Academics rushed to say that there were multiple causes for the decline, that demographics were changing, that more young men were in prison.

None of these academics ever gave a good explanation of the coincidence that the plunge in the murder rate in New York just happened to occur right when Bratton began implementing his strategies.

His deputy went to New Orleans, and worked the same wonders.  But for the most part, the strategy languished for a decade, and people seemed to believe in New York exceptionalism.

Then, a year and a half ago, Bratton went to LA and achieved a similar decline.  He ran into a wall in efforts to further cut violence, because LA simply doesn't have enough police officers.

As the initial results of the LA changes came in, Chicago began questioning why its murder rate hadn't really fallen very much after a decade of stricter sentencing and demographic changes that had made the city (somewhat) more white and more middle class.  They adopted a Bratton-style test program, and the west side quieted almost overnight.  

Within a month, the police commissioner was cashiered and a new guy came in, pledged to using the Bratton techniques.

The Bratton strategy in New York and its copycat efforts in other cities were largely made possible by Clinton's "100,000 cops" plan.  Yet we liberals have wasted a decade spending our political capital on gun control and ignoring our successes.  It amazes me.

It's not that I agree with the NRA.  Obviously, having more guns on the street makes it a little easier to commit murder - for the unattached rookie commiting a crime of passion.  But our country is absolutely awash with guns, and none of the gun control proposals would change that -- it won't change if we continue outlawing specific forms of assault weapon, for instance.

But it's basically irrelevant.  What helps is smart policing.  The crime rate went up in the late 60's because you had a generation of white cops throw up their hands and say, I don't care, I can't do anything with these people.  Some because they were racist, some because they were cynical, some because it's tough to keep doing your best when those around you aren't bothering.

Bratton told them you have to care or you're fired.  He demanded results, got rid of commanders who gave excuses like hey, my district is just poor and violent, and he flooded those districts that needed help with extra officers till the wave passed.

That's what works.  Gun control doesn't work any more than "concealed carry."

I also think you have the right idea with the faith-based inititives.  While I am terrified by the idea of creationism being taught in school and our government legislating morality, there is no reason to insist that charity must be secular.  The religious charities have a tremendous infrustructure and they should be supported.  (Your point about forced bible study is also a good one.)

I'm a big fan of gun control, but I'm not suggesting we campaign for an outright ban.  There is plenty of reasonable middle ground such as background checks, waiting periods, banning assault weapons, and cop-killer bullets where we would probably get pretty broad agreement.

On faith based initiatives, I think the same applies.  I imagine we could do some good with the kind of controls you suggest without having the Republic come crashing down around us.

Tod

I think that a lot of commonsense people in the West see Democrats' support of gun control as an insurmountable barrier that makes them identifiable nuts.

I think gun control should show up vestigially as part of ideas on security: I.D. requirements to purchase guns, coupled with a reasonable permit process, is no barrier to anyone who wants to buy a gun, but cuts out the crazies and terrorists who want to strafe schools. If I can get a car loan approved in half an hour, the Feds ought to be able to identify whether I'm a known terrorist or a wanted criminal in half an hour.

On faith-based initiatives, I think that this has been a key way for Bush to reward the religious right for their support. The promise of billions in federal money is quite a cookie. That said, I think that this probably more evens the playing field in the sense of whose "side" gets federal money than creates a lopsided one.

Instead, I like your focus on what works, instead of who is doing it. I think Republicans have unfortunately shown that at least the neo-con wing is more partisan than patriotic, and values ideology more than good old-fashioned American compromise. I think faith-based initiatives Simply Work Better for a lot of people in a lot of situations. There's no reason more liberal faith-based organizations shouldn't do just as well or better in getting funding through such programs. I'm not up to speed; perhaps they already do.

I'm pretty familiar with some strains of evangelical Christianity, and there is a real skepticism about becoming too entangled with federal funding, in fear of the encroaching regulations that can bring. Once an organization is addicted to federal money, maintaining an anti-government ideology is hard to do. Systems theory ensures it. I wouldn't be surprised to see faith-based initiatives end up being a self-inflicted wound on the ideological purity of the religious right.

