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“Wouldn’t a better approach be for amenable states or municipalities to spend money on public education campaigns to discourage people from owning guns, much in the way that they do to discourage smoking? This would do nothing, of course, with respect to deranged people who want to kill many. But there are many more easily preventable gun deaths from suicides, accidents, or domestic violence. If lawful gun possession went down by, say 10%, many lives would probably be saved.” – Indiana University Law Professor Gerard N. Magliocca in Guns and Public Service Campaigns [via concurringopinions.com]

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75 COMMENTS

    • Kind of a one sided affair. The liberal platform amounts to rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. Eventually they’ll sink themselves anyway.

      • Yup. Then we’ll use taxpayers money to convince them not to exercise their Constitutionally-protected rights.

        • I can easily see the Progressives really running with the ‘treat guns like cigarettes’ theme.

          Imagine warning labels on ammunition boxes (Warning! May cause injury or death!). Some countries put pictures of people with cancer on packs of cigs.

          Visualize a picture of a gun suicide victim *In (not) Living Color!* every time you buy a box at your LGS.

          (As an aside, imagine the warnings or pics on a box of Zombie-Max. *snicker*).

          I seriously can see them doing this…

        • “I can easily see the Progressives really running with the ‘treat guns like cigarettes’ theme.”

          Idiot who ran the CDC did precisely that, in a public forum. That’s how he managed to get his budget cut and a federal law written specificaly to prevent the CDC from doing it. And boy, are the proggies still chapped about that. Because if they couldn’t finance their propaganda with public funds, they’d have to hold bake sales.

      • Unfortunately, we are all on the same Titanic and the it seems like the liberals are steering the ship right now.

        • And lining up the deck chairs, taking reservations for shuffleboard, and planning the seating for dinner. At least there will be plenty of ice for the drinks.

      • I wish that were true. Unfortunately, the Russian Revolution was a progressive movement. Not only did it become a shining light of failure, but it lasted 70 years. We have not even had the revolution yet. The progressives are still lining things up… turning one group against another, disabling the Constitution, ruining the economy, getting the lemmings to accept their point of view, etc. While the progressive movement which became communism lasted 70 years, the control of the masses is still in the hands of the few long after the wall came down. So, we could be looking at a lot more than 70 years to regain our rights.

        If they ever gain full control, it may take generations to overturn it.

      • JR_in_NC,

        Unrelated to this post, you asked 3 days ago how Michigan eliminated the pistol purchase permits. (I would have answered there but I wasn’t sure that you would see it.) I believe their campaign hinged on the fact that, going back decades when Michigan first mandated a purchase permit, there were no background checks. Thus, the purchase permit basically was the background check. Today, everyone who purchases a handgun at a licensed dealer has to pass a background check before they can purchase. Thus, advocates pointed out that a purchase permit before purchase was redundant to the background check at the dealer and totally unnecessary. So, Michigan eliminated purchase permits for purchases at licensed dealers under that rationale. Note that a person who purchases a handgun at a licensed dealer still has to register that handgun within a certain number of days after purchase.

        Also, you would still need a purchase permit to purchase a handgun from a private seller since a private seller has no way of running a background check.

        One final note: people who have concealed carry licenses passed a background check to get their licenses. Thus, anyone who has a concealed carry license can purchase from any dealer OR private seller without a purchase permit … although they still have to register within a certain number of days after purchase.

        • In NJ, the Purchase Permit provides the rationale that “allows” face-to-face private sales. Since the permittee underwent a background check to get the permit, a second one is unnecessary. Of course, this then makes the requirement for one @ a FFL superfluous, but who sees any logic in the gun laws.

        • US, if my friend wants to buy my old 1911, how in the world would I know something as stupid as a “purchase permit” is somehow required? I want to see the money, don’t care about the “permit”. How does enforcement work? And how many times per year is it enforced?

      • “Unrelated to this post, you asked 3 days ago how Michigan eliminated the pistol purchase permits. (I would have answered there but I wasn’t sure that you would see it.)”

        Thanks for the good info.

        I did check back there once to see peirsonb’s reply, but all info welcome.

        In NC, the CCH serves as the permit as well on the same ‘bgc’ grounds. Hammering NICS at the FFL as making the permit redundant is cool. Thanks.

