Tag Archives: guns

The Assault Weapons Ban Just Doesn’t Have the Votes

by LeannqOsborn Posted on January 25, 2013

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Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) new assault weapons ban legislation has many features the original 1994 law lacked—most notably, it closes loopholes that allowed manufacturers to produce de-facto assault weapons, and it eliminates the sunset provision, meaning the new version wouldn’t expire after 10 years as the first one did. But according to Bloomberg, AWB 2.0 is missing one key thing that the original had—votes:

A proposed ban on sales of assault weapons would be defeated in the U.S. Senate today unless some members changed their current views, based on a Bloomberg review of recent lawmaker statements and interviews.

At least six of the chamber’s 55 Democrats have recently expressed skepticism or outright opposition to a ban, the review found. That means Democrats don’t have a simple 51-vote majority to pass the measure, let alone the 60 votes needed to break a Republican filibuster to bring it to a floor vote.

…The five Democratic senators from traditionally pro-gun states who’ve recently expressed skepticism about the bill are Max Baucus and Jon Tester of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Independent Senator Angus King of Maine, who is caucusing with Democrats, also said he opposes a ban.

This isn’t exactly surprising. On Sunday, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wy.) predicted the ban wouldn’t even come up for a vote. For gun control advocates, the question going forward may be just how much capital they want to invest in what’s looking like an uphill battle—especially given the uncertain effects of the initial ban.

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The Assault Weapons Ban Just Doesn’t Have the Votes

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Americans Like Obama’s Gun-Control Ideas—Unless You Tell Them They’re Obama’s

by marinavhunt Posted on January 25, 2013

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Americans are remarkably supportive of requiring criminal background checks to buy a gun, banning civilans from buying armor-piercing bullets, and spending more government money training law enforcement officials to deal with mass shootings, a new poll by Gallup finds. No fewer than nine in ten people said they’d support requiring criminal background checks for all gun sales, Gallup found; eight in ten said they’d vote for more government spending on mental health programs for young people and also on more training for police officers and school officials to respond to armed attacks. Indeed, the least popular of the nine gun-control ideas advocated by President Obama, according to the poll, is a ban on the sale of ammunition magazines holding more than 10 rounds. And that idea was still favored by more than half of all respondents.

So what’s the catch? The poll didn’t mention Obama by name. Last week, when Gallup polled Americans on the president’s gun-control plans and name-dropped the president, just 53 percent said they’d tell their representatives in Congress to support them.

Here are the full results:

We’ll leave it to others to ponder the reasons for the discrepancy, but in practical terms this represents a challenge facing the president as he makes the push for new gun policies: Sell the public on his ideas while staying out of the way.

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Americans Like Obama’s Gun-Control Ideas—Unless You Tell Them They’re Obama’s

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How the NRA Undermined Congress’ 2007 Gun Control Push

by biglermyrta910 Posted on January 25, 2013

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This story first appeared on the ProPublica website.

Last week, President Obama unveiled sweeping proposals on gun control, including a ban on military-style assault weapons, a reduction of ammunition magazine capacity and stiffer background checks on gun buyers.

National Rifle Association President David Keene quickly accused the Obama administration of being opportunistic. The president is “using our children to pursue an ideological anti-gun agenda,” he said.

The NRA has already begun to lobby on Capitol Hill to counter the administration’s effort.

To get a sense of what the NRA might do, it’s helpful to look at how it scored a victory during the last major federal initiative to tighten gun control.

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How the NRA Undermined Congress’ 2007 Gun Control Push

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Dianne Feinstein Tries to Unsuck the Assault Weapons Ban

by LeannqOsborn Posted on January 24, 2013

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The problems with the 1994 asault weapons ban, according to its supporters, were twofold. The first was that gunmakers could—and did—simply modify their semiautomatic weapons to fit the law by eliminating cosmetic features. An AR-15 without a bayonet mount is still an AR-15; it’s just marginally less effective in hand-to-hand combat with Redcoats. That second problem with the ban was that it ended, sunsetting in 2004.

At a Capitol Hill press conference on Thursday to introduce new legislation banning assault weapons, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) promised that she and her colleagues had learned from their mistakes. “One criticism of the ’94 law was that it was a two-characteristic test that defined an assault weapon,” Feinstein said. “And that was too easy to work around. Manufacturers could simply remove one of the characteristics, and the firearm was legal. The bill we are introducting today will make it much more difficult to work around by moving a one-characteristic test.”

And unlike AWB 1.0, Feinstein explained, this one wouldn’t expire in 10 years: “No weapon is taken from anyone,” she said, but “the purpose of this bill is to dry up the supply of these weapons overtime, therefore there is no sunset on this bill.”

