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Giffords is a fighter, and NRA will be sorry

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 11:46:00 +0000

Adorable red-haired Daniel Barden will live forever, but only in photographs: The 6-year-old with two eternally missing front teeth was murdered in the Sandy Hook massacre. So if his father, Mark, isn’t giving up on gun control, after losing not only his beloved son but the shameful Senate vote on background check legislation Wednesday, then nobody else is allowed to give up.

President Obama let Mark Barden introduce him before his angry Rose Garden reaction to the failure of the Manchin-Toomey compromise, and to me that signaled a new, long-term, bare-knuckled and visceral approach to the issue of guns. Barden reminded us that the motto of the gun-control group he co-founded, Newtown Promise, is, “Our hearts are broken, but our spirits are not.” That’s got to become the animating drive of a nationwide movement to fight the National Rifle Association and its allies, on every level. This defeat, however crushing and shameful, is just a beginning.

Obama: The NRA “willfully lied” on guns

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:30:00 +0000

Speaking just minutes after a minority in the Senate killed a bipartisan bill to expand background checks on gun sales -- something 90 percent of Americans support -- President Obama stood in the Rose Garden in front of weeping gun violence victims, including former Rep. Gabby Giffords, to give a searing indictment of the forces that just blocked even this modest reform.

Showing flashes of anger and passion rare for this president, Obama laid into the National Rifle Association and Senate Republicans, saying they "willfully lied on this bill," especially by erroneously claiming the bipartisan background check legislation known as Manchin-Toomey would create a national gun registry when, in fact, the bill made creating one a felony punishable by 15 years in prison. Even though politicians lie all the time, the word "lie" is almost never uttered in public discourse in Washington, let alone by the president, underscoring his unusual anger.

"Unfortunately, this pattern of spreading untruths about this legislation served a purpose. Those lies upset an intense minority of gun owners and that in turn intimidated a lot of senators," Obama said. "There were no coherent arguments as to why we shouldn't do this, it came down to politics."

The education of Joe Manchin

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 15:19:00 +0000

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin had an A rating from the NRA, winning the endorsement of its PAC for his staunch defense of gun rights (and opposition to even sensible gun regulations). He made national headlines during his 2010 campaign with an ad that featured him shooting a copy of a cap and trade bill with a rifle, proving with one unforgettable image that he loved guns and hated energy regulation.

So it was big news when he decided to hook up with Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey on compromise gun control legislation expanding background checks and closing the so-called gun-show loophole. When Manchin announced that he was working on such measures, the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent said it represented “real movement in the right direction” and might even “give cover to all of the other red state Democrats who are skittish about embracing this common sense step.” Sargent was also encouraged that the NRA darling said he was discussing the measures with the NRA.

With gun nuts hoarding bullets, will cops be disarmed?

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:45:00 +0000

Dayne Pryor is the chief of police in Rollingwood, Texas, a small suburb of Austin. “I’ve been in law enforcement for 31 years and I’ve been a chief for eight years,” he sighs. “And it’s just one of those things that I never thought I’d have a problem with, especially being in Texas.”

Pryor’s problem, he explains to Salon, is that he’s having trouble finding ammunition and firearms for his officers, thanks to a national shortage. The cause? A run on supply from gun lovers afraid that Congress or state legislatures will impose new gun control laws in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting.

“Everyone is thinking, they’re going to stop manufacturing, or they’re going to be taxing and all this, so it’s just this mentality of, let’s all buy up everything now just in case. And it hurts us,” Pryor said. “This is ridiculous. This shouldn’t be happening to law enforcement.”

But he’s hardly alone. Rommel Dionisio, a New York-based firearms industry analyst at Wedbush Inc., confirms the trend is a national phenomenon. “Most certainly, ammunition is in very tight supply in addition to firearms,” thanks to “consumer fears of possible bans,” he told Salon in an email.

Have we forgotten Newtown already? Why are we letting the NRA win

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 13:12:00 +0000

Like many of my friends and neighbors, I was shocked to learn that the NRA had been indiscriminately canvassing Newtown residents with pro-gun robo calls and post cards this past week. It was a chilling indication of the organization’s complete indifference to the events in Sandy Hook and a stinging reminder of their unfailing ability to erase the horrors of gun violence from the conscience of our legislature before a decisive vote on gun control.

