Do the President's enemies make him the Left's friend? Charlie Bertsch, in Tuesday's Souciant.
I live in the south, and not a college town like thenewgreen. There are a lot of gun nuts, and a lot more who have guns because having guns is a thing people do, but people getting guns pulled on them is very uncommon, as is people getting shot. I think that might have something to do with gun control looking so sinister to people here. People going around shooting each other isn't a problem here, so alternate explanations look more plausible.
I would imagine it's a far more common experience to have a gun pulled on you in Urban areas of any geographical region of the US than in the South, generally. I, fortunately, have never had this experience, but I know many people here in my fair city (Detroit) who have. I can think of at least 10 friends or acquaintances off the top of my head who have had this happen to them. Gun laws are about politics; gun violence is not.
I live in the "south," not the south-west. I've only been here for about 2 years but I've never had a gun pulled on me. I would be willing to wager that Charlie Bertsch's experience is thankfully a rare one. I don't doubt that it happened and does happen still to others, but the crazy people that treat guns/violence with such reckless abandon are in the extreme minority.
There is a lot of anger on that bumper. I live in NC and where I live it is pretty liberal. There are several major universities here, UNC, Duke and NC State are all in close proximity. When you head outside of this area, the state gets pretty conservative, pretty quickly. You start to see more confederate flag stickers on cars and where that exists, there is often an anti-Obama sticker as well. BUT... We've had "personal" bumper stickers before. Let's not have too short of memories:
As for the question regarding how Obama could be expected to stand up for his convictions in the face of such hatred... such hatred with guns, I think that's a silly question. We elect presidents in the hope that such a question wouldn't sway their convictions. My hope is that all the hatred, anger and dumb bumper stickers in the world wouldn't sway a good presidents hand. Is Obama a good president? Well, there I think we may agree though he still has some time to sway me otherwise.
Bush was called an idiot and basically told to "fuck off" on the car shone above. He was called a nazi, a murderer etc on many a bumper sticker. I suppose you could argue that this was all policy driven and not personal but it was still pretty ugly.