“We Deserve A Vote”: Americans Stand With President Obama’s Gun Control Pleas
On Tuesday, President Obama delivered his fourth State of the Union address (his 2009 speech was technically not a State of the Union). He followed the traditional path of laying out his vision with a laundry list of policy ideas and priorities. As he suggested, all are needed to create more jobs, encourage more economic growth, and to keep America safe, while protecting its values of fairness and equal opportunity.
It was not until he called upon Congress to take up new proposals to curb gun violence that he became emotional and animated. It was a stark contrast to his address in 2009, delivered shortly after the tragedy in Tuscon, Ariz., when he failed to mention any need for gun control at all.
Recent Quinnipiac University polling shows the majority of Americans are more supportive of a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons (56 percent to 39 percent) and more supportive of a nationwide ban on the sale of high-capacity ammunition magazines (56 percent to 40 percent) than members of Congress, and overwhelmingly support the president’s position to require background checks for all gun buyers (92 percent to 7 percent).
In having the confidence of knowing where the American people stand and with Gabby Giffords in the audience, along with many other victims of gun violence, the president said, “This time is different.” In a cadence often reserved for the pulpit, he called out the names of those individuals and communities who have suffered tragic losses and repeated the simple refrain, “They deserve a vote.”
It was a powerful moment in the speech, one that brought scores of lawmakers to their feet in thunderous applause, and one that the president can now use effectively to continue to build the necessary political support to pass common sense gun control measures.
By: Penny Lee, U. S. News and World Report, Debate Club, February 13, 2013
“The GOP’s Violence Problem”: Accepting Of Violent Language And Violent Behavior
As The Plum Line‘s Greg Sargent rightly points out, the Republican Party has much bigger problems than inviting a washed-up whackjob like Ted Nugent to the State of the Union. Sargent says the “problem is the perpetual winking and nodding to The Crazy.”
I would take that further and say not only does the Republican leadership condone The Crazy, but also the violent tendencies associated with this type of dangerous ideology. Whether it is refusing to back the Violence Against Women Act, fighting against every single sensible gun law, promoting military force over diplomacy or failing to condemn violent rhetoric toward President Obama — the GOP is gaining a reputation of a political party that cynically accepts violent language and behavior.
Here are a few examples of why the GOP has a violence problem.
Inviting Ted Nugent To The State Of The Union
In an appallingly insensitive move, gun-crazy congressman Steve Stockman (R-TX) invited right-wing rocker Ted Nugent to Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, where he will be joined by more than 20 gun violence survivors to watch the president talk about his gun safety proposals.
Nugent was recently investigated by the Secret Service for threatening remarks he made towards President Obama. Nugent has referred to the president as “an evil, dangerous man who hates America and hates freedom,” going on to warn that “we need to fix this as soon as possible.” But it was his ominous warning that he “will either be dead or in jail by this time next year” if Obama won re-election that got the attention of the men in black.
The Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence put out a press release Tuesday condemning the Nugent invitation. ”I can’t think of any public figure less appropriate for such an occasion,” said executive director Josh Horwitz. But where are the condemnations from the Republican leadership?
Blocking The Violence Against Women Act
House Republicans are holding up reauthorization of the traditionally bipartisan Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) because there are provisions to protect immigrants, the LGBT community, and Native Americans. Even some House GOPers sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), urging them to immediately reauthorize VAWA. Maybe someone checked the last election results that showed a majority of women voted for Barack Obama and Democrats. In fact, the 20-point gender gap was the largest in history and marked the sixth straight presidential election in which the majority of women voted Democratic.
In the video (http://youtu.be/AqoGTD1Mlw4), Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) slams Senate Republicans for attempting to remove tribal provisions from the Violence Against Women Act.
Attacking Hagel For Not Being Hawkish Enough
Many Republicans prefer military action over diplomacy and are suspicious of people like Vietnam veteran and Obama defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel for saying military force should always be a last resort after exhausting every other method.
The New York Times quoted former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage as saying that “this is the neocons’ worst nightmare because you’ve got a combat soldier, successful businessman and senator who actually thinks there may be other ways to resolve some questions other than force.”
Failing to Condemn Violent Rhetoric From The Right
The Republican leadership has failed to condemn the militant tendencies of the Tea Party movement and other right-wing sources. Examples include Sarah Palin’s electoral map that targeted Democratic districts (including that of Gabrielle Giffords) with crosshairs, and Florida congresswoman and DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s Republican opponent shooting at a human-shaped target with Wasserman Schultz’s initials on it.
