90% of the American people want universal background checks.
From the national Quinnipiac poll:
"More than 9 in 10 Americans (91 percent) support the idea of universal background checks for purchasing firearms, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll.
But nearly half of those polled also said they thought the establishment of such checks would result in the government confiscating guns that had been purchased through legal channels.
Just 38 percent of those polled said criminal background checks wouldn’t lead to such confiscations, compared to 48 percent who said they would."
And where do Americans get this idea of gun confiscation? From Crazy Lying LaPierre and his venal N.R.A. masters.
"SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre says he thinks the federal government wants universal background checks on gun owners to make it easier for federal officials to seize firearms. LaPierre told a crowd of more than 1,000 people in Salt Lake City on Saturday that President Barack Obama’s call for universal background checks fails to address the problem of the nation’s gun violence. “This so-called background check is aimed at one thing — registering your guns,” he said. “When another tragic opportunity presents itself, that registry will be used to confiscate your guns …"
"The gun lobby is spreading the pernicious falsehood that a background check will lead to a gun registry, and a registry will lead to a knock on the front door by a government SWAT team intent on confiscating the nation’s weapons. [Senator Rand] Paul and the other signatories who share this belief have promised to filibuster that bill." --NYTimes
LaPierre is clearly lying to the American people, who apparently are unaware of this law:A national gun registry is illegal.
It has been ever since the 1986 passage of the Firearm Owners Protection Act:
"No such rule or regulation prescribed after the date of the enactment of the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act may require that records required to be maintained under this chapter or any portion of the contents of such records, be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or any political subdivision thereof, nor that any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or dispositions be established. Nothing in this section expands or restricts the Secretary’s authority to inquire into the disposition of any firearm in the course of a criminal investigation. "
I disagree with the law--which was, in all probability, written by N.R.A. lobbyists, and foisted on our cowardly law makers in Washington D.C. through threats and bribes. There's absolutely nothing in the 2nd Amendment that says anything about not abridging anyone's right to bear arms through registration.
REPUBLICANS John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have said they will obstruct the proposal and the will of the American people for a sensible law that aims at prohibiting mentally ill people, criminals, and terrorists from easily obtaining firearms.
"McConnell is the fifteenth Republican to join the filibuster effort being led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). The GOP leader could have opted to stay out of it, letting the votes happen on the gun package and putting the pressure on House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to decide the bill's fate, if it even made it out of the Senate. Instead, McConnell is making a calculated decision to be part of the filibuster effort that could derail the entire push for gun control legislation. News of McConnell's plan came at the exact moment that Obama was giving a speech in Hartford, Conn. -- to a crowd that included families of victims from the Newtown shootings..."
Editorials from around the country:
"The problem with the debate in Washington is that the gun lobby has been successful in shifting the debate away from any substantive argument to one that amounts to political posturing." --BattleCreekInquirer.com
Editorial, 3/30: Thumbs-up on background checks --JournalStar.com, Nebraska
Editorial: Ignore the gun lobby and start substantive debate on background checks --Detroit Free Press
Americans favor stricter control over gun rights
Gallup on Guns
Are we Americans going to allow the lackeys of the N.R.A. to thwart the will of the people on this sensible proposed piece of legislation?
39 comments:
The NRA is an organization who is chartered with advocating for it's members.
The irony is if you have a ccp, which requires an extensive background check, you still have to do a spot background check to buy a gun. All that requiring background checks for all purchases will do is cost money and provide nothing, but isn't that the government way. Like most regulations the government puts forth, this will have little to no effect on gun violence.
As to what the pols show, the majority of people are against obamacare yet it is steamrolling it's way into our lives.
I don't know why we can't even have a vote...
First: Majority of NRA membership supports gun control measures:
"A strong majority of gun owners and non gun owners support stronger restrictions on firearms, according to a national survey conducted by Johns Hopkins University.
A sizable 89 percent of all respondents, and 75 percent of those identified as NRA members, support universal background checks for gun sales. Similar surveys by Pew Research Center and Gallup have also found background checks to be by far the most popular gun control proposal in the aftermath the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut." --USNews
Second:
"The verdict is in: Americans don’t just support Obamacare — they consider implementing its central tenets a “top priority” for their state legislatures.