Another issue I'd like to see Democrats tackle is illegal immigration. This is a big issue for the Southwest. Democrats are stereotypically pro illegal immigration, and Republicans are against it. Why? The commonsense view is that Democrats want illegal immigrants to come in, consume government handouts, and vote pro-entitlement Democrat tickets. I do not think this is true, and I do not think it would take much to turn these tables. Democrats are traditionally pro-working class. A lot of working class people are concerned about illegal immigration in terms of job protection. (A lot of illegal immigrants are concerned about illegal immigration for the same reason!) This isn't about anti-Mexican racism, it is about systematic crises related to the federal governments' unwillingness to police the borders (!!! homeland defense anyone? !!!) and the states' obligations in terms of health care, infrastructure, housing, etc. This was a major issue in the CA recall, in the AZ 2004 general election, and is also important in 5 or 6 other swing/near-swing states in the west and especially southwest.

Take it with about four tablespoons of salt, but here's an article in the National Review Online by someone at the AEI on guns and Switzerland. (Every male in Switzerland is required to keep a gun in the house.)

"While the emotional response to passing even more gun laws is understandable, laws that primarily disarm law-abiding citizens relative to criminals can have perverse effects."

I must say, George Bush changed my mind on gun control.  I used to believe in gun control but always had a worry in the back of my head; while I believed that the right to bear arms sprang from the need to balance the power of the people with the power of the state, I used to believe that was an obsolete concept.  I no longer believe that.  I now fear the government as much as the most concervative guy out there.  Today's democrats need to take advantage of that fear.

One is womens rights, and two is diversity.

The dems should not stand for any change in abortion rights and they should be clear that they will never be the party of constitutional admendments embracing one set of values over another.

See here:

http://www.au.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5122&abbr=pr&security=1002&news_iv_ ctrl=1282

Sure - let's start with guns. Next?

How about abortion? We need to evolve our traditional, steadfast positions here into a more broadly digestable stance. Let's remember, abortion is not a pleasent topic, and this unpleasentness will always enable some degree of a wedge to be driven. One of the few things more unpleasent than the topic itself is denying a woman the right to safety and choice when it comes to her own body.

With that said, are all abortions under all circumstances something we should really be fighting for?

Bill Clinton began leading us down a better path here and we seem to have lost the trail.

Safe, legal, and RARE.

Our clearly defined position on this issue needs to be fewer abortions as the goal. This everyone will agree upon. Education, yes education that  highlights the effectiveness of abstinence, as well as the importance of contraception needs to be key component of the position. Late-term abortions, in the third trimester? This is a hard one to advocate for, and probably not very wise from pragmatic point of view.

Why not this as the the "New Democratic" position on abortion:
Full freedom of choice during the first trimester, increasingly stronger controls and medical requirements as the pregnancy term progresses.

What else?

How about this whole concept of "big government". The New Democrats should become aggressive deficit hawks. Government oversight needs to replace government control as a message, with efficiencies and spending/cost controls a centerpiece.

How about strong support for Veteran benefits and rights? Talk about an inevitably growing segment of our populations. This should be OUR issue, not theirs.

How about tax reform?

I will play these out further in future posts. Combined with re-crafting the message around our core populist positions and values and morals and we can finally build and become the majority party for a generation or more.

It's our country. It's our party. It's our future.....pt

There is also a very small population of random innocent bystanders who do not fall into either category.  But, by and large, if you don't do drugs and you don't associate with people who own guns (and especially if you don't become romantically involved with them, or date women who were very recently romantically involved with them), your odds of being the victim of murder are close to zero.

So if you and those you love can avoid these behaviors, gun control is largely irrelevant to your personal safety.  There are also thousands of gun-related accidents and suicides every year, but again, if you don't own a gun you're very safe.

On a national level, people are killed because people as a whole are not perfectly rational.  If there were no guns, there might still be some homicide, but it would be far less frequent simply because it would be so much mroe difficult.  When a man is enraged at his ex-girlfriend and he owns a gun, it is very easy to remain angry for the short length of time it takes to get the gun, drive to her work or home, and shoot her and anyone who tries to protect her.  

Its all about opportunity.  We all have instances where we think "I could kill that person!".  Some get so mad, and have such poor impluse control, that they may be moved to action.  Guns make it MUCH easier to do so.  And there's always accidents...  European countries have murder rates a small fraction of the US.  Lack of easy access to firearms is the big reason why.

But we tolerate tens of thousands of deaths each year from auto accidents, and motor vehicles aren't mentioned in the Constitution.  Why should guns be different?  Its clear to me that gun control, while a good idea, is never going to be law in the way that liberals would like - that is, European style-regulation strong enough to substantially reduce murder rates.  So abandoning it would probably be okay in my book, especially if it brings broader electoral success.

