garin

“Opposing common-sense gun safety laws either means that someone is too extreme or too much in the pocket of the gun lobby.” – pollster Geoff Garin in Why Hillary Clinton Thinks Gun Control Can Win in 2016 [at time.com]

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

50 COMMENTS

  1. “Opposing common-sense gun safety laws…” OK, I see how that was done. How about ‘Those opposing the clear intent of the Second Amendment are either braindead or willfully undermining the strength of the US Constitution’?

    • Anyone who believes in limiting the power of elites is an extremist. Guns are just the most easily vilified in order to scoop up low-info votes.

    • Excellent question, I support free speech but, do you really need that 20,000 word assault thesaurus? Also public buildings need to be speech free zones, for the children.

      • Careful there, you’re coming very close to committing a micro-aggression. Free speech needs to be limited to very small ‘free speech zones’ where no one goes because they might be offended.

      • Dont forget the background check and your requirement durring the grace period to register that speech….. And if you live here in California you have a 10 day waiting period lest you use that speech in an impulsive and hateful manner to hatm someone.

    • Actually, if “common sense” is the standard, I would argue that there are a bunch of gun control laws that should be repealed on the grounds that they make no sense at all.

  5. I love the smell of vilification and demonization in the morning. If it isn’t clear yet, authoritarianism is the progressive goal. So no civil right is safe if it could possibly represent a threat to their all powerful government control. No aspect of your life is too small.

    • Citizens rights are circumvented everyday by legislators, enforced by police and incursions protected by judges. Any of 12,000 laws can be brought to bear on a citizen, any moment the Triad chooses.

  6. Then why did Schumer pull out of the talks with Coburn in early 2013? Coburn was willing to give up background checks at that time.

  7. How rigged do you think this pollster’s questions and results are? He obviously has a bias so strong that he can’t be objective. Not that I’d expect less, but still.

    • It’s not the job of every pollster to find out what people are really thinking. The purpose of some polls is to word the questions in such a way that a certain position seems to be the dominant one when it isn’t. It’s called push polling and it’s value is solely for propaganda. It’s how we come up with ‘90% of NRA members support expanded background checks’ and ‘97% of scientists agree with anthropogenic global warming’.

  8. Maybe someone in the media will ask Obama and Hillary about the common sense hearing protection act… maybe…

  9. Someone should get this guy’s position on the Hearing Protection Act. Since it’s a proposed “common-sense gun safety law”, opposing it would mean he’s “too extreme” even by his own arbitrary definition.

  10. Another Hillary lie.

    “You know, my dad took me out behind the cottage that my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton and taught me how to shoot when I was a little girl,” Clinton said in April 2008. “It’s part of culture. It’s part of a way of life. People enjoy hunting and shooting because it’s an important part of who they are.”

    Note she said “who they are” not what we do. By the way guns are not a culture.

    Someone please ask Mrs.Weird relationship with her still cheating husband how does one lawful protect themselves against a criminal?

    • Sooo–Once more, when will we see Hillary! in camo waders with a Browning over her shoulder?? She was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, you know. Her parents were somehow clairvoyant enough to know he would become famous several years after she was born….

  11. I am always amused by the idea of the “deep pockets of the gun lobby” being the only thing keeping ‘common sense ‘ laws from passing. As if the lobby was paid for by a few powerful players and everyone else wants these laws. Sure, the gun lobby has lots of money, but we have lots of money because of the contributions of millions of members. Luckily for us, we not only give money but we vote, too.

    • The “gun lobby” cannot hold a candle to the weight big oil, big pharm, the unions, and the banks.

      The “gun lobby” lists high on the lobby list, but not because of money.

  12. Anyone who believes the gov’t should take away my rights by force is either my enemy or retarded.

  14. We are open to meaningful discussion about gun control as long as your opinions agree with ours. If you don’t you are wrong and a threat.

    That sounds a lot like how terrorists and other extremists sound…

  15. This is all I need to know about this guy, “Geoff Garin is the straightest shooter. He doesn’t try to shift the numbers or slant the numbers to buttress his argument.”— (So says the dishonorable) Senator Charles E. Schumer, New York Times.
    Not exactly a ringing endorsement to my way of thinking.

  16. False dichotomy. I will not answer your question or any other question until you explain why you think your choices are “common sense.”

    • Basing an argument on a logical fallacy by definition destroys the argument and ends the conversation. You don’t even owe the courtesy of listening to the followup answer nor should you bother. It will not advance the conversation as your opponent in the debate has started with an acceptance of the indefensible nature of their position. If their position was defensible then they’d have opened up with said defense.

    • Behold the classic false dichotomy, free in the wild, in symbiotic relationship with a little begging-the-question. Both used to be endangered, but have been brought roaring back to health by progressives who have nothing to argue but logical fallacy.

  17. I guess I must be ‘too extreme’ then, because the gun lobby is in my pocket, not the other way around.

  18. Ah… nice… A rhetorical question combined with a false dichotomy. A “two-fer” logical fallacy.

  19. Absolutely. Pushing for more common-sense gun laws just won big for democrats in Virginia, when – oh, wait, no, sorry, my mistake, that’s how the Democrats just LOST their chance to win back the state senate. They brought in Bloomberg’s money, tried to make a key state senate race a referendum on gun control, and lost. When it comes to gun control laws, the Democrats are like Charlie Brown and Lucy’s football – maybe THIS time it will actually work for us. And it never does. And they keep running at the football anyway.

  20. Classic false choice fallacy. There is a much better option: as stated in the Constitution, the government has no right to infringe upon the rights of responsible citizens. Any removal of rights – for citizens accused of a crime – must be subject to due process, and the law must apply equally to all citizens.

