NRA Owns The GOP

I don't expect much from republicans as they are poorly informed and get most of their news from Fox which is a propoganda outlet and arm of the GOP.  

Republicans live their whole lives swimming in lies they choose to believe.   Lies GOP leadership feeds them as it goes about representing big business and the rich and other special interest like Gun Manufacturers.   That 75% of republicans supported the Public Safety and Second Amendment Rights Protection Act means nothing because the republican higher ups run the show and vote any way big business wants them to vote.   That meek and gullible 75% of republicans will keep their mouths shut and march lock step to the GOP's tune.   The GOP knows this and knows it can get away with anything big business wants.  The local republican sheep will always shut the heck up and vote republican.   The last thought a republican will have is to vote for their self interest or ask big business to care about water or air quality or the lives of their children and grandchildren.   They have been that simple for the last quarter of a century and I really doubt the ability of their wasted minds to kick off a spark.

Democrats are a different matter and the ones who voted against the Public Safety and Second Amendment Rights Protection Act are low life scum who lack the courage to hold the positions they have been elected to.   Democrats who voted against it were Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (ND), Max Baucus (MT), Mark Begich (AK) and Mark Pryor (AR) — the latter three are up for reelection in 2014.   They should be turned out by the party and left to face the next election on their own.   These four cowards are farm animals owned by the NRA.

The Senate voted 54-46 on Wednesday afternoon for bipartisan legislation to expand background checks to gun shows and Internet sales, falling short of the 60-vote threshold to overcome a filibuster.   The Republicans who voted for the bill were Sens. Pat Toomey (PA), Mark Kirk (IL), Susan Collins (ME) and John McCain (AZ).   Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) changed his vote to no in the last minute to reserve the right to bring up the bill again.

It was called the Public Safety and Second Amendment Rights Protection Act and the bill did not, in any way, shape or form infringe upon anyone’s Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms.   It didn't take away anyone’s guns or ban any type of firearm.  The bill did not ban or restrict the use of any kind of bullet or any size clip or magazine.   The bill did not create a national registry in fact, it explicitly prohibited it.  

The legislation, written by Toomey and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), was the centerpiece of gun control efforts in the wake of the Newtown, Conn. shootings. It was supposed to be the breakthrough that led to the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.   But it only picked up a few senators and hardened the opposition of many. A last-ditch effort by Democrats to win over skeptical senators by offering new concessions fell apart late Tuesday.

About nine out of 10 Americans support universal background checks, according to polls. The failed vote reflects the enduring power of the National Rifle Association, which opposed the bill and threatened to target lawmakers who voted in its favor. 

“Today, the misguided Manchin-Toomey-Schumer proposal failed in the U.S. Senate,” the NRA’s top lobbyist Chris Cox said in a statement issued immediately after the vote. “As we have noted previously, expanding background checks, at gun shows or elsewhere, will not reduce violent crime or keep our kids safe in their schools.”   The NRA's answer is to just forget it and do nothing.

Centrist senators who were courted eventually revealed their opposition to the proposal this week, making it all but clear by Wednesday that it lacked the votes to pass.   Opponents voiced gripes ranging from an alleged infringement on Second Amendment rights to the more far-reaching — and inaccurate — claim that the legislation would set up a national gun registry.   They were too cowardly to vote the way the people wanted but brave enough to lie about their reasons for opposing the bill.
Eight other amendments were still set to be voted on, including a Democratic bill to ban military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips, and a Republican substitute that aims to address federal trafficking, mental health and school safety.

The 60-vote threshold was agreed to in part to avoid wasted floor time for what would be an inevitable filibuster on background checks and other amendments.   Democrats also did not want to hold a 51-vote threshold for a sweeping GOP measure to expand concealed carry rights, for fear that it would pass and poison the underlying legislation.   No one in the Senate had the courage to get the job done, they were a complete failure at doing anything.   All these bums need to be thrown out of office.

26 lives were snuffed at Sandy Hook Elementary School.   Thousands were lost befor this and thousands more will die until Congress gets the guts to act.   If your Senator or Congressman is one of those who does the bidding of the NRA then replace him or her.

Charlotte Bacon, Feb. 22, 2006
Daniel Barden, Sept. 25, 2005
Rachel Davino, July 17, 1983  (teacher)
Olivia Engel, July 18, 2006
Josephine Gay, Dec. 11, 2005
Ana M. Marquez-Greene, April 4, 2006
Dylan Hockley, March 8, 2006
Dawn Hochsprung, June 28, 1965  (teacher)
Madeleine F. Hsu, July 10, 2006
Catherine V. Hubbard, June 8, 2006
Chase Kowalski, Oct. 31, 2005
Jesse Lewis, June 30, 2006
James Mattioli, March 22, 2006
Grace McDonnell, Nov. 4, 2005
Anne Marie Murphy, July 25, 1960   (teacher)
Emilie Parker, May 12, 2006
Jack Pinto, May 6, 2006
Noah Pozner, Nov. 20, 2006
Caroline Previdi, Sept. 7, 2006
Jessica Rekos, May 10, 2006
Avielle Richman, Oct. 17, 2006
Lauren Rousseau, June of 1982   (teacher)
Mary Sherlach, Feb. 11, 1956    (teacher)
Victoria Soto, Nov. 4, 1985     (teacher)
Benjamin Wheeler, Sept. 12, 2006
Allison N. Wyatt, July 3, 2006

When children die it is sickening.   When adults don't care the NRA stays strong and the gun makers can continue to sell their wares to mentally unstable people and criminals with no background checks.    The NRA and the gun makers are so greedy they demand to sell to anyone who has money any weapon they wish to purchase, clips holding unlimited rounds of ammo, armor piercing ammo to shoot cops with.  



