How The Congressional Baseball Shooting Didn’t Become The Deadliest Political Assassination In American History
A lot of luck and a couple of Capitol police officers . . .
There’s been a lot of discussion the past year about where this broader moment fits in American history, which past era it might resemble. Are we living in 1968, on the precipice of more violence, assassinations, disruption, unrest? Is it more like the 1970s? Or a different period, something new altogether?
What is certain is the disquieting way June 14 slipped beneath the news so quickly. The shooting felt much further away by July, August, September than mere months. If people joke about how the weeks feel like years in the current era, there’s an unsettling truth behind the joke — the way anything can lose scale and proportion. Two dozen members of Congress were nearly killed one morning last year, and the country didn’t change very much at all.
U.S. Supreme Court Turns Away Gun ‘Right to Sell’ Appeal
Another Supreme Court cold shoulder . . .
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to endorse a constitutional right to sell firearms, rejecting an appeal by three men who were denied a permit to open a gun store in northern California.
The justices, without comment Monday, left intact a federal appeals court decision that said the Second Amendment doesn’t protect the rights of would-be firearm sellers. The lower court also said potential customers could buy guns elsewhere.
It’s the third time this year the court has rejected an appeal from California gun-rights advocates. The court hasn’t heard arguments in a Second Amendment case in eight years.
Lou Ferrigno Pumps Up the Crowd at the N.R.A. Convention
The New Yorker is thoroughly mystified by the whole thing . . .
The National Rifle Association held its annual conference earlier this month, at a Dallas convention center. Thousands of people milled around hundreds of exhibitors, including Armageddon Gear (beer bivy sacks), WMD Guns (not nuclear weapons), and RCBS Precisioneered Reloading supplies (“leaving varmints mystified since 1943”). A long line snaked around the booth of a firearms company called Brownells. At about 9 a.m., a staffer looked at his watch. “He usually gets a pretty good line,” he said, referring to Lou Ferrigno, the former Mr. Universe and star of “The Incredible Hulk” TV series (which aired on CBS from 1978 to 1982), who would soon arrive to sign autographs. Nearby, at another table, attendees filled out paper slips for the “Gun-A-Day Giveaway.”
Ferrigno showed up at nine-thirty wearing a black polo shirt with the Brownells logo, jeans, and black shoes. He had a graying goatee and a tan, and, for a sixty-six-year-old, he was ripped. He said that he’d worked out that morning, to pump up his “flexing muscles.” He now lives in Santa Monica, but he grew up in New York, the son of a Brooklyn cop who taught him about guns.
“When I was twelve, I remember watching my dad shoot at the range,” he said. He described seeing holes in the head of the target. “My dad said to me, ‘You ever misbehave, the same will happen to you.’ That was kind of a joke.” He went on, “He always left his gun and his badge on the refrigerator. Today, it’s a different story; you can’t leave guns in plain sight.” A few hundred firearms could be seen on the surrounding convention floor. The air was full of clicking.
Exhaustive Study: Murder Rates Rise Every Place that Bans Guns
Who could have possibly predicted such an outcome? . . .
Perhaps the most striking thing is that three of the case studies here — England and Wales, Jamaica and Ireland — are on islands. That means you don’t exactly have guns coming over a land border. So, why did murder not only persist but rise after these gun bans?
Maybe it’s because criminals found other ways to get guns. Maybe it’s because there were less armed citizens to protect themselves. Maybe it’s because criminals will always find ways to kill other people if they want to kill them. And maybe it’s all of these.
No matter what the reason, the conclusion from the data is clear: gun bans don’t stop murder. Far from it. This is the kind of data gun rights advocates need to know for themselves. And these are by no means the only examples — as the CPRC noted.
More states approving ‘red flag’ laws to keep guns away from people perceived as threats
They used to be gun violence protection orders. Now they’re red flag laws . . .
While most legislative proposals to address gun violence stall, the “red flag” laws, as they are known, have passed with bipartisan support and the collaboration of activists on both sides of the gun control debate. The momentum for these laws comes after investigations revealed that the shooters often showed warning signs that they would commit violence.
Nine states now have such laws on the books and dozens of others are considering such proposals.
The most recent law came in Delaware, where Gov. John Carney on April 30 signed the Beau Biden Gun Violence Prevention Act into law. It allows mental health professionals to report potentially dangerous people and have their guns seized through a court order.
Study: Gun Violence in PG-13 Films Is More Acceptable as Long as It’s ‘Justified’
Now they want a PG-15 rating . . .
As the debate around gun control in the U.S. has crescendoed, gun violence in Hollywood films with PG-13 ratings is becoming more acceptable, according to a new study.
Parents with children under the age of 17 are more desensitized to gun violence when it’s deemed justified, according to the study from the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) at the University of Pennsylvania.
The study determines justified gun violence as that which is used in the defense of a loved one or for self-protection. Unjustified gun violence would be when it has no socially redeeming purpose.
Angry American moms have had it up to here with gun violence
Another big wet media kiss for the billionaire-funded civilian disarmament organization . . .
Five years ago, the notion of a group of moms challenging the deep-pocketed National Rifle Association in their spare time seemed ludicrous. But by many measures, the NRA has shifted to its back foot in recent months.
Despite the fact that the US president and vice president showed support for the NRA by speaking at its annual convention this month, more Americans than ever before hold an unfavorable view of the group. Sparked by a post-Parkland student movement, national support for strengthening gun laws is the highest it has been since the mid-1990s.
“One of the NRA’s most powerful assets was their ability to mobilize and be noisy,” said John Feinblatt, the president of Mike Bloomberg-funded Everytown For Gun Safety, which was formed when Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns merged with Moms Demand in 2014. But angry parents and students are now out-shouting the gun industry and gun owners. Moms Demand, Feinblatt notes, is “driven by a ferocious desire to protect their children, and an ability and willingness to show up anytime, anywhere.”
Court to Texans: Leave your AK-47s at home if you come to Massachusetts
Or, you know, stay out of Massachusetts entirely . . .
The Supreme Judicial Court today upheld a Texas native’s conviction for illegal possession of an assault weapon and illegal possession of another gun, ruling that the Second Amendment still gives Massachusetts the right to ban assault weapons and regulate ownership of other guns.
At issue were the “AK-47-style pistol,” four 30-round magazines and a 9-mm pistol that had been modified to hold up to 20 rounds that John Cassidy brought up here with him in 2010 after he enrolled at the University of Massachusetts Law School in Dartmouth. Cassidy obtained copies of Massachusetts gun-registration forms but never filed them, saying the fees were too expensive for him. He also cited Texas law, which let him walk around with the weapons – something he legally might not have been able to do here with the AK-47 pistol, in any case, since it’s classified as an “assault weapon” banned under Massachusetts state law.
Cassidy was arrested in March, 2011 on seven counts: Illegal possession of an assault weapon, illegal possession of a gun, illegal possession of four high-capacity feeding devices and illegal possession of ammunition, after Dartmouth police obtained a search warrant for the apartment he shared with another law student.
For NRA members that have bought more guns out of an irrational fear of us the NRA does provide some safety tips for guns please be sure to be a safe and responsible gun owner. Around 900 children commit suicide with parents gun every year. https://t.co/0rPzQGrcIZ
— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) May 14, 2018