Gun Control Legislation in the United States

Meager and mild legislation is the best we can hope for.

First we all need to understand that our constitution’s second amendment states we all have the right to keep a bear arms. That is the core reason that gun owners offer to justify their ownership of all the weapons in their possession.

Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was almost killed by an assassin, and her husband retired astronaut, Mark Kelly, wrote an op-ed in USA Today that their Americans for Responsible Solutions initiative would help raise money to support greater gun control efforts and take on the powerful gun lobby.

President Obama has appointed Vice President Joe Biden to head a committee that will develop proposed legislation that might reduce gun violence.

Jim and Sarah Brady formed the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Brady, then-President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, was wounded in the 1981 presidential assassination attempt by a mentally ill gunman.

In January, Calfornia Senator Feinstein will introduce a bill to stop the sale, transfer, importation and manufacturing of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition feeding devices.

The NRA spent at least $24 million in the 2012 election cycle, including $16.8 million through its political action committee and $7.5 million through its affiliated Institute for Legislative Action. By comparison, the Brady Campaign spent around $5,800.

And when it comes to direct lobbying of lawmakers, the NRA was also dominant. Through July 1, the NRA spent $4.4 million to lobby Congress, compared with the Brady Campaign’s $60,000.

It is estimated that there are 300 million weapons of various kinds in the hand of the American public.

I would support the idea of confiscating all guns that can hold magazines of more than ten bullets.

It won’t happen. The owners of guns are everywhere. The mere thought of gun controls results in higher gun sales. Gun organizations are too strong to be contained.

This Has to Be the Time for Gun Control

Author Robert Shrum in the Daily Beast

How many children have to die, how many innocents have to be lost in a mall or a theater or on a neighborhood street, how many presidents or political leaders or prophets like Dr. King have to be shot down in a fusillade that wounds history itself, before America protects the first of our founding inalienable rights—to “life”—which surely comes before the “liberty” of carrying a cache of weapons. And that demands gun control—and I’m not using a politically convenient phrase like “gun safety legislation.” Some guns are outright unsafe—assault weapons—and all guns are unsafe in the hands of some people.

We as a society are hostage to the thugs of the NRA—which actually stands for the National Rampage Association.

Republicans who claim to defend the “right to life” profit politically by defending the moral wrong of a wholesale arsenal of death inflicted on the already living. The religious right that has allied itself with the gun lobby defies Christ’s warning that those who harm the children would be better off thrown into the sea with a millstone around their necks. Shouldn’t the protection of life begin not with a fertilized egg, but with human beings who are truly and fully alive?

And on the other side, politicians who know better, including most Democrats, cower before the threat of electoral retaliation—and invoke the rationalization that it is too hard to pass anything in Congress, even a ban on assault weapons or closing the gun-show loophole that lets criminals and the deranged shop for firearms without any background check. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said today is “not the time” to talk about policies that at least in theory President Obama supports. Oh yes it is. If not now, when? If not the president, who? As he spoke in stricken terms, he seemed to comprehend that—and that he holds the office Franklin Roosevelt described as “pre-eminently a place of moral leadership.”

No measure short of banning all firearms could prevent all shootings. But we can take practical measures that would save many lives. Who among us, who among our children, could be the next to be killed in an unexpected moment of unspeakable horror? So now we will shed a tear again. And in the phrase of Robert Kennedy, who himself would soon be a casualty instead of a president, we should “say a prayer for ourselves and for our country.” And we should have the courage to do something for our country, too. We should look into the anguished faces of parents outside that Connecticut elementary school—faces now tragically incised on our national consciousness. We should recall events from that darkness at noon in Dallas nearly 60 years ago to the carnage at Columbine and Aurora. Those faces and events matter more than the scorecard of the National Rampage Association.

Let us resolve that half a century and more of this country as a killing field is more than enough. Let us refuse to let this day of dying fade into memory and the malaise of resignation to things as they are. Let us stand against the odds so that countless others who otherwise would never even know the cause of their slaying or the name of their executioner may instead live, laugh, and find love and not hate.

Today Barack Obama spoke his heart and the nation’s—and called on us to take “meaningful action regardless of the politics.” Maybe at last, this is the time; it must be the time. The massacre has come too many times.

90 Guns for every 100 Citizens

Re-posted November 5, 2013

Shooting in New Jersey Mall and at LAX

Gunman kills himself after terrorizing New Jersey shopping mall

Three dead, including gunman, in Oregon mall shooting in December 2012. Killings like this happen so often that few even pay attention.

