Liberals Roar As Elizabeth Warren Vows To Mobilize Democrats To Defeat The NRA
“If the Republican Party would rather work for the NRA than the American people and if they won’t do their jobs to keep our children safe, then somebody else has to step up,” Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) charged during a press call Wednesday afternoon, hosted by the White House with members of Congress to discuss President Obama’s actions to reduce gun violence.
Senator Warren framed the issue around keeping our kids and families safer, “I wanted to be on this call today… because we can’t keep waiting to take action that will help stop gun violence in this country and help keep our kids and families safer.”
“The Republicans who control Congress have had all of the time in the world to do something about gun violence,” Warren explained, continuing, “And every time the Democrats have tried to get even the smallest reforms passed the Republicans have flatly refused.”
The Massachusetts Senator crystallized the issue by calling out Republicans for working for the NRA instead of the people, “If the Republican Party would rather work for the NRA than the American people and if they won’t do their jobs to keep our children safe, then somebody else has to step up.”
MORE:
http://www.politicususa.com/2016/01/06/elizabeth-warren-if-republican-party-work-nra-american-people.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
that I can only rec this once. 
and open to looking for solutions?
Sorry about that, I really did try to keep a straight face. Oh well, have a lovely evening. 
can you elaborate?
Onehandle made an outrageous accusation about fellow DU'ers, when asked repeatedly to provide a link to this slanderous claim, he's, so far, refused to provide even one link, what are we to make of that?
You have a wonderful evening too.
the back and forth with Duckhunter et al. and --- though I am a strong supporter of gun control (AND an outspoken critic of the suburbanites who are scarfing up millions of weapons under the auspices of imaginary/delusional "need" to protect themselves) --- I understand why they have been so adamant in calling out your accusation that there are DUers who laugh at dead children.
Given that Hillary has virtually no issue, other than gun control, where she can align more with the 99% than Senator Sanders (and actually not even there, but that is a matter for another day), a post hyperbolically attacking "DUers" who support Heller's interpretation of the 2nd Amendment is pretty clearly an attempt to create space between Bernie and Elizabeth. In other words, it is yet another attempt to slime Bernie WITHOUT being honest enough to debate the policy differences between Hillary and Bernie.
While I can imagine your defense ("pro-gun rights REPUBLICANS mocked Obama for becoming overwhelmed by emotion when talking about Sandy Hook, which is tantamount to laughing at dead children --- I don't dispute this first part, btw --- therefore pro-gun rights Democrats should be seen the same way"
what you are really doing is trying to hijack this story to use as yet another part of Hillary supporter's guerilla war on a man whose policies they will not debate in the clear light of day.
There are NO DUers "laughing at dead children"
the faithful to oppose the entire bill.
She was her own worse enemy, and the ironic part is that just a few days/weeks earlier, she and Reid opposed the filibuster reform proposal.
I swear, you can't make this shit up.
And I'm the one in denial. 
Ok. That's what I thought.
A problem? Of course not. We love to see your defense of all things NRA done in stereo! 
he did not defend the NRA, never stated that once.
Maybe you missed the part where I said that I reject outlandish accusations against the NRA, which is what Stasi was doing by accusing the NRA of being a terrorist org.
Ms. Stasi has no room to make accusations of terrorist orgs, just look at her last name.
You can't make this shit up.
Do you think the worst thing which can be said about people who claim to "stand behind the 2nd Amendment" is that they laugh at dead children? Fine, wipe away your tears and let's talk about facts.
You claim an assault weapons ban will do nothing to affect school shootings.
That's interesting because the entire reason high-powered high-capacity semi-automatic weapons (let's call them HPHCSARs just so we don't have to listen to a bunch of irrelevant drivel about how they aren't really "assault weapons" were invented in the first place was to provide their user with a tactical superiority over their enemy. In other words, it was to make their bearer into a more efficient killing machine. That means that right off the bat we can take the old "they will just use a car or a spoon" argument and toss it straight in the litter box. Without HPHCSARs, school shooters will not be as efficient killers.
"But," you say "just making any gun illegal won't stop a criminal because a criminal doesn't follow the law." Let's look at most mass school shootings . . . are they committed by folks who have experience purchasing weapons on the street? Nope, their committed by folks who would end up shot and stuffed in a dumpster if they ever had to deal with real criminals. Accordingly, a ban would stop opportunistic shooters entirely, force determined shooters to use a less efficient weapon, or decrease the number of school shootings by subjecting at least some of the group of would-be perpetrators who absolutely must have a HPHCSARs to the rigors of natural selection.
