We Need to Bring Back the Assault Weapons Ban

The GOP, the Vote, Guns and You, America

Guess which it wants to have less of, if not even do away with?

On Guns and Common Sense Gun Legislation

"Make no mistake about it: Universal background checks will save lives...

Make no mistake about it: Outlawing high capacity magazines will save lives. Make no mistake about it: Getting the military-style weapons off our street and private ownership will save lives." --Senator Ben Cardin, Maryland (D)

Republican Party Priorities

There's only one political party in the nation that is so patently, provenly bad and unpopular that they have to--and do--actively disenfranchise fellow American citizens.

End vote and voter suppression.

Require background checks for all weapons purchases, coast to coast, for mental stability and criminal history.

Put back into effect the Assault Weapons Ban.Require a waiting period for weapons purchases. Simple, important things we need to do as a nation. Oh, and vote out Republicans. For sure.

Quote of the Day -- On America, Americans and Assault Weapons

"After Bill Clinton banned assault weapons in 1994, mass shooting deaths dropped by 43%.

After the Republican Congress let the ban expire in 2004, they shot up by 239%. This isn't rocket science: we need to ban assault weapons again." --Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, Pennsylvania Democratic Party candidate for the US Senate.

What to do About Guns in America?

What do we do about weapons in the United States? 3 things, at minimum---all common sense and not complicated. These won't solve all our problems, no, certainly not but they'll go a long way to curing some of our nation's ills and keeping people from getting shot and/or killed.

1) Require background checks, coast to coast, for ALL weapons purchases, for mental stability and criminal history, 2) Put into law a waiting period for receiving a gun after purchase and 3) Ban assault weapons. Again. Period.

On Guns: Facts in America and What We Must Do

The 3 Stated, Official Goals of the March For Our Lives Students and Movement

These are the 3, stated, official goals of the March For Our Lives students and movement, according to their site.

1. Passing a law to ban the sale of assault weapons like the ones used in Las Vegas, Orlando, Sutherland Springs, Aurora, Sandy Hook and, most recently, to kill 17 innocent people and injure more than a dozen others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Of the 10 deadliest shootings over the last decade, seven involved the use of assault weapons.

No civilian should be able to access these weapons of war, which should be restricted for use by our military and law enforcement only. These guns have no other purpose than to fire as many bullets as possible and indiscriminately kill anything they are pointed at with terrifying speed.

2. Prohibiting the sale of high-capacity magazines such as the ones the shooter at our school—and so many other recent mass shootings used.

States that ban high-capacity magazines have half as many shootings involving three or more victims as states that allow them.

Limiting the number of bullets a gun can discharge at one time will at least force any shooter to stop and reload, giving children a chance to escape.

3. Closing the loophole in our background check law that allows dangerous people who shouldn’t be allowed to purchase firearms to slip through the cracks and buy guns online or at gun shows.

That's it. That's all. It's not long. It's not complicated. It's very doable and people will still have weapons.

Proof Gun Legislation Works

This right here.



So now, by all means, go online. Do a search. You'll find this--and more--is what these things cost.

Let's do this.

On Assault Weapons

Ban the AR-15

It's not a coincidence.

And while we're at it, bring back the Assault Weapons Ban.

For starters.

Link:

The NRA Is Killing Us And Their Weapon Is The 2nd Amendment

Remember Newtown?

Think about it.

If 20 children, 20 beautiful children and 6 adults, being gunned down in a few minutes years ago in Newtown, Connecticut wasn't enough to get America to wake up, pay attention and make changes to gun legislation so these mass shootings don't repeatedly happen, why would adults being gunned down, anywhere else, let alone Las Vegas, make any difference?

Let's speak up. 

Finally.

At long last.

Let's get something done.

Let's change things, America.

Let's be better than this. Finally.

We Need to Reinstate the Assault Weapons Ban

Australia did it.

We could, too.

And we need it.

Las Vegas proved it.

How Insane America Is About Weapons

This is how insane.



Fight for background checks for all weapons purchases in America for mental stability and criminal history.

It's the least we can do.

