The Manchin-Toomey Expanded Background Checks Bill to regulate purchase of guns by Al Qaeda terrorists, gang members, rapists and murderers, and mentally unstable people at gun shows and on the internet, went down to a defeat in the US Senate yesterday, only able to gain a vote of 54-46, when 60 votes was needed to overcome the filibuster which holds up action unless that number is reached.
This is a slap in the face of former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and the others who were victims in Tucson; those killed and wounded in the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado; and the massacre of 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.
It also comes right after the Boston Marathon Massacre, which left three dead and 170 wounded, and it says to the nation that we are not willing to do the simple act of requiring expanded background checks as a minimum.
Four Republicans were courageous enough to oppose the National Rifle Association, while four Democrats were unwilling to do what was right, because of their fear of retribution when they came up for reelection, three of them in 2014.
But as much as one wants to keep his job, if a Senator has no principles except his or her own advancement, it means we have forgotten what our government is all about–doing what is best for the American people, and preserving their security and safety, the first and most important role of any government!
Probably only if these four Democratic Senators and the 42 Republicans who voted against expanded background checks had members of their own families killed or wounded, would they get the message!
This is a sad moment in the history of the US Senate, particularly when up to 90 percent of Americans and 80 percent of gun owners support such expanded background checks to preserve some of the lives of our children and our loved ones!
Ron maybe this will help you in understanding your incomprehension of the issue:
The gun bill is dead, but for the shouting. That will come now, thick and fast. “Shame on you, political cowards!†its crestfallen supporters will say, and then they will lash out at the NRA, the Republican party, and, very probably, the Senate itself. This will no doubt be cathartic. But those who indulge such temptations will have drawn the wrong conclusion. With a toxic combination of wishful thinking and mistaken reading of polls, the advocates of stricter control had managed to convince themselves that America was changing in their favor. As recently as last week, Eleanor Clift prophesied on The McLaughlin Group that “the culture of guns is beginning to go through a transformation in this country.†Clift, who appears to be stuck in a bubble, had not yet caught up to reality.
After the abomination at Newtown, Alaska senator Mark Begich, a Democrat, warned of a “sea change.†This conceit was picked up by the media and propagated without criticism or thought and, within a few days, it became conventional wisdom. The president went around the country insisting that “it is clear that the American people want action†and repeating his ever-present conviction that “now is the time.â€
But, as reason and calm were given time to intrude on the debate, whatever momentum there had been after Newtown quickly disappeared. In the intensity of the aftermath, 58 percent of Americans wanted “stricter†gun laws; today, that number has gone back to 38 or lower, its usual territory. According to Google Trends, the Internet-searching public lost interest in gun control just after Christmas. Crucially, in rural areas, support for tighter control dropped from a post-Newtown high of 49 percent down to 27 percent within three months. Normality and calm, the enemies of reaction, were restored before Joe Biden’s commission had even reported.
National polls, cited as if they were argument-winners, are irrelevant — especially when it comes to the Senate. There is a touch of Pauline Kael about today’s progressive indignation. The population centers in California, Illinois, and New York may still be up in arms — your friends, too — but most other states probably do not have pro-gun-control majorities and, when it comes to regulating firearms, most Americans appear to err on the side of caution. Take a look at the Brady Campaign’s scorecard, which tracks the severity of gun laws across America: http://www.bradycampaign.org/stategunlaws/scorecard
Bill Clinton warned Democrats about this in January, urging them to remember that “these polls that you see saying the public is for us on all these issues — they are meaningless if they’re not voting issues.†Message: Gun owners are engaged; most people are not. Mother Jones’s Kevin Drum put his finger on this this morning:
“How did this happen even though, as liberals remind us endlessly, 90 percent of the American public supports background checks? Because about 80 percent of those Americans think it sounds like a reasonable idea but don’t really care much. I doubt that one single senator will suffer at the polls in 2014 for voting against Manchin-Toomey.”
As they regroup, gun restrictionists might look at their tactics. The shiny new Gun-Control Thesaurus, in which “gun control†was seamlessly replaced by “gun safety,†“gun-violence prevention,†and “gun responsibility,†did nothing much to help their cause. Likewise, supplanting the already misleading term “assault weapon†with “weapon of war,†“military weapon,†or “combat weapon.†Advocates’ penchant for the wider culture war led them to vilify gun-rights advocates as ridiculous or paranoid and to cast basic liberties as antithetical to the interests of the nation’s children, turning potential allies off and leading to 52 percent of Americans’ disapproving of how the president dealt with the issue.
