“No Boundaries”: The NRA’s Shameless Attempt To Defeat The Sandy Hook Promise
NRA leadership demonstrated yet again last week just how low they are willing to go in their unconscionable effort to block any and all common sense, life saving gun violence legislation. Their most recent repugnant tactic—repeated robo calls to Newtown families—mocks and betrays the courage and compassion demonstrated by the Newtown community just barely three months after one of the world’s most horrific acts of gun violence seized 26 beautiful and heroic young lives.
Less than two months ago at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gun violence, I asked NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre if he would join the tens of thousands of people around the world in taking the Sandy Hook Promise. The Promise is a very simple message. It asks its followers to honor the 26 lives lost at Sandy Hook Elementary School by promising to do everything possible to encourage and support common sense solutions to make our communities and country safer from similar acts of violence. “I promise this time there will be change,” the Promise concludes. Wayne LaPierre agreed to the Promise that day, yet every minute of everyday since then, he and his organization have poured countless amounts of time, money and effort into making that simple promise harder and harder to achieve.
In its relentless effort to defeat the Sandy Hook Promise and block common sense, life saving gun violence legislation, NRA leadership has shown no boundary it will not cross—including injecting its fear-based messages into the homes, the sanctuaries, of a grieving community.
What NRA leadership simply refuses to acknowledge is that, despite their hopes and efforts, the Connecticut effect is not going to fade. In fact, it is growing, and it will not go away until we get the weapons of war off our streets, provide law enforcement the tools they need to enforce the laws on the books, improve the safety of our schools (and I don’t mean vigilante dads and teachers with guns), and strengthen our mental health system. With or without the NRA, we will act.
My message to NRA leadership: Stop these invasive, unconscionable calls. Join the vast majority of Americans and Newtown residents in supporting common sense measures to stem and stop gun violence.
If you agree, join me in urging NRA leadership to cease and desist these inhumane calls by calling them at 1-800-672-3888.
By: Senator Richard Blumenthal, Guest Blogger; Think Progress, March 25, 2013
“A Terrible Way To Live”: The Unending Soul-Gripping Terror Of The Red-State Democrat
Over the weekend, we learned that New York mayor Michael Bloomberg will spend $12 million airing ads in 13 states pushing senators to support expanded background checks for gun purchases. NRA honcho Wayne LaPierre, in his usual restrained fashion, described Bloomberg’s engagement as “reckless” and “insane,” but what’s so remarkable is that this is something you need an ad war to accomplish. After all, universal background checks (which would extend such checks to gun shows and private sales) enjoy pretty much universal support, with polls showing around 90 percent of Americans in favor, including overwhelming majorities of Republicans and gun owners.
And yet, not only are lots of Republicans still holding back, but even some Democrats are afraid to take a position on universal background checks. Greg Sargent reports that at least five Democratic senators—Mark Pryor (AR), Mary Landrieu (LA), Kay Hagen (NC), Joe Donnelly (IN) and Heidi Heitkamp (SD)—are refusing to say where they stand on the issue. There’s only one reason why: the abject, soul-gripping fear of the red-state Democrat.
There are certainly some times when a legislator would want to withhold judgment on an issue or a bill. Maybe it’s highly technical, or complex and multifaceted, or something that hasn’t been contemplated before, and she needs time to study it and weigh the pros and cons before making a decision. But this isn’t one of those cases. Sure, there are some particulars that would need to be worked out, but at this point the question is relatively simple: Do you support requiring some kind of background check for private gun sales, or not?1
But even with the knowledge that they would have pretty much their entire constituencies behind them if they came out for universal checks, they can’t bring themselves to say where they stand.
This is just one obvious case, but if you’re a red-state Democrat, you have to live with this kind of fear all the time.2 Since you know your party is unpopular in your home state, you have to be constantly looking for ways you can buck the party, and worrying about the times when you support the things your party stands for. Even if your leadership understands the necessity, it has to make things a bit uncomfortable with your colleagues. You’re forever worrying that the voters you represent will grow angry with you, and saying to them, in effect, “Please don’t be mad at me.” And the more the issue touches on “cultural” matters implicating what people see as their identities, the more fear it inspires, since the senator doesn’t want to be tarred with the lethal “She’s not one of us” attack in her next election.