As to the issue of "faith based initiatives" however, I'd say: don't be fooled.  As a member of a church that devotes a lot of money to social initiatives I see absolutely no need for the government to give money to religious institutions for any reason.  Every desired program can be set up outside of the religious context if desired, and there is no law against a volunteer citing their religion if asked why they are giving of themselves.

There is also nothing stopping private citizens from giving more money to religious efforts to deal with societal problems.  In fact, in many situations this is precisely what has had to happen as conservative policies have cut the funding to needed safety nets.  

Shifting some of this money to "faith based" programs would put the government in the position of determining which churches, mosques or synagogues were more worthy than others. No doubt, large evangelical congregations with the resources to hire full time professional grant writers and lobbyists would be in the best position to get this federal funding. This fits neither my picture of good government, nor of good religion.

Hunters and collectors and any law abiding citizen just relax!  You have been swayed by the evil NRA of the slippery slope argument that any form of gun contol is bad, but even you in your heart of hearts know that reasonable gun laws make sense.

Democrats should continue to show common sense with this issue and remain strong in their support of an assault weapons ban, and other sensible efforts.  The MILLION Mom march, the Brady group and others are where the mainstream of Amercia is on this issue, not the NRA.

I am more wary of faith based initiatives but if their work is the same minus the preaching the faith part, maybe.

RELIGON - MORALITY
We can win the religion - morality issue conflict which is now presented as a huge net negative for the Democratic Party.

We need to get liberal religous leaders to become activists.

We need to fund them and promote them.

We need religous leaders to lead the public debate for out side, not our politicians and not our media personalities.

Everyone knows the names of religous leaders on the right, but no one knows of the religous leaders who support our opinions.

In fact we have better more appealing positions on issues that touch upon morailty that can really gain a great deal of leverage over the fight wing agenda.

We can win on these issues, Stem Cell research is an example. There is great moral harm being done by the political and social policies on the right, we just need to promote our religous leaders and our solutions.

Our religous leaders must become well known household names, known by everyone. This must be a MAJOR part of our plan to recover ground after allowing Bush to steal two national elections and after doing nothing about the media slant to the right for 4 going on 8 years.

No on tax dollars to religious institutions. This is bad policy. We can "encourage" them privately with charitable donations - in fact the government already supports that by making your donation deductible.

I don't think this is an majorly important point to fight the Bush administration on but I do see deep problems with the system.

Charities are already adept at observing conditions in grants, because even private sector grants care many restrictions. Conditions against proselytizing would not be difficult to enforce or outside the norm.

Not only is pro-gun rights the true liberal/populist position idealogically is also absolutely essential for the future success of the Democratic party.

The future of the Democratic party lies in the Mountain west, Colorado, New Mexico, Montanna.

I see a parallel between gun-rights and pro-choice (instead of faith-based initiatives which I oppose).  Pro-choice is not pro-abortion; pro-gun rights is not pro-gun violence as the improper framing implies.  Both are protected by the constition, one explicitely.  Both are slippery slope issues.  Anti-abortion folks try to legitimize taking away choice by starting with partial-birth abortion.  Anti-gun folks start with gun registration which has already lead to gun confiscation in this country.  Sadly this includes taking guns away from law abiding citizens who forget to update the regisration and live in neighborhoods where there are plenty of criminals with unregistered guns.

Anyway, I could go on, but I am really glad to see there are more gun-rights progressives out there.

As far as the faith-based initiatives go, I hope someone can educate you better than me.  That is so obviously wrong to me.  What can't be better handled by reality-based initiatives that don't violate separate of church and state?  The example I saw was funding preachers to go into prisons to do things like preach the Bible to teach anger management.   Uhhh, if we are going to spend tax dollars why not have a trained specialist who have a reality based education from an accredited university teach anger management using proven techniques?

When you read stuff like this
http://rogerailes.blogspot.com/2004_11_14_rogerailes_archive.html#110045937945428990
I think you may realized that most funding for faith-based initiatives is probably going to end up in some Replican's campaign fund.

