Amy Goodman: Time For the Majority to Vote on Gun Control

[marmar]

from truthdig:


Time For the Majority to Vote on Gun Control

Posted on Apr 4, 2013
By Amy Goodman


New federal gun-control legislation has been declared all but dead on arrival this week. Gridlock in the U.S. Senate, where a supermajority of 60 votes is needed to move most legislation these days, is proving to be an insuperable barrier to any meaningful change in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., massacre. Meanwhile, the National Rifle Association is pushing its controversial agenda to place armed guards in every school, increasing the number of guns in our society and further entrenching gun culture.

While the Senate is perhaps the worst bellwether for public sentiment, recent polls indicate majority support for stricter controls, with an overwhelming 85 percent-90 percent of respondents from across the political spectrum supporting universal background checks. As the horror of the Newtown massacre recedes in time, polls show that support for a more aggressive ban on assault weapons is slipping slightly, as could be predicted.

Time is on the side of those opposing gun control, most notably the NRA. The longer this drags out, the less likely anything will get done. That is why President Barack Obama’s announcement of a commission, just four days after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, was a harbinger of failure and inaction. Commissions take time. It didn’t help that the chairperson he appointed, Vice President Joe Biden, encouraged lawless, reckless gun use, saying: “If you want to protect yourself, get a double-barrel shotgun. Have the shells for a 12-gauge shotgun, and I promise you as I told my wife—we live in an area that’s wooded and somewhat secluded—I said, ‘Jill if there’s ever a problem, just walk out on the balcony here, walk out, put that double-barrel shotgun and fire two blasts outside the house. I promise you whoever’s coming in is not going.’ You don’t need an AR-15. It’s harder to aim; it’s harder to use. And in fact, you don’t need 30 rounds to protect yourself. Buy a shotgun. Buy a shotgun.”

Too much of what Biden says is written off as gaffes and bluster. But this is coming from the chair of the president’s own commission on gun control. In his State of the Union address, Obama got rousing applause when he insisted: “The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote. The families of Oak Creek and Tucson and Blacksburg and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence, they deserve a simple vote.” ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/time_for_the_majority_to_vote_on_gun_control_20130404/

[SecularMotion]

1. K & R

[krispos42]

2. Then pass a bill requiring universal background checks.

Public sentiment does not change the fact that the proposed ban on assault weapons is stupid, useless, inflammatory, and designed only to get a temporary political advantage to the same people that failed us on so many other issues.

The concept of banning "assault" weapons has been a central idea of the gun control movement for about 25 years. The emotional nature of the term has done an effective job of concealing both how arbitrary the definition is and how useless the entire concept it.

But creating an arbitrary class of rifles, shotguns, and handguns called "assault weapons", then banning them for public safety reasons, has become a political holy grail, a symbol of striking back against gun nuts and the NRA and the gun lobby and the militia groups and Southerners and rednecks and secessionists and conservatives and fundamentalists. Now, it's a reflexive reaction to pretty much any gun violence.

If I was to judge the problem from the proposed solution, I would have to determine the problem with the Newtown Fuckwad was that... his rifle had a protruding pistol grip.

Yup. A protruding pistol grip.

Under Connecticut's definition of "assault weapon" that was in effect when the massacre occurred, a pistol grip was okay, as long as it wasn't in combination with a telescoping stock or a bayonet lug or a flash suppressor.

Under what has been proposed for a 2013 federal ban, a pistol grip or telescoping stock are never okay, but flash suppressors and bayonet lugs are okay again. So obviously, the problem was that Fuckwad was using a protruding pistol grip.



This obviously is not the real problem. The real problem was that a crazed psychopath had 5 uninterrupted minutes to shoot as many women and gradeschoolers trapped in an enclosed environment as he could, and that regardless of weapon there was going to be a LOT of dead bodies.