Two influential senators, one from each party, are working on an agreement that could expand background checks on firearms sales to include gun shows and online transactions, Senate aides said Sunday.
If completed, the effort could represent a major breakthrough in the effort by President Barack Obama and his allies to restrict guns following last December’s massacre of schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn.
Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., could nail down an accord early this week, said the aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the private talks. With the Senate returning Monday from a two-week recess, the chamber’s debate on gun control legislation could begin as soon as Tuesday, though it might be delayed if the lawmakers need more time to complete a deal, the aides said.
The potential deal, which aides cautioned still might change, would exempt transactions between relatives and temporary transfers for hunters and sportsmen, they said.
Manchin is a moderate who touts an A rating from the National Rifle Association, which has opposed Obama’s gun control drive. Toomey has solid conservative credentials and was elected to the Senate two years ago with tea party support from his Democratic-leaning state.
A united front by the two lawmakers would make it easier for gun control advocates to attract support from moderate Democrats who have been wary of supporting the effort and from Republicans who have largely opposed it so far.
As for Toomey, you go right ahead and connect with your “moderate” constituency. I hope you choke on them. Remember when it was urgent necessity to elect Toomey to the Senate? Yea, just like it was to elect Scott Brown, who supports a so-called assault weapons ban.
The Republican party is dead. It’s merely a different color of vanilla, no different than the Democrats. And that’s why they lost the last election. And lose they will, again and again, trying to connect with their “moderate” constituency, because that’s what the highly paid talking heads and moron consultants are telling them they need to do. Choke and turn blue on it.
David Codrea is a little wiser in his counsel for Toomey:
As for Toomey, if he and his staff hadn’t opened their yaps to indicate things were open to discussion, they wouldn’t be in this self-created pickle. He, too, has had a pretty good record on guns (even Gun Owners of America grades him at “A-”), and he needs to be reminded that his duty is to improve that score, not to threaten the rights of a core constituency that entrusted him with power.
Read it all at Examiner. Okay. Change his mind and remember his supposed values, or choke and turn blue. Either way is fine with me.
Nonprofit Quarterly recently carried a commentary on Lindsey Graham and his comments on AR-15s that took a detour into the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Rick Cohen’s thoughts make for interesting reading.
Our impression of American behavior during disasters has been that people generally pull together, that adversity brings out the best in us. Sure, we know that people do very bad things, but the press often notes how people also go out of their way to help and protect their neighbors. In fact, that feeling of mutuality was what we thought undergirded the nonprofit sector in a democratic society.
It must be that we fell for some Panglossian view of America, if we are to believe Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday, Graham grilled Attorney General Eric Holder about the proposed ban on assault weapons. We haven’t seen the news reports that verify what Graham says happened—or sort of happened—to spark his support for carrying around military-style assault weapons:
“Can you imagine a circumstance where an AR-15 would be a better defense tool than, say, a double-barrel shotgun? Let me give you an example, that you have (sic) an lawless environment, where you have an natural disaster or some catastrophic event — and those things unfortunately do happen, and law and order breaks down because the police can’t travel, there’s no communication. And there are armed gangs roaming around neighborhoods. Can you imagine a situation where your home happens to be in the crosshairs of this group that a better self-defense weapon may be a semiautomatic AR-15 vs. a double-barrel shotgun?
I’m afraid that world does exist. It existed in New Orleans, to some extent up in Long Island [after Hurricane Sandy], it could exist tomorrow if there’s a cyber attack against [the] country and the power grid goes down and the dams are released and chemical plants are — discharges.
What I’m saying is if my family was in the crosshairs of gangs that were roaming around neighborhoods in New Orleans or any other location, the deterrent effect of an AR-15 to protect my family, I think, is greater than a double-barrel shotgun.”
As far as we can tell, Graham must be referencing a gang of white vigilantes in New Orleans’ Algiers Point neighborhood who, armed with shotguns and assault weapons, allegedly opened fire on African Americans “with impunity” after Hurricane Katrina; the militia was reportedly on the lookout for anyone who “didn’t belong” in the neighborhood, as reported by ProPublica and The Nation. If so, maybe Graham’s fears would have more of a basis in reality if he looked a little more like Holder and was facing a white militia armed with AR-15s.
