I agree with the idea that most minds are already made up, so his speech is pretty pointless.
And while I support his stance, it doesn't hold much water in my eyes. Most laws in general are meant to limit the minority and not the majority. I mean would the majority of people kill other people? I would say no. But we have laws against it. Would the majority of parents abuse their children? No, but there's still laws against it. We will find that there will be laws passed against assault weapons (even if they're mechanically the same as the semi-auto .308 your grandfather gave you for deer hunting). I think it would work out better for us gun owners to concede on some things in order to have more voice on the really important things. I won't go into what I would classify as really important because my list is probably different from yours, but compromise will at least ensure that the uninformed far left doesn't pass all out bans.
The main miscalculation here is assuming you are dealing with rational people who genuinely want what they claim. There are people in positions of power in this country who will not be satisfied until every gun, every bow, and every knife is confiscated and destroyed. Note, I am not saying this is the case with anti-gun people as a whole- the majority of them genuinely believe the stuff they are repeating. They really believe they will be safer if they become more helpless. Because the media are controlled almost entirely by one side here, there is no place at the table for logical discussion. There is huge political power up for grabs by whipping people up into a frenzy of fear and then offering a "solution" to a nonexistent problem. Nobody will ever be allowed on mainstream media to point out that killing innocent people is already the most illegal action there is, and if that doesn't stop someone, making it slightly more illegal certainly won't. That is
reason, and it is entirely unwelcome. They are not at all interested in anything that will allow you or me a voice.
There is no compromising with these people. Appeasement has never worked, throughout history. Once you pay the Danegeld, you are never rid of the Dane. They will take whatever you offer, then demand more. Once they have all the handguns, all the "high capacity magazines" and all the "assault rifles", your bolt action deer rifle will become a "sniper rifle", and your shotgun will become a "street sweeper". There is no "enough" in their crusade. There are a few people who are intent on collecting more power for themselves by taking it from everyone else. They, quite wisely, started out by cementing control of the media. They carefully craft responses to every tragedy that comes along so it builds fear in the minds of the uninformed. Keeping the hysteria going keeps people from looking at uncomfortable facts. Particularly since the largest urban areas are almost entirely disarmed, most people have very few facts to work with. There will always be more tragedy, because gun control simply doesn't work. They know it doesn't work, but it's not really about the guns. It's about the control.
Television and movies keep pounding on the theme that violence=guns. You almost never see criminals on TV deliberately choosing a target because they know the victims will be unarmed. You almost never see a common citizen on TV successfully defending their home or family. You never see anyone on TV who owns guns and doesn't shoot anyone with them. The message is that guns are violence, and your only protection is the police, who will always solve any crime in 22 minutes plus commercials.
I realize there are outdoor channels available, but a lot of the shows there are doing the antis' work for them. The "Whack-em-and-stack-em" mentality is revolting to nonhunters, and to most real hunters as well. The majority of that programming does a better job of painting hunters as psychotic rednecks than the antis ever could. Psychotic rednecks are safely ignored, until they are needed to take the blame for the next shooting.