The public quickly switched off. Try as they might, nobody on the restrictionists’ side could get past the fact that laws banning assault weapons, limiting magazine size, and forcing background checks upon all gun transfers would do nothing to stop maniacs. They could not present ploys such as “if it can save one life . . . †without looking manipulative and desperate. People can tell when their representatives don’t know what they’re talking about, and they know when they’re being played. Gallup’s revelation in March that only 4 percent of Americans considered guns to be the “most important†issue facing the country instructed us that Senator Begich’s warning of real change’s being imminent was wrong — his “sea change†a mirage. How do I know? Today, he too voted against it. – Charles C. W. Cooke is an editorial associate at National Review
I antiicipated and expected this.
The Senate Rs who voted yes: Arizona’s John McCain; Illinois’s Mark Kirk; Maine’s Susan Collins; and, not surprising due to helping shape the “bipartisan” background-check bill, Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey.
The Senate Ds who voted no: Alaska’s Mark Begich; Arkansas’s Mark Pryor; Montana’s Max Baucus; North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp; and, the majority leader of the U.S. Senate, Nevada’s Harry Reid.
Of these listees, the Senate seats on schedule for the 2014 midterms elections are applicable to Baucus, Begich, Collins, Heitkamp, and Pryor.
@ http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=113&session=1&vote=00097
Shame on those senators who voted No to this bill! We the people will ensure they get voted out in 2014 because of this!
“It also comes right after the Boston Marathon Massacre, which left three dead and 170 wounded”
This has absolutely nothing to do with obamas gun grabbing attempts other then his Modus Operandi of never letting a crisis go to waste in order to further his policies of tyranny.
This should sicken Americans. The NRA and gun lobby for weapons and ammunition manufacturers have methodically crippled our country’s ability to stop or even slow down the insanity of gun violence!
Blindfolded, and with One Hand Tied Behind the Back
How the Gun Lobby Has Debilitated Federal Action on Firearms and What President Obama Can Do About It
Winnie Stachelberg, Arkadi Gerney, and Chelsea Parsons March 18, 2013http://www.
.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/GunRidersBrief-7.pdf
LOL! Love your tin foil hat Dave! 😉
LOL, princess, you can keep the tin hat I’d rather my Glock 19 with a 30 round magazine
Dave, you need 30 bullets to kill a deer–or are you hunting people–this is insane talk!
Totally agree Professor. Definitely insane talk.
Dave,
I don’t wear a tin foil hat because I don’t believe in the conspiracy that Obama’s policies are tyranny.
LOL, nothing scares a progressive more than black scary guns. First it seems the professor seems to not understand deer hunting, but you are not alone neither our vice president or Sen. Feinstein understand the subject either, one would never hunt with a Glock 19 pistol. Personally I do not like hunting and would only do it for survival, however I fully support others right to do so. Now as far as having 30 rounds it seems the professor does not understand this either, you only have to look at the events of the past few days and see where TRAINED officers in the heat of battle fired hundreds of rounds that did not hit their mark. If God forbid it came my time to defend myself and family it is entirely my decision as to what type of magazine and how many I need.
What part of “SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED” do you and the princess do not understand?
The average citizen does not need the ability to shoot large numbers of continuous bullets for hunting or standard self-defense. That’s basic common sense.
@Dave: It’s hopeless, they will never understand. They have been programmed like drones. Some actually quote Governor Cuomo’s ridiculous “don’t need to hunt a bear” statement as if were a coherent statement!!!
Nope, Juan. Your side are the ones programmed like drones.
http://www.vpc.org/studies/justifiable.pdf —- an analysis of the most recent FBI and National Crime Victimization Survey data concludes that guns were used to resist a violent crime only approximately 45,000 times per year, far less than the 2.5 million defensive gun uses per year that the NRA and other gun activists claim.
Princess Leia, there is nothing new in the NRA lying through its teeth. And nothing new about those who think by stocking up guns, they protect themselves against our government, when if insurrection ever came, they would be mowed down, but only after many innocent people are slaughtered by those who should not have unlimited weapons, as they are unstable emotionally!
Article in The GUARDIAN
Saturday 20 April 2013
This Should Make Us Think
*****
http://m.guardiannews.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/21/boston-marathon-bombs-us-gun-law
*****
Why does America lose its head over ‘terror’ but ignore its daily gun deaths?
The marathon bombs triggered a reaction that is at odds with last week’s inertia over arms control
The thriving metropolis of Boston was turned into a ghost town on Friday. Nearly a million Bostonians were asked to stay in their homes – and willingly complied. Schools were closed; business shuttered; trains, subways and roads were empty; usually busy streets eerily resembled a post-apocalyptic movie set; even baseball games and cultural events were cancelled – all in response to a 19-year-old fugitive, who was on foot and clearly identified by the news media.
The actions allegedly committed by the Boston marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan, were heinous. Four people dead and more than 100 wounded, some with shredded and amputated limbs.
But Londoners, who endured IRA terror for years, might be forgiven for thinking that America over-reacted just a tad to the goings-on in Boston. They’re right – and then some. What we saw was a collective freak-out like few that we’ve seen previously in the United States. It was yet another depressing reminder that more than 11 years after 9/11 Americans still allow themselves to be easily and willingly cowed by the “threat” of terrorism.