Nearly 15 weeks have passed since the shooting in Newtown. I spent the morning of Friday, December 14 feverishly collecting scant pieces of information about an incident in my hometown. As the details emerged, I did my best to shun the lurid images rushing to my mind. A massacre that could rival the most gruesome spectacle in any modern war had somehow unfolded in the elementary school I had attended as a child. I imagined the terror and anguish that must have gripped every parent with a child at Sandy Hook, then thought of the innumerable family members whose lives would never be the same after that day. It was the most sadistic act of madness imaginable visited upon the most innocent place I could think of.

When the right to bear arms trumps a woman’s right to safety

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 13:11:00 +0000

Domestic violence survivors and victims' rights groups have long advocated for stricter laws to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, but powerful lobbying by the National Rifle Association has succeeded in keeping such regulations from taking effect in all but a handful of states.

As a result, far too few judges have the legal authority to order the surrender of firearms when issuing protection orders in domestic violence cases. And according to a harrowing report in The New York Times on Monday, the consequences have been deadly:

Common-sense gun control: Even the NRA should back this

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 22:50:00 +0000

In the days after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, there was one thing that all of us -- gun owners and non-gun-owners, Democrats and Republicans -- did the same.

We stared.

We watched our little girls as they skipped into school in their sparkly headbands and princess sneakers, backpacks banging against the backs of their legs because they themselves were so tiny. We watched our boys at their basketball games, forgetting the scoreboard and just watching them, their knobby knees and puppy energy, their exuberant fist-bumps and crooked grins.

We held them on our laps until they protested, pulled them close until they gave us funny looks. When we hugged them, we could feel their tiny shoulder blades; it was like hugging a fairy.

We were struck by how big they wanted to be, and how small and fragile they really were.

And we tried to figure out what to do -- what to do about gun violence in America.

* * *

Judging from some news outlets, you might have thought there were only two choices, each on furthest outposts of the spectrum: a) arming every man, woman and child to the teeth with as much hardcore weaponry as possible, or b) piling every single gun in America onto the USS Kum-Ba-Yah and sinking it at sea under a wreath of daisies.

Obama’s gutsy gun control push

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 12:45:00 +0000

Second-term Barack Obama continues to show us he’s wiser and tougher than the guy who took office four years ago. The latest sign is his stance on his gun control agenda. In Minneapolis on Monday, he laid out everything he intends to push for, not merely pushing criminal background checks and tougher penalties for gun trafficking, but also the part of his plan that will be the heaviest lifting: an assault weapons ban.

This is what many liberals have hoped to see since his earliest political battles in 2009, going all the way back to the initial stimulus skirmishes: a president who tells the American people what he thinks will solve our problems, and who fights for those solutions, who demands congressional votes even on the most controversial agenda items – and who may, down the road, be forced to compromise on some of those priorities, only to fight for them another day.

Skeet-gate rocks the Internet

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 20:00:00 +0000

In response to a question about whether he had ever fired a gun, President Barack Obama told the New Republic that he shoots skeet “all the time” at Camp David. Republicans immediately expressed doubts that the president, who is seeking a ban on assault weapons among other measures to reduce gun violence, was really the type to fire at clay pigeons to unwind.

But unlike the Birthers, the newly dubbed Skeeters got their proof almost immediately, with the White House releasing an August photograph of President Barack Obama shooting skeet at Camp David.

Rather than quiet skepticism, the photo fueled a host of far-right conspiracy theories about its authenticity. An Internet fury nicely summarized by MSNBC contributor Ari Melber thusly: "So the gun lobby does support more background checks -- but only for Barack Obama's skeet shooting."

A round up of the best of the worst.

Michael Harlin at the American Thinker

The photo is a fake, plain and simple. How can you tell? Why, by these seven highly scientific reasons:

Standing up to gun bullies

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 12:45:00 +0000

Another day, another big Washington D.C. gun legislation event interrupted by news of more gun violence.

Just as a televised meeting of Vice President Joe Biden’s post-Newtown gun safety task force was upstaged by breaking news of another school shooting three weeks ago, so did Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing compete with chilling news reports of three more gun horrors: a Chicago teen who marched with her school band in the inaugural parade shot down in a park; an Alabama child taken hostage (and his bus driver murdered) by a known anti-government “survivalist;” three people shot, one dead, after an “office dispute” in Phoenix, barely two hours away from where former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was almost killed two years ago in Tucson.

