Biden is doing this to drive a wedge into Republicans. The gun nuts and the ones that don’t care about guns will have differing opinions because now gun violence affects them directly. It’s really smart.
Biden looks presidential. Trump has three choices:
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Come out against AR-15s, for obvious reasons. This makes gun nuts less likely to vote for him.
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Come out in favor of AR-15s. He looks insane to Republicans who don’t care about guns.
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Trump ignores the issue or waffles and looks unpresidential.
Number 3 is most likely. Of course the correct answer is number 4: propose a competing policy that is nuanced. But that’s impossible for trump.
Is that enough to matter? And is this issue enough for them to change their vote, given the tax stuff? All the other shit Trump does certainly doesn’t matter.
Those republicans already know he’s fucking crazy and they don’t give a fuck what his stance is on guns.
Lots of them. Do you know any Republicans? None of them care about issues that don’t affect them and their families. Even other “conservative” issues. They are not driven by policy.
Only Republicans with guns care about guns. And only 50% of Republicans have guns.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own-guns.aspx
They don’t care about each other. Liberals care about what other liberals think. Stop thinking like someone who cares about policy.
I’ve had to explain this to a lot of people who naturally assume that any organization of people will be organized around some kind of shared values. Most of the time that’s true, but not for Republicans.
Republicans are just a mish mash of obsessive single-issue voters, and by in large they just don’t care about the other single issues that their fellow party members are going on about.
At the head of the Republican party it’s people who want to minimize their tax burden, eliminate regulations on corporations, and cannibalize as much of the US government as they can into for-profit institutions. You could say that’s three issues instead of one, but the overarching theme is to cater to personal greed, no matter the harm to society. These are the ones who are primarily pulling the strings in the party, at least historically.
Just below them is the military industrial complex and gun manufacturers who just want to sell guns no matter the harm to society. They like to rile up 2A fanatics with conspiracy theories that the government is out to steal all their guns so they’ll be defenseless, paving the way for King Biden to ascend to his throne. The industry only cares about selling guns and the fanatics only care about having guns, and neither care about any kind of harm to society.
Then there’s the radical Christians whose obsessions cover an eclectic mix of social reactionary positions and literal death cult worship (e.g. Christians who give absolute support to genocide in Palestine because they think Israel’s conquest is a crucial step towards the rapture, which they believe is imminent). Broadly speaking the people in this group just want to hoist their religious doctrines onto everyone they can by any means available and no matter the harm it causes to society. They literally only care about “God’s Kingdom” in the afterlife.
Then there’s people who just lack any capacity for adaptation or learning. Their obsession is to feel like things are staying the same, or even reverting back to a past that they only know how to view through rose tinted glasses. They can’t be bothered to comprehend the problems we’re facing as a society or how the past was not the idyllic utopia that they mistakenly remember, nor can the old way of doing things sustain a growing and transforming society. These people just want to exist in comforting ignorance by feeling like they get to remain in familiar surroundings, no matter the harm to society.
There’s really only one thing that truly unites them: Each one wants one specific thing no matter the harm to society, and that one specific thing that they each want IS HARMFUL to society. But they work well together because none of them care about the harm being caused by any of the others, and as long as they all tow the same line, each one gets what they want.
I’ve never met any Republicans that were pro-gun-bans. I really don’t believe you’ll be able to find a single one either.
This is dumb as fuck timing by Biden, but I’m sure he can’t help himself because he’s been super anti-gun for decades so it’s probably just like a reflex at this point for him to to off about banning guns after a shooting.
How many of them will stay home or change their vote because the head of the party they’re still a part of despite all the gun nuts continues acting like a gun nut?
If Biden is trying to use guns as a wedge issue for Republicans, he’s the person we saw at the debate all the time.
Gun control, especially banning the most popular and utilitarian platform, is a massive political loser. This is incredibly poor timing for a struggling campaign.
The AR platform is highly customizable for different chamberings, sizes, attachments etc.
People who are “into guns” usually have at least one pistol or rifle that is built on the AR platform. ARs are great for everything from target shooting as well as hunting. Very practical.
It’s good for shooting small, very fast bullets. May that be hunting, target shooting or self-defense.
