“I don’t think you should have restrictions on clips,” said Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who has said he welcomes a Senate debate on guns. “The Second Amendment wasn’t written so you can go hunting, it was to create a force to balance a tyrannical force here.”He doesn't realize how right he is.
The legislation addresses the millions of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines currently in existence by:Hmm.
Requiring a background check on all sales or transfers of a grandfathered assault weapon.
This background check can be run through the FBI or, if a state chooses, initiated with a state agency, as with the existing background check system.
Prohibiting the sale or transfer of large-capacity ammunition feeding devices lawfully possessed on the date of enactment of the bill.
Allowing states and localities to use federal Byrne JAG grant funds to conduct a voluntary buy-back program for grandfathered assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition feeding devices.
Imposing a safe storage requirement for grandfathered firearms, to keep them away from prohibited persons.
Requiring that assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition feeding devices manufactured after the date of the bill's enactment be engraved with the serial number and date of manufacture of the weapon
posted by zombieflanders at 4:40 PM on January 24 [2 favorites]QUESTION: Do you think there should be universal background checks on anybody who wants to buy a gun? Right now it’s done only through federally licensed firearms dealers.This is a significant step forward. For one thing, Manchin explicitly endorsed new legislative action to achieve background checks on pretty much anyone who wants to get a gun, with narrow exceptions. He also endorsed closing the gun show loophole. Given Manchin’s “gun rights” credibility, this should give cover to all of the other red states Democrats who are skittish about embracing this common sense step. It’s hard to see why they’d hold out against supporting this, now that Manchin has made it politically safer.
MANCHIN: I’m working on a bill right now with other Senators — Democrats and Reupblicans — we’re trying to get it, and looking at a background check that basically says that if you’re going to be a gun owner, you should be able to pass a background check, to be able to get that. With exceptions. The exceptions are: Families, immediate family members, some sporting events that you’re going to — that if you’re just going to be using them at the sporting events. So we’re looking and talking to people with expertise. I’m working with the NRA, to be honest with you, and talking to them. [...]
QUESTION: So you think that if you go to a gun show … and there’s a private dealer there, not a federally licensed firearms dealer, but a private dealer, and you buy a gun from that private dealer, that you should have to undergo a background check?
MANCHIN: I think that’s common sense. Why would a legitimate gun retail shop have to go through that, but then the unfair advantage for someone at a gun show doesn’t?
Manchin’s claim that he is discussing this with the NRA is also interesting. It dovetails with recent comments by Dem Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, a staunch gun control advocate, who said private talks with the NRA had indicated an openness to give ground on background checks, with exceptions similar to those described by Manchin. Coming from Manchin, of course, this is far more significant.
To repeat this one more time, commentators and news orgs are prematurely writing the obituary for Obama’s gun package based solely on the fact that the assault weapons ban faces an uphill struggle in Congress. It undoubtedly does. But the assault ban is not the centerpiece of Obama’s proposal; improving the background check system is. If Obama gets just the latter and some other provisions — minus the assault ban — it is still a major achievement.
Last year, The New York Times published an interview with a young black man living in New York who said that police stopped him at least sixty times before he turned eighteen. And each time he was stopped, he was not arrested. He was entirely innocent, but was nonetheless stopped repeatedly because he is black.and
But there is basic flaw in that argument: There’s no concrete evidence that stop and frisk actually works. Although violent crime dropped in New York by 29 percent from 2001 to 2010 after Mayor Michael Bloomberg ramped up stop and frisk in his city, other large cities that did not rely on stop and frisk experienced even larger drops in violent crime during the same time period, the ACLU has noted. Violent crime declined by 37 percent in Baltimore and 49 percent in Dallas, for example.posted by small_ruminant at 8:36 PM on January 24 [1 favorite]
There can be little doubt that some societies are more steeped in violence than others, even controlling for obvious factors like income levels and education.previously, The Second Amendment was Ratified to Preserve Slavery
[...]
The US homicide rate is roughly four times that of comparable societies in Western Europe, and Latin America’s homicide rates are even higher than in the US
[...]