It is in vogue to tell this revisionist history of Katrina. We’ll deal with this shortly, but before we do that and in order to set the stage for our response, we will now be the ones to take a detour into another crisis to watch how a nation behaved. We’ll address AR-15s, catastrophies and totalitarian governments, but for now let’s briefly revisit the fall of the Berlin wall, the role of one church, and the actions of the East Gernam Army.
OathKeepers has an interview with Lt. Colonel Gunter Spens, in which he describes the fact that the East German Army simply refused to obey orders to stop the protests at the wall and stayed on base. True enough for part of the story, and as much as I admire Oath Keepers, it isn’t as simple as this and there is more to the story. This is the church that brought down the wall.
In the GDR, atheism was the norm. Churches like St. Nikolai were spied on but allowed to remain open.
“In the GDR, the church provided the only free space,” Fuhrer said in an interview with Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. “Everything that could not be discussed in public could be discussed in church, and in this way the church represented a unique spiritual and physical space in which people were free.”
In the early 1980s, Fuhrer began holding weekly prayers for peace.
Every Monday, worshippers recited the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. Few came at first, but attendance grew as the Soviet Union began opening to the West.
The prayer service, Fuhrer said, “was something very special in East Germany. Here a critical mass grew under the roof of the church — young people, Christians and non-Christians, and later, those who wanted to leave (East Germany) joined us and sought refuge here.”
As a college student in those years, Sylke Schumann was one of the hundreds, then thousands, who joined the vigils in the sanctuary at St. Nikolai and then marched in the streets holding candles and calling for change.
“Seeing all these people gather in this place … from week to week and more and more people gathering, you had the feeling this time really the government had to listen to you,” Schumann said.
In October 1989, on the 40th anniversary of the GDR, the government cracked down.
Protesters in Leipzig were beaten and arrested. Two days later, St. Nikolai Church was full to overflowing for the weekly vigil. When it was over, 70,000 people marched through the city as armed soldiers looked on, but did nothing.
And even this report doesn’t tell the whole story. I was a member of a church during this time that received regular (underground) reports from East German churches about the events of that era. When society has rejected God and embraced totalitarianism, the men can become lovers of power or drunkards and whore chasers. Not all men do, but many succumb to this fate.
But oftentimes the women – mothers and grandmothers who want their children to be raised with a sense of morality and the knowledge of God – toe the line. Secretly they teach their children. Their children learn to love their mothers and the instruction, and like ticking time bombs that explode later in life, that instruction proves determinative.
And toe the line the women did. The crowds were heavily populated with mothers and grandmothers, and the boys who populated the East German Army remembered their instruction. They wouldn’t discharge their weapons at their own blood, and whether it was the instruction in underground churches or the simple fact that the boys wouldn’t kill their mothers or mothers of colleagues, no rounds were fired. It had little to do with orders to stay in garrison. If the East German Army had deployed (as some of them did), they would simply have watched as the wall fell without a shot.
Now, let’s return to the issue of New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. Except for the horrible racist, Aryan gangs who abused the black folk, it was a veritable Shangri La indeed. Except for the white folk everyone would have gotten along just swimmingly. White Aryan gangs in the middle of New Orleans. You simply can’t make this up.
Except that this isn’t reality. Revisionist doesn’t even begin to describe that view. That view is an outright fabrication and falsehood. A more accurate and honest accounting shows how rough the time was.
In the City of Vultures, a New Zealander is one of the few remaining police officers who has stayed behind to protect the helpless.
James Gourlie, 30, formerly of Christchurch, is one of six officers who have remained out of a district force of 200.
“This is my district. I will not abandon my district, my county, my workmates or these people,” he told the Herald On Sunday last night.
Mr Gourlie was speaking while preparing for another night patrol from the Hampton Inn, which he and fellow officers took over after their police station was overrun. For its single entrance, and the war zone outside, they have dubbed the hotel “The Fortress”.
It’s been six days and five nights of lawlessness since Hurricane Katrina hit. In the vacuum left by Katrina, anarchy has reigned. Human vultures have preyed on the helpless, pillaging homes and shops, committing murder and rape.
The decision to stay while hundreds of fellow officers fled has left them bitter. Mr Gourlie returned after getting his American wife Jennifer out of New Orleans.
