The FAST Approaching Gun Ban

[robertlouis]

One more time:
There's NO "approaching gun ban", at any speed. This myth is a bunch of hyperbolic paranoia, just like it always is when it pops up, & it pops up every time somebody gets stupid with a gun.

Indeed. The senate votes down the attempt to introduce wider checks on arms sales. The NRA immediately hails it as a victory for freedom.

How depressingly, predictably, inevitably familiar.

More innocent blood to be shed on the corrupt hands of congress. SMDH.

[fivekatz]

I think that this time it won't go away. There will never be gun bans but while today showed the flaws of allowing "silent filibuster" and the cowardice of many senators.

The fight will continue and just as many of the same parlimentary tactics and similar inflammatory speeches about freedom and constitutional purity could not perpetuate segregation in the US, so too will this black mark on the US body politic pass.

How many more have to die while we wait we can only guess but arms without restriction will some day be as out of touch with reality and morality as was the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans or the suppression of woman's votes and then rights.

It will pass because the majority of Americans want intelligent registration, background checks and limits on magazine capacity. When Congress finds itself this out of step with public opinion, regardless of the success of a cloture vote, a corner was turned today, one that the NRA celebrates today but will soon recognize was the sea change.

[trish]

I'm sure gun stores love this rhetoric as the gun sales always shoot through the rood when a dem is in the WH.

It's true that Ombama is a great gun salesman, but it's not because of rhetoric nor political action. All through his first term there was absolutely no move toward any sort of tighter regulations on guns. Even after Gifords was shot, there was no move toward making tougher gun laws. Yet during this same period ALEC was writing boiler plate concealed carry laws and stand your ground laws and racing them through conservative State legislatures. The Obama administration was silent on gun laws even when Travon Martin was slaughtered in the cleanly swept streets of a gated Florida community. Yet all through his first term gun sales were through the roof and dealers couldn't keep ammunition on the shelves. Gee, funny how paranoid certain stupid assholes can be when a black man wins the White House.

[fivekatz]

No kidding Trish. I can only imagine now that the carnage of Newtown or just the fact that Obama can not run again has him fired up about gun out-of-control just how many more weapons the industry can sell to fools who think the black guy is out to screw them when in reality it is and has long been a bunch of rich mostly white guys out to screw the working dude.

Sadly considering opinion polls tell us that the vast majority of Americans are for closing the gun show loophole and better background checks and we still end up with a cloture motion in the Senate, that for most of the pols only personalization would change their minds.

[robertlouis]

No comment required.

[Prospero]

A cowardly and nauseating day.... and doubtless there will be gloatesr and jerks rubbing their hands at this "victory for freedom."

Would it have made any difference if it had been a shooter in the crowd in Boston instead of a bomber.

Hey NRA - why not call for legalisation of bombs.

[Willie Escalade]

Tis was emailed to me...

http://www.nationalmemo.com/is-this-...uve-ever-seen/

[thombergeron]

Takeaway line from Gabbrielle Giffords's editorial in today's New York Times:

"...if we cannot make our communities safer with the Congress we have now, we will use every means available to make sure we have a different Congress..."

I couldn't stand Max Baucus already. His vote yesterday just makes it that much easier to fundraise to kick his ass out of the Senate in 2014.

[Prospero]

This thread was started when it really looked as if some form of sanity might prevail. We know better now.

[thombergeron]

One more time:
There's NO "approaching gun ban", at any speed. This myth is a bunch of hyperbolic paranoia, just like it always is when it pops up, & it pops up every time somebody gets stupid with a gun.

We are so far from a gun ban that yesterday that a competing amendment from Texan John Cornyn that would federalize concealed carry permits -- in other words, states would be forced to respect concealed carry permits issued in other states -- actually received more yes votes than the background check amendment.

It didn't pass because it also did not receive the 60 votes necessary to end a filibuster, but an amendment to loosen current gun regulations received 57 yes votes in the U.S. Senate, while a bill to moderately expand background checks on gun purchases received only 55 yes votes.