From a political standpoint here in the South you have a lot of people that plain and simply love their guns.  They don't drive down the street killing people, they don't break into homes murdering people.  But they are law abiding citizens and they don't want the government in their business.  Guns alone can swing the vote.  I'm pro-choice and pro-gun and I'll vote on those issues.  In the case of abortion if it were ever outlawed I know that women will fight to get it overturned.  But if weapons are slowly removed I seriously doubt that anyone will fight very hard to get them back.  And so I would flip more easily to someone promoting pro-gun stance than a pro-choice.  The slippery slope is mnore inclined to remove weapons from citizens than anything else because once they are gone there is no stopping the machine.  Now I voted against Bush and I will vote Democratic I suspect for a long time to come, simply because I see evil in the right wing at the moment.  But if you drop gun control as a theme you will be doing two things 1) You will be protecting this country from itself by giving people the right to one day overthrow and restore it from control of someone/group that may pervert its core beliefs.  Let us all hope it is never necessary and that somehow common sense rules and the vote continues to level the playing field from one generation to the next. 2) You will remove a great number of redneck sooutherners from the desire to vote against you even if they may not be convinced yet to vote for you.  Put simply I believe IT can happen HERE and it is necessary to preserve the strength of regular citizens.

Gun Control----->Gun Safety

Faith-Based----->SSPs  Self Sufficiency Programs

and...

When churches start paying taxes I'll sit down at the table and talk about faith based initiatives.

Therefore, I think gun control is dead -- if we're pro-choice, we have to be pro gun rights as a matter of consistency. We can't cherry pick our liberties...

At the same time, keeping church and state firmly separate is critical to limiting state power. Any sliding here -- using federal dollars to indoctrinate potential church goers -- would allow power to expand unacceptably off its islands into matters of conscience. [I also think people are confused about the faith based issue. Even before W, churches could run soup kitchens with federal money, as long as the effort wasn't a recruiting tool to spread biblical teaching. The Repubs made it sound like churches were cut-off entirely... just not true... ] ...

...see this James Madison quote: "An alliance or coalition between Government and religion cannot be too carefully guarded against......Every new and successful example therefore of a PERFECT SEPARATION between ecclesiastical and civil matters is of importance........religion ....will exist in greater purity, without (rather) than with the aid of government"

Anyway, from a classical liberal standpoint, the consistent position is to 1) let gun control die, and 2) fight like hell against any government effort to spread / influence religious dogma...

hank

The BS lost, and lost again on appeal(thank god for the 9th circuit).
But if faith based contracting becomes common, churches won't change: the laws will. How long before religious groups seeking government contracts are given blanket exemptions from discrimination laws? followed by  "clarifications" that blur the lines between churches/affiliates/business corporations with religious clauses in their charters ...

And forget about funding only the programs that are effective.   Funding, both private and public, is given to the groups that "feel" good, the ones that reaffirm the opinons of the funders, not the ones with proven results. That's how it already works (DARE anyone?); it won't get any better with religious groups calling even more of the shots.

I am a gun owner (gasp!) will be killing a deer in a couple of weeks (gasp!) both for the enjoyment of the hunt (gasp!) and for eating its meat (double gasp!  He's not a vegetarian!).  I went into a gun shop the day after the assault weapons ban was lifted, and jokingly asked, "Can I buy a fully-automatic assault rifle, please?"  The owner said, "Sure, here they are."...  I was puzzled, and asked, "You got these in today?"  

"No." he said.  We've always had them.

"But... I thought they were banned?"

"Yes, the new manufacture of them was banned, but the sale was not... so the gun industries saw this coming, and they flooded the market with fully-automatic assault rifles before the ban took effect.  The 'ban' actually caused the weapons to be cheaper, and more available because there were more of them than we could possibly sell."

This was a big eye-opener for me.  I actually believed that I couldn't purchase these guns, but the ban actually had no effect whatsoever on stopping the sale of these guns.  AND, the Democrats were effectively lying to the American people claiming, "Gun violence is going to go up now that these weapons are banned."  How do you think that makes people feel about Democrats who hear Kerry and Co. spouting that bullshit (and it IS bullshit... you could have purchased an AK-47... fully automatic in pretty much any gun store in the nation for a bargain price... and no guns were ever taken off of the shelves with that ban... period)... how would that make you feel if Democrats were saying, "Gun crime is gonna go up!  Republicans are gonna have blood on their hands!"... and you were a gun owner... and you popped into a gun shop and saw literally dozens of these "banned" guns for (legal) sale every single day?  This is a losing proposition for Democrats... and it's an especially losing proposition if Democrats lie through their teeth about the merits of their "ban-that-never-really-was-a-ban".

p.s.  A caveat... personally, I think fully-automatic assault rifles should be banned.

No one can say where the money has gone.  No one can say how much has been passed along to Republican voter-suppression efforts, or to Jimmy Swaggart's "Prostitute Outreach" program.  It's a blank check.  And our troops still need body armor.

Question: do these welfare churches pay tax on their windfall?

