Doug:
> >I think that liberals get exercised by gun control for reasons not
> >dissimilar to their obsession with the Supreme Court: they're scared
> >of the masses. Bigoted yahoos who can't be trusted. So disarm them -
> >and leave the important decisions to judges and other experts (you
> >know, getting all the smart people together on the Vineyard...).
Yoshie Furuhashi:
> Yes, I think it's important to call liberals on their fear of the
> masses. It's just that, you know, in the past, criticism of this
> nature has been mainly coming from folks who think like Alex
> Cockburn, and that it has tended to come across as an expression of
> vicarious identification with armed macho men in weekend warrior
> outfits. Perhaps it's better if the same criticism comes from
> someone like you -- a guy who would rather carry a purse than a gun.
If by "liberals" you sort of mean "Democrats", I wonder if they _can_ rescind their position on gun control without suffering a lot of electoral damage. I agree the Wojtek that gun control represents one side of gun fetishism. But fetishes can be very powerful. This one is said to account for many votes in certain regions and among certain important categories of voters, just as it loses them votes in other constituencies they might hope to do well among. The idea of local option does not seem acceptable to either gun nuts or gun control nuts, nor does a mainstream, bourgeois party, dependent on ignorance and superstition, have the option of talking of "fetishes" and other such high-brow analytic whizbangs. I think they're stuck.