T-rump stupid things

Disarm Clinton's bodyguards

Donald Trump said this when disparaging Hillary Clinton over her stand on gun control. Here is Trump's actual brainless comment...

"I think that her bodyguards should drop all weapons. They should disarm. Take their guns away, she doesn't want guns. Take them, let's see what happens to her. Take their guns away, OK. It will be very dangerous."

Thanks to amNewYork.

Media video on Trump statement...

This is the incoming president that will have his finger on the button. God help us!

Drop the College and drop the 2nd Amendment

Never before have I seen a case made so eloquent for ridding ourselves of a "relic" bestowed on us by the Founding Fathers. We have a few but this is one that happens to be in the spotlight now as the bungled finish of the 2016 Presidential election becomes evident. For the second time in 16 years, the out-of-date Electoral College has given the White House to the person with the least popular vote. And this year it is significant: Hillary Clinton has scored over 2.2 million more votes than Donald Trump. John Nichols does an excellent job of making his case in The Nation...

"The Electoral College is an abomination: an antidemocratic relic of the unconscionable compromises made during America’s founding that should never have been allowed to linger into the 21st century."

Now I'll get to the Electoral College in a later post but this one is devoted to just how much Nichols' article applies to the 2nd Amendment. Read it again, but this time substitutiing the 2nd Amendment for Electoral College...

The 2nd Amendment is an abomination: an antidemocratic relic of the unconscionable compromises made during America’s founding that should never have been allowed to linger into the 21st century.

I hear the gun nuts coming out from under their rocks now but even the "antidemocratic" portion, above, can be defended. It is against my democracy to have to be in a public place with some guy or gal who feels it necessary to walk around with an assault rifle on their shoulder, a weapon that belongs only in law enforcement and the military. Yes, they have a right, but that should extend no further than their front door. But even the right to defend yourself in the home shouldn't include assault rifles. Individual rights go just so far and can be limited, as agreed by the Supreme Court.

The fight over guns will go on until enough of the "right" people are killed, and by that I mean those most verbal over gun rights that preclude any responsible  control at all. And by the lunacy of some of their rhetoric, I wonder if even then.

More on the Electoral College later.

How many more guns does this country need? REALLY

Apparently Donald Trump's gun lovers don't believe what he said about the 2nd Amendment, the National Rifle Assn. (NRA) and protecting their guns. They headed out in droves on Black Friday for the 10% to 50% discounts that were available on weapons like a $500 Sig Sauer and various assault rifles like an AR-15. Featured in many articles as the "go-to weapon for mass shooters," the average, reasonable individual wonders why any normal citizen needs one.

Because these people are not normal; they are obsessed with guns. And like some car enthusiasts who want the fastest vehicle they can drive, gun worshippers go for the gun with the biggest capacity. Like the Sig Sauer MCX .223 used in the LGBT nightclub massacre with a magazine of thirty. Omar Mateen killed 49 people with a gun that belongs only with the military and law enforcement, but is available to a majority of the U.S. population.

So, the fact that Hillary Clinton, an avowed gun control advocate, didn't win the election, had no effect on the Black Friday surge in gun buying, why are these enslaved individuals rushing out to buy more of what they probably already have at least one of at home? Because Wayne LaPierre, NRA Head, told them to and he did that because the gun manufacturers told him to. There are almost well over 300 million guns on the street, very near to one per household.

Since only one-third of U.S. households own a weapon, approximately 101 million, that's over 3 guns per household. Here are some obscene gun statistics to close:

• Total number of gun incidents-51,720
• Number of deaths-13,367
• Number of injuries-27,560
• Number of children killed or injured-3,418
• Mass shootings-351

The problem is, since we have a cowardly Congress, a newly elected President who favors gun rights, the future looks dismal.

Congressional members with NRA blood on their hands

Rep. Steve Chabot

Recipients of cash from the National Rifle Assn. (NRA) (1988-2016) who refuse to pass gun control laws that would save lives, as reported by The Nation magazine. Call them today!

Congressman: Rep. Steve Chabot, (R-H)                                                           

Total amount received: $54,100 

Tel. Number: (202) 225-2216

Gun Control: With Trump emphasis shifts even more to states

NRA head, Wayne LaPierre

For years now a cowardly Congress, scared to death of Wayne LaPierre and the National Rifle Assn., has failed to act on reasonable gun control. Even the simplest steps like background checks, closing the gun show loophole and banning assault weapons. And now in comes Donald Trump with his open philosophy on guns, including a belief that there should be absolutely no limit on gun sales in America. With 112.6 guns per 100 residents already.

