Stop the gun violence.
On Mar 27, 9:26 am, plainolamerican <plainolameri...@gmail.com> wrote:
> They understand that allowing
> people to purchase military-style weapons at gun shows without a
> background check renders gun safety laws meaningless.
> ---
> most gun owners I know don't mind the background checks.
> it's a small price to pay to keep guns out of the hands of thugs and
> gangs
>
> On Mar 27, 9:03 am, Tommy News <tommysn...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Guns DO kill people. Silence does too. -T
>
> > Silencing the Guns
> > By DREW WESTEN
>
> > Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
> > A man displaying weapons for sale at a gun show held on Jan. 15, 2011,
> > in Tucson, Ariz., one week after Jared Lee Loughner shot Rep.
> > Gabrielle Giffords at a campaign event.
> > When Gabrielle Giffords tendered her resignation from the House of
> > Representatives to Speaker John Boehner because she did not feel she
> > could continue to serve at her current level of disability, the entire
> > House erupted in a rare moment of bipartisan unity, supporting their
> > brave colleague who had survived a bullet through the brain at
> > point-blank range.
>
> > That was not, however, the first bipartisan moment related to the
> > attack on Gabby Giffords, nor would it be the last. In 2004, Congress
> > let the assault weapons ban Bill Clinton had passed "sunset" despite
> > overwhelming public support. That law limited the number of rounds of
> > ammunition a shooter could fire before having to reload, and letting
> > it die an untimely death allowed a mentally ill young man in Tucson to
> > purchase a handgun with a 33-round magazine. Had the assault weapons
> > ban remained in place, he may well have been able to shoot the
> > congresswoman, but he would not have been able to empty his clip,
> > killing 6 people and wounding 13 others, before being tackled to the
> > ground.
>
> > That moment was followed by another bipartisan moment, when President
> > Obama delivered a moving speech on Jan. 12 at the scene of the carnage
> > in Tucson. In it, the president called on the nation to mourn not only
> > the shooting of a beloved member of Congress but the lives of the
> > people who died at the hands of Giffords' assailant, including a
> > 9-year-old girl and a federal judge. But on neither that national day
> > of mourning nor on any day since has the president or the members of
> > Congress, who are either too frightened or too corrupted by the
> > National Rifle Association, honored Giffords or the memory of those
> > who died in that massacre in Tucson in the most appropriate way: with
> > a return to common sense, like reestablishing the assault weapons ban
> > that might have saved their lives. Later in January, Representative
> > Carolyn McCarthy and Senator Frank Lautenberg proposed legislation to
> > outlaw high-capacity magazines; it has gone nowhere.
>
> > The first President Bush, unlike his swaggering son (who advocated the
> > demise of a ban on assault weapons whose sole purpose is to hunt
> > humans) showed political courage by publicly quitting the N.R.A. in
> > disgust in 1995 when it began advocating ideas like its contention
> > that citizens need military-style assault weapons to protect
> > themselves against our own government (members, for example, of the
> > National Guard). In colorful but paranoid language, it called law
> > enforcement officers "jack-booted government thugs," prompting the
> > elder Bush to condemn the group for its disrespect for the law and
> > those who defend it. Since then, it has successfully advocated for
> > increasingly radical laws. One of them, of course, is Florida's
> > "stand your ground" law, which discourages de-escalation of potential
> > firefights in public with predictable results, like the shooting death
> > in Sanford, Fla., of Trayvon Martin.
>
> > Between the Giffords massacre and Martin's death, we have seen more
> > shootings and more bipartisan moments. Around the anniversary of the
> > Tucson massacre that cut short the congressional career of an
> > extraordinary woman — a woman I had come to know personally and adore
> > in her five years in Congress — came two more mass killings. One
> > occurred in Chardon High School in a small town in Ohio, as a
> > 17-year-old opened fire on students with a Ruger .22-caliber
> > semiautomatic with a capacity of 10 rounds. Fortunately the alleged
> > shooter, T.J. Lane, didn't have access to a gun with more firepower.
> > About two weeks later, a man entered one of the nation's premiere
> > medical centers, at the University of Pittsburgh, with two
> > semiautomatic handguns, and opened fire.
