Josey: Americans put up with all kind of inconveniences all the time in the name of safety: We have to go through all kinds of slow and even humiliating things in order to fly; we have to put up with long lines to go through metal detectors at stadiums, courthouses, etc.
So why are gun owners immune from a little inconvenience? Obama's new proposal would require background checks for gun store and online purchases. If you're a law-abiding citizen, you'll get your gun anyway. Waiting an extra few days is too big of inconvenience to prevent some mentally ill people or people with criminal records from buying a gun they shouldn't be able to?
I simply do not understand the right wing's objection to *ANYTHING* involving less than total freemarket capitalism on guns when that isn't the case with anything else. Why is that so? It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. And slippery slope arguments don't cut it. (If you let this one thing go through, next thing you know Obama will be coming to get my guns!!!) Slippery slope arguments are the argument of a scoundrel or a person who simply doesn't think things through. The same kind of folks who think gay marriage means we'll soon be allowing plural marriages or letting people marry their dog or their car. PLEASE!!!! Don't even go there.
A stock market tip: If Hillary gets elected, buy gun stocks. Every time Obama says the word "gun," sales skyrocket. I imagine it will be the same for her! Gun morons don't pay any attention to what is actually being said.
Good question, Josey. And I don't know what it takes to get on the terrorist watch list. Considering that the biggest terror threat in the U.S. is from "home grown" terrorists, I think it's safe to assume that a number of right-wing hate groups in the U.S. are on it. Considering that too many on the right view the U.S. government as the enemy, it's pretty safe to assume that viewpoint is a large reason why a bill that seems like a no-brainer was defeated.
BearinFW, Talking points noted. Now once again The "list" Who decides and will they tell you or just let it be a surprise ?
I fall on the surprise side, why have a secret list if you can't use it to cause the most havoc ?
I think the terrorist list bill likely failed mainly because the right wing is afraid that some of the hard-core hate groups that buy tons of guns will show up on the terrorist list.
Again, on gun control, people: NO ONE IS GOING TO TAKE YOUR GUNS AWAY!!!! That is a straw argument that the NRA uses to get guns owners up in arms and marching to the gun store to buy more guns.
The goal is to make it harder for *some* people to buy them. This nation has 330 million people and 310 million guns. That's way more than one for every person who can legally own one. Doesn't it seem like some people's priorities are out of whack? Sorry, guys, but large-scale gun ownership is a symptom of mental illness. (That's not to say EVERYONE with a number of guns is mentally ill, but many are. Like having way too many cats.)
Sadly, violence is endemic to the "human condition" whether it be by gun or any other means (bombs, knives, or whatever). And sadly, too, governments can get out of control where citizens might have to defend themselves against it! The U.S. Constitution guarantees every citizen the right to protect himself and that should never be taken away. Yes, you can have background checks and take all the precaution to insure that criminals don't have access to guns, but that cliche "outlaw guns and only outlaws will have them" is so true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqhyWd0ZqNs
I find it stunning that some would allow an abrogation of rights quantified in the US Constitution for being put on a list by some political appointee.
At least we ought to NOT allow people who are considered too dangerous (radicalized) to fly on an airline to have guns. With automatics they can kill as many on the ground in the same time as they could by taking down an airliner full of people. The Rethuglican Party just voted that idea down. They and the NRA are saying that terrorists MUST be allowed to have guns. Evidently, the gun manufacturers wouldn't want to miss out on a single sale even if it means keeping Americans safer.
Here is an excerpt from the article below:
"With shouts of "Shame on you!" echoing in the chamber, the U.S. Senate failed to muster sufficient support Wednesday for a gun-buyer background check bill that's supported by nearly 90 percent of Americans.
It also voted down other key measures and counterproposals, defeating a string of amendments in a series of procedural votes that likely doomed any major legislation to curb gun violence.
The background check measure -- painstakingly crafted by the bipartisan duo of Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) -- was seen as the key to passing the first legislation in decades to address the sorts of mass slaughters that so recently horrified the country in Newtown, Conn., where 20 children and six educators were gunned down at an elementary school, and in Aurora, Colo., where 12 people were killed in a theater.
The amendment failed 54 to 46, falling short of the 60-vote threshold needed to break a filibuster. That failure upset anew victims of the Sandy Hook shootings and other slaughters who watched from the Senate gallery.