The gun situation in the U.S. can be defined in one word: obscene. The Washington Post reported:

"Homicides in the United States went up by more than 10 percent in 2015 over the year before, while violent crime increased by nearly 4 percent in the same period, according to new statistics released Monday by the FBI."

Translated into specifically gun-related violence, the Gun Violence Archive 2016 reports:

Total gun incidents-49,816
Number of deaths-12,860
Number of children to age 11 killed or injured-594
Mass shootings-342
Accidental shooting-1,846

In another report, you can see Donald Trump's position on nine issues in his own words. One in particular is laughable. Here's what he says about the national right to carry:

“The right of self-defense doesn’t stop at the end of your driveway … A driver’s license works in every state, so it’s common sense that a concealed carry permit should work in every state.”

Can you believe that kind of stupid reasoning? It's like saying a driver's license gives you the right to drive and your gun gives you the right to kill. Especially when you are talking about carrying an AR-15 assault rifle. Only a dedicated gun nut would espouse or believe this kind of bullshit. Or...a political candidate trying to get your vote.

Letter to the President on gun control

Barack Obama
The White House
Washington, D.C.

Dear Mr. President:

You have tried to stop gun violence on several occasions and I realize you have combated a GOP Congress that vowed from the beginning of your first term in office to stop any legislation you proposed. Any legislation. That in itself proves that you are dealing with a group of individuals that have put their ideologies, and I must sorrowfully say, Mr. President, their hate for you, before their country. You have always placed our country first and most of us appreciate that.

It seems to me that to deal with this kind of mentality you must prove to the American public, and those who would block this legislation, the nature of those who are against reasonable gun laws, those who put guns before the safety of innocent victims. I think the way to do this, and, it is my wife's idea by the way, is to lower all U.S. flags to half-mast at government facilities around the world and keep them there until Congress passes meaningful laws for gun control.

Then you, Mr. President, can be instrumental in convincing large and small business, plus individuals who fly the flag, to lower their flags to half-staff until Congress addresses and does something about gun violence. When American citizens realize the reason for doing this, and the fact that it is an on-going event, hopefully that will make them better comprehend the gun slaughter that takes place on American streets every day.

I thank you for your consideration, Mr. President, and my wife and I stand ready to help in any way we can in this matter.

Jack and Barbara Dunning
Cave Creek, AZ

Flags at half-mast until more gun control

Yesterday I introduced the concept of lowering all the flags to half-staff until the U.S. Congress addresses the problem of gun violence. On government facilities, private residences, commercial buildings, just anywhere that flies the American flag. Right through the evening hours,all the next day and on and on and on. Until we get acceptable gun legislation that will stop these mass gun killings and all the day to day bloodshed.

The Orlando LGBT club is only the latest of a string of mass murders by guns which already numbers 141 just in 2016. I read the comment just after the Florida devastation that from Sandy Hook (where 20 children age 6 were slaughtered with an assault rifle) to Orlando, the public's attitude toward more gun control has not changed measurably. They're still against it which is completely dumbfounding to me.

This can all be traced back to the cowards in Congress (Democrats and Republicans) who refuse to pass the reasonable gun control bills that would have saved many of the lives in those 141 mass shooting, and the day to day shootings on the streets. And this can be attributed to Congress' fear of retaliation from the National Rifle Assn. (NRA) and its head gun nut, Wayne LaPierre. Grown men who allow this sleaze bag to run their lives.

It's pathetic but if people woke up each day looking at flags everywhere at half-mast, after a while maybe this whole dilemma could be solved.

Think about it.

Here's an idea to make the gun control issue work

Fly the American flag at half-staff until Congress passes new gun control laws that will help curtail gun violence. This is not my idea. It is my wife's idea and she isn't even as close to the gun control movement as I am. But it is time that we realized the current loose gun laws and open availability of any kind of weapon that anyone wants is not working.

The National Rifle Assn.'s head, Wayne LaPierre, and his NRA minions can spout off their mouths all they want about the 2nd Amendment, but it is clear that their way has failed miserably. There have been 141 mass shootings in 2016. With 6,171 total deaths, 1,577 of them under the age of seventeen, 260 under eleven. If the American public can't understand this, there must be something wrong with their priorities.

