via Weasel Zippers, this, from NBC:
Bottom line: Obama is going about as big as he can go, realizing there’s little political downside (at least in the short term). One gun-control advocate tells First Read that the recommendations would be “the most significant reform of our guns laws since MLK and RFK were assassinated” in 1968.
Yet as NBC’s Savannah Guthrie pointed out on “TODAY” this morning, there’s a reason why you have to go back to four decades for the last time Washington tried to go this big: The politics of gun control are incredibly hard. Given that reality, which component becomes the priority for the White House? The background checks, magazine clips, and anti-trafficking might be the ones with the best chance of passage, while the assault ban could be the hardest. So what is the order? And what does the president and congressional Democrats really lean on? Also, what is the president going to say about culture? And finally, does he say anything about the new NRA video that injects his daughters into the debate? “Are the president’s kids more important than yours?” the video asks. “Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school?”
[…]
The NRA is acting as if this were 2001 — after beating Al Gore and facing a cowed Democratic Party. Instead, this is 2013 — after the NRA was unable to beat Obama and after Democrats expanded their majority in the U.S. Senate. The danger the NRA is facing, especially after releasing this new video, is that it’s potentially alienating the handful of Democratic allies it has. The Harry Reids, the Joe Manchins, the Jon Testers. While the NRA has always had a deeper reach within the Republican Party, what has made it particularly powerful is its influence inside both parties (a la AIPAC). But how the NRA has reacted to Newtown may very well have reduced its influence to just one political party. And if they decide to keep their attacks focused on the president, they will end up alienating the rest of the Democratic Party — and that will cost them down the road. Right now, they are acting like an ideologically driven cog of the conservative movement rather than attempting to persuade or keep its Democratic supporters.
Aw, isn’t that sweet? NBC lecturing the NRA on tone — all but stating explicitly that the only way to win anything in today’s political culture is to please weasely Democrats who may then grant you a stay of execution. For the right show of obeisance.
Fuck that. I didn’t agree with LaPierre’s police at schools proposal — allowing teachers with CCW to carry on campus is a much better, and less ostentatious, means of deterrent — but the video the NRA put out was a stroke of genius, showing as it does that the very politicians rushing to take away your guns, and doing so while ghoulishly standing on the graves of dead children, hold themselves and their own children above the law.
We saw this play out nationally with David Gregory — on camera breaking the law he ostensibly supports — excused for the very crime the President wishes to impose nationally. Though not, evidently, on David Gregory — and not on the armed guards who protect him or his daughters at school.
We the People have families as well. What we don’t have is the ability to sign into law permanent armed protection for the rest of our lives paid for by taxpayer money. Politicians in a constitutional republic are servants of the people. They aren’t our betters.
This President and any temporary Congress has no authority to take away our 2nd Amendment rights. The amendment doesn’t exist to allow for hunting or target shooting, or even home protection: those are useful appendages to what the amendment as written and ratified does provide for: an armed and prepared populace set up as a deterrent to foreign invaders or a tyrannical turn by their own government.
This may prove unpalatable to some, but that is beside the point: the amendment is what it is and does what it does. If progressives wish to change that, they can try amending the Constitution. Otherwise, they lack the authority. And we mustn’t allow them to chip away at our rights and consider the “compromise” worth the ending of the headache.
Nothing to be proposed today would have prevented Newtown. And it isn’t meant to. It is meant to take away part of your liberty, as free people. Nothing more.
Barack Obama has never cleared a beaver damn bottling up the waterways on private land. He has no idea how much ammo it takes. Similarly, so long as the police are allowed to carry “assault rifles” and high capacity magazines, we need to maintain our right to do the same, lest we lose a check on their ability to unlawfully bully and control us.
It comes down to this: the left wants us living in a beneficent police state — with themselves in charge of the social engineering, the economy, the land, and all the assets. This comes with the implied promise that they’ll protect us from cradle to grave.