American violence is rooted in history. The US and Latin American countries are all “conquest” societies, in which Europeans ruled over multi-racial societies. In many of these countries, including the US, the European conquerors and their descendants nearly wiped out the indigenous populations, partly through disease, but also through war, starvation, death marches, and forced labor.
As Dr. Carl T. Bogus wrote for the University of California Law Review in 1998, "The Georgia statutes required patrols, under the direction of commissioned militia officers, to examine every plantation each month and authorized them to search 'all Negro Houses for offensive Weapons and Ammunition' and to apprehend and give twenty lashes to any slave found outside plantation grounds."posted by Golden Eternity at 9:39 PM on January 24 [2 favorites]
[...]
By the time the Constitution was ratified, hundreds of substantial slave uprisings had occurred across the South. Blacks outnumbered whites in large areas, and the state militias were used to both prevent and to put down slave uprisings. As Dr. Bogus points out, slavery can only exist in the context of a police state, and the enforcement of that police state was the explicit job of the militias.
[...]
Patrick Henry:
"If the country be invaded, a state may go to war, but cannot suppress [slave] insurrections [under this new Constitution]. If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, the country cannot be said to be invaded. They cannot, therefore, suppress it without the interposition of Congress . . . . Congress, and Congress only [under this new Constitution], can call forth the militia."
Notwithstanding the militia's dismal performance, some politicians--particularly Southern slaveholders like Madison who relied on the militia for slave control--continued to cling to the notion that the virtuous citizen militia was superior to a professional army. One Southerner who would have found these views laughable if they were not so dangerous was George Washington. "America has almost been amused out of her Liberties" by pro-militia rhetoric, he said: "I solemnly declare I never was witness to a single instance, that can countenance an opinion of Militia or raw Troops being fit for the real business of fighting."University of California at Davis Law Review: THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT (Carl T Bogus)
"Slavery was not only an economic and industrial system," one scholar noted, "but more than that, it was a gigantic police system."[123] Over time the South had developed an elaborate system of slave control. The basic instrument of control was the slave patrol, armed groups of white men who made regular rounds.Wow, this is fascinating to me. He also talks about how the second amendment received very little attention until the late nineties when the gun lobby and the NRA funded a large effort to promote their interpretation, including the "paranoic, anarchistic, and anti-democratic," and not very historical, insurrection theory.
[...]
By the mid-eighteenth century, the patrols had become the responsibility of the militia.
[...]
After the war, the militia remained the principal means of protecting the social order and preserving white control over an enormous black population. Anything that might weaken this system presented the gravest of threats.
[...]
The Federalists did their best to respond to the suggestions that the federal government would, in one way or another, render the militia impotent as a slave control device.
[...]
The evidence that the Second Amendment was written to assure the South that the federal government would not disarm its militia is, I suggest, considerable. However, the evidence is almost entirely circumstantial.
[...]
Mason and Henry fanned the flames of Southern paranoia to manipulate the ratifying Convention, and Madison later became a fire fighter to protect both the Constitution and his own political career. These were games of masquerade and innuendo. No one's purpose was served by laying cards upon the table. The history of the Second Amendment was hidden by design.
I’m grateful to Scott Galupo for reviving Gary Wills’s provocative interpretation of the Second Amendment. As one might expect from encounters with Wills’s other work, this interpretation is learned, brilliant…and wrong. ... The inadequacy of these arguments is irrelevant to the legal authority of the 2nd Amendment. Until it is altered by the people and the representatives, I see no alternative to the conclusion that the Constitution protects an individual right to bear arms. But consideration of the theoretical and historical background to the 2nd Amendment provides a useful reminder that our Constitution is the work of a specific place and era, rather than the pure expression of timeless wisdom. We owe it respect and should not change it lightly. Reverence, however, is more appropriate to the works of God than of men.posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:36 AM on January 25 [1 favorite]
In the years following its ban, Washington did not generate a decline in gun murders. In fact, the number of killings rose by 156 percent — at a time when murders nationally increased by just 32 percent. For a while, the city vied regularly for the title of murder capital of America.There is no correlation between gun bans and reduced violence. Crime happens without regard to laws, that's what makes it crime.
