Showing posts with label Arizona. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arizona. Show all posts
Saturday, May 15, 2021
Republicans, Our Votes and Our Democracy
Where we stand, Mr. and Mrs. America. They and their csandidates and office holders and platforms and political party are so very unpopular with most of Americans, all they have is still more, heightened vote suppression.
And so, our nation, that Democracy I was talking about?
Vote suppression.Of fellow, tax paying American citizens. It's all they've got. #VoteThemAllOut
Saturday, February 6, 2021
Republicans Lost In This Election -- So What Are They Doing?
They are trying to disenfranchise as many American votes and voters as they can.
That is, ladies and gentlemen, they, Republicans, are trying to make sure that fewer and fewer of us can and do vote. They are trying to take away our vote. It's the only way they can get into office and then stay there. The fewer of us that can vote, the more likely Republicans can gain and keep office. Most usually, this is done by disenfranchising the votes of minorities, Blacks and Hispanics and Latinx citizens and voters.
Already this year, 106 bills have been introduced in 28 states—including 17 under complete GOP control, where passage is more likely—to undermine access to the franchise. According to the Brennan Center's report, "These proposals primarily seek to: (1) limit mail voting access; (2) impose stricter voter ID requirements; (3) limit successful pro-voter registration policies; and (4) enable more aggressive voter roll purges."
"These bills," the report argues, "are an unmistakable response to the unfounded and dangerous lies about fraud that followed the 2020 election."
...The GOP has been trying to undercut efforts to expand voting access for years. "A decade ago," Berman wrote, "Republicans passed new voter ID laws and other efforts to curtail voting rights when they took power in the states following [former President] Barack Obama's election."
But now, he added, "Republicans are taking their assault on voting rights to the next level." Like the Brennan Center, Berman attributed the surge in anti-democracy legislation to Trump's failed bid to subvert the will of the people in last year's election.
According to Berman, the GOP is "trying to accomplish through legislation what Trump couldn't with litigation. All in all, these efforts amount to the most concerted attempts to roll back voting rights since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965."
Our path forward this moment:
"Democrats have a clear choice. They can get rid of the filibuster to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the For the People Act to stop GOP voter suppression, or they can allow the GOP to undermine democracy for the next decade."
"Democrats have a clear choice. They can get rid of the filibuster to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the For the People Act to stop GOP voter suppression, or they can allow the GOP to undermine democracy for the next decade."
We have to stop this. We have to stop them. We can't let them take our vote, our votes. We can't let them disenfranchise Americans. We can't let them steal elections any more than any other political party should be able to.
Additional link:
Friday, October 30, 2020
Fortunately, Trump is Going to Defeat Himself
It's no surprise that Trump thinks his supporters are a bunch of morons.
Now he isn't even pretending any longer
Some of the article:
But despite years of bowing and scraping and, of course, voting to acquit Trump despite his obvious guilt, McSally has earned no loyalty in return from her orange master. She's in a tough race against former astronaut Mark Kelly, a Democrat, and has consistently trailed in the polls. At a recent Arizona rally, Trump didn't bother to hide his disdain for McSally's standard political desire to address her own potential voters.
"Martha, just come up fast. Fast. Fast. Come on. Quick," Trump barked at her. "You got one minute! One minute, Martha! They don't want to hear this, Martha. Come on. Let's go. Quick, quick, quick. Come on. Let's go." It was clear that, as always, Trump resents every moment when the spotlight's not on him, even in the context of helping a sycophant.
I ask again---who does this?
Who but one Donald J Trump treats other, fellow adults like this at ANY time, anywhere but especially in public and especially when you know you are a) on camera because you are, after all, either President of the United States or supposed to be or b) even worse, even more so, you're in a political reelection campaign for the office you want to and are working to keep?
Who does this?
Ironically, he actually needs her in Arizona, too, and in the Senate, God knows and she's behind in the polls against her opponent, Mark Kelly.
Even if it were only for common decency and respect and manners--any one, let alone all of those---you'd think he'd treat her decently out of his own greedy, self-serving needs.
But no, not this one Donald J "Jenius" Trump.
We'll have no manners, we'll have no decency.
We've seen it time and again.