If they want to ban AR-15s, they should ban all semi-automatic rifles otherwise it would be ridiculous. The would-be assassin could have done the same thing with a whole assortment of mostly equivalently performing rifles. Some just as “scary looking” black rifles, some with wooden parts.
Any of those options will work fine for Trump. He doesn’t need to have policies, strategies, or responses to anything. His voters can’t remember it anyway. You think they remember that he banned bump stocks in the first place? He could promise to ban AR-15s one day, then criticize his own proposal the next day, and he’ll just get cheered by both sides. Voters are fucking stupid.
All that matters is that he keeps the steady supply of hateful buzzwords flowing. You can’t win chess against an opponent who’s playing hungry hungry hippos.
All of that wastes trump’s time and makes him look unprofessional to swing voters. He can’t win with just his fans. That’s why he lost big time in 2020. The swing voters saw him failing to respond to an actual issue.
Correction: He lost big time because of mail-in votes. Trump in 2020 got the record high for votes for a Republican candidate at something like 67.2 million, which was just about a million votes less than what Obama got during his first election (which was a record-breaking turnout). Biden got around 80 million votes in 2020, breaking every voter turnout record ever.
Swing voters are still crucial because that’s how Hillary lost despite having only 100,000 less votes than Obama did in his second election, but I feel like swing voters have probably more or less already made up their minds. If you don’t see Trump for what he is already, the odds of his reaction here being the final straw seems unlikely. I think if people had better access to voting, we’d easily see a repeat of 2020 even if we were to vote right this minute.
Trump already said he’d take away everyones guns, no questions asked, years ago. No one that supported him even blinked. This means nothing to them.
That’s just bullshit, he did not. He said the one stupid thing about ignoring due process for red flag law situations. This is pretty far and away from “everyone’s guns”
Biden is doing this to drive a wedge into Republicans. The gun nuts and the ones that don’t care about guns will have differing opinions because now gun violence affects them directly. It’s really smart.
Or… he just doesn’t want to get shot himself. Just saying. not wanting to get shot is a powerful motivator…
Not that it’s perhaps prudent. or you know, god forbid, actually a good fucking idea.
Option 4: trump and the GOP in general still views his assassination attempt as the danger you have to live with to live in a “free nation”. It’s the cost of freedom. Something something “just because i got shot doesn’t mean taking everyone’s rights away is a good idea”
Growing up in texas, this is a very common view.
Admittedly, knowing the coward Trump is (He literally doesn’t order his own food because he’s afraid of poisoning) There’s a very slim chance Trump will declare the AR-15 is evil and act afraid of it.
What you’re arguing would make sense with logical voters. So of course it doesn’t apply here. When have Republican voters marked ‘D’ or stayed home instead of voting for a pro-gun candidate!? It just doesn’t happen.
And “wedge” issue?? Come on, Republican voters are either all-in on Trump or they reluctantly mark the ‘R’…
It’s just dumb. The sniper that killed the guy wasn’t using an ar-15. Stopping ar-15’s wouldn’t have done anything to change something like this.
What do you mean, it was an AR-15. I don’t support a ban, just clarifying facts.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear in my statement. When I said “the sniper that killed the guy” I was specifying the the secret service sniper that successfully head shotted Crooks. I wasn’t referring to Crooks.
Pointedly, I was saying that the guy who hit what he was aiming for wasn’t using an AR. Not the guy who failed.
FBI special agent in charge Kevin Rojek said Crooks used an AR-style rifle chambered in 5.56mm, a common caliber for such weapons. Authorities said the weapon was identified and traced using records from a gun dealership that is no longer operating.
If that source doesnt work for you, here’s the president of the United states:
“An AR-15 was used in the shooting of Donald Trump, just as other assault weapons were used to kill so many others, including children."
That’s from the linked article.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear in my statement. When I said “the sniper that killed the guy” I was specifying the the secret service sniper that successfully head shotted Crooks. I wasn’t referring to Crooks.
Pointedly, I was saying that the guy who hit what he was aiming for wasn’t using an AR. Not the guy who failed.