Chicago followed a similar course. In the decade after it outlawed handguns, murders jumped by 41 percent, compared with an 18 percent rise in the entire United States.
Since the expiration of the gun ban in 2004, the number of shootings per year has doubled, and the number of victims per year has nearly tripled. Three of the bloodiest four years shown here occurred since the expiration.What, is that all? Seriously? All this noise and kerfuffle over 44 people dying per year? That's nothing. An absolute non-problem.
Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.Biden said they couldn't be bothered to enforce existing law.
Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.
Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.
Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.
Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.
Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.
Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.
Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. took his campaign for gun control to the Internet on Thursday in an online video chat in which he was pressed on whether the proposals he and President Obama have advanced would actually do much to stop gun violence.posted by zombieflanders at 10:43 AM on January 25 [2 favorites]
In a “fireside hangout” using a Google video chat service, Mr. Biden acknowledged that many shootings would not be stopped by the package of legislation and executive actions unveiled at the White House last week. But he said they were worth it even if they saved just one of the 20 children killed last month at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
“Because it doesn’t solve the whole problem you shouldn’t do it – I don’t buy the logic of that,” Mr. Biden said.
Among the plans endorsed by the White House are a reinstated and strengthened ban on new assault weapons and new high-capacity magazines; expanded criminal background checks for nearly any gun purchase outside the family; and a crackdown on straw purchasers. While waiting for Congress to consider those measures, Mr. Obama went ahead and acted on his own to improve the background check databank with more information.
If you combine the populations of Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and Australia, you'll get a population roughly the size of the United States. We had 32,000 gun deaths last year. They had 112. Do you think it's because Americans are more homicidal by nature? Or do you think it's because those guys have gun control laws?once again less murders with a gun is not the same as less murders
"Note that insufficient evidence to determine effectiveness should not be interpreted as evidence of ineffectiveness.Which is unsurprising, of course, because they're not allowed to gather that evidence in the first place.
The sometimes boisterous public hearing -- after nearly four hours of testimony from State Police, parents of slain Newtown first-graders and city mayors -- seemed dominated by gun owners, who railed at more than 90 proposed bills.posted by zombieflanders at 6:11 AM on January 29 [1 favorite]
"The Second Amendment!" was shouted a couple of times by as many as a dozen gun enthusiasts in the meeting room as Neil Heslin, holding a photo of his slain 6-year-old son, Jesse Lewis, asked why Bushmaster assault-style weapons are allowed to be sold in the state.
“The confiscation of guns per capita in Chicago is six times the number in New York City,” Durbin said. “We have guns everywhere and some believe the solution to this is more guns. I disagree. When you take a look at where these guns come from, 45 percent plus are sold in the surrounding towns around Chicago, not in the city.”posted by zombieflanders at 9:32 AM on January 30 [1 favorite]
"When it comes to the issue of background checks, let’s be honest – background checks will never be 'universal' – because criminals will never submit to them," LaPierre's testimony reads.Testimony of Wayne R. LaPierre, Executive Vice-President, National Rifle Association, before the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Crime (May 27, 1999)
We think it 's reasonable to provide mandatory instant criminal background checks for every sale at every gun show. No loopholes anywhere for anyone.posted by zombieflanders at 9:37 AM on January 30 [3 favorites]
Sources tell Al.com the suspect, identified as 65-year-old Jimmy Lee Dykes, is a Vietnam veteran looking to gain attention to “air his grievances.” The Southern Poverty Law Center said today that Dale County Sheriff’s Investigator Tim Byrd told SPLC’s “Hatewatch” that Dykes has “anti-America” views. They described him as a “survivalist” with ties to the antigovernment movementposted by zombieflanders at 9:40 AM on January 30 [1 favorite]
[...]