But wait, there's more. Link:
Trump believes his followers are a bunch of racist morons. Sadly, a lot of them are eager to prove him right
Thursday, June 28, 2018
Route 66 Endangered---And What You Can Do
Seems the National Trust for Historic Preservation just came out with its list of endangered historic places---and Route 66 is on it.
A proposal has been made, to help save it, by making it a National Historic Trail, officially. To do this, to support Route 66 becoming a National Historic Trail, the trust has set up an online petition. You can go to it here and sign up/sign on:
Thank you in advance for your support, for signing.
Now, let's do this!
Wednesday, October 25, 2017
The Very Important Speech Yesterday Every Voting American Should Hear
Senator Jeff Flake gave a now very famous and even important speech yesterday in and to the Senate and nation. Here is just a bit of it.
It is time for our complicity and our accommodation of the unacceptable to end. In this century, a new phrase has entered the language to describe the accommodation of a new and undesirable order, that phrase being the new normal.
But we must never adjust to the present coarseness of our national dialogue with the tone set up at the top. We must never regard as normal the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals. We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country. The personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institution, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency.
The reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have been elected to serve. None of these appalling features of our current politics should ever be regarded as normal. We must never allow ourselves to lapse into thinking that that is just the way things are now.
If we simply become inured to this condition, thinking that it is just politics as usual, then heaven help us. Without fear of the consequences and without consideration of the rules of what is politically safe or palatable, we must stop pretending that the degradation of our politics and the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal. They are not normal. Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as telling it like it is when it is actually just reckless, outrageous and undignified.
And when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else. It is dangerous to a democracy. Such behavior does not project strength because our strength comes from our values. It instead projects a corruption of the spirit and weakness. It is often said that children are watching. Well, they are. And what are we going to do about that? When the next generation asks us, ‘Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you speak up?’ What are we going to say?
Mr. President, I rise today to say: enough. We must dedicate ourselves to making sure that the anomalous never becomes the normal. With respect and humility, I must say that we have fooled ourselves for long enough that a pivot to governing is right around the corner, a return to civility and stability right behind it....
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
The Heat Isn't Just the Southwest US
I think the news that it's hitting 120 degrees in Phoenix today and being so hot all over the Southwest US is getting around. That seems clear.
What isn't also clear is the heat on another continent.
Heatwave scorches Europe,
from London to Siberia
More than 1,000 firefighters were still fighting to control the flames that broke out in central Portugal at the weekend, killing 64 people.
Cooler weather was aiding their efforts, but thermometers were still hovering around 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit)—a level matched across oven-like swathes of Europe, including Italy, Austria, the Netherlands and even alpine Switzerland.
Two forest fires have also broken out since Sunday on Croatia's southern Adriatic coast, prompting the authorities to evacuate 800 tourists, though the blazes have now been brought under control.In Italy, forecasters say the current heatwave could turn out to be the most intense in 15 years, with temperatures around eight degrees above the seasonal average—39 C in Milan and up to 30 in the Alps at an altitude of 1,000 metres (3,300 feet).
Britain saw its first five-day stretch of temperatures over 30 degrees in June since 1995—and the thermometer hit 33.9 C in west London, a UK record for the month since 1976.
In Guildford, southwest of the capital, a road surface melted on Tuesday, with motorists likening it to a bar of chocolate left out in the hot sun.
In Russia, Siberia was also suffering a heatwave, with temperatures of up to 37 Celsius in the city of Krasnoyarsk, Channel One television reported.
It's gotten so clear there's global warming, apparently, even the extreme Right Wing website, Breitbart, posted the same story.
So, yeah, it looks like 2017 is shaping up to be, again, the new hottest year in recorded history.
Maybe we need those Paris Climate Accords after all.
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
Turns Out It Is the Heat After All
Have you seen what's going on this week, just now, in the Southwest? The weather? The temperatures and forecasts?
American Just Cancelled 43 Flights to Phoenix Because This Place Is a Literal Hellscape
While the headline is more than a bit of hyperbole, the fact is, some jet planes can't handle temperatures over 118 degrees. it's been forecast for Phoenix today to be over that. It's supposed to be 120 degrees there today and 119 tomorrow, Wednesday.
And keep in mind, it's not even July yet, of course, let alone the hottest month of the year down there, August.
Then check this out. While this has become more common, not that long ago it wasn't like this. The following took place in June, 2013.
