“Bought And Paid For”: Pennsylvania’s Shameful NRA Sellout
Two days after losing his reelection bid, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett signed a bill with an amendment that allows the National Rifle Association (NRA) to sue cities and towns that pass ordinances regulating firearms by claiming they infringe upon individual rights. Until the gun lobby’s dream amendment got tacked on in the final hours of the legislative session, Act 192 had nothing to do with guns; it criminalizes the theft of secondary metal, like copper wire, and it had broad support.
With Democrat Tom Wolf replacing the Republican Corbett, the NRA and its allies in the legislature had to act quickly. In his haste, Corbett even signed the wrong version of the bill, and had to be called back for a second signing. Outraged at how gun enthusiasts rammed through the amendment, Democratic State Senator Daylin Leach recruited several other elected officials plus the cities of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Lancaster to challenge the law’s constitutionality.
Pennsylvania law says amendments must be germane, and empowering the NRA to sue municipalities for enacting gun laws is far afield from Act 192’s intent. Leach, a lawyer, wrote the brief himself, and the lawsuit is before the Commonwealth Court. “The Pennsylvania legislature is essentially a wholly owned subsidiary of the NRA,” he says, explaining that the NRA saw an opening in the closing days of Corbett’s term to “sneak it in” while it had the votes and a proven ally in the governor’s office.
The NRA quickly used its newfound legal power, suing a number of municipalities and threatening others to get them to back down. The amendment as written says an organization does not need what’s known as “standing”—in other words, the NRA doesn’t have to prove someone has been harmed by a gun safety law. It can just outright sue, and if it wins, the city or town has to pay the group’s legal expenses. But there’s no risk to the NRA; if it loses, it doesn’t pay the winning side’s legal expenses.
Ed Foley, the mayor of Jenkintown, a borough in the Philadelphia suburbs, told the Daily Beast that the NRA forced him “to choose between public safety and financial solvency.” Foley describes Jenkintown on his Twitter account as “0.6 square miles of the best place to live, dine, shop, and raise a family.” With a population of 4,500 and a budget of $6.5 million, “We can’t afford to defend a law suit even if we win it, and if we lose, we have to pay their legal fees. That’s a form of blackmail,” he says, “or maybe extortion is a better word.”
Under the threat of a lawsuit brought by the NRA, an ordinance in place since 2010 requiring Jenkintown residents to report lost or stolen firearms at the police station was rescinded in a public meeting. “It was a hold-your-nose vote,” says Foley. “It’s such an innocuous law, and it doesn’t do anything to restrict anybody’s right to have a gun. I don’t know why the NRA isn’t a bigger supporter of the police. The police want the law.”
The NRA never plays defense, it always goes on offense, says Jim Kessler, a co-founder of Third Way, a moderate Democratic group. “Even after Sandy Hook, they were trying to expand their reach and loosen gun laws,” he says. The nation may have recoiled in horror at the massacre of 20 first graders, but the NRA’s response is always more access to guns, not more restrictions. A movement to expand gun rights is growing, fueled by a libertarian streak on the right and the left, and it is playing out on the state level. In Florida, a campus shooting in November prompted a House panel to approve guns on college campuses, a first step to overturning a state ban on concealed weapons on university grounds.
Gun safety advocates favor ballot measures like the one Washington state passed in 2014 requiring background checks while gun rights groups work their will through state legislatures. State Senator Leach tells the story of the time when he had the votes to overturn the “Florida loophole” in Pennsylvania law. Then the NRA lobbied each member one by one “and they came back ashen-faced.” When Leach asked, “’Are you still with me?’ most didn’t respond; one said, ‘I’ve got to fuck you, buddy.’” The Florida loophole allows people who can’t get a gun under Pennsylvania’s very low standards to go online, get one from Florida, and Pennsylvania will respect that. “We would never do that on marriage,” says Leach. “ Let another state decide what to do in our state.” As for his colleague’s X-rated comment, he says, “I appreciated his candor, and that’s the Democratic caucus. I’m sure the Republican caucus is far worse.”
