People who desire power over others are using both of these issues to set Americans against each other, and are using the same mechanisms to oppress both groups. It's pretty elegant, as government efforts go, in that it's pretty effective so far. People who aren't willing to use reason and logic, and so glom on to the nearest party line, will join the bandwagon in demonizing the "other" group while crying for the freedoms they like. They don't seem to realize that their demands for oppression of the other folks is merely playing right into the hands of the power hungry.
Arbitrary bans on *anything* always ends badly. Prohibition, the War on (some) Drugs, and the last few decades' efforts to disarm peaceful people are great examples in how you will ALWAYS drive an entire industry into the hands of the criminal element.
The power-mongers love this, though, as they (and their lapdogs in the media) will point at the increased violence and other crime as somehow proving the necessity of the laws that caused it in the first place. This is Washington logic, and most folks who believe their party line will eat it up without question.
Everyone here knows that guns don't cause crime, and neither do drugs. They are inanimate objects or substances, and can only serve whatever purpose their owners choose. And, so long as gun owners and pot smokers are kept at each others' throats, the jackboots will revel in their job security. And, so long as drugs are kept illegal, it will fuel the newsworthy violence that the thugs also need to oppress gun owners, so... in a very large way, the drug war is one of their primary tools in their citizen disarmament schemes.
Nobody would have to die for a weed. It's a weed. It grows anywhere. The only thing that makes it valuable is the fact that it's arbitrarily illegal, much like a fully-featured AR15 is in California. It's senseless and useless, but it's "The LAW"...