A new Kaiser Family Foundation/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/Harvard School of Public Health poll finds that strong majorities of Americans consider implementing Obamacare’s statewide insurance exchanges and Medicaid expansion either a “top” or “important” priority for their state.
Also this:
" November 2012: As a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll reports, the majority of Americans don’t support repealing Obamacare. In fact, after the presidential election, the number of Americans advocating for a full repeal of the health reform law dropped to an all-time low at just 33 percent — compared to nearly half of Americans who would rather keep the law in place."
So let's put the idea that Americans are against Obamacare to rest. That is NOT what this post is about.
Please stay on subject.
"A national gun registry is illegal."
When has that ever stopped the government?
You progressives vest way too much trust in government.
I look forward for a future GOP takeover, if for no other reason that to see the good people on the left regain their skepticism. And I promise, I will be right there with you.
“Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.”
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
The quicker naive partisans of all parties learn this, the better off we will all be.
I have no issues with background checks but if they are going to do them, make them meaningful and have a universal card showing you have passed a comprehensive background check. like a concealed carry permit.
On the non topic, real clear politics shows overwhelming opposition to it.
“Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.”
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
The quicker naive partisans of all parties learn this, the better off we will all be.
Why do you continue to live in this country where you believe this is true?
Why do you continue to live in this country where you believe this is true?
How could anyone possibly believe it is not true. Did you believe the government was honest when Bush or Reagan were in office?
Are our tax codes not designed to confiscate funds at the desire of the government and punish people not in the governments favor.
"Why do you continue to live in this country where you believe this is true?"
Because the nation is not the government, and the government is not the nation.
The founders believed the same thing.
A child-like naivete and credulity is charming. In children.
But you do live in this country where you are subject to its laws.
And those laws are enacted through law makers. The government. Through your elected representatives.
Do you agree with this:
"We are a nation of laws, not men."
The "nation" is the people, true. But also the nation is its laws.
We can't have one without the other.
What you object to are some of the laws, I imagine, that we the people have elected our representatives to propose and enact.
The evil, I think, is in the corporations and lobbyists who have replaced our elected government representatives as the makers of our laws.
The battle on background checks for firearms is a perfect example of a powerful lobby telling the representatives of the people how to vote or even not to bring something up for a vote. If our representatives in Washington are supposed to do the will of the people, why are they bowing to a gun lobby and not listening to the people they represent?
To not even allow this to come up for a vote is unconscionable and it does damage to our system of government.
Do you agree with this:
"We are a nation of laws, not men."
I believe in the concept, that it describes how we should be, but it does not describe how we are. We are an oligarchy of men and women.
The evil, I think, is in the corporations and lobbyists who have replaced our elected government representatives as the makers of our laws.
We're not too far apart on that one.
Big Biz-DC-Wall Street is an anti-liberty axis of evil.
The NRA lobbies on behalf of gun owners, the AARP for old people. I don't see the harm in that.
Look at how heavily the religious right has fought against gay marriage. They've lost. Compare that to the gun issue, where Obama will probably get nothing he wants.
Why the difference? It's not the lobbying, it's where the American people are at.
I didn't want to get in a dispute over it, but your statistics are wildly off, and that is why Obama is now out on the campaign trail again shouting himself hoarse over guns. It's why Hairy Reed shamelessly invoked his dead father.
Gotta get the people stirred back up. We are not an anti-gun nation, and the dems are overreaching.
I stand by my statements. It is nauseating to see so many people vest so much unmerited trust in our decrepit, corrupt government.
And on your Margaret Thatcher post, yeah, the Brits hated her so badly they elected her three times...
@Dave I agree, lets have a vote.
@SF you nailed it. When one side acquires power because the center agreed with them; they inevitably overreach.
Deja vu (already seen).
This feels like 2009 all over again before the 2010 correction.
I thought that most states already have universal background checks? Virginia certainly has this measure in place.
The Virginia measure has never affected me. I'm so clean that I squeak when I walk!
Dave Miller said, and I have to agree: I don't know why we can't even have a vote...
Silverfiddle said...
"And on your Margaret Thatcher post, yeah, the Brits hated her so badly they elected her three times...
