You couldn’t make this stuff up.
Sen. Marc Rubio, R-Fla, admitted that he’s opposing a bill that he hasn’t read — not just that he hasn’t read it, but that he doesn’t really know what’s it in.
“On Fox News Sunday, Sen. Marco Rubio [R-Florida] denounced the Senate’s gun control bill while admitting that he hasn’t actually read it all. [Give him points for honesty; now, we watch to see if he does the remedial work.]
This is the bookend to the complaint that the anti gun violence bill shouldn’t be debated, because it’s unavailable to read. Actually, it is available.
It’s not the contents of the bill that got their ire up. It’s the surface politics, the public relations, the political correctness.
PoliticsUSA didn’t see the humor in it, but instead joined the unedified braying:
When asked by Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace if his filibuster threat on background checks meant that he would also vote against the final Manchin/Toomey bill, Rubio said, “Well to be fair, I haven’t read it in its totality, but I can tell you this, I am very skeptical of any plan that deals with the Second Amendment because invariably these gun laws end up impeding on the rights of people to bear arms who are law abiding and do nothing to keep criminals from buying them. Criminals don’t care what the law is.”
Rubio also added that we shouldn’t be focused on guns. We should be focused on violence.
How in the world does a sitting United States Senator prepare for appearing on all five Sunday shows and not read the legislation that is currently being debated in place where he works?
What are taxpayers paying Rubio to do?
Here’s a clue, senators: We need work from you to help control gun violence, and mass violence in our schools. You’ve narrowly voted to discuss such a bill, which is the purpose for which you were elected and collect more than $100,000 in salary.
Do your jobs, gentlemen and ladies. Get off your duffs, go to the floor, discuss with other senators, and vote on the stuff the nation needs you to pass to keep up our drive to peace, prosperity, truth and the American Way.
High school debate was about winning the round. Senate debate is about improving the nation. You’re in the big leagues now. Act like you know it, and like you know how to play the game.
(PoliticsUSA has video, but in a format I can’t embed here; if you know where embeddable video might be found, please let us know in coments.)
More:
- Rubio, Inhofe vow to filibuster gun bill – UPI.com (upi.com)
- CT Gov. set to sign gun control bill (foxprovidence.com)
- Inhofe on victims’ families: Obama made them think gun debate ‘has something to do with them’ (dailykos.com)
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Your appeal, “Hitler favored it,” was a cheap dodge and a stupid argument at best. That it is also contrary to the facts is another symptom of how shallow your responses have grown.
Well…I’ll have to agree with the “shallow” part of it, we don’t have to do too much digging to show how you’re all wet on this one. Like I’ve said already, you’ve been checked-and-mated now that you’re pretending a thing is the opposite of itself. That’s about as close to an admission of defeat out of Ed Darrell, as anyone’s ever gonna get.
Looks like we have to bust out the dictionary. Even then, though, you can’t jump a King in Chess, so I’m sure you’ll double-down on doubling-down on doubling down. Still, for the benefit of the written record…
Def. 5 is irrelevant, def. 4 is the only one that supports your argument in any way, but even there Hitler passed restrictions on who was allowed to have guns. I’m still not clear on why you’re trying to dodge this.
And, of course, defs. 3, 2 and 1 all apply directly to American proponents of gun control. As well as to Adolf Hitler. Directly. Would any of them apply to Thomas Jefferson, I wonder? In my mind, he was a true gun control opponent. You would equate Jefferson to Hitler, in some way? If so, I’d like to know more. This is getting good enough for the Sarcastic Willy Wonka meme generator.
Now if you really wanted to strain yourself, I suppose you could argue that Hitler was controlling the who but this is not similar to gun control in the modern U.S., whose advocates seek to control the what (magazines holding 30 rounds, barrel shrouds, bullet-buttons, et al). Even that wouldn’t work, though because the gun control advocates we have are a big, sloppy, kissin’-cousin mishmash of control freaks who seek to control the why (deer hunting versus home defense versus insurrection) as well as the where (gun ranges) and, yes, the who, just like Hitler (only the police should be armed, many of them insist).
Here I am actually trying to help you out. It still isn’t working, because for you to continue to try to save face, you have to flout the Law of Identity which is, like, the most fundamental out of all of the Laws of Thought: A thing is what it is. Hitler controlled guns. He was not on the side of the Tea Party, or of Thomas Jefferson, with their desires that the people be in charge. He was a statist. A leftist dictator. National Socialist. The state decides everything. No matter how you cut it, that’s pro-gun-control, and pro lots-of-other-things control. It isn’t even something unique to Hitler, that’s what dictators tend to do. They want their friends to have exclusive access to just about everything. Good food, good medicine, good education for their children…and the guns.
So now we’ve gone to the dictionary. What’s your next step to try to salvage this? Can’t wait to see it. I’ll go microwave the popcorn…
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Factoids:
(Source)
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http://news.yahoo.com/mormon-bishop-samurai-sword-runs-off-attacker-233001935.html
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Argument Morgan might understand:
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Your appeal, “Hitler favored it,” was a cheap dodge and a stupid argument at best. That it is also contrary to the facts is another symptom of how shallow your responses have grown. You started out defending Rubio’s, Lee’s, Paul’s and Cruz’s attempts to remain ignorant, AND be belligerent about it, but you rather rapidly changed course to try to make it a “smart 2nd Amendment advocate vs. stupid hippy pacifist” story — except, I’m no hippy pacifist (and I’ll let your writing provide judgment on the other end).
You’ve never offered a good reason we shouldn’t work to keep bad people from getting guns. Ultimately you fell back on the absurd claim that background checks aren’t enough to stop all gun violence (no one said they were), and so, you logically stretch, we shouldn’t try anything at all.
What we need is a lot more ease of access to mental health care, a diminution of the stigma that comes when people seek mental health treatment, and some way to at least alert crime prevention authorities when a person who may abuse a gun to cause death an injury in others (without the usual criminal motivations), so that prevention can work. A pre-sale clearance process was proposed by the NRA a few generations ago, and it would work if we would allow it to work.
Those are initial steps.
Just after Newtown, NRA said they’d support all of that. They criticized the Obama administration for not doing enough.
Then, when it came time to vote on more money for mental health, NRA took a hypocritical powder.
And when Obama proposed to make the pre-sale clearances work better, NRA called him a “dictator.”
So, Morgan, when you copy their arguments, in about the same sequence, I find it difficult to grant you any credence at all.
Sen. Feinstein introduced a bill to re-impose the ban on civilians getting military weapons, and to limit the size of clips. The Newtown murderer used 30 bullet clips that probably increased his victim count by at least ten, maybe by 20.
That didn’t even get to the floor — but on the basis that you opposed something that wasn’t even being proposed, you favored the rant of ignorance from the RWNJ senators who announced they were filibustering for murderers’ rights (well, they didn’t admit they were doing it for the murderers, but they sure as heaven weren’t doing it for the victims and survivors).
A clip limitation would provide precious time to intended victims of mass shooting incidents, to get out of harms way. At least eight, and as many as a dozen intended targets at Newtown are alive today because the murderer had to change clips. You keep avoiding any comment on Sen. Mike Johnston’s speech in the Colorado Senate, I suspect because you know there is no good rebuttal.
But that wasn’t even on the table.
What other things would help?
NRA proposes arming a lot more people, on the theory that a lot more bullets flying around will tend to discourage criminals and mass shooters. That’s a discussion worth having, I think — the evidence runs exactly counter. The Aurora murderer (alleged) appears to have been looking for exactly such a fight. Same with the Virginia Tech murderer. And the Columbine murderers were prepared with bombs to face off against anyone with guns. Statistics show that guns purchased for protection are more likely to be stolen, more likely to be used against the people they were supposed to protect, more likely to be abused, more likely to be used in murder, more likely to be used in suicide, more likely to kill in accidents.
But it’s a discussion worth having, just to get all that out.
I suspect that’s another reason for the filibuster. Reasonable people looking at the actual statistics would draw a conclusion different from the one you want.
We need to have a discussion on whether any civilian, outside of an official, government sponsored militia, should have any access to military-style assault weapons. I think shooting a .30 or .50 caliber machine gun is a lot of fun — but I don’t really want my neighbors to have one, and I don’t want the responsibility of caring for such a weapon here in the house. I can’t imagine a strong defense being made for keeping those weapons.
Nor do I see hand grenades getting much of a defense.
So I think we could start discussions of reasonable restrictions on arms, well within the traditional, founder-intended and founder-created limitations on arms ownership. AR-15s are fun to shoot, but not sporting rifles. They were designed as human killers. We need to have a discussion over whether any civilian not on a police force should have unfettered access to human-killing machines.
But you don’t want to talk.
Words don’t break bones, but cop-killer bullets, and the tumblers out of AR-15s, do serious, unhealable damage to people.
No, killing-machine control is not the same as speech restrictions.
You missed the “Citizens United” decision out of the Supreme Court? Corporations always love it when the proles (you, me) shoot each other up, instead of being able to get a megaphone to tell the truth.
I wish you wouldn’t fall so willingly into the “prole” pigeon hole.
Yes, it’s escaped me — I don’t think that’s accurate. I think there’s a lot of racism involved, which explains why NRA was in favor of background checks when the Black Panthers were arming themselves, but not now when it’s the White Panthers.
Neither group should be able to establish an anti-government para-military group with enough firepower to maim and kill citizens. The Constitution does not have a “to the strong and well-armed go the spoils” amendment; it should protect us against such injustice.
You want to protect your home? You don’t need cop-killer bullets. You don’t need AR-15s. Most of the people who badly need a gun to protect them, can’t get the gun, and don’t know how to use them. If you really wanted that to work, you’d support the NRA offering concealed-carry classes in Harlem, Watts, South Dallas, South Chicago and other areas with heavy African-American or other darker-skinned ethnic groups — support gun discounts there, too.
But you don’t even want to discuss it.
You are too smart to be superstitious about the placement of the amendments. They were written according to the places in the existing Constitution they would go — and the 27th Amendment was proposed first.
There would be no 2nd Amendment without the First — but you don’t hesitate to get them out of order to sacrifice discussion required to make the First work, if any of that discussion affects your odd reading of the 2nd.
Hitler did not increase the number of newspapers, nor removed restrictions on anyone talking.
I wasn’t the one who made the false claim on that issue, Morgan, you did.
All we need to do is stick to the facts. Hitler wasn’t in favor of free speech. But neither did he increase controls on gun ownership.
And if he did, that wouldn’t be any reason we shouldn’t work to prevent other similarly crazy people from getting guns.
<blocqkuote I’m sure a lot more words were spoken when he gave one of his wonderful Obama-style super-charismatic speeches. Film from that era certainly shows Germany to be a vocal place. More words, does that mean more “free” speech? Or are you imposing a different standard for control-versus-freedom, between the speech and the guns?
You’re really unfamiliar with that history, aren’t you.
No wonder you fear discussing the issues. Someone might listen.
I’m not rationalizing anything — you’re trying to redefine words to defend the rights of killers to use unarmed children as shooting targets.
I think that’s immoral, and it should be illegal, and better, we should work to prevent it from ever happening.
The modern age is made by small miracles, clean water, working sewers, working ranges in every home, clean food, safe drugs, antibiotics, medical advances.
We sacrifice a lot when we chuck that, let loose a flood of killing arms, and say, “Well, we can’t do anything about those bad guys, except shoot ’em when we can.” We shouldn’t make those sacrifices. We can do something about those bad guys, and we should.
Even if we have to run over those who want to be speed bumps, in the process.