A lot of our tax dollars go to things at least one citizen or another has a real problem with.  Defense spending has put some Friends and other pacificists in jail -- they've refused to pay their taxes or that portion of their taxes which would go to the military.  Many have real problems with recipients of some art funding, etc.

As for the gun issue, I keep thinking that trying to keep guns out of people's hands is a distraction from our general permissiveness about violence.  Removing most guns will not erase violence which is what, I think, we really want to do.  So I agree with Chris, pretty much completely.

I realize there is a big push from certain parts of the party to acquiesce to the republicans on certain areas; I think we should be cautious.  Personally I would be willing to give in on gun control, I don't think it is particularly effective at preventing crime, and it will be impossible to get anything done anyway.

That said I simply would not vote for a candidate that does not stand for the strict separation of church and state.  Perhaps this country is inevitably moving towards becoming the theocratic state that the religious right wants, but I will take no part of it.  Anything besides completely trivial movement towards government supported faith based groups is utterly unacceptable to me.

Perhaps I'm just much more willing to "go down with the ship" on certain issues then most democrats are.

My gosh, we are running scared, aren't we?

I find this exercise in jettisoning our long held core beliefs -- expressions, after all, of our liberal VALUES -- not only highly insulting but a piss-poor strategy for winning elections.  What we need is not to create a party which looks like the GOP of 40 years ago by getting rid of everything we stand for, what we need is to craft a cohesive and easily understood narrative which encompasses and communicates those values and can compete with the GOP's obviously successful narrative of no taxes, "moral" values and strong defense.

Gun control may be unimportant to many of the posters here, but I'll wager that the majority of them didn't live in a major American city as adults in the 70's and 80's when gun violence was at its peak.  Urban dwellers (and not just women) appreciate that guns are not nearly as rampant as they were in the recent past, and gun control laws are a significant part of the reason.  Oh, they're far from perfect, there's loopholes galore, and no one thinks they're the only answer, but they are necessary, and any party which drops support for them will lose my vote and, I think, the votes of a large portion of those who live in urban areas -- and where, exactly, was Kerry's strength the most pronounced in this election?  So the idea is to alienate that segment of the population that gives us the most consistent and strongest support in order to, perhaps, sway a few voters over from the right side of the middle?

Just how many NRA members do you think are going to change a lifetime's preconceptions of what being a liberal or a Democrat means and switch their vote over, just because the party abandons its support for gun control?  It's ridiculous to think that it would do anything but lose us a significant amount of votes.

Not only that, but I object to throwing out principled positions, and the idea of standing for and doing the right thing, just to eke out a few measly votes.  Democrats and liberals don't lack values, they have values which are different from (and, in my mind, superior to) the fundamentalist-Christian based "moral" values of the right and the GOP.  Every time we shuck off more of them, in a pitiful attempt to triangulate ourselves to a few more votes, we hand a tremendous victory to the right, because not only will they have won an election, they will have caused us to put a stake through our own hearts.

The gov't centers for faith-based initiatives in the White House and ten federal agencies aren't just making funding available. Their jog is to conduct coordinated efforts to win more financial support for faith-based groups.

And the idea that the funds only support the social programs and not the religious components is ridiculous. One group receiving funds divided their time into fifteen minute segments and billed the government for the segments that weren't religious and paid for the religious segments themselves. That's not quite the division of social/religious content that I think we'd support.

Additionally, let's not fool ourselves into thinking that no value judgments are made on which religious groups get the money. Of the $100m that HHS gave to faith-based groups, 100% went to Christian groups.

The conferences for the intiative are White House sponsored public affairs that start with a prayer. The DC conference included a gospel singer and a Christian preacher with the congregation, um I mean audience responding with Amens and Hallelujahs. I don't think this is what we have in mind when we talk about supporting the faith-based initiatives.

Oh, and did I mention that these conferences were held in swing states.

I've done quite a bit of research on this whole issue and if you want details and links, you can find them here. I'd replicate that post here, but it's just too long.

Bottom line is that the faith-based initiative looks harmless on the outside but is something quite different once you look under the hood. If we're going to support it, then it's got to be on the basis of fair application across religions and separation of church and state.  

I think sacrificing guns can help a lot, and could be a part of a new "western strategy" for the Democratic party. Turn Montana blue! Also would help in rural areas all around. My ideal for this issue would be a pretty standard European type system, but that just doesn't seem possible, and most patchwork quilt type measures ("assault weapons ban" leaps to mind) lack effectiveness.