So, how about lowering the flag to half-mast and leaving it there until we get some results on gun control legislation. I have researched this and it is legal to fly the flag at night as long as it is illuminated. The President can order this for government facilities but I am also talking about all those flags that are on display around the country, commercial and private, and around the world at other U.S. possessions. If we lead this movement here, maybe other countries hopefully will join in the cause and lower their flags to half-staff.

The purpose is to shame Congress into doing something about gun violence. So think about this over the weekend and follow my blog for more information. And please leave your comments that can be shared with others, particularly if your home or business agrees with the idea.

American gun murder rate is obscene

Shannon Watts

"Americans are 20 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than people in other developed countries," this from Shannon Watts on MSNBC following the San Bernardino gun slaughter. She is the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a part of Everytown for Gun Safety. Watts, like many of the rest of us have run out of adjectives to describe the gun carnage going on in the United States that has been fostered by the National Rifle Assn. and a group of greedy cowards in Congress. There is blood on their hands that will never be washed off.

"Everytown for Gun Safety research shows us that In states that require background checks, there are 52% fewer mass shootings, 46% fewer women shot to death by intimate partners, and 48% fewer law enforcement officers killed with handguns," is her proof that common sense gun laws do work. In the San Bernrdino case a straw purchaser bought the guns for the couple who killed fourteen, a law that Pres. Obama has been trying to pass.

Shannon Watts says the tide is turning and in her position I trust her judgment and urge all gun control advocates to let it be known how you feel.

Bernie Sanders on gun control

This is what Bernie Sanders wants to do about gun control:

1. We can expand background checks to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the dangerously mentally ill. This is an idea that over 80% of Americans agree with, even a majority of gun owners.2. & 3. We can renew the assault weapons ban and end the sale of high capacity magazines — military-style tools created for the purpose of killing people as efficiently as possible.4. Since 2004, over 2,000 people on the FBI’s terrorist watch list have legally purchased guns in the United States. Let’s close the “terror gap” and make sure known foreign and domestic terrorists are included on prohibited purchaser lists.5. We can close loopholes in our laws that allow perpetrators of stalking and dating violence to buy guns. In the United States, the intended targets of a majority of our mass shootings are intimate partners or family members, and over 60% of victims are women and children. Indeed, a woman is five times more likely to die in a domestic violence incident when a gun is present.6. We should close the loophole that allows prohibited purchasers to buy a gun without a completed background check after a three-day waiting period expires. Earlier this year, Dylann Roof shot and killed nine of our fellow Americans while they prayed in a historic church, simply because of the color of their skin. This act of terror was possible because of loopholes in our background check laws. Congress should act to ensure the standard for ALL gun purchases is a completed background check. No check — no sale.7. It’s time to pass federal gun trafficking laws. I support Kirsten Gillibrand’s Hadiya Pendleton and Nyasia Pryear-Yard Gun Trafficking & Crime Prevention Act of 2015, which would “make gun trafficking a federal crime and provide tools to law enforcement to get illegal guns off the streets and away from criminal networks and street gangs.”8. It’s time to strengthen penalties for straw purchasers who buy guns from licensed dealers on behalf of a prohibited purchaser.9. We must authorize resources for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study and research the causes and effects of gun violence in the United States of America.10. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are over 21,000 firearm suicides every year in the United States. It’s time we expand and improve our mental health capabilities in this country so that people who need care can get care when they need it, regardless of their level of income.

New York Daily News blasts NRA

The gutsy NY Daily news, a conservative newspaper, has taken up the charge against the NRA and its irresponsible blocking of any kind of gun legislation. If we had more newspapers like this throughout the U.S. we might have prevented some of the 309 mass shootings so far in just 2015. One of the reactions from the NYDN earlier front page, “God Isn’t Fixing This,” was from the Fox News anchor idiot Elizabeth Hasselbeck who said,  "if you think prayer is less effective than gun control laws 'you’re lining up with the terrorists.'” It is this kind of garbage spewed from the Faux News Network that helps urge these fanatical terrorists on.

Here's another example of the New York News support of gun control with their past front page spreads:

The NRA Doesn't Want Public to Know Where Gun Violence Weapons Come From

The National Rifle Assn. (NRA) has pushed the limits of the Second Amendment to the extent that there is daily gun violence all over America, unabated because a gutless Congress won't enact laws to control guns in this country. The 2nd Amendment is an antique that should either be drastically modified or repealed. There is no hope for reasonable gun control until the NRA, along with its leader, Wayne LaPierre, are backed into a corner and told to shut up. 

