Category Archives: Guns

Yup, They’re Running

We know that Rick Perry and Chris Christie are running in 2016 because they are making decisions purely out of fear of pissing off primary voters.

Perry refused to meet President Obama at the airport in Texas tomorrow, as governors traditionally do, because God forbid he should be photographed shaking the President’s hand.

And Christie vetoed a bill that would have reduced gun magazines in New Jersey from a maximum of 15 rounds to 10, because God forbid a mass shooter should have to re-load more often, giving his victims a chance to run.  Nah, much more important for Chris to run.

The Perry thing is just silly, but the Christie thing is sad.

Quote of the Day

“I totally get the very correct desire to avoid violence. But allowing a bunch of militia freaks and gun-toting thugs to run off federal agents trying to act against a rancher who’s refused to pay grazing fees for using federal lands for 20 years seems like a very, very bad idea.”

Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo

Amen to that.  Fox News has really outdone themselves on this story.  Sean Hannity didn’t challenge Cliven Bundy when he claimed his cattle aren’t on federal land.  That’s because in Bundy’s alternative universe, there’s no such thing as federal ownership of land.  I doubt Sean would be so sympathetic if a bunch of  young African-Americans took over a federal building in New York City.  But when it’s an old white guy in a cowboy hat, Sean doesn’t call him out for the criminal he is.

 

We Like It, We Really Like It

“Consider these numbers from a Kaiser Foundation poll from last week. Percent who like the ACA’s extension of dependent coverage: 76. Percent supportive of the act’s closing of the Medicare drug “donut hole”: 73. Percent favoring “guaranteed issue” of coverage to people who are already sick: 69. Percent who back the Medicaid expansion: 62.

“Oh, wait. Those are the Republican percentages. The overall percentages, respectively, are 80, 79, 70, and 74.

“It’s the same old disconnect. Just as majorities of even rank-and-file Republicans support things like restricting the gun-show loophole (indeed a majority of NRA members support that), majorities of Republicans back these and other basic common-sense provisions of the ACA. And yet these same Republicans keep reelecting to Congress a horde of dishonest and ideologically driven harlots who’ve voted 50-whatever times to do away with all these positive changes.

“Here are two other numbers from the Kaiser poll. They gave people four options: keep the law as is, keep it and change it where needed, get of it and replace with a GOP alternative, and simply get rid of it and replace it with nothing. The first two and the second two can be reasonably grouped together as “basically support the law” and “basically oppose the law.” The numbers are 59 to 29. Not against—in support of the law.”  Italics in original.

Michael Tomasky, Obamacare Crosses the Finish Line,” The Daily Beast

Priorities, People

The NRA has succeeded in killing the nomination of a highly-qualified doctor, Vivek Murthy, to be surgeon general because he stated the obvious — gun violence is a public health issue.  And today is Saturday.  Obama can’t even get him through the Senate with a simple majority because so many Dems are scared of the gun nuts.  I guess when Harry Reid changed the filibuster rules on nominations, he forgot to check that the members of his caucus had balls.

Instead of focusing their outrage at a fine nominee being trashed and scuttled just because the NRA wants to raise money and demonstrate their disproportionate power, what has America up in arms, as it were, today?  That Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are on the cover of Vogue.

Should Have Seen This Coming

The Duck Dynasty Robertson clan is partnering with Mossberg, a gun manufacturer, to promote a line of guns, including nice shotguns, two rifles, and a semi-automatic pistol.

Says vagina-loving, anus-hating Phil Robertson on the web site, “You know what makes me happy, ladies and gentleman? To blow a mallard drake’s head smooth off.”

Um, why do you need a semi-automatic to go duck hunting?  And now I’m stuck with a mental image of severed duck heads flying through the air, dripping blood.

North Colorado?

Five of Colorado’s 11 counties voted to secede yesterday over gun rights and oil and gas policy.  Now all they have to do is get the Colorado legislature and the U. S. Congress to approve their secession, which I’m sure will be a piece of cake, probably done by the end of the week.  The Dems would love to give these folks two senators and help make the Senate as crazy as the House.

But have they stopped to think how tough it is to arrange 51 stars on the flag?

Telling It Like It Is

From “The Truth About Trayvon,” Ekow N. Yankah*, NYT:

“The Trayvon Martin verdict is frustrating, fracturing, angering and predictable.  More than anything, for many of us, it is exhausting.  Exhausting because nothing could bring back our lost child, exhausting because the verdict, which should have felt shocking, arrived with the inevitability that black Americans know too well when criminal law announces that they are worth less than other Americans.

“The anger felt by so many African-Americans speaks to the simplest of truths:  that race and law cannot be cleanly separated. … We are tired of pretending that ‘reasonable doubt’ is not, in every sense of the word, colored.

“I do not have to believe that Mr. Zimmerman is a hate-filled racist to recognize that he would probably not even have noticed Mr. Martin if he had been a casually dressed white teenager.

“Imagine that a militant black man, with a history of race-based suspicion and a loaded gun, followed an unarmed white teenager around his neighborhood.  The young man is scared, and runs through the streets trying to get away.  Unable to elude his black stalker and, perhaps, feeling cornered, he finally holds his ground — only to be shot at point-blank range after a confrontation.

“A young, white Trayvon Martin would unquestionably be said to have behaved reasonably, while it is unimaginable that a militant black George Zimmerman would not be viewed as the legal aggressor, and thus guilty of at least manslaughter.”

 

*  Yankah is a law professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University