        As I mentioned before, we were close to getting rid of the PPP last year. One anti-gun leaning Sheriff from a very Progressive county rattled sabers on the “Law and Order” meme and finagled Sheriff’s Association support (perhaps lukewarm and more tacit than overt, but enough to ‘scare’ some of the state legislators from wanting to appear anti-Lah And Ordah).

        The PPP puts undue burdens on those wishing to buy a handgun both practically and ideologically. Folks have to appear to the SO office in person to apply and pick up the permit, which could mean taking time off work, for example.

        With NICS done on-site at the dealer’s, that should be a slam dunk. Will pass along, and thanks much.

        • I only needed a permit once. I had my CPL after that first purchase.

          When I bought that first one I wasn’t a “gun guy” yet. I was a fence sitter, at best. I didn’t become an absolutist until about two years later. Even then, without a strong opinion about 2A either way, I distinctly remember thinking that having to ask permission before I buy something is absolutely asinine, regardless of what it is.

          I STILL struggle to come up with any other example of needing permission before a purchase (except from my wife, of course).

        • “I distinctly remember thinking that having to ask permission before I buy something is absolutely asinine, regardless of what it is. “

          +1000

        • They are losing the “momentum” game right now.

          Their message is imploding around them. That’s why they are getting so much more bizarre, extreme and even violent. They have to appeal more and more to ‘fringe’ and radical groups.

          The fight is not over. It never will be.

          But, it’s clear that momentum is shifting. There’s a heap ton of under 30 people that are pushing back hard against Progressivism…both on campuses and in the general culture.

          Now is the time to INCREASE pressure. Stand Fast. Don’t give up.

    • Precisely this.
      I’m getting really tired of the grabbers that think that a reduction of 10 (or whatever) percent in legally owned firearms – in other words, about 36,000,00 – has any impact at all. There is no linear relationship (or no relationship at all) between the number of guns owned legally and crime committed with guns.

      If guns owned in the U.S. did drop from 360,000,000 to 324,000,000 does anyone really think that the people that commit about 140,000 crimes each year with a gun are going to be seriously constrained.

      I’ve gotten to where I ask anti’s if they understand the term “order of magnitude”.

      • That’s what I’ve thought when they talk about Aus-style gun control. Their buy-back got only 20% of the known guns out of people’s hands. 20% of 350 million isn’t that much, and still leaves almost 300 million firearms.

  1. If liberal professorship went down by 10 percent, learning would increase exponentially.

  2. We need to support Friends of the NRA and the NRA Foundation. This is the education section of the NRA responsible for attracting and training new shooters. They do it well through local clubs across the country.

    • The above, this! I just bought my 100.00 ticket for the Friend of NRA banquet happening in August in Lima, Ohio. You get to help a good cause and also possibly walk away with some nifty prizes in the drawings.

    • A while back I watched a program where a group of anti-gun students were invited to go to a gun range where they were given some education and safety training and a shooting session. Afterward, they were asked if their opinions had changed about guns. Surprise! A number of them actually enjoyed the experience, and, of those, several said they would like to return and shoot more. As I recall, only one stuck to her original position and another was kinda sitting the fence.

      Perhaps the NRA, CRPA, and local gun shops should work with local ranges to provide an “experience day”. Perhaps even be sneaky and put it out as being for anti-gun people to learn so they can speak from knowledge when they are trying to convince pro-gun people. 🙂 evil laugh

  3. How many lives are saved / crimes prevented every year with cigarettes?

    Yeah.

    So let’s go and start a campaign to discourage use of a right. Voting isn’t a right, but can you imagine the outrage if someone went to black communities and started campaigning to discourage voting?

    • Already been done. It was called Prohibition and it only lasted 13 years before it got tossed. Unfortunately, once the 2A is tossed, we will never get that right back. One only needs to look at the UK, France, Australia, etc. We’ll be back to rocks and sticks because bows and arrows, crossbows, air-guns, etc, have all been included under FIREarms. Or, we may be up all night at the local machine shop, building our own.

      Who knows what will be banned next? Recently, in the California Gulag, they passed an ordinance on how much butane you are allowed to purchase. Public Safety don’cha know. Can’t have them druggies overfilling their butane lighters.

  4. Oy! Where to begin?

    1. What ivory tower has this guy been sequestered? Is he not aware that Daddy Bloomberg started the culture war on gun with an initial 50 million dollar investment in his anti gun groups?