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Actually if I’m reading you right, you’d be the one coming up with a Newspeak version of the word “control.” It’s all about the quantity, right? If it’s all up to the whim of the state, and the private citizen has to sit on his haunches waiting for them to decide what they’re going to do…then the decision comes out, and they’re going to permit the private citizen to have some more guns…on Planet Darrell that is not control.
I think — it is “not control” the same way free speech is not control. Rich, powerful aristocrats may despise what you say or what I say, they may want like the dickens to shut us up, but not be able to do it. That is not-control. That is good, old-fashioned freedom.
So I guess it’s escaped your notice that when people oppose gun control in the United States, they’re simply wanting the same thing for guns. Which seems to be the original intent of the first two amendments…logical when you think about it, no? Amendment I, Amendment II.
By your logic, Hitler was in favor of free speech. I’m sure a lot more words were spoken when he gave one of his wonderful Obama-style super-charismatic speeches. Film from that era certainly shows Germany to be a vocal place. More words, does that mean more “free” speech? Or are you imposing a different standard for control-versus-freedom, between the speech and the guns?
Again, I’m sure you’ll always be able to rationalize your funky definitions in your own mind no matter how far we run down this bunny trail. I’m curious about how much twisting & turning you’re going to have to do in order to get that done.
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In 1938 Nazi Germany reformed its gun control laws to encourage Germans to buy more guns, removing restrictions on ownership and registration — except for persecuted populations.
Morgan wants us to regard that as Adolf Hitler’s contribution to “librul politics.” I said inter alia ‘…no, that’s not fair to call it gun control. It’s not accurate, either.”
Under the Clean Air Law, some emissions are permitted. If a company is not required to reduce any of its emissions, it’s not “pollution control.”
Under the 1938 law in Germany, MORE guns were encouraged to be purchased (and were), MORE people got guns. More guns were spread throughout the population with fewer controls.
Only in an extremely technical sense could that be considered “control” — cue the “technical bastard” joke.
No, it’s not gun control to ease restrictions on gun ownership for 80% of the population, to push more guns into the population, and to make it easier for most people to get guns — not any more than our current system is “gun control,” simply because poor people cannot afford to buy good guns.
Hey, you offered the link to the Nazi law. Did you read it? Here’s the section that talks about “restrictions;” look at each provision:
So, Morgan, let’s look seriously at what you call “control”:
1. Easier acquisition and transfer of rifles and shotguns, and ammunition
2. Legal age of ownership expanded two years downward
3. Permits valid for longer periods, which means less oversight
4. More people exempt from permits; many more people exempt from all restrictions on gun ownership
If a U.S. law did any of those things, would NRA say anything other than “attaboy?”
Your claim that we should call an expansion of gun ownership “gun control” smacks of the Doublespeak Orwell needled satirically, doesn’t it?
Morgan said:
Don’t you dare blame me for your attempts to twist history and language into forms they do not wish to have, and should not have.
First point of the Scout Law, Morgan. Live it.
Did you ever read 1984? Find a high school class studying the thing, and join them. Either you’ll learn the error of your ways, or you’ll learn new tricks to try on someone much more gullible than I.
The GOP platform in Texas condemns “critical thinking;” your propaganda attempts may have a large audience here in a few years.
You were the one who invoked Hitler. However, you claimed Hitler restricted gun ownership, when in fact he expanded it greatly.
“Facts are stubborn things,” John Adams said. Even more stubborn than your error, we hope.
I’m grateful for that spirit. I think you err in thinking I need more instruction than I do in that — but your heart’s in the right place on many things, even when somone’s dumped a load of misshapen history on you.
I’ve often thought the politics would change under certain circumstances. When the Black Panthers urged African Americans to arm themselves back in the Johnson-Nixon years, gun control was quite popular among the white, country-club/redneck axis. If it became known that applications for concealed-carry permits in Texas are 75% to African Americans and Hispanics, I think support for the program would crumble.
There will be a lot of rethinking of this stuff in Texas even without color. While the GOP are busy hammering away at teachers on “being shadow commies AND Muslim-lovers,” about 800 teachers showed up for the free-to-teachers concealed-carry instruction sessions the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and more showed up at other sessions. It puts a new character on the teacher rating sessions; and when the GOP realizes that teachers may be arming because the GOP insists on calling them commies, one policy or the other will bend.
(Of course, I’m assuming three working gray cells in GOP minds here; not sure that’s accurate. They’re still puzzling over how to blame Obama for the West, Texas disaster without calling attention to their having slashed the budgets for environmental and safety enforcement, and recruiting, training and equipping of volunteer fire departments like West’s. We have several billions in surplus funds we could fix those problems quickly, if the GOP gave a damn about dead firefighters.)
And just as you do, too. Any “gun control” that makes it easier for whites to get guns to shoot people of color, that makes it easier for rednecks to threaten people who advocate for rights and progressive change, you favor. Any “anti-gun-control” which makes it more difficult for crazy rednecks to get guns, however, you oppose.
Some of us did read Orwell, and know what you’re really saying. We’re not quite so slow as Winston Smith.
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…no, that’s not fair to call it gun control. It’s not accurate, either.
It isn’t fair or accurate to call control, control? Since when?
We’ve been here before a few times: I will never, ever, ever convince you to ‘fess up that you’re wrong about anything, so the exercise becomes something like Chess, in which the King will never actually be jumped. Just as the best you can achieve in Chess is a check-mate, the best I can achieve with an Ed Darrell argument is to define exactly how reality has to be pressed and molded and twisted around, to make Ed’s idea look like a good one.
The check-mate is complete: We have to make things look like their opposites. We have to make control, look like something other than control.
It seems the problem is, the lack-of-control is something that is outside of your comprehension. Let’s look at it this way, shall we: I am opposed to gun control, therefore, according to your warped view of reality I should be similar to Hitler. It doesn’t work because in spite of our many disagreements, if you were to wake up tomorrow morning determined to get hold of a gun and learn how to use it, and approach me and say “Morgan, in spite of our many disagreements, I would like your help choosing a gun and learning how to use it” — I would help you, just as I’ve helped you locate links to cartoons on occasion. Provided you’re sane and responsible, which I think you are. That isn’t to say we would reconcile on anything; I don’t/wouldn’t care. I’d help you get a gun.
That, clearly, is not the policy Hitler had in mind. He wanted the gun access to be reserved for the “good” people, and restricted from his political enemies. Just as, in America, those who support gun control do not necessarily support gun confiscation (unless you include James K., and when he’s really upset about something).
It all comes down to this: The old adage is correct, gun control doesn’t have that much to do with guns. It’s about control.
Hitler favored it, just as I said.
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When you’re increasing the number of guns, when you’re making it easier to buy guns, when you’re making it easier to transfer guns, when you’re increasing the number of people who have guns with no barriers — no, that’s not fair to call it gun control. It’s not accurate, either.
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Ed,
When you’re controlling who is allowed to have the guns, that’s gun control.
I’m right about that, aren’t I? If we have to debate the meaning of “gun control” down past that level, then we also have to debate what a “fact” is, and if we have to debate that then you don’t have credibility when you start talking about “damn the facts.” It’s a bit like trying to figure out where to put your credit rating when you’ve been caught counterfeiting.
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Not gun control. Where is the control?
As the author of the Fordham LR article noted, gun ownership restrictions were eased in 1938 — for everyone but Jews and communists. Sales were easier, registration was reduced — it’s just the contrary of what you and the NRA claim.
One more example of where it’s damn the facts and children, full shooting ahead, for you and Wayne LaPierre.
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You know who favored gun control? Hitler, that’s who. Except that he didn’t.
If your policy is, everyone may freely own guns, as long as my government is constantly updated with regard to who has them, and by “everyone” what I mean is only those people I happen to like…I would call that “gun control.” What would you call it?
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You know who favored gun control? Hitler, that’s who.
Except that he didn’t.
“Good Germans” were encouraged to have as many guns as possible. White Arayans were perfectly welcome to own guns. What gun control policies were supported by the Nazis were applicable to Communists, trade unionists, Jews and non-Arayans.
But do please play the Hitler card. It makes it so much easier to chew up and spit out.
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Tell me about how we’re discussing ideas, when you regularly deride good people in your writings. I’ll give you some credence on your claim when you lead the way. “Muffin heads,” you called ‘em. Is this yours, too?
Show us you’re not a muffin head, Morgan. Explain why you oppose background checks as a great infringement on some right (specify the right, and justify it), when you claim at the same time they can’t work.
It’s an infringement. The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. When the people who don’t own guns, are coming up with background checks — which as we saw in Tucson and Aurora, don’t actually get the backgrounds checked — just to mess around with the people who do own guns, or want to own guns, just because they think they’ve got the votes to get the legislation passed, then our democracy becomes the old thing about “two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for lunch” and then that is when the Constitution kicks in and puts constraints on the government power. The Second Amendment doesn’t say “guns” or “muskets” or “hunting,” what it is specifying is that the people are to retain the power. It codifies our relationship with the government, continuing the sentiment in the Preamble, as well as in much of the language beneath, that the government’s authority is limited to the legislative, executive and judicial. In pre-teenage-speak, you might say they-are-not-the-boss-of-us.
I wonder if, while you and I are demonstrating for each other that we’re not muffinheads, perhaps you can answer the question the muffinhead in the video couldn’t answer. Why is it “not a strong argument” to say, if guns are outlawed then only outlaws can have guns. Also, do you think it’s good that the kids on our campuses are being taught how to just throw out statements like this that they can’t back up?
Now, the Hitler-and-evidence thing is an easy one. Are you saying Adolf Hitler was opposed to gun control? If you are, then we can commence with the “link wars” and see what the evidence says. If not, then your debunking stands revealed as what I’ve noticed your debunking very often is, and that’s just distraction.
I said Hitler was for gun control; he kept the existing gun ownership restrictions and regulations in place, and expanded their applicability to all guns; evidently there’s some “debunking” going on about “Hitler banned gun ownership” and you’re trying to shoehorn my claim, into that other claim, so you can pull out some victory here.
I think, going forward, you should probably stick to debunking some things you can actually debunk. Stop trying to go after the stuff that really is true.
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LaPierre should have little credibility. On a Thursday he met with Obama and Biden, told them they needed to beef up support for background checks. On Friday, he told PBS Obama’s a turd for not beefing up background checks, as Obama announced he would do what LaPierre suggested. On Monday, LaPierre said beefing up background checks is a stupid idea, and he’d oppose ’em.
You could call him a snake, but that’s an insult to snakes. You could call him a cockroach, but cockroaches are clean and sanitary by comparison.
Consequently, I wonder just how in the hell anyone could “besmirch” LaPierre beyond what his own hypocritical, misanthropic, anti-child behaviors do?
Worse, I wonder how anyone could defend him. Judas at least sold out for money.
Tell me about how we’re discussing ideas, when you regularly deride good people in your writings. I’ll give you some credence on your claim when you lead the way. “Muffin heads,” you called ’em. Is this yours, too?
Show us you’re not a muffin head, Morgan. Explain why you oppose background checks as a great infringement on some right (specify the right, and justify it), when you claim at the same time they can’t work.
I’d love to hear you explain what WOULD work to reduce gun violence. I mean reduce it, so arming the kiddies at school doesn’t count.
You can’t defend the crude opposition and sheer power play that leaves Americans much more endangered from guns than any other first world nation; so you claim we play unfair poking fun at Wayne LaPierre?
Would it be okay if I just called him a “muffin head?”