The temperature hit 129 for the first time that year. Now? It's not uncommon.
Then this happened, just last year.
Two Middle East locations hit 129 degrees, hottest ever in Eastern Hemisphere, maybe the world
If a person didn't know any better, you'd think the planet was heating up or something.
Links:
Friday, September 11, 2015
Thursday, July 2, 2015
Obama's Coming to Take Our Guns!
From Phoenix this week:
2008: Obama's coming to take our guns!
2009: Obama's coming to take our guns!
2010: Obama's coming to take our guns!
2011: Obama's coming to take our guns!
2012: Obama's coming to take our guns!
2013: Obama's coming to take our guns!
2014: Obama's coming to take our guns!
2015: Obama's coming to take our guns!
It got tiresome the second year they said it.
We knew it was stupid the first year, the first time they said it. The second year, it was already old.
Monday, March 2, 2015
Republican Party Chutzpah Again--This Time in Arizona
Have you been following what came out of Arizona in the last year regarding voting and voting districts and gerrymandering?
The court hears argument Monday in an appeal by Republican lawmakers in Arizona against the state’s voter-approved independent redistricting commission for creating the districts of U.S. House members. A decision striking down the commission probably would doom a similar system in neighboring California, and could affect districting commissions in 11 other states.
It seems the voters of Arizona were sick of legislators creating very arbitrary voting districts of bizarre shapes just to protect legislators getting re-elected. The voters got together and created a vote to end it. The legislators, not liking it, have since taken this all to court in a lawsuit and it's now before the Supreme Court. They will decide.
Basically, the legislators want to overturn the people's will. Screw the people, the legislators are more important--to the legislators, anyway.
These same legislators are claiming the laws call for "the legislature" to create laws on this so they think it's against the law.
Mind you, these are, once again, "small government" Right Wing Republicans in Arizona trying to overcome the people's will.
This much, surely, is true--again, from the article:
Independent commissions such as Arizona’s “may be the only meaningful check” left to states that want to foster more competitive elections, reduce political polarization and bring fresh faces into the political process, the Obama administration said.
The thing is, every state, nationwide, needs to be able to overcome gerrymandering by legislators. We need government representatives--of the people--to create voting districts that are, once and for all, not supporting specific incumbent representatives and/or their political party. Arizona's state law here could be one step forward in a long trek to get and keep good legislation and laws that are for the people and not representing one candidate or one political party.
These kinds of efforts should come from no political party but especially not from one that insists it is for true, representative government, from and for the people.
Links: Will The Supreme Court Kill Citizen Redistricting Commissions?
Supreme Court Seems Divided Over Independent Redistricting Commissions
The Supreme Court and the Freedom to Gerrymander
Thursday, December 11, 2014
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Another bad list Kansas is on
This little gem:
These states are trying to stop young people from voting
No, it's no surprise but still, it's disheartening. From the Washington Post:
Earlier this year, North Carolina lawmakers passed a bill aimed at stifling the newfound political muscle of their youngest eligible voters. The package of laws, known as HB 589, stripped away crucial policies that made it easier for young people to cast their ballot and participate in the political process. This week, lawyers have descended on Winston Salem to argue that eliminating these policies may have violated the 26th Amendment, which prohibits age-based voting discrimination.
The programs under attack have been proven to boost youth participation. In 2012, young people in the state were 2.6 times more likely to take advantage of same day registration. And over a three-year period, 160,000 eligible young people were automatically registered to vote from pre-registration of 16- and 17-year-olds. Now these options are unavailable to the young residents of North Carolina.
Laws like HB 589 are part of a troubling pattern taking hold across the country, triggered by the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, thus allowing Southern states to make changes to their voting laws without securing federal approval. A raft of voter ID laws—designed primarily to suppress turnout of minority voters—are also turning away young people, and often, both at the same time. Millennials are the largest, but also the country’s most diverse generation, with 43 percent identifying as people of color. In all, 22 states have new, restrictive voting laws that will go into effect before the 2014 midterms.
An undisguised attempt to block new immigrants and minority voters, new laws in Kansas and Arizona require voters to present proof of citizenship in order to register to vote in the first place. That means when you’re stopped on the street by a nice kid with a clipboard, you have to have your birth certificate, passport or naturalization documents just lying around in your purse or back pocket. Rock The Vote recently joined other community-registration arms including Voto Latino to sign an amicus brief, arguing that the laws unduly impair efforts to register new voters. It also launched an online petition to spread the word.