April 9, 2013 at 8:56 PM"
Yeah, you must be correct. Because Americans voted for President Obama twice [that's all they're allowed], he must be very popular with the American people. That proves it, no?
And George W. Bush! Now there was a wildly popular president. He, too, was elected to the maximum two terms by the American people!
I don't know what point you're making, Shaw.
I'm not one of those accusing Obama of stealing the election.
I was merely responding to the earth-shatering news that "many didn't like her."
Wow. Stop the presses!
And yes, the South Africa thing... It's called Realpolitik. Kinda like Obama giving teargas to the new Egyptian regime so it can gas those same "Arab Spring" people we were cheering in Tahrir Square only a few short years ago.
Politics is dirty business.
interesting...how rabid rightwingers go ballistic when they...discover their heroes ain't so universally...loved...but they love...when filth mongers like Breitbart go after...Ted Kennedy...and called him sh**t...just after he died...true bullies...only their idols deserve respect...LOL...
SF: "I don't know what point you're making, Shaw.
I'm not one of those accusing Obama of stealing the election.
I was merely responding to the earth-shatering news that 'many didn't like her.'"
I got that. But your point was that Thatcher was elected 3 times, therefore, she must have been popular. I answered that both Bush and Obama were elected the maximum number of times allowed by the Constitution. That isn't necessarily an indication of wild popularity, is it, q.v. GWB, who left office with an approval rating in the 20s.
SF: "And yes, the South Africa thing... It's called Realpolitik. Kinda like Obama giving teargas to the new Egyptian regime so it can gas those same "Arab Spring" people we were cheering in Tahrir Square only a few short years ago."
Sorry. Your example doesn't apply. Throwing your support to apartheid is never a good thing, even in Realpolitik. It's called lack of character in the ability to see what is universally correct: equality under the law. She didn't get that simple point, and whether it was Realpolitik or not, doesn't get her off the hook any more than we would have excused Abraham Lincoln for ending the Civil War and keeping Americans in slavery because the South wouldn't come back into the Union unless that were the case.
SF: "Politics is dirty business." Yes, of course, but certain contarians can't bring themselves to look at the dirt when their "idols" wallow in it.
All this fuss over gun control. Obama has done a very effective job of controlling guns. Since his re-election there are very few guns available to purchase so the sale of guns is in effect.
Apartheid is working well for Africa so I guess it was a good decision for all
I'm sure wherever skudrunner or silverfish are; they are looking down on us. They're not dead, just very condescending.
Octo: Didn't anyone teach you that ascribing motives to others is rude?
Of course I do not look down on you or anyone.
I am merely pointing out that government must sometimes make realpolitik-based decisions to overlook or sometimes even be nice to rotten regimes.
Look at how Obama failed to support Iranian dissidents who were being murdered in the streets.
I am not even singling him out. All governments have done it.
It is telling that you can point it out in others, but you're blind when your guy is doing it.
If it makes sense for the government to do background checks for all individuals purchasing fire arms, wouldn't it make more sense for the people to demand background checks for those individuals seeking to election to office?
To paraphrase Sarah Palin: Why not start with the President? Plenty of blanks to be filled in there, no?
Here are two articles, written by people who were not fans of Thatcher, that puts the apartheid issue into perspective:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/09/margaret-thatcher-apartheid-south-africans_n_3045670.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/10/margaret-thatcher-apartheid-mandela
It seems I have to say this on practically every issue you sound off on here, Shaw, but it's not as black and white (excuse the unfortunate pun) as you so simplistically portray it.
Silver, as to whether something is black or white, of course I agree with you.
I tend to lean more toward the left, but understand that much is gray.
Now I may be wrong, but IMHO, I've seen a lot more acceptance of gray here, than at conservative blogs.
Here we have open criticism of President Obama, open questioning of his policies and even some lefties who voice disgust. Yes, there are the apologists, but that is to be expected from both the left and the right.
The key for me is balance, and while the left can be just as partisan, I don't think you'll find near as much balance on the conservative blogs we frequent as you do here.
And I doubt you can even cite a major conservative web site that was critical of the last Admin when it was in office.
I for one am happy to call Truthdig.com one of my daily reads as they happily try to hold president Obama's shaky feet to a liberal fire.
Did you actually read those articles?