When one fellow officer and friend pulled out for Texas on Friday, taking two automatic rifles and a shotgun, he earned his colleagues’ anger.
“They’re preserving their lives but they’re risking their friends,” said Mr Gourlie, of the “cowards” who have left. “You know what the New Zealand and Australian way is – and that ain’t the Anzac way. You sacrifice yourself for your mates.”
There are incidents every day involving weapons, although Mr Gourlie is thankful he has not yet had to shoot anyone. The times the officers have intervened, those desperate for help have wept and offered thanks.
A fellow officer was killed after warning looters away from a store. A looter pushed a gun against his head and pulled the trigger. “It was heartbreaking to see this police officer lying on his back, blood pouring out of his head.”
There are gangs of armed thugs in the convention centre. One young hood the officers pulled up was carrying a civilian version of a military M-16 rifle.
“There’s shooting. The thugs inside, they have come outside. They are running up and down, disturbing people with impunity. They know we can’t cross the road and engage them because we don’t know where their cohorts are. We are so vastly outnumbered, especially at night,” said Mr Gourlie.
There has also been murder and rape. In one awful case, a 15-year-old girl had suffered both, her body stuffed into an oven with her throat slit.
“I would expect something like this in a war zone in the Middle East. You’d be stupid not to be afraid. It’s how you face it that counts.”
The gangs in the centre have now destroyed the generators, and last night was the first Katrina’s survivors have spent without light. “That’s one of the reasons why people are so afraid today.”
I am certainly no admirer of Lindsey Graham. His criticism of Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Rand Paul over their filibuster was petulant, and his friendship with John McCain shows that he wants to stay in power rather than hold government accountable. But from the mouth of the unexpected sometimes comes wisdom, even if by accident.
Unfortunately like the author says, Ameica is indeed like this concerning violence and danger, even if his intended target – white gangs – is a fabrication of his imagination. And during this period of peril for the citizens of New Orleans did the National Guard keep order? No, to their everlasting shame they spent their time confiscating weapons from law abiding citizens.
And yet, the National Guard had no evidence that New Orleans wouldn’t devolve into something like the L.A. riots, leaving people helpless and defenseless.
America as we have know it is dead. It is no more. The cities are violent and the government totalitarian. America is more bifurcated than it has ever been in history. Ninety million people are out of the labor force, and something approaching half of America pays no income tax. Keynesian economics has failed like a star burning out. The first medium size city has gone bankrupt, taking with it nearly one billion dollars in pensions for state workers. Note that this doesn’t include Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment payments, welfare, social security or any other federal program. One billion dollars – just on state pensions, just with one medium size city.
While the states are going down, the federal government is working hard at making itself more totalitarian than before.
The ATF doesn’t just want a huge database to reveal everything about you with a few keywords. It wants one that can find out who you know. And it won’t even try to friend you on Facebook first.
According to a recent solicitation from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the bureau is looking to buy a “massive online data repository system” for its Office of Strategic Intelligence and Information (OSII). The system is intended to operate for at least five years, and be able to process automated searches of individuals, and “find connection points between two or more individuals” by linking together “structured and unstructured data.”
Primarily, the ATF states it wants the database to speed-up criminal investigations. Instead of requiring an analyst to manually search around for your personal information, the database should “obtain exact matches from partial source data searches” such as social security numbers (or even just a fragment of one), vehicle serial codes, age range, “phonetic name spelling,” or a general area where your address is located. Input that data, and out comes your identity, while the computer automatically establishes connections you have with others.
Many other specific requirements are also to be expected for a federal law enforcement agency: searching names, phone numbers, “nationwide utility data” and reverse phone searches. The data will then be collected to help out during investigations and provide “relevant information and intelligence products.”
To do this and similar things they are spending the wealth of your children and children’s children. Ben Bernanke is trying ever so hard to keep hyperinflation under control and interest rates low in order to keep the deficit from exploding, but sooner or later America’s unfunded liabilities will come due and no amount fiat money will suffice. Fractional reserve banking will prove to people when hard times hit that their money doesn’t exist and cannot be withdrawn from their accounts. It’s just a waiting game, because the system cannot be saved.
