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NRA

NRA gun creeps’ agenda enables cop-killers

by Dan Burns on April 8, 2013 · 2 comments

gunnutNo, that headline is not an exaggeration. We have every reason to be blunt and forceful, considering what’s at stake.
 

A new study released last week by the Center for American Progress analyzed 10 key measures of gun violence and found that Louisiana is worst among the 50 states. Included in the report is a 50-state ranking of law enforcement feloniously killed by guns: Louisiana ranks second worst in the nation behind South Dakota…
 

The NRA often says that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” But in states like Louisiana, no single group has done more than the NRA to put guns in the hands of bad guys. That puts the good guys with guns—like our law enforcement officers—and good guys without guns at a higher risk.
 
(Think Progress)

 

Of course the firearms freaks can explain why it isn’t their fault. (For conservatives, and in fact cognitively rigid, dogmatic types in general, it never is.) The ignorant, contemptible “rationalization” that many use, deep down inside, is that since many of those states have higher percentages of racial minorities, they therefore have a larger element that is just naturally disposed to violent criminal behavior. But few dare to come right out, outside of their inner circles of the like-minded that is, and say that. Instead, one hears the same old crap about existing laws not being enforced, societal factors that have nothing to do with gun ownership…
 
Tell that to the families of the slain officers.
 

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More than 20 Die at the NRA Annual Gun Show

by Grace Kelly on April 1, 2013 · 0 comments

More than 20 deaths have been reported at a gun show, the 2013 National Rifle Association Convention, at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas. Two police officers and multiple others have been wounded.

 
The first 911 call came out of the men’s bathroom. A man reported that he had just purchased a new handgun. When he dropped his pants, the gun misfired, causing a bullet to go ricocheting around the room. This caused multiple people to immediately respond with rapid-fire immense-clip weapons. Weapons fire spilled into the main hall and exhibit area, where again responding gunfire escalated rapidly, and something in the exhibit area exploded.

…READ MORE

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The gun nuts and their psychological “issues”

by Dan Burns on March 27, 2013 · 0 comments

gunsCritics of the gun nuts, including me, have been making suggestions along the lines of the following, for a while now. (“Critics” isn’t the whole deal; I do try to nurture some empathy, for people so flagrantly messed up. But it’s hard to maintain.) This phrasing is more striking and perhaps effective than anything that I’ve managed to create.

 

But there may be another explanation – and none of these are mutually exclusive – for the ferocious, truculent grasping onto guns as if they were life vests to save a wounded psyche.

 

It may be this, and the clue emerged – from all places – in the written introduction to a “B” movie I was watching the other night: “The worst thing about growing old is that men stop seeing you as dangerous.”
 

This may be the molten lave core of the overheated zealotry of male gun fanatics. They are not, in general, worried about using a gun for self-defense; they are more concerned about being perceived as dangerous.
 

That is not a distinction without a difference. It shifts the debate from arguing that one’s life is imperiled without carrying a gun to “I need to carry a gun so that I am feared as a man should be.”
 

That’s not an issue of so-called Second Amendment Rights; it’s a cry for massive national psychiatric intervention.
 
(Truthout/Buzzflash)

 
…READ MORE

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More to the progressive win in IL-02 than outside money

by Eric Ferguson on February 28, 2013 · 0 comments

Turns out there was a lot more to the IL-02 primary special election than Michael Bloomberg’s money. He came in only after Robin Kelly had established gun violence as the issue and herself as a top-tier candidate. She made gun violence her issue even before Sandy Hook, and defined her opponents as NRA supporters while her opponents made the mistake of touting their NRA A grades until they discovered the NRA was toxic. She had the best field operation, and my take is she would have won without Bloomberg, though probably by the predicted narrow plurality. It’s possible Daily Kos was more important than Bloomberg. The election appears to have already been over when presumed frontrunner Debbie Halvorson went on Fox News to ask Republicans to cross over into the Democratic primary (the fact this was a completely viable strategy is why I hate open primaries).

 

I think a lesson for us isn’t just that candidates in bluish districts should avoid the NRA like the plague (though not safe to assume this about purple or red districts based on this one election), but there’s a virtue to setting the agenda and forcing opponents to respond to you, using the data-driven field operation, and putting yourself in a position to benefit should outside events intervene.

 

Let me stress that last part. It was because Kelly chose at the beginning to run against the NRA that she was in a position to benefit when gun violence suddenly became the country’s top issue, and a billionaire decided to fund ads against NRA supporters.

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The NRA gets stomped in Illinois

by Dan Burns on February 26, 2013 · 1 comment

A lot of recent polling has been pointing in this direction, but the result of tonight’s Democratic primary (for all practical purposes, the general election) in Illinois’s 2nd District send the strongest message yet that the NRA is far, far from some terrifying behemoth that no politician serious about being elected should ever dare cross.