Not everyone is afraid of the NRA. Pittsburgh Mayor William Peduto declared in a statement that the city would not be deterred from enforcing its requirement that lost and stolen firearms must be reported: “Too many people are being killed in the streets of Pittsburgh and other cities with stolen guns. It’s a common-sense requirement, which is why police across the state support the regulation, as do many members of the NRA.”
Mayor Richard Gray of Lancaster, a city of some 60,000 known for its distinctive Amish population, is also determined to protect its requirement that lost or stolen firearms are reported to the police within 72 hours. “The NRA is trying to bully smaller communities,” Gray told the Beast. “I learned in junior high school the one way to deal with a bully is to stand up to him, so we’re not backing down. And if they lose, over a hundred communities will pass the same law. I guarantee it.”
A Common Sense Lancaster Legal Defense Fund was launched in mid-January, and has collected almost $10,000 in small contributions. Gray says the NRA is “a paper tiger,” and if challenged can be defeated. He said in a statement announcing the Fund that statewide legislation to make reporting of lost or stolen guns mandatory was introduced in the Pennsylvania legislature in 2007, but it never got out of committee. He noted that the new law granting unprecedented legal power to the NRA was needed, according to its prime sponsor, “to stop little tyrants at the local level from enacting their own gun-control measures.” Now it’s up to the voters and the courts to judge where the tyranny lies, whose rights are being trampled, and whether Act 192 will be allowed to endure as the will of the people, or the product of a process bullied by the NRA.
By: Eleanor Clift,
“Guns On Campus”: Lawmakers Cooking Up Recipe For A Bloodbath
The very first bill being rammed through the Florida House of Representatives this year would allow guns to be carried on college campuses.
This screwball idea comes from Rep. Greg Steube, a young Republican from Sarasota. Remember his name in case he’s ever daft enough to run for statewide office.
In the macho comic-book world where Steube’s imagination dwells, armed college kids will stand ready to whip their pistols out of their book bags and shoot down crazed campus intruders with flawless aim.
This delusion has been nurtured by the National Rifle Association, which owns so many stooges in the Legislature that a dozen others would have been thrilled to introduce the campus gun bill, if Steube had balked.
Florida is currently one of 20 states that prohibit concealed weapons on university property, the wisdom being that firearms don’t belong in college classrooms, football stadiums or booze-soaked frat houses.
Most of the remaining states allow universities and colleges to decide their own firearms policies, and — no surprise — the vast majority of institutions don’t allow anyone but police officers to carry guns on campus.
Seven states do, thanks to the NRA. Florida is next on its list.
If Steube’s bill passes, it would open the way for firearms to be carried at private colleges as well as public universities, although each private school would be able to implement its own weapons ban.
Steube said he was working on his guns-at-college bill before the Nov. 20 shooting at Florida State University, where a mentally disturbed alumnus named Myron May shot and wounded two students and an employee at the school library.
Police arrived within minutes and killed May. Steube has speculated that an armed undergrad might have been able to drop him even quicker.
Or missed the shot completely and hit a bystander by mistake, which sometimes happens even when experienced police officers are pulling the triggers.
“School safety has always been the paramount issue I’ve dealt with,” said Steube, dead serious.
He’s eager to point out that only students with concealed-weapons permits would be allowed to pack heat. “These are 21-year-old adults who have gone through background checks, who have gone through training, who do not have a criminal record.”
Well, that certainly should reassure all worried parents, because 21 is the age of instant responsibility and maturity. Binge drinking, all-night partying, fighting — all that magically ends on a person’s 21st birthday, right?
And just because they lose their car keys now and then doesn’t mean they’d ever misplace a loaded Glock, or leave it out where their roommate could take it. You might wonder if Steube has ever set foot on a college campus. In fact, he has.
He graduated from the University of Florida, and stayed to get a law degree. During all that time in Gainesville he must have encountered at least a few fellow students who were unstable, angry, depressed, or battling drug and alcohol abuse.
In other words, troubled young men and women who shouldn’t be sitting in a classroom (or anywhere else) with a loaded weapon.
This would be a nightmare scenario for families who’ve sent their kids off to college believing they’ll be safe, at least while they’ve got a book in their hands. It’s also a nightmare scenario for teachers and professors, who’d be left to assume that every student in every class is armed. Would you give any grade except an A+ to a sophomore with a semiautomatic?