"Shame on you!" shouted two women in the gallery after the vote. One was Patricia Maisch, who grabbed the third clip from the gunman who opened fired at then-Rep. Gabby Giffords in the Tuscon., Ariz., shooting in 2011. The other was Lori Hass, whose daughter was injured in the Virginia Tech shootings six years and one day ago.
"I think we're going to continue to work for the right thing to be done. I think the senators who voted against this will have to live with that vote, and I think they're going to have to account for themselves," said Peter Read, whose daughter, Mary, was among the 33 killed at Virginia Tech.
An angry and disappointed-looking President Barack Obama also hammered the vote in a Rose Garden speech on Wednesday.
"All in all, this is a pretty shameful day for Washington," Obama said.
"The American people are trying to figure out -- how can something that has 90 percent support not happen?" Obama said."
I believe in the Constitution and therefore our 2nd amendment rights. If people don't get guns legally they will find a way to find them illegally. I think these mass murders are absolutely terrible but do not believe the government taking any the citizens guns will do anything but leave us more vulnerable.
After reading this blog and it’s comments for a few days we can see that there is a strong leaning towards having gun control but not a full consensus. We are, after-all, a reflection our country and world if only one of it’s many variations. Since encoding linguistic utterances man has been writing about some kind of messiah’s new beginning and an end-time. A major player in that Yin & Yang is religion. “Even the devil can quote scripture.” If there are gods and dark-side counterparts than it is we who assembled these deities and the demons. Our well developed ability of creating justifications to give reason to ones own desires and actions built the sky scrapers and sent them crashing to the ground. It is not one thing that will kill off mankind. It is the cocktails created by choice and happenstance that will. “Guns don’t kill people…” but they are one of the major causes. We just needed to switch it’s rhetorical emphasis from calling it a tool for death to one for protection.
I don't know what will work, but bottom line is we are facing an explosion of gun deaths in this country. It's a major public health issue, and arguably the only one we do nothing about. And we do know that doing nothing, which is currently the case, isn't working. Gun deaths have passed auto accident fatalities. In 2013, 33,169 Americans were killed by guns compared to 32,719 in traffic accidents. Clearly, the NRA's way on this issue is failing. During the Bush administration, the NRA got a bill through Congress that bans the Centers for Disease Control from doing research on gun violence!!!! Talk about having your cake and eating it, too. The NRA does not have the public interest at heart on this issue. Doing nothing is no longer an option.
Stephen King sums up the most obvious way we could curtail the killing of so many so fast as in many recent mass murders. Even before an assault weapons ban, we should immediatly make it illegal for those on the Don't Fly list to have any kind of gun whatsoever.
If you do some research into the NRA you'll find that most of its leaders are large gun manufacturers. They spout rhetoric to get members to join. Mostly country boys, rednecks etc. Who pay donations which help right wing politicians to campaign who also spout the same rhetoric. The second amendment was written during a time where it was very likely you would need to defend yourself against a corrupt government. It is now a useless obsalete relic and unnecessary. We won't stop violence but we could lower it by making them harder to own
"Over 360,000 Gun Deaths Since 9/11 -- From the Outside It Looks Like America Is a Country Gripped by Civil War. The annual toll from firearms in the US is running at 32,000 deaths and climbing, even though the general crime rate is on a downward path (it is 40% lower than in 1980).
"To absorb the scale of the mayhem, it's worth trying to guess the death toll of all the wars in American history since the War of Independence began in 1775, and follow that by estimating the number killed by firearms in the US since the day that Robert F. Kennedy was shot in 1968 by a .22 Iver-Johnson handgun, wielded by Sirhan Sirhan. The figures from Congressional Research Service, plus recent statistics from icasualties.org, tell us that from the first casualties in the battle of Lexington to recent operations in Afghanistan, the toll is 1,171,177. By contrast, the number killed by firearms, including suicides, since 1968, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI, is 1,384,171.
"That 212,994 more Americans lost their lives from firearms in the last 45 years than in all wars involving the US is a staggering fact, particularly when you place it in the context of the safety-conscious, "secondary smoke" obsessions that characterise so much of American life.
Everywhere you look in America, people are trying to make life safer. On roads, for example, there has been a huge effort in the past 50 years to enforce speed limits, crack down on drink/drug driving and build safety features into highways, as well as vehicles. The result is a steadily improving record; when the stats are in for 2015, forecasters predict that for first time road deaths will be fewer than those caused by firearms (32,036 to 32,929)."