It was not immediately clear what prompted Dykes to storm the bus, but his motives appear to be related to a menacing charge in December. That month, Dykes pointed a gun at his neighbor, James Edward Davis, who told the Dothan Eagle that Dykes accused him of driving on his yard. Dykes was scheduled to have a bench trial today on the charge, and an unidentified girl who Dykes released from the bus told reporters that Dykes was referring to his upcoming case.
During the hearing, LaPierre repeatedly voiced the talking point that there’s no need to expand the background check system because criminals don’t cooperate with background checks. Kelly responded:posted by zombieflanders at 11:10 AM on January 30 [2 favorites]The Tuscon shooter was an admitted drug user. He was rejected from the U.S. Army because of his drug use. He was clearly mentally ill. And when he purchased that gun in November, his plan was to assassinate my wife and commit mass murder at that Safeway in Tucson. He was a criminal. Because of his drug use, and because of what he was planning on doing. But because of these gaps in the mental health system, in this case, those 121,000 records, I admit did not include a record on him. But it could have.There are two policy conundrums here. One is this: How do you ensure that people like the Tucson shooter are represented in the national database designed to prevent criminals and the mentally ill from getting guns? There are significant gaps in this database for a variety of reasons, including the failure of states to share info with the feds. Some of Obama’s proposals are designed to fix these problems, by encouraging states to share data, reviewing data collection procedures, and so on. The second question is: How do you expand the background check system so it screens more gun sales than it currently does? The Obama proposal would do this by closing the loophole that allows guns to be sold without background checks at gun shows and by private sellers. As Kelly notes, the likelihood is that someone like the Tucson shooter — even if he were denied guns by the currently functional part of the background check system — would then try to get guns via a private seller. Closing the loophole could block that.
And if it did, he would have failed that background check. he would have likely gone to a gun show, or a private seller, and avoided that background check. But if we close that gun show loophole, if we require private sellers to complete a background check, and we get those 121,000 records and others into the systems, we will prevent gun crime. That is an absolute truth. It would have happened in Tucson. My wife would not have been sitting here today if we had stronger background checks.
Gayle Trotter, the conservative activist who became the breakout star of Wednesday’s gun violence hearing in the Senate with her adamant cry that women need assault rifles to defend themselves, wrote last year that she opposed the Violence Against Women Act.posted by zombieflanders at 3:41 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]
The reason, she said at the time, was the law would create the prospect of “false accusers” stealing taxpayer money by using shelters and legal aid.
On Wednesday, Trotter used the fear of violence against women to support gun laws that allow access to large capacity magazines and assault weapons in her testimony.
“An assault weapon in the hands of a young woman defending her babies in her home becomes a defense weapon,” she said.
Wayne LaPierre, the National Rifle Association’s chief executive, arrived for his hearing on Capitol Hill in the organization’s trademark fashion: violently.posted by zombieflanders at 10:00 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]
When he and his colleagues stepped off the elevator in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Wednesday morning and found TV cameras waiting in the hallway, LaPierre’s bodyguards swung into action. One of them, in blatant violation of congressional rules, bumped and body-checked journalists out of the way so they couldn’t film LaPierre or question him as he walked
[...]
Usually, LaPierre comes out the victor in these tangles, and on Wednesday he was so confident of another win that he boldly declared that the NRA would oppose the most innocuous of proposals to reduce gun violence: criminal background checks.
Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) reminded LaPierre that the NRA once supported checks with “no loopholes anywhere, for anyone.” So does the NRA favor closing the “gun-show loophole” that allows people to avoid background checks?
“We do not,” LaPierre replied.
His reasoning, as always, is that existing gun laws aren’t being enforced — but he seems to have pulled the evidence out of his gun barrel. “Out of more than 76,000 firearms purchases supposedly denied by the federal instant check system, only 62 were referred for prosecution,” LaPierre declared in his opening statement.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) looked up the actual statistic. “In 2012 more than 11,700 defendants were charged with federal gun crimes,” Whitehouse said, “a lot more than 62.”