Bernie had this right. Despite being pretty progressive, he wasn’t for outlawing semiautomatic firearms because they were black and looked scary. He believed that the right to arms was justified. This “AR Ban” is a great way to lose a lot of independents, and even some hard D voters like myself. There are a lot of dems who carry, and a lot of them who own the very firearms he wants to ban.
I had a friend that said he only voted for Trump in 2016 cause he felt like he needed somebody to protect his rights to own a gun. This guy that “protected” host rights to own a fun also did massive amounts of damage to other people rights.
I wish Dems would quit talking about guns. It’s a mistake.
Actually that is a good question. You don’t need an AR-15 because there are non-AR semi-automatic rifles that will do exactly the same thing but aren’t viewed as bad-ass. (BTW, auto-loading rifles have been around since 1883.) The AR-15 is a civilian semi-automatic and the basis of the M-16, so larpers can fulfill their G.I. Joe fantasies and a cuddle them when they are told to fear something by Fox.
Have you ever fired one before? They are way more accurate than a handgun. You could be 5ft away from someone with a handgun and still miss (especially in a high adrenaline situation). It’s considerably more difficult to miss with an AR.
As an independent, I could care less about this sort of thing. I see it as virtue signaling to staunch democrats. It won’t win him a single vote, since his entire platform has always been about being a super traditional Democrat.
We need new traditions, not rehashing of old, tired trades against things like specific types of guns and obesity.
The next would be assasin will be forced to use a weapon appropriate for distance killing. They would be more likely to succeed.
He wasn’t against outlawing them because they looked scary implies that he was in favor of outlawing them because they looked scary.
I think you mean he was against outlawing them because they looked scary.
If you didn’t reply within 14 seconds of me correcting my post, yeah. That’s what I corrected it to.
He’s not gonna do shit, he’s just gonna continue to bark at one of the symptoms of the problem.
Anyone who makes an object, guns, cars, pcs, weed, media they are fans of, etc. a significant aspect of their person, just means there wasn’t much person there to begin with. It is possible for something to be important to you, something you do for fun, something you enjoy, and not be your personality.
Holy deep fried frankenfuck will the Democrats NEVER LEARN?!?!?!?!
AFTER!
You talk about guns AFTER the election!
What in the actual pogostickingpopejohnpaul is he THINKING?!?!?
The optics are 1000% awful here.
Uvalde wasn’t enough, but a potshot at the planet’s most notorious living felon is?
Lose the election speed run any %
I’m 100% sure Dems are actively self sabotaging their re-election.
There is no way the entire party cannot read a fucking room. This has to be on purpose at this point.
P2025 will increase their stock portfolio value so they can dump it all and make millions.
Then add some more taxes on the middle class to pay for it.
They get more fundraising dollars when Trump’s in power too. For the dems who are in states that’ll never vote them out, they’ll make a killing from a second Trump term and they’re rich enough to be insulated from just about all his decisions that fuck the rest of us over.
To be fair there’s large swaths of the party that want him to step down. It’s his advisors and aligned leadership that insist on running him and these policies no matter what.
A though has just crossed my mind: what if the advisors want him to be there this way and wait till the last moment to say “you know what? Biden steps down [because of his health] and X runs in his place” so Democrat voters can say “we dodged the bullet”.
He’s trying to motivate the progressives. His campaign has finally figured out that progressives aren’t turning out in the swing states. After over a year of warnings. This, the rent thing, (which progressives immediately identified as entirely too high and a gift to landlords everywhere), and the exponential increase in supposed policy lists. (Which like any gift horse, shouldn’t be checked too thoroughly lest the corporate subsidies they hide shine through)
What we really need him to understand is the problem is Israel. Any of this would have worked a year ago. But many progressives are not willing to support the genocide in Israel just to buy themselves comfort.
Most of the progressives I know are moving toward gun ownership rather than away, out of despair
the left don’t give fuck about gun control - the far left actively oppose it
its the center right, pearl clutching, NIMBY, yuppy liberals who use it for virtue signaling, but even they won’t be budged on who they’re going to vote for based on the lip service about guns
The center left/right is Biden’s base too, they’re already sure to show up. But I don’t think it’s accurate to say the Left, like progressives, don’t care. They very much care, the ones further to the left want to arm up and the ones closer to the center want to ban guns. It’s an interesting intersection to look at but it pretty much comes down to how threatened they do or do not feel.