And yet what they’ve shown over the past month or so is that they will use every occasion to try to further enslave us; they will demonize those who oppose this enslavement; and they will punish those they perceive to be against them while allowing those they believe are allies — hi, David Gregory! — to escape the law.
That is not a society I wish to live in. And it most certainly isn’t the society laid out by the Founders and Framers.
Resist we much.
Notice who they mention as “conservative/blue dog” Democrats.
Senators. That is because of this.
Obama means to break the “blue dogs” in the Senate to get this passed. He will also work the RINOs in the both houses to bring enough of them to heel to pass his 2nd [amendment] magnum opus.
Yglesias: Pretty comfortable saying that the president’s children are in fact more important than yours:
So Yglesias thinks living under a Rex Lex regime would be peachy?
No. Full stop. I will not submit.
No they’re not Matt. Fuck you.
If he meant to say that Obama’s kids are more at risk, than he’d be right.
But they are not more important. But Matt thinks Obama’s are.
One of his many confusions.
First, they try to get you to believe there’s no political cost to be paid.:
Little downside, my hairy white ass! Next, they acknowledge that their opening assertion is bullshit, and that there actually is a big political cost:
(Which is a mischaracterization in its own right, seeing as how gun control initiatives haven’t been difficult over the past few decades; rather, they’ve been DOA. In fact, the gun-grabbers have suffered a number of major defeats.) Then, they contradict their contradiction of their opening bullshit, and again pretend that there is no cost:
Because the 2013 election was all about gun control. Don’t you remember? Anyways, the rest of their “analysis” is about cementing the pretense that the NRA has a much higher political price to pay than the President and his council of gun-grabbers. They want to embolden the President’s side, and cow the NRA, by pretending that the momentum has shifted. Never mind that the polls show no such shift — NBC News will keep working overtime to make those polls shift!
Don’t let them get away with it. When your friends — or neighbors, or family, or cow-orkers — talk about the President’s “recommendations” as though they’re a done deal, push back! And don’t stop there — as long as you’re at it, remind your governor, your congresscritter, and your local NRA chapter that they have strong popular support to stand against this latest attempt to crush our liberty, and that it’s up to them to make damn sure that the Proggies fail, and pay a steep price for the attempt.
(And it’s little wonder that the President’s cheerleaders are trying so hard to get the NRA to shut up and play nice; another couple of commercials about the double-standard between the proles and the aristocrats is likely to do all sorts of damage to their grand plans. Don’t give in, lads! Punch back twice as hard!)
Whoa! Grace loved pink! So fuck you and your Second Amendment rights.
They make a huge mistake thinking this is DC versus the NRA. This is DC versus the Constitution. The NRA is the point, not the spear.
The following is a list, provided by the White House, of executive actions President Obama plans to take to address gun violence.
1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.
2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.
3. Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.
4. Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.
5. Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.
6. Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.
7. Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign.
8. Review safety standards for gun locks and gun safes (Consumer Product Safety Commission).
9. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.
10. Release a DOJ report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement.
11. Nominate an ATF director.
12. Provide law enforcement, first responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations.
13. Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.
14. Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.
15. Direct the Attorney General to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies and challenge the private sector to develop innovative technologies.
16. Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes.
17. Release a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities.
18. Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers.
19. Develop model emergency response plans for schools, houses of worship and institutions of higher education.
20. Release a letter to state health officials clarifying the scope of mental health services that Medicaid plans must cover.
21. Finalize regulations clarifying essential health benefits and parity requirements within ACA exchanges.
22. Commit to finalizing mental health parity regulations.
23. Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health.
4. Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.
What? You mean like Mexican drug lords?
Nothing about banning gun-free zones, leigh. Guess they didn’t have a clue after all. Well, Biden was in charge, so what did we expect?
10. Release a DOJ report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement.
Let me save DOJ a lot of work: Hey, cops: the lost weapons are all at the bottom of the lake, guys! Tragic, really.
7. Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign.