LaPierre had been caught. “So those — the 62, senator, statistic, was for Chicago alone,” he clarified, a salient fact omitted from his original testimony.
His logic failed him as badly as his facts. “My problem with background checks is you’re never going to get criminals to go through universal background checks,” he argued, unwilling to admit that deterring criminals from buying guns is a good thing, even if some eventually get theirs on the black market.
[...]
But LaPierre’s job is to stir up the active minority who are frightened and resentful. “If you’re in the elite, you get bodyguards,” he told the senators. “You get high-cap mags with semiautomatics protecting this whole Capitol. The titans of industry get the bodyguards.” He said it’s only “the hardworking, law-abiding, taxpaying American that we’re going to make the least capable of defending themselves.”
Minutes after that denunciation of the well-protected elites, LaPierre rejoined his bodyguards, who were waiting in a back room.
So if we’re not prosecuting everyone who tries to purchase a gun we should stop preventing them from purchasing the gun. That’s completely crazy. Not to mention wildly disingenuous.If you are getting tired of the links, here is one more that is a quick bullet point summary, turns out guns are used WAY, WAY more in self defense by law abiding gun owners than are used to commit murder. Lots of very revealing and interesting facts in there.
Secondly, in no other part of criminal law or public health do we dismiss effective policies because they’re not 100% effective. Do we not advocate condom use because not everyone will practice safe sex? Do we not vaccinate because vaccination is not 100% effective or because not everyone gets vaccinated? Do we not ban narcotics sales because “the criminals” won’t follow the laws?
The dishonesty and inanity of these arguments is mind-boggling.
But Ms. McKinley said she supports the idea of expanding the background check system, telling me: “Anybody should be willing to get a background check that wants to take a gun.”posted by zombieflanders at 11:27 AM on February 1
“I completely agree with background checks,” she said. “If I want a gun I have no problem getting one. I don’t see why anybody would have a problem getting a background check if they have nothing to hide.”
Ms. McKinley herself didn’t get a background check to procure her shotgun. But she said she inherited it from her late husband — which means she likely would have been exempted from the background check system under the current proposal, which would exempt family members. And at any rate, given her willingness to undergo one herself, she’d presumably pass and be able to buy the sort of gun she’d used to defend herself
[...]
As I’ve been saying, the expanded background check is the most important proposal on the table right now — it’s arguably more important than the assault ban. The fact that Ms. McKinley supports it — even though she is widely cited by gun rights advocates as a poster woman for their cause, and even as she does not support the assault ban — alone shows what a no-brainer this proposal really is. Having fought off a home invasion herself with a gun, she does not appear to see expanded background checks as a barrier to acquiring weapons for legitimate self defense — or as an infringement on people’s rights.
1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.And from the article in the OP:
2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.
3. Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.
4. Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.
5. Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.
6. Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.
7. Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign.
8. Review safety standards for gun locks and gun safes (Consumer Product Safety Commission).
9. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.
10. Release a DOJ report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement.
11. Nominate an ATF director.
12. Provide law enforcement, first responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations.
13. Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.
14. Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.
15. Direct the Attorney General to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies and challenge the private sector to develop innovative technologies.
16. Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes.
17. Release a letter to health-care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law-enforcement authorities.
18. Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers.
19. Develop model emergency-response plans for schools, houses of worship and institutions of higher education.
20. Release a letter to state health officials clarifying the scope of mental-health services that Medicaid plans must cover.
21. Finalize regulations clarifying essential health benefits and parity requirements within ACA exchanges.
22. Commit to finalizing mental-health-parity regulations.
23. Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health.
More legislation is expected to arise over the next week or two, and some of it will have bipartisan support. Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, and Senator Mark Kirk, Republican of Illinois, have agreed to work together on gun trafficking legislation that would seek to crack down on illegal guns. Currently, federal law does not define gun trafficking as a crime.But when the conversation moved on and he asked what reason should people own this kind of gun a legitimate answer is the second amendment.
Mr. Kirk is also working on a background check proposal with Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, who is considered somewhat of a bellwether among Democrats with strong gun-rights records.