Are you suggesting democrats will somehow fool voters into thinking they are agnostic about guns?
No, nor should they try, nor should they stick with their current seemingly nonsensical policy ideas about guns.
The “gun problem” as it stands is really more of a symptom of our mental health crisis, our ridiculously confrontational “news” cycle, and a number of other HUMAN factors that aren’t going to be solved by banning a particular model of gun, though and no one seems to want to hear that.
Screeching “Ban the right’s favorite model of toy” right before an election is beyond tone deaf, and an incredibly dumb move politically that won’t do squat except mobilize the NRA voters to vote the other way, which we DO NOT NEED with democracy in this country at stake.
I can personally count multiple handfuls of coworkers and acquaintances who might have voted for him that will now vote trump or stay away from the polls over this.
Maybe Biden actually does plan to announce that he’s not running in the 2024 general election. That way, this scores some political points with Democratic voters, but doesn’t impact the election much.
Other than that, I don’t really see how this makes sense politically. I dunno. Maybe his team has done some kind of analysis and is convinced that a particular demographic in the swing states that they’re trying to win will like this or something, so it might be disadvantageous nationwide but a win locally.
Basically, they got some breathing room on the replacement thing because of Trump getting shot at. But I guarantee you behind the scenes the message is the polling numbers in PA come up or else.
If it’s viable to run someone else, I’m pretty sure that it has to happen almost immediately, if it’s going to happen. The primaries have already happened, so if someone gets run, it’d have to be the party picking them already, and there’s very limited time to campaign.
The general election is November 5. It’s currently July 17. That’s three-and-a-half months in which someone would have to sell themselves to the public.
goes back to look at presidents who didn’t run again
https://www.britannica.com/story/have-any-us-presidents-decided-not-to-run-for-a-second-term
Johnson is not the only U.S. president who decided not to seek a second elected term. The others are James K. Polk, James Buchanan, Rutherford B. Hayes, Calvin Coolidge, and Harry S. Truman. (Theodore Roosevelt declined to run in 1908, after being elected president in 1904 and serving one term, but he again sought the office—and lost—as a third-party candidate in 1912.)
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LBJ did it prior to the primaries, at the end of March of the election year.
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Polk apparently promised in his initial campaign that he would only serve one term, so it was known long in advance.
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Buchanan promised in his inaugural speech that he would serve only one term, so it was known almost as far in advance.
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Hayes apparently also pledged not to run for re-election.
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Coolidge apparently announced the summer prior to the election year, so over a year prior to the general election.
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Truman did it at the end of March of the election year. So relatively-close, but still with seven months to go.
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Teddy Roosevelt apparently announced after being elected the first time that he would not seek a second term.
So looks like the closest equivalent would be LBJ and Truman, and they still did so at the end of March in the election year, with twice the amount of time remaining that’s still left for 2024, and before the primaries.
Like, I don’t think that it’d be realistic to wait and see what happens in the polls and then have someone run with even less time.
Nah, I think I’ll keep my shit and wait for the far right to move.
The fuckin scenario we are in I swear.
Far right: let’s kill the left and do fascism.
Democrats: let’s ban weapons right now while there’s threats of violence against democrats.
Really?
Just wait for it, Dems are preparing to finally kill the filibuster just days before they lose to republicans in a landslide defeat due to running the worst possible candidate, simply because he promised the donors nothing would fundamentally change and actually delivered on it.
Afterwards, they’ll eat ice cream and blame the left for not voting hard enough.
Just as dumb as when Beto said it before his election…
It’ll never pass, and he thinks saying it will get votes, but all it does is motivate idiots to vote trump, even tho he actually did an executive action to try and close a loophole.
It might not have stood, but it worked for a couple of years.
On its own its a dumb idea, but I do think another commenter had it on the money how this is more a ploy to catch trump with his pants down. Trump can either agree and piss off his pro gun base (and look like a coward given his previous statements), he can argue against it and seem like hes inviting more violence and alienate anyone in his base who thinks gun violence is bad. Or he can ignore it and look like hes a doddering old fool oblivious to whats happening around him.
