They’ll wake up in China!
And shame on me for being shocked, but really I am.
The RNC has a new ad criticizing President Obama for “a string of defeats” in Congress. As they catalogue those defeats, they show the President with one of the Newtown mothers, Nicole Hockley.
So the Republican Party is blaming President Obama for the failure to pass gun reform!
“It hurts her. Elections are won in New Hampshire with the vote of independents, particularly independent women. Independent women will not favor a candidate who does not believe in background checks. Will it be the only issue? No, but it will be an issue.”
Kathy Sullivan, former head of the NH Dem party, on GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte’s vote against the Manchin-Toomey bill to expand background checks for gun purchases.
Ayotte is now being called NRAyotte.
Ayotte says she supports fixing the mental health system to prevent people from getting guns. But how would that work, other than through background checks? If someone is in a data base as being too mentally impaired to own a gun, how would a gun seller know that without doing a check? There are two steps here. First, you have to get them into a data base, and then someone has to access that data base before doing the transaction.
From “A Shameful Day in the Senate,” Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast:
“Every strong political movement, besotted with the fragrance of its own power, hits the point of overreach, and the pro-gun movement hit that point yesterday in the morally repulsive Senate vote on the background-checks bill. We all know the old cliché that the National Rifle Association has power because its members vote on the guns issue, while gun-control people aren’t zealots. Well, Wayne LaPierre and 46 craven senators, that ‘majority’ of the Senate, have just created millions of zealots, and as furious as I am, I’m also strangely at peace, because I’m more confident than ever that the NRA will never, ever be stronger in Washington than it was yesterday.
“You cannot oppose the will of 90 percent of the public and expect no consequences. You can’t have people saying what Rand Paul said, that monstrous comment of his about Newtown parents being “props,” and think that you haven’t offended and infuriated millions of people. You can’t introduce amendments that encourage more interstate transfer of weapons and give it the way-beyond-Orwellian name ‘safe communities’ act and think that karma will never come back around on you. And you can’t sneer at the parents of dead 6-year-olds and expect that God isn’t watching and taking notes.
“Sickening. The whole thing. The four cowardly Democrats, too. Max Baucus, Mark Begich, Mark Pryor, and Heidi Heitkamp. Heitkamp won’t face her voters again for five years. Baucus has been around long enough to be able to be bigger than this. Begich and Pryor, who face reelection next year, have the least lame excuses of all, but they are cowards too. They have to know they did the wrong thing. If Joe Manchin could do what he did—and trust me, I’m from West Virginia, and I know Joe, and our families knew each other, and the whole thing. If Manchin could do what he did, from a state every bit as tough on this issue as theirs, these four pygmies really have to be ashamed of themselves.”
So the NRA says we can’t have gun reform, any gun reform, even teeny-tiny gun reform that a Tea Party guy like Pat Toomey would support, because they want to protect us from tyranny.
What about the tyranny of the NRA — aka the gun and ammo manufacturers — imposing their views on the 90% of this country who want enhanced background checks, and the substantial majorities who want other reforms as well?
The tyranny is here, people, we are living under it tonight.
More votes against gun reform. A ban on assault weapons got only 40 votes. A ban on high-capacity clips got only 46.
You know what got the most votes? The NRA-backed proposal to ease concealed-carry permits, so that if you came from a state with looser restrictions, you could take your gun into a state with tighter restrictions, got 57 votes. So New York City would have a bunch of Texans running around with guns.
As the Manchin-Toomey bill for broader (not universal) background checks for gun sales appears headed for defeat, Sen. Ted Cruz (Tea Party-Texas) admits that the bill wouldn’t create a federal gun registry:
“I don’t disagree that on its face, the currently pending legislation does not purport to create a national gun registry.”
Indeed, the bill provides a 15-year felony sentence for any government official who keeps such records.
Stay with me here, cause this one is a little convoluted.
GOP Congressman Jeff Duncan of SC repeated on his Facebook page the gun-nut canard that background checks will inevitably lead to a national gun registry and then, well, then the America we love will become Rwanda:
“Ask yourselves about a National gun registry database and how that might be used and why it is so wanted by progressives. Read about the Rwandan genocide, the Hutu and Tutsi tribes. Read that all Tutsi tribe members were required to register their address with the Hutu government and that this database was used to locate Tutsi for slaughter at the hands of the Hutu. … I use this example to warn that national databases can be used with evil consequences.”
First, we already have background checks, just not universal checks, and we don’t have a gun registry. There is no reason that the expansion of existing background checks would lead to the creation of a registry. No one is proposing such a registry. In fact, we have laws against such a registry.
Second, um, Jeff, you moron, the Government already knows where we live!
Oh, big whup — the debate on gun reform is going to proceed after a GOP filibuster attempt was defeated 68-31. And shame on you, Mark Begich of Alaska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas for voting with the GOP. That special circle in hell for cowards awaits.
Nothing like walking by your dead child’s room and thinking, “What a great victory to stop that filibuster.”
So we’ll get a debate on gun reform, we’ll get votes on gun reform, we just won’t get any real gun reform.
Broader background checks? Sure, a good thing if the Manchin-Toomey deal passes. But we need to deal with the semi-automatic weapons and large ammo clips, and that ain’t gonna happen. More dead kids? That’s definitely gonna happen.
Poll after poll shows that 90% or more of Americans support universal background checks for gun purchases. And that includes solid majorities of NRA members and Republicans. Yet even this, the most popular and least controversial of gun reforms, seems doomed, unable to get out of the Democrat-controlled Senate, let alone the GOP House.
Sahil Kapur writes today at Talking Points Memo:
“Politically, Democratic leaders are in a lose-lose predicament. If they somehow squeeze background checks through the Senate (it’ll still have to pass the House), their vulnerable members will face the wrath of the NRA. If the legislation fails, leaders will anger and demoralize their liberal base, which is demanding meaningful action on guns.”
It seems to me that if this legislation fails, the anger and despair and frustration will rightly extend well beyond the liberal base. Background checks are not just a liberal cause, they are supported all across the political spectrum.
Kapur names four Dem senators who won’t vote for background checks because they are up for re-election in 2014: Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and Max Baucus of Montana. I hope they lose their seats — they don’t deserve the extraordinary honor and power of being a senator.
Jewish tradition says that if you save one life, you save the whole world. I can’t imagine that universal background checks won’t save at least one life. If I lost my Senate seat, but knew that I’d saved a life because of my vote, I’d consider that an excellent trade-off and be proud and at peace for the rest of my life. And, given the lop-sided polling, I believe these senators can do the right thing and win in 2014 anyway.
It may be inevitable that crazies like Adam Lanza will do us harm, but it’s not inevitable that cowards will lead us.
Embattled Farmers 