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Morgan, go here for the gun use statistics you refuse to look for — turns out, guns aren’t much used for self-defense. You’re more likely to be killed by your own gun, if you get one, than you are likely to be killed by a gun if you don’t have one at all.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/04/charts-debunking-myth-guns-self-defense
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Which is why it’s a bad idea to claim Hitler was for gun control, when the facts tend to show something else completely.
Actually, if you look into it, they don’t do that.
This is part of debunking-101, or at least it should be: If someone reads your “debunking,” then takes the time to check it all out and sift through all the relevant information, and the original claim is left standing…you didn’t debunk.
But you missed the larger point. Are we discussing people, or ideas? You besmirch Mr. La Pierre and that’s somehow supposed to mean something. That isn’t how grown-ups discuss things, and there’s a reason for that…just about any idea in the world, is going to be opposed by all sorts of people and supported by all sorts of people. Sliming some advocate or some opponent, doesn’t demonstrate anything.
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Which is why it’s a bad idea to claim Hitler was for gun control, when the facts tend to show something else completely.
It’s part of the old saw that no dictator ever survived without gun control. Facts are that guns were not tightly controlled in places like Czechoslovakia, arms were easy to come by in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and lots of people had too many guns in Idi Amin’s Uganda.
Maybe you’d appreciate Santayana more if he’d said “Those who don’t know history let history bite them in the ass.”
The fact that the Weimar Republic had gun control PRIOR to Hitler’s rise to power simply means that Hitler didn’t impose it. That the laws were relaxed under Hitler completely refutes your ahistorical claim.
Hitler was for gun control? On Planet Morgan, maybe. On Earth, not so much.
Yes, you’re evidence impervious. Loughner’s run-ins with the law should have raised red flags, and his mental issues should have been reported, too — it appears they were not reported to the FBI. Arizona’s failure to report is not a failure of the FBI’s system, except as it’s been neutered by NRA; and consequently, your and the NRA’s claims that the law CANNOT work are suspect at least, and made false by the rabidity of your opposition. If you didn’t think the laws would work, why would you bother to oppose them?
I can’t find any indication that Arizona is yet reporting stuff to NCIC. Please show us they are.
It’s true what that guy said about the opponents to reasonable gun regulations: They like the thrill of child shootings, and they want Somalia to come to America.
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When you have to use propaganda to make things appear to be the opposite of what they really are, in order to make your idea look good, then that’s a sign your idea is probably bad.
Hitler was for gun control. So you want to make a big deal out of the fact that Germany had gun control prior to Hitler…so what? That somehow makes Hitler opposed to gun control, even though he was passing gun control laws? On Planet Salon, maybe.
And your background checks were given a fair shot in the case of Jarod Loughner; they failed. You want to blame that on the NRA somehow. “Evidence impervious,” they call that. Why do you push so hard for things that we know don’t work?
It’s true what that guy said; gun control advocates aren’t trying to prevent the next tragedy, they’re trying to exploit the last one.
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Morgan said:
Earlier I pointed out that NRA has worked to gut the execution of this law — successfully in this case.
President Obama ordered that the holes be fixed and — right on cue — NRA protested that the actions were authoritarian, unconstitutional, and won’t work. The irony in this is that Obama announced he would follow exactly what the NRA recommended to Vice President Biden’s group searching for solutions. In other words, Loughner’s ability to pass the FBI background check was facilitated by NRA’s hard work to prevent mental disability information from being reported to the FBI. Despite official reports, years of serious problems and run-ins with local police, apparently none of that showed up on the FBI system.
So, once again, you’ve sided with the Mr. Chutzpa, the guy who was convicted of murdering his parents, and asked for mercy at sentencing on the ground that he was an orphan.
You claim we shouldn’t have background checks because they don’t work. They don’t work where NRA has frustrated their working. NRA sardonically calls for toughening background checks and enforcement in criminal prosecutions, but then opposes all actions to toughen the background checks or increase criminal prosecutions.
The hard facts are you side with the shooters, and I cannot for the life of me imagine why. Your explanations don’t make sense.
What do you think would have happened had the gun dealer in Tucson called the local cops? Why won’t you allow the local cops to talk to the FBI?
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It would make a great deal of difference.
Hitler actually reduced gun controls on Germany, and advocated everybody arm themselves.
So, first, had he advocated gun control instead, you’d score some sort of odd point. George Washington’s town had gun control. I’m not sure what that means.
But second, we understand that someone is distorting history. Hitler didn’t advocate gun control the way NRA suggests. So we know there is no truth in history NRA and it’s wacko advocates won’t stomp on, a hobnail boot into the face of the truth forever.
Why would you fall sucker to that old one?
See: http://www.salon.com/2013/01/11/stop_talking_about_hitler/
The underlying Fordham Law Review article, by Bernard F. Harcourt: http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4029&context=flr
I call Godwin’s Law.
When Fascism comes to America, it will wrap itself in the U.S. flag, claim to be patriotic, distort history to be 180 degrees off from reality, and claim itself to be stopping a fascist dictator.
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I’ve seen no evidence to suggest the law wouldn’t have worked to prevent some of the gun and ammunition acquisition by the Boston bombers (is that the incident you’re referring to?)
In Aurora, had there been adequate reporting (frustrated by NRA), I think the Toomey-Manchin Amendment could have prevented gun acquisition. In Newtown, I’m not sure — I’m not comforted by knowing that a rage killer was able to get guns legally, and I think that suggests there is something grotesquely wrong with current law. If Mrs. Lanza had been required to sign that she was not making a straw purchase, would she?
In Tucson, I think there’s little doubt that a working pre-check would have prevented the shooter from purchasing guns. As it is, though the cops had been called to get him off of campus, and though there was a court order against him, that information appears not to have been available in the NRA-reduced reporting base — if it was reported at all.
Why do you think a background check wouldn’t have worked in any of those cases. On what do you base that judgment?
Right. In all cases, there’s no evidence to offer that your solution helps anything. As my compatriots have already pointed out, a neutral effect is not acceptable, as it’s simply a poor argument to offer. And if we want to try it on for size somewhere to see if it provides a beneficial effect, California provides all the proving ground you need.
I’ve seen no evidence to suggest the law wouldn’t have worked to prevent some of the gun and ammunition acquisition…
My, you do have a low bar for your own theses don’t you. “No evidence to suggest the law wouldn’t have.” Let’s all take snake oil for our headaches and stomach maladies and ingrown toenails. No evidence to suggest it doesn’t work.
In Aurora, had there been adequate reporting (frustrated by NRA), I think the Toomey-Manchin Amendment could have prevented…
But, again, what evidence do you have to offer. This case is a point for my side, as the background checks were applied, and passed; they didn’t work. You think the latest round of checks would have provided a different result somehow? What’s the rationale for that?
In Newtown, I’m not sure — I’m not comforted by knowing that a rage killer was able to get guns legally…If Mrs. Lanza had been required to sign that she was not making a straw purchase, would she?
Mrs. Lanza, from all I know about that case, didn’t make a “straw purchase,” she acquired these weapons for her own use. Her son stole them from her and ended her life with one of them. That’s already illegal, so you’re laboring under a misunderstanding there. What law, specifically, is being proposed to prevent that?
In Tucson, I think there’s little doubt that a working pre-check would have prevented the shooter from purchasing guns.
Well you think incorrectly since Jerod Loughner passed the FBI background check, which further substantiates what the gun rights groups have been saying. Like any other database system, it’s as good as the data in it. In software development we have a term for this, GIGO, Garbage In, Garbage Out.
Once the software is developed and it’s time to conduct security accreditation on what results, we have another saying about “imaginary safety belts” that aren’t really there: It’s worse than having no safety belts at all, since the users of the system believe there are protections in place that aren’t there, or aren’t effective, and this has an effect on their day-to-day behavior as they use the system. I’m afraid in the cases you have listed, the best evidence we have is that your precious “background checks” fall into that: They’re worse than nothing, since they don’t provide the protections people believe they provide.
Also, they inconvenience the law-abiding gun owners. Which is what some of your cohorts really want to get out of this, President Obama included. This is a cultural conflict; it’s one culture saying “screw you” to another. But it wouldn’t stop Lanza, Loughner, or Holmes.
Now, on to Mr. La Pierre: To quote an illustrious former Secretary of State, what difference, at this point, does that make. Hitler was in favor of gun control. Hey, this is fun. Are we discussing ideas, or the personalities & biographies behind them?
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I’ve seen no evidence to suggest the law wouldn’t have worked to prevent some of the gun and ammunition acquisition by the Boston bombers (is that the incident you’re referring to?)
In Aurora, had there been adequate reporting (frustrated by NRA), I think the Toomey-Manchin Amendment could have prevented gun acquisition. In Newtown, I’m not sure — I’m not comforted by knowing that a rage killer was able to get guns legally, and I think that suggests there is something grotesquely wrong with current law. If Mrs. Lanza had been required to sign that she was not making a straw purchase, would she?
In Tucson, I think there’s little doubt that a working pre-check would have prevented the shooter from purchasing guns. As it is, though the cops had been called to get him off of campus, and though there was a court order against him, that information appears not to have been available in the NRA-reduced reporting base — if it was reported at all.
Why do you think a background check wouldn’t have worked in any of those cases. On what do you base that judgment?
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You asked for laws that made it tougher on bad guys. Are you moving the goal posts, again?
Not at all. You referred to it as a “ploy” when someone says your solutions don’t work; and, I’m merely noting you can’t produce examples of where they’ve done what they’re supposed to do.
It’s as if intentions are being deliberately confused with outcome. Which is something to be expected with people whose credo is, as I’ve already written, “I am not prepared, and I do not want the other guy to be prepared either.”
In sum — it looks like you’re the one with a “ploy.” Seriously, why do we want to inconvenience gun owners or prospective buyers, with something that wouldn’t have worked in Boston/Aurora/Newton/Tucson? I struggle to find something I can call this besides “buckshot approach” because it seems like I’m trying to make a witty, firearm-related pun, when that is not the case. But also it doesn’t fit: With “buckshot approach” it’s typically to at least try to point the barrel in the general direction of the problem you’re trying to address…
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You asked for laws that made it tougher on bad guys. Are you moving the goal posts, again?
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And how many people were saved by VAWA? Are you confusing intent with outcome…again?
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Perhaps the Boston bombers should be forced to go to counseling for not submitting to background checks for their guns. That oughtta show ’em, or something?
I think this is part where we just come clean, and admit your “background check” is just a way to mess around with people who are part of a culture you hate. It hasn’t got a single thing to do with making any kids safer, anywhere.
Like Severian pointed out:
There are really only 3 possible real-world outcomes here, none of them flattering to liberals.
1) They honestly believe, cargo cult-style, that the word is the thing. If we simply pass a law that says “there shall be no more gun violence,” then gun violence will actually cease. Back when anthropology was a real thing, this was called “magical thinking” and only the most primitive civilizations did it.
2) They know it’s a useless feel-good measure but they want it anyway, because it makes them feel good — a nice virtue fix. And it’s one more inconvenience heaped on right-wing gun nuts, and you can’t have too many of those.
3) They honestly don’t know it’s a useless feel-good measure, and they’re too impervious to reason, evidence, and basic human nature to admit doubt.
I’m surprised you didn’t take me up on my challenge, and produce some examples of democrat-inspired rule-making or legislation that made things more onerous, expensive, time-consuming or difficult for the bad guys. Again, to the best I recall, if your pals were to pass a background-check bill and it became law, and as a direct result some lives really were saved as you continue to insist — that would be the first time such a thing happened.