All politicians have to worry about upsetting the folks back home, which is why they aren’t, as a group, particularly courageous. But the more precarious your electoral situation is, the less freedom you have to just say what you believe. And the red-state Democrats act as though they have no freedom at all. It just seems like a terrible way to live.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, March 25, 2013
1. The NRA’s argument against universal background checks has two parts. The first is that criminals won’t get them, so why bother? By that logic, of course, there’s no point in having laws against murder or robbery either. The second is that it will be an inconvenience for law-abiding gun owners, adding crushing “bureaucracy” to the simple process of adding to your arsenal. The truth, however, is that there are so many licensed gun dealers in America that you’re never more than a few miles from one. I made some graphs breaking out the numbers state by state here; Mayors Against Illegal Guns (an organization funded by Bloomberg) distributed the data geographically to show that 98.4 percent of Americans live within ten miles of a gun dealer. What that means is that instead of completing your gun purchase in 60 seconds, it might take you an hour, since you’d have to go down to the gun shop and have them run a check. Unless you’re buying a gun every day, that doesn’t seem like that much of a burden.
2. There are some blue state Republicans too, but for some reason they don’t seem to have so many visible displays of terror. Perhaps Mark Kirk and Susan Collins wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, having suffered through nightmares in which their constituents chase after them with pitchforks and torches, enraged by their refusal to support minimum-wage hikes and same-sex marriage. But somehow I doubt it.
“The Foreigners Are Coming”: Wayne LaPierre’s “Red Dawn” Moment
What’s the problem with universal background checks? If you listened to National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre at the Conservative Political Action Committee you learned that not only is it a tool for the U.S. government to come take your guns—you probably knew that already—but for the Chinese and Mexican governments to as well. I guess maybe he’s watched “Red Dawn” one time too many?
LaPierre went into what has become his usual line against universal background checks—that it’s just a ruse for a nefarious agenda. “In the end there are only two reasons for government to create that federal registry of gun owners—to tax them or to take them,” he said at one point. (It’s worth noting that the NRA is somewhat schizophrenic on background checks, sometimes supporting them and sometimes seeing them as the next step toward fascism.)
I’d heard the anti-U.S. government paranoia before. But I hadn’t heard this bit before:
What’s the point of registering lawful gun owners anyway? So newspapers can print those names and addresses for criminals and gangs to access? So that list can be hacked by foreign entities like the Chinese, who recently hacked Pentagon computers? So that list can be handed over to the Mexican government that, oh by the way, has already requested it.
Umm. Why would the Chinese care about who in the United States owns guns? Or the Mexicans for that matter? Are the Chinese and/or the Mexicans coming to invade? He didn’t elaborate but it’s certainly the implication of the comment. Why else would they want to know which U.S. citizens are armed?
Like I said, maybe before he came on stage he watched the classic 1984 film “Red Dawn” to psych himself up? If you’ve seen the movie you’ll recall that at one point one of the invading Cuban officers (when did Mexico pass Cuba on the threat-meter?) instructs one of his subordinates to go to the local sporting goods store and retrieve “form 4473” which, he says, has “descriptions of weapons and lists of private owners.” (Another shot opens with the camera on a bumper sticker promising, “They can have my gun when they pry it from my cold dead fingers;” the camera then pans down to an American corpse clutching a handgun—and then a Communist jack-boot slams down on the arm and an invader pries the weapon away.)
On a serious note, however, this is just classic of LaPierre, and of a piece with his fantasy that after Hurricane Sandy, Brooklyn became some sort of “Mad Max”-esque wasteland where only the armed survived: It’s fear mongering—you’d better be armed because the urban folk and the foreigners are coming to get you.
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, March 15, 2013
“A Direct Correlation”: Stricter Gun Laws Mean Fewer Fatalities
A study released last week by JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association): Internal Medicine shows a direct correlation between gun laws and gun-related fatalities. While the study is mainly based on the number of gun laws, not the type (it doesn’t, for example, specify which particular laws are the most effective), it confirms that generally speaking, stricter gun laws result in fewer deaths.
The report, entitled “Firearm Legislation and Firearm-Related Fatalities in the United States,” developed a method for rating states depending on the degree of the gun laws in place. How far state laws go to control gun trafficking, effectiveness of a background-check system, focus on child safety, restriction on military-style assault weapons, and whether state laws allow individuals to carry guns in public places were all considered when ranking each state.
The states that come in at the top of the list for strong gun laws are Massachusetts, California, New Jersey, Connecticut and New York. Aside from California, which is closer to the median, these states also have the lowest average of firearms deaths per year. The states on the other end of the list—those with the most lenient gun laws—include Alaska, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Utah, all of which have among the highest percentage of deaths per year.
The authors conclude from their data that just owning a gun puts individuals at risk, and the federal government should focus on limiting gun ownership entirely. “One way that firearm legislation may act to reduce firearm fatalities is through reducing firearm prevalence. Studies have shown a strong connection between gun ownership and firearm suicide and firearm homicide,” says the report. “A cross-sectional study of all 50 states from 2001 to 2003 found that higher rates of household firearm ownership were associated with significantly higher rates of homicide.”
