Since the tragic shooting in Tucson, President Obama has been a force for healing, recovery and reconciliation. As a nation, we were reeling. He steadied us. The President has been a profile in understanding and empathy.
He now needs to be a profile in courage.
In his State of the Union speech tomorrow night, he needs to talk about guns.
I can imagine the voices advising him to do nothing of the kind. They have been telling him to avoid the gun issue for two years. After Tucson, however, everything is different. Their arguments now ring especially hollow.
First, and perhaps foremost, is the political argument. Until the midterm elections, the guiding principle of the Administration's approach to guns was simple: Whatever we do, don't rile up the gun guys! The White House and the Democratic leadership in Congress marched in lockstep, embracing a strategy of appeasing the National Rifle Association to avoid giving the Republicans a lethal weapon to use against the Blue Dog Democrats. This strategy reached its height of absurdity when Congressional Democrats carved out a special exception from the proposed DISCLOSE Act campaign finance reform law for the NRA and the NRA only!
The Democrats gave it all to the NRA and received little in return. Remember the 65 Democratic House Members who wrote to Attorney General Holder in March, 2009 objecting to his comments supporting reinstatement of the 1994 restrictions on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips? Only 26 of them returned to the House. Of 50 key NRA-endorsed incumbent House Democrats, only 23 were reelected. As Professor Jeremy Mayer recently wrote in the Christian Science Monitor, "the NRA's endorsement is about as useful to a Democrat as a duck decoy to a deer hunter."
I'm also sure some are telling the President that any political risk is simply not worth it, because stronger gun laws won't make much of a difference. As a general matter, this argument is insupportable, as shown, for example, by the success of the Brady Law in stopping over-the-counter purchases by almost 2 million prohibited gun buyers and contributing to a historic decline in gun crime. After Tucson, the argument becomes trivial and even callous.
The Tucson shooter was able to fire an astounding 32 rounds, killing 6 and wounding 13, in an elapsed time of about 15 seconds. Only when he had exhausted his high-capacity ammunition magazine holding 33 rounds was he forced to reload, enabling several heroic citizens to subdue him. His extended magazine was illegal for 10 years under the federal assault weapons ban, which limited magazine capacity to 10 rounds, but expired in 2004 as yet another gift to the gun lobby.
No one has yet been able to deny that if the Tucson shooter had been forced to reload after 10 rounds, lives would have been saved and grievous injuries avoided. Just watch gun lobby stalwart Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), as he desperately tries to avoid answering Lawrence O'Donnell's simple question: "Don't you wish the Tucson shooter had only 10 rounds, instead of 33?" The Franks interview is any politician's nightmare.
As to those who would claim that a ban on high-capacity clips would have no effect on criminals, on Sunday the Washington Post reported its analysis of Virginia crime gun data showing that the number of guns with those clips seized from criminals by Virginia police declined sharply during the 10-year federal ban, only to start increasing again after the ban expired. To revise a favorite NRA slogan, "When high-capacity clips are outlawed, fewer outlaws will have high-capacity clips."
President Obama will no doubt hear that raising "divisive" issues like gun control is not what the nation needs. It is true that a Presidential appeal for stronger gun laws will be met with vociferous, and likely ugly, resistance from the NRA. The NRA's noisy and intimidating tactics, however, mask an important reality that political experts are just beginning to understand. There is a remarkable consensus among those who own guns and those who do not supporting sensible policies to regulate guns; the NRA's extremism is not typical of gun owners, nor even of its own members. After doing a survey of gun owners and NRA members, Republican pollster Frank Luntz concluded, "the culture war over the right to bear arms isn't much of a war after all." This is a chance for Obama to lead the middle against the extreme.
Prominent conservatives are coming forward in support of limiting the firepower of high-capacity ammo clips. As former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan put it in the Wall Street Journal, "What civilian needs a pistol with a magazine that loads 33 bullets and allows you to kill that many people without even stopping to reload? No one but people with bad intent." Noonan advised the President to "seize the moment" in his State of the Union address and "come out strong for a ban." Even former Vice President Cheney, who years ago was one of four Members of Congress to vote against a law banning plastic handguns that could evade metal detectors, has voiced his support for limiting high-capacity magazines.
Finally, President Obama will hear that any reform of our gun laws simply won't happen in this Congress. This is the futility argument, and it's self-fulfilling. If the President fails to exercise leadership because he thinks he cannot succeed, then he cannot succeed. For every major piece of progressive legislation enacted into law, there likely was a time when its prospects seemed doomed. But events change minds. Arguments change minds. Demonstrations of political courage, Mr. President, change minds.
As he looks out at the assembled 112th Congress, acknowledging their applause as he readies himself to begin his State of the Union address, one seat will be empty, hopefully not for long. Tomorrow night, the absence of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords will weigh on every Member of the House and Senate and every American who is watching. It will be a moment that transcends politics and rhetoric.
It will be a moment to make history.
For more information, see Dennis Henigan's Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths that Paralyze American Gun Policy (Potomac Books 2009)
She and the six that died are victims of both SOCIETAL FEAR and PERMISSIVENESS.
She would have probably been stabbed with a knife or hit with a club by a determined adversary, and not so many would have been killed or wounded if there had been a tighter control on Guns.
Your societal fear is not about preventing mass kilings it's your conditioned fear of guns or else you would be demanding banning knives and cars, too. But since you think cars and knives are not used in movies to kill many people you fear only guns.
Go figure.
At least you'll be a member of an *effective* group and your money will get you something rather than nothing.
He'll be adopting a stance that will alienate a significant bloc of his voters, endangering his 2012 campaign, and in return, he'll get a bill to Congress that will die in the house, or the senate, or just in committee with congressmen who are interested in reelection.
Lose-lose. Lose support, and accomplish no gun control.
Americans continue to trend toward holding attitudes that are more in favor of gun rights, and Gallup today finds new low points in favor of gun control on two separate measures dating back at least two decades. While solidly against a ban on handgun possession, Americans are nonetheless about equally likely to say they favor stricter laws on firearm sales as to say these laws should not change. Still, the current poll marks the first time Gallup has not found a significantly higher proportion of Americans preferring tighter gun-sale regulations."
http://www.gallup.com/poll/123596/in-u.s.-record-low-support-stricter-gun-laws.aspx
Kinda puts that Luntz poll in perspective, doesn't it?
Polls show that most people, including most gun owners, are in favor of sensible changes in gun regulation, such as better mental health reporting and closing the gun show loophole, but you can't tell that because the vocal NRA minority drowns out their voices.
Folks, we need to join this debate. We need to tell them their right to bear arms does not extend to every person bearing any type of arms at any time. There are limits to all rights and this right needs more limits because it is taking the lives of too many innocents. They have been silenced and deprived of ALL of their rights and now we need to speak up for them.
Which is why the NRA joined with Brady to pass a law providing additional funds to states to improve the reporting of mental health records to NICS.
BlueOnBlue wrote: "and closing the gun show loophole"
Even assuming such a thing exists (which it does not) what good would it do if the persons conducting the sale sans background check, merely cross the street from the gun show and sell the weapon there?
If there's no loophole, why would closing it affect anyone?
Not to be left out is the non disclosure of the Assault Weapon/High Capacity Magazines (HCM) ban that was in place for 10 years. The ban covered the importation, manufacture, distribution and selling of said HCM but not the owning or using. Given around 75,000,000 semi automatic weapons in private hands and even if only 10% of those have HCM (probably at least two) that would bring the number to around 15,000,000 in circulation right now. What does Henigan propose to do about that?
Finally, Henigan goes to great lengths to down play the role the NRA plays in the politics of gun control. After the political blood bath following the passage of the Brady Bill, the two following presidential elections (remember Al Gore) and the most recent over whelming thumping the Democrats took, I think he’s whistling in the wind.
1. Multiple attackers: Police statistics show that hit rates in OIS shootings are in the 15-40% range. My neighbor on the corner was murdered in his driveway by three robbers. If he had a gun and shot as well under stress as a lot of police departments during OIS incidents, he very well might have run out of ammunition before the threat was stopped. Many home invasions present the same problem. Multiple mobile attackers, high stress, fast pace. It is not unreasonable to expect some law abiding citizens to use more than ten rounds in some situations.
Gun control advocates point to the fact that home invasions and attacks by multiple aggressors are rare. Mass shootings by crazed lunatics are far more rare.
2. One shot stop myth: Having extensive personal experience working with gunshot trauma victims, I know all too well that the Hollywood myth of 'one shot and drop' is just that. I have seen individuals shot five and even eight times (including shots to the chest and head) come in fighting belligerently with police and paramedics. Shot placement is everything, and unless you manage to hit a major vascular or CNS structure a determined attacker is not going to immediately stop their assault (although they may bleed to death on the ambulance or die of peritonitis and sepsis a week later). Hitting these targets under stress is not an easy thing, and wanting an 11th round to do so is not unreasonable.
Lautenberg and his partisan allies on the extreme left are using this incident to try to save face over their pet firearms bill which was allowed to expire after multiple studies (including two by the Justice Department) found no evidence that it actually reduced crime.
Instead of clinging doggedly to their failed experiment, they should instead be focusing on the real issue:
There was a(nother) very disturbed individual who despite myriad warning signs was not treated or dealt with before it was too late... and what can be done to deal with these individuals in the future.
No just the manufacture of new ones were banned, you could still buy any made before the ban.
the size of the magazine has nothing to do with how many people got shot, and more to the point, a smaller magazine usually means a larger caliber.
and to completely make the argument moot, it is very easy to fire off 30 rounds in 15 seconds while only using 10 round mags.
and another fact.....the fact he was using extended mags probably saved others from getting shot, as extended mags tend to jam much more frequently than 10 round mags.
if he had been using 10 round mags, the chances of a weapon jam drops dramatically, and those who stopped him during the jam would most likely have also been shot.
final thesis.............guns dont kill, the nuts that should never have gotten the gun in the first place kill
if there had been any follow up to the numerous complaints from school staff and students, or the numerous charges that mysteriously never made it to court ( mommy works in the administration )
this psycho would never have been able to purchase the gun in the first place
and more to the point criminals break laws...........what makes you think a new gun law would stop a criminal from also breaking that law too?
the only thing that makes a criminal stop and think before committing a crime, is if the victim can shoot back
http://www.myconfinedspace.com/2007/05/25/birdman-weapons-systems-homeboy-nyte-sytes/
Whether it was due to CCW permits is hotly debatable; many issues factor in. But what is to be noticed is that these law-abiding folks carrying haven't caused a bunch of crazy shoot-outs and crime surges.
D Henigan's ilk would try and point out that there have been some 150-odd (or more, or less, depending on how he frames it) murders by concealed carry permits in the last half decade. Most of those have been in the privacy of a home (rendering public carrying moot). He wouldn't tell you this. He also would avoid putting into context that this translates to a murder rate magnitudes lower than the general public, even using a dishonestly high figure like murders at home.
Obama should speak about guns in his address-he is the chief! This insane act must be address. [anyhow, if he does, he has nothing to lose- because the majority of Repub..own guns-and they will not vote for him anyway]. He must talk about it.
US with 14.5% has the highest gun death in the world, 2nd is Brazil is 12:65% and Mexico.
Countries that allow guns legally are the Swiss, Israel, Finland- and they have the lowest gun death.
Something is wrong in the US. They need to put strickier laws or ban guns/or redo the law.
Who knows better than the medical journal of gun death - here is a link.
GUN DEATHS - US TOP THE LIST- WORLDWIDE.
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=6166
It is illegal to own guns in Japan - they are the bottom of the list with 0.05%
ha, I'm so fortunate to not live in the a country with guns.
Go figure!!.remember Gun kills - and it kills animals too.