    2. Preventing suicides really? I guess only some suicides are worth preventing.

    3. Someone get this guy a course in power dynamics. Not not the typical academic trope about majority groups and minority groups, something more individual like how the banger wants a weapon to gain the power dynamic over his victim.

  5. This is nothing more than a thinly veiled spin on Eric Holder’s “We need to brainwash people so they develop an acute fear of guns” scheme.

  6. By all means, you should absolutely turn more Americans into toadies to the state. I mean, what can possibly go wrong?

  7. I find it funny that his exact words are “many lives would PROBABLY be saved”. Dude doesn’t even pretend to have faith in his lie.

  8. Good thing he lives in Indiana, one of the most gun-friendly states.

    He just doesn’t see it because he lives in Bloomington. Talk about an echo chamber. It’s even posted on a website called “concurring opinions?!” Geez.

    Whatever.

      • Hmmmm. Must work at the law school at IUPUI then.

        Indy tends to be more diverse, gun-culture-wise.
        I guess we’ll have to blame him and him alone for his stupidity.

  9. I guess I missed that part of the Constitution that read ‘the right to keep and smoke cigarettes shall not be infringed.’ Perhaps our local and state governments should run PSAs to discourage people from voting or attending the church of their choice, etc.

    • It generates dollars. The more economically useless courses of study they offer the more tuition they bring in. It doesn’t matter if those students ever make a difference in society, in the form of dollars, because the loans are federally insured.

      • That’s why the majority of progressives have degrees in things like literature, psychology, etc. Or, like politicians… law. If they got back to things like reading, writing, math, etc, maybe the level of education would start climbing instead of falling.

  10. Upon further reflection, I’m sure this wannabe Stasi agent gleefully supports the medicalization of deviance we’re bound to see more of down the road. I wouldn’t be surprised if nurses and doctors were already bribing kids into talking about mom and dad’s guns with free candy.

  11. He’s a little late to the party. The anti-gun (well, anti-everything) culture war has been going on for a few decades now. Whether it’s drinking, fast cars, motorcycles, meat, smut, or guns, there’s always been some harridan berating people who partake in those activities, or anything related to them.

    • The pussifucation of men’s sports/hobbies/interests. They want men to be more like women, and women to be more like men.

      • Great way of putting it. It used to be that no one would look askance at things guys did. Whether it was drinking, gambling, going to a strip joint, hunting, other gun-related things, motorcycles, etc…no one cared.

        For a hot minute there was a trend where girls were down with it too. Girls wanted in on the fun things guys did.
        I don’t mind one bit if a lady wants to go to a strip club or come to the range with me. My fiancé does both, but she’s a rare one…

        The interesting thing is when she mentions it to other acquaintances of hers…they are aghast that she “lets” me be a gun owner or visit the occasional nudie bar. As an aside, I work in entertainment and our company owns a few places catering to the prurient interests and I have to go there for work (hahaha), but still, her more leftist female friends want their guys to be your hipster-ish “SNAG” (Sensitive New Age Guy) type.

        “Guy stuff” has been under assault for a long time now.

        • Yep, Seems to be part of a larger agenda; disrupting normal gender roles and the weakening/destroying of the traditional family unit. The state steps in as the “man”, the authority figure for the masses, and the feminized man is further marginalized.

  12. Imagine if we did this to any other right?

    “Wouldn’t a better approach be for amenable states or municipalities to spend money on public education campaigns to discourage people from voting, speaking out against the government and having abortions, much in the way that they do to discourage smoking? This would do nothing, of course, with respect to deranged people who want to kill many babies in the womb or vote to take away others private property. But there are many more easily preventable abortions and democide that can be prevented. If lawful voting, abortions and free speech went down by, say 10%, many lives would probably be saved.”

  13. FACT: The anti-smoking campaigns did not work.

    This from a far left site
    http://www.vocativ.com/culture/health-culture/anti-smoking-ads-actually-work/

    FACT: The “this is your brains on drugs” ads do not work
    http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=6041092&page=1

    All of these PSA’s only line the pockets of special interest groups and left leaning media groups but otherwise have ZERO impact. It is just a waste of money and what this man is asking is to just simply waste money. As any academic, they live in a bubble and not in the real world.