After all, it’s not as if this is the first time that homicidal killers have been on the loose in a major American city. In 2002, Washington DC was terrorized by two roving snipers, who randomly shot and killed 10 people. In February, a disgruntled police officer, Christopher Dorner, murdered four people over several days in Los Angeles. In neither case was LA or DC put on lockdown mode, perhaps because neither of these sprees was branded with that magically evocative and seemingly terrifying word for Americans, terrorism.
To be sure, public officials in Boston appeared to be acting out of an abundance of caution. And it’s appropriate for Boston residents to be asked to take precautions or keep their eyes open. But by letting one fugitive terrorist shut down a major American city, Boston not only bowed to outsize and irrational fears, but sent a dangerous message to every would-be terrorist – if you want to wreak havoc in the United States, intimidate its population and disrupt public order, here’s your instruction booklet.
Putting aside the economic and psychological cost, the lockdown also prevented an early capture of the alleged bomber, who was discovered after Bostonians were given the all clear and a Watertown man wandered into his backyard for a cigarette and found a bleeding terrorist on his boat.
In some regards, there is a positive spin on this – it’s a reflection of how little Americans have to worry about terrorism. A population such as London during the IRA bombings or Israel during the second intifada or Baghdad, pretty much every day, becomes inured to random political violence. Americans who have such little experience of terrorism, relatively speaking, are more primed to overreact – and assume the absolute worst when it comes to the threat of a terror attack. It is as if somehow in the American imagination, every terrorist is a not just a mortal threat, but is a deadly combination of Jason Bourne and James Bond.
***If only Americans reacted the same way to the actual threats that exist in their country. There’s something quite fitting and ironic about the fact that the Boston freak-out happened in the same week the Senate blocked consideration of a gun control bill that would have strengthened background checks for potential buyers. Even though this reform is supported by more than 90% of Americans, and even though 56 out of 100 senators voted in favour of it, the Republican minority prevented even a vote from being held on the bill because it would have allegedly violated the second amendment rights of “law-abiding Americans”.
So for those of you keeping score at home – locking down an American city: a proper reaction to the threat from one terrorist. A background check to prevent criminals or those with mental illness from purchasing guns: a dastardly attack on civil liberties. All of this would be almost darkly comic if not for the fact that more Americans will die needlessly as a result. Already, more than 30,000 Americans die in gun violence every year (compared to the 17 who died last year in terrorist attacks).
What makes US gun violence so particularly horrifying is how routine and mundane it has become. After the massacre of 20 kindergartners in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, millions of Americans began to take greater notice of the threat from gun violence. Yet since then, the daily carnage that guns produce has continued unabated and often unnoticed.
The same day of the marathon bombing in Boston, 11 Americans were murdered by guns. The pregnant Breshauna Jackson was killed in Dallas, allegedly by her boyfriend. In Richmond, California, James Tucker III was shot and killed while riding his bicycle – assailants unknown. Nigel Hardy, a 13-year-old boy in Palmdale, California, who was being bullied in school, took his own life. He used the gun that his father kept at home. And in Brooklyn, New York, an off-duty police officer used her department-issued Glock 9mm handgun to kill herself, her boyfriend and her one-year old child.
At the same time that investigators were in the midst of a high-profile manhunt for the marathon bombers that ended on Friday evening, 38 more Americans – with little fanfare – died from gun violence. One was a 22-year old resident of Boston. They are a tiny percentage of the 3,531 Americans killed by guns in the past four months – a total that surpasses the number of Americans who died on 9/11 and is one fewer than the number of US soldiers who lost their lives in combat operations in Iraq. Yet, none of this daily violence was considered urgent enough to motivate Congress to impose a mild, commonsense restriction on gun purchasers.
It’s not just firearms that produce such legislative inaction. Last week, a fertiliser plant in West, Texas, which hasn’t been inspected by federal regulators since 1985, exploded, killing 14 people and injuring countless others. Yet many Republicans want to cut further the funding for the agency (OSHA) that is responsible for such reviews. The vast majority of Americans die from one of four ailments – cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic lung disease – and yet Republicans have held three dozen votes to repeal Obamacare, which expands healthcare coverage to 30 million Americans.
It is a surreal and difficult-to-explain dynamic. Americans seemingly place an inordinate fear on violence that is random and unexplainable and can be blamed on “others” – jihadists, terrorists, evil-doers etc. But the lurking dangers all around us – the guns, our unhealthy diets, the workplaces that kill 14 Americans every single day – these are just accepted as part of life, the price of freedom, if you will. And so the violence goes, with more Americans dying preventable deaths. But hey, look on the bright side – we got those sons of bitches who blew up the marathon.