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Here Are 3 Gun Control Proposals That Republicans Actually Support

by KandiMRYfxeypn Posted on August 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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It turns out there are some gun control proposals that Republicans and Democrats actually agree on. According to new findings from the Pew Research Center, fully 85 percent of Americans—including 88 percent of Democrats and 79 percent of Republicans—believe people should have to pass a background check before purchasing guns in private sales or at gun shows. Currently, only licensed gun dealers are required to perform background checks. A majority of Americans (79 percent) also back laws to prevent the mentally ill from purchasing guns.

There is a greater divide between the parties on other gun issues. Seventy percent of respondents support the creation of a federal database to track all gun sales, including 85 percent of Democrats but just 55 percent of Republicans. A more narrow majority (57 percent) would like to ban assault-style weapons. That proposal draws support from 70 percent of Democrats and 48 percent of Republicans.

The survey found even sharper partisan disagreement on other questions:

Seventy-three percent of Democrats say it’s more important to control gun ownership, while 71 percent of Republicans say it’s more important to protect gun rights.
Republicans are almost twice as likely to see gun ownership as an effective form of protection rather than a way to jeopardize safety.

The study also examines demographics such race, gender, and education level:

Proposals for a federal gun database draw more support from African-Americans (82 percent) and Hispanics (76 percent) than from whites (66 percent). Fifty-six percent of African-Americans say gun ownership is a safety hazard.
Sixty-five percent of women favor banning assault-style weapons, compared with 48 percent of men.
Sixty percent of men say guns help protect people, compared with 49 percent of women.
Those with post-graduate degrees are more likely to favor a ban on assault weapons (72 percent) than those with a high school diploma or less education (48 percent). Those with post-graduate degrees are also more likely to say gun ownership does more to endanger than increase safety (57 percent).
College graduates are almost evenly divided; 48 percent say guns endanger people, while 46 percent say they protect people.
Those with a high school diploma or less say gun ownership does more to protect people (59 percent).

For more information, check out these interactive charts from the Pew Research Center.

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Here Are 3 Gun Control Proposals That Republicans Actually Support

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The Chinese people care more about the environment than Americans do

by KurtisBoag Posted on October 17, 2014

The Chinese people care more about the environment than Americans do

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17 Oct 2014 2:21 PM

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The Chinese people care more about the environment than Americans do

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Those who oppose action on climate change in America are fond of complaining about how futile our own efforts to cut greenhouse gases are when China doesn’t give a hoot about its own emissions. But a new poll finds that the Chinese people do want action to cut pollution — even more than we do in America.

The Pew Research Center asked people around the world to rank five global threats. A full third of respondents in China think that issues related to “pollution and the environment” present the greatest danger to the world. Compare that to 15 percent of Americans. (We Americans, according to Pew, are most concerned about inequality — which, incidentally, is a related issue because inequality both makes climate change harder to tackle, and will be made greatly worse as poor communities and nations face the brunt of a climate run amok.)

And increasingly, the Chinese people are making their voices heard. This summer, Stephen Vines reported for Al Jazeera on the growing number of environmental protests in China:

The latest official State of the Environment report recorded 712 cases of “abrupt environmental incidents” in 2013, up 31 percent from the previous year. Many of these “incidents” are in fact protests, and the level of protest in the current year is, if anything, on the up. Yang Chaofei, the vice-chairman of the Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences, told members of the powerful Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress that environmental protests have been growing 29 percent annually from 1966 to 2011.

Maybe the folks running the country with the world’s highest greenhouse gas emissions and some of the filthiest air are starting to listen to their people. This June, just a day after the U.S. announced its own plans to cut power plant emissions, a Chinese government advisor stated that, for the first time, his country would limit its emissions. And China’s Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli outlined the country’s plans at the U.N. summit in New York last month. Mashable’s Andrew Freedman writes:

China has a goal to reduce its carbon intensity, which is a way of measuring the carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product, by up to 45% by 2020. Zhang said that China will reveal its goals for reducing emissions post-2020 during the first quarter of 2015, as the United States also intends to do.

Zhang said that in 2013, carbon intensity dropped by nearly 29% from the 2005 level, and that installed renewable energy capacity increased significantly as well.

“Responding to climate change is what China needs to do to attain sustainable development at home,” Zhang told the throngs of dignitaries, corporate titans and representatives of civil society groups at the U.N.

So not only have the Chinese beaten us in emitting, they’ve beaten us in being concerned about what those emissions do. Will they now beat us in doing something about it?

Source:
Global Attitudes Project

, Pew Research Center.

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The Chinese people care more about the environment than Americans do

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Three-Quarters of Mexican Child Migrants Have Been Caught at the Border Before

by CarmeloUBYX Posted on August 5, 2014

Mother Jones

Pew Research Center

While the focus of the recent border crisis has been on unaccompanied child migrants from Central America, thousands of Mexican kids also have been apprehended trying to cross into the United States since last fall. According to a new analysis by the Pew Research Center, the vast majority had been caught several times before—and 15 percent of them reported having been previously apprehended six times or more.


70,000 Kids Will Show Up Alone at Our Border This Year. What Happens to Them?


Map: These Are the Places Central American Child Migrants Are Fleeing


Why Our Immigration Courts Can’t Handle the Child Migrant Crisis


Are the Kids Showing Up at the Border Really Refugees?


Child Migrants Have Been Coming to America Alone Since Ellis Island

See MoJo‘s full coverage of the surge of unaccompanied child migrants from Central America.

The US Border Patrol made more than 11,300 apprehensions of unaccompanied Mexican child migrants from October 2013 to May 2014. Among the kids picked up, 76 percent said they’d been caught “multiple times before,” according to the Pew report, which is based on data provided by Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As the map above shows, 64 percent of Mexican minors crossing alone came from six states: Tamaulipas, Sonora, Oaxaca, Guerrero, Guanajuato, and Michoacán.

Currently, child migrants from Mexico (and Canada) can be deported shortly after apprehension, unlike kids from elsewhere, who are reunified with US-based family while their immigration proceedings are pending. As I wrote last month in a post about why the federal government shouldn’t change the law to more easily deport Central American kids:

When an unaccompanied Mexican child is apprehended by the Border Patrol, agents are supposed to screen him within 48 hours. Specifically, they are supposed to determine three things: (1) whether the child has been the victim of trafficking; (2) whether the child has a fear of returning to Mexico; and (3) whether the child is able to voluntarily make the decision to return home. If the screening reveals that the child hasn’t been trafficked, isn’t afraid to go back, and can make the decision by himself, then he can be sent back.

In practice, says the ACLU’s Sarah Mehta, “when they’re happening, the screenings are inconsistent, but often they’re not happening.” Some agents don’t speak Spanish; in other cases, Mehta says, kids have reported not being asked any questions at all, or being told by agents that they can’t get deportation relief for whatever they experienced at home or along the way to the United States.

Perhaps not surprisingly, a UN Refugee Commission report claimed that more than 95 percent of Mexican children caught at the border by themselves in fiscal 2013 were returned to Mexico. If Mexican kids do have legitimate asylum claims, they’re likely not being heard, advocates claim. And when these kids do get sent back, many try to cross again.

Here’s another Pew chart, this one showing the numbers of unaccompanied child apprehensions by country of origin since 2009:

Pew Research Center

See original article here:

Three-Quarters of Mexican Child Migrants Have Been Caught at the Border Before

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