Those competing gun-violence news stories are not technically a coincidence. With 30 gun homicides a day across the country, you’re going to have gun murders whenever you schedule an event to talk about it. We’re just finally paying attention to it. All of it.

Obama II: Older, wiser, stronger

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 12:00:00 +0000

You don’t have to like everything President Obama did in his first term – or anything he did, actually – to acknowledge he did a lot. He signed the largest stimulus bill in American history and the Affordable Care Act; ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden and ended George W. Bush’s disastrous war in Iraq, just to name a few accomplishments.

But he’s never had a month like this last one. In January alone, over the final three weeks of his first term, the president faced down three of the most toxic forces in American politics -- call them the three Ns: the National Rifle Association, Norquist (as in Grover) and the neocons – and won crucial battles, if not the war.

On Jan. 2 he signed a deal that raised top tax rates on the wealthiest Americans, winning the first GOP votes for a tax hike since 1990, despite their solemn vow otherwise to Norquist. On Jan. 7, he appointed former Sen. Chuck Hagel his Secretary of Defense despite once-fatal charges that he’s anti-Israel -- or worse, anti-Semitic -- from neocon bullies. On Jan. 16, he rallied the nation behind a gun control agenda and issued 23 “executive actions” that shouldn’t be controversial but are, thanks to the way the NRA has controlled gun politics in the last 20 years.

Conservatives’ full-on meltdown

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 19:27:00 +0000

The ugly, funny-if-it-wasn't-scary truth about our right wing overlords keeps emerging as 2012 comes to a close. Last week we learned that House Speaker John Boehner is a pathetic hostage to the Tea Party crazies in his caucus, while the National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre shared his delusions at a post-Newtown press conference where he memorably intoned: "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" – ignoring the fact that gun "enthusiast" Nancy Lanza was murdered by her own guns, which then slaughtered 20 first-graders and six educator-heroes, plus her disturbed and ultimately suicidal son Adam.

Then over the weekend we discovered that the late Andrew Breitbart's empire of hate is imploding, and the ridiculous Dana Loesch is trying to use the lifeboat of labor law to flee the ship of bullies she once helmed.

The right’s stunning meltdown

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 17:42:00 +0000

Just when it seemed the meltdown on the right couldn't get any more spectacular, after House Speaker John Boehner's Plan B humiliation Thursday night, the NRA's Wayne LaPierre self-destructed Friday morning. His bizarre self-serving tirade blamed everything but guns for the Sandy Hook massacre last week. He proposed placing an armed police officer in every school.

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," he pronounced fatuously.

As usual for the NRA, the solution to gun violence is more guns. But finally, Americans are seeing that for the destructive illogic that it is. LaPierre is truly one of the bad guys. We don't need guns to fight him, though, we just need votes. And we need the politicians elected with our votes to stand up for us.

Last June, President Obama told a roomful of donors that if he were to be reelected, "the fever may break" and the Republican Party might return to its common-sense roots. It won't be that easy. Obama and the Democrats can't passively wait for relief from the sickness that claimed the GOP, even though it may seem that the party is self-destructing on its own. They are going to have to fight.

If ballots were bullets

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 19:00:00 +0000

What if politicians began enacting and enforcing a spate of laws across the country that prevented millions of law-abiding citizens from buying guns in order to stop criminals from getting their hands on weapons? Would Second Amendment advocates remain silent?

That’s what is happening in America in 2012 -- except, instead of keeping millions of Americans from exercising their right to bear arms, Republican legislators, governors and secretaries of state are trying to stop millions of Americans from exercising their right to vote. Yet those who would never tolerate any curtailment of gun rights have raised nary a peep about this assault on voting rights.

Under the excuse of preventing “voter fraud,” Republican state officials are vigorously pushing voter ID laws that will make it harder -- and in some cases, virtually impossible -- for certain citizens to vote. These laws -- which require voters to show a state-issued photo ID that many Americans don’t have and will have great difficulty obtaining -- could bar 3.2 million eligible and legally registered voters from voting in the next election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a non-partisan think tank.