It seems the opposite of what we thought America was and Americans are about, doesn't it?
I'm telling you, folks, we have to fight to get our country back. We have to fight to end campaign contributions. We have to get the big, ugly, corrupting influence of money from the wealthy and corporations out of our elections and government. Until we do that, nothing will change.
Sunday, November 3, 2013
We're beginning to win some small battles
Yes, we "Populists" and "Progressives" and just the middle and lower classes seem to be beginning to win some battles. Documented here, today in The New York Times:
TORONTO — HERE’S the puzzle of America today: the plutocrats have never been richer, and their economic power continues to grow, but the populists, the wilder the better, are taking over. The rise of the political extremes is most evident, of course, in the domination of the Republican Party by the Tea Party and in the astonishing ability of this small group to shut down the American government. But the centrists are losing out in more genteel political battles on the left, too — that is the story of Bill de Blasio’s dark-horse surge to the mayoralty in New York, and of the Democratic president’s inability to push through his choice to run the Federal Reserve, Lawrence H. Summers.
All of these are triumphs of populists over plutocrats: Mr. de Blasio is winning because he is offering New Yorkers a chance to reject the plutocratic politics of Michael R. Bloomberg. The left wing of the Democratic Party opposed the appointment of Mr. Summers as part of a wider backlash against the so-called Rubin Democrats (as in Robert E. Rubin, who preceded Mr. Summers as Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration) and their sympathy for Wall Street. Even the Tea Party, which in its initial phase was to some extent the creation of plutocrats like Charles and David Koch, has slipped the leash of its very conservative backers and alienated more centrist corporate bosses and organizations.
As proof, here is but one additional example of how we've won lately:
A group of wealthy donors wanted to give millions to two right-wing California political campaigns last year, but didn’t want anyone to know their identities. They came up with a scheme that any money-launderer would be proud of, funneling the cash through a convoluted series of independent spending groups that were allowed to collect unlimited dollars. By the time the donations had been used to buy advertising, the original money trail had been erased.
Or so they thought. California has one of the best laws in the country requiring disclosure of political donations, and officials at the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission suspected that the bulk contributions were obscuring the true donor groups. A yearlong investigation revealed the nature of the scheme, and the groups were accused of violating state law.
A few days ago, as part of a civil settlement, the state imposed $16 million in penalties and fines on the groups, a record in a campaign finance case. Though it’s not clear how much of those penalties will ever be collected, or even who many of the original donors were, the effort demonstrates the importance of state disclosure laws and aggressive enforcement, particularly since Congress has refused to pay attention to abuses on a national level.
The California commission, in fact, has done the political world a favor by exposing the secretive network of conservative groups that have aggressively taken advantage of the unlimited donations allowed by the Supreme Court, as well as the ability to hide donors that is permitted by the Federal Election Commission and lower courts. The network centers on groups with close ties to the Koch brothers, whose huge donations have played such a large role in electing Tea Party candidates around the country.
The commission suspected something fishy was going on when an Arizona group called Americans for Responsible Leadership donated $11 million to a California effort to pass a ballot measure limiting the political power of unions. Some of the money was also spent in opposition to another measure to raise state taxes. The group had no history of political activity in California, and the commission sued last October to find the hidden money source. Just before the November election, the group announced that it had received the money from the Center to Protect Patient Rights, which in turn had gotten it from Americans for Job Security.
The “patient rights” group actually has nothing to do with patient rights, and was described by the commission as “the key nonprofit in the Koch Brothers’ dark money network.” The job security group spent more than $15 million attempting to defeat President Obama last year, much of which came from the patient rights group. The patient rights group itself made a $4 million contribution to the California campaign, funneled through another intermediary. The Koch brothers deny contributing to the effort, and the full list of donors to the groups has not been made public, largely because Congressional Republicans have refused to pass the Disclose Act, which would require disclosure of the names of all donors giving more than $10,000 to independent groups. That makes state enforcement all the more important. Currently only 13 states have laws as strong as California’s; the success of this investigation should encourage others to take a stronger stance against secret money.