Most student and faculty groups are appalled by Steube’s campus gun bill, for good reason. It’s a recipe for another bloodbath.
A House subcommittee endorsed the measure last week, each Republican on the panel voting yea under the hawkish eye of the NRA. Luckily, there are more sane and cautious voices in the Florida Senate, where a similar piece of nutball legislation was snuffed four years ago.
At that time, John Thrasher, an influential Republican senator, opposed the push to put guns on college grounds. He had a friend whose daughter had been tragically killed in an accidental shooting at FSU.
Although Thrasher left the Senate last fall, he still has powerful friends in that chamber who pay attention to his opinion.
And they should, because Thrasher is now president of FSU. He started on the job 11 days before Myron May went to the library and started shooting.
The rampage didn’t change Thrasher’s mind about the danger of arming students. That’s because he lives in the real world, not the Bruce Willis fantasy inhabited by Steube and his reckless cohorts in the House.
By: Carl Hiaasen, Columnist for The Miami Herald; The National Memo, January 29, 2015
“When A Hobby Verges Upon Obsession”: Veronica Rutledge And America’s Gun Cult
That Idaho mother shot to death by her two-year-old son in a Walmart store? Judging by Veronica Jean Rutledge’s biography, you can be just about certain that she’d driven to the store wearing a seatbelt, with her little boy buckled carefully into his car seat.
By all accounts, Rutledge, age 29, was that kind of mother: loving, diligent and careful — an entirely admirable young woman. In the aftermath of the tragedy, photos of her shining face are almost unbearable to contemplate.
A high-school valedictorian, Rutledge graduated from the University of Idaho with a degree in chemistry. She was a promising research scientist at Batelle’s Idaho National Laboratory, working on reducing the toxicity of nuclear waste.
It would appear to follow that her child’s home environment was carefully childproofed, with household poisons stored safely away and dangerous objects placed out of reach. Rutledge probably would never have dreamed of letting her son play outside unsupervised, nor left him alone in the bathtub.
And yet she carried a loaded semi-automatic handgun in her purse on a post-Christmas shopping trip and left it unattended in a shopping cart, where the child took it out and somehow pulled the trigger.
Rutledge died instantly there in the electronics aisle.
Very likely her son is too young to understand or remember what happened, although it will shadow his life forever.
In the immediate aftermath, Terry Rutledge, Veronica’s father-in-law, gave an ill-advised interview to a Washington Post reporter expressing anger that anybody would use the tragedy “as an excuse to grandstand on gun rights,” as the article put it.
“They are painting Veronica as irresponsible, and that is not the case,” he said. “… I brought my son up around guns, and he has extensive experience shooting it. And Veronica had had handgun classes; they’re both licensed to carry, and this wasn’t just some purse she had thrown her gun into.”
Oh no, it was a designer item produced by an Illinois firm called Gun Tote’n Mamas with a zipped compartment for carrying a concealed handgun — given to her as a Christmas present from her husband.
Nevertheless, Rutledge made an incomprehensible blunder, and it cost her life. The blunder, as I see it, of carrying a loaded handgun — with a chambered round, no less — as a kind of fashion accessory, a totemic item signifying her cultural identity.
Her close friend Sheri Sandow explained that for all her academic accomplishments, Rutledge was “as comfortable at a campground or a gun range as she was in a classroom.”
OK, fine… but why Walmart? Not because she was fearful, Sandow explained.
“In Idaho, we don’t have to worry about a lot of crime and things like that,” she said. “And to see someone with a gun isn’t bizarre. [Veronica] wasn’t carrying a gun because she felt unsafe. She was carrying a gun because she was raised around guns. This was just a horrible accident.”
Indeed, she needn’t have felt unsafe. The most recent homicide in Blackfoot, Idaho, where the family lived, was six years ago.
The scientist in Veronica Rutledge, had she allowed herself to think about it rationally, would have understood that the pistol in her purse was far more dangerous to her and her child than any external threat. As an NRA adept and a big fan of the Guns.com website, however, she evidently become so habituated to carrying a gun around that she quite forgot she had it.
