone willing to make that sweeping generalization is a fool.
HDB
January 22nd, 2013
1:46 pm
Kyle Wingfield
January 22nd, 2013
1:34 pm
“Conservatives do not object to “helping genetically unrelated strangers”; we believe centralized government planning is not always or even often the best way to do this.”
….but the problem with many conservatives is that they believe that the private sector…particularly the charitable sector…..can handle they myriad problems of the nation. Problem is….the private sector can not effective handle the VOLUME of affected people. It will take a COMBINATION of both the private and public sectors to address the national issues! Privatization of many governmental functions will not work!!
That’s one main difference between liberals and conservatives; conservatives won’t address the VOLUME……liberals focus on the VOLUME…….
JDW
January 22nd, 2013
1:46 pm
@Kyle…”You’ve totally proven my original point about liberals’ love of being told they’re intrinsically more thoughtful and rational than conservatives!”
Almost forgot…I never disputed that liberals love the truth…
In fact I think it is one of the things that seperates us from todays “Conservatives”…the ablity to understand the truth.
jconservative
January 22nd, 2013
1:49 pm
What all must get a hand on is that the Heller and McDonald decisions by the SCOTUS took threats to the 2nd Amendment off the table. These two decisions, like Roe v Wade, are here to stay. I would recommend all read those two decisions.
Now, I admit I do not have a handle on those folks who sit in their houses with multiple weapons and several hundred rounds of ammo in fear that government troops will appear any day to take their guns. I always envision some heavily armed guy and his family all hunkered down in their bunker ready to fight off a platoon from the 101st and an Air Force fighter flies over, drops napalm on his bunker and all you hear is the sound of frying bacon and melting metal.
Del
January 22nd, 2013
1:50 pm
Liberal think ideologically, while conservatives think logically.
JDW
January 22nd, 2013
1:51 pm
@Tbone…”Based simply on observations, I think the left leaners go out of their way to presume some sort of intellectual superiority as a means of self-security. Anyone willing to make that sweeping generalization is a fool.”
Statistics can in fact be “sweeping generalizations”. Hang around this blog and you will see lots of them…this particular one happens to appear quite consistently and could be considered more of a working hypothesis.
Hillbilly D
January 22nd, 2013
1:52 pm
Now Calvin Coolidge? A man of few words, but when he spoke…it was worth a listen.
Only saw a little of that, the ones about Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. Coolidge was my Grandma’s favorite president and she was a 3rd generation, (her Daddy and Grandpa were both in the Legislature) Yellow Dog Democrat.
md
January 22nd, 2013
1:53 pm
“That means guns kill about 14% of all children and teens that die in the US every years…that is not “pretty insignificant””
“Killed by gun users”, NOT guns kill.
The next question would then be how many would not have died had another form of weapon been used……..impossible to know that answer. All speculation from there……..
HDB
January 22nd, 2013
1:54 pm
Del
January 22nd, 2013
1:50 pm
That works both ways, also……i.e., conservatives think ideologically, while liberals think logically.
Look at Texas and how they are teaching students for evidence……………
Lil' Barry Bailout - OBAMAPHONE!!!
January 22nd, 2013
1:55 pm
Ben Franklin was a paleo-liberal. You know, the kind that believed in liberty.
Rush
January 22nd, 2013
1:57 pm
MarkIV:
A AR15 was not used in the shooting in Connecticut but was recovered in the suspects car. Maybe the AR15 just decided to walk into the school on its own since, you know, guns kill people.
Lil' Barry Bailout - OBAMAPHONE!!!
January 22nd, 2013
1:57 pm
Data point: your Liberal Messiah thinks we don’t have a spending problem. Not exactly a sign of higher intelligence.
md
January 22nd, 2013
1:57 pm
“YOU may believe that but the run of the mill “Conservative” of today does not. Nor did you last Presidential candidate (re: the 47%).”
Hmmm…..and that Presidential candidate gave how much to charity??
I’d hazard a guess he gave more than a majority of liberals did……..