But democrats don’t make things more difficult and time-consuming for bad guys. They make things that way for people who are trying to make a living, and help other people. The pattern is really quite well substantiated by now.
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o Violence Against Women Act
o Background Checks (especially made it tough on bad guys who are also members of NRA’s policy board — you do know that Wayne LaPierre was considered too much of a risk to allow into the military, don’t you?)
o 1934 Firearms Act (until Haynes, in which the defendant ironically argued that letting anyone know he had a gun was potentially incriminating evidence of a crime — and the Court agreed!)
More, pending.
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Ah, the old “background checks don’t work” ploy.
Well, no, they don’t work if you don’t use them. Morgan, the GOP says we cannot afford $2.18 to see whether a gun purchaser is a felon. In other words, they think your 2nd Amendment right isn’t worth $2.18.
Go figure.
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/02/28/The-Problem-with-Our-2-18-Gun-Buyer-Background-Check.aspx#page1
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Morgan has attributed a ton of stuff to me that I haven’t said…
Such as?
…all the while sliding off without proposing anything that could possibly protect a school kid.
Yeah, you know I think that’s okay. You started the discussion faulting Marco Rubio for not reading the entire bill before deciding to oppose it — implying rather heavily that he hadn’t read any of it, which turns out not to be the case. As far as the merits of concluding a bill should be opposed without reading all of it, I think Phil articulated that as well as anybody: A good argument could perhaps be paid that senators should read the bills stem-to-stern if they decide to support them, but there’s nothing wrong with skimming on through, running into something irreconcilable with the sensibilities of the senator or his constituency, or the Constitution, and saying “em, that’s a no-go.” It’s called a “deal breaker.” Not a complicated concept, people run into them, well heck, every day pretty much.
Cylar Z had something to say about this “background check” business, maybe he can get the point across to you, where I seem to have failed:
California is already doing all of that and we aren’t seeing results. I conceded to my cousin on FB the other day that we aren’t seeing any conclusive evidence that such measures are actually counterproductive, but that’s not really an acceptable answer. Reforms are supposed to generate measurable results, aren’t they? What’s the point of implementing something with a neutral impact on the problem?
Reading his comment, you know, it occurs to me: If the whole point of the exercise is to make a process expensive, time/energy-consuming, onerous & unworkable for the bad guys, and we want to base our actions on the lessons of history, I’d say step one would be to take EVERYTHING put together by democrats and just throw it out. It’s true they’re great at making things onerous & unworkable sometimes…but the pattern seems to hold that that’s only for the things that have to do with bringing medicines to market, starting businesses, moving freight across state lines, hiring people, helping people…
I can’t really think of a democrat policy that’s made it harder to kill people. Except for rules-of-engagement imposed on our troops serving overseas, maybe. But I struggle to think of any policy a democrat ever put in place that actually made things tougher for the bad guys.
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We rather backed into this discussion. Morgan has attributed a ton of stuff to me that I haven’t said, all the while sliding off without proposing anything that could possibly protect a school kid.
That’s the chief problem with gun proponents, it seems to me. While many of them — almost all, we hope — wouldn’t personally set up at a school and use kids for target practice, they think they should have the right to do it. Tragedies occur when others then exercise that right.
There are a lot of things we need to do in order to insure the safety of school kids. Gun advocates are unwilling to do any one thing, because one thing won’t work by itself; but they are also unwilling to do a series of things that will work. So every proposal that could help in any given situation earns indignant opposition from gun advocates and gun nuts (makes it hard to tell ’em apart), because it’s not a silver bullet (pun not intended, but take it for what it’s worth).
That’s where we came in, with Morgan defending gun-nut senators who refuse to even discuss the issue, claiming falsely that they don’t know weeks in advance what would be proposed, and claiming they can’t possibly discuss any proposal anyway.
Morgan said:
Actually, about 90% of Americans are in favor of background checks. They think crooks and crazies shouldn’t get their hands on guns to shoot kids with. Or to shoot anyone at all.
The Constitution isn’t opposed to it, either. In the history of the nation the courts have emphasized that the 2nd Amendment has a first clause that tells us something about what it was intended to do — that clause that talks about “well-trained militia.”
One court case disagrees, and says that clause should be stricken out when we read it.
Nothing in the Constitution states that citizens who are NOT part of a well-trained militia need access to guns at all. We’ve accepted that, but it’s not a Constitutionally-guaranteed right.
Nothing in the Constitution says citizens should be able to outgun police. When that started to occur after World War I, during Prohibition, Congress limited ownership of the Thompson submachine gun, and similar firepower. Even crazy Justice Scalia says there are limits on the arms citizens may own (he’s not said where that limit is, but it’s somewhere between a single-shot derringer and a tactical nuclear weapon).
The Constitution is in favor of kids, however, and it has a lot of stuff intended to secure the safety of people from criminals and madmen. The Constitution is not in favor of taking away your right to sit quietly in your town, unarmed.
Bullfeathers.
No law-abiding citizen has a need for an automatic or “semi-automatic” weapon like an AR-15. It’s a human killer. It was intended to do things that law-abiding citizens do not do in the boundaries of the U.S.
There are a lot of other weapons in that category.
No law-abiding citizen could not do well without human-killer guns, cop-killer bullets, and other iterations of the weapons that can be used legitimately ONLY on an enclosed gun range.
Were that true, it would still set a norm for how the bar should be set on gun ownership, and even such symbolic laws can do a lot of good.
But that’s not correct. The Columbine shooters were able to obtain guns at a gun show, though they were underage, because they used a straw purchaser who did not get a background check.
One of the major problems with background checks is that not all the information that would stop a gun sale is available to a dealer making the check. That’s been one of the tactics of the NRA since that law was passed, to frustrate background checks by stopping funding for keeping accurate lists, by stopping funding for enforcement of that law, and by keeping the law from being implemented, so it could be questioned.
Then they turn around and say background checks won’t stop crooks because the information they stopped from going in, isn’t in.
The old orphan asking for mercy of the court, again. Convicted of murdering his parent, the orphan asked for mercy because, he told the judge, he was an orphan.
If these checks are ineffective, why are you complaining about them, Morgan? They can’t stop crooks? They can’t stop law-abiders, either, then.
You’re being questioned by your own hypocrisy on the argument, and by the grotesque hypocrisy of the NRA.
If the proposal the Senate looked at had been law, it well may have stopped Aurora.
Colorado’s information input was limited by a GOP-led budget cut.
Why not? Be specific here. You assume that Mrs. Lanza would have made all the same purchases had she been questioned for a background check on them. Are you sure?
And, if it makes no difference, why would you oppose it?
Another case where the data that SHOULD have been entered would have stopped it. There was a police report, and an arrest, on the shooter, that would have at a minimum, delayed purchase of weapons.
That delay is critical.
Unconstitutional. Deceptive. A bunch of scheming politicians off in the weeds somewhere without the public will leading them, or even along with the ride…and they’re lying about it.
You’re being deceptive when you scheme with the NRA to create difficulties in implementing the law, and then claim that the laws don’t work.
If it wouldn’t work, why are you complaining?
Yeah. NRA controls the gonads of the Congress. It was all about control. NRA controls the horizontal. NRA controls the vertical.
See here: https://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2012/12/18/pat-bagley-tells-the-truth-pulitzer-committee-are-you-paying-attention/
Fascism. You gonna take up arms against the NRA?
No — perhaps someone else did — but not I.
Stupid. Dishonest. Against the spirit and best interests of America. Unpatriotic. Cowardly.
But that’s not treason.
That’s the real problem, you know. Too many nuts already have guns. We’ll always be outgunned by bad guys, Sen. Johnston said. Always.
Giving them more guns doesn’t help in the least.
Make the case that any of those people needs an assault weapon, armor, and cop-killer bullets.
You know they don’t.
Rep. Dick Bolling of Missouri used that diversity to explain why we need 438 Members in the House; but he also said it means we need to listen to one another.
The rancher who needs a gun to shoot coyotes, doesn’t need a semi-automatic Glock to do it. Who needs assualt weapons, seriously? Little old ladies? We’ll write a little old lady exception into the bill, and send them to jail if they use that exception to make straw purchases.
Who else?
Put in a rural home exception.
But again I ask, what is the significance? Why must we arm bad guys in cities, to protect good guys on farms? That makes zero sense.
If it were three guys, and they were so determined to get in that getting shot at didn’t discourage them, you’ve got exactly the situation your policies create: You’ve over-armed the bad guys, at the expense of the good guys.
My experience is that intruders, shot, usually don’t stick around to see how big a gun the owner has, or whether there are a lot more bullets. Most burglars are unarmed.
I think your hypothetical, even with one incident backing it, doesn’t make the case that we must arm a hundred bad guys and risk not catching them, in order to stop one home intrusion.
Had the Newtown shooter been limited to ten shots, he couldn’t have killed as many people.
If you can live with ten-shot clips, why do you insist innocents must die with 30- and 50-shot clips?
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What I said was I think it’s time to stop arming crazy guys.
And then I pointed out this latest idea wouldn’t have prevented any deaths or injuries at Aurora, or at Sandy Hook, or at Tucson. You didn’t slow down one single bit over that…didn’t miss a beat…
So let’s not pretend this has something to do with preventing the next episode of gun violence. It’s about exploiting the last one.
The question naturally comes up, exploiting it for what purpose? Obviously, to make it harder to own guns. People who aren’t ready, don’t want anyone else to be ready either.
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Is there no fact you won’t do your best to hide, no statement of history you won’t dishonor with a misinterpretation?
What I said was I think it’s time to stop arming crazy guys.
Why you assume you’re a crazy guy, I don’t know; I don’t consider you that, but if you think it’s aimed at you, you may have cause.
And that worries me.
Watch the video from Sen. Johnston, will you? You will always be outgunned by a bad guy who wants to get you. The shooter in Aurora was discovered because he had much more and in some cases better body armor than the real cops — different brand, too. He stood out, to the prepared guys, like a sore thumb.
Once discovered, it was not a shoot out.
Even with mass murderers, serial or single-event, it takes brains and thinking to beat the bad guy with the gun.
Give advantage to the potential victims, to the good guys, and stop arming the crazy guys. Even if you’re among the crazy guys, you can’t really justify arming them better than the cops, and better than their victims. Arming the victims hasn’t stopped but a tiny percentage of shooters and potential shooters; according to your panic, it’s stopped an even smaller percentage of home invaders.
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A patriot would celebrate each of these things, don’t you think?
A patriot would either be prepared, or not; but, in either case, respect the decisions of others who also made the determination to prepare themselves, or not.
Perhaps if you give small-tee tim’s comment another gander, all will be made clear to you. The control freak here is President Obama, and the guy you see in the mirror.
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Morgan said at his site:
Hand sanitizer. Wow. That’s a political threat from the left, don’t you think? No wonder Morgan wants to be armed to the teeth.
I responded over there:
Yeah, that creeping Good Samaritanism, that hegemonistic civilization. If we’re going to remain barbarians and stunt the growth of good living, we have to fight civilization at every turn, right?
Were they systems, so what?
Why would anyone get so worked up over the good deeds that make easier the doing of other good deeds by other people.
These are systems that make it possible for people to take responsibility for their own lives, for their own disease prevention, for their own reducing carbon footprints, for their own environmental clean-up of dog poop. A patriot would celebrate each of these things, don’t you think?
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[…] think it is a myth, after all I’ve seen this week, that gun control opponents think about home defense situations …. I think the gun control supporters think about that too. I think both sides are arguing about what […]
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I’m happy when I’m prepared, Ed.
