Who's mainstream and who's extreme?

There are a number of "arguments" that those who would place greater hurdles between the law abiding and their fundamental civil rights spout to justify their actions. They make claims regarding the meaning and intent of various historical documents, they buy and promote half baked studies with Joyce foundation money and they mangle all manner of statistics: All in the name of depriving you of your civil rights.

One of the most common themes is the notion that more people agree with them, tied in with the notion that there are fewer and fewer gun owners. Allow me to retort.

Actually, the first part of the retort comes from folks like Linoge, Tam, Uncle and anyone else I may be forgetting that expressed this thought first.

It does not matter.

That's correct-it does not matter how many folks think firearms ownership is an antiquated concept best left on the frontier. Fundamental to this line of thinking is the concept of Natural Rights. Natural Rights is the notion that your rights exist because you exist. They are something that belong to all humans as a function of their humanity. (Overview of natural rights) Although the early proponents of this idea couched it in terms of rights endowed by God and therefore were something that could not be taken by men from other men, there is no reason why the agnostic should not view human rights as a condition of humanity. There is no need for a creator to adopt this view. There is no room in this idea for racial, gender or religious bigotry. We all have our fundamental rights until we actively seek to initiate harm to others, at which point these rights become forfeit. In short, your rights exist because you exist, and the votes of the majority have no claim on these rights of the minority. I'm pretty sure that last line is a quote from someone else, but I can't recall who-probably Kevin Baker or Joe Huffman.

From another angle, I refuse to be penalized for another person's misdeeds. I am not responsible for their actions, and you will not restrict my liberty because some other person failed to handle the animated contest with the degree of success we should expect.

There is a wealth of reasons to suppose that more people support an expansion of gun rights than support increased restrictions. I will list a few here.

1) Facebook: The Brady Campaign (formerly known as Handgun Control, Inc) has about 14,000 likes on their Facebook page. Some fraction of these are pro-rights folks who have clicked "Like" to be able to comment on their page. The NRA Facebook page has almost 1.3 MILLION likes. In other words, almost 100 times more people have clicked "Like" on the NRA page than the Brady page.

2) Forums: There are a large number of internet message forums dedicated to firearms and gun rights. From some of the giants like AR15.com and Calguns (290,000 and 100,000 members respectively) to smaller specialty boards dedicated to particular regions or manufacturers (NYFirearms, Glocktalk, Ruger) there are easily a million folks that read and post on these boards. AR15.com typically has 4-5 thousand people viewing it at any given time. I have yet to find a gun control forum, let alone one that is in front of four thousand pairs of eyes at any given time.

3) Youtube: There are several documented cases of Brady, CSGV etc posting videos and only getting a few hundred views over the course of weeks, while pro rights folks will post videos that get a few thousand views in a shorter period of time. (Brady Campaign-after two weeks the too many victims video has about 900 views. The Gunnie reply to that video has about 7000 views in the same timeframe ) This time the factor is about 10 times versus 100. Bear in mind that this Brady event was hyped nationally by the largest gun control groups in the nation, groups with dedicated staffs and large (but ever shrinking) piles of cash from the Joyce foundation. The counter protest was something thrown together by a few bloggers that do this in their spare time.

4) Meetings: Every year the NRA holds its annual meeting, with attendance in excess of 60 thousand, while organized protests of that meeting draw about two hundred. See here for instance. And again, that factor of approximately 100. It just keeps popping up...Even in Illinois, a place where citizens fundamental rights are squashed without regard, gunnies manage huge turnouts.

Now, I would not claim that any of these indicators are definitive proof that the advocates for firearms freedom outnumber the advocates for restriction of the same. Taken as a whole, they make a fairly compelling case that we do, in fact, outnumber the Brady types.

There are several indications that the current gap in enthusiasm for further gun control is widening beyond where it already is. FBI NICS checks have been steadily increasing for years, meaning that more names are being checked to see if it's legal for them to posses firearms. Not every check is a purchase, and some checks are for a single purchase of multiple firearms. So, while there is not a one to one and onto mapping of checks to purchases, increasing checks strongly implies increasing purchases. Remembering that guns are rather durable, even a steady rate of NICS checks implies an increasing number of guns in circulation.

Gallup is showing that self reported gun ownership is at its highest level in decades.

Firearms manufacturers are recording record profits.

Ruger is trying the unprecedented feat of selling 1 million guns in1 year.

The anti rights folks will try to claim that these are simply indicators of people that already own guns buying more guns, and not an indicator of more people buying guns. That is nonsense. Yes, some people are increasing their inventory, but there is no way this is simply a stockpiling by current owners. First time/introductory shooting courses are filling up faster than instructors can teach them, CCW applications are skyrocketing and even formerly hostile or ambivalent media outlets are covering firearms positively. TV shows like Top Shot, American Guns and Pawn Stars show guns in a generally positive light and get pretty good ratings. Good ratings means more of them, and that means more people getting exposed to the cultural notion that guns are not de debil.