>
> > And in yet another show of bipartisanship, political leaders on both
> > sides of the aisle put on their silencers. If an assassination attempt
> > on one of their own did not move members of Congress to ask whether
> > the N.R.A. has a little too much sway in their chambers, a few dead
> > and wounded teenagers, medical patients, and their family members were
> > not going to unlock their safeties. Most have clearly made the risk
> > assessment that they have more to fear from the N.R.A. than they do
> > from an occasional sniper. In the 2010 election cycle, the N.R.A.
> > spent over $7 million in independent expenditure campaigns for and
> > against specific candidates, and it has a remarkable record of success
> > at taking out candidates and elected officials with the misfortune of
> > being caught in its crosshairs.
>
> > Over a million Americans have lost their lives to gunfire since that
> > awful spring of 1968 when both Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King,
> > Jr. were killed by assassins' bullets. Last year alone guns killed or
> > wounded another 100,000 Americans; roughly 30,000 of them died. Had
> > that occurred elsewhere, we would call it genocide. We don't know
> > exactly how many have been killed in the fighting in Libya, Egypt and
> > Syria, but our elected officials have had far less trouble calling for
> > the ouster of Middle Eastern leaders than the leadership of the N.R.A.
> > But it's not just money that prevents common-sense action on gun
> > violence in America. Millions of Americans hunt, and a third of all
> > households in the United States own a gun. Guns were part of the
> > frontier culture that shaped the American psyche, and hunting has
> > passed from generation to generation in much of America. As a son of
> > the South, I could give an intruder a run for his money (although,
> > like most people, I would do better to rely first on our security
> > service and the loud alarm a break-in sets off), and I put on my
> > thickest Southern accent and tease my soon-to-be teenage daughter that
> > I'll be out on the front porch "cleaning my shotgun" when her first
> > date arrives at the door.
>
> > In so many cases, it's a failure of our leaders — Republicans, who
> > prey on the fears of their constituents and don't even bother anymore
> > to hide the puppet strings pulled by large corporations, and
> > Democrats, who too frequently forget that humans are supposed to be
> > vertebrates (and hence to have a spine) — to speak to Americans'
> > ambivalence about guns. Over the years in my capacity as a strategic
> > messaging consultant, I've tested a range of messages on guns, and
> > the messages that resonate with hunters and gun owners sound like
> > this: "If you need an M-16 to hunt deer, you shouldn't be anywhere
> > near a damned gun," or "If you're hunting with an AK-47, you're not
> > bringing that meat home for dinner." The first things responsible
> > hunters teach are never to point a gun anywhere but up or down unless
> > you mean to shoot, and where the safety is.
>
> > It's no wonder that Democrats have backed off of even talking about
> > guns since Clinton signed the Brady Bill and the assault weapons ban
> > into law nearly two decades ago. The last thing you want to be armed
> > with as an advocate of common sense are phrases like "gun control,"
> > which makes a government-wary public and law-abiding gun-owners uneasy
> > — and susceptible to tendentious "slippery slope" arguments about how
> > "they want to take away your guns." In contrast, everyone but the
> > lunatic fringe in America supports gun safety laws — such as
> > eliminating the gun-show loophole that allows the sale of
> > military-grade weapons without background checks, and has led to the
> > deaths of tens of thousands of Americans as well as Mexicans, whose
> > drug cartels find the loophole extremely helpful.
>
> > Democrats could steel their spines if they could find the point of
> > intersection between law-abiding gun owners and law-abiding citizens
> > who may or may not own a gun but want to keep their families safe. In
> > national testing, we've found that a simple, non-equivocating
> > statement focusing on that point of intersection — law-abiding — beats
> > the toughest "they want to take away your guns" message we can fire at
> > it. It leads every demographic group other than those who stockpile
> > weapons to support common-sense gun safety laws. Offered a message
> > that speaks to their ambivalence, people readily recognize that a
> > 33-round clip makes it virtually impossible to tackle a shooter until
> > he has had time to kill 15 or 16 people. They understand that allowing
> > people to purchase military-style weapons at gun shows without a
> > background check renders gun safety laws meaningless. And they find
> > it incomprehensible that we have laws on the books that tie the hands
> > of law enforcement officials trying to track down where a gun was
> > bought and sold, and that we keep such sloppy records that criminals,
> > people with a history of commitment for care for serious mental
> > illness, and people with active restraining orders on them can slip by
> > background checks even where they're required.
>
> > Beginning with a statement of principle both makes clear the speaker's
> > intent and inoculates against all the slippery-slope arguments used by
> > the N.R.A. and the elected
>
> ...
>
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>
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