“The NRA’s Big Lies Get Bigger”: Stoking Resentment And Fear To Obscure Sensible Gun Control
Yesterday Joe Biden met with officials from the National Rifle Association in hopes of finding common ground in the quest to prevent future massacres, such as the one in Newtown, which killed 20 children. Predictably, the NRA put out a statement that was full of lies, accusing the White House’s gun task force of an “agenda to attack the Second Amendment” and of blaming “law-abiding gun owners” for the “acts of criminals and madmen.” As always, the game plan is to stoke resentment and fear among gun owners and to obscure the real goals of sensible gun law reform. This signals that an epic battle lies ahead.
In this context, you really should read the Huffington Post’s big piece detailing the degree to which the NRA represents, first and foremost, the multibillion dollar gun industry. The piece details the financial ties between the two, and demonstrates a key thing about this debate: The NRA is putting an enormous amount of firepower into defending what can only be described as an extreme worldview, one that encourages resistance to even the most sensible regulatory and public safety efforts, with the apparent goal of ensuring that the country is awash in as many guns as possible.
From the point of view of gun reform advocates, this was captured perfectly in Wayne La Pierre’s now infamous statement, which accompanied his call for armed guards in schools as the only way to protect our children: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
Left unsaid, of course, is that having “good guys” with guns in no way precludes doing far more to prevent the “bad guy” from getting a gun in the first place. The NRA wants to frame this debate as a false choice — as one between improving front line security for our children (with guns, natch) and doing more to prevent criminals and the mentally ill from getting access to lethal, overwhelming firepower. But these are not mutually exclusive at all. Indeed, the White House is weighing a proposal to make federal funding available for schools that want to hire cops and surveillance equipment to keep guns out of schools, an idea that would be part of its broader package of reforms.
The point is that both sensible gun law reform and and sensible security efforts can be simultaneously pursued — even though the NRA wants to deceive you into thinking otherwise. What’s more, the vast majority of Americans almost certainly don’t buy into the organization’s increasingly transparent Second Amendment alarmism. As noted here yesterday, polls show that very large majorities, including majorities of Republicans, support the gun reforms that are currently being discussed.
By: Greg Sargent, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, January 11, 2013
“Guns, Guns And More Guns!”: Appealing To The Most Racist Elements Of Our Society
A headline on today’s New York Times blares:
Sales of Guns Soar in U.S. as Nation Weighs Tougher Limits
(Well, the Times‘ trumpet blares through a mute.)
Here’s some of the scariest bits, in Michael Cooper’s article — a piece that’s pretty frightening throughout:
High-capacity magazines, which some state and federal officials want to ban or restrict, were selling briskly across the country: one Iowa dealer said that 30-round magazines were fetching five times what they sold for just weeks ago.
Gun dealers and buyers alike said that the rapid growth in gun sales — which began climbing significantly after President Obama’s re-election and soared after the Dec. 14 shooting at a school in Newtown, Conn., prompted him to call for new gun laws — shows little sign of abating.
The day after the Sandy Hook shooting, I started stumbling upon news of surging gun sales, and found it startling — especially to learn that Connecticut was among the states where gun-sellers were running out of AR-15 rifles, of the kind used by murderer Adam Lanza, and large-capacity magazines.
But, in retrospect, the response was predictable.
Since the election of our nation’s first African American president, right-wing leaders have played on the twisted guilt-and-projection continuum that plagues the more racist elements of the white, male cohort to convince them that the black man was coming for their guns (leaving to their fertile imaginations what he might do to their women).
Here’s Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, addressing the so-called Second Amendment Rally at the Washington Monument on April 19, 2010, the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 Americans:
We’re in a war. The other side knows they’re at war, because they started it. They’re comin’ for our freedom, for our money, for our kids, for our property. They’re comin’ for everything because they’re a bunch of socialists.
And, whoa, are some of those imaginations fertile indeed! A veritable mix of manure and composted grey matter. Just look at the growing trend of “Sandy Hook truthers” — people who contend the massacre never happened, but was just a narrative ruse invented by government in collusion with the news media, all so Obama might disarm his enemies and have his way with America.
Salon’s Alex Seitz-Wald dares to explore the truthers’ claims:
In the latest angle, theorists think they have found “absolute proof” of a conspiracy to defraud the American people. “You reported in December that this little girl had been killed,” a reader emailed Salon in response to a story. “She has been found, and photographed with President Obama.”