Just yesterday I posted on my blog about the death of an innocent 19-year-old girl and asked the question I have been asking for a couple of years: Where did he get the gun? There is no answer to that because the NRA has refused to allow a gun registry that would assist law enforcement in tracing back every gun used in violent shootings. One of the reasons the gun lobby doesn't want that registry is that then many of the weapons used in gun violence might be connected to NRA members. 

Where Bernie Sanders Stands on the Issues

Bernie Sanders believes in the average person and detests wealth in relation to inequality between that and the other 99% of the country. This has kept him in office for almost 35 years now but it has all been in the state of Vermont. Not many racial problems there or gun violence or difficulty with immigration, nor has he had to really get out and actively woo the female vote. But that was Vermont and now he wants to be President of the United States. Although he is reasonably defined on many issues, his goal must be to make these positions crystal clear to the public. Here they are:

Racial issues:Voted NO on ending preferential treatment by race in college admissions. Rated 97% by the NAACP, indicating a pro-affirmative-action stance. Sponsored Recognize Juneteenth as historical end of slavery.
Gun Control: Voted YES on banning high-capacity magazines of over 10 bullets. Voted YES on allowing firearms in checked baggage on Amtrak trains. Voted YES on prohibiting foreign & UN aid that restricts US gun ownership. Voted YES on prohibiting product misuse lawsuits on gun manufacturers. Voted YES on prohibiting suing gunmakers & sellers for gun misuse. Voted NO on decreasing gun waiting period from 3 days to 1. Rated F by the NRA, indicating a pro-gun control voting record.
Immigration Reform: Voted YES on continuing federal funds for declared "sanctuary cities".  Voted NO on comprehensive immigration reform. Voted NO on declaring English as the official language of the US government. Voted YES on eliminating the "Y" nonimmigrant guestworker program. Voted NO on building a fence along the Mexican border. Voted NO on reporting illegal aliens who receive hospital treatment. Voted NO on more immigrant visas for skilled workers. Rated 0% by FAIR, indicating a voting record loosening immigration. Rated 8% by USBC, indicating an open-border stance.

More on this later.

GUN CONTROL ADVOCATES SHOULD LOVE BERNIE SANDERS...I THINK

The Senator from Vermont who is running the Democratic nomination against Hillary Clinton has voted for more background checks and to ban assault weapons and magazines of over 10 rounds. But on the other hand he voted against the Brady bill, voted to block lawsuits against gun manufacturers, and voted to allow guns to be transported in checked baggage on Amtrak trains and to prohibit foreign aid from going to any international efforts to restrict gun ownership. Not sure where Sanders stands on open and concealed carry and so far cannot find where he has voted for or against. The latter is a hot issue and is now being voted on in the house to drop some of the requirements on getting a permit. This is my sore spot because there are so many cowboys on the street carrying around a gun in a holster or concealed who have not had one iota of training. Anyone who stands for that does not deserve to be President.

SHOULD YOU ALLOW YOUR CHILD IN A HOME WITH GUNS?

A woman recently wrote a gossip columnist that the mother of one of her son's friends refused to let her child come to their house because there were guns there. The first mom quickly contacted the other mom to explain how perfectly secure the guns were in her house to alleviate the concern. It may have satisfied the distressed mom but it wouldn't satisfy me. Here's why. According to the Gun Violence Archive, 666 children age 17 and under have died or been injured by gun violence since the start of 2015. New Yorkers against Gun Violence reports that 2,694 children die from gun violence every year. Healthday News says gunshot wounds send around 20 kids to the hospital every day in the U.S. Our subject mom may very well be locking up her guns but someone isn't.  

DEFINITION OF A GUN NUT

A gun nut is the kind of individual that loves his or her gun(s) over the life of an innocent gun violence victim. They have no room for negotiations, period, only a demand that their gun rights not be violated in any way. A gun nut has a ring in the nose, pulled regularly by the NRA asking for money to fund an organization that is completely self-absorbed.  This person believes the 2nd Amendment is sacrosanct and completely untouchable, that the Founding Fathers had Wayne LaPierre's and the NRA's interpretation of this law in mind when it was passed in 1791. A gun nut swaggers into a Target or Kroger store with arrogance just to show that it can be done, sometimes masking a limited masculinity or femininity. Any conversation on firearms immediately prompts the comment, "Sounds like you're trying to take away my gun." Most likely many gun nuts maintain an arsenal at home alleging for years now the government takeover that is "just around the corner." There is possibly a gun nut on every block and if we could just get rid of these radicals, the solution to gun violence would be so much easier.  

