The thing that concerns me the most is that people are supportive of our police officers and other law enforcement agents standing around public streets with assault rifles.
Did anyone see footage of the parade this weekend?
The need for better detection aside, we are witnessing one of the most dramatic coalescence of police power in the history of our nation. This is one of the reasons some of us point to the unrealistic proposition that an armed populace would resist government encroachment of their civil rights--the people are actually demanding it now.
Well I'll be damned, the NRA agrees with me!
Quote:
Four years later, some gun owners have grown so disenchanted with President Bush that they may cast a protest vote for a third-party candidate, stay away from the polls, or even back the likely Democratic nominee, gun-control advocate John F. Kerry.
Surprisingly, the issues that have most alienated many gun groups from the Bush administration have little to do with firearms, but rather with the Patriot Act and other homeland security measures instituted after Sept. 11. Opposition to such laws has aligned gun-rights activists with unlikely partners, such as liberal Democrats and the ACLU.
The Bush administration has come down on the side of gun-rights groups on several issues, perhaps most notably in opposing efforts to hold firearm manufacturers liable for damages caused by their products. But it also has repeatedly disappointed gun activists on other issues, from refusing to allow airline pilots to arm themselves to quietly supporting the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban.
"People who have a strong interest in gun rights tend to be libertarian in their thinking," Lund said. "They tend to be skeptical of the government."
"Too many are too timid to ask what these outrages are supposed to achieve. Too many are too polite to say that our Bill of Rights is too sacred to give up for homeland security or for anything else," he said.
This year state and regional gun groups are openly attacking not only Bush, but other Republicans they view as turncoats.
The Oregon Firearms Federation, for example, has grown increasingly hostile toward Republican Sen. Gordon Smith, who joined Bush in backing the renewal of the Assault Weapons Ban. In direct mail and e-mail campaigns, the group has accused Smith of voting against gun rights 80% of the time and using Bush as "cover" for his backing of the ban.
Though proponents of gun control frequently characterize the NRA as a radical far-right organization, many state and regional groups view it as too moderate, and accuse the NRA of acquiescing on fundamental tenets of the movement in the interest of political expediency.
Such groups are nearly as irked by the NRA for its support of Bush — "squishy" though it may be, in the words of one official — as with Bush himself.
Although they traditionally back Republicans, several state and regional gun-rights groups — driven especially by opposition to the Patriot Act and other post-Sept. 11 measures — have grown so disillusioned by the Bush administration that they are openly discussing the potential benefits of voting for Kerry.
A Democrat in the White House to face down a Republican-controlled Congress might, the argument goes, be the best way to halt what they view as a raid on civil liberties.
"Had the Clinton administration proposed the Patriot Act, which is a real scary thing for gun owners, the Republican-controlled Congress would have been apoplectic," said Starrett of the Oregon Firearms Federation.
"The Republicans aren't the saviors of gun owners. Sometimes we're better off when those two gangs are divided," he said.
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--http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/2004/la-na-gunpolitics13apr13,1,2467557.story?coll=la-home-headlines