Evidently, you’re happier when you’re not, and in this, you’re not alone. That’s fine, let’s take a live-and-let-live approach. Rather than ridiculing each other’s respective cultural preferences, let’s prepare ourselves or not-prepare ourselves, as our desires determine, and each not interfere with the other.
Seems we have an adequate number of Senators who think that’s how it should work. That’s good.
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When you’re hunkered down in your bunker, Morgan, do you want to know the guy trying to come through your door has a 50-round clip, or would a 5-round clip make you any happier?
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Again, If I’m actually dealing with a situation in which I need to use a reliable weapon for my defense, I don’t care how unique the situation is. And if you have to deal with that then you aren’t going to care either.
So perhaps you need to quantify how it matters. After you manage to form a good response to the sheriff who demonstrated how unlikely it is that a magazine capacity limit can save anybody.
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I asking. It’s a standard debate issue: Is your problem significant?
I gather it’s not a significant problem.
Mass shootings in schools is presents a significance issue the same way. There aren’t a lot. However, for every mass shooting (and there must be four dead for it to qualify as a mass murder), there are about a hundred other cases of mass shootings and/or bombings frustrated by alert teachers, counselors, resource officers and students.
It seems to me that we ought to concentrate resources where they do the most good. In this case, you advocate leaving literally thousands of people frustrated in their attempts to stop crime, on a hypothetical crime stopping whose significance you can’t justify.
Only shotguns really work against zombies, you know. But if you tell us we need to provide shotguns to every household, I’m allowed to ask you to put some quantification to the danger, before we give up our right to travel, our right to quiet enjoyment of our property, and our right to be free from gun violence.
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Of all gun uses other than target practice, what percentage are used against home intruders, versus, say, suicide, accidental deaths, or family violence?
You want to leave America vulnerable for a minuscule number of intruder cases?
If I’m actually faced with a home invasion situation, I don’t care how unique my situation is.
If you’re faced with one, you aren’t going to care either.
And isn’t it remarkable that this is where all conservative/liberal deliberations seem to end up? With the liberal coming up with justifications for interfering with the efforts of law-abiding people, who are simply trying to do right by themselves & others?
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Of all gun uses other than target practice, what percentage are used against home intruders, versus, say, suicide, accidental deaths, or family violence?
You want to leave America vulnerable for a minuscule number of intruder cases?
How many home intruders disarm the homeowner/gunowner?
Do you piss off so many people that you have a lot of home intruders in your neighborhood?
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Either one works.
Did you watch that video from the Boone County, Indiana, Sheriff? They explain that the heating of the magazine slows down the exchange. In comments there one of the gun advocates explained that’s a major problem (and why some gun users don’t like to change magazines).
But a problem for a shooter is a blessing for an intended victim in a mass shooting incident. That’s what Colorado State Sen. Mike Johnston was talking about in the video I offered (did you watch it?).
Jamming occurs more often if magazines have to be changed. The gun heats up, and the magazines don’t fit as well, increasing the time needed to change magazines, and increasing the chances of a jam.
That precious time from a jam or a any other delay, time when the shooter is not shooting and cannot shoot, saves lives.
I’m not conflating jamming with exhausted magazines. Both are the same in saving lives — a gun that ‘s not shooting. One life saved per second that the shooter isn’t shooting.
You can’t spare 30 seconds? What patriot would deny an elementary school 30 seconds? The 2nd Amendment is eviscerated by 30 seconds delay to a madman? What good is it, then?
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More details, more details. Oh dear, I should’ve realized you were talking about an incident from fourteen years ago, my bad, I guess.
And yet — you conflate a jamming magazine with an exhausted magazine. You’re all over the map on this, you previously said there was no limitations on magazines in the bill being deliberated in the Senate, so we shouldn’t even be talking about it…then, the Boy Scouts recognized the sound of a weapon exhausting its ammunition supply, now it’s jamming. Which is it?
Are we discussing the merits of legislation that would make the magazines jam, regardless of capacity? If so, this isn’t doing much to persuade me toward your point of view. I keep thinking about defending a home from an intruder, I’m kind of a pain-in-the-ass that way…and the question in my mind is, do I want my weapon to jam? Well, no. I don’t want it to butter or jelly or marmalade either.
No, there are only two reasons people are opposed to waiting periods, background checks, mag limits or the AWB. One is that they are easily-led sheep, and trust people like the child-molester and draft dodger Ted Nugent more than the NAC of P. Which is sorta like trusting Timothy McVeigh on military matters more than the Joint Chiefs.
The other reason?
Treason.
There’s a third: They recognize the anti-gun effort has nothing to do with savings lives — I’ve already laid out the argument that this would have done nothing to stop the injuries or deaths in Aurora, Sandy Hook, Tucson. They recognize this is merely an effort to make it additionally difficult to acquire and own guns. The United States Constitution frowns upon that.
You know…that document that member of the U.S. Senate are sworn to uphold and defend. You were saying something about treason?
Then there is the matter of the public’s sentiment. President Obama brought that one up several times during His “temper tantrum” speech yesterday. Well, here’s the sentiment.
So. The public isn’t in favor of this. They think, properly, that in this anemic economy Congress should have bigger fish to fry. The Constitution isn’t in favor of it. It messes around with the ability of the law-abiding to do their law-abiding thing. It would not actually conduct any background checks on criminals, save for the criminals who volunteered to have them done…which…you know…they don’t. I keep trying to get that across to you and y’all don’t seem to get it.
It would not have saved any lives at Aurora. Nor prevented any injuries. It would not have saved any lives or prevented any injuries in Newton. It would not have saved any lives or prevented any injuries in the Oregon shooting, or in Tucson. Unconstitutional. Deceptive. A bunch of scheming politicians off in the weeds somewhere without the public will leading them, or even along with the ride…and they’re lying about it. Once they’re defeated, we see them acting like petulant children, the very picture of people we don’t want to be holding on to power. They run into a bit of disagreement and they don’t know what to do next. It’s impossible to conclude anything but: This was part of something much, much bigger — it wasn’t about gun control, it was about CONTROL, period.
You were saying something about treason?
Meanwhile, y’all might be shocked to learn about this, but this is a big country and there are people living in it who can’t just dial 9-1-1 and expect the sheriff or the police to be right there. They need to do their own incident response. Some of them need to leave the house, and rely on the WIFE to do the incident response. Against one guy breaking in? Maybe not. Maybe three of them. You want to leave your wives with guns limited to six bullets in a scenario like that?
This woman had to confront one intruder, not three. Her husband is very glad she had the courage to act, of course. But this is the outcome with one intruder, using a caliber not known for falling short like this, especially with six shots to the torso. He ended up driving away, one guy. What if it was two guys? Or three? Your wife and kids?
Thanks, but I find ten shots to be enough of a limit. And I don’t think guys who own thirty-shot clips are necessarily cuckoo. I trust most of them, more than a lot of politicians who’ve been brought to my attention.
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I like guns. I collect antique, pre-1898 firearms for investment purposes and enjoyment. There’s a lot of history there, both in terms of military history and the history of manufacturing. A study of what John Hall accomplished with the pre-Civil War rifle and carbine bearing his name should be required. Hall was at least as prescient as Mr. Whitney of cotton gin lore. (Whitney, also, was a gunmaker.)
I also enjoy shooting modern firearms. Clay pigeons, balloon targets, all of that sort of thing. It’s fun. I don’t keep a firearm in my home for personal defense because I trust the National Association of Chiefs of Police and my old friend — the former Republican Sheriff of Allen County, Indiana (a very conservative guy, btw) — all of whom insist such weapons are disproportionately more likely to be stolen and used in a crime or even stolen and used against me and my family. That’s not a claim as much as it’s a statistical fact.
But even if I did want a Desert Eagle, a .357, a shotgun or a sleek Colt Police Positive in my bureau drawer for home defense…what of it? The legislation just shamefully killed by the NRA-owned members of the Senate would have done bupkis in terms of denying me my right to collect or own firearms. The mag limit wouldn’t impact me either. I don’t NEED 30 or 100 rounds to hit my mark, thank you very much.
No, there are only two reasons people are opposed to waiting periods, background checks, mag limits or the AWB. One is that they are easily-led sheep, and trust people like the child-molester and draft dodger Ted Nugent more than the NAC of P. Which is sorta like trusting Timothy McVeigh on military matters more than the Joint Chiefs.
The other reason?
Treason.
Some people like to play soldier with groups like the Hutaree Militia and the Council of Conservative Citizens. They keep saying they’re going to rise up against the tyrant, Obama and his “uppity” wife.
Good luck with that. Good luck with your 100-round drum magazines against Seal Team Six.
If you want to play soldier so desperately, I’ll echo what Ed said. You’d love Somalia. And as an added bonus…no taxes, no big gub’mint regulation, no abortions, no gay people (living ones, that is) and plenty of ‘ol time religion.
Bon Voyage.
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Morgan, you should listen to that guy. He’s right.
And if the gun contains more than one bullet, that means more than one can be killed before the shooter has to reload.
One of the best ways to stop mass killings with guns is to limit the number of bullets that can be shot off in an automatic or semi-automatic mode. Shooters get to keep their guns. As the Indiana sheriff’s video demonstrates, limiting magazines is no problem for sport shooters, nor for people shooting in self-defense.
But there’s no excuse to give such armaments to people who don’t know that the bullets can kill, or who know, and intend that consequence.
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I noted: “One of the Oregon shooters similarly was taken down when his gun jammed — two Boy Scouts recognized the sound of a jammed gun, and tackled him.
“So, in response to your hypothetical that smaller magazines don’t work, I give you at least 20 lives saved in two incidents from exactly the thing you claim won’t work.”
Morgan replied:
So many mass shootings that it’s not enough to specify the state anymore.
Okay, you give us a third one. I was talking about Kip Kinkel’s rampage at Thurston High in Springfield, in 1998:
Two of the kids who jumped him were brothers, Jake Ryker shot and with a collapsed lung, both Boy Scouts who had the shooting merit badges, joined by other Scouts who were also shooters. They said they recognized when his gun jammed, and jumped him then.
From the Amarillo Globe-News:
It is clear from all descriptions, and from Kinkel’s writings, that he had not intended to stop so soon.
So, with the mall shooter’s jam included, now we have more than a score of people saved from death by jamming magazines.
That senator in Colorado was right: Seconds saved lives. In the Thurston High case, it wasn’t someone else with a gun who took down the shooter, but unarmed kids equipped with information; how many fewer would have been injured, or killed, had the magazine on the Glock been smaller?
(Here’s another good account of the Thurston High incident, with more details about Ryker: http://www.myleftwing.com/viewRating.do;jsessionid=B5E560A9F8CDE8A6E0F042BACF2D6496?rateCommentId=210680 )
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More on the magazine-limit issue.
The article says in a couple places that this has become the most persuasive argument we’ve heard from the gun control advocates. On that particular point, I have less than full confidence. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: There’s a certain number of bullets a gun has to contain at one time, before it is an instrument of deadly force, and that number is one. Whoever doesn’t get that, shouldn’t be anywhere near a gun, nor should they have anything to say about what the rules should be.
Every single shot is one you can’t ever take back. And can make this year into a number on someone’s tombstone, forever.
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One of the Oregon shooters similarly was taken down when his gun jammed — two Boy Scouts recognized the sound of a jammed gun, and tackled him.
So, in response to your hypothetical that smaller magazines don’t work, I give you at least 20 lives saved in two incidents from exactly the thing you claim won’t work.
That’s debatable, to say the least.
Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts said the rifle jammed during the attack, but he managed to get it working again. Police, however, flooded the scene and the shopping center was credited for employing a rapid lockdown.