Feinstein’s bill, like the original version, includes a ban on the manufacture and importation of high-capacity magazines, defined as any feeding container holding more than 10 bullets—something gun-control advocates point to as one of the success stories in the 1994 law. It would also close a loophole that legalized the slide iron stock, which as my colleague Dana Liebelson reported, allows gun-owners to convert their firearms into fully-automatics weapons—legally.

But the package faces stiff opposition, including from some Democrats. Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) recently lamented “one-size-fits-all directives from Washington,” and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), who initially seemed receptive to limits on assault weapons and high-capacity clips, has since clammed up.

Even if Feinstein’s bill does make it through Congress, though, there’s still an open question as to what it would actually accomplish. Although Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) suggested on Thursday that the ban might have saved “hundreds of thousands” of lives had it never gone away, a 2004 University of Pennsylvania study commissioned by Department of Justice was much more reserved: “We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence.”

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Dianne Feinstein Tries to Unsuck the Assault Weapons Ban

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It’s Not Illegal To Buy a Gun for a Criminal

by LeannqOsborn Posted on January 24, 2013

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Want to buy an AR-15 for a friend who happens to be in a Mexican drug cartel? The way gun laws stand right now, you can: It’s not illegal to purchase guns for a criminal. And federal laws surrounding gun trafficking across the border are notoriously weak. Legislation that Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) unveiled Wednesday would help fix that.

The Stop Illegal Trafficking in Firearms Act, co-sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), strengthens laws governing the “straw purchase” of firearms, or the buying of guns or ammunition for someone who is prohibited from owning one. Under current law, it is only a crime to transfer a firearm to someone else with the knowledge that the person will use it in a crime. So prosecutors usually cobble together “paperwork” violations such as lying on federal forms in order to bring charges against a straw purchaser. Leahy’s bill prohibits weapons transfers in which the transferor has “reasonable cause to believe” that the firearm will be used in criminal activity, and sets up heavy penalties for doing so.

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It’s Not Illegal To Buy a Gun for a Criminal

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MAP: Does Your State Let You Carry a Gun on Campus?

by d2wk58 Posted on January 23, 2013

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On Tuesday, a dispute between two people at Lone Star College in Houston ended in a gun fight. Three people were wounded (including suspects in the shooting) and a fourth person was reportedly hospitalized with an unspecified “medical emergency” in connection with the incident. It was the sixth shooting on or near a US college campus this month.

Texas generally has lax gun laws, but prohibits carrying a concealed weapon on a college campus. The GOP-controlled Texas legislature may soon change that, however. Last week, state Sen. Brian Birdwell, a Republican, introduced new “campus carry” legislation that would allow firearms to be carried at public colleges with a valid permit. Texas would join six states that, to varying degrees, now allow weapons to be carried on campuses. And lawmakers in at least seven other states are aiming to follow suit.

Does your state allow guns on college campuses? Hover over an individual state for further details. (Also see lists below the map.)

States with laws allowing guns on college campuses: California, Colorado, Mississippi, Oregon, Utah, Wisconsin.

States in which lawmakers have recently introduced legislation to allow guns on campuses: Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Wyoming.

For more, check out MoJo’s year-long investigation into gun laws and mass shootings in the United States.

Sources: Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence; National Conference of State Legislatures.

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MAP: Does Your State Let You Carry a Gun on Campus?

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Gun-Rights Activists Take Aim at Cops With Misleading Video

by ghd12australia Posted on January 23, 2013

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A video circulating on the Internet this month has gotten tea partiers and other conservative activists riled up over what they see as the never-ending assault on the right to bear arms, particularly with the Obama administration mobilizing on gun control. The video (below) shows a man getting stopped by Citrus County, Florida, Deputy Sheriff Andy Cox for having expired tags on his van. After the man gets out of the car and futzes around to find his license, proof of insurance and registration, the officer notices that the man has a gun on his hip and asks, “What are you carrying a gun for?” The man answers, “I always carry a gun.” At which point the officer quickly gets agitated and demands that he turn around and face the van, or “I’ll shoot you in the back.” The officer then orders the man to the ground, handcuffs him, and calls for backup.

Gun-rights activists have seized on the video as an example of how they are the persecuted, innocent victims of overzealous law enforcement, and they’re using it to support a larger crusade: Ensuring that police officers can never take action against anyone simply because they’re carrying a gun. Which is what the activists are implying happened here. The problem is, the man in the video in fact ran afoul of a state gun law, although Florida authorities declined to prosecute him for it.