I don't much care whether anyone thinks their having the right to a HPHCSARs is more important than decreasing the death toll from school shooting, but don't try to blow smoke about how gun control wouldn't make a difference.
friend. You miss the points of my post, not that this prevents you from again playing, "look at the squirrel."
No matter, discussion is good. As to your sad attempt to inject the NRA party line into my discussion of HPHCSARs and mass school shootings, I did not call for HPHCSARs to be banned . . . rather I stated that those who claim that banning of HPHCSARs will not reduce the number of deaths from mass shootings are . . . do not miss the absolute nature of my word here . . . liars.
I admitted in my post that the use of HPHCSARs in violent crimes as a whole is an infrequent occurrence. Being an ideologue, you ignored the fact that my argument took this into account and launched into a diatribe about how rarely HPHCSARs are used in violent crimes. Congratulations. You prevailed on an agreed-upon point. What you failed to address, however, was the fact that mass school shootings are unique vis a vis HPHCSARs in at least a couple of important aspects.
The first is that the objective of inflicting mass casualties is facilitated (that means "made easier" by the capabilities of the HPHCSARs. Such weapons are specifically designed to provide their user with a tactical advantage over their opponent. If you take away that advantage, you reduce the shooter's ability to inflict mass casualties by rendering him a less efficient killer. (This is basic stuff, hopefully you are with me here.) The second is that the majority of mass school shooters come from a particular demographic, i.e. disaffected suburban males with little or no history of serious criminal conduct in their background. In other words, they are uniquely ill-suited to obtaining guns from REAL criminals on the black market. IF HPHCSARs were banned, these disaffected suburban males would be forced to turn to the black market, a venue to which they SHOULD be reluctant to turn and, IF they were foolish enough to do so, a venue in which they would stand an increased risk of getting their posterior's capped and their carcass stuffed in a dumpster.
These two FACTS, which you never addressed, fully support my comment that a HPHCSAR ban would reduce the deaths resulting from that single segment of violent crime, mass school shootings. I believe (actually for the very reason you stated) that there exists a valid argument on both sides as to whether the relatively few deaths resulting from school shootings justifies as extreme a step as banning HPHCSARs. As I noted, the higher value we place upon the lives of children appears to be what most proponents of such a ban place in the balance, but the extremity of a complete ban on HPHCSARs weighs heavily on the other side. My point, however, was not which side should win, but rather that ANYONE who claims that a ban would accomplish nothing (in other words, that there is NOTHING weighing in favor of a HPHCSAR ban) are LIARS.
Now let's turn to you hurt feelings over my claim that the overwhelming majority of self-protection gun purchasers (and mind you I am referring to the purchasers of all types of firearms for self-protection purposes) face a near-zero risk of becoming the victim of a violent crime at the hands of someone other than a family member OR as a result of their own despondency. That statement has absolutely nothing to do with what threats you, or any other gun owner thinks, imagine, of "feel" they face. It is a statistical fact. When you look at the non-natural death rate in the suburban enclaves housing the hordes of self-protection gun purchasers, then remove the violent crimes committed by their "co-armed" family members and self-inflicted deaths from those statistics, the rate approaches zero. This is not to say there is NO risk, only that the risk is so low that a sane, responsible citizen should be asking themselves whether the minimal risk they personally face outweighs the risk to society created by increasing the supply of firearms flowing in the stream of commerce which is the source of almost every gun used in criminal activity (you do understand that increasing supply increases availability, right?).
This, of course, brings us to my final point (which, btw has NOTHING to do with gun laws) which is that the REAL cure to gun violence cannot be obtained through legislation (well, not without violating the 2nd Amendment). No, my friend, that solution comes ONLY when suburbanites discard the NRA-fostered DELUSION that there is some imaginary criminal from the other side of town hiding in their well-trimmed hedges, or that an imaginary radical Muslim wearing an explosive vest is running up their sidewalk, jumping over the electric trimmers that got left out, or that the kid mowing their lawn is some imaginary rapist/kidnapper ready to snatch their children (note: each of these examples are intended to illustrate the racism, classism, and xenophobia so prevalent among our conservative brethren) and QUIT BUYING GUNS they do not need and will never use except at some gun range as they blast away at a paper picture of Osama Bin Laden. Only then will the supply of readily-available firearms dry up and this country can advance along with the other so-called "advanced nations" of the world.
by the capabilities of the HPHCSARs.
