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Comment by flexie | Hacker News Reader

"In essence, this is an orchestrated attempt to use the Newtown shootings and the subsequent heightened public sensitivity..."

Oh please. Who orchestrated that? The media got together? The government?

There is nothing odd in requiring safety from other people's activities, whether that's their their reckless driving or their gun fetish.

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It's not like it's a hidden conspiracy. Gun control activists have explicitly stated that they need to take advantage of the emotion following the shootings to push their agenda. And yes, the goal of many of them (including the author of the assault weapons ban currently proposed) is confiscation. She said it herself.

Yeah it's totally irrational to seek the most obvious way to prevent recurrence of the shooting massacre of 20 children, which happens with a marked regularity. Only a New World Order could explain why people want to ban guns.

The snark is unnecessary. Gun control advocates have had these goals for decades - long before Newtown - and openly speak about them. There is no tinfoil hat, no new world order. Just a political agenda by a minority of the political spectrum that uses tragedy to their advantage without apology.

That still doesnt make any sense. It's like say in nuclear energy. There are two camps: one side says it is safe the other says it isn't. However, if evidence of more and more nuclear tragedies accumulate, one side looks more and more correct than the other. That side isn't "using" a nuclear tragedy to "further their own agenda", they are simply using it to demonstrate they are correct.

I'm just responding to the claims that there is an orchestrated attempt to use Newtown emotion to further gun control and confiscation. There undeniably is, and it's not some crazy notion of the tinfoil hat crowd - but the admitted and public goals of some people in power.

They have stated that they need to act now or they will lose the emotion required to pass such laws. That is not demonstrating that they are correct - it's the equivalent of "act before we have time to calm down and think, because we know we are in the minority on this."

Anti-nuclear hysteria is another good example.

Which "tragedies" would those be, by the way?

The same can be argued against the NRA:

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/16/behind_the_nras_money_...

Absolutely true. They use propaganda and emption as much as the anti gun crowd.

But that link is way off base. The NRA is as pure a grass roots organization as exists in American politics. The gun industry is tiny. The NRA's lobbying budget is no where near the top of the list of political spenders. But they have roughly 4 million members (give or take - it grows in times of need) who are extremely passionate. They open their wallets, they vote, they organize, and they have an uncanny political memory. They terrify politicians (as the citizens should) because they are a well organized, focused group of single issue voters without party affiliation.

When someone from the NRA sends a letter saying "don't vote for this or I won't vote for you" it really means something. They're not like the suburban housewife who demands that politicians "do something about guns" and then forgets about it a month later.

That is where the NRA gets it's power. The gun industry and their money is peanuts.

Then why doesn't the NRA support most of its members when the vast majority of them want background checks on all gun sales?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/01/31/nr...

The media does tend to sensationalize it, and yes certain people in government exploit it for personal gain.

I look at it this way, just be glad they can sensationalize it, the alternative would be that this is so routine it doesn't make people think.

America does not have a gun problem; it has a cultural problem that many refuse to recognize. The look to ban the tool employed by this culture but not to find how to end this culture. Ever listen to the music on the streets? Ever listen to the talk in a down town truly urban mall area?

We spend more time coddling and telling them its not their fault than focusing on getting them productive and responsible. People who are told over and over they are not responsible tend to become just that.

"Orchestrated" may be too strong a word; it's like there is emergent, independent behavior from a large minority of people who share the same views and all saw the same opportunity.

It's really not too strong. From a Brady Campaign press release: https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2012/12/15-1

"We have to take terrible moments like this and use it as a catalyst to demand the sensible change in our nation that is too long overdue."

That was a major talking point for similarly minded groups in the time immediately following the shooting.

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