Of course politicians don’t want to be held accountable for their pro-NRA stance while the NRA has a fundraising account that Maria Butina and her ilk exploited. If we’re going to get serious about gun control, we need to follow the money and thoroughly investigate NRA fundraising.
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You could edit the first two minutes (ending with "now, now, now"..) down to one minute and put this on national television.
It's that good. Like, "This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs".
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Who doesn't appreciate the use of logic to call out political hypocrisy?
The muzzle velocity of a 9mm handgun is 1,200 ft/sec.; for an AR-15 3,300 ft/sec. Being shot by a 9mm is possibly survivable, being shot by an AR-15 is probably not.
Universal background checks and banning assault weapons -- absolute no-brainers.
Glad to see Mark Kelly has announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate from Arizona.
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Guns kill 33,000 people, cars kill a similar number, opioids kill 35,000 people a year. Hospitals and negligent medical staff kill 400,000 people a year, but nobody gets upset about them because they don't read about them in the newspapers.
I would much rather our politicians address the real killers in our society, our most expensive medical system in the world.
We already have gun laws. We already have background checks. It's already illegal for domestic abusers to buy a gun and it's already illegal for people to sell guns without a federal firearms license.
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@Aristotle Gluteus Maximus
This is a standard "whataboutism" argument used to try and deflect any criticism of the position you take. My 7-year-old son uses it regularly.
"Why should I clean up my bedroom," he decries, "what about my sister leaving her clothes all over the floor?"
"Just because she's done it, doesn't make the mess you need to clean up go away does it? And, besides I'll be talking to her shortly."
As for cars, opioids, and negligent medical staff: there has been a steady effort on-going to reduce car accidents, which has had large positive effects. The US has been lagging the rest of the world lately though and can do better.
Nobody gets upset about opioids? I seem to recall Trump campaigning on it, and more than one in-depth article over the past couple of years in the NYT about it.
As for negligent medical staff? Doctors and hospitals are regularly sued over it. That is, if nothing else, a really good incentive for trying to improve.
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Is there an App that gives current NRA scores for each politician in both at state and federal levels? This would be nice to have on voting day.
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@Juh CLU a few weeks before an election the NRA posts its ratings of candidates on the NRA-ILA website. Then they take it down after the election.
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The gun plague has been allowed to fester for over 50 years while the rest of the world looked at us in shock and disbelief. Republicans blindly followed the NRA, and the Democrats feared them.
Incredibly, there are now groups even more extreme than the NRA. So if by some miracle we ever got reasonable gun control, I think we would face pockets of armed insurrection the like of which we haven't seen since the Civil War.
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@bnyc--
First, perhaps, you need to define "reasonable gun control" for the rest of us gun-owning miscreants out here in fly-over country.
THEN, perhaps, we can start talking about The Second American Civil War. If, indeed, you ever find the need to provoke one.
@Zee Okay. How about not selling weapons of war that make mass murder, in the mind of a psychotic, a sort of distant, media-like point-and-click affair?
To this lifelong hunter, target-shooter, and ex-military person, that should be easy.
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@Zee Perhaps a set of regulations that will make it harder for someone diagnosed as schizophrenic to buy a gun.
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There’s “Made in USA” and there’s Only in USA. With gun violence, both are true,
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Excellent satire and profoundly correct. My suggestion to readers is to forward this to all your elected representative. Especially the cowardly ones.
Universal background checks, gun registration and an insurance requirement for gun owns would not violate the 2nd amendment. After all, have you ever felt infringed about driving a car?
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@Ron--
You're right, none of your nostrums for "gun violence" would violate the Second Amendment, at least not as I read Heller v. DC.
However, with some 300,000,000 mostly-unregistered firearms already "in circulation," along with untold gazillions of rounds of live ammunition already "out there," too, good luck with all of your schemes.
I certainly won't be marching down to my local police station to register my firearms--and doubtless also paying a "reasonable" fee for the "privilege" to do so.
Nor will I be shopping anytime soon for "affordable" gun owner's liability insurance.
And when the time comes to pass my firearms on, well, who's ever gonna know whether or not I had a background check done on, say, my son or daughter, nephew or niece, or other individual whom I happen to trust?
Dream on.
@Ron -- I don't disagree that universal background checks, gun registration and an insurance requirement for gun owners are reasonable steps (and I'm a gun owner). But the analogy to driving a car is fallacious. Driving is a privilege, not a right. Under the Heller SCOTUS decision, gun ownership is a right protected by the 2nd Amendment, and thus has considerably stronger legal status than the privilege of driving. But in fact Heller allows considerable room for effective gun control steps without making misplaced analogies.
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@John Voting is a privilege. We place limits on who can exercise it.
I wish this could actually be installed on all elected officials' phones. With perhaps the addition of a little electric shock to reinforce the message.
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guns are a plague of death. the people who most want guns are exactly the last people who should have them. automatic weapons are designed to do one thing only: kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible. there is no place for them on our streets, our schools, our movie theaters, our malls, and our homes. ban them all.
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@true patriot -- In fact, automatic weapons are already illegal under federal law.
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@true patriot AUTOMATIC weapons have been heavily regulated since 1934. They are NOT on our streets, in our schools, theaters, or malls. If you have a Class III license, you might have one or more in your home. Give a law abiding citizen an RPG and everybody will remain safe, give a criminal a rock and he could take your life.
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I loved the satire. We need to do everything. Reasoned articles, satire, and finally maybe getting on the roof and screaming at the top of our lungs.
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@gnowell I couldn't agree more!
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@gnowell
Republicans and gun owners do NOT understand satire.
Bribe taking members of Congress don’t care about the death caused by the NRA.
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@George--
Actually, I understood--and enjoyed-- the satire quite well.
And I'm both a Republican AND a gun owner since my twelfth birthday (I'm now 68.)
Perhaps you need to abandon your stupid stereotypes of both Republicans AND gun owners, lest you prove YOURSELF to be the fool that you imagine others to be.
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