Too late, asshole! We’ve already bought all the guns in the country!
13. Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.
You mean like prosecuting those who’ve been illegally sending weapons to Mexican drug gangs? Sure, Barry! Let’s maximize those efforts!
16. Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes.
And my response to my physican will be along the lines of “…and this is pertinent to me coming in to see you for [insert health concern] exactly how? You gonna ask about flat-screen teevees, curly-fry light bulbs, Chia Pets and Egyptian-cotton towels in my home next?”
Oh, something like the NRA?
That whole list is full of sound and fury signifying nothing, to paraphrase the Bard.
Obama would demand — demand — the “assault ban” (I think they mean the assault weapon ban, since assault is already illegal as a rule, and in NYC so is salt). He seems to need failure more than success, as success doesn’t give him enemies to blame for why even his successes are failures.
Doesn’t require me to answer either.
if secret service meatheads get to have guns while they bang third world pussy then I want one too
Bad news: when banging third world pussy a gun doesn’t give you all the protection you need.
that is a very sobering observation mr. mcgehee
Home grown pussy isn’t good enough for you now, happy? You have to gunnin’ for it elsewhere?
signifying nothing
On the contrary, it signifies a great deal concerning Obazma’s view of government and governance. He is no respecter of persons.
Don’t ask me how I know.
I also needed nunchakus and a push broom, is all I’m gonna say.
He is no respecter of persons.
Neither is he a respecter of laws, either. He fancies himself a king.
Honestly, that entire list is so asinine. It’s honestly insulting. Like this one:
12. Provide law enforcement, first responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations.
@@. Because local law enforcement needs the federal government to come in and tell them how to do their job.
Is there ONE example of the first responders failing to do a good job? Anywhere?
16. Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes.
umn … they already do this now. They started asking this question at least a year ago.
The only sensible answer is FYNQ.
7. Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign.
Thanks SCOAMF, but the NRA already has this covered.
4. Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.
For example … gang members?
Just a thought.
Trying to help.
23. Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health.
Are we done with our national dialogue on “race”? Because THAT went so well …
I thought it was more along the lines of MYOB.
“The NRA is the point, not the spear.”
I’m just hopin’ the phalanx is up to it THIS time. They’ve had a bad quarter to put it mildly.
Car,
No, the federal government needs the federal government to tell local law enforcement how to do their job. Everything on King Putt’s List is exactly that: imposing federal influence or outright authority on local government business.
“The only sensible answer is FYNQ.”
Or lie outright.
Unless there’s perjury involved or something, that’s probably the pragmatic response.
They’ve had a bad quarter to put it mildly.
Did you miss the part where there were more than 3 million weapons sold?
[…] today, you would think that President Obama’s speech on gun control Executive Orders and the NRA’s pro-Second Amendment ad were the only things happening. But you’d be wrong. There are now between three and seven […]
testFixed that for them.
SBP, I recently had to attend an on-line course covering the rules concerning business dealings with government officials here and overseas. One of the pages started listing people who might be government officials that would be covered, and “health care providers” was on it. After all, there are laws about lying to the FBI even if you aren’t officially a “suspect”.
Glad to have you back again, Spork!
Well, it was either “go big” or “go home”, and Kenya said no.
Said Obazma in his imperious declaration yesterday:
*** I also believe most gun owners agree that we can respect the Second Amendment while keeping an irresponsible, law-breaking few from inflicting harm on a massive scale. ***
But do they — that is, most? Not at all, I think, simply because they likely believe preventing criminals (that is, Aristotle’s natural slaves) will do what they can, and what they can is what they like. There is no such “while keeping” possible, which in turn makes Obazma’s proposals appear futilely stupid. But if Obazma is not himself entirely stupid, then someone looking on might think “Ah, then his seemingly stupid proposals must have been conceived for another purpose — and that purpose looks quite like it is conceived in Obazma’s political interests, and not ours, nor in the interests of unprotected children in schools.”
And indeed, so they were.