Where is the gun control debate going?

[LoveLife&Laughter]

Is there any solution that can really protect us from mass shootings or the Jock's, Dunn's and Zimmerman's?

[ellevan]

Have to say that I agree...I have been getting all kinds of emails and messages on Facebook from people who are hunters and who will not answer the question, "WHY do you need an assault weapon to hunt?"  They are so afraid of losing their guns that they refuse to consider the safety of others or the victims of shootings, not even just MASS shootings...shootings.  No one wants to stop people from hunting or protecting themselves...that is not what gun control is about.

[exedir]

Agreed, though powerful and emotional, the issue is not a priority of congress or the administration.  The Biden Report will have the usual suspects and remedies compounded by serious social dysfunctions as to 2nd Amendment rights, mental health diagnosis and treatment and violence in all forms of our society most specifically in the media.

What will happen is, after the annual debate and fight over the debt ceiling, and sandwiched in between potentially contentious cabinet nominees and other hanging fruit left over from the 112th Congress, then something might be done.  And certainly much will be proposed but from being proposed to being legislated is in many cases a bridge too far, and so it might be with meaningful gun and violence legislation.  

The real wild card is the obvious, another event that shocks the nation to bring the issue into new focus as to what can be done, what should be done and what can actually impact events. 

[exedir]

So, a wild card, something like the $1 trillion  coin and drone usage, a presidential order.  And yes, this gets contentious, murky and troublesome as to what a president can and can not do.  And no, this isn't war powers act, or is it?  

We are in the start of a second term, which means a lame duck president who has a legacy to manufacture that tidies up the 1st administration and creates the final chapters of the story of who and what Barack Obama, President Obama, was, is and will be.  Normally domestic policy is scaled back in the second administration while international is where attention is turned.  However, these aren't normal times, whatever they were in the past as normal.  

What we have here is where leadership counts and that can be exceptional leadership where others would fear to tread.  The use of executive action has been a way to fineness out of situation that to some degree considered tricky but in the end, necessary to get things done.  And this might be the case to remove a Gordian knot to the problem of gun control just say it is so and let the chips fall where they might.   And they will fall and it will be nosy no matter what.  

So does he take the risk?  Only Joe Biden seems to know. 

[ProblemAgain]

[ellevan]

I don't know how Piers Morgan kept his cool during that interview.  I could not have stayed in the same building as that moron, let alone, on the same stage.

[ProblemAgain]

this is the same pinhead who broadcast his 'facts' about the bilderburg group as cars were entering the meeting place. in his broadcast, he described the cars as delivering children for deviant sexual practices and human babies roasted and wrapped in goldfoil for banquets...the man is a fucking lunatic

[LoveLife&Laughter]

Holy Crap LOL, what a riot!

[ProblemAgain]

INFLUENCE GAME: NRA lobbying targets courthouses

By By PHILIP ELLIOTT | Associated Press – 8 hrs ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Rifle Association has enjoyed high-profile success over the years in shaping gun-rights legislation in Congress and statehouses, in part by campaigning to defeat lawmakers who defied the group.

Now, the NRA has added a lesser-known strategy to protect its interests: opposing President Barack Obama's judicial nominees whom it sees as likely to enforce gun-control laws. In some cases, the group's opposition has kept jobs on federal benches unfilled.

Still in its early stages, the effort is a safety net to ensure that federal courthouses are stocked with judges who are friendly to gun rights, should gun restrictions somehow get through the group's first line of defense on Capitol Hill. The NRA also weighs in on state judicial elections and appointments, another fail-safe if the massacre of young children at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school leads to tighter gun-control measures.

A case study in the group's approach across the country can be found in its opposition to the nominations of the two most recent Supreme Court justices.

The NRA opposed both Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan and warned its allies in Congress that their votes to confirm each would be held against them.

In a letter to lawmakers, the NRA wrote: "In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, (Kagan) refused to declare support for the Second Amendment, saying only that the matter was 'settled law.' This was eerily similar to the scripted testimony of Justice Sonia Sotomayor last year, prior to her confirmation to the court. It has become obvious that 'settled law' is the scripted code of an anti-gun nominee's confirmation effort."

It added, "The NRA is not fooled."

The group had limited evidence to back up its claims that the two were opposed to gun rights. It pointed to a one-paragraph memo Kagan wrote in 1987 to Justice Thurgood Marshall that suggested she was not sympathetic to gun owners, and to her time as a lawyer in the Clinton administration as it sought to put tighter gun controls in place. For Sotomayor, critics cited a ruling that upheld New York's ban on nunchucks, a martial arts weapon that has nothing to do with firearms.

http://news.yahoo.com/influence-game-nra-lobbying-targets-courthous...

and do read the rest of the piece at that link....there is enough there to mentally chew on for quite a while

[ProblemAgain]

they never ever stop creating idjits...

COMMENTARY | Modern society has more than its share of two-sided blessings, but none seems to cut so much in opposite directions as the easy spread of information. Or misinformation, depending on the topic.

James Tracy, a hopefully soon-to-be-former Florida college professor, claims the Newtown, Conn., school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary did not happen in the way documented by the media. And then he goes completely outside the universe of reality.

He suggests that it didn't happen at all.

Instead, he says that the whole tragedy was manufactured to push gun control. Who would mastermind such a twisted plot to impugn the benign nature of killing machines? President Barack Obama, of course. After all, no modern off-the-wall conspiracy is complete without the nefarious complicity of the president.

http://voices.yahoo.com/professors-ridiculous-newtown-theory-gets-i...

[LoveLife&Laughter]

I was wondering exactly what regulating assault weapons, magazines, ammo, etc would accomplish until I saw a piece on TV last night.

Mothers against drunk driving started their cause three decades ago.  Now drunk driving deaths are down ~70%.

It's not perfect but it does work.

[Lifesighs]

I'm glad I live where I do, these gun freaks are fearful cowards in my opinion. They need to have the guns because they're afraid of so much "out there" probably us liberals more than anything. They think we'll force them to give food to someone on welfare. I read today about the soccer mom who was killed by her husband, she was open carrying her gun. Lot of good it did her. Her husband turned his gun on himself also so there are three kids without parents, probably better for them with the parents they had.

[ProblemAgain]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States suffers far more violent deaths than any other wealthy nation, due in part to the widespread possession of firearms and the practice of storing them at home in a place that is often unlocked, according to a report released Wednesday by two of the nation's leading health research institutions.

Gun violence is just one of many factors contributing to lower U.S. life expectancy, but the finding took on urgency because the report comes less than a month after the shooting deaths of 26 people at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

The United States has about six violent deaths per 100,000 residents. None of the 16 other countries included in the review came anywhere close to that ratio. Finland was closest to the U.S. ranking with slightly more than two violent deaths per 100,000 residents.

http://news.yahoo.com/violence-plays-role-shorter-us-life-expectanc...