I'd wager you not a single right-winger saw that video and thought "we need to ban guns". They're thinking "I need more guns to protect me from this kind of leftist violence".
We rarely hear about motives. Paddock was responsible for the deadliest shooting in American history. We never got a motive. We got a bumpstock ban which was deemed unconstitutional
The second amendment fundamentalists are decidedly thawing. I expect at least some of them are thinking, “we need to ban guns from those people” for some value of “those people.”
The response to the last high-profile public shooting was, if you’ll recall, noise in the DoJ about taking gun rights away from transgender people. So some kinds of gun control are apparently on the table.
The second amendment was passed when there were slaves, and I guess the 2A supporters at that time didn't see it as contradiction.
These people aren't mellowing on their position on 2A; they're instead starting to think "Hmm maybe some of these 'people' shouldn't be considered fully people from legal point of view ..."
I agree that they don’t necessarily view it as a mellowing of their position, but as a matter of policy the net effect is the same.
All my life I’ve heard conservative talk radio types (and more recently, conservative influencers) chant “shall not be infringed” as a mantra and oppose any restrictions whatsoever (at least, post-Reagan; see the comment down-thread). That old state of affairs has subtly changed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Codes_(United_States)
After the Civil War many Democrat dominated Southern state governments enacted Black Codes that regulated virtually every aspect of freed people’s lives. A common element was restricting possession and carrying of firearms by Black people (or by anyone without a license), often implemented through local ordinances, licensing requirements, or explicit prohibitions.
The Black Codes precede the Mulford Act by a hundred years.
I'll give you one guess as to who said the following[0] (hey! no peeking at the link first!):
"I think it's fitting to leave one final thought, an observation about a country which I love. It was stated best in a letter I received not long ago.
A man wrote me and said: ``You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.''
Yes, the torch of Lady Liberty symbolizes our freedom and represents our heritage, the compact with our parents, our grandparents, and our ancestors. It is that lady who gives us our great and special place in the world. For it's the great life force of each generation of new Americans that guarantees that America's triumph shall continue unsurpassed into the next century and beyond.
Other countries may seek to compete with us; but in one vital area, as a beacon of freedom and opportunity that draws the people of the world, no country on Earth comes close.
This, I believe, is one of the most important sources of America's greatness. We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people -- our strength -- from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation.
While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we're a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier.
This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost."
I intend motivation to choose actions that might make a difference. Can anyone make the case that prayer actually works? Consider the massacre of children actually praying at a Catholic school a couple weeks ago. Was that the result of someone praying for it to happen? Was any deity looking out for its flock? Whereas making guns a lot harder to obtain would definitely reduce gun usage.
First, my bad. I owe you an apology. I'm sorry for treating you like that.
There are millions of eyewitness accounts and personal testimonies about prayer. They are exceedingly well documented (esp. in books) and span nearly all of human history. Whether you believe them or not is a different matter. But at the very least, we can't easily dismiss prayer as something that "doesn't work".
Second, even if we accept that "prayer" works, there's a ton of questions that raises. Does all prayer work? What if the prayers are contrary? And who are people praying to? And do all receivers of prayer actually have the power to answer prayer? For those that do, what happens when prayers are contrary to each other? What happens when the prayers are contrary to the will of the one being prayed to?
I'm only bringing up these questions to illustrate that we can't say "prayer doesn't work" as a matter of fact, even in instances where it doesn't seem to work.