The NRA’s Wayne LaPierre has stood adamantly against the implementation of new federal gun laws, citing these measures as an all-out attack on responsible gun owners with a view to taking away their guns, and a complete waste of time since the government fails to enforce laws already in place. LaPierre has completely ignored and opposed proposals that include universal background checks, banning military-style weapons, and outlawing high-capacity magazines. During an interview, the NRA CEO tried to shift blame for growing gun violence when he said, “Look, a gun is a tool. The problem is the criminal.”
At the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), LaPierre said, “Across the board, violent crime in jurisdictions that recognize the right to carry is lower than in areas that prevent it.” During a January Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gun violence, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) repeated this statement nearly verbatim. The problem with this logic is that there are far too many exceptions when piecing together a direct connection between any one lax gun law and a decrease in gun-related violence—other factors in society can trigger an increase or decrease.
The JAMA study focuses on gun-related fatalities, as opposed to gun-related violence. It also doesn’t delve into the specificity of each law, but instead measures the efficacy of all gun laws in each respective state by assigning one point for every law passed, all while taking into consideration the magnitude of the laws and the state’s demographic data.
Read the results of the study here.
A 2004 study by The National Academies Press called “Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review” shows that since the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban (which expired in 2004) was passed, total murder rates and handgun murder rates have declined considerably.
In the 1990s, Congress voted to reduce funding for the Centers for Disease Control, a leading research source on gun control. Before the funding was cut, the CDC found that having a gun in the home put families at a far higher risk for suicide and homicide. President Obama signed an executive order that provides funding to the CDC for this type of research, which is telling of the president’s commitment to passing effective, sensible legislation.
LaPierre, Sen. Cruz, and other opponents of stricter gun laws can make claims that more lenient gun laws lead to a decrease in gun violence, but the data to support those claims is plainly non-existent. The JAMA study reiterates what a recent Quinnipiac University poll points out: A majority of Americans support stricter gun laws despite opposition from the NRA and NRA-funded Republicans—and it’s in the people’s best interests to do so.
By: Allison Brito, The National Memo, March 10, 2013
“A Patron Saint For Handguns?”: The Lizard Incident That Produced Wayne LaPierre And The NRA
When a new pope gets elected later this month, one of the many decisions he will face is whether to grant official recognition to anoint a Patron Saint of Handgunners.
The candidate is Saint Gabriel Possenti, a 19th century Italian monk who allegedly saved a village from bandits with a handgun before dying of tuberculosis at 23.
The St. Gabriel Possenti Society established itself over 20 years ago with the sole purpose of getting Possenti recognized as handgun enthusiasts’ official saint, agitating and campaigning on his behalf. The 501(c)3 charity group, whose seal includes a drawing of Possenti and a revolver, encourages members to lobby local clergymen, write letters to Vatican officials, and “obtain numerous Gun Saint tokens and deposit them in church collection baskets of your denomination.”
According to the group, Saint Gabriel Possenti saved the villagers of Isola del Gran Sasso from a marauding gang of 20 renegade soldiers by demonstrating his marksmanship with a revolver in 1860. When the gangsters (whom the group notes were also “would-be rapists”) descended on the town, Possenti fired at a lizard in the road and killed it with a single shot.
The bandits, terrified by his excellent shot, fled the town and the day was saved. “St. Gabriel Possenti performed this feat of courage without causing physical harm to a single human being,” they note.
The legend, however, may be little more than that, as some allege the gun incident never occurred. One website dedicated to the saint notes that the tale only appears in one of the four biographies on Possenti, and that the author of the relevant one, Rev. Godfrey Poage, acknowledged that “some of the accounts in his book were invented to ‘enliven’ the story.” Furthermore, Possenti died only two years later and thus would likely have been in late stages of tuberculosis, the critics note, and thus in no shape to fight off 20 armed gangsters.
In a statement sent today marking the upcoming feast day of the saint, Society Chairman John Snyder acknowledged the historical dispute and defended the “lizard incident.”
“The Poage account of the lizard incident remained non-controversial for over a quarter of a century. It wasn’t until I began promoting St. Gabriel Possenti as a Patron of Handgunners in the late 1980s that anti-gun bigots began a belated attempt to attack the account of the lizard incident. It seems they are more concerned with being politically correct than historically accurate,” Snyder said.
Snyder wrote a whole book about the incident, “Gun Saint,” which features an illustration of the young Saint Gabriel Possenti firing a gun as bearded gangsters flee in all directions.
The group even claims biblical passages support the use of guns for self-defense. You can read about them in a printed monograph, which the Society will send to you for a reasonable contribution of $10.
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, February 21, 2013
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 