 

In the end, it wasn’t even close. Sure, there are votes here and there still left to be counted, but our very own Robin Kelly won a solid majority of the vote while no one else even cracked a quarter. She still has to win the general election, but in this district, that’s a formality. Republicans don’t exist in meaningful numbers.

 

It was just a month ago when we engaged — the NRA was boasting that the two front-runners were both big supporters, and Kelly was struggling to gain traction in a field of about 2,000 people (what, was the filing fee $20?)…

 

The problem for (right-wing gun nuts) is that with elections, there’s no muddying the waters. Reality is pretty assertive. And in this case, the reality is that we helped the voters of IL-02 send a clear message on sensible gun regulations. It’s a new playing field, we’re on the offensive, and we’re not stopping now. And if you think that the message resonated only because this was an urban district, 2014 will prove otherwise as the message resonates just as strongly in suburban districts. Personally, I can’t wait to see what we, our progressive allies, and Bloomberg’s Super PAC can accomplish next year.

 

(Daily Kos)

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Next up for gun nuts: armed invasion of State Capitol?

by The Big E on February 12, 2013 · 0 comments

Photo: Oregon Live

The Minnesota legislature is holding hearings on how to address the epidemic of gun violence. A few bills have already been introduced. More will be coming. As the bills and hearings progress towards the inevitable conclusion of banning automatic weapons, high capacity clips and requiring background checks on all gun sales, what will the unhinged right wingers do to protest?

Will it include an armed invasion of the State Capitol?

Oregon law allows people who have concealed handgun licenses to openly carry weapons inside public buildings, including the Capitol.

Among those who ventured inside from a pro-gun rally across the street was a man who would only give a first name, Warren.

“I’m supporting my fellow patriots,” he said. He was carrying an AR-15 slung across his back. “It’s technically loaded,” he said, meaning a full magazine was in place, but no round was chambered.


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Today’s Example Of Numbers Don’t Lie, But GunNuts Use Numbers

by TwoPuttTommy on February 12, 2013 · 0 comments

I saw the tweet, way late last night while snowplowing:

What??!?  Let’s look at that again:

“January gun death toll: 40 in Gun free Chicago. 0 in gun-toting Tampa.  #stribpol”

No gun deaths in Tampa, for a whole month??!?

Having lived in Tampa, I just knew that couldn’t be true.  Especially coming from The Gas Bag Of The Midway.

So I get home, and do a quick google search —   Tampa murder  –  with the click on news.  Sure enough, there it is – – first page, on google:

Tampa police dispatcher victim of apparent murder-suicide
By JOSÉ PATIÑO GIRONA | Tribune staff
Published: January 24, 2013

.
The sheriff’s office said Mendoza was confronted by her armed, estranged husband outside his mother’s home, 8361 Galewood Circle in Tampa.

A neighbor heard gunshots at about 9 a.m. and ran to the driveway to find Mendoza slumped over in the front seat and her husband, Pedro Mendoza, slumped over in the back seat of her Hyundai Sonata, said Cristal Bermudez Nuñez, a Hillsborough County Sheriff’s spokeswoman.
.
.

Why look any futher? First page of a google search, and Berg is already talking out of his… well, you get the idea.

So, I send this tweet the following tweet, and go to bed:

Retweeted it, around 11:00am this morning and Berg starts tap dancing! Basically whining “move along, folks – nothing to see here!”  Let’s look:

Can’t make this up, folks!

And that’s the problem with people like Berg, shill for GunNuts everywhere:  reasonable people have no reason to believe ‘em.  Point out that they’re wrong, and they just ignore it and pretend nothing is wrong with what they’ve said.

It’s simply impossible to shame people that simply have no shame.

And it’s just another example of:
You Couldn’t Trust The GOP Then, You Still Can’t Now, And Tomorrow Won’t Be Any Different.

 

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NRA stooges oppose this kind of arming

by The Big E on February 5, 2013 · 2 comments

Here’s the kind of “arming” that I’m sure the NRA stooges oppose:


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Failed arguments from the NRA crowd

by The Big E on January 30, 2013 · 3 comments

I wrote a post last week about some of the mystifying and thunderously stupid arguments the stooges of the NRA use. I have since run across several others news items that I think are relevant.

These RWNJs keep repeating their mantra “the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Here’s a story from a good guy with a gun that didn’t follow the mythology and ended poorly for our hero.

An astute blogger noticed that the NRA may have gotten their talking points from Archie Bunker.

And God wants everyone to have an assault weapon if this RWNJ is to be believed. Yeah, I think that’s right out of Browning’s 13:16.

I’ll begin with the guy who’d just holstered his gun when the mass killer walked into view:

It was 2005, at the Tacoma Mall in Washington state. McKown had been chatting with friends when gunshots rang out. Everyone hid; but McKown had a pistol. For years, he’d carried a legal concealed weapon, with the thought that someday he’d protect others. Now it seemed that moment had come.

Gun drawn, McKown scanned for the shooter. But the gunshots stopped. Unsure what had happened, McKown tucked his pistol back under his coat – just as the shooter walked right in front of him.