As far as gun violence goes, we pay a VERY high price for the NRA's paranoia. But, of course, the gun sellers are smiling all the way to the bank. For every 100 residents, the gun manufacturers have sold 89 guns. In Japan and Poland, they have sold just 1 (one) and the deaths from guns are a small fraction of the U.S. deaths.
The 2nd Amenement can be interpreted to mean different things. What is absurd is how the NRA has taken over control of the 2nd Amendment from the government. At the same time the NRA was becoming more radical in how it approaches gun ownership, it was also taken over by the gun manufacturers and the right-wing politicians. Today, although a majority of Americans want gun safety laws (see the chart), the politicians refuse to do anything because of the brainwashing done by the NRA and the donations they have invested to buy our government.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the NRA’s leaders helped write and lobby for the first federal gun control laws—the very kinds of laws that the modern NRA labels as the height of tryanny. In the early 1920s, the NRA’s handgun training counterpart—proposed model legislation for states that included requiring a permit to carry a concealed weapon, adding five years to a prison sentence if a gun was used in a crime, and banning non-citizens from buying a handgun. They also proposed that gun dealers turn over sales records to police and created a one-day waiting period between buying a gun and getting it—two provisions that the NRA opposes today. The NRA is SO paranoid that the government is coming for their guns that they even want people on the NO FLY list to be allowed to buy and carry guns.
I just have a tough time trying to get my head around why it is that the second amendment carries so much weight and none of the rest of the Constitution seems to. As a former gun owner (lots) I realized that what I thought I was protecting I wasn't and what was I really afraid of that I needed a gun? I agree that people that are determined to kill others can find the means but with the attitude about guns in this country why are we making it so easy for them. Hell it is harder to buy alcohol as an under aged minor than it is to get a gun. We make cars safer (Nader and MADD), we make buildings safer, we make flying on planes safer why can't we as a society make living in our neighborhoods safer? This will take decades to do but we have conquered much bigger problems than this before. I just think a small amount of disturbed people, NRA and gun and ammunition manufacturers are the problem and that the rest of us need to voice our outrage at the amount of killings by guns in this country every day.
I think fenwaydav is pretty close to my view. Like the saying goes "Where there is a will, there is a way".
Can we as a nation do a better job in keeping guns out of the hands of people who want to do harm? Probably not. However I think we can do a better job of how assault rifles and the ammunition for them are being sold today.
The NRA is a very powerful entity, they could be a partner in the control, but they choose not stand back and give the old blah blah of 2'nd rights amendment.
Just like every thing else in government, don't like it, get out and vote. Might seem like a losing cause at times but "the times they are a changing".
Whether we like it or not, gun violence is here to stay and in my opinion only going to get worse. If it's not foreign terrorist that are trying to kill us, it's our own home grown terrorist (or copycats) that will. I don't think tougher laws will curve this problem. This is happening all across the world. Any person or persons intent on doing harm will succeed no matter how many restrictions are placed upon how to obtain weapons. It doesn't surprise me that a coworker to the latest Ca. killings said he sat next to him for 5 years and he was a NICE GUY and would never think he was capable of doing such a heinous thing. Long before this was common place I always said "you never know who you're sitting next to". It's ashamed that the first thing I think of when I go to a movie or any place these days is where's the exit and how do I get the hell out of here quickly. What a horrible way to live your life......
So why are gun owners immune from a little inconvenience? Obama's new proposal would require background checks for gun store and online purchases. If you're a law-abiding citizen, you'll get your gun anyway. Waiting an extra few days is too big of inconvenience to prevent some mentally ill people or people with criminal records from buying a gun they shouldn't be able to?
I simply do not understand the right wing's objection to *ANYTHING* involving less than total freemarket capitalism on guns when that isn't the case with anything else. Why is that so? It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. And slippery slope arguments don't cut it. (If you let this one thing go through, next thing you know Obama will be coming to get my guns!!!) Slippery slope arguments are the argument of a scoundrel or a person who simply doesn't think things through. The same kind of folks who think gay marriage means we'll soon be allowing plural marriages or letting people marry their dog or their car. PLEASE!!!! Don't even go there.
I fall on the surprise side, why have a secret list if you can't use it to cause the most havoc ?
Again, on gun control, people: NO ONE IS GOING TO TAKE YOUR GUNS AWAY!!!! That is a straw argument that the NRA uses to get guns owners up in arms and marching to the gun store to buy more guns.