    Unfortunately, statist liberal progressives have been pushing the envelope for decades by creating special classes and exemptions. Low information voters are cowards are complicit in allowing rights to be curtailed or eliminated based upon the broken promises of increased safety. The mainstream media is also a conspirator by parroting idiot talking points, exaggerations and lies made by anti gun politicians and billionaire plutocrats.

    • The ‘Yes, Minister’ / ‘Yes, Prime Minister’ BBC series is one of my favorite ‘British Humour” shows on PBS.

      The first episode shown here was titled ”Open Government;” and the quote that best reflects typical government thinking was:

      “If they don’t know what we’re doing, they don’t know what we’re doing wrong.”

  22. “Anyone who doesn’t see the Emperor’s new clothes is an idiot and will be publicly shamed”

    Oldest trick in the book, attempt to create conditions where dissenters look unreasonable, unpatriotic, or unintelligent.

    • Consider this excerpt from the Wall Street Journal article, ‘Liberal strategists poke holes in Obama’s divisive income inequality rhetoric’:

      “…veteran liberal pollster Geoff Garin…”

      Kinda hard to take any “polls” he makes as being in any way “non-slanted” towards the left.

  23. Right…….too extreme or in the lobbyists’ pocket.

    Or…….behind Door #3, we have rational, sensible people who have examined the issue, reasoned through it and reject your Orwellian Newspeak of freedom snatching tactics masquerading as “common sense” anything.

  24. Evidently, to Shrillary and Co. the gun issue is just too “obvious” for them to imagine any sincere individual could oppose them on it. The polls must be defective or rigged, somehow!

  25. Obviously we should listen to a Hillary lobbyist about the evils of lobbyists. You better screen shot that whole page before the servers are wiped.

  26. Are they anywhere close to wearing out “common sense gun safety” yet? They certainly have with me. Hopefully ” gun reform” will become more common soon–not that it makes any difference as far as deceptiveness goes, but it will be something “new”.

    • You can bet that it will still be “common sense” gun reform.

      The term “common sense” is a very powerful argumentative tactic, because it implies that their point/premise/opinion has already been widely accepted (finally decided in society as a whole), and that further argument about it is pointless. The point of this tactic is to stifle any argument about the issue, and force the debate to accept the “common sense” premise with no further discussion.

      The “common sense” tactic can be very convincing for someone who is uneducated on the issue. Another instance of this tactic is the term “accepted science” when talking about global warming/climate change. Of course, we know that there is no part of the gun-rights/gun-control issue that that has been finally decided, and if it has, then it wasn’t decided in favor of gun control.

      No, you should expect the “common sense” phrase to be used for a long time, because it is very powerful. It is unfortunate for us that the gun-control side has tainted the common sense phrase in the minds of many Americans, because it would be a great argumentative tactic for our side too.

  27. I have become more “extreme” thanks to guys like this who make it clear with his Orwellian wording that there can be no compromise with his side… at least until they learn the meaning of the word.

  28. “Opposing common-sense gun safety laws either means that someone is too extreme or too much in the pocket of the gun lobby.”

    Let me destroy his argument in a logical fashion. When I am finished, you will see that every word and phrase of it is completely false.

    “Opposing common-sense” – an attempt to end the argument before it gets started by stating that the point has already been widely accepted, when in fact it has not.

    “gun safety laws” – This is an ad-agency-approved catch-phrase that the gun-control lobby uses to avoid telling us their true purpose. Let’s call them what they are: gun CONTROL laws or citizen disarmament laws. None of them will promote gun Safety at all.

    “either means that” – False Dichotomy. Implying that there are only two possible conclusions/results/motives, and that there can be no others.

    “someone is too extreme” – attempting to discredit your opponent by labeling his opinion as extreme (without actually debating the pros and cons of that opinion). This logical fallacy is often used by people whose own opinion is extreme.

    “too much in the pocket of” – attempting to discredit your opponent’s argument by attacking the impartiality of you opponent (again while ignoring the actual arguments of your opponent).

    “the gun lobby” – Gun control people want to discredit us (the gun lobby) by implying that we are actually a group of greedy companies that only want to increase our profits by selling more and more guns. This is demonstrably false with even a cursory examination of the membership and funding of the major organizations supporting gun rights. For example, the NRA (the largest of those organizations and gun control’s biggest enemy) has around 5 Million individual members, gun owning citizens, and they receive very little of their support or funding from industry. The ‘gun lobby’ is several million people who support gun rights, and this is why gun control can not succeed in many states and at the Federal level. There are many more of us, than them.

    • Re: Geoffrey Garin, president of Hart Research

      “Leading progressive organizations, including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the League of Conservation Voters, and the Center for American Progress, rely on Mr. Garin for strategic research and analysis. He also has conducted reputational and policy research for leading trade associations in healthcare, finance, and housing.”

      http://hartresearch.com/team/geoff-garin/

  29. In the pocket of the gun lobby?

    I am the gun lobby, and the gun lobby is me. Well, me and several million other peaceful, law-abiding gun owners who donate to and vote for people and organizations that who support and protect our constitutionally guaranteed civil and human rights (and not just the guns, mind you: we support all individuals’ civil rights). Such as the gun lobby is, it’s in MY pocket.

    If that’s “too extreme,” then I’m glad to wear the label — especially if it separates me from corruptocrats like the Clintons.

  30. I oppose voting for ANY candidate that supports restricting, limiting, or eliminating the ability of law abiding Americans to exercise their 2nd Amendment Right. All 3 democrat candidates support doing all of the above they will not be recieving my support or vote.

  31. I totally support common sense gun safety laws. The trouble is his definition of common sense and mine are quite different. Reducing injuries resulting from malfunctioning guns is an admirable goal. I’m not entirely convinced that any new laws, or even most of the current ones do anything to further that objective, however.

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