“So anyway, I’m standing there like Napoleon Bonaparte, with his hand, you know, in his jacket,” he recalls. “So I said, ‘Young man, I think you need to put your weapon down.’ “

That moment of vulnerability gave the other guy just enough time to shoot McKown. The bullet hit his spine, and he found himself unable to aim his own gun.

But let’s let Archie Bunker rebutt my arguments:

And so much for Jesus and his sissy liberal crap about turning the other cheek …

The author, David French, interprets the Christian Bible as granting everyone a right to self-defense. He suggests that this, if true, means that God’s will is that people have access to guns, as they are the means for self defense:
In fact, Jesus’s disciples carried swords, and Jesus even said in some contexts the unarmed should arm themselves…What does all this mean? Essentially that gun control represents not merely a limitation on a constitutional right but a limitation on a God-given right of man that has existed throughout the history of civil society. All rights – of course – are subject to some limits (the right of free speech is not unlimited, for example), and there is much room for debate on the extent of those limits, but state action against the right of self-defense is by default a violation of the natural rights of man, and the state’s political judgment about the limitations of that right should be viewed with extreme skepticism and must overcome a heavy burden of justification.

Even if French is right about the Christian view of self-defense (though Jesus did have choice words about “turning the other cheek“), it’s a logical fallacy to say this implies anything about restrictions on access to guns. Saying that people have a right to defend themselves if attacked isn’t the same thing as saying they should have a right to possess any conceivable means of defending themselves – presumably, French is fine with banning grenade launchers. The burden, instead, is on French to prove that universal background checks or limitations on assault weapon ownership somehow prevent people from defending themselves; to prove, in other words, that gun regulation is actually a restriction on the right of self-defense proper rather than a crime-prevention statute.

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Top Ten Reasons We Do Not Need Gun Control

by Alec on January 2, 2013 · 1 comment

1) Guns Don’t Kill People, Pencils Do

Yes, you can kill folks with lots of different things. It is the exact same thing to be attacked with a pencil as it is to be attacked with a gun. The lethality of of a pencil, hammer, or knife is the same. This is iron clad logic.

2) Registering Stuff Means It Gets Taken Away.

Just last summer I bought a new car. I had to register it. Any day now the guv’ment will come take away my car. I know registering my gun would immediately lead to someone taking it. It is not a paranoid delusion. Just like they are going to take my car, house, and vote. All things I have registered with the government.

3) Speaking of registering, you shouldn’t have to register to do something in the Bill Of Rights.

In fact, I say we organize ourselves and go practice our 1st Amendment Right to Assembly down at City Hall. If you’re in, let me know, and I will go register for a permit post haste.

4) You cannot regulate anything in the Bill of Rights.

The 4th, 5th, and 8th Amendments have already been regulated out of existence, but true constitutional conservatives only really need to protect the 2nd. The guv’ment can spy on you, or lock you away without trial now, but your deer rifle will protect you when the S.W.A.T. team comes.

5) If you outlaw arms, only outlaws with have arms.

This one is just common sense. For decades we have outlawed grenade launches and fully automatic, belt fed arms. I cannot tell you how many times I have had to face down a grenade launcher armed bandit with no machine gun to protect my own self.

6) If you want to regulate guns, it means you are Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao,  Stalin, and another guy I saw in a Facebook picture mash-up.

Those are all the terrible folks that wanted to take away your guns. Regulating guns is the exact same as taking them away. We already discussed that earlier about my car and it’s inevitable guv’ment confiscation.  

7) Regulating assault weapons will lead to a slippery slope of taking my deer rifle.

We have already discussed how all the outlaws have grenade launchers and machine guns. Now the guv’ment even wants to take our deer rifles. Fully automatic weapons have been tightly regulated since 1934, and it is only a matter of days before that slippery slopes down to my deer rifle! Even if you believe in regulating Nuclear Arms it will all slip, slip, slippery slide to my deer rifle. If you believe in regulating Nucler Arms on down you are Hitler.

8) The only thing protecting the 1st Amendment is the 2nd!!

Only my rifle can protect us from a tyrannical guv’ment. If they try to make me register to assemble, I will need my rifle to prove my point. Some think democracy and voting will protect us from a third Obama term, but I know it is my rifle. I can totally take down an M1 Abrams tank or an Apache Helicopter. I got skills. The NRA knows we don’t need any of those other Amendments like the 4th,5th, or 8th. Just the 2nd baby!

9) The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun!

The Sandy Hook tragedy would have been stopped if only there had been a good guy with a gun. His mother was a law abiding citizen who had lots and lots of guns. Some would think that she was a “good guy with a gun, or lots of them”, but she wasn’t a guy. I think the NRA policy says it has to be a good guy with a gun.

10) And most of all, the 2nd Amendment protects your right to own a gun!!

You cannot regulate a right. We’ve talked about that. Even though the Amendment has “well regulated” right in the description, I believe that was an autocorrect quill error.


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