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Is there anybody who doesn't believe that gun rights supporters are outnumbered in Oregon, Washington and most obviously in California? I would like to believe otherwise but I feel like there is no turning back at this point. While I would welcome some pro-gun rights intervention from SCOTUS, I don't see it happening anytime soon.

We could blame voter participation or we could face the reality that gun rights don't seem to be important to a majority of voters in OR, WA and CA these days.

Now we face a tri-state reckoning that will almost certainly bring more infringement on our gun rights, while the majority of the population either celebrates these infringements or blissfully ignores that the infringements are even occurring.

Demographics are to blame IMHO. Through brainwashing of youngsters by the educators. Fearmongering by the politicians and anti-gun groups. Media fearmongering after every nut case commits an atrocity with a firearm. These types of influences and more are sealing the fate of our supposedly inalienable gun rights.

Doom and gloom is on the horizon for gun rights supporters. I wish I could see some sunlight breaking through but all I see at the moment is dark skies ahead.

Edit: I would like to acknowledge Andy's point that likely not all members of the above influence groups share the same anti-gun viewpoint as the rest. But I believe that it is a majority of them. And the students themselves spread the anti-gun sentiment among themselves at a prolific rate, this is evidenced after nearly every school shooting. And don't forget the many celebrities who also spread the anti-gun message in big ways. We have very few respected well known people who support gun rights. The few that do are often vilified.
 
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Through brainwashing of youngsters by the educators.
Please don't blame all educators...We have several teachers here on this forum.
I myself am one , and have taken a student or two , to a shooting range / Rendezvous and taught safe firearm handling.
Even in the classroom I encourage free thinking and the shaping of one's own thoughts and opinions....

Blanket statements like the one I quoted are often not true for all and can create ill will.
What if I exchanged the term educators for gun owners...?
"Though brainwashing of youngsters by the gunowners..."
Is this statement true for all...? Would it not create ill will...?

Granted not all educators think and teach the way that I do....But not all are against guns and gun ownership either.
Andy
 
It's definately not all educators Andy (and I know you are one and applaud your influence in the field). However, with my kids havong attended schools in CA and working directly with these schools for the past 15 years, you would be considered an anomaly down there. I have been informed personally, on several occasions, that they would prefer to not have officers on campus because of the negative presence of a firearm. They scare little kids (and high schoolers too). Most of my kid's teachers were clearly not conservative in any way. I have met several like you as well, but they are a vast minority.

Keep up the good fight! Thank you for your positive presence with our children.
 
If you look at pictures of a protest/march, it is pretty easy to identify the core demographic of the anti-gun movement. The same type of people are at every anti-gun protest/march. Except now they've been able to exploit anti-Trump sentiment to expand the "victim" network. It is called intersectional politics, or intersectionality, and it is an idea that came from Columbia University.

The other thing is, people who are anti-gun are much better at using the internet than our community is. We need to be flooding the social media with our presence. We can all start by "friending" each other. Our community is very good at putting together cogent, logical arguments, but we ignore the fact that Pictures and feelings, are how many people communicate nowadays.
 
Please don't blame all educators...We have several teachers here on this forum.
I myself am one , and have taken a student or two , to a shooting range / Rendezvous and taught safe firearm handling.
Even in the classroom I encourage free thinking and the shaping of one's own thoughts and opinions....

Blanket statements like the one I quoted are often not true for all and can create ill will.
What if I exchanged the term educators for gun owners...?
"Though brainwashing of youngsters by the gunowners..."
Is this statement true for all...? Would it not create ill will...?

Granted not all educators think and teach the way that I do....But not all are against guns and gun ownership either.
Andy
Andy I sorry for implying that all educators share the same viewpoints on gun rights. I didn't mean for my statement to apply to everyone in the education system, or all media orgs, or all politicians. In the future when discussing a group I will try to use a phrase that doesn't imply that everyone in the group is included and that there may be exceptions.

I understand there are minority viewpoints in every group. I wish my kids had teachers that shared your viewpoint during their education. Unfortunately in the areas my children attended school your viewpoint was not the prevalent one. There may be more educators that share your views but are not comfortable sharing them for fear of.....I imagine a teacher that took students out to shoot and learn about gun safety today would not be popular among the staff, parents or the school board (at least in the big cities). Kids now a days, learn that doodling a gun on paper, chewing their sandwich in to the rough shape of a gun, or making a gun gesture with their fingers can result in sometimes severe disciplinary action against them. Zero tolerance gun policies exist in many school districts. Whether or not they are intended to do so, I believe these policies enforce the idea that guns are bad. I also believe these policies cement the idea in the young minds of students, a fear of guns and by extension that gun rights are not valuable.