Finally, there's this:
The overall amount spent by various interests on federal lobbying declined yet again in the third quarter of the year, a new analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics shows -- a continuation of the trend that's been going on for several years.
Organizations filing federal lobbying disclosure forms reported spending $760.3 million between July 1 and Sept. 30, the lowest amount in a single quarter going back to at least 2010. Additionally, the reports listed 10,048 active registered lobbyists, the lowest number in at least as long, and far below the 10,878 active registered lobbyists in the third quarter of 2012.
Finally, there's this:
The overall amount spent by various interests on federal lobbying declined yet again in the third quarter of the year, a new analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics shows -- a continuation of the trend that's been going on for several years.
Organizations filing federal lobbying disclosure forms reported spending $760.3 million between July 1 and Sept. 30, the lowest amount in a single quarter going back to at least 2010. Additionally, the reports listed 10,048 active registered lobbyists, the lowest number in at least as long, and far below the 10,878 active registered lobbyists in the third quarter of 2012.
(Pharmaceutical companies, in this report, still gave an increase in lobbying payouts, not surprising, given our current controversey with "Obamacare.")
So there are successes for us out there, for "we the people", for the working man and woman of America, thank goodness.
But the fact is, the facts are, we haven't "won" nearly enough, first, and second, we aren't winning quickly enough. As we know, the wealthy and corporations keep piling on more and more wealth while the rest of America, that same middle- and lower-class---most of us, most of America---are losing.
So once again, I go back to the other fact that we need to fight to end campaign contributions so we can take back America, so we can get back our representatives and government for the people.
Do what you can to help the fight. Write your State and Federal representatives in both the respective Houses of Representatives and Senates and tell them to support the elimination of campaign contributions.
As I keep saying, we need to get the big, ugly, corrupting influence of the money from the wealthy and corporations out of our government, once and for all.
And the sooner the better.
Friday, August 23, 2013
The warming, even hot, drying Earth
It's not just the ice caps and glaciers shrinking that are the problem, as we keep learning.
51 uncontained wildfires in the US right now.
And if you remember last Summer, you know we had wildfires from our Southern, Mexican border, in every US State in the West, all the way to the Northern, Canadian border.
But there's no global warming.
Oh, hell no.
Links:
_________________________________________________________
Current Wildfire Map & Satellite Images - Wildfire Disaster Interactive Map - View a continuously updated map of US wildfire locations, perimeters, fire potential areas, burn areas, precipitation, and social media:
Wildfire Map & Satellite Images | Wildfire Disaster Interactive Map
You can back that map off, too, and look at Alaska. They have wildfires raging, too.
And then there's this:
Try and have a nice weekend.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Republican examples for how to legislate--for Kansas
I saw the other day how very Right Wing and Republican Arizona Governor Jan Brewer--you remember her, the one who had the nerve to publicly scold President Obama on a tarmac in her state? Anyway, she has made it publicly clear to her also-very-Republican state legislature that unless the people of her state get federal government Medicaid expansion, she's going to hold up every bit of legislation they create:
Quite the stunner. It's her own political party's legislature and naturally they're opposed to anything even remotely proposed by our current (black, Kenyan, Socialist, Communist, whatever) president yet she's pushing them for this expansion of Medicaid through "Obamacare."
Yeehaw. How rare. How refreshing.
Now, not to be done there, Texas legislators seem to have caught on, too:
It seems Texas Republican legislators are--GASP--COMPROMISING with Democrats and others and GETTING THINGS ACCOMPLISHED FOR THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE:
If Texas’ less-than-theatrical 83rd legislative session is remembered at all, it will be known for accords, not discord.
Lawmakers put down their partisan swords to expand financing for water infrastructure, women’s health, public education and the mentally ill, steering almost entirely clear of bitter ideological battles over immigration enforcement and abortion.
The state’s Republican majority pulled its weight in a few major areas: passing legislation requiring drug screening for unemployment benefits and blocking measures opening the door for an expansion of Medicaid, the joint state and federal health care program for children, the disabled and the very poor, under the federal health care overhaul.
But Republicans themselves warded off some of the session’s most anticipated battles, like Senator Dan Patrick’s “school choice” effort to finance scholarships so public school students could attend private schools.