But perhaps the most outrageous act was directed against Ms. Giffords in June 2010, only six months before her life was changed forever by gun violence during the Tucson mass shooting and three months after her campaign office was vandalized following the Palin crosshairs incident. Giffords’ Republican opponent Jesse Kelly held a gun-themed fundraiser at which supporters could shoot an M-16 rifle with Kelly. This is how the event was promoted: “Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.”
Well, maybe that isn’t even the most despicable example. In 2009, Rep. Gregg Harper (R-MS) told Politico that “we hunt liberal, tree-hugging Democrats, although it does seem like a waste of good ammunition.”
By: Josh Marks, The National Memo, February 12, 2013
“Too Few Deaths”: The Big NRA Flip-Flop On Background Checks
You know, I had premonitions of this story, thinking: Didn’t the NRA used to support universal background checks as the alternative to every gun control measure? Between deadline pressures and the fear that I was having a senior moment, I didn’t follow it up. But now, via TPM’s Evan McMorris-Santoro, we have a former NRA president acknowledging that used to be the organization’s position not that very long ago, but has “changed its mind”:
The former president of the National Rifle Association told CNN Thursday night that the group has changed its mind on universal background checks. Back in 1999, after the Columbine school shooting, the NRA actually ran ads saying “it’s reasonable to provide for instant background checks at gun shows, just like gun stores and pawn shops.”
After last month’s school massacre in Newtown, Conn., the group has sounded a different note. Universal background checks are a waste of time at best and a “federal nightmare” that would lead to confiscation at worst, NRA leaders have said recently.
On CNN, former NRA President Sandy Froman admitted that the group dramatically changed its tune on universal background checks — which gun control advocates have said are their number one post-Newtown goal — and explained the reason was that the NRA now sees expanded background checks as totally ineffective.
“Yes, the NRA has changed its position,” Froman said. “And the reason it’s changed its position is because the system doesn’t work. The (National Instant Criminal Background Check System) is not working now. We have to get that working before we can add any more checks to that system. It’s already overburdened. In Colorado, I know it takes 10 — 10 days to do an instant check.”
So why not fix the system? If the NRA’s basic position is its members are law-abiding citizens who have no reason to fear background checks, why is it a problem?
Current NRA President David Keene echoed those concerns at a meeting with reporters Thursday while explaining his group’s opposition to expanded background checks. But he also sounded a more ominous note, warning that a universal background check infrastructure was possibly a first step toward a dismantling of Second Amendment rights.
“One of the reasons we’re fearful of a system like that is because we have been and continue to be and will continue to be very opposed to any kind of national gun registry system,” Keene told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor-sponsored breakfast. “For several reasons. The historic reason of course is that is a precursor in many cases to confiscation.”
So boil off the evasions, and we’re right back to the insane idea that Barack Obama is part of, a front for, or a precursor to, a totalitarian regime, and that “patriots” need the right to keep their military-style weapons on hand in case the day arrives when it’s time to start killing cops and members of the U.S. Armed Forces.
Somebody with access to these people needs to very directly ask them their own personal indicators for when it’s time to start the blood-letting.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, February 1, 2013
“Survivalism”: Nothing New Under The Wingnut Sun
There’s nothing new under the wingnut sun.
Survivalists are back in the news this week, though now we call them “preppers.” In Alabama the hostage standoff against a doomsday prepper holding a five-year-old in a bunker he’d been working on in the middle of the night for over a year approaches the end of its first week. Adam Lanza shot up the children of Sandy Hook elementary with weapons his mother was reportedly stockpiling “for the economic and social meltdown.” And the brittle worldview that drives the survivalist mentality—the imagination of one’s one innocent enclave, always ever threatened by siege from dread unnamed Others—was laid bare at the recent congressional hearings on gun control, when Gayle Trotter of the Independent Women’s Forum (incidentally: not independent, not by and for women, not a forum) spun out her delirious fantasy of “a young woman defending her babies in her home” by fending off “three, four, five violent attackers” with one of those lightweight, easy to handle assault rifles.