I'm a bit more hesitant on the FBI. As others have said, I would want to see some rigorous utilitarian analysis of the effects of this. I'm not religious, but if FBIs could really help more people, then I think it is hard to argue against it, despite my stand on church and state issues (no under god in pledge of allegiance, etc). Ultimately what I care about most is actual human consequences. If I had a genie that would grant me either shutting down a north korean death camp or taking under god out of the pledge of allegiance, I'd go with shutting down the north korean death camp. No brainer, I think. But if FBIs helped fewer people, we would have to carefully weigh whatever electoral benefit we would get, and the consequent power to help other people in other ways (health insurance, etc), against the damage done by FBIs.

There are two political issues: 1) privatizing social services; and 2) reducing oversight of the spending of social service dollars.  In general, both are really bad ideas.  Privatizing social services means that you can have several competing homeless shelters in a neighborhood with several activist churches and none in a town where homelessness isn't the trendy issue.  You have to settle for larger holes in the service net.  

Reducing oversight of spending virtually always leads to abuses, and remember, we're talking here about groups that don't want to deal with the "red tape" (boo, hiss) of setting up a secular subsidiary.  There are two kinds of abuses.  One is goodhearted people who use the dollars for whatever they think is a good idea.  That may be fine, but if Congress has appropriated funds for homeless shelters, charity directors or volunteers can't legally decide to spend the funds on drug rehabilitation (or church bulletins, for that matter).  But many of them do.  The other abuse is, of course, diverting funds to the personal benefit of the directors.  It's not that the organizations can't be audited, but it is politically very difficult to do so.  Busloads of people can show up at the nearest elected official's office to complain about how the auditors are persecuting their director.

Like many privatized services and private businesses, it all looks a whole lot more efficient than government only after you've socialized the regulatory costs and the costs of failure.

Of course if we say that we support government funding a market-based system of social services, regardless of religious affiliation, what about schools?  Let's say private-religious Sacred Heart School can graduate 80% of its students to college, while public-secular Thomas Jefferson HS only gets 30% of its students into colleges.  Why not give more funding to Sacred Heart and reduce it from Thomas Jefferson?

This issue is a slippery slope because:

1. By not not giving money to organizations associated with religions, we essentially discriminate against an organization because of it's religion.  (Think about today's YMCA.)

2. Once we allow religious organizations to compete for government funding, there is little to keep religious affiliated-institutions out of other sectors of public service.  (Can you imagine a Christ's Construction being hired to do the local freeway improvements?)

-N

Dems have been so weak at resisting and reconciling special interest orthodoxies that they have deservedly been labeled as prisoners of special interests. Conservatives have managed to equate this with liberalism, causing many people to believe that liberalism requires extreme uncompromising positions. Of course that's 180 degrees wrong, but as long as the Democratic Party remains under the sway of slippery slope arguments, we won't be effective at setting public opinion straight.

So Chris, I applaud your willingness to reject sacred cows, and the comments on this thread are excellent. I'd like to rate the entire thread "Super." (Is there a way to do that?)

I also want to point out that non-extreme positions, such as what Chris and the commenters describe for faith-based initiatives, guns, abortion, and gay rights, do require some intelligent regulation on the part of government. We have to be ready to explain why we should be trusted to be the regulators.

I think we can do this by explaining how we reconcile competing values, such as how we balance rural gun sensibilities with the need to reduce urban violence, or how we balance women's rights with fetal rights. Most voters hold both competing values in their heads at the same time, and I think they evaluate leaders by their ability to find the right balance.

To me, true liberalism is the ability to appreciate all those competing values (even the religious ones, and even if we don't necessarily internalize them all), and pragmatism is the art of finding the right balance. By this definition, there are more liberals in the population than most people think. Pragmatic liberals, who explain their values and sense of balance well, should be able to win.

And, no, guns don't have much effect on our society;  there are buckets of chock-full-o-guns societies that show, at worst, slight increases in violence over chock-full-o-gun-laws societies.   The United States is a "special" case;  I suspect that if the Gun Fairy magically converted every firearm within the borders of the United States into daisies, we'd see a massive increase in flower-related violence.

But Amy Sullivan writes over at Washington Monthly about how these programs are not as effective as their government counterparts.  That was how Bush sold the idea, is that recidivism would be lower, but it is not. Now, Amy has long been pushing for more talk of faith in politics, and even she doesn't support this.  

While I agree builiding bridges to the religious community is a good thing, these initiatives are not the way to do it.  The bottom line is they are not a good use of taxpayer money, and should be exposed for the frauds and church bribes that they are.  