The girl in question is Emilie Parker, a 6-year-old who was shot multiple times and killed at Sandy Hook. But for conspiracy theorists, the tears her family shed at her funeral, the moving eulogy from Utah’s governor, and the entire shooting spree are fake. Welcome to the world where Sandy Hook didn’t really happen.
[…]
The crux of the theory is a photograph of Parker’s sister sitting on President Obama’s lap when he visited with the victims’ families. The girl is wearing the same dress Emilie wore in a pre-shooting photograph of the family shared with media, so she must be Emilie, alive and well. “BAM! I cannot believe how idiot these people are [sic]… That’s her,” one YouTuber exclaims as he watches the two images superimposed on each other. (Apparently missed by these crack investigators is the possibility that the sister wore Emilie’s dress and that they look alike because they are sisters, after all.)
This is not to say that all of those in a state of panic, stocking up on assault rifles and large-capacity magazines, are massacre-deniers. Some obviously just have a burning need for military-style weapons and oodles of rapid-fire ammo. (Go figure.)
And not every person in the gun-store stampede is motivated by race, of course. Many of these folks have long been suspicious of the intentions of liberals and/or Democrats for decades, flames of fear fanned by the likes of the John Birch Society and religious right.
But add to that paranoia the toxic brew of America’s failure to accept the brutality of its racist past and the reality of its race-fixated present, and there’s much to give pause in this current stream of events.
By: Adele Stan, Washington Monthly Political Animal, January 12, 2013
“Please Just Shut Up”: Phil Gingrey’s Valuable Expert Validation That Many Rape Victims Are Actually Liars
From the “They Just Can’t Help Themselves” file, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s intrepid Jim Galloway informs us that U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA), an OB-GYN, went out of his way in a local speaking appearance to express sympathy for the “legitimate rape” comments of his former colleague Todd Akin:
And in Missouri, Todd Akin … was asked by a local news source about rape and he said, “Look, in a legitimate rape situation” — and what he meant by legitimate rape was just look, someone can say I was raped: a scared-to-death 15-year-old that becomes impregnated by her boyfriend and then has to tell her parents, that’s pretty tough and might on some occasion say, “Hey, I was raped.” That’s what he meant when he said legitimate rape versus non-legitimate rape. I don’t find anything so horrible about that. But then he went on and said that in a situation of rape, of a legitimate rape, a woman’s body has a way of shutting down so the pregnancy would not occur. He’s partly right on that….
And I’ve delivered lots of babies, and I know about these things. It is true. We tell infertile couples all the time that are having trouble conceiving because of the woman not ovulating, “Just relax. Drink a glass of wine. And don’t be so tense and uptight because all that adrenaline can cause you not to ovulate.” So he was partially right wasn’t he? But the fact that a woman may have already ovulated 12 hours before she is raped, you’re not going to prevent a pregnancy there by a woman’s body shutting anything down because the horse has already left the barn, so to speak. And yet the media took that and tore it apart.
Well, thanks, Phil, for that valuable expert validation of the perspective that many rape victims are actually liars and thus we shouldn’t be reluctant to force them to carry pregnancies they claim are the product of rape to term.
Now please just shut up.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, January 11, 2013
“Revolutionary Language”: The Sound Of A Cultural Paranoia By People Who Have Lost Their Grip On Power And Reality
That sound you hear is the sound of a cultural paranoia by people who have lost their grip on the reins of power, and on reality, and who fear the worst is coming.
And they are preparing for it, whatever it may be — a war, a revolution, an apocalypse.
These extremists make sensible, reasonable gun control hard to discuss, let alone achieve in this country, because they skew the conversations away from common-sense solutions on which both rational gun owners and non-gun owners can agree.
These people, a vocal minority, have extreme fears — gun confiscation, widespread civil instability, a tyrannical government — from which they are preparing to defend themselves with arsenals of weapons and stockpiles of ammunition.
If you pay attention to the right-wing’s rhetoric, you can hear a string of code words that feed the fears of these people and paralyze progress.
A collection of conservative groups have declared Jan. 19, during the weekend celebrating President Obama’s inauguration and Martin Luther King’s Birthday, as Gun Appreciation Day.
In a press release, the event chairman, Larry Ward, said, “The Obama administration has shown that it is more than willing to trample the Constitution to impose its dictates upon the American people.”