As far as the education system as a group, it seems pretty clear that a majority of them (not all) are not gun friendly. Being on the outside we can only make that assumption based on what we see from the educators as a group. This includes teachers, administrative staff and even school board members. We see the anti-gun policies they have in schools, we see their support for anti-gun protest by students, we see the unions/associations that they belong too support almost exclusively anti-gun candidates in elections, etc.

I hope my assumptions are wrong and that there is a silent majority of educators that are ready to come out and stick up for our gun rights but I am not confident it is going to happen.

Thank you for your years of service educating students.
 
you can piss in the cheerios with your skepticism It wont soggy our optimism in an attempt to do SOMETHING
we are not naive, this is merly a preemptive maneuver to force a lawsuit between the second amendment people in our county and the sanctuary state people infringing on our 2nd A rights and we want this kicked to the supreme court

what was your accomplishment for the cause
 
2018
FACT: MANY COUNTIES NOW HAVE A 2ND AMENDMENT ORDINANCES
FACT: CLOSE TO ONE MILLION VOTERS DID NOT VOTE, BEING 44% VOTED KNUTE, THAT MEANS
APPROX 400,000 VOTES WERE NOT USED, PERHAPS THIS WILL WAKE UP THE RIGHT ?
FACT: FIREARMS COMMERCE IN 2017 AND 2018 HAVE BEEN STEADY SALES.
FACT: WHERE I LIVE WE OUT NUMBER THE LEFT 3-1
FACT: THERE IS MUCH MORE GOING ON BEHIND THE SCENES MOST ARE NOT AWARE, HAVE PATIENCE.

Out numbered in a interesting choice in words, if there is a riot and 100 people with bats and knives, and 10 with
firearms, are the 10 out numbered? Nope! Just because something looks like defeat, doesn't mean it is.
 
gun owners wait til they loose their rights before they do anything, all this is a little after the fact
That seems to be the case. It's also difficult because we have gun enthusiast from all political spectrum's and they might not be able to hold their nose long enough to vote for somebody who will stand up for our gun rights because they disagree with that candidate on almost every other issue. For many who don't typically vote for the type of candidates that promise to protect gun rights, gun rights might take a backseat to x, y and z issues.

But I am more pessimistic than that after seeing I-1639 pass by such a large margin. That is why I wrote this thread today. I really believe now that gun rights supporters are simply outnumbered and the trend will continue possibly for good. I have trouble envisioning a scenario that would cause that trend to be reversed.
 
Its not the educators, its the students. They can make their own decisions, and are more interconnected through social media than ever.

virtually no high schooler has a use for a gun outside recreation, and further, generally can't afford any, so they will inherently be anti-gun.
 
Okay time for a rant:

Let's put this in perspective, I'm not sure why or where this thread is going. But is completely off base.
Let me first address the school situation, this is total BS. Educators are hired to do the job the best they can. Students 100% have the ability to make decisions. At the same school you will find people that will walk out based on their own decision-making, and at that same school you will have ROTC students, looking for a future in our armed services. This is the exact same school with the same educators. I'm not sure why this is come about and why this is not meant to be political, if we were so outnumbered why do we have a particular president in office right now that would be seen as representing the opposite of those who oppose gun rights?.

Secondly, firearm owners are not sitting around on their thumbs, waiting to do something after the fact. The back to the matter is there is very little leadership. Even in the site alone drop 40,000 members, the flounder around on this site to try and find direction. Why the administrators and moderators here trying help along. You cannot force 40,000 members to make a decision based on what they read in a forum. People join the NRA and other lobbyists, because they're looking for something to be done that they can't do themselves. This is the first step a firearm owner can do to help preserve their rights. The second is to become proactive, this is not mean start your own school, or get involved in training people in firearms. It means simply educating yourself to the positives aspects of a firearm. All too often we focus on defensive measures used by a firearm. When in reality for defense, firearm is only used by very small portion of all owners combined. I say defense, I mean actually having to use the firearm typically to oppose aggression. Why frequent in certain demographic areas, is not as common in others. Where I live over a third of the population has concealed carry, it's estimated that a tad over half the population here is armed. It's important that that message is used to tell people that we have a very peaceful community with many armed individuals.

We are not outnumbered, we are not outnumbered anywhere. In a book that I am writing, part of the issues I bring up within the firearms fight that we have, is power and perceived power. In this country many people have been elected recently, and been brought to the front of the news, all on perceived power. Not actual power. What this means is just because somebody has a loud voice, and makes up facts that appear to be accurate to the public, does not make it so.

Are there things that firearm owners can do to help improve their rights? Of course there is. And our side is doing far more to preserve rights than the opposition is doing to remove rights. You do not see anti-gun persons every day going out promoting their agenda. But you do see every day people showing up exercising their Second Amendment rights purchasing firearms, loading ammo, going to gun ranges, and engaging in hunting. This is done by the minute in each of our states. You do not see the anti-gun movement having this kind of impact to its population. Just because it appears that way does not make it so. ( edits typos power went out )
 
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