The anti-gun lobby pushing so many Assault Weapons Bans (AWBs) today has always seemingly operated under the apparent presumption that they are not only working to save lives, but that the majority of Americans are on their side. A favorite poll of theirs says 80% of Americans support universal background checks, and they mention that at every opportunity. When support fails to materialize in the form of a federal bill to enact such a scheme, they trot out their usual list of boogeymen, and claim that the NRA or GOP subverts the will of the voters, and is the only thing standing in the way of their AWB and background check-fueled utopia.
Do you believe that? Do you believe that the NRA has accomplished anything in the last decade, let alone subverted the will of 80% of the American public? Even at their pre-scandal, post 94 AWB peak, the NRA’s lobbying expenditures were around $5million annually, spread among 35 lobbyists, though the average was closer to $3.5mil, and 24. Meanwhile during the same period, FedEx –the package shipping giant that remembers where I live about 30% of the time– maxed out at 66 lobbyists wielding over $25million, with an average closer to $12million.
Even during lean years, Federal Express was outspending the NRA by a factor of more than 2. If the NRA can forestall another federal AWB, and sideline a national universal background check requirement indefinitely, by lobbying congress with such paltry offerings, one has to wonder what sort of Tom Clancy shit FedEx is doing with that budget and army of lobbyists.
Perhaps more people are waking up to the lie of AWBs, background checks, and the war on guns in general. Plenty of people have realized that the war on drugs was a racist, classist, politically motivated nightmare started to suppress opposition to the Vietnam war, and the Civil Rights movement. Whatever the intent of the drug war, the net result was that drugs won, and America imprisoned more people than China for nonviolent crimes. It seems that a war on drugs can only produce a similar result, regardless of what “80% of Americans” may, or may not agree on.
Thankfully, those numbers are coming down. As this Monmouth poll shows, support for AWBs at least is slipping. Those are however, as they say, rookie numbers, and we know we can do better than that.