The American experiment – subtended by wealth redistribution, race baiting, totalitarianism and the creation of taker class that leeches off of workers – is over. It has been replaced by Fabian socialism. But all is not lost. America will be reborn in a different form. Hard times are approaching, and there are some salient and hard questions that are a function of those hard times.
Will police, soldiers and Marines raise their weapons against American civilians? The Louisiana National Guard did. To each and every officer, soldier and Marine I tell you, you’d better not. God will condemn you for it. Your orders must be legal and moral to require your fealty, and notwithstanding the [il]legality of such an order, it would be immoral. Will you confiscate weapons if so ordered? You’d better not – God will condemn you for it. Each man lives his appointed days, and then he will face judgment. Do not face God having removed means of legitimate protection of the family. And do not face God having been the stooge for a tyrant. It matters little how long you live. It matters much how you live, and how you perish.
To parents, you must teach your children and instill in them a reverence for and love of liberty. Even for the old among us, you may very well end up training the very men who would otherwise be your tyrants, but who will remember their upbringing instead. Mothers and grandmothers, you essentially saved the day in East Germany. Don’t underestimate your role. Teaching the children is the most important job on earth.
Men, don’t be naive. God apparently granted a special dispensation to East Germany for a bloodless coup. It won’t happen that way anywhere else. The National Guard in many states has already shown that they will assist totalitarianism. The race riots in Los Angeles were nothing compared to what it will be like in the event of an economic collapse in America.
Teach the children. Defend the family. It isn’t just a right, it’s your God-given duty. And never, ever relinquish your weapons. That would be as immoral as the actions of totalitarians in confiscation. You shall not cooperate with the totalitarians and be approved by God. Never give up. God is on your side.
David Codrea links the text of the upcoming Connecticut gun law. It’s long but I read the majority of it. Taken as a whole, I must say that it seems to me to be the most restrictive gun law ever devised in American history. One particularly salient feature is the new ban on magazines (see line 998).
Except as provided in this section and section 24 of this act: (1) Any person who possesses a large capacity magazine on or after January 1, 2014, that was obtained prior to the effective date of this section shall commit an infraction and be fined not more than ninety dollars for a first offense and shall be guilty of a class D felony for any subsequent offense, and (2) any person who possesses a large capacity magazine on or after January 1, 2014, that was obtained on or after the effective date of this section shall be guilty of a class D felony.
So also with guns. Read it for yourself. So now, Connecticut gun owners. All of those magazines and many of the guns you just purchased in expectation of the upcoming ban will soon be illegal. Owning them will be a felony.
Tyrants in Connecticut have turned you from a law-abiding, upstanding citizen into a felon.
Glenn Reynolds links a Hot Air report on Obama’s recent remarks concerning gun control. The comment of the day thus far is this:
What a jackass, what an embarrassing, petulant, jackass fool we have as preznit.
If the Founders knew we would eventually reach the point of electing a bugwit like Dog Eater, they probably would have burned the Declaration and said “What’s the point in fighting and sacrificing?”
I don’t want to press this issue of fully automatic weapons too far because I think the Hughes Amendment was unconstitutional. But the statement is so mind-numbingly stupid and disconnected that it’s easy to pass over a point of logic.
If Obama thinks that a fully automatic weapon was used in the Newtown shooting, then why isn’t he going after machine guns (and then someone can tell him about the “Firearms Owners Protection Act” and make this whole issue go away)? Why is he targeting magazine capacity, universal background checks and other aspects of firearms features and ownership? Could it be that, as we’ve discussed before, none of this is really related to making things safer? It’s all related to increasing state control?
Organizers of a Colorado shooting competition have cancelled the event because of the state’s recently passed gun-control laws.
The International Defensive Pistol Association was scheduled to hold its Rocky Mountain regional championship July 4-6 in Montrose. Organizers said an estimated 300 shooters were expected to attend the event.
The cancellation stemmed from a combination of concern about legal liabilities under the new laws, and political opposition, said IDPA spokesman Paul Erhardt.
“The attitude toward Colorado is not very pleasant among firearm owners,” he said.
Gunmaker Ruger cancelled another event, the Ruger Rimfire Challenge World Championship, which was to be held in Byers July 19-21.