The goal is to make it harder for *some* people to buy them. This nation has 330 million people and 310 million guns. That's way more than one for every person who can legally own one. Doesn't it seem like some people's priorities are out of whack? Sorry, guys, but large-scale gun ownership is a symptom of mental illness. (That's not to say EVERYONE with a number of guns is mentally ill, but many are. Like having way too many cats.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqhyWd0ZqNs
Here is an excerpt from the article below:
"With shouts of "Shame on you!" echoing in the chamber, the U.S. Senate failed to muster sufficient support Wednesday for a gun-buyer background check bill that's supported by nearly 90 percent of Americans.
It also voted down other key measures and counterproposals, defeating a string of amendments in a series of procedural votes that likely doomed any major legislation to curb gun violence.
The background check measure -- painstakingly crafted by the bipartisan duo of Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) -- was seen as the key to passing the first legislation in decades to address the sorts of mass slaughters that so recently horrified the country in Newtown, Conn., where 20 children and six educators were gunned down at an elementary school, and in Aurora, Colo., where 12 people were killed in a theater.
The amendment failed 54 to 46, falling short of the 60-vote threshold needed to break a filibuster. That failure upset anew victims of the Sandy Hook shootings and other slaughters who watched from the Senate gallery.
"Shame on you!" shouted two women in the gallery after the vote. One was Patricia Maisch, who grabbed the third clip from the gunman who opened fired at then-Rep. Gabby Giffords in the Tuscon., Ariz., shooting in 2011. The other was Lori Hass, whose daughter was injured in the Virginia Tech shootings six years and one day ago.
"I think we're going to continue to work for the right thing to be done. I think the senators who voted against this will have to live with that vote, and I think they're going to have to account for themselves," said Peter Read, whose daughter, Mary, was among the 33 killed at Virginia Tech.
An angry and disappointed-looking President Barack Obama also hammered the vote in a Rose Garden speech on Wednesday.
"All in all, this is a pretty shameful day for Washington," Obama said.
"The American people are trying to figure out -- how can something that has 90 percent support not happen?" Obama said."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/17/backgrou … 03341.html
"To absorb the scale of the mayhem, it's worth trying to guess the death toll of all the wars in American history since the War of Independence began in 1775, and follow that by estimating the number killed by firearms in the US since the day that Robert F. Kennedy was shot in 1968 by a .22 Iver-Johnson handgun, wielded by Sirhan Sirhan. The figures from Congressional Research Service, plus recent statistics from icasualties.org, tell us that from the first casualties in the battle of Lexington to recent operations in Afghanistan, the toll is 1,171,177. By contrast, the number killed by firearms, including suicides, since 1968, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI, is 1,384,171.
"That 212,994 more Americans lost their lives from firearms in the last 45 years than in all wars involving the US is a staggering fact, particularly when you place it in the context of the safety-conscious, "secondary smoke" obsessions that characterise so much of American life.
Everywhere you look in America, people are trying to make life safer. On roads, for example, there has been a huge effort in the past 50 years to enforce speed limits, crack down on drink/drug driving and build safety features into highways, as well as vehicles. The result is a steadily improving record; when the stats are in for 2015, forecasters predict that for first time road deaths will be fewer than those caused by firearms (32,036 to 32,929)."
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/us-death- … -civil-war
In the 1920s and 1930s, the NRA’s leaders helped write and lobby for the first federal gun control laws—the very kinds of laws that the modern NRA labels as the height of tryanny. In the early 1920s, the NRA’s handgun training counterpart—proposed model legislation for states that included requiring a permit to carry a concealed weapon, adding five years to a prison sentence if a gun was used in a crime, and banning non-citizens from buying a handgun. They also proposed that gun dealers turn over sales records to police and created a one-day waiting period between buying a gun and getting it—two provisions that the NRA opposes today. The NRA is SO paranoid that the government is coming for their guns that they even want people on the NO FLY list to be allowed to buy and carry guns.
Can we as a nation do a better job in keeping guns out of the hands of people who want to do harm? Probably not. However I think we can do a better job of how assault rifles and the ammunition for them are being sold today.
The NRA is a very powerful entity, they could be a partner in the control, but they choose not stand back and give the old blah blah of 2'nd rights amendment.
Just like every thing else in government, don't like it, get out and vote. Might seem like a losing cause at times but "the times they are a changing".