Clearly, there's a lot of anger in America right now.
Much of it justified, as some can afford shower curtain rings that would dwarf others' weekly wages (and the latter are the ones who are lucky enough to have jobs). When you take this fact, combine it with the Orwellian "Newspeak" so pervasive in our media (which David Neiwert has written so articulately about), and multiply that by the NRA's mission to fight for the rights of criminals, the mentally ill and even terrorists to have access to guns, you have a toxic stew, ready to erupt.
Scene: Panama City, Florida. A school board meeting is interrupted by a man with a criminal record of assault (with a gun) waving a gun, and furious that his wife lost her job, his benefits have run out and the board members were unwilling to raise sales taxes so she and others like her wouldn't be fired (it should be noted that reports are still sketchy, so not all of what he says about his wife and himself during the 5 minutes when the board members try and talk him down can be confirmed yet).
A new report this week from Mayors Against Illegal Guns reveals the massive--and growing--role played in the Mexican drug war by crime guns trafficked into Mexico from US states--particularly border states, with Arizona leading the way on a per-capita basis. This comes just on the heels of a new report from the Pew Hispanic Center, showing a dramatic drop in the rate of illegal immigration.
A press release from Mayors Against Illegal Guns that accompanied the report stated:
The more than 500 members of the bi-partisan coalition of Mayors Against Illegal Guns today released a new report, entitled The Movement of Guns Across the U.S.-Mexico Border, that reveals that Southwest border states supplied a disproportionate number of crime guns to Mexico from 2006 to 2009. The report analyzes new data made available to Mayors Against Illegal Guns by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The new data, released by the coalition co-chaired by New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, builds on the coalition's first groundbreaking source state analysis, The Movement of Illegal Guns in America, released in December 2008.
"Illegal guns and their accompanying violence devastate communities across our country, now we know more about how guns purchased here have helped sustain violent drug wars in Mexico," said coalition co-chair and New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. "I hope this report from Mayors Against Illegal Guns is a wake up call for policy makers - it is too easy for criminals and traffickers to get guns."
Just as Arizona Governor Jan Brewer finally admits that there are no beheaded corpses in her state's deserts. these two reports combine to show that the entire wave of hysteria she's been riding and helping to foment has everything exactly backwards: hard times are not just reducing illegal immigration, according to Pew, but are actually reducing the total number of undocumented immigrants in the US, at the same time that US-bought guns are exporting violence to Mexico.
Perhaps most striking is the dramatic decrease in the "Time-to-Crime" in Mexico, which experts regard as a key indicator of illegal gun trafficking:
We are spending $2 Billion a week in Afghanistan. If you want to see zeros, that's $2,000,000,000.00 a week. It also means $104 Billion a year.
Meanwhile, we can't afford to keep our education budgets in functional condition. We can't reduce our National Debt. We can't bring down our operating deficit. And we are spending a fortune on foreign servicing (read China) of our debt.
As kovie noted in Quick Hits, today the SCOTUS ruled that that Second Amendment "applies equally to the federal government and the states", as Alito wrote in his opinion. The case was around a ban on handguns in Chicago and the suburb of Oak Park, IL, which the Brady Center says is the last two places where such bans exist, following the SCOTUS decision in the Heller decision to strike down DC's ban here. Technically the decision did not strike down the ban, but ordered a federal appeals court to re-examine the decision. But the general consensus I'm hearing appears to be that the laws will be struck down sooner or later.
Post-Heller, the District of Columbia officials rightfully enacted stringent requirements in order to get a handgun, including demonstrating knowledge of firearms use and DC laws, completing a firearms safety course including at least four hours of instruction, fingerprinting, submitting photographs, background check, and others (and speaking as a resident, I'm grateful for these restrictions). All of these are reasonable, and if they go down, DC will probably once again be known as the murder capital of the nation. Not to mention that the NRA-sponsored amendment to the Voting Rights Act that was, which would eliminate other restrictions like a ban on firearms within a certain distance from schools or playgrounds, as well as banning the city from enacting any laws relating to firearms. The amendment was rejected as the basis for a compromise on the back of unanimous opposition from the DC Council and the Mayor, but was considered for a time by Norton and drives home the point on how gun "rights" advocates are hell-bent on eliminating what's left of urban gun control among nearly 600,000 residents (and more when VA and MD residents stream in on weekdays) in the nation's capital.