By itself, there’s nothing inherently objectionable about target shooting, a harmless pastime like bowling or golf. I own a target pistol myself, and take it out sometimes to plink aluminum cans. I also own shotguns, although I no longer hunt.
But when a hobby verges upon obsession, you’re talking about cultlike behavior. Spend a few minutes browsing around Guns.com and maybe you’ll see what I mean. Current features include Kid Rock’s gun collection, and the effects of shooting a giant Gummi Bear with a 12 gauge.
Cool!
In a recent New Yorker article, Adam Gopnik explained the political psychology of guns. The great majority of Americans agree that there should be sensible limitations on the possession and use of tools whose function is killing, “while a small minority feels, with a fanatic passion, that there shouldn’t. In a process familiar to any student of society, the majority of people in favor of gun sanity care about a lot of other things, too, and think about them far more often; the gun crazy think about guns all the time, and vote on the issue with fanatic intensity.”
Hence handguns as costume jewelry, totems signifying one’s membership in the NRA tribe. Terry Rutledge, however, can rest easy. If the 2012 Newtown, CT massacre failed to bring reform, his daughter-in-law’s death won’t change anything significant.
Except possibly the behavior of anybody tempted to pack heat around little children.
By: Gene Lyons, The National Memo, January 7, 2014
“Because The NRA Tells Them To”: Republicans Are Blocking Ratification of Even the Most Reasonable International Treaties
The world got a present on Christmas Eve, when an international treaty to limit the sale of weapons to warlords and terrorists went into effect. The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) aims to limit the number of civilians slaughtered around the world by requiring any country that sells weapons to establish the same kind of export criteria that the U.S. and other Western democracies have in place. It has been signed by 130 countries and ratified by 60, ten more than it needed to become effective. When the U.N. General Assembly put it to a vote last year, only three countries opposed the treaty outright: North Korea, Syria, and Iran.
While the Obama administration has signed the treaty, there is no chance it will get the 67 votes needed for Senate ratification. In October 2013, 50 senators sent the president a letter expressing their opposition to the ATT. They included every Republican except Mark Kirk, and five Democrats—Joe Manchin, Mark Pryor, Mark Begich, Mary Landieu and Kay Hagen. (Manchin was the only one of the Democrats who was not up for reelection last month, and all four that were lost.) So the Republicans stand together with the Axis of Evil 2.0 because the National Rifle Association opposes the treaty. The NRA sees it as a potential threat to gun ownership because it does not explicitly provide a guarantee of the “American people’s rights under the Second Amendment.”
In the Senate’s first two centuries, it approved more than 1,500 treaties. It rejected only 21; another 85 were withdrawn because the Senate did not take action on them. A treaty that is not approved, rejected, or withdrawn remains in limbo. At present, there are 36 treaties awaiting action by the Senate, dealing with everything from the protection of albatrosses to the testing of nuclear weapons.
While protecting waterfowl might seem like something reasonable people could agree upon, apparently no issue is too small for the foes of the imaginary threat of a world government. There are more serious questions not being addressed, however, including:
—The United States has six tax treaties with over 60 countries to prevent double-taxation and make tax evasion more difficult. Republicans have prevented approval of the six, costing the country billions in lost revenue each year.
—Drafted over thirty years ago, the Law of the Sea Treaty is designed to bring some order to the world’s oceans and lessen the chances for conflict in places like the South China Sea. Ratified by 162 countries and supported by the oil and gas industry, the Pentagon, environmentalists, and past presidents from both parties, it was opposed by Republicans because “no international organization owns the seas.”
—The Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities would apply the standards found in American law to other countries. It is supported by veterans’ groups and corporate interests and has been ratified by 141 countries. Home-schoolers and right-to-life groups opposed it, however, believing false claims that it would interfere with their children’s education and increase access to abortion. When it came to a vote two years ago, 38 Republican senators voted nay.
—The Convention on the Rights of the Child, one of the most popular and respected human rights treaties in history, was negotiated during the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations with major American input. The United States may soon be the only country among the 193 members of the U.N. that has failed to ratify it. Opponents argue it would hurt traditional families and the rights of parents.