    Let’s see this guy and other anti-gun groups march on the South Side of Chicago, Stockton, Camden and other crime infested areas. Since many of these stupid protest marches simply leave more litter behind than do anything else in terms of benefit, at least when they leave there will be no noticeable difference. The streets are already littered in garbage.

    • Good point.

      The “culture war” on cigarettes didn’t work. I see a lot of people smoking, still.

      And it certainly didn’t work with regards to drugs. To find someone who hasn’t done drugs in our society is a truly rare thing.

  14. So spend public tax money on programs designed to change peoples mind on exercising constitutional rights?
    Leftist thinking strikes again

  15. When a school child gets suspended for chewing his pop-tart into the rough shape of a pistol, what possible explanation can there be other than a cultural war against gun ownership?

  16. “If lawful gun possession went down by, say 10%, many lives would probably be saved [deaths from suicides, accidents, or domestic violence].” – Indiana University Law Professor Gerard N. Magliocca

    Well, Japan proves that ZERO citizen firearm ownership means nothing since their suicide rate is substantially higher than the suicide rate in the United States.

    A reduction in firearm ownership would reduce accidents from the already minuscule 500 or so deaths per year among 100 million firearms owners. A well funded educational campaign would also reduce accidents.

    As for domestic violence, reducing gun ownership MEANS NOTHING since a domestic partner can just as easily injure or kill their domestic partner with alternate means because it is exceedingly easy to injure or kill you domestic partner when you live with them and sleep with them. (Easy methods include poisoning your partner’s food/beverages and crushing their skull with a large club while they sleep, among countless other possibilities.) Again, a well-funded education campaign and intervention activities would also seriously reduce domestic violence, without attacking anyone’s basic right to self-defense.

  17. We also have to retrain subjects to eat food without sharp eating utensils. In Japan where there are no civilian ownership of guns, the suicide rate is about 30,000 annually as they utilize razors, steak knives and high buildings to jump.

    The British who celebrated criminalization of almost every weapon to even to include eating utensils now has the highest felony victimization rate in Europe.

    Perhaps my dear professor you will support Democide as a proper reaction by government to stem violence by murdering individuals who want to stem violence such as the police.

    Have a good day retooling yourself instead of the United States of America.

    • The Japanese even use extinct volcanoes to commit suicide with. Park officials at Mount Fuji have to periodically sweep the woods on the lower slopes for the bodies of suicides who wanted to die near Japan’s holiest summit. No guns involved, unrike you gun clazy Amelicans.

  18. The operative word is “LAWFUL”-what a PUTZ…need to replenish those brain cells I lost reading that.

  19. I was pleasantly surprised at the well thought out and clearly articulated push back found in the “Concurring Opinions” comment section.

  20. If lawful gun possession went down by, say 10%, many lives would probably be saved.”

    Wrong. Defensive gun uses exceed homicides and suicides combined. Also, why are statistics more important than individual rights?

    We know why they really want to reduce gun ownership rates. They don’t like guns. They don’t like gun owners. Reducing the rates reduces the voter base so they can inact legislation banning said guns.

    • Someone should’ve “brainwashed” Eric (Black Revolutionary) Holder against guns before he, as a student at Columbia University, “occupied” the campus ROTC building while ARMED with a handgun demanding it be turned in a “Black Student Center”..

  21. I’ve always felt there was someone just itching to turn those anti-smoking truth.com ads into anti-guns ads, “be the generation that ends gun ownership” or some such crap.

  22. It is easy to do without a gun most times. That is, until you really need one.

    In a world of unicorns, rainbows, and little tiny elves, the average person would not need to be worried about his personal safety. Seems to me, though, that things are more dangerous now than ever before. (Thanks to Obama on that one.) I am going to choose to protect myself.

    • Maybe if there were guns in that world unicorns and tiny elves wouldn’t have been wiped out.

  23. Well, their masks just keep slipping off, don’t they? Propaganda and enforcement to create the New Soviet Man, much?(*) This has all happened before, and will all happen again.

    It’s cultural engineering because *those people* are *so wrong*, using the government to reengineer them is o k – the mission is more important than the means. What’s the point when every suggestion isn’s also a crime? What’s the point when every crime isn’t also a sin? It ain’t about people doing what they want, it’s about people doing what our revealed truth demands.

    Well, that’s clear now with the disarm the people folks, in case it was not already.