But hey, as Adam notes at DailyKos, if you're concerned about your safety, Alito and the majority says you can just get your own damn gun:
[P]etitioners and many others who live in high-crime areas dispute the proposition that the Second Amendment right does not protect minorities and those lacking political clout. The plight of Chicagoans living in high-crime areas was recently highlighted when two Illinois legislators representing Chicago districts called on the Governor to deploy the Illinois National Guard to patrol the City's streets. The legislators noted that the number of Chicago homicide victims during the current year equaled the number of American soldiers killed during that same period in Afghanistan and Iraq and that 80% of the Chicago victims were black. Amici supporting incorporation of the right to keep and bear arms contend that the right is especially important for women and members of other groups that may be especially vulnerable to violent crime. If, as petitioners believe, their safety and the safety of other law-abiding members of the community would be enhanced by the possession of handguns in the home for self-defense, then the Second Amendment right protects the rights of minorities and other residents of high-crime areas whose needs are not being met by elected public officials.
In somewhat better SCOTUS news today, the court also ruled that a right-wing Christian group can't get legal funding and recognition from a California college if they discriminate on the basis of religion and sexual orientation.
The Supreme Court says a law school can legally deny recognition to a Christian student group that won't let gays join.
The court on Monday turned away an appeal from the Christian Legal Society, which sued to get funding and recognition from the University of California's Hastings College of the Law.
The CLS requires that voting members sign a statement of faith and regards "unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle" as being inconsistent with that faith.
But Hastings said no recognized campus groups may exclude people due to religious belief or sexual orientation.
The court upheld the lower court rulings saying the Christian group's First Amendment rights of association, free speech and free exercise were not violated by the college's decision.
The court also rejected a challenge to San Francisco's universal health care law from business groups upset that businesses are required to cover their workers or chip in towards city coverage. Many businesses have passed this fee along to its consumers. On my last visit to SF, there was a surcharge leveled on consumers as well, as the restaurant I visited (Dosa) noted at the bottom of the menu an additional fee on top of my bill. On the other hand, the program has covered 53,000 individuals and, according to the city, resulted in a 70% drop in emergency room visits at San Francisco General Hospital.
(I was going to write something about the NRA & gun madness this weekend. But then things got crowded. And then Cliff contacted me. This is the result. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
This week two fresh pieces of evidence came to light that prove once again that this country's guns nuts & the leadership of the NRA (one in the same?) are seriously out of touch with anything one might call reality.
First, we have the elites who run the NRA. While they believe it makes sense for potential terrorists actively under investigation by the the FBI or DHS to buy whatever firearm strikes their fancy, it turns out, as you can see in the video just below, their members feel somewhat differently.
Then there are the open carry nuts (see video #2 below), who think it makes sense to openly display their weapons while you're eating at a local diner or getting your coffee at Starbucks. Sadly for them, a new poll commissioned by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun violence dispels any myth that the public is with them on this one either.
As Paul Rosenberg has pointed out in this space before, The NRA represents nobody except the big gun manufacturers.
Full Disclosure: I am proud to consult for Mayors Against Illegal Guns & The Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence
And have you noticed that even when they are "in Session" they throw away most of Monday and Friday with traveling? And have you noticed that from Tuesday to Thursday Senators are rarely on the floor, so they are spending more time having Quorum Calls than they are debating?
Have you noticed that when they are debating neither side ever seems to be actually "debating" with the other side... like they don't respond to each others' comments and queries? And have you noticed that even when they do comment on a question from the other side they never really provide an accurate answer?
Charlie Cook expresses a bit of conventional wisdom when he writes that Democrats helped themselves by dropping gun control as a public campaign issue:
When Democrats lost their House and Senate majorities in 1994, polling for organized labor showed that the top issue for union members voting Republican for Congress was guns, something that had nothing to do with unions.