One of the most frequent criticisms of any treaty is that it undermines American sovereignty. But that is the price of international cooperation. Any relationship, whether between two people or among two hundred countries, requires some limits on what one party can do. Globalization has made such cooperation even more imperative; it is impossible for one nation to deal unilaterally with today’s gravest problems. Even the world’s only superpower cannot ignore that fact.
The term “American exceptionalism” never appeared in any party platform until the election in 2012. It made its debut in the Republican platform that year as an 8,000-word section, devoted to the concept that America holds a unique place and role in human history. If the GOP continues to let paranoia prevent this country’s leadership, or even participation, in addressing the challenges created by an ever-more globalized world, that role in history will be short.
By: Dennis Jett, Professor of International Affairs, Penn State University; The New Republic, December 26, 2014
“HO, HO, NO!: The NRA’s Twisted List For Santa
You might have heard that the U.S. Senate last week finally voted to confirm the president’s nominee for surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy.
You also might have wondered what all the fuss was about. The vote on America’s top doctor was held up for nearly a year, thanks to a campaign by the National Rifle Association. Dr. Murthy was endorsed by the medical community, but the NRA’s lobbying machine turned his nomination into a political battle. All because Murthy believes that gun violence, which kills an average of 86 Americans every day, is a public health issue.
For most of us, acknowledging that America has a gun violence problem is stating a fact. For the NRA’s leadership, it’s heresy.
The gun lobby’s goal is to expand its customer base—and boost gunmakers’ bottom lines, no matter the risk to public safety. So a new surgeon general committed to reducing gun violence isn’t what the gun lobby wanted for Christmas.
The NRA’s wish list looks more like this:
• Guns for felons. The NRA has fought for the rights of felons to buy and own firearms. That means successfully restoring gun rights to convicted murderers, robbers, rapists, and people guilty of transferring explosives to international terrorists.
• Guns for terror suspects. The NRA has opposed efforts to block terror suspects from buying guns. Today the FBI can stop terror suspects from boarding a plane, but not from purchasing firearms.
• Guns for domestic abusers. The NRA objects to restraining orders that require domestic abusers to give up their guns. This year, six states—including Scott Walker’s Wisconsin and Bobby Jindal’s Louisiana—defied the gun lobby and enacted laws that will help keep guns out of the hands of abusers.
• Guns for the mentally ill. The NRA opposed a new California law that will help prevent gun deaths, homicides and suicides both. Police and family members now can present evidence to a judge, who can order temporary custody of a mentally ill person’s guns for a brief, emergency period.
• Gun gag orders. The NRA objects to doctors asking patients basic questions about gun ownership. For example, before Congress repealed it in 2012, an NRA-authored gag order barred doctors and military officers from talking about guns with service members at risk of suicide.
• Guns on campus. The NRA has pushed for “campus carry” laws—despite near unanimous opposition from college presidents, law enforcement, and parents—and for arming educators in K-12 schools.
• Guns in bars. The NRA has pushed to allow guns in bars—despite the fact that 40 percent of people convicted of homicide had been drinking alcohol at the time of their offense.
• Guns in restaurants and grocery stores. The NRA supports the open carry of guns in cafes, burrito shops, and the produce aisle. They reiterated their position in June, after a staffer first made the mistake of calling open carry demonstrations “weird” and “scary.”
• Gun lawsuits. The NRA wants the ability to sue local officials for passing laws that protect public safety. They push for so-called “preemption” bills in statehouses—which allow them to file expensive lawsuits against towns, cities, and even mayors and city commissioners.
• Guns for everyone, no questions asked. The NRA opposed Washington State’s gun-sale background checks ballot measure this year. The measure passed with 59 percent of the vote. Like background check laws across the country, it will help keep guns out of dangerous hands, reduce gun crime, and save lives.
That’s the gun lobby’s wish list for America—more guns for everyone, everywhere, anytime.
The new surgeon general certainly has his work cut out for him. But in 2014, numerous states passed common-sense public safety laws, showing that the momentum for gun safety is building. And just like Dr. Murthy’s confirmation, that’s bad news for the NRA.
By: John Feinblatt, President of Everytown for Gun Safety; The Daily Beast, December 23, 2014
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