They were NOT flattering, and enforced what others have said about Thatcher.
You seem not to be able to look at how she made people's lives miserable, and that YES, according to the two articles you linked to, she was not a champion for ending apartheid on a human rights level.
From the articles you linked to:
"Thatcher argued that sanctions were immoral because they would throw thousands of South African blacks out of work. Her stance allowed British companies to continue operating in apartheid South Africa, where the United Kingdom was the biggest trading partner and foreign investor.
Former Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda berated Thatcher bitterly at a 1986 Commonwealth conference where she refused to join six nations including Australia and Canada in imposing a package of sanctions against South Africa.
Kaunda told reporters Thatcher cut a "very pathetic picture indeed" and accused her of "worshipping gold, platinum and the rest" on offer from South Africa.
It was a far cry from his amused references to Thatcher as "my dancing partner" after the two famously waltzed at a 1979 Commonwealth summit of Britain and its former colonies in Livingstone, Zambia.
The rapport engendered there led Thatcher to help resolve the impasse in Rhodesia's 7-year war. With Australian negotiators, she persuaded the warring parties to sign a peace settlement that ended that country's white-minority rule and installed Robert Mugabe as leader of a democratic Zimbabwe in 1980.
Mugabe, now derided for destroying the economy of his country through violent and illegal grabs of white-owned farmlands, always enjoyed a collegial relationship with Thatcher. He said he admired her and that she was easier to deal with than Tony Blair who later became prime minister for Labour Party."
This from the other article:
"Advised by her husband, Dennis, who had business interests in South Africa, she felt that anything that damaged wealth creation must be bad for South Africa. She was also a great admirer of Laurens van der Post, the South African writer and traveller later exposed as a fraud, who also opposed sanctions on the country. He introduced her to Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the Zulu leader, who played an ambivalent role in the struggle against apartheid, splitting from the ANC in 1979 and accepting "homeland" status for Kwazulu. His movement, Inkatha, helped the South African police repress ANC rebellion in the townships.
he rapport engendered there led Thatcher to help resolve the impasse in Rhodesia's 7-year war. With Australian negotiators, she persuaded the warring parties to sign a peace settlement that ended that country's white-minority rule and installed Robert Mugabe as leader of a democratic Zimbabwe in 1980.
Mugabe, now derided for destroying the economy of his country through violent and illegal grabs of white-owned farmlands, always enjoyed a collegial relationship with Thatcher. He said he admired her and that she was easier to deal with than Tony Blair who later became prime minister for Labour Party.
But Britain's government under Thatcher ignored the killings of an estimated 20,000 Zimbabwean civilians of the minority Ndebele tribe, prompted by an uprising of dissidents, that lasted from 1982 to 1987. Queen Elizabeth II even gave Mugabe a knighthood after the massacres. Donald Trelford, editor of The Observer newspaper in London, later charged that Thatcher and her Foreign Office were more concerned about their relations with Mugabe than with human rights.
Only after thousands of white farmers were driven off their land and more than a dozen killed did the queen strip Mugabe of his knighthood in 2008.
Thatcher finally was forced to impose sanctions against South Africa by following the lead of the U.S. Congress, which in 1986 passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, overriding Reagan's presidential veto after South Africa attacked Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana on the same day, recalled Pallo Jordan."
I read the articles you provided, SF, and they clearly show that Thatcher was not willing to come out and unequivocally state that apartheid is wrong.
It is you, not I, who will not see that Thatcher wasn't the hero the right is making her out to be.
She wasn't all that.
Thatcher was one of the main supporters of toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam during the Iraqi-imposed war on Iran in the 1980’s.
Despite her government being officially neutral in the Iran-Iraq war, and having voted for a UN Security Council resolution calling on all countries not to further escalate the conflict, she was hungry for selling arms to Saddam’s government.
Secret files made public in December 2011 unveiled an exhaustive list of equipment from Hawk fighter jets to military air and naval bases that London was attempting to sell the Iraqi regime as early as 1981 under the pretext that they were “non-lethal”.
Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait almost certainly never would have happened without American and British support for Iraq during the 1980’s.
Thatcher called Suharto as “one of our very best and most valuable friends”.