Kyle Wingfield
January 22nd, 2013
1:59 pm
“YOU may believe that but the run of the mill “Conservative” of today does not.”
JDW, I suggest you pick up a copy of this book. And read it. The whole thing, not just the bits that you like. Until then, you are bound to continue, however unwittingly, proving my point that most liberals’ knowledge of what conservatives believe and how we act extends no further than, as one might say, “this stuff” that you’ve “been listening to … for so long that [you] believe it all.”
Oh, and fyi “liberal” has a different meaning in Britain than it does in the U.S. It generally refers to a system of beliefs we might call “classical liberalism,” which calls for little government intervention in the economy. The left-wing party there is Labour. The right-wing party is the Conservative Party. The Lib Dems are sort of a muddled mix of the two: generally liberal (in the American sense) on social issues but more or less market-oriented when it comes to economic issues. It often depends on the particular individuals leading the party (more so than usual in partisan politics, I’d say … and fwiw, I covered British politics when I worked in Europe).
Come to think of it, the fact that Kanazawa found self-described “liberals” were more likely to vote for the Lib Dems only confirms the idea that they don’t really know which political ideology they follow.
Del
January 22nd, 2013
2:00 pm
HDB,
If education produces greater prosperity than economically the state of Texas, a red state outperforms California and New York both blue states. I guess that the education system in Texas must do a few things better.
md
January 22nd, 2013
2:01 pm
And for the superior liberal on board, there is a huge difference in “helping genetically unrelated strangers” and “voting for others to help genetically unrelated strangers”.
I get tickled listening to the many here that have no problem taking the food from another’s refrigerator to feed the homeless and then patting themselves on the back for feeding the homeless.
TBone
January 22nd, 2013
2:01 pm
@ JDW With advanced degrees in statistics, I have learned that figures don’t lie BUT liars figure.
Hillbilly D
January 22nd, 2013
2:02 pm
Logical Dude @ 1:22
A Federal firearms permit for an automatic weapon, is considerably more difficult to obtain than a driver’s license.
md
January 22nd, 2013
2:02 pm
“liberals focus on the VOLUME…….”
Yes they do, with the money of others…….hence the recent tax increase on the rich.
Kyle Wingfield
January 22nd, 2013
2:03 pm
HDB @ 1:46: Why can’t the private sector handle the volume? Doesn’t the private sector identify the demand for, and produce the supply of, a vast array of goods and services?
It might be true that, decades into our social-welfare state, the private sector may not have the capacity to do this today, but there is no empirical reason to believe the private sector is incapable of addressing these issues — or, at the very least, some of the ones the government now handles, and not always well.
@@
January 22nd, 2013
2:07 pm
Yellow Dog Democrat.
Unfortunately those dogs been hit and backed over more times than should be allowed.
Progressive road rage.
(ISH)
md
January 22nd, 2013
2:10 pm
“That works both ways, also……i.e., conservatives think ideologically, while liberals think logically.”
Should a student that CHOOSES to study 24/7, does no partying and makes A’s have to share those A’s with a student that CHOOSES to party 24/7, does no studying and makes F’s?
Logic says no, ideology says yes……..so liberals think what now?
Hillbilly D
January 22nd, 2013
2:12 pm
From a historical perspective, the terms liberal and conservative, long ago lost their meanings. The 2nd Amendment, the idea that every person has the right to own a firearm, if they choose, was a classical liberal notion, at the time it was written and ratified. Funny how that’s gotten flipped 180 degrees, in current terminology.
Labels are fine, if you’re marking things on a shelf or in a drawer but that’s about it.
xxx
January 22nd, 2013
2:16 pm
Maybe we can get a two-for-one and use the voter ID card as permit to purchase a gun.
@@
January 22nd, 2013
2:18 pm
….while liberals think logically.
WRONG!
Having been a liberal, I can attest it was my emotions that ruled. That’s probably why 53% of women vote democrat. Most women are ruled by their emotions, and liberal men are ruled by their women.
schnirt