America, the world and guns

Kurt Vonnegut on writing, America and guns

Author Kurt Vonnegut on his book, "Breakfast of Champions."  Particularly poignant today as the NRA has their annual gunfest convention in Houston:

"I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, with such abominable results: they were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books.

... Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper facial tissues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their made-up tales. 

 And so on.

Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done.

If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order in the world around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead."

 It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: It can be done."

Guns in America: Lee Judge nails it

From our own Kansas City Star, of course.

A couple of facts on guns

Quote of the day--on guns

“Gun ownership has dramatically dropped over the last 20 years, so now it’s about selling a larger number of more expensive weapons to a smaller number of customers. The N.R.A., doing the bidding of the industry, ratchets up paranoia about government so that those people will go out and buy more guns.” 

--Senator Chris Murphy, Connecticut from his article in The New York Times  today:  Chris Murphy's Crucible

Yet 2 more studies show more guns = more shootings, killings

First this study covered in The New York Times 2 days ago:

Report Links High Rates of Gun Violence to Weak State Regulations

Weaker gun laws = more shootings and deaths.

 

From that article:

 

Many states with the weakest gun laws have the worst rates of gun violence, ranking high on numerous indicators, like gun homicides and suicides, firearm deaths of children, and killings of law enforcement officers, according to a report to be issued Wednesday by the liberal Center for American Progress.

      

Alaska ranked first in overall gun deaths, the report found, with 20.28 deaths per 100,000 people in 2010 — more than twice the national average — followed by Louisiana and Montana, all states that prior analyses have judged to have weak gun laws. Eight of the states with the highest levels of gun violence were among the 25 with the weakest gun laws, the report found.

 

The report is the second in recent weeks to link gun deaths and firearms laws.

 

Right. Here's the other one:

 

Firearm Legislation and Firearm-Related Fatalities in the United States 

 

Importance  Over 30 000 people die annually in the United States from injuries caused by firearms. Although most firearm laws are enacted by states, whether the laws are associated with rates of firearm deaths is uncertain.

Objective  To evaluate whether more firearm laws in a state are associated with fewer firearm fatalities.

Design  Using an ecological and cross-sectional method, we retrospectively analyzed all firearm-related deaths reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System from 2007 through 2010. We used state-level firearm legislation across 5 categories of laws to create a “legislative strength score,” and measured the association of the score with state mortality rates using a clustered Poisson regression. States were divided into quartiles based on their score.

Setting  Fifty US states.

Participants  Populations of all US states.

Here's the meat of the study:

Main Outcome Measures  The outcome measures were state-level firearm-related fatalities per 100 000 individuals per year overall, for suicide, and for homicide. In various models, we controlled for age, sex, race/ethnicity, poverty, unemployment, college education, population density, nonfirearm violence–related deaths, and household firearm ownership.

Results  Over the 4-year study period, there were 121 084 firearm fatalities. The average state-based firearm fatality rates varied from a high of 17.9 (Louisiana) to a low of 2.9 (Hawaii) per 100 000 individuals per year. Annual firearm legislative strength scores ranged from 0 (Utah) to 24 (Massachusetts) of 28 possible points. States in the highest quartile of legislative strength (scores of ≥9) had a lower overall firearm fatality rate than those in the lowest quartile (scores of ≤2) (absolute rate difference, 6.64 deaths/100 000/y; age-adjusted incident rate ratio [IRR], 0.58; 95% CI, 0.37-0.92). Compared with the quartile of states with the fewest laws, the quartile with the most laws had a lower firearm suicide rate (absolute rate difference, 6.25 deaths/100 000/y; IRR, 0.63; 95% CI, 0.48-0.83) and a lower firearm homicide rate (absolute rate difference, 0.40 deaths/100 000/y; IRR, 0.60; 95% CI, 0.38-0.95).

Conclusions and Relevance  A higher number of firearm laws in a state are associated with a lower rate of firearm fatalities in the state, overall and for suicides and homicides individually. As our study could not determine cause-and-effect relationships, further studies are necessary to define the nature of this association.

As if the Harvard studies on guns weren't enough.

Link:  Harvard School of Public Health » Harvard Injury Control Research