GUN CONTROL BUILT INTO 2ND AMENDMENT

Adam Winkler is a Constitutional Law Professor at U.C.L.A. and author of the book "Gunfight." He is an expert on the legality of gun rights and I have corresponded with him regularly on this subject. I asked him two questions recently: 1) Is there any constitutional law validity in the premise that based on the many revisions of the 1st Amendment, that the same could apply to the 2nd Amendment? I refer you to Barry Lyga's "Second Amendment Loopholes." 2) Do you see any loopholes in the 2nd Amendment that people like the Brady Organization or CSGV, or the individual American could pursue legally? His answer was not a direct response to the questions but more pointed to the issue of gun control.

First, he says he "wouldn't call them loopholes, but the Second Amendment does include space for legitimate gun control." I used the term "loophole" for its obvious meaning, "a means of escape or evasion; a means or opportunity of evading a rule, law, etc." However, Adam's answers are much more directed at the need for gun control. He continues: "There's some reference to gun owners being 'well regulated' in the text itself. Well, it's government that does the regulating. And we know that the founders who wrote the Second Amendment supported gun regulation, including gun bans, gun registration, and safe storage laws." Two direct hits on gun rights so should we call it quits here? No way!

Adam Winkler confirms the legal possibility of gun control with, “More importantly, the scope of the right as it has been shaped over the course of American history permits government significant leeway to regulate the right so long as the right is not nullified or destroyed.”

Seems to me like prohibiting assault rifles, requiring universal background checks and limiting open and concealed carry to only those with a specific need does not nullify or destroy the right of an individual to have a weapon in his or her home for protection as the Supreme Court recently ruled.

With these hard facts and a Constitutional Law Professor like Adam Winkler to back them up, why haven't the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence gone to court?

 

 

  

 

 

TEA PARTY TRIES TO OUT-DUMB HILLARY CLINTON

Tea Party numb-nuts caught Hillary Clinton in a bit of a compromising position in the making of a
complex statement on gun control. Now, to begin with, have you ever read one of the Tea Party site posts chocked full of typos and grammatical errors, along with their regular tirade of misinformation? I do because it always makes such good copy,
 like this one. Hillary said, "We cannot let a minority of people – and it’s, that’s what it is, it is a minority of people – hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people." If TPers can't see the deeper meaning in this statement then they are denser than I thought. What Clinton is saying is what she has said all along on gun control; a small group of the radical gun culture is terrorizing the public and Congress and we can't allow this to happen. Which is dead on. Understand now?

YOUR HOME IS NOT SAFE UNDER CURRENT GUN CONTROL LAWS

So says the Washington Post Editorial Board, one of the leading U.S. newspapers. This piece starts out with the simple but oft-repeated phrase, “THIS SHOULDN’T happen in Troutdale. You don’t expect something like that to happen in your hometown.” This reaction after a 15-year-old high school student killed a fellow 14-year-old student and then shot himself. The Post says don't expect anything from this Congress which refuses to even consider gun control legislation. But just take a look back...from an elementary school where 20 6-year-olds were massacred with an assault rifle to the Washington Navy Yard where a gunman killed 12 with a sawed-off shotgun, and the same thing happens in hundreds of other  venues around the country. The Editorial Board comments, “We’re the only developed country on earth where this happens. And it happens now once a week..." President Obama has spoken forcefully. Now we need action!

GUN CONTROL TAKES OVER BROOKLYN BRIDGE

Chipotle gun nuts

They came, they marched, they made their point. It is time we see the well balanced people of the gun control movement out there in force for reasonable gun laws rather than the gun nuts who sling their assault weapons over their shoulders shuffling their way into a Target or Chipotle to protest and prove their masculinity. If ever there were a couple of losers, it's the two in the attached photo. Now to me this pair looks like what I call gun nuts; more guns than brains. But there were 1,000 gun control demonstrators on the Brooklyn Bridge, including almost 100 from Newtown, Connecticut, the site of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting rampage. Lots of moms against gun violence were there who look very intelligent compared to the Chipotle double-digit IQs. The momentum is obviously there this time for gun control.