I have written about this situation before. The United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making it the most heavily armed society in the world. This has been reported by news agencies repeatedly.

U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world’s 875 million known firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies.

So is it any wonder that when Americans become angry they grab a gun, go to the mall or their church, and start shooting at everyone in sight. It is a society of frustrated people who want their way in everything.

Argument with your spouse, kill her/him. Argument with your boss, kill him/her. You look suspicious as you walk through my neighborhood I will kill you and ask questions later.

Well it’s all about Second amendment rights. The NRA (National Rifleman’s Association) says, Defend Your 2nd Amendment Rights, Help Protect Hunters’ Rights. There is nothing in the Second amendment that says you have the right to bear arms for your protection or to hunt. It does say, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

The problem is the people of the United States. They really believe that their freedom hinges on their right to own weapons. Sales have dramatically increased in the past four years because many believe that the Obama administration has plans to enforce new gun controls. No laws have been suggested or proposed. Still, there are those who continue to believe that their weapons will be confiscated. The gun manufacturers are happy with this situation.

It is a puzzle to me that a nation of so many wise and smart people believes that owning a gun is a necessity of life.

Abraham Lincoln and the Never Ending Civil War

Perhaps the title of this post should be “Is this the and of the United States?”

The American Civil War, also called War Between the States , fratricidal four-year war (1861–65) between the federal government of the United States and 11 Southern states that asserted their right to secede from the Union. The war ended 147 years ago.

After all of these years since the end of the Civil War the South is still re-fighting every battle and every event connected with the confederacy. Steven Spielberg’s new movie simply titled Lincoln says we have not gotten over the war or the events that led up to the war.

The new Steven Spielberg movie is based upon the book Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It’s an enthralling book. Even someone who is not particularly interested in reading history books will find this biography a compelling read.

The troubling part of this story is that citizens of all 50 states have submitted petitions to secede from the United States and that happened just this year. Seven southern state petitions have collected significant number of signatures. The leading is Texas with over 101,000. Major numbers of petition signers are residence of Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

Happily Anti-Secession Petitions are Gaining Clicks, Too! The thought is that those wanting to secede should be stripped of their citizenship and deported. I would agree with that thought. Perhaps Mexico will take them.

California Death Penalty

The AP reported today, “A former Charles Manson follower imprisoned for 40 years in a double murder engineered by Manson won a recommendation of parole Thursday in his 27th appearance before a parole board panel.”

The man, Bruce Davis, convicted with Manson and another man in the killings of a musician and a stuntman is one of a group of the Manson family of mad dog killers.

He has been in prison since 1972 and is now 70 years old. Had there been a death penalty in place that year he would have spent his life on California’s “death row.” The chances are he would not have been put to death. The last person was executed in 2006. There are now over 700 people on California’s “death row.”

Proposition 34 in the November ballot “ Repeals death penalty as maximum punishment for persons found guilty of murder and replaces it with life imprisonment without possibility of parole.” That is the wording of the State Attorney General in the official summary.

The summary goes on to say that the current costs associated with those sentenced to death amounts to $100 million a year. It likely to rise to $130 million in the not too distant future.

My question is what are the chances that people like the Manson Family clan can receive recommendations for parole?

There was the madman who killed two teenage girls in San Diego County just a few years ago. He admitted to the crime and to avoid a trial was sentenced to life without possibility of parole. Really?

If Bruce Davis can receive such a recommendation then why not Sirhan Sirhan? Why not the Hillside Stranglers (Cousins Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi enjoyed killing Los Angeles women just for the thrill that they experienced during the process of torture and murder.) ?

It’s not your problem until it’s someone in your family!

Freedom of Speech

Anti-jihad ‘savage’ ads going up in NYC subway NEW YORK (AP) — A provocative ad that equates Muslim radicals with savages is set to go up in the city’s subway system as violent protests over an anti-Islamic film ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad sweep over much of the Muslim world.

“Innocence of Muslims” is the Muhammad movie that was the excuse for riots throughout the Muslim world. Google was asked to remove the movie clip from Youtube but they refused, sighting their first amendment rights.

The American constitution’s first Amendment says

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Americans of all stripes hold those words as important as any in the bible. We go to war to defend the freedoms we have. Many elsewhere do not agree with this belief. They believe that the United States has a responsibility to muzzle words or actions they consider disrespectful.

It’s a conflict of beliefs that could lead to a breakdown of relations with other nations.

I believe Americans really take these words in our Declaration of Independence to heart

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

I believe Americans will fight, if necessary, to defend the American ideals. Thanks, Thomas Jefferson.