Using the word “dictates” is a subtle, but intentional, effort to frame the president as dangerous.
Andrew P. Napolitano, a Fox News analyst, said in a video posted Thursday on the network’s GretaWire blog: “Here’s the dirty little secret about the Second Amendment, the Second Amendment was not written in order to protect your right to shoot deer, it was written to protect your right to shoot tyrants if they take over the government. How about chewing on that one.”
He went even further in a piece in The Washington Times, saying that the Second Amendment “protects the right to shoot tyrants, and it protects the right to shoot at them effectively, with the same instruments they would use upon us.”
Who are Napolitano’s tyrants here? Is this government takeover theoretical, imminent, in progress or a fait accompli?
Ward went so far as to say on CNN: “I believe that Gun Appreciation Day honors the legacy of Dr. King.” He continued: “The truth is, I think Martin Luther King would agree with me if he were alive today that if African-Americans had been given the right to keep and bear arms from Day 1 of the country’s founding, perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history. And I believe wholeheartedly that it’s essential to liberty.”
Set aside, if you can, what would most likely be King’s horror at the association, and look at that language. Pay particular attention to the suggestion that guns are an essential guard against slavery’s resurgence in this country. And who would be the slaves and who the enslavers?
As the Southern Poverty Law Center said in a Spring 2012 report, the number of so-called patriot groups surged after Barack Obama was first elected president.
“The swelling of the Patriot movement since that time has been astounding,” the report said. “From 149 groups in 2008, the number of Patriot organizations skyrocketed to 512 in 2009, shot up again in 2010 to 824, and then, last year, jumped to 1,274.”
(According to the center, “Generally, Patriot groups define themselves as opposed to the ‘New World Order,’ engage in groundless conspiracy theorizing, or advocate or adhere to extreme antigovernment doctrines.”)
The center also points out: “Fears of impending gun control or weapons confiscations, either by the government or international agencies, also run rampant in antigovernment circles. As a result, many antigovernment activists believe that being well armed is a must. The militia movement engages in paramilitary training aimed at protecting citizens from this feared impending government crackdown.”
That’s why it is both shocking and predictable that James Yeager, the C.E.O. of a Tennessee company that trains civilians in weapons and tactical skills, posted a video online Wednesday (since removed but still viewable at rawstory.com) saying he was going to start killing people if gun control efforts moved forward. He said, and I quote:
“I’m telling you that if that happens, it’s going to spark a civil war, and I’ll be glad to fire the first shot. I’m not putting up with it. You shouldn’t put up with it. And I need all you patriots to start thinking about what you’re going to do, load your damn mags, make sure your rifle’s clean, pack a backpack with some food in it and get ready to fight.”
Again, calling the “patriots” to arms is, I think, no accident.
Chew on that.
By: Charles M. Blow, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, January 11, 2013
“Influence Game”: NRA Putting Its Stamp On Another Branch Of Government
The National Rifle Association has enjoyed high-profile success over the years in shaping gun-rights legislation in Congress and statehouses, in part by campaigning to defeat lawmakers who defied the group.
Now, the NRA has added a lesser-known strategy to protect its interests: opposing President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees whom it sees as likely to enforce gun-control laws. In some cases, the group’s opposition has kept jobs on federal benches unfilled.
Still in its early stages, the effort is a safety net to ensure that federal courthouses are stocked with judges who are friendly to gun rights, should gun restrictions somehow get through the group’s first line of defense on Capitol Hill. The NRA also weighs in on state judicial elections and appointments, another fail-safe if the massacre of young children at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school leads to tighter gun-control measures.
A case study in the group’s approach across the country can be found in its opposition to the nominations of the two most recent Supreme Court justices.
The NRA opposed both Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan and warned its allies in Congress that their votes to confirm each would be held against them.
In a letter to lawmakers, the NRA wrote: “In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, (Kagan) refused to declare support for the Second Amendment, saying only that the matter was ‘settled law.’ This was eerily similar to the scripted testimony of Justice Sonia Sotomayor last year, prior to her confirmation to the court. It has become obvious that ‘settled law’ is the scripted code of an anti-gun nominee’s confirmation effort.”
It added, “The NRA is not fooled.”
