Bill Clinton to liberal donors: Don’t condescend to gun owners

Hotair ^ | 01/21/2013 | AllahPundit

[SeekAndFind]

Excellent advice but surely a total buzzkill for leftists, for whom the big gun-control push is at least as much a cultural struggle as it is a serious attempt to reduce mass shootings. Tightening the laws on background checks and banning high-capacity magazines might not stop future Sandy Hooks or Columbines but it will potentially force the yokels to behave in a bit more civilized fashion. Like they do in, say, Chicago.

Next he’ll be telling them not to use kids as props for their big gun-grab rituals. I thought this guy was supposed to be fun.

“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.”…

“A lot of these people … all they’ve got is their hunting and their fishing,” he 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.”

Clinton closed his remarks with a warning to big Democratic donors that ultimately many Democratic lawmakers will be defeated if they choose to stand with the president.

“Do not be self-congratulatory about how brave you [are] for being for this” gun control push, he said. “The only brave people are the people who are going to lose their jobs if they vote with you.”

The hunting/fishing line is a nice example of the difference between Clinton and Obama. When The One gets behind closed doors with like-minded ideologues, he’ll happily patronize rural culture by giving you his pet theory on why the bitter-clingers cling to their guns and Bibles so bitterly. Clinton won’t give you “why.” He’ll imply it (“all they’ve got”) but that extra bit of condescension, where hunting and religion and opposition to amnesty are supposedly all a byproduct of economic frustration, just isn’t there. You already know this if you watched the Democratic convention last year, but Clinton’s far the superior retail politician.

More good advice from the Big Dog about not overreaching on guns: “All these polls that you see saying the public is for us on all these issues — they are meaningless if they’re not voting issues.” I.e. it’s quite possible there’s a reckoning coming for Democrats in the midterms if anything major happens in Congress. Via Mediaite, here’s Shep Smith not caring much about that at all.

CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO

[SirLurkedalot]

I have no handy reference source....but my answer is “More than enough”

Molon Labe!!!

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Question for the forum – can anyone point me to a reference sources that details how many gun owners there are in the country?

Per SeekAndFind’s Gallup link:

One in Three Americans [Adults] Personally Own a Gun.

Per http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_gun_owners_are_there_in_the_United_States_of_America:

Most estimates range between 39% and 50% of US households having at least one gun (that's about 43-55 million households). The estimates for the number of privately owned guns range from 190 million to 300 million. Removed those that skew the stats for their own purposes the best estimates are about 45% or 52 million of American households owning 260 million guns)

Annually there are roughly 15,000 gun murders in the US; if you divide that number into 45 million households with guns, you come up with about 3,000 households with guns for every (annual) gun murder.

Which only means that an awful lot of people legally buy guns with no intention of murdering with them. Nearly all guns are bought for legitimate reasons.

A gun is a responsibility. You know, like a car, or a swimming pool. There are people who earn their living by carrying and if necessary using a gun; policemen and security guards for example. There are even instances when men have been legally required to carry, and to shoot, guns - and even to fire cannons. It was called, "the military draft.” The fact that people have the inherent right to assume the responsibility entailed by gun possession is explicit in the Constitution. The choice to exercise that right is a prudential, rather than a moral, issue.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Annually there are roughly 15,000 gun murders in the US;

According to UN figures via WaPo the number of gun hommicides in America is not 5 per hundred thousand but about 3.25 per hundred thousand. Times 10 (hundred thousand per million) and times 300 million Americans yields not 15,000 but “only” (each one a tragedy) 9750 gun homicides annually.

if you divide that number into 45 million households with guns, you come up with about 4,600 households with guns for every (annual) gun murder.

An awful lot of people own guns for reasons other than committing murder. As noted above, the Constitution asserts that they have a right to do so. It takes a 2/3 majority in Congress to propose an amendment, and a simple majority in 3/4 of the state legislatures to ratify it. I doubt that the adults who own, or reserve the right to contemplate owning, a gun will be persuaded to defer to the “wisdom” of a few children who don’t understand the Constitution and may not know the difference between a thousand and a million on the prudential issue of the risk/benefit ratio of gun ownership.