Gun-rights activists posted the video online in early January and it has since gone viral—but the incident actually took place in July 2009, a fact they don’t bother to mention. Yet, the date is key: The man in the video, Joel Edmond Smith, was arrested and charged with a violation of what was then the state’s “open carry” prohibition. At the time of his arrest, it was illegal for someone—even with a valid concealed weapon permit—to display a gun openly in public, which Smith did accidentally when he was trying to get his paperwork out of his van. The state legislature changed the law in 2011 so that an accidental display of a legal concealed weapon is no longer a criminal offense, but in 2009, Cox still had solid legal justification for arresting Smith. Nonetheless, the state’s attorney didn’t see the charges against Smith as sufficiently serious to warrant prosecution and they were dropped shortly after he was arrested.

Those facts haven’t stopped gun-rights activists in the past week from urging supporters to call the sheriff’s department and ask that Cox be fired. They’ve done so in the thousands, according to Detective Corey Davidson, an internal affairs investigator with the Citrus County sheriff’s department. Davidson said Cox was placed on paid administrative leave about a week ago, and that the department is investigating the incident (again). He said the department never released the video and that it is unclear how it got out or why it started circulating this month. He added that the man arrested in the video has never made any complaints against the department. (Davidson would not release the defendant’s name because of the investigation, but it’s been circulating on the Internet and is listed in county arrest records.)

The officer’s treatment of Smith, who had a valid concealed weapons permit, may not have been model policing, but his reaction was understandable: According to the Violence Policy Center, at least 14 law enforcement officers have been killed by people legally carrying concealed weapons since May 2007, two of them in Florida. In several of these shootings, the officers were killed while conducting routine traffic stops like the one in the video.

The video appears to have been first posted by Sean Caranna, the executive director of Florida Carry, a major figure in the state fighting for the right for people to carry guns in public. Activists like Caranna want to change the law to ensure that cops can’t confront or search anyone for carrying a gun in public—whether or not that gun may be illegally possessed. Florida Carry is involved in a legal case pending in the Florida Supreme Court that would decide whether the mere presence of a gun on someone’s person can constitute a reasonable suspicion to justify an officer making an investigatory stop or search. A victory for gun activists could make it extremely difficult for law enforcement in the state to crack down on illegal guns and the crime associated with them.

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Gun-Rights Activists Take Aim at Cops With Misleading Video

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7 Gun Groups That Make the NRA Look Reasonable

by f45 Posted on January 19, 2013

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On Saturday, January 19, an alliance of pro-gun groups is commemorating the very first Gun Appreciation Day, encouraging Americans to head to their local gun shows, stores, and ranges to prove their support for the 2nd Amendment. The fake holiday is a call to arms to conservative gun owners as well as a direct rebuff to President Obama’s push for gun legislation in the wake of mass shootings like the one at Sandy Hook Elementary. “Scheduled to send a message to Washington two days before Obama’s second inauguration, the ‘Gun Appreciation Day’ is expected to rival ‘Chick-fil-A Day‘ as a public statement of protest against government policies,” a blast email from the organizers reads.

Some of the organizations promoting Gun Appreciation Day are so extreme that even the NRA won’t go near them. (One of the now-disavowed official sponsors was a hardcore white nationalist political party.) These groups are smaller, far less powerful, and do not enjoy anything close to the NRA’s hundreds of millions of dollars in annual fundraising. Here’s a look at five groups that are hyping up the occasion—and two more of their ilk:

revolution pac

RevolutionPAC.com

This super-PAC—run by Lawrence Hunter, a Forbes columnist and ex-adviser to the Reagan White House—was influenced by the tea party and libertarian fixture Rep. Ron Paul. Pet causes include raging against antidepressants as deadly and dangerous and equating the president to Hitler and other dictators:

Revolution PAC

Second amendment foundation

Founded by conservative author Alan Gottlieb in 1974, the Second Amendment Foundation is the country’s oldest legal-action group focusing on gun rights. It claims about 650,000 members. It is known for its flurry of federal lawsuits, including a pair filed in conjunction with the NRA. The foundation also runs a series of magazines, including Women & Guns:

womenshooters.com

Women Warriors pac

Facebook

Speaking of women and guns: Women Warriors PAC was formed during the past election season to support “strong Conservative Women fighting the Obama political machine’s ‘war on women’ message”—women like Mia Love. (It emphasizes that its members are “warriors not helpless minions!”) The PAC only has a few hundred dollars on hand, but what it lacks in funds and publicity, it makes up for in enthusiasm:

Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

ccrkba.org

Alan Gottlieb also serves as chairman for this nonprofit that started in 1971. Its tax forms show that it rakes in less than $70,000 annually. However, it does have this bit of gun-enthusiast cred: CCRKBA is credited as having coined this wildly popular slogan:

JEWS FOR THE PRESERVATION OF FIREARMS OWNerSHIP

jpfo.org

Unlike the previous four, this group isn’t listed as an official Gun Appreciation Day sponsor. But that hasn’t stopped them from cheerleading for the event.