Any change in FBI's is heading down a slippery slope we should avoid.

What has happened IMO is that the democratic party lost the gun culture. They left years ago with the last of the "majority" southern democrats. There is now no moderating force within the party to push the gun controllers back. The result is gun controllers are running around without any institutional opposition, pushing terrible laws. This function was being performed by groups like the NRA back when they still backed some democrats, but they are gone. We need to rebalance the party.

There is a huge strategic opportunity at this time for the party to change direction, regain the trust of the gun community and with a little work, cause a split in the republican coalition. All hunters are environmentalists and they hate what the republicans have done in this area but they are gun owners first.

"VOTE BUSH! Because we had too much public hunting land that wasn't being drilled for oil." is from a sig line at a place called shotgunworld.com

Gun owners see the assault weapons ban as the political grandstanding that it is, and do not appreciate politicians playing games with the constitution in their cherished area of expertise. Its similar to the way we view the republicans use of the old flag burning amendment. The gun nuts see guns as a "values" issue because they are valuing the second amendment and we are not. its that simple.

This is a golden opportunity to really be the party that cherishes the whole bill of rights.

So, its my issue now, and i'm compelled to shout
DROP THE GUN CONTROL!

and please read this:
"Americans  widely  believe  that  there  is  a  right  to  bear  arms  but many  -- gun  owners  in  particular  --  do  not  believe  Democrats  share this  belief.

As  gun  owners  represent  almost  four  in  ten  Americans  this perception  impedes  efforts  to  create  a  durable  Democratic  majority"

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=119&subid=157&contentid=252103

Ok so that's my rant.
I have decided that what needs to be done is to rebuild the institutional opposition to the gun controllers within the party. the first step being to recruit fellow liberal gun owners for the task.
If you are a gun owner and agree with me, i recently set up an email address to gauge interest in this idea. (yes there is interest)
progressiveowners@mindspring.com
(don't worry, no spam, no mass emails)

The question was does gun control work, and one look at the DC and Baltimore murder rates proves that it does not. On the other hand gun control keeps machine guns from being sold off the shelf,  the better question is does it work as an issue in the election, absolutely not.

Faith-based funding - I will first qualify this by saying I have no idea about any of the details of the "faith-based initiatives" program, but I'm just speaking to the philosophy.  I'm going to have to say no to this one.  There are multiple reasons.  First, the government already funds enough programs as it is.  Thus we have soaring deficits which myself, my children and everyone after them will be paying for (and remember that total anarchy situation?  Yeah, the deficits aren't helping alleviate my concerns about that).  Second, I highly doubt that funds will be distributed in an equitable manner to groups of all religious causes.  Thirdly, I suspect that some portion of this money would be discreetly diverted by many of the groups to religious activities not permitted by the government.

You have to buy a license to be a gun collector, which would allow you to purchase more dangerous weapons (legal today, illegal under my plan : )  ).  Teh license would require a test of basic gun safety.  You would also have to prove ownership of a reasonable gun safe that would hold all of your weapons, which would have to be registered.

If you have a weapon stolen and are found negligent, i.e. left it under the bed, then you would be held responsible in a civil court, but not in a criminal court for all misdoings carried out with said weapon.

whew, my $0.02

This post shows how far removed we are from having fixed values.  Why not ditch an "abstraction" like the First Amendment if it gets in the way of winning?  Ronald Reagan would never had done that, because he really believed in something.  Maybe we disagreed with him, but he had conviction.

For those of you who think that winning is more important than standing for something, and re-educating America about the fundamental importance of what you stand for (which is what Reagan did so well), let me offer a more practical reason for not using tax monies to finance religious activities.  I have handled litigation for a large, Protestant denomination.  When churches accept government funds for their programs, it corrupts them.  Just as we as individuals lose some freedom when we compromise the First Amendment, churches do too.  They become subject to all kinds of government intervention, regulation and scrutiny.  Their ability to advocate their distinct world view gets watered down.  They become an extension of the government.  I can't see how anyone would consider this desirable.  Faith based initiatives are a pact with the devil, and both non-believers and believers should recognize this.  And you have to ask yourself this.  If American religiosity is at an all time high, why do churches need government assistance?

As a physician, I feel obliged to remind people that gun ownership is a PUBLIC HEALTH issue -- it isn't just about preventing crimes, it's also about preventing suicides and accidental death. One of the previous posters linked to data showing very clearly that a gun is much more likely to be used in one of these ways than for self-defense. Bottom line -- reduction or elimination of guns would reduce the occurrence of such badness, pure and simple.