The group had limited evidence to back up its claims that the two were opposed to gun rights. It pointed to a one-paragraph memo Kagan wrote in 1987 to Justice Thurgood Marshall that suggested she was not sympathetic to gun owners, and to her time as a lawyer in the Clinton administration as it sought to put tighter gun controls in place. For Sotomayor, critics cited a ruling that upheld New York’s ban on nunchucks, a martial arts weapon that has nothing to do with firearms.
Even some pro-gun-rights lawmakers bristled at the NRA inserting itself into judicial confirmation battles.
“I am a bit concerned that the NRA weighed in and said they were going to score this. I don’t think that was appropriate,” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said at the time. “A vote on a Supreme Court justice, in my mind, should be free from those political interest groups that are going to pressure you.”
But, like most Republicans, she still voted against confirming both nominees, likely for reasons beyond the gun issue.
Only seven GOP senators voted for Sotomayor in 2009 and, a year later, only five Republicans voted for Kagan.
Among those who supported both was Sen. Richard Lugar, a six-term Indiana Republican who lost his seat last year in a primary.
The NRA exacted its revenge in that race, spending $200,000 against him in order to help GOP challenger Richard Mourdock.
“Dick Lugar has changed. He’s become the only Republican candidate in Indiana with an F rating from the NRA,” the group said in one TV ad. The group also warned allies that Lugar voted to confirm “both of Barack Obama’s anti-gun nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Last spring, the group opposed the nomination of Elissa Cadish to the federal bench in Nevada and worked with Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada to block it.
In 2008, while running for a district court position in Nevada, Cadish replied on an election-year survey that “I do not believe that there is this constitutional right” to guns. She added, however, “Of course, I will enforce the laws as they exist as a judge.”
Cadish completed the Citizens for Responsible Government questionnaire before the Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the Second Amendment protected a citizen’s right to have firearms in the District of Columbia and before a 2010 case that gave the same rights to citizens who live in the states.
Four years later, when Obama nominated her to a federal bench, she faced questions about those views and sought to clarify her position in a letter to her state’s other senator, Harry Reid.
“I want to assure you that I was not giving my personal opinion on this question,” Cadish said. “Rather, this response was based on my understanding of the state of federal law at the time.”
The NRA questioned the sincerity of Cadish’s statement.
“While she has more recently tried to backtrack from that statement, her ‘new’ position is of little comfort to gun owners,” NRA executive director Chris Cox wrote to Heller in April.
In the months that followed, the NRA and its affiliated groups spent $98,467 to help Heller win election, including a television ad promising Heller would “oppose any anti-gun nominee to the Supreme Court.”
“This election’s not about the next four years. It’s about the next 40 years. So vote like your freedom depends on it. Because it does,” Cox told audiences in that ad.
Similarly, the NRA has helped block Caitlin Halligan’s rise from the Manhattan district attorney’s office to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a launching pad for several Supreme Court justices. The group pointed to her work on New York’s 2001 lawsuit against gun makers and opposition to a 2005 federal law that shielded firearm companies from liability for crimes committed with their wares.
“Given Ms. Halligan’s clear opposition to a major federal law that was essential to protecting law-abiding Americans’ right to keep and bear arms, as well as an important industry that equips our military and law enforcement personnel, we must respectfully oppose her confirmation,” Cox wrote the lawmakers in 2011.
That appeals court seat has remained vacant since 2005, when President George W. Bush nominated and the Senate confirmed John Roberts as chief justice on the Supreme Court.
Last Thursday, Obama renominated both Cadish and Halligan and urged the Senate to vote.
“I am renominating 33 highly qualified candidates for the federal bench, including many who could have and should have been confirmed before the Senate adjourned,” Obama said.
Yet there was no signal the NRA would drop its opposition.
The group’s deep pockets help bolster allies and punish lawmakers who buck them, on judges or legislation. The group spent at least $24 million in the 2012 elections — $16.8 million through its political action committee and nearly $7.5 million through its affiliated Institute for Legislative Action. Separately, the NRA spent some $4.4 million through July 1 to lobby Congress.
In one case, the group spent about $100,000 — a tremendous sum for a state legislative race — to mount a primary challenge against a Republican Tennessee lawmaker, Debra Maggart, because she wouldn’t toe the NRA’s line in Nashville.
As the NRA works to put its stamp on another branch of government, its influence could be even more lasting — federal judges are appointed for life and aren’t subject to voters in election years.
By: Philip Elliott, The Associated Press, January 9, 2012
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