Mr. Leahy’s bill would give law enforcement officials more tools to investigate so-called straw purchasing of guns, in which people buy a firearm for others who are prohibited from obtaining one on their own.
Injuries have been a leading cause of death and disability throughout history; consequently, many people and agencies have undertaken prevention efforts. In 1985, the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recognized the need for a coordinated effort to prevent injuries in the United States. They identified CDC as the federal agency best suited to lead injury research. CDC had a strong history of interdisciplinary research, data collection and analysis, information sharing, and relationships with states—elements the council and IOM deemed important. And unlike other federal agencies involved in injury prevention, CDC had no regulatory or enforcement role.Also, the very same people cutting off funding to the CDC have been doing it to DOJ:
In 1997, IOM’s Committee on Injury Prevention and Control recommended that no one agency could effectively serve as the sole leader for injury. Rather, it recommended that agencies should collaborate on injury prevention and control activities, with each agency leading in its area of expertise.
CDC’s Injury Center now functions as the focal point for the public health approach to preventing violence and injuries and their consequences, by moving from science into action.
The U.S. Justice Department, for instance, has stopped funding studies on firearms trafficking patterns. The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) used to be a “world leader” in research on gun ownership and trafficking. No longer.All the links I posted had soruces listed, footnotes or where factual reporting.
And it’s not just academic studies. Data is also sparse. The CDC’s National Violent Death Reporting System has never been fully funded by Congress. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives is barred from keeping electronic records. Lawmakers have placed restrictions on how cities can share information about crime guns. That all directly impinges on research.
Nugent’s role as a political bomb thrower and an especially incendiary critic of President Obama gives him a strong gravitational pull for TV cameras covering the SOTU. And that means more coverage for Obama’s gun violence plan, according to gun control advocates.The problem runs a lot deeper than Ted Nugent
“It definitely adds more coverage. And it’s going to play terribly for them,” Ladd Everitt, spokesperson for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence told TPM.
Gun control advocates have lobbied their allies in Congress to invite survivors of gun violence and their relatives to sit in the SOTU audience. USA Today reported about 20 will be in attendance. Michelle Obama is also hosting relatives of Hadiya Pendleton, a Chicago teen who was gunned down days after returning from the President’s inauguration, at the speech.
A spokesperson for Stockman’s office told DCist the congressman invited Nugent “because he is a supporter of the Second Amendment and American values.”
“We thought he would be a good representative,” spokesperson Donny Ferguson said.
But the juxtaposition between the group of survivors and a hardcore gun activist like Nugent during the SOTU is exactly what gun control advocates want.
“You’re going to have a guy who recently threatened the life of the President opposite over 20 survivors from some of our nation’s most gruesome episodes of gun violence,” Everitt said. “It’s heartless, and emblematic of just how radical the Republican Party has become on this issue.”
[I]f I were the GOP leadership, the prospect of further comments from Nugent after the speech would have me a bit worried. After all, there’s little doubt that reporters will seek him out, and there’s really no telling what Nugent will say. The GOP leadership has not commented on the news.posted by zombieflanders at 2:27 PM on February 11 [1 favorite]
But really, this episode is significant for reasons that go well beyond Nugent. The key actor here who matters is Steve Stockman. The problem lies in all the over-the-top stuff GOP lawmakers say regularly that isn’t quite crazy enough to earn widespread condemnation, as Nugent’s quotes have, but are still whacked out enough to encourage an atmosphere that helps keep millions of GOP base voters sealed off from reality. The problem is the perpetual winking and nodding to The Crazy that is deemed marginally acceptable – the hints about creeping socialism, the claim that modest Obama executive actions amount to tyranny, the suggestions that Obama’s values are vaguely un-American and that Obama is transforming the country and the economy into something no longer recognizably American, and so on — more so than the glaringly awful stuff that gets the media refs to throw their flags.
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In unrelated news, the firearms industry has unveiled the AL, AS and Timpson rifle lines.
posted by Etrigan at 12:42 PM on January 24 [31 favorites]