Having said that, however, we don't need the elimination of guns. This is an issue that divides along Red and Blue states in a way that actually makes common sense. After all, there's not much need for gun restrictions in Wyoming -- they probably have hardly any gun crime. There is quite a pressing need for it in Cook County Illinois, where I live, however. States are blue because they have urban areas (where gun control is warranted), and red when there is a higher rural/urban ration (where gun control is not warranted).

The solution, I think, is NOT for us to just give up this issue. The solution is to try to press everyone to accept common sense gun safety legislation, and call it that -- the term "gun control" should be eliminated, because that's not even really what it is. Ask people in red states if they'd be willing to register their guns so that people like the D.C. Sniper can't get their hands on one, and so the small handful of utterly corrupt gun dealers can be put out of business. IF you frame it something like that, and be very clear about the fact that nobody is interested in taking away anyone's hunting rifle, you might get them to say yes.

The assault weapons ban is a perfect example of a place where we can use this issue to our advantage. The public overwhemingly supports this -- christ, the Pew Center did a poll showing that even A THIRD OF NRA MEMBERS SUPPORTED THE ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN! I thoroughly disagree that this issue is dead, or irrelevant, or dispensible.

Given the importance of guns in the culture of many places, and in view of the fact that it is crucial in some areas but wholly unnecessary in others, I think perhaps we should take the Howard Dean approach and say that gun rules should be made by the states. That way Blue states can have restrictions and common-sense regulations (e.g. mandatory child safety locks), and Red states can decline, and everyone will basically be happy in his own community.

First, it seems to me that the most valuable political currency these days is TRUST.  There are many, many Republican voters who will simply never believe that Democrats oppose gun control, whatever they may claim.  Despite the repeated references Kerry made to going hunting, it was clear many voters, particularly in the South, thought he would take away their guns. Why ?  Because they were convinced that gun control is one of the main things many Democrats stand for.  What better way to lose trust than by pretending to take a position you do not believe in.      

Second, and more importantly, ARE YOU PEOPLE NUTS ?  I think most of us in the UK simply do not get your country's attachment to guns.  It's all very well referring to your Constitution (although I know there are plenty who take issue with what exactly the "right to bear arms" means); equally, I know many simply say that your society is different etc, etc.  But this is all a smokescreen - GUNS KILL.  If it is the person carrying the gun who you have to worry about rather than the gun itself, as so many gun advocates like to say, then why not just give all gun owners nuclear missiles of their own.  

Here in the UK, as everywhere, people are of course worried by crime, but how about this: THERE IS VIRTUALLY NO GUN VIOLENCE HERE BY COMPARISON WITH YOUR COUNTRY.  In 2002/2003 there were 81 homicides involving firearms in England and Wales, down from 97 the previous year.  Please think about those figures for a moment.  How can you claim to be so horrified by what is going on in Iraq, when thousands of innocent people are murdered by guns throughout your own country each year, not to mention the horrifically high number of children who are killed in accidents involving guns ?

I am deeply ashamed that our Prime Minister has involved us in the illegal occupation of Iraq, but one of his finest acts was to instigate a total ban on hand guns some 7 years ago now.  There is no pressure at all to reverse this.  

If you truly believe one of Bush's greatest failings is his insular, go-it-alone behaviour, then please bear all this in mind, look to what other countries are doing and start educating your people !
 

The first is the separation of church and state issue. Who decides which religion's charities get how much money? The question is really rhetorical. One of the problems I always have with this situation is that giving money to a faith-based charity will mean that the faith can consider not diverting to the charity as much money as it might otherwise. This will allow it to keep more money for it's non-charitable faith-based operations, e.g. proselytization.

The second problem I have is that the issue is a slippery slope issue. The government says that it can't adequately cover the charitable needs of the populace, so it will farm out money to those who purport they can. However, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is simply a means to decrease the importance of the federal government. It represents a diversion of money from the federal government to a diffuse group of organizations that cannot have the efficiency that the federal government could have. (I chose the word "could" carefully.) It is more or less an admission of defeat, when defeat need not be admitted.

I would also like to add the following words from Barack Obama:
""Alongside our famous individualism, "there's another ingredient in the American saga: a belief that we are connected as one people. If there's a child on the South Side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. . . . It's that fundamental belief -- I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper -- that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. `E pluribus unum.' Out of many, one."