And House Speaker Joe Straus’s reluctance to tackle redistricting — though Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Attorney General Greg Abbott wanted to — was an effort to keep Democrats in the fold. That effort seems unlikely to last if the governor calls legislators into a special session on the issue.
Indeed, many of the lawmakers’ hardest-fought initiatives this session — preventing wrongful convictions and prosecutorial misconduct, overhauling high school diploma requirements and high-stakes testing, and curbing the authority of regents of the state’s public university systems — did not fall along party lines.
And maybe, just maybe they're doing this because they see things working in California, with a Democratic majority:
Those darn Democrats.
Doing the right, responsible things for their state and people.
Damn them to hell.
(You don't suppose anyone in Kansas government is paying any attention to all this, do you?)
Friday, February 15, 2013
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
The most moving part of the State of the Union last night
"...what I’ve said tonight matters little if we don’t come together to protect our most precious resource – our children.
It has been two months since Newtown. I know this is not the first time this country has debated how to reduce gun violence. But this time is different. Overwhelming majorities of Americans – Americans who believe in the 2nd Amendment – have come together around commonsense reform – like background checks that will make it harder for criminals to get their hands on a gun. Senators of both parties are working together on tough new laws to prevent anyone from buying guns for resale to criminals. Police chiefs are asking our help to get weapons of war and massive ammunition magazines off our streets, because they are tired of being outgunned.
Each of these proposals deserves a vote in Congress. If you want to vote no, that’s your choice. But these proposals deserve a vote. Because in the two months since Newtown, more than a thousand birthdays, graduations, and anniversaries have been stolen from our lives by a bullet from a gun.
One of those we lost was a young girl named Hadiya Pendleton. She was 15 years old. She loved Fig Newtons and lip gloss. She was a majorette. She was so good to her friends, they all thought they were her best friend. Just three weeks ago, she was here, in Washington, with her classmates, performing for her country at my inauguration. And a week later, she was shot and killed in a Chicago park after school, just a mile away from my house.
Hadiya’s parents, Nate and Cleo, are in this chamber tonight, along with more than two dozen Americans whose lives have been torn apart by gun violence. They deserve a vote.
Gabby Giffords deserves a vote.
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.
Our actions will not prevent every senseless act of violence in this country. Indeed, no laws, no initiatives, no administrative acts will perfectly solve all the challenges I’ve outlined tonight. But we were never sent here to be perfect. We were sent here to make what difference we can, to secure this nation, expand opportunity, and uphold our ideals through the hard, often frustrating, but absolutely necessary work of self-government."
--President Barack Obama, State of the Union Speech, February 2013
Friday, December 21, 2012
An important read on guns
An article yesterday from the conservative federal judge who oversaw the trial of the Tuscon, Arizona shooter:
A conservative case for an assault weapons ban
If we can't draw a sensible line on guns, we may as well call the American experiment in democracy a failure.
Last month, I sentenced Jared Lee Loughner to seven consecutive life terms plus 140 years in federal prison for his shooting rampage in Tucson. That tragedy left six people dead, more than twice that number injured and a community shaken to its core.
Loughner deserved his punishment. But during the sentencing, I also questioned the social utility of high-capacity magazines like the one that fed his Glock. And I lamented the expiration of the federal assault weapons ban in 2004, which prohibited the manufacture and importation of certain particularly deadly guns, as well as magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
The ban wasn't all that stringent — if you already owned a banned gun or high-capacity magazine you could keep it, and you could sell it to someone else — but at least it was something.
And it says something that half of the nation's deadliest shootings occurred after the ban expired, including the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. It also says something that it has not even been two years since Loughner's rampage, and already six mass shootings have been deadlier.
I am not a social scientist, and I know that very smart ones are divided on what to do about gun violence. But reasonable, good-faith debates have boundaries, and in the debate about guns, a high-capacity magazine has always seemed to me beyond them.
Bystanders got to Loughner and subdued him only after he emptied one 31-round magazine and was trying to load another. Adam Lanza, the Newtown shooter, chose as his primary weapon a semiautomatic rifle with 30-round magazines. And we don't even bother to call the 100-rounder that James Holmes is accused of emptying in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater a magazine — it is a drum. How is this not an argument for regulating the number of rounds a gun can fire?
I get it. Someone bent on mass murder who has only a 10-round magazine or revolvers at his disposal probably is not going to abandon his plan and instead try to talk his problems out. But we might be able to take the "mass" out of "mass shooting," or at least make the perpetrator's job a bit harder.