The Colorado legislature recently passed three gun-control measures. The laws restrict magazines to no more than 15 rounds, require universal background checks on sales and charge gun buyers for the checks.
Several hunting groups and individuals have said they will boycott hunting in Colorado this fall. Some Colorado-based manufacturers of magazines and their parts said they will relocate operations because of the gun laws.
Good. As I’ve said, there is no better teacher than consequences. Wisdom demands experience, and Colorado is getting some experience in the power of gun owners as we speak.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) wants to tax your gun rights. His new legislation charges you a fee that is in essence a federal tax on selling or giving away your firearm, and he lets Attorney General Eric Holder decide how big that tax will be.
Senate Democrats Charles Schumer of New York, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and Barbara Boxer of California have introduced a raft of gun control legislation (S. 374, S. 54, and S. 146, respectively). Senator Leahy, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, rammed the legislation through committee in record time—not even bothering to issue the customary committee reports to explain the bills—and Reid combined the bills into a single gun control bill (S. 649). Firearms owners across the country and others who care about their right to keep and bear arms should keep a close eye on the Reid legislation. Your rights are under attack.
[ … ]
Title I of the Reid gun control bill purports to “fix gun checks.” The proposed “fix” in section 122 of S. 649 is to take away an individual’s right to sell or give away a firearm to another individual unless, in most cases, the individual (1) uses a licensed importer, dealer, or manufacturer to make the transfer of the firearm and (2) pays a fee to that importer, dealer, or manufacturer to make the transfer. The individual transferring the firearm is not actually receiving a service; the federal government is receiving the service. The service the government gets is a background check on the intended recipient of the firearm, because the law requires the importer, dealer, or manufacturer to run the recipient through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
Forcing the individual to pay for the government-mandated service, which is in fact a service to the government, is in essence a federal tax on the individual. And the amount the individual pays as a fee is not limited by the legislation; section 122(a)(4) of the Reid bill enacts a new section 922(t)(4)(B)(i) of title 18 of the U.S. Code to grant to Attorney General Eric Holder the power to set the maximum fee by regulation.
Thus he gets it all – a national gun registry, almost omniscient state knowledge of the whereabouts of firearms for legal owners, and taxation of our property. And on top of that, Eric Holder gets to set the fee schedule. Again as I have observed, so-called assault weapons are irrelevant to the progressive. A national gun registry is the touchstone of success.
What could possibly go wrong? Their only mistake is in assuming that gun owners will willingly acquiesce to this tyranny. On that account, this might not turn out like Reid had hoped.
I wouldn’t otherwise link claptrap like this, but since it’s with the Washington Post it gets a nontrivial amount of traffic. It’s important to deal with it.
Senators Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee all appear set to mount a filibuster to prevent any Obama gun control proposal of any kind from being debated on the Senate floor — on Second Amendment grounds. Senator Paul went on Fox News last night to explain his thinking.
In the process, however, Paul inadvertently made an important concession. Here’s what he said:
“I haven’t heard one proposal from him or Harry Reid that would have saved one life. And I’m all for saving lives….We plan on making them have at least 60 votes to pass any legislation that may abridge the Second Amendment. So we will fight tooth and nail, and use every parliamentary procedure to stop that from happening. We have a lot of things on the books that the president says he wants to enhance, many of these could be enhanced without any legislation. Background checks already do work. We already have rules that say mental health statistics need to come from the states to the data bank.”
I’d advise Senator Paul against claiming improving background checks would not save lives or prevent mass shootings. A better background check system very well may have prevented the Virginia Tech massacre. Data collected by the pro-gun-control Mayors Against Illegal Guns suggests that states with better background check laws show a lower murder rate of women, fewer suicides, and less gun trafficking. Now, maybe you don’t trust MAIG’s data. Shouldn’t the possibility that expanding gun background checks could save lives — which Paul himself says he wants — be enough for him to actually give the idea serious thought?
It’s also important that Paul claimed that current background checks “already do work.” Here’s why: He’s effectively allowing that the current background check law is not a threat to people’s Second Amendment rights. The current compromise on expanded background checks being negotiated would simply expand the current system to cover most private sales. It would maintain the prohibition against any national gun registry. It would maintain the current system of record keeping — in which dealers keep records of sales, and the feds destroy any record of a valid gun transfer within 24 hours. By Paul’s own lights those things, in the context of the current law, are not a threat to Americans’ constitutional rights. There is no logical way, then, that the new proposal threatens them, either. This is an important concession.
