Yay, Metrocons!

Tam referenced me!  I am pleased.  Now instead of 3 readers and 297 hits from Chinese Spambots, I will get 8 readers!  Welcome!

I'm not sure if I got the term anywhere or it appeared in my head-movies, unbidden, after observing the behavior of some Republicans.

I just got to notice, as I learned the backgrounds of various commentators, that the ones that grew up in DC or New York or where have you, rarely commented on the topic (boomsticks) at hand.  If at all.  They grew up in the 70s and 80s where guns just weren't done if you lived in a city.  Only Cops and Robbers had guns.  Regular people did not.  There was no place to go to shoot, anyway.  In DC and NY and Chicago and other Big Towns, as we still know, guns were either effectively or actually banned.  So, to a metrocon, guns are an abstraction.  Maybe their alliance with more rural or suburban conservatives, gun owners, gave them some sympathy to the Second, or their Libertarian side defaulted them to lean that way, but it was all still out of their personal experience, so not a priority and something they rarely gave much thought to.  Especially if it was a current event to propound on.

Metrocons are conservatives with a more urban(e) outlook.  And I wasn't thinking 'metrosexual' when I formulated my version of the term, despite what some have assumed.  It was purely in the context of the Second Amendment because of this blog, naturally.

Jonah Goldberg, grew up in New York, went to Goucher college, lives in NW DC, married an ALASKAN and visits her family regularly, never said a thing about guns.  So I wouldn't trust him to be the single individual to formulate gun policy for all time as some sort of Grand Poobah entrusted to come up with a new scheme we'd all have to follow.  He might be fine, but I suspect not. 

Sean Hannity.  New Yorker.  Has the rare McGuffin of a NYC CCW permit, but never said Boo for our side on his radio show in all the time I'd catch part of his show.   

Other Metrocons:  David Frum, Mark Steyn, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, the late William F. Buckley Jr., Ramesh Ponomoru, Jay Nordlinger, &c.

For the longest time, the only person in National Review's web stable that talked firearms was the now exhiled John Derbyshire.   And I may have read every post on their Corner blog for a decade.

Things are changed now.  The Second Amendment has risen in the national conversation via debated policy and inter-party conflict.  So many more Metrocons become ostensible 2nd Amendment advocates.  But you get the feeling that they are only doing it because it is the closest stick to hand to beat on Obama's policies.  If Obama was pro gun they'd be silent again.  So, they are really pro gun because they are pro Republican Party.  You get the feeling many would throw us over the side if was advantageous to the the Party to do so.  I get this vibe from Hannity, who I think of as a mere rabble rousing cheerleader for the GOP.  If you like rabble rousing, he's fine.  But I worry his principles on this would shift with the politics if the politics moved.


That said, National Review does seem to have recruited some actual 2A folks relatively recently.  Robert VerBruggen and Kevin Williamson come to mind.  Others.