Recently a young blogger, in a nice profile of the diverse subculture as it thrives now, unfortunately described preppers as a “nascent” movement. That ain’t so. As I’ve insisted earlier, “too much of what we observe today on the right we act as if started the day before yesterday. Always, we need to set the clock back further—as a political necessity. We have to establish deeper provenances. Or else we just reinvent, and reinvent and reinvent the wheel.” Let’s think about this: for generations we have shared our America with Americans who fear change, fear difference, fear you and me, fear everything falling apart. So much so that they organize their lives and politics around staving off the fear—which often entails taking political action that only makes America more fearful and dangerous for everyone; which destroys the trust and love it takes to sustain communities; and who reinforce one another in their fear to such a degree that the less crazy among them surely play a positive role in spurring the more crazy to the kind of awful acts we see around us now. We need to better understand where that comes from, and why it is not going away.
So let’s get down to work.
In the early 1960s there was a group called the “Minutemen,” preparing for the imminent combined Communist and United Nations invasion. Their founder, Robert DePugh, a manufacturer of veterinary phamarceuticals in Misssouri, told the press that while waiting for the final showdown, his men would monitor and check subversive activities in their hometowns. DePugh claimed inspiration from a speech given by John F. Kennedy: “We need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take up arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as a basic purpose of their daily life.”
Make no mistake: armed right-wing enclave-defenders aren’t just a function of their hatred for Democrats; they are also enabled by Democrats who braid paranoia into the political identity of the nation—Cold War paranoia then, “Homeland Security” paranoia now.
The stickers they distributed included one reading “REGISTER COMMUNISTS, NOT FIREARMS,” and tiny one members would slap on restroom walls or inside phone books featuring an image of rifle crosshairs, and this text: “See that old man at the corner where you buy your papers?” the sticker read. “He may have a silencer equipped pistol under his coat. That fountain pen in the pocket of the insurance salesman that calls on you might be a cyanide gas gun. What about your milkman? Arsenic works slow but sure. … Traitors, beware! Even now the crosshairs are on the back of your necks.”
In 1966, Minutemen were arrested in a raid after FBI infiltration indicated they were on the verge of attacking three pacifist camps in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. They had stockpiled rockets, bombs, and literally tons of ammunition. (You can read all about the group in this excellent book published at the time.)
What was DePugh’s connection to later preppers and survivalists? It was direct. In 1973 he published Can You Survive? Guidelines for Resistance to Tyranny for You and Your Family. Read the Amazon comments (“Everything they don’t want you to know…”); some people still find it useful now. And note the cover of the paperback. Like I said: the enclaves of innocents, always ever threatened by sudden siege by dread unnamed Others. Be prepared.
By the way, heard that new one? That a liberal is a conservative who’s been incarcerated? According to an article in his hometown newspaper published upon his 2009 death, “DePugh spent four years in federal prison and wrote a book about the plight of the incarcerated. Many consider it his best and most compassionate work.”
But that article also noted, “His ideas were so out of whack with what most people were thinking that the great majority of people laughed him off as a kook.” Not precisely so. The culture DePugh helped midwife grew and grew—so much so that, by 1981, Peter Arnett, then of the Associated Press, did a four-part series on the subject. It began: “Small but growing bands of Americans are arming themselves and learning how to kill because they are convinced the social order is crumbling and they will have to fend for themselves to survive…. “There are inner perimeters in America today, places people are reluctant to leave for fear of their own safety. The national perimeter no longer seems secure.’”
Enclaves of innocents, always ever threatened by sudden siege by dread unnamed Others.
And now we have the hit new cable series.
Is there a continuity of culture here? Well, consider the reviews by the podcasting proprietor behind TodaysSurvival.com of “Best of the 80s Survivalist Books” (“The gem, the golden find of this book is his reloading tables: He has provided load data for virtually every cartidge in existence…with only 3 powders. This is incredibly helpful to the survivalist reloader who may anticipate reloading ammunition for themselves, and possibly others. By storing only 3 types of powder one may reload everything from the 219 Zipper to 300 Weatherby Magnum to .44 Special and everything in between. This book is out of print, but Mr. Stair is alive and well. He runs the ‘End Times Report’ web site, which sells a pamphlet containing the reloading data in the ‘booklet’ section.”)
There’s nothing new under the wingnut sun—only that, these days, you’re more likely to find ideas that once upon a time might have got you laughed off as a kook aired out in front of respectable Congressional committees.
By: Rick Perlstein, The Nation, February 2, 2013
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