Keep that in mind as you read Senator Lee’s deeply strange and hallucinatory argument against the proposal. Lee claims it would require a national registry to work (it wouldn’t) …
Let’s deal with this is four categories. First, Senator Lee’s argument is only deeply strange to the author because he hasn’t taken the time to study people who are smarter than he is if he lives a thousand lifetimes. Dave Hardy has an article Mr. Sargent needs to read.
Second, Mr. Sargent does in fact point to a larger problem with the opposition that Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee are mounting to gun legislation. It troubles me that they are discussing “improved” background checks as a cure for anything, much less crime. We have made it clear from the outset. No new gun laws. Not a single one, and it’s high time for the Senators to hear the message.
Third, I agree with Mr. Sargent in his demurral over “improved background checks.” He doesn’t believe it will save lives or prevent shootings for the same reason that I don’t believe it. It won’t, and the mental health professionals have told us so in the clearest possible terms.
But fourth and most important, while planning his logical coup against Rand Paul, Mr. Sargent has opened a logical hole in his own arguments and divulged the secrets of the gun control lobby.
While pointing out that “improved background checks” won’t have the desired effect on crime, he has informed you of his presuppositions. Criminals don’t uniquely and solely suffer from mental health problems.
Crime is a moral choice, and there is no justified reason to claim that while “improved background checks” won’t help the situation, universal background checks will. To assert that would require Sargent to believe the following: (a) no crimes are committed by people who suffer from mental maladies (since mental health checks won’t accomplish their desired end), or otherwise (a1) those who suffer from mental maladies obtained their firearms illegally, and (b) all criminals obtain their firearms legally.
Proposition (a) is demonstrably false, and acquiescing to (a1) would undermine his acceptance of proposition (b). Proposition (b) also entails the acceptance of the notion that only previously convicted felons will commit felonies in the future, also a demonstrably false proposition.
Mr. Sargent has a world of logical problems, but it’s because he knows that this isn’t about crime. Other statists have told us what a national gun registry is all about and how important it is for their world view.
The only way we can truly be safe and prevent further gun violence is to ban civilian ownership of all guns. That means everything. No pistols, no revolvers, no semiautomatic or automatic rifles. No bolt action. No breaking actions or falling blocks. Nothing. This is the only thing that we can possibly do to keep our children safe from both mass murder and common street violence.
Unfortunately, right now we can’t. The political will is there, but the institutions are not. Honestly, this is a good thing. If we passed a law tomorrow banning all firearms, we would have massive noncompliance. What we need to do is establish the regulatory and informational institutions first. This is how we do it. The very first thing we need is national registry. We need to know where the guns are, and who has them.
I have told you not to trust the Leviathan, and I have explained why. Fortunately, while Mr. Sargent finds the weakness in Rand Paul’s argument, he divulges the secret weaknesses of his own. Again, this isn’t about crime – it’s about a national gun registry. There are only two reasons for a national gun registry: taxation and confiscation. Both would be unconstitutional and immoral.
President Obama is quietly moving forward on gun control.
The president has used his executive powers to bolster the national background check system, jumpstart government research on the causes of gun violence and create a million-dollar ad campaign aimed at safe gun ownership.
The executive steps will give federal law enforcement officials access to more data about guns and their owners, help keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill, and lay the groundwork for future legislative efforts.
It is unclear whether the National Rifle Association (NRA) will challenge any of the executive actions in court. A spokesman for the NRA did not return a request for comment.
The moves, which have not been widely touted by the administration, come as Obama ups his pressure on Congress to take action on gun control in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. The Senate is expected to begin floor consideration of legislation when it returns in April.
Efforts to renew a ban in semi-automatic weapons with military-style features and high-capacity magazines have stalled in Congress. Democratic senators still hope to move gun control legislation that includes tougher background checks, but conservative Republican senators have threatened to filibuster it.
If approved by the Senate, any bill would then face tough sledding in the GOP-controlled House.
Gun control groups say Obama’s piecemeal approach falls short of what could be accomplished by legislation overhauling the nation’s gun laws. Still, they argue the actions remain important and will reduce gun violence.