How? At least the Australian gun-ban appeared to be written by people with actual knowledge of how firearms function. The ban encompassed all semiauto centerfire rifles. Now, I absolutely don't want that as law, but it makes sense. Semiauto avoids needing to manipulate the action between rounds, substantially speeding up shooting. The Australian ban is simple and based on the internal function of the gun. "Assault Weapon" bans in the US, at least as practiced, are more like obscenity bans masquerading as technical bans. They only encompass a section of semiauto weapons, leaving others alone for poorly explained reasons.
At Newtown, for example, Lanza fired over 100 rounds of .223 in the space of a few minutes. By far more the most important factor here is the fact that his weapon automatically cycled between rounds. .223 is also a low-powered round when compared to other centerfire rifle cartridges, which means smaller rounds (can carry more), lower recoil (easier to keep weapon on target), and a smaller weapon (Larger cartridges require a more heavily built weapon). Yet AWBs are NEVER written as pure bans on semiautos. Rather, they target semiauto weapons that "look military". Even in states with "strict" AWBs, you can still buy magazine-loaded semiauto .223 rifles, such as the Ruger Mini-14 or Ares SCR. The latter is essentially an AR-15 in drag, and could probably be equipped with a wood stock too. So, looking at this, the AWB looks less like a serious, informed attempt to ban weapons with certain technical capabilities and more like an obscenity ban which prohibits weapons because they trigger disgust at an emotional level. The core difference between a woodstocked Mini-14 and a standard AR-15 (both magazine-fed, .223 semiauto weapons) is that one is "respectable" in appearance and one is not. The Mini-14 has wood and a traditional appearance. It looks like something Uncle Milton uses on his annual deer hunt. But that AR looks positively awful! Clearly only a redneck would want such a horrible gun! To people with hands-on experience with those weapons, the idea that the latter is somehow much more destructive than the former sounds like poppycock. The supposed important difference would also be news to the 67 people Anders Breivik murdered on Utoya Island with a Mini-14.
As far as other reasons why HPHCSAR comes across as silly, well, here goes:
High-Power: Relative to what? And how are you judging "power"? Is this a technical, quantifiable measure of power? The "assault rifle" revolution that occurred at the end of World War 2 and the early Cold War was notable for a major reduction in the individual power of the rounds fired. During WW2, the typical bolt-action rifle would have fired a round with somewhere around 2500-3000 ft/lbs of muzzle energy, with the .303 British at the low end and the 8mm Mauser at the high end (The American Garand fired the .30-06, in that range as well). Notably, the very first "assault rifle" fired the 7.92Kurz, which developed 1400 ft/lbs on a good day. And the story of the STG-44 was largely one of German officers coming to the conclusion that the high power of the 8mm Mauser was effectively wasted. It had nasty recoil, the rifle was cumbersome in close quarters, and its vastly superior long-range ballistics were largely useless because very few soldiers were trained to a level where they could actually do anything at that range. Similarly the AK-47's 7.62x39 (1600 ft/lbs) and the M-16s 5.56/.223 (1300 ft/lbs) represented a drastic reduction in power.
High-Capacity: Most modern-day semiauto weapons load off of a detachable box mag. This is not necessary in a semiauto weapon (see the Garand for a fixed-magazine semiauto), but does remove the necessity of engineering the weapon so that a fixed magazine can be loaded through a port. Referring to a weapon that feeds from a detachable magazine as "high capacity" makes little sense. These weapons do not have a "capacity". They have a magazine port that can grab a magazine firmly and can detach it. The magazine manufacturer determines the capacity of the magazine. If the manufacturer figures out how to make a 5000-round magazine that feeds the rounds reliably, the weapon neither knows nor cares. It cycles. If the magazine works, the weapon will strip a new round of the mag.
As I'm reading this, the ad on the side of the page reads: "Join NRA, FREE POCKET KNIFE!"
They have a pretty bad habit of arming random people.