To guarantee that there would never be another Tucson or Sandy Hook, we would probably have to make it a capital offense to so much as look at a gun. And that would create serious 2nd Amendment, 8th Amendment and logistical problems.
So what's the alternative? Bring back the assault weapons ban, and bring it back with some teeth this time. Ban the manufacture, importation, sale, transfer and possession of both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Don't let people who already have them keep them. Don't let ones that have already been manufactured stay on the market. I don't care whether it's called gun control or a gun ban. I'm for it.
I say all of this as a gun owner. I say it as a conservative who was appointed to the federal bench by a Republican president. I say it as someone who prefers Fox News to MSNBC, and National Review Online to the Daily Kos. I say it as someone who thinks the Supreme Court got it right in District of Columbia vs. Heller, when it held that the 2nd Amendment gives us the right to possess guns for self-defense. (That's why I have mine.) I say it as someone who, generally speaking, is not a big fan of the regulatory state.
I even say it as someone whose feelings about the NRA mirror the left's feelings about Planned Parenthood: It has a useful advocacy function in our deliberative democracy, and much of what it does should not be controversial at all.
And I say it, finally, mindful of the arguments on the other side, at least as I understand them: that a high-capacity magazine is not that different from multiple smaller-capacity magazines; and that if we ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines one day, there's a danger we would ban guns altogether the next, and your life might depend on you having one.
But if we can't find a way to draw sensible lines with guns that balance individual rights and the public interest, we may as well call the American experiment in democracy a failure.
There is just no reason civilians need to own assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Gun enthusiasts can still have their venison chili, shoot for sport and competition, and make a home invader flee for his life without pretending they are a part of the SEAL team that took out Osama bin Laden.
It speaks horribly of the public discourse in this country that talking about gun reform in the wake of a mass shooting is regarded as inappropriate or as politicizing the tragedy. But such a conversation is political only to those who are ideologically predisposed to see regulation of any kind as the creep of tyranny. And it is inappropriate only to those delusional enough to believe it would disrespect the victims of gun violence to do anything other than sit around and mourn their passing. Mourning is important, but so is decisive action.
Congress must reinstate and toughen the ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
Larry Alan Burns is a federal district judge in San Diego.
Link to original article here: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-burns-assault-weapons-ban-20121220,0,6774314.story
NRA response to Newtown slaughter: The Onion couldn't write it any better
26 people are slaughtered by a man with an assault rifle a week ago today, on top of all the other mass assaults and killings in America and the National Rifle Association finally comes out with a response:
NRA’s Wayne LaPierre: Put ‘armed police officers’ in every school
(Link at bottom)
So the NRA's and their leaders' response to yet another huge slaughter of Americans--the answer to far too many guns in the US is, as ever, as we keep seeing, time and again, is "more guns."
Nice.
All they are is consistent.
To our peril.
Links: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2012/12/21/nras-wayne-lapierre-put-armed-police-officers-in-every-school/">http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2012/12/21/nras-wayne-lapierre-put-armed-police-officers-in-every-school/">http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2012/12/21/nras-wayne-lapierre-put-armed-police-officers-in-every-school/
http://www.theonion.com/
Be sure to read this one:
http://www.theonion.com/video/mayan-word-for-apocalypse-actually-translates-more,30781/
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Quote of the day
"With all the carnage from gun violence in our country, it’s still almost impossible to believe that a mass shooting in a kindergarten class could happen. It has come to that. Not even kindergarteners learning their A,B,Cs are safe. We heard after Columbine that it was too soon to talk about gun laws. We heard it after Virginia Tech. After Tucson and Aurora and Oak Creek. And now we are hearing it again. For every day we wait, 34 more people are murdered with guns. Today, many of them were five-year olds. President Obama rightly sent his heartfelt condolences to the families in Newtown. But the country needs him to send a bill to Congress to fix this problem. Calling for ‘meaningful action’ is not enough. We need immediate action. We have heard all the rhetoric before. What we have not seen is leadership – not from the White House and not from Congress. That must end today. This is a national tragedy and it demands a national response. My deepest sympathies are with the families of all those affected, and my determination to stop this madness is stronger than ever.”
--Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City
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