Showing posts with label Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG). Show all posts

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

The debates may not make a difference but we’ll watch them anyway

BUT FIRST…THERE IS A DRIVE to confront President Obama and Mitt Romney in the Wednesday debate with the question of what they will do about regulating guns following all the recent gun massacres around the country.  In particular, eight of the 12 relatives of those killed by James Holmes in the Aurora, Colo. movie theatre have written to debate moderator Jim Lehrer saying:

“To ignore the problem of gun violence where two of the worst shootings in U.S. history took place - Aurora and Columbine - would not only be noticeable by its absence but would slight the memories of our loved ones killed." 


Obama Romney ready to debate

To coincide with this request and as a forewarning to both candidates, The Mayors Against Illegal Guns, headed up by NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston’s Thomas Menino, are running national TV ads featuring Stephen Barton, one of those wounded in Aurora, asking Obama and Romney how they would reduce gun violence.  MAIG uses high profile events—like a recent Super Bowl ad—and now pre-debate interest to get their point across.

Why we must debate gun control:

So in terms of their importance, the debates are going to be very important to gun control advocates if Lehrer addresses the issue.  It is beyond me why he wouldn’t.  There may be certain parameters set by the candidates, and this may be one they don’t want to discuss, but that too would be a travesty considering the gun mayhem that is taking place in America Today.  I will be releasing my monthly shooting report in a few days that will further confirm the problem.


NJ Gov. Chris christie
BUT WAIT…GOP vice presidential contender Paul Ryan says the debate is not really “critical” for Mitt Romney, at the same time praising Obama’s debating skills, attempting to take the heat off his running mate.  But at the same time, New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie has predicted that the debate will literally turn the race around for Romney, apparently not knowing what Paul Ryan knows.  Like all politics, they turn these critical debates into a game.

Donna Brazile, Dem. strategist, comments that most debates since the 1980s haven’t changed the outcome of the elections.  She does cite one instance where it did make a difference in 1960 when Nixon apparently went through a meltdown which changed the direction of that election.  Nixon refused to debate in 1968 or 1972.  She also mentions the Reagan against Carter comment, “There you go again,” leading up to “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

Obama Romney put on the gloves
Arch conservative Ann Coulter says that we are going to see an “unfiltered” Mitt Romney, whatever than means.  She adds in support like Christie, that this will make all the difference with Independent voters.  One poll shows it almost even with 47% of Independents for Obama, 45% for Romney.  Halimah Abdullah on CNN feels Obama won’t talk about his record but Mitt Romney will.  GOP pollster Whit Ayres feels it is all about who can fix the economy.

Brazile thinks that whether or not the candidates are good or bad, it can make a difference, but she agrees with Ayres, the conditions in the country right now are on everyone’s mind.  Voters want to hear how Obama and Romney will fix the problem and this could make a difference if the public believes one or the other of the candidates has the right answer.

Monday, August 27, 2012

Empire State Building shooting ruins mass shooting silence

The Onion was celebrating a week without any major massacres by firearms when it had to back off as it was announced that there had just been a mass shooting at New York City’s Empire State Building right in the middle of Manhattan.  You probably wouldn’t classify this as the typical massacre like Aurora, Colo. or the Wisconsin Sikh temple because the gunman only shot and killed one person.  The nine wounded were from police fire.

Assisting victim in Empire State Bldg shooting
Now I am no expert at criminology, but does this incident appear to have been prompted by a police force—one of the finest in the world—that has become influenced with the possibility that every public shooting is potentially a massacre?  These are well trained officers yet they wounded nine bystanders in the melee.  Has the huge availability of guns in this country pushed police departments in America to the edge, resulting in this kind of outcome?

To give you an idea of the actual anticipation of the possibility of more imminent gun violence, federal authorities commented that a lot can happen in 24 hours, saying: ““so let’s not get too excited yet.”  And they were right.  Yet another person armed with a gun holding a grudge killed an innocent person.  Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano was down the street talking to the celebrating crowd and when told what had happened said:

“You know what, forget it. There was another one about 20 blocks from here. So, party’s over. Sorry.”

It is a sorry state of affairs when we can’t go one week without a shooting that ends up killing innocent victims and wounding several others.  But it is blatantly clear why this can happen and it all centers around the National Rifle Assn. (NRA) and its head, Wayne LaPierre.  This organization, commandeered by this wacko in the late 1970s, who devised his evil concept that 2nd Amendment rights are more important than human life, deserves the majority of the blame for all the killings.

Vivid tape of Empire State Bldg. chaos with victim:

The shooter, Jeffrey Johnson, used a .45-caliber semiautomatic and was armed with extra ammunition in his briefcase.  Johnson was killed by police but not until he caused nine innocent people to be shot.  In BuzzFeed.com “Criminologist James Alan Fox has written that, according to FBI data, mass shootings have fluctuated since 1980 with no sustained upward or downward trend.”  But his data stops with the year 2010 with no crime data available for