Shooting Down The Lies

The good people at Amnesty International would like you to know that the National Rifle Association — and its nutbag spokesman, Wayne LaPierre — are pretty much chockful o'bullshit when it comes to their actual agenda, which is not to preserve our precious Second Amendment freedoms, or to protect Uncle Fud's ability to hand down an arsenal to his children and grandchildren free of pesky inquiries as to whether or not one of the grandchildren might be a cannibal murderer in training.   The actual agenda is to make sure the people who are willing to pay nutbags over $1 million a year can make as much money as they possibly can selling guns to whoever comes in whatever door.

Children — no matter where they live — must be kept safe from gun violence.   The United Nations is preparing to finalize a treaty that would help to do just that by helping to stem the flow of weapons to human rights abusers.   The National Rifle Association (NRA) is standing in the way of these efforts by waging a campaign of misinformation and lies force the U.S. government to oppose the treaty. Around the globe, over a billion children live in countries impacted by armed conflict that is fueled by small arms and conventional weapons.   These children are at grave risk of being abducted and trafficked...

To watch LaPierre on Teh Sunday Showz, talking about how that rich moneybags Michael Bloomberg is bringing his rich person's money to Main Street USA to buy all your freedom, and probably lend it back to you at exorbitant rates, because we all know how they are, is to see true evil-for-profit.   While he's out there talking about how he's really in it to make sure that we enforce the gun laws we have in place now — pathetic, though they are — he's spinning paranoid fantasies to the rubes in order to kill a measure aimed at making sure children in Africa aren't made into murderous fanatics toting the weapons that pay LaPierre's salary.   More guns in more places in more hands for more money.   That's all he's about.   That's all he's ever been about.   Trafficking in arms?   We should make a better effort in this country to stem the flow of the deadly nonsense in our politics around the world.


The notion that the Second Amendment is about allowing the citizenry to mount an insurrection against the government is exactly backwards. Rather, it’s about conscripting the citizenry to suppress insurrection.

If somebody brings up the first phrase–” A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…” they [the National Rifle Association, et al] insist the militia meant the people at large, and that the idea was to create a counterweight to the central government, so it wouldn’t dare infringe on the people’s rights.

I’m sorry to have to burst their bubble–well, not really–but the legislative history following the Second Amendment’s passage very clearly supports the opposite of what they say. In 1789, the militia was intended to substitute for a standing Army, and to defend the government from insurrection.

Congress passed two Militia Acts in 1792. The first created state militias, each under control of that state’s governor, specifically created to resist invasion, and suppress insurrection. The second directed all able-bodied white men between the ages of 18 and 45 to belong to their state militia, own a gun and related equipment for that purpose, and report for duty twice a year. The law even laid out
how many bullets each militia member had to bring with him–25 if he owned a musket, 20 if he owned a rifle. After the Civil War the Acts were modified to allow black militia members to belong. In 1903, the state militias were merged with the National Guard.

Aside from frontier fights with the Indian Nations, the militia was used only twice between 1792 and 1814: Once against the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pa. (led in person by George Washington); and then at Bladensburg, Md., to defend Washington DC against the British (the militia ran at the first volley and the day has been called the Bladensburg Races ever since). There was one use of a militia under the Articles of Confederation; in 1787, Shay’s Rebellion in western Massachusetts was put down by a private militia after Shay’s men attacked the Springfield armory.
There is no record of any legally-constituted militia “defending the people against a tyrannical government” under the Constitution–acts it would construe as treason, under Article 3, Section 3 (“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”) The only way to claim otherwise is to use the Civil War as an example. Even then, using state armies that way fit the Constitution’s definition of treason; it was simply expedient after the war to let the matter go.
Given that, anyone can see that the militia under the Constitution was an instrument of the state from the first, and never meant to safeguard the people from the state. What the NRA is doing is trying to confuse colonial militias–when there was no United States–with militias under the Constitution.

The record likewise makes clear that personal gun ownership was protected by the Second Amendment as a way to arm the militia. Of course, lots of people owned muskets or rifles then anyway. And in general, most people didn’t care. But a glance at the historical and legislative record explains why the Second Amendment has three clauses in one sentence and can’t be understood without considering all of it–screams from the right notwithstanding.

Your Second Amendment rights are not unlimited — never have been and never will be  

As we Americans debate the issue of gun control in the wake of the Sandy Hook school massacre, we would do well to avoid any notion that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution affords us unlimited rights to keep and bear any arms we might choose.
You’re never going to have the right to wield a bazooka against things that go bump in the night. You’re never going to have the right to plant land mines in your yard to guard against burglars or boogeymen. Your personal arsenal will never legally include small nuclear weapons.

Over the years, even the most conservative Supreme Court justices have held that Second Amendment rights have their limits.
Consider, for example, Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion in a ruling of four years ago that overturned a ban on handguns in the District of Columbia:
Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose…
 The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms…

[A previous ruling] holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.
So, our debate in the wake of Sandy Hook should begin with the universal acknowledgement that we’re arguing only about where the lines should be drawn — not whether there should be any lines at all.