She also worked closely with Pinochet during the Falkland War of the 1982 and praised him for “bringing democracy to Chile” during a visit with him in March 1999 while the former Chilean dictator was under house arrest.
The so-called “Iron Lady” was no less lethal to Britain’s own people in political terms especially in Northern Ireland.
Her government oversaw the hunger strikes of 1981 in Northern Ireland by anti-British republicans, in which as Sinn Fein current President Gerry Adams said, she tried in vain to “to criminalize the republican struggle and the political prisoners”.
“Margaret Thatcher will be especially remembered for her shameful role during the epic hunger strikes of 1980 and 81. Her Irish policy failed miserably," Adams said.
Adams also pointed to two other darkest aspects of her foreign policy that is her support for the Khmer Rouge, who are accused of killing an estimated 1.7 million people during their rule over Cambodia, and her staunch backing for the racist Apartheid regime in South Africa.
I never said she was a saint, Shaw. The articles provide a balanced view, not a hagiography.
She did indeed work to bring down apartheid, and she did work for the release of Nelson Mandela. That one reporter says when he first heard it he didn't believe it so he didn't report it.
As for the rest of it, yeah, the people who hate her are going to blame her for every evil in the world, including Mugabe, Pol Pot and the Smallpox outbreak among Native Americans.
Again, realpolitik, as every world leader does. These articles provide the side to the apartheid issue that you chose to ignore.
I did read those articles, Shaw, and I saw the negative information.
You should understand by now that I don't play your silly team sport politics game.
I take things as they are and strive to find the whole picture and share it with others.
We are all flawed human beings, and human nature gets the best of us all, something progressives, as well as partisan sports fans of all stripes strive to ignore.
And quoting Jerry Adams? Seriously?
That's like quoting rightwing racist David Duke for the definitive opinion on Barack Obama...
Also, any props to her for bringing down the military junta in Argentina?
Of course not...
SF, you've put up posts quoting Mark Levin and Michael Savage!
Please stop.
Seriously, another Tu Quoque?
You treat every exchange of information as some kind of arm wrestling match.
I'm not trying to tell you that you are wrong. I give you props for not completely trashing the lady like so many of your confreres are doing.
You brought up apartheid, and I provided you information that rounds out the picture.
Apartheid and Margaret Thatcher aside....why is it that...
"GUN LOBBY TELLS POLS: NO VOTE!"
the conversation took a few twists and turns, as conversations are wont to do, but the issue I see, is 'why are Lobbys now considered as almost an equivalency to elected government?"
No one ever voted for LaPierre, or Norquist or Rove, yet Norquist lectures congressman on how to vote on taxes. LaPierre tells the politicians how to vote. Is this some sort of shadow government? Is Rove a paid troll of the Koch bros. that must be considered in his rants and raves?
Phillip K. Dick penned a line;
“A weird time in which we are alive. We can travel anywhere we want, even to other planets. And for what? To sit day after day, declining in morale and hope.”
...and that is what we do. Acknowledge all that we can accomplish, and then abandon that thought because accomplishment, we are told by lobbyists, is impossible. They do not have anyone's interest in heart other than their employers. They are pirates.
"The chief weapon of sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was too late, how heartless and greedy they were."
Kurt Vonnegut
perhaps our problem is not really 'gun control', but lobbyist control.
okjimm and anybody else out there.
Give us some examples where a politician defied his constituents and obeyed the lobbyists, and didn't end up losing the next election.
More common is a politician taking money from lobbyists to do what his voters want him/her to do, or taking money from some arcane or financial lobby that people have no understanding of.
You guys are the victims of your own echo chamber. America ain't that liberal, yet. Be patient.
So, do you have any examples? Not saying there aren't any...
//Not saying there aren't any...//
don't be disingenuous. just examine any pol who is vowing to filibuster any small measure to regulate firearms......speaks out against climate change....comes up with stupid rules to regulate birth control ... panders to the religious right wing.... and then track their money back to the Heritage Foundation,NRA, Coal and Oil industries and other groups. Please.
or, for that matter, peruse this article
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/04/12/1859811/rick-perry-appointee-tweets-a-picture-of-a-noose-accuses-pro-gun-regulation-senators-of-treason/?mobile=nc
...indicative of what some Republicans face if they stand in line with what their constituents think.
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