It would seem you don’t have the twenty lives to present to me.
Also:
It is possible that Lanza, who reloaded the rifle frequently, mishandled or dropped a magazine and unfired bullets fell to the floor, they said.
But it also is possible, they said, that the mechanism that fed bullets into the rifle jammed, causing Lanza to remove the magazine and clear the weapon. Unfired bullets could have fallen to the classroom floor during that process as well, law enforcement officials said.
You were saying something about falsehoods running around the world before truth has time to lace up its shoes. It would seem that one of these falsehoods is “lower capacity magazines [would] save some lives.” Anyway, it doesn’t even make sense. If it DID, then why not just go full-tilt and outlaw magazines? Every firearm is single shot. Imagine the lives saved!
But imagine how hard it would be to defend your home from an intruder. Meanwhile, if you’re the madman who wants to shoot up the theater or the shopping mall, is your plan really foiled? Seems to me the most effective plan, then, would be to find the most lightweight gun to carry around, then then go packing with five to ten of ’em.
The evil is in the person, not in the implement. It just keeps coming back to that.
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Yes, you’re right — I don’t use multi-bullet magazines to protect myself against my neighbor. He never mows the lawn that badly.
Thanks for the explanation.
And, while you claim that there is no “mystical” time involved in reloading, the reality is that the shooter in Newtown was not a pro, and took considerably longer. My guess is that the guns heated up, and the magazine switch wasn’t smooth, as your sheriff explained in the video. One of the Oregon shooters similarly was taken down when his gun jammed — two Boy Scouts recognized the sound of a jammed gun, and tackled him.
So, in response to your hypothetical that smaller magazines don’t work, I give you at least 20 lives saved in two incidents from exactly the thing you claim won’t work.
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Surely the good sheriff of Boone County, Indiana, doesn’t intend to deceive here.
Morgan, what’s the explanation for the last six-round magazine having seven shots?
I’ve reluctantly concluded you really, honestly don’t know. So I’ll be nice about it…
What both the expert and the novice are doing in the video, is a bit of preventative discharging to avoid losing the time to work the slide lever when the new magazine is engaged. You assume control over your weapon, and your set of magazines each of which hold C cartridges. You fire C-1 times from the first magazine and eject. Now you have “one in the pipe.” When you engage the second magazine, there is no need to work the slide. When you fire C times out of the second, you still have one in the pipe, so you work through all the magazines that way. When you reach the last, yes you’re right, you have C+1 cartridges in the weapon for your last assault on the target.
They do the same thing with the 10-shot magazines, and with the 15-shots as well, I believe. I’m heading to the range this Saturday to try this out myself. I expect it would take a bit of practice, although not a whole lot. Like most other techniques, it would be really undesirable to face down a life-threatening situation without having gotten the practice in.
I should point out that it would require a bit of extra vigilance on the part of a homeowner intending to defend his family and property, to put in this kind of practice and get this technique down cold. I would not expect 10 out of 10 home-defense practitioners to have done it; 1 out of 10 would be a more likely ratio. But it would be a much more likely practice among the nut-jobs who want to shoot up a school or a theater in a “gun free zone” as part of some last-hurrah. Which is relevant, since your whole argument is that the innocent can be ushered to safety, or perhaps tackle the shooter, during this mythical-eleven-second pause-to-reload business. As you can see from the video, it just doesn’t work.
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We’ve been trying the “make the firearms more deadly, and give ‘em to more people” thing for 40 years…
What we’ve been seeing for the last 40 years, is an effort to make guns more accessible? In what universe might I ask.
Let’s try something else.
Yes, not to intend a pun, but let’s try President Barry’s “buckshot approach.” What went down in defeat yesterday had nothing to do with the theater in Aurora, or Sandy Hook, or the Tucson shooting…but hey. It’s doing something! That’s what democrats always talk about, right before I have more hoops to jump through as a law-abiding citizen — before I can do really, really, really simple things.
Year N a democrat says “Let’s try this.”
Year N+1 I get to hear yet more “I’m sorry sir, you can’t do that.”
I think it all just comes down to this, Ed: How many criminals did you expect to have lining up for these “background checks”? If some number greater than zero, congratulations you’re well on your way to making this look like an effective bill…but you’ve had to sever whatever attachment you had, to reality, in order to do so.
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We’ve been trying the “make the firearms more deadly, and give ’em to more people” thing for 40 years; mass shootings have increased. Despite a massive anti-homicide effort by all other parts of society, we’re not making headway in reducing gun murder rates or gun death rates to the level of, say Serbia, or Croatia, or Venezuela.
We can see that the “arm everybody” idea not only does not reduce violence, injuries and deaths, but it tends to contribute.
Let’s try something else.
In the 1930s, we actually got rules to restrict civilian access to the Thompson submachine gun, and they helped.
Maybe there’s a lesson from history.
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Arming kids is stupid. Arming teachers is contrary to civilization, contrary to the American dream.
I knew cowboys. They hated carrying arms, and preferred not to. Carrying an arm meant you weren’t in town, you weren’t in civilization, that you couldn’t trust your neighbor, couldn’t trust that the next guy you met wouldn’t try to drill you.
Somalia’s like that. We in the U.S. aspire to be more than the next Somalia. If that is your aspiration, please move.
And yet — your vision, according to your own description of it, is that we are civilized and so we can trust each other. But, just in case, we should have magazine capacity limits. So that if one of us snaps, another of us can tackle that guy while he’s reloading. Or…we shouldn’t be carrying at all? Because we’re just so trustworthy, we can’t be trusted with anything.
It’s like a whole political ideology built around not being able to remember what was said five minutes previous.
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So, for the unarmed kids, there’s no mercy, in your world?
Arming kids is stupid. Arming teachers is contrary to civilization, contrary to the American dream.
I knew cowboys. They hated carrying arms, and preferred not to. Carrying an arm meant you weren’t in town, you weren’t in civilization, that you couldn’t trust your neighbor, couldn’t trust that the next guy you met wouldn’t try to drill you.
Somalia’s like that. We in the U.S. aspire to be more than the next Somalia. If that is your aspiration, please move.
Jefferson didn’t carry arms. He didn’t even carry arms when he was close to battle, the British on his tail. Nor did George Washington.
You do disservice to history, and to America, when you tell whoppers like that.
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I think unarmed, innocent civilians deserve a fair chance in a firefight with an armed maniac.
Like Thomas Jefferson, I’m in favor of them being armed.
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I’ll see your Buckley, and raise you Ronald Reagan:
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Surely the good sheriff of Boone County, Indiana, doesn’t intend to deceive here.
Morgan, what’s the explanation for the last six-round magazine having seven shots?
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It’s also amusing to see the complete 180 the NRA and gun nut advocates make on this issue.
I’ve watched these debates up close for 40 years. NRA used to say, “All a homeowner needs is a pump-action shotgun. It doesn’t even need to be loaded. Just pump the thing, and burglars or other intruders will stop and run.”
Now the burglars and other perps are better armed. When Vice President Biden says, “Just get a pump action shotgun,” you guys claim it’s not enough to protect homeowners.
No elementary excrement, Sherlock. You’ve been arming bad guys for 40 years now.
Time to stop arming the bad guys, and improving their arms.
P.S. – did you notice that the expert here (shooting not as a maniac would), in addition to performing better than most maniacs, also shoots seven rounds from his last six-round magazine? (See the video at 3:50 and the next ten seconds or so.)
They won’t even be honest with a pro gunman showing off what amateurs probably couldn’t do?
But, as you’ve shown, there’s no need for larger magazines, for honest people. Was that the point of the video?
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All of that makes a good case for cops having larger magazines, Morgan.
But nothing there makes a case that we need to give shooters in Aurora, Colorado, and Newtown, Connecticut, extended magazines.
Nothing in that makes the case that unarmed children have an advantage over a well-armed and armored crazy man, and that Congress needs to protect the crazy armed man from six-year-old kids.
One second per life. I like free markets and competition. I think unarmed, innocent civilians deserve a fair chance in a firefight with an armed maniac.
Make the armed maniac use smaller magazines. Step 1.
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The irony, Ed, is you accuse the other side of not having a point to make, when not only do the have the point, and have made it just fine, but they’ve just gotten done spanking you with it. Fine, I’ll do it again.
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On gun control, William F. Buckley actually said nothing about magazines, and doesn’t appear to support the use of semiautomatics:
http://old.nationalreview.com/buckley/buckley040902.asp
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Not at all. I said magazine limits make sense, and they save lives.
If you want to criticize them, feel free.
But don’t claim this bill contains magazine limits and should be opposed because, you claim, magazine limits won’t work when there is no such provision in the bill.
Actually, I criticized you for not knowing what you were talking about when you said they might save lives.
So I’m reading the words of yourself, and James, with at least as much precision as that you show when you read mine. Substantially more, in fact. Nevertheless, it’s difficult to pin down your positions and it doesn’t seem the problem starts with any lack of attention to detail on my part.
At this point I’d just like to know if James wants to ban guns. It seems from what he’s saying here:
Because as liberal as I am, Morgan, I have no interest in banning all guns. But I’d have no problem in doing so as an object lesson to your side to stop acting like hysterical lunatics.
…that he isn’t in favor of banning them, until such time as he’s upset. Then, he is. Cue the picture of the liberal-girl insisting “your rights stop where my feelings begin.”
Come to think of it, cue the Buckley image:
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Not at all. I said magazine limits make sense, and they save lives.
If you want to criticize them, feel free.
But don’t claim this bill contains magazine limits and should be opposed because, you claim, magazine limits won’t work when there is no such provision in the bill.
The report on the Newtown incident clearly shows the benefits to intended victims from magazine limits; I think you could figure it out from Aurora, too — but argue against them with every bit of bluster-instead-of-fact you can muster.
What you said earlier was that Sen. Rubio would have been justified in opposing the bill on magazine limits alone — when the issue is that Rubio said he hadn’t read the bill (after conservatives harped constantly since 2009, being major anal orifices on the issue of their refusing to read the Affordable Care Act or participating actively in the debate, in committee and on the floor of Congress).
If I agreed with you that Rubio can abdicate his duties whenever he runs into something he personally finds objectionable, Rubio would have had no complaint about this bill. It’s not in there. But that view is something that seems to me a dereliction of basic citizenship duties.
What I said is that a magazine size restriction would be a great benefit to intended victims. That is all.
Typical conservative policy masturbation: When they get caught with their pants down on any issue, they whine that no one should be looking at them. Rather than discuss the issue (where they’re losing the fight), let’s discuss how unfair it is for liberals to use facts, logical construction, and real math to make a clear and cogent, truthful argument! How unfair of liberals to use reality!
Is a magazine restriction a bad idea? Make the case.
Don’t claim that because you failed to read the bill, your case was made. Not so, and rather dishonest to claim, don’t you think?
These issues DESERVE a discussion in Congress. It was wrong to propose a filibuster just to frustrate the will of the American people, and even to stop discussion of the issue. These GOP senators who argue we don’t deserve the discussion are moral midgets, and they deserve to be called out for their perfidy.
You make up false claims against liberals all the time, as you have here. I regret you misunderstood what I wrote. Your failing to understand, and having built a grand, false claim on that House of Sand, does not make me dishonest.
Discuss the issues. You’re never going to feel you get a fair shot here if anyone else makes a decent argument. In rational and courteous discussion, at some point you have to stop yelling against the no yelling rule, and be rational and courteous.