    Poor Professor Propagandist is behind the curve, however. Culture wars are fought by out-grouping the bad guys, especially by casting them as distasteful. Like, casting them as O F W G hicks. Or “bitter clingers.”

    The current President has been “arguing” “policy” this way from before his first term. Including, relentlessly, on guns. His offer from day 1 has been: “I’ll help you feel smugly superior (to “those people.”) All you have to do is support my political trajectory: elect me, n back the policies I prefer.” The anti-advocates have adopted that tactic completely. (It’s all they’ve got, but still, not fun to be around.)

    Eventually, some of the wee-wee-ed up take it further, and start, say, shooting up some out-group you’ve un-personed. Like, say, cops, who “act stupidly.” But, that’s a problem for another day. (Oops. That day arrived.)

    One wonders why they do it? For the rake-off once they’re the Boss Hogs? That doesn’t happen until they’re in place, so why start? Martyr’s courage of conviction? Not likely. When the going gets tough, the out-groupers find someone else to pick on. So, why?

    It’s great ego fodder to be in The Vanguard. That’s why this notion appeals so strongly to people with nothing else to be proud of. Also, being all intellectual-revolutionary-like is a way to get girls, if that’s all you’ve got. I wonder if that’s what’s driving Professor P-P so hard?

    (*) “New Soviet Man” was their gender-loaded term. Our prior-cycles, gonna reengineer humans for humanity (that their vision gives them the right to impose)-peeps were not terribly gender-forward. Their spectrum of “acceptable lifestyles” was a tad – er – monochromatic.

    Still is. Everybody else is one of “them.”

    This has all happened before, and is happening again now, a bunch of ways.

  24. Bring it.

    Their side: “If somebody breaks into your house, make sure you stand in your doorway to block it so that your spouse can climb out the window. It’s the manly thing to do. At the same time, cross your fingers and hope your children are also making their escape. Then, politely offer the bad guy a condom from your nightstand, because you’re about to be raped.”

    Our side: “If somebody breaks into your house, be prepared and have a fighting chance. Take your gun for self protection while you retrieve the kids and barricade your family in a room and call the police. If the worst happens, you can respond with deadly force on equal or superior footing. Also, you get a fun new hobby for sunny weekends and new ways to spend quality time with the children.”

  25. Idk, I think we should have a government sponsored war on college and universities. If you think about it, going to get a worthless degree that can’t get you anything more than a job with a nametag and a funny hat and leaves you having to pay $80,000 in student debt on a minimum wage salary is pretty hazardous to a persons health.

  26. What, the public schools, universities, and 95% of the media are not enough for you?

    Sorry if others expressed that thought, didn’t have time the read through the comments.

  27. And what’s his alternative?

    Oh yeah, we’ll just PRETEND that the police will “protect” us.

    As a “law professor”, he should KNOW:

    1. Police have no legal duty to protect individuals.
    2. Police have no legal liability when they fail to protect individuals.
    3. 1 and 2 are basically moot, since police not assigned as bodyguards have virtually no physical ability to protect individuals from the immediate threat of unlawful deadly force.

    If he’s never heard of “Castle Rock” and the host of other applicable cases, he should be standing in front of a fryolator instead of a classroom lectern.

  28. There is a lot of rhetoric, and the left working really hard to push a narrative to get gun control passed. Seems like they are working really hard to generate the public outcry to pass No Fly / No Buy which on the surface would not affect any of us one bit as far was we would notice. Nothing proposed would have prevented any of the mass shootings. In reality it is barely even a small chip away from gun rights. So what is it that they want about it so bad? In reality it is not guns they are after it is Due Process. Once precedent is set for dispensing with due process it opens us up to have any of our rights attacked and taken.

    They are smart enough to know that a gun grab in itself will not work and would take generations at slowly chipping away. But due process can not be supplied from private reserves collected for over 230 years. Due process can’t be smuggled across the border and sold on the black market. So, the target is not guns, it is due process the want, and when they take that away, there is nothing to stop them from taking your possessions, or your freedom without the burden of having to prove anything.

    So, they will ramp up the rhetoric with each crisis, and eventually they will pass a piece of meaningless gun legislation and many gun owners will by that time feel that with no more than we gave away it was a small victory, when in reality it will be a defeat. The left is not so above board that they would be this obvious and only wanting gun control. They want total control.

  29. The problem with his argument is that gun ownership doesn’t endanger your health. Smoking does.

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