“They’ve taken direct aim at some of the bigger problems in the regulatory part of the issue and they’re doing it in the right way and that’s going to be very helpful,” said Mark Glaze, the director of Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns group.
“Ultimately you need to close the loopholes in the law that will continue to undermine enforcement, but what they’re doing is precisely right.”
They also illustrate the administration’s power to change gun laws despite inaction on Capitol Hill, a practice the president may need to duplicate in other policy areas amid congressional gridlock.
Because, you know, he doesn’t especially get into that concept called balance or separation of powers. That’s for those who live in a republic.
President Obama moved Thursday to put the muscle of the White House and his network of supporters behind a gun control package tracking toward the Senate floor, calling on voters to pressure Congress into backing it as the proposal runs into resistance on Capitol Hill.
The president, in a set of brief remarks from the White House Thursday surrounded by the mothers of shooting victims, raised concern that the shock from the Newtown elementary school shooting could soon fade.
“Less than 100 days ago that happened. … Shame on us if we’ve forgotten,” Obama said. “I haven’t forgotten those kids. Shame on us if we’ve forgotten.”
Let’s recast that shame in a more truthful light. Shame on you Obama for surrounding yourself with the props of hurting mothers in order to pass your Fascist measures. Shame on you for lying to the gullible American people and claiming that any measure you take would have changed the outcome of a dedicated person bent on doing harm. Shame on you for deceiving the public into thinking that this has anything to do with school shootings.
Shame on you for inferring that any change you make to the laws governing law abiding people has any affect on criminals. Shame on you for pushing measures more suited to communist China (who supports your gun control efforts) than a free America (I can recall such a thing, although many youth today cannot). And finally, shame on you for nurturing a Fascist ideology that would turn our freedoms on their head and focus power in the hands of ruling elites who confiscate not only firearms but wealth too. Shame … shame … shame.
God will soon condemn you, and your empty philosophies of liberation theology and warmed over Fabian Socialism won’t be able to save you on that awful day of judgment.
David Codrea passes along a statement from LWRC International where they have told us that they will move their company out of Maryland if the proposed unconstitutional gun ban passes. I appreciate their patriotism, and I have already weighed in informing Beretta that they must move as well if they wish to survive as a company.
But there’s some fascinating movement in the proposed weapons ban in Maryland. I must quote at length.
When hunters argued that Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s proposed assault-weapons ban would ruin their sport, state lawmakers were not moved. When devotees of the National Rifle Association cried that it would trample on their constitutional rights, lawmakers did not blink.
But then there were the soldiers, who showed up in Annapolis by the dozens this year and quietly became one of the most influential critics of O’Malley’s gun-control plan. Veterans streaming back from Iraq and Afghanistan have argued that freedoms they fought for overseas would be violated at home.
Some also came with a different, more complicated message that has resonated with lawmakers, who are now considering significantly weakening the proposal by O’Malley, a Democrat, by exempting several military-style weapons.
The very guns the veterans used in war — the ones they sang about in boot camp, slept with, cared for, cleaned, prayed with, the guns that led them down dark alleys and through firefights — have now become something altogether different. They are instruments of catharsis more than violence, a postwar release, therapy through the crosshairs.
Since he has returned from Afghanistan, A.J. Wynne, 24, who was a corporal in the Marines, has spent countless hours shooting in the farmland north of Frederick, Md. On a recent Sunday, he picked up his semiautomatic rifle, put down his demons and let muscle memory take over.
Breathe. Focus. Squeeze.
The weapon erupted into a violent cacophony — 30 shots in 11 seconds — and sent the crows in the treesbolting skyward.
The smile made his beard rise. He reloaded.
Wynne knows there are those who would argue that he is perhaps the last person who should be given unfettered access to high-powered, semiautomatic rifles that are designed to emulate the weapons he was trained to use in battle.
For months after coming home, Wynne would lunge to the ground at the sound of a weapon firing or a car backfiring. At night, he would awaken to find himself wrestling an invisible enemy, flailing and slamming the nightstand and leaving his girlfriend, Tara, cowering at the end of the bed.
The nightmares have subsided, but guns have become an ever bigger part of his life. He sells them, trains people how to shoot them, collects them, and has positioned them around his home so they are never more than a few steps away.