This Wisconsin-based organization was founded in the late ’80s by ex-arms dealer Aaron Zelman. Over the decades, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership has made some high-profile friends, including musician and anti-Obama gun-toting zealot Ted Nugent (whom Zelman praised for his “talent, success, wit, and celebrity“). The group has criticized the NRA for its incessant “kowtowing to authoritarian police bureaucrats.”

Perhaps more than any other group, JPFO likes to push the idea that gun control always leads to totalitarianism and/or genocide: It’s known for selling posters and bumper stickers tying Nazism to gun laws. Zelman even wrote a book in the ’90s that supposedly contains “startling evidence that the Gun Control Act of 1968 was lifted, almost in its entirety, from Nazi legislation”:

jpfo.org

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7 Gun Groups That Make the NRA Look Reasonable

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Will Conservative Media Give the GOP Cover to Make A Deal on Immigration?

by greenenergy4 Posted on January 18, 2013

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After non-white Americans voted overwhelmingly for Democrats in the 2012 election, prominent conservative pundits like Sean Hannity and Charles Krauthammer began signalling a willingness to shift on immigration reform. At the time, Republicans were still sitting shiva for Mitt Romney’s campaign, so it’s possible all the talk of compromise was just post-election despair. But the right wing media’s reaction to Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio’s new immigration proposal—a plan that resembles the one put forth by the White House—suggests conservatives may really be changing their tune on immigration reform.

As Rubio elaborated on his pitch for immigration reform, which would include a pathway to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants already in the US, to Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly Wednesday, O’Reilly listened and said “that seems pretty fair.” Likewise, when Rubio showed up on Laura Ingraham’s show Wednesday, Ingraham sought to put distance between Rubio and the White House saying, that “Obama’s going to seek citizenship in one fast push,” whereas Rubio’s plan would be more “piecemeal.” (Ingraham’s wrong: How long any undocumented immigrant would have to wait for citizenship under either plan actually remains undetermined.) Meanwhile, Rubio, in both instances, said he didn’t really know where the White House stood on the issue. Rubio also appeared on Sean Hannity’s radio show Thursday, and Hannity called Rubio’s immigration plan “the most thoughtful bill I have heard heretofore.”

Here’s why this is important: When George W. Bush sought to pass immigration reform, his plan was killed by the GOP base, who had been whipped up by conservative media and talk radio. Hannity himself was key to the effort. With some exceptions, conservative media seems more inclined to cover for Rubio this time around. That could all change pretty quickly, but given how much influence Fox News and talk radio have on the conservative base (remember when they convinced Republicans Mitt Romney was on the verge of a landslide victory?), how the right-wing media approach this issue could determine whether immigration reform actually has a chance of passing. For the moment, conservative pundits are playing up a distance between Rubio’s proposal and the Democrats that doesn’t really exist. That could make a potential compromise seem more palatable to the Republican base. “Why do I think regardless of what you propose that would solve the problem Democrats are going to demagogue it?” Hannity asked Rubio Thursday. “Well, that may be the case,” Rubio replied solemnly.

Immigration reform advocates have noticed—and are elated by—conservative media’s new tone on immigration. “It shows the power of the messenger,” says Frank Sharry, who runs the pro-immigration reform group America’s Voice. “It’s going to be hard for the right-wing echo chamber to get whipped up the way they did in 2007.”

Contra Hannity, Democrats have already signalled they’re willing to work with Rubio. “I expect that the Judiciary Committee will devote most of our time this Spring working to pass comprehensive immigration reform,” Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt) said during an appearance at the Georgetown University Law Center Wednesday. “I have a lot of respect for Marco Rubio,” Leahy added. “We disagree on some things, but we agree on others, but I found him to be very open in his views and I’ll seek that.”

Rubio told Ingraham yesterday that “I’ll work with anybody” on immigration reform. That claim will be tested in the next few months.

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Will Conservative Media Give the GOP Cover to Make A Deal on Immigration?

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Welcome to the NRA Wine Club

by trasze2aja Posted on January 17, 2013

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The NRA may or may not be a gun club for whiners, but it does have a wine club. The NRA Wine Club, as it is known, offers “limited collector’s editions NRA wines.” If you sign up, you’ll also get a “Custom NRA Engraved Wine Box.”

Sadly, the NRA does not offer a domestic-beer club. Yet in one sense, marketing alcohol of any kind to hard-core gun owners is a stroke of brilliance: According to a 1997 study in the American Journal of Public Health, owners of semi-automatic weapons are more likely than other gun owners to report binge drinking.

Now if only the NRA could start a tobacco club, it would be primed for a raid by the “jack-booted thugs” in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

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Welcome to the NRA Wine Club

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