The Newtown tragedy (especially with the fact that 6 year olds were killed), has made this event fall under more focus than other. Whether you agree with gun restrictions or not, surely everyone can at least appreciate or understand that, in particular, many parents of young kids themselves will watch coverage of the tragedy, and it will hit home more emotionally than other similar events.
Not saying NRA members should be happy about it, but nobody should be really surprised that "this time is different". Support for "being seen to do something" is probably at an all time high, and acceptance of doing nothing at all is probably near an all time low. There are parents out there, who are not into guns recreationally, who are literally saying "I'd be happy to voluntarily relinquish some of my 2nd amendment rights in exchange for decreased chance that my little Timmy doesnt get shot dead in grade 1".
You can disagree, but to pretend that only insane people would have that attitude is not useful. Dont forget, for every NRA member who thinks a worried mother is nuts for focusing on the wrong type of shooting risk, there is someone who thinks an NRA member is nuts for clinging to the notion that there is a sufficiently high probability that the US government is about to tyrannically oppress the citizens, so everyone must be armed to deter against it.
In both cases, the person is fixated on a risk with an extremely low probability of happening, and they are asking the opposing group to discard their own respective concerns so they can mitigate their own fears. Saying that my fear is legit, while yours is nuts, get you nowhere. As someone with no skin in this game (I have neither children nor guns), frankly, I look at both groups and shake my head.
IMHO, the thing that tilts the deck against the NRA now (especially with global media and ever-connected world), is that people can see that all around the globe, parents are justifiably concerned for their child's safety, and are willing to do things to increase it; BUT, outside of the USA, there are not large organized groups of people in modern democracies who are concerned that their own government will oppress them, and thus need to be armed.
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Originally Posted by MediaArtist
I'm not some wacky, tin-foil, anarchist who thinks all government is bad, but to assume the U.S government can never turn on its own citizens is lunacy. The threat of armed citizen resistance is one of the reasons this hasn't happened in over 200 years, but now? I feel like 1776 is due for a sequel if this continues.
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And yet no such tyrrany has occurred in places like Australia or Canada in over 200 years either, and they have no equivalent deterrent (heavily armed populace). People notice stuff like that, and start to question the legitimacy of the risk. There are Jewish Germans who are old enough to remember what happened in 1939. Are these folks spearheading fights to allow German citizens the same gun ownership rights as Americans have? Nope. Why is that? Hell, if any place has a legitimate reason to fear government tyranny, it's those folks. Their lack of comparable fear or paranoia in an arguably riskier position does somewhat weaken the credibility of the NRA in the eyes of a lot of moderates.