As the House of Delegates debates O’Malley’s bill, the veterans’ argument appears to be having an effect. After passing the Senate, the legislation is bogged down in an influential House committee, where lawmakers say they are concerned about the effect of the assault-weapons ban. Members of both parties say they are considering rolling back provisions of O’Malley’s ban, potentially leaving legal for purchase many semiautomatic rifles modeled after military ones.
State Del. Kathleen Dumais, a Montgomery County Democrat and vice chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said veterans and competitive sportsmen were central factors in her thinking that a total ban may be inappropriate.
“We have problems with soldiers returning from combat and taking their own lives. That’s a big deal, and we need to talk about that overall in this country,” added state Del. Michael McDermott, an Eastern Shore Republican and former member of the U.S. Army Reserve. “But banning these weapons? For some guys, that’s actually therapy …
While he understands that many like to shoot for recreation or even relaxation, Democratic Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, a colonel in the Army Reserve, said that doesn’t mean you need to have a weapon designed for war.
[ … ]
“I came home and bought an M4 and $1,000 worth of suits at Joseph Banks” to look for a new job, said Obest.
“I want to be able to be an asset to my community if I am needed. If there is a disaster, and the road is blocked and I can’t get to the armory, I want to be able to tell my mayor that, ‘I’ve got this. I’m here. I can help keep order.’ “
First, as for Brown, no one cares what he thinks.
Second, let’s deal with the lawmakers. I am generally opposed to treatment of veterans which differs from treatment of the balance of U.S. citizens. The idiot Feinstein wants to ban combat veterans from having firearms. As I said, she is an idiot and so her ideas are idiotic. On the other hand, I am uninterested in the cathartic affect of firearms for veterans if civilians cannot have them.
So naturally, I see the actions of lawmakers who insist of being Fascists, but who back down because they might be seen as opposing the voice of veterans as cowardly. But then again, saying that politicians are cowardly is redundant in most cases.
Veterans mostly just want you to see them as normal people, and for you to fulfill your contractual obligations to them (involving the GI bill, etc.). I know because my son is a Marine Corps veteran … a veteran of a combat tour in Fallujah in 2007, MOS 0311. So I’ve put in my time standing at the doorway to my home at 0200 hours looking out into the driveway and wondering if a Marine Corps officer and a Chaplain were going to show up any minute.
Third, speaking of Marines and veterans and guns and what you do stateside, you have made a serious blunder, Mr. Obest, and it is this blunder where I want to spend the rest of our time together.
You’ve made it easy on yourself. Listen to me, boy. Take it from someone who is more than twice your age. God has placed a thousand unexpected things in my path over my lifetime. You cannot prepare for the unexpected, but what you can do is train your body, mind and soul. The mind and soul are the most important.
You need to have a set of incorrigible beliefs – a worldview – a set of irreducible axioms – upon which to base your life. This way, when you face the unexpected you will have some moral moorings upon which to lean.
It’s too easy to imagine that a natural disaster occurs and you are called upon to “keep order,” whatever that means. Frankly, you’re better off just ensuring that your family and loved ones are cared for and protected.
It’s much more likely that you will be called upon in darker circumstances, and it is these conditions you must consider. I have asked my own son what he would do if ordered to bear arms against American citizens, and the answer is not only no, but “No, and I will prevent others from doing so. Not a single one of my old unit would do such a thing.”
So you see, I’m not impressed with the felt need to shoot, although I certainly have that and like to do that. I would be much more impressed if you would simply cite the constitution and demand rights for not only yourself, but your fellow citizens in the broader context of the intention of the second amendment.
So Obest, listen to me, son. Heed my counsel (Leviticus 19:32). Life’s vicissitudes are hard and complicated, and you haven’t seen anywhere near the worst of it, regardless of what you saw in Egypt.
You need to ask yourself some very hard questions regarding world view, morality, and basic commitment to liberty. Suppose that you are called upon to “keep order” while the statists confiscate weapons, or confiscate wealth, or confiscate children? Will you fire upon American citizens if ordered to? I know my son’s answer. How about yours?
UPDATE: Thanks to Mike and David for the attention.
13 years, 4 months ago