Would magazine limits help? Newtown suggests that, with one wacko, over-armed shooter, limiting magazines to 5 rounds may have saved 10 or 15 lives — and maybe more. The shooter would have been out of rounds, and would have had to have stopped to reload, before he got past his first two victims.
Had that one classroom teacher been able to lock the door, or get her students across the hall and out the door, 20 children might be alive. After most of the victims were already mutilated, the shooter’s stopping to reload provided an escape opportunity for at least 11 kids who are alive today because the shooter had to stop shooting and reload.
How about a public debate on these questions? Don’t we deserve that? Isn’t the 2nd Amendment important enough to discuss — or is it such an albatross that, like slavery before 1809, it must be kept off the table because its advocates can’t think rationally? Haven’t we as a nation grown up any since then, on this issue?
Tell us why these senators are afraid of public discussion, Morgan. Why do they think that, with two mass shootings last year, Americans do not deserve the courtesy of a full public discussion on whether restrictions on access to arms might help — and a vote on those issues, too.
You have a first amendment right to make any fool claim you wish. How is a Facebook poster showing foggy thinking, defending the Constitution?
What the heck is that photo supposed to show, and what light does the nonsensical slogan on it add?
Now I worry: Not only do you not know Congressional processes, and not only do you not want a fair and open discussion of safety around guns and gun use, you also think that poster makes some claim.
Sort of the old line, “you get farther with a smile and a gun, than with a smile alone;” you guys have such crappy arguments that, without a gun, you get no attention at all. No wonder you live in blinding fear that someone may make it harder to be a mass murderer.
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I see. So Ed says we shouldn’t criticize magazine capacity limits because they’d save lives, but when I point out they wouldn’t, suddenly that stops being what he said. And you’re not calling for an outright ban, except when you are.
Now & then I criticize liberals for calling things the opposite of what they really are. It’s not often I see them insisting things are what they are, and that they’re the opposite, at the very same time. As I’ve seen the two of you do back-to-back, in this thread alone. What a flexible, twisty-turny world for you to call home…what color is the sky over there?
I suppose this is defending the Constitution:
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Morgan writes:
Were you the one who said “if it goes through with the magazine limitation, it buys time for intended victims to get to safety,” or not?
I have a question. Is there a limit to the number of magazines you can carry? Like a physical limit.
Also, if your side is unwilling to compromise..to even do the same things your precious Messiah Ronald Reagan did..then why in God’s name shouldn’t we try to ban all guns? What reason are you giving us not to?
Sorry, its time those on your side of this argument, Morgan, come down off the mountain and compromise so you guys don’t get what you claim to fear.
Because as liberal as I am, Morgan, I have no interest in banning all guns. But I’d have no problem in doing so as an object lesson to your side to stop acting like hysterical lunatics.
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Morgan said:
Yep, I’m the one. That would have to be added, and from the gun nut blogs, I understand Sen. Feinstein has such an amendment in her pocket.
It would be a good idea — see the video of the Colorado State Senator: https://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2013/03/17/powerful-argument-for-limiting-bullets-in-a-clip-colorado-sen-mike-johnston-pleads-to-give-victims-a-chance-to-escape/
But I didn’t say that it was in the draft Reid introduced, nor did I say it was in the Toomey-Manchin amendment. Silly me, I had thought that in a discussion about how stupid people are who knee-jerk opposed good legislation even though they don’t have a clue what they’re opposing, you’d have at least looked at the summary of what the amendment offers.
I keep getting burned when I assume there is a working gray matter cell in what passes for conservatism these days. (I dreamed the other night of my meeting with Ronald Reagan, but in my dream instead of non-essential pleasantries he says something about Bill Buckley being dead, and quotes from somewhere in Isaiah (14.12?) about how far the movement has fallen — probably meaningless.)
Every corner of what used to be the conservative movement appears to be seriously infected with and affected by malreason, disreason, misreason and unreason. Is it a real virus? Can NIH push the development of a vaccine for it?
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I’m sorry, I must have lost track.
Were you the one who said “if it goes through with the magazine limitation, it buys time for intended victims to get to safety,” or not?
I was responding in particular to that. To paraphrase the Ohio professor from legend, someone has gotten hold of a perfectly good editor window, filled it with gibberish, stuck your name on top and hit the “Post Comment” button.
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[…] Morgan’s defending Sen. Marc Rubio’s right not to know what’s in the compromise reached by Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Sen. Joe Manchin of […]
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Morgan said:
Helluva distraction. There’s no such proposal, but you’re so bugged about it you can’t argue straight.
Maybe we’re being sneaky. Maybe we’re getting you all worked up over something not in the bill so you’ll have a heart attack and be unable to lobby your senators to go easy on baby killers.
Or maybe you guys can’t read. Can’t, won’t, doesn’t make much difference — you’re so sure of your position you not only damn the facts, you damn the existence of the facts and the non-existence of the hoodoos you fear.
Here, tell this guy he got it wrong; you’re barking up a tree on the wrong side of the ocean here: https://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2013/03/17/powerful-argument-for-limiting-bullets-in-a-clip-colorado-sen-mike-johnston-pleads-to-give-victims-a-chance-to-escape/
Think of all the gun ranges put out of business if we did that!
I don’t think a crazy guy should be allowed to pump out 150 soldier-killer bullets in 5 minutes, with most of them going into the heads and faces of more than a score of 6-year-old kids. You seem to think that is such a sacred right that we . . . well, I don’t know what you propose.
You seem to think that forcing crazy men to reload is unfair. I think you’re not being fair to those six-year-old kids.
The evidence in Newtown is that the one reload he did took 11 seconds, and a teacher got 11 kids out of the school, to safety, in that time.
It took him five shots to blast through the safety lock on the door — had he been limited to five-round clips, he’d have been out of ammo in one gun just getting through the door.
I cannot imagine why you think we can’t be fair to six year old kids, but we must give crazy men more than a sporting chance to murder 20 unarmed people. I think my rights would be safer if I didn’t go with your defense of the crazy man’s rights.
Now, is it technically impossible to limit the rounds and reduce the carnage? Not according to the record.
Facts are stubborn things. That old John Adams sure got that right.
We know you’re not going to read the bill, just like Rubio hasn’t. He has a sort of duty to read it — but you’re so cock sure that you’re smarter than every other guy in the country and that you can see the future before God, you can’t be bothered to read even the quick summary of the bill.
It pains me when you reinforce all the stereotypes of the right-wing, can’t-tell-me-nuthin’ nuts, Morgan. If you’re going to pretend to be thoughtful, at least read the stuff, will you?
You’re so cock-sure that there would be a crazy proposal of the type you fear that you can’t be bothered to read the bill and see that there’s nothing at all like it. Worse than Don Quixote tilting at windmills, you’re shooting at windmills that are not dragons, but behind which children were playing a few minutes ago. See, Quixote was harmless with his lance. Facts again: Guns are not lances.
Sometimes it’s not the things we don’t know that gets us into trouble, but the things we know, that are wrong. It’s not the target practice of the safe and sane occasional hunter that gets gun ownership questioned, it’s the crazy shooting at dragons that don’t exist, in schools and theaters and workplaces, where real people do exist.
Quite to the contrary, we’ve succeeded in electing nuts who are so dedicated to protecting those rights, they’ll go overboard to be sure that anything even close to resembling a right of a white male with a gun cannot be regulated rationally. Rex Tillerson’s right to pour oil in every backyard in Arkansas is defended, Rep. Joe Barton apologizes to the white guys who run BP for all those Cajuns’ having put their Gulf of Mexico where BP could pollute the hell out of it. A white guy wants sex, well, some women “rape easy,” “they’re just good-time-lovin’ football players and football is an American game,” and if he’s an Army or Air Force officer, his superior will dismiss the rape charges. Jeremy Dimon gets to keep his freedom, and all the money he stole from black families put out of their homes in New Orleans, Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles because his bank and his cronies’ banks screwed up the mortgages.
And if you want to shoot up a theater, or a school, and kill a bunch of unarmed people — well, you know, that’s a right, right?
I cannot imagine what rights you think are not defended, for white males.
Right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness? Right to private enjoyment? Right to be free from assault and battery? Right not get life-saving and cheap medical care for your kid? Right not to have to bury your kid as child? Not all rights are enumerated rights. You seem to miss some of the more important ones, when we get right down to it.
Now, if one worries about rights for anyone of color, or rights of children to health care or education, or rights of women to fair pay — well, none of those people are mentioned in the Constitution, are they? They all look like Dred Scott, to a Congress of white males.
I see no evidence Rubio wasn’t telling the truth — and Cruz is probably too stupid to understand it, so I believe him when he says he can’t even find the bill that was placed in the middle of his desk on March 22. I swear that guy puts an icepick over his left eyeball every night he can.
There is nothing in the Constitution which says anyone has to be an inadequate anal orifice. You’re reading it wrong.
Or have you even read it? You haven’t read the gun control bill. Why should you read the Constitution?
In reality, there is nothing in the Constitution that says any Member of Congress must be a roadblock, or should be a roadblock, nor that there should be any roadblocks at all. Filibustering is not a Constitutional right — not mentioned in any way.
Funny how you can completely miss the first 13 words of the Amendment, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State.” There are only 27 words in the amendment; you worry about punctuation while completely missing 48% of the text. That rounds to 50%.
But, you don’t read. I forgot. As with most conservatives, you think you know what is in a text without reading it, predudging it from . . . well, prejudging it, anyway.
“Prejudge” isn’t related to “prejudice” in the conservative dictionary, anyway.
Can you do what no other gun rights advocate has done, Morgan?
Tell us what infringement there would be if you had to limit your automatics, semi-automatics, or single shots, to a five-bullet magazine. How would that, in any way, infringe on your right to keep arms, or bear them?
After you stumble over that one, tell us how it affects your right at all to fill out a form that lets a gun seller figure out whether you’re being straight about not being a felon, and not being a crazy shooter, and not fronting for a crazy shooter or felon.
How does filling out a form to make sure you’re legal, infringe on your right to keep and bear arms? There’s nothing in that amendment that says you can keep your gun ownership or bearing secret — in fact, in many states, keeping a gun concealed is a crime (without a permit).
Tell us how anyone’s rights are infringed by those common sense proposals, one of which isn’t even being proposed.
So you won’t do that anymore? That’s good news. I hope it’s a movement, and it catches on.
Aggravating as the situation would be, such a reaction would be very silly…because once the 8th or 9th block is screwed up, it’s an invalid form, and even though blocks 10 through 88 may be loaded with wonderfully accurate information, in context it’s still a bunch of nonsense until they’re copied on to another form that has been filled out PROPERLY. So reading them would actually be an inappropriate use of that time that I bought through my tax money by paying the clerk’s salary. Well, if that’s true of clerks, it’s certainly true of Senators, who swear an oath to uphold the Constitution.
I don’t think that’s a good analogy. Your paying your taxes is not similar in any way your elected representatives’ lying to you about whether they read bills or not, and using the pretense that they’ve not seen what they know is in the bill, to block the majority from even debating what is the best thing for the nation.
In their constitutional duty to represent you, they don’t have the right to boldly lie about what they’re doing for demagogue points.
It’s not illegal, but it’s dishonest, disgusting, and unpatriotic. It doesn’t represent you well — at least, I don’t think that you’re so corrupt that you can only get by by lying through your teeth and making phony excuses.
Sorta like enforcement of a lease — lying through your teeth about the rent isn’t a good idea, regardless you’re the tenant or the landlord.
Because you’re trying to defend ugly skullduggery on a bill you don’t know much about?
Because you sank all of your retirement funds into a gun manufacturer, and you just realized that rational gun laws might take that gold mine away? Because you’re a conservative, and these days that means “so congenitally unable to tell the truth that, when a conservative shoots a hole-in-one on the golf course, he writes ‘0’ on the score card?”
I don’t know.
And you’re providing ample support for a couple of hypotheses I’ve wished didn’t need to be tested: One, that conservatives really DON’T know what a theory is, especially contrasted to hypotheses; two, that conservatives can’t be bothered to read the book, or the law, or the proposal, or anything else that might inform their arguments, probably out of fear they’ll realize their prejudices are wrong; three, that conservatives really like rules, out of their defense of “traditional” life and “order” — but they think the rules never apply to themselves or their supporters; and four, that the fact that the conservative position is correct should be so self-evident, no matter how half-wit or knuckleheaded the idea, that conservatives will never stoop to actually arguing the issues — keep John Walsh and Candy Lightner far away from conservatives, because they have no real defense for why we treat automobiles as more valuable than children or why we never stick to our guns about criminalizing drunk drivers who kill, especially repeatedly — and so, keep the parents of the Newtown victims far away from Washington, and demonize them as soft-on-crime, anti-patriotic, anti-Constitution liberal fuzzy heads, so we don’t have to look them in the eye and explain why we’re voting to defend the right of the idiot to shoot their children without cause, justification, warning, remorse or chance for retribution.
What’s more important, overarming people (the better to reduce the population), or keeping kids alive? (“We secretly hate children, which is why everyone of our policies is designed to make childhood difficult, cripple children educationally, mentally or physically, or kill them.”)
I thought you just had a mental burp — but now I see you’re on some tear about filling in forms incorrectly.
What difference could that possibly make?
Apparently there’s another trait of conservatives: The tendency to dissolve into irrelevant rants, instead of facing up to real problems, and making hard decisions about real solutions.
They weren’t your kids anyway, right?
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Battingcage complains about this troublesome exercise, troublesome especially if one wishes to stop the legislation (though I think that’s far too easy) without dealing with the real issues, or being questioned on them when you’re trying to get television time instead of doing your job.
Battingcage listed the language of the amendment:
So, you go to the U.S. Code (every senator’s office gets a free copy of this stuff, plus it’s all online):
This is the part that is repealed:
Here’s the new subsection (s), which is now subsection (t), but as amended:
Regardless how confusing one may find legislative language, it remains pure demagoguery for the Harvard Law graduate, Ted Cruz; son of the founding Dean of BYU’s J. Reuben Clark School of Law and graduate of that school and clerk for Justice Samuel Alito, Mike Lee; and the privileged son of Ron Paul, a graduate of Duke University’s medical school (despite his dropping out of Baylor . . .), to claim they haven’t read the bill.
Cruz and Lee may confess they are idiots, and I’d allow they need remedial time to read the bill; Lee’s work for my former colleague, Judge Dee Benson should have prepared him to analyze laws, but he may have been effectively lobotomized later serving with Alito (not so likely as had he been sentenced to time with Scalia, but I digress); Paul is an idiot demonstrated many times over, but he refuses to acknowledge that, and so I think we should hold him to the standards his own hubris demands, and assume he can read complicated but not complex summaries of proposed laws prepared by the committees, Library of Congress and his own aides.
I don’t think the language, as I’ve listed it above, is overly difficult to figure out.
(Please holler if you find I’ve erred; I simply read through the amended section following the instructions. I’m sure the office of legislative counsel has better versions prepared for the senators.)
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I’m going to have to agree with Morgan here.
If you read the bill and you get to a spot you can’t abide by, you can say “nope” and not read the rest of it.
But, if you support a bill, I expect you to read the whole thing. How do I know there’s nothing in there about killing the first born of each family if I don’t read the whole thing?
Now, as far as the bill goes … This doesn’t excuse our lawmakers from reading it (qualifications noted above) but I find it very difficult to read it since a lot of it has to do with revisions of existing code.
Here’s an idea: I’d like it to be required that 1) proposed laws be posted publicly for a minimum of, hell, I’ll go for Obama’s supposed 72 hours. And stick to it. And no amendments once it is posted. If you make amendments, you re-post and the clock starts over. But in addition, what it should do is show the altered legislation in a readable form, instead of shit like this:
(a) In General.-Section 922 of title 18, United States Code, is amended-
(1) by repealing subsection (s);
(2) by redesignating subsection (t) as subsection (s);
(3) in subsection (s), as redesignated-
(A) in paragraph (1)(B)-
(i) in clause (i), by striking “or”;
(ii) in clause (ii), by striking “and” at the end; and
(iii) by adding at the end the following:
“(iii) in the case of an instant background check conducted at a gun show or event during the 4-year period beginning on the effective date under section 130(a) of the Public Safety and Second Amendment Rights Protection Act of 2013, 48 hours have elapsed since the licensee contacted the system, and the system has not notified the licensee that the receipt of a firearm by such other person would violate subsection (g) or (n) of this section; or
“(iv) in the case of an instant background check conducted at a gun show or event after the 4-year period described in clause (iii), 24 hours have elapsed since the licensee contacted the system, and the system has not notified the licensee that the receipt of a firearm by such other person would violate subsection (g) or (n) of this section; and”;
(B) in paragraph (3)(C)(ii), by striking “(as defined in subsection (s)(8))”; and
(C) by adding at the end the following:
“(7) In this subsection-
Show me what the resulting language will say in its entirety so it’s coherent.
Bottom line is, I’m fine with background checks even for civilians at gun shows as long as non-gunshow civilian passing down to kids and giving to brothers and uncles or even a private sale outside of a gun show is still cool without all of the tedious record-keeping and background checks.
Because as “common sense” as this all seems, it will do nothing practical to reduce gun crime. It will, however, make yet one more law to trip up the otherwise law-abiding citizen.
Over half of gun deaths in the US are suicides. Those won’t be stopped, they’ll just use something else. 70-80% of the rest of them are gang violence. It ain’t your average gun owner that’s the problem – certainly not your typical NRA member.
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[…] arguments meets hypocrisy. Let’s see “background checks” … would not have stopped any of the recent […]
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[…] arguments meets hypocrisy. Let’s see “background checks” … would not have stopped any of the recent […]
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Alright. First, if you’re trying to make this look like “reasonable” or “common sense” gun “safety” legislation as they call it, it’s a good idea to stay away from this capacity-limitation stuff. To swap out a magazine — not clip — I don’t need eleven seconds, I don’t need half that. I’m not anywhere close to James Bond, or Barney in The Expendables…I merely maintain familiarity and confidence/competence with my sidearm. If I can do it in two seconds, a lot of other people can as well. So you’re counting on a payoff there that you’re not getting. The whole magazine-capacity thing is not only a distraction, it actually highlights for the benefit of the knowledgeable public which loudmouth legislators ought not to have anything to do with gun legislation, or guns either.
It comes down to this: A gun has a certain number of bullets with which it can be loaded, before it becomes an instrument of death — that number is one. Whoever isn’t familiar with that, should be escorted off the range. Of course, that is a comment on the mechanics; as far as process goes, the number is zero, since one of the basic rules of guns safety is “the gun is always loaded.”
If I were Sen. Rubio, considering for the moment supporting this gun “safety” bill, and decided to read it all the way through, I’d change my mind and oppose it the first time I saw something about magazine capacity limits, because that would tell me someone wrote it without knowing anything about how guns are supposed to be treated around a public that we don’t want to be hurt by them. Which is the subject of the bill.
Second. The Constitution guarantees me certain God-given rights, which supposedly nobody can take away from me, and I wouldn’t be able to discard even if I wanted to. Conservatives and liberals would agree — with different examples in mind — that We The People have lately encountered considerable difficulty electing representatives who will truly protect these rights. In view of that, I like the idea of a Senator who made up his mind to oppose a gun bill before reading all of it (your headline would imply that he hasn’t read any of it, which is not substantiated by your story). This would be in keeping with his oath to uphold the Constitution: If the bill has something that cannot be reconciled with the Constitution, out it goes.
After all, there is a period-end-of-sentence after the word “infringed.” It doesn’t say “shall not be infringed, unless something really spiffy is written that makes the infringing seem like a swell idea.” This is the way I want ALL guarantees to me, or to anybody else, to be enforced. I want my renter’s insurance to be enforced this way. I want my employment contracts to be enforced this way. It’s only fair.
If I submit a form to the Social Security Administration, or to the IRS, or to some state agency like the DMV, and the form has 88 blocks in it and I botched something somewhere around the 8th or 9th block, it would be patently absurd for me to stand there and berate the DMV clerk who rejected it with “Why didn’t you read blocks ten through eighty-eight?? What am I paying you to do with your time??” Aggravating as the situation would be, such a reaction would be very silly…because once the 8th or 9th block is screwed up, it’s an invalid form, and even though blocks 10 through 88 may be loaded with wonderfully accurate information, in context it’s still a bunch of nonsense until they’re copied on to another form that has been filled out PROPERLY. So reading them would actually be an inappropriate use of that time that I bought through my tax money by paying the clerk’s salary. Well, if that’s true of clerks, it’s certainly true of Senators, who swear an oath to uphold the Constitution.
Why am I having to explain the above? You’re doing a great job of supporting one of my pet theories, that liberals are people who haven’t actually had to deal with the bureaucracies their ideas create. I do have to say though, I can see an upside to having it work the way you want…it would give me great pleasure, when I fill out a form wrong, to throw a hissy fit about “why didn’t you read the rest of my form?” But realistically, of course there’s no way it can work like that.
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But you’re right, Morgan — this bill is not a major change for anything. The fuss of the bill is way out of proportion to what it can do for safety.
NRA is acting like the crazy aunt in the attic room.
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It closes loopholes that allow people to buy guns without background checks; if it goes through with the magazine limitation, it buys time for intended victims to get to safety. Story is that in the clip change the Newtown shooter made — took him 11 seconds — one teacher got 11 kids across the hall and out the door. One life saved for every second the shooter had to spend reloading. Sounds like a bargain to me.
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It looks like you’re saying, the bill would not restrict gun ownership rights in ways they were not already restricted. Crazy people already aren’t supposed to have guns…
How then, if the bill really is limited in the way you imply, does it change anything?
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I’d be interested in having someone explain how any part of the bill proposed violates the 2nd Amendment rights of anyone, Morgan — can you explain?
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Nothing in the bill infringes on anyone’s right to keep and bear arms. No arms are outlawed. No one’s guns are outlawed.
EXCEPT, those who have proven unable to be part of the state militia either because they have a criminal conviction or have a demonstrated issue of mental instability, may not have guns.
Do you think the Constitution requires that we arm crazy people?
Can you point to anything in the bill or amendments which you think DOES infringe on the 2nd Amendment? (Texts posted earlier, in the immediately previous post.)
The issue is that Rubio showed up, rhetorical guns blazing, claiming there are infringements in the bill. He voted against cloture. But, as it turns out, he doesn’t know what’s in the bill.
He’s not opposing anything he thinks may infringe on the 2nd Amendment; he’s blindly opposing anything NRA doesn’t like, regardless the benefits of the bill to Rubio’s constituents or the nation. He’s not doing his job.
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…I haven’t read it in its totality, but I can tell you this, I am very skeptical of any plan that deals with the Second Amendment because invariably these gun laws end up impeding on the rights of people to bear arms who are law abiding and do nothing to keep criminals from buying them.
Given that we are a constitutional republic, this would seem to be a fair statement. Can you point to something in particular in the bill, that would make it compatible with the amendment that says the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed?
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