In 2000, when Al Gore lost West Virginia, Gore's state manager later said that the top three reasons for Gore's defeat there were guns, guns and guns. Guns probably played a factor in not only Gore's loss of his home state of Tennessee but in every state that even touched Tennessee.
It was the presidential loss in 2000, on top of the congressional losses in 1994, that convinced the Democratic Party to simply shut up on guns. As much as many Democratic elected officials wanted to legislate the issue, they realized that they couldn't get re-elected if they kept offending so many union members, white males and rural and small-town voters on the gun issue.
Gun-control advocates had plenty of other reasons to support Democrats, so remaining silent on the issue didn't hurt the party that much. Rather, it enabled it to have a conversation with voters who otherwise would not listen as long as guns were on the table.
The problem with this conventional wisdom is that Democrats have not improved their share of the vote among gun owners since 2000. Whatever "conversation" Democrats ended up having with gun owners, it did not translate into votes. What did happen, however, is that the percentage of gun owners in the electorate dropped:
Gun Households In Presidential Elections, 2000-2008
Year
% of Electorate
Dem %
2000
48%
36%
2004
41%
36%
2008
42%
37%
Gore and Kerry received identical percentages of the overall vote, and identical percentages of the gun household vote. Obama improved among gun owners, but only by 1%. Given that he improved the Democratic share of the overall vote by 4.5%, that means that his increased vote percentage came disproportionately from non-gun owners.
Democratic outreach to gun owners failed to result in new votes. However, Democrats did benefit from a long-term decline in the percentages of Americans who live in a gun owning household. The change is rather striking (more in the extended entry):
Gun Lobby Files New Suit in D.C. Over Federal Restrictions
Gun rights advocates have filed a new lawsuit in D.C. federal court, this time seeking to make it possible for American expats to buy guns when they're back home in the United States.
The suit, filed Friday at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, challenges a government requirement that forces gun buyers without a federal firearms license to fill out their state of residence on a special transaction form. It also targets a law that bar gun dealers from selling fire arms to non-U.S. residents for anything other than hunting or sports purposes.
Ed Tinsley, the GOP's Congressional candidate in NM-02 who's running against Democrat Harry Teague, has been caught in the act again. Tinsley's latest inflammatory remarks -- and what can be perceived as a threat to Barack Obama -- came at a recent candidate forum in Roswell. Tinsley was asked about his views on gun ownership and the Second Amendment. Instead of talking about his or his opponent's positions on the issue, Tinsley launched into a disturbing attack on presidential candidate Barack Obama, as you can see in the video clip above. Ed Tinsley said:
Well, I'll say this, somebody that certainly doesn't get it is Barack Obama when he says that our district clings to our guns and our religion out of frustration. I have a rude awakening for him and we'd love to have him as a guest at our ranch.
Check out Tinsley's demeanor when he says the words "rude awakening." What do you think he has in mind when he says it? What do you think his words are meant to convey?
I know the unorthodoxy of this choice makes Obama supporters want to celebrate - but in fact this is a very solid choice. Newness doesn't last long - it fades almost instantly - and while people may be hesitant about such a newbie for president - she's not running for president. YES-it makes me uncomfortable to imagine her as next in line - but next is still not NOW. More importantly - Palin shores up McCain's base - and is attractive from a "woman in the white house" point of view. She's pro-life, pro-guns, pro-drilling. That's a conservative trifecta. More importantly - the ONLY real effective argument against Palin is Clinton. Biden will have to be really careful in his debate against her because on the one hand he can wipe the floor with her, but on the other hand, optically - he could wind up looking like a bully. So - this choice ties one hand behind Biden's back. I think he can win anyway - but he's got a LOT of prep to do for tone - he's got to go against Michelle, Hillary, Pelosi, and a couple of other women in private (focus group watched) debates to gauge tone against a variety of female personas. And the pro-life argument has to come from a woman - there will be no woman in any of the debates. WORSE - Obama came across to some women as smug when up against Hillary, s he's got to tread very carefully.
No - this is a very smart choice for McCain, and while it is a beatable ticket - it's not an easily beatable one.
