[David]

And its not likely you'll here about it on MSNBC:

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2 ... SocialFlow

Honora Laszlo, a volunteer with the Arlington, Virginia chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, asked Sanders during the question-and-answer session of a policy forum to clarify his stance on gun reform, and to explain his vote in favor of a 2005 law that shields firearms manufacturers from liability if their products are used in the execution of a crime. The families of victims of the 2013 Sandy Hook massacre have tried the approach of taking legal action against manufacturerers and unsuccessfully lobbied Congress to repeal the law.

Sanders defended his record on gun control, noting that he took “very, very difficult votes” in favor of the 1994 assault weapons ban and, in 2013, to close the gun show background check loophole.

“With all due respect, you also cast the vote to allow gun manufacturers to never be sued,” Laszlo interjected.

“Right I did, OK?” Sanders fired back, adding later, “Why would I have voted that way? Because if somebody has a gun and somebody steals that gun and they shoot somebody with it, do you really think it makes sense to blame the manufacturer of that weapon? If somebody sells you a baseball bat and somebody hits you over the head with it, you’re not going to sue the baseball bat manufacturer.”

Laszlo, 58, said in an interview after the event that baseball bats have other uses, whereas certain firearms are designed exclusively “to kill a lot of people in a short amount of time," which should open manufacturers up to liability.

Sanders, however, pinned the intractability of the gun control issue on a cultural divide between urban and rural America.

“I come from a state that has virtually no gun control and it turns out one of the safest states in the country. I come from a state where tens and tens of thousands of people hunt and do target practice. I understand that guns in my state are different than guns in Chicago or Los Angeles,” Sanders said. “People in urban America have got to appreciate that the overwhelming majority of people who hunt know about guns and respect guns, and are law-abiding people, that’s the truth. And people in rural America have got to understand that in an urban area, guns mean something very, very different.”

“We will not succeed on this terribly important issue if we continue the cultural warfare between urban America and rural America, and I think I’m in a good place to bridge that gap,” Sanders said.

Sanders also called for more understanding from both sides, a markedly different tack than his take-no-prisoners approach on economic and other social issues.

“There have to be some compromises on both sides, and I don’t apologize for that vote,” Sanders told Laszlo.

Despite his progressivism, Sander's voting record on gun control is mixed and his remarks on gun control reveal his doubts about its effectiveness. In 1993, then Rep. Sanders voted against the landmark Brady Background Check bill, which instituted the federal background check system. In 2009, he voted to allow guns in checked baggage on Amtrak. After the Sandy Hook massacre, Sanders told a Vermont magazine, “If you passed the strongest gun control legislation tomorrow, I don’t think it will have a profound effect on the tragedies we have seen.”

[DMac]

He is a self-admitted socialist. Even if he were for constitutional carry, his positions on other issues would completely disqualify him from my consideration.

[stephpd]

Agreed. He could also say he supports national reciprocity. Heck he could say he'd disband the ATF, the NFA and the GCA and I still wouldn't vote for him. Because it takes more then a phone and a pen. It takes acts of Congress to delete those.

Being an admitted socialist keeps him off my list of potential candidates because that's the antithesis of liberty.

[Owen]

He's not on my list either.

[dave_in_delaware]

... I come from a state where tens and tens of thousands of people hunt and do target practice. I understand that guns in my state are different than guns in Chicago or Los Angeles,” Sanders said. “People in urban America have got to appreciate that the overwhelming majority of people who hunt know about guns and respect guns, and are law-abiding people, that’s the truth. And people in rural America have got to understand that in an urban area, guns mean something very, very different.”

Sounds like the basis of gun ownership discrimination based on geography.

So basically he's saying rural people are OK with guns because they hunt and practice target shooting, while urban people are all criminals and shouldn't be allowed to own guns.

[California_Exile]

Candidate Obama made similar comments in 2007-08 about how guns in rural areas are different from guns on the south side of Chicago. And we can see how important that nuance has turned out to be for President Obama.

I also like how nobody in the media called out Obama, and nobody is going to call out Sanders, for speaking in racial code. Because that's what this is. What this means is, "Rural folks who hunt and do target practice are salt-of-the-earth trustworthy founding stock white folks. The urban criminals that terrify you are black." Yes, obviously, there are scummy rural folks (black and white), scummy white folks (urban and rural), good urban folks (black and white), and good black folks (urban and rural), but that's the stereotype he's appealing to. "Gun control" = "Keep guns out of the hands of violent urban blacks. And if the only way to do that is to disarm everybody, then that's just the price we all have to pay." That's the message to low-information voters.

There's a lot wrong with that message, not least of which our suspicion that the goal of disarmament matters a lot more to some people than controlling crime.

[stephpd]