Get real. Have you ever been to places like Fort Bragg, Eureka, Chula Vista, Sacramento? Not to mention that Bakersfield, Modesto, Stockton, etc, aren't what I'd call "redneck" territory.

It's bigger than most countries, I believe. It's incredibly diverse...there are big cities like San Francisco and LA (which are very different from each other), there are mountains, there are deserts, there's tons of farms (most of our produce comes from there). Saying all Californians are a certain way is like saying all Americans are a certain way.

Incidentally, Florida has some diversity, too--it's not all beaches and swimming pools and theme parks, there is plenty of cattle country and farms (besides citrus).

What the diarist has done is find large states that are thinly populated, so that there is no urban population to dilute the percentage of hunting/fishing types. It doesn't really prove anything about Obama...it may be possible to win the Democratic caucus in a lot of those states without having much support among hunters/fisherman (they may be out hunting or fishing the day of the caucus).

And they do it with Wyoming's water.

When did he say that? I thought he was for gun control, but lying low because it's not considered an acceptable position now. Of course, if the Supreme Court interprets the Second Amendment as granting an individual right, then it doesn't matter  whether Obama supports it or not.

Your statistics are inaccurate. In 2005, California discontinued issuing licenses for non-commerical ocean fishing, an activity in which millions of people engage.

Well, then it's a good thing that the survey data wasn't compiled using licensing-data but rather interviews. By its citizens own admission, no state hunts or fishes less on a per capita basis than California.

You mean licenses like the 2008 California Resident Sportfishing license: "Required for a resident to take fish, mollusks, crustaceans, invertebrates, amphibians or reptile in inland or ocean waters. Additional stamps and report cards are required for certain species and areas."?

Never mind that if you read the report you'd have seen that this data didn't come from license sales.

You'll have to lie harder next time.

I'm Californian (born in Oakland, raised in northeastern California where my Irish immigrant ancestors settled in the late 1870s).

I come from a long line of sportsmen and outdoorsy types.  Hell, my career keeps me outside most of the time.

My Dad and my Brother combined own more guns than the Canadian Army and both hunt/fish regularly.  They're Obama supporters.

Dad called tonight, laughing about Hillary's "duck hunting" story.  Not a chuckle, an out and out guffaw.

Uh no. He was talking about  people turning into single-issue voters and voting against their economic interests.

It's not that he mentioned guns, it is that he seems to think that people turn to guns in frustration and bitterness.

Some certainly do.

You all don't get the overall impact of his statements because like him you don't get the insulting tone of his remarks in general.

I don't get it? And where, exactly, do you live?

Religion and guns and the way people live in rural america isn't a result of having been ignored and frustrated by politicians.  It is how they live by choice.

I think you're right to some degree. However, I think that Senator Obama was arguing that people living in depressed rural communities take comfort in the familiar (guns, god, etc.) and vote against their economic self-interest as a result -- which is, to my mind, also true.

Cause god knows, Obama doesn't.

And neither does Senator Clinton.

I doubt that the other gun voting states which you list grasped his mindset or they might not have voted for him, or maybe they didn't.

1. There's a difference between hunting and gun-fetishism. 2. Those states I listed were by and large ground-zero for the populist movement and care far more about a candidate's authenticity  and honestly and their own economic well-being than the social-conservatives' flim-flam.

According to Joan Burbick, author of Gun Show Nation: Gun Culture and American Democracy :

"The symbolic meaning of owning a gun is to reclaim political power, demonize minorities, distort the issue of crime in America, express contempt for women gaining access to power, and distract Americans from the real issues of democracy."

Ironically, the first hints of gun control in America emerged from the Civil War era South.  Such motivations, stoked by white fears of armed blacks, were anchored to the model of distrust for the South's class considered both different and inferior: Americans of African descent.

Joan Burbick (cited above) posits that the movement championing Second Amendment rights was born of the social unrest of the 1960s.  She argues that conservatives responded to blacks' and women's demands for rights by deliberately co-opting the language of civil rights to appeal to a disaffected white electorate, thereby birthing a strong conservative response to liberal efforts aimed at achieving social, economic, and racial justice.

Later, we've seen the National Rifle Association (NRA) secure their claim to a "gun rights ideology" that uses gun issues as political weapons to attack virtually every progressive idea, especially on issues of poverty and race.  It's a conservative wedge strategy that has successfully caused the rural people to vote against their own economic interests, and played a significant role in the creation of the bloc we now call "Reagan Democrats".

In addition to a move toward religion, it would seem that economic adversity may push people toward a gun rights ideology that, while cloaked in a mythic tradition and nostalgic "frontier" mentality, serves largely to ensure the political power of conservatives.

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/4/12/2123 1/8815#commenttop

The poor and the working poor in these states are more likely to hunt and fish.

Not true. According to the survey I cited, approximately 60% of hunters/anglers have household incomes > $50,000 a year. The poorest people tend to hunt/fish the least.

If you haven't been to Missouri you might not realize that outside of the urban areas Missouri is the South. And it is the white South, like Arkansas, Tennessee and Oklahoma. Those voters went for Clinton not because of guns. I can guarantee you that. Race may have been only a part of it - Arkansas it was home town support for sure. But being a Tennessean myself I can assure you that Obama's "heritage" was a big reason why so many yellow dog Democrats voted for Clinton.