The big Gun Grab

Here's who talks about confiscating everyone's guns, and why:

1. The gun makers, their lobbying organization the NRA, and their political arm, the GOP
Reason: profit. Every time the gun makers and their minions mount a campaign about some mythical "gun grab,"gun sales skyrocket.

2. The Angry Billionaires' Club (including such luminaries as the Koch brothers), and their well-paid servants the RWM (Right Wing Media)
Reason: profit. The ABC makes more money for themselves the less they are regulated--this is not money for any Americans but the richest .1%, which is why all the enormous gains in productivity by American workers over the last 40 years has been appropriated by the .1%, leaving Americans working harder and harder, longer and longer, with nothing more to show for it. The ABC wants Americans not to notice this. It has succeeded. The ABC wants to prey on individual Americans--polluting their air, poisoning their water, working them to death--without the Americans organizing and without the Americans' government protecting them. Thus the ABC has been carrying on a multi-billion dollar campaign dedicated to making Americans hate and distrust the federal government, so as to weaken it. This has succeeded largely--hence no bankers going to prison over their crashing the American economy in 2008.

3. The RWM (Right Wing Media), whose compensation from the ABC is proportional to their influence--especially the size of their audience. Well, their audience increases whenever there's an emergency, whenever they can scare or enrage their audience.
Reason: profit, consequently. Ad rates are based on eyeballs. The more eyeballs, the more advertising, the more money per ad and the more subsidization from their patrons, and the more speaking fees, and the more book sales. So profit comes from pandering.

4. Right Wing Politicians (I don't call them Conservatives, since they've upended the original meaning of that word).
Reason: profit. Most right wing politicians "represent" congressional districts so gerrymandered that whoever the GOP nominee is will win; so they only fear a challenge from their own right in the primaries, and as Bob Bennett can attest, you can never be right wing enough to eliminate that fear. A majority of Congressmen leave office vastly wealthier than they are when they enter, and the longer they hang onto their seat the wealthier they become.

And in terms of rhetoric, the way to defend the indefensible is through the straw man argument. Few gun owners--much less non-gun owners--think it's a good idea for people to be able to buy guns without a background check. But the NRA and its patrons don't want the law changed, so they can sell guns to criminals and crazy people--a gun sale is a gun sale, after all. This is indefensible, so the NRA and its lackeys in politics starts screaming about gun confiscation, and the Democrats start talking about how they aren't trying to confiscate guns, and the original point--universal background checks--gets lost, just as the NRA wants it to be.

Talk about gun confiscation is a diversionary tactic. Anyone who takes it seriously is being played for a fool by the gun makers and their lackeys.