The "National Debate" About Gun Control Is Over. Gun Control Lost.

In recent weeks we’ve seen gun control advocates, anti-gun Democrats, and their allies in the mainstream media call for a laundry list of laws to be passed:

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  • “universal” background checks
  • bans on certain kinds of firearms, primarily “assault weapons”
  • magazine limits and magazine confiscation
  • background checks for ammunition purchases
  • expensive liability insurance
  • increased taxes on guns and ammunition
  • repeal of the Second Amendment
  • forced government gun confiscation

Backed by all of the current crop of Democrat Presidential candidates and President Obama, gun control supporters are increasingly loud, almost shrill in their demand for federal gun control laws…

…and they aren’t anywhere near to getting them.

Indeed, the one constant in the gun control movement at this time is that the echo chamber is getting louder not because more people are joining them, but because the walls are closing in around a movement of old, white liberals that are literally dying off, and which has resorted to self-deception.

UCLA professor Adam Winkler is one sad example of this trend, as he tried to convince himself that demographics favored the gun control movement, even though we know that gun ownership is growing across every measurable metric.

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Dana Milbank of the Washington Post is likewise, is trying to give himself and other gun control supporters a pep talk, trying to delude themselves that changing terminology and rebranding the gun control movement is what will save it from extinction, even as their core ideas are more widely reviled as being simply dishonest.

Writing at Forbes, Frank Miniter notes that interest in gun ownership has decisively jumped the lines of age, race, sex, and political parties.

Old or young, black or white or brown, male or female, and Democrat, Republican or independent, every demographic group has seen interest in favor of gun ownership. The singular exception  small and declining number of wealthy while liberals in urban areas who are the primary source of support for the dying gun control—excuse me, they now want to be called, “gun safety”—movement.

Healthy political movements don’t engage in desperate rebranding gimmicks every few years.

Groups that have the facts on their side don’t have to resort to outright lies, academic fraud, or outspending their opponents by millions just to keep from sinking into complete irrelevancy.

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Every single day, there are hundreds of new first-time gun owners. Every single day, there are more gun owners than ever before in American history.

Every. Single. Day.

The number of gun owners in the United States has skyrocketed in recent years, while both crimes with firearms and accidents with firearms are on a four-decade long decline.

The only recently-proposed federal laws that have any chance of passing Congress are the Hearing Protection Act (HPA), which would remove a $200 federal tax and lengthy waiting period (currently about nine months) for suppressors, updating the obsolete National Firearms Act of 1934, and a National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act that Barack Obama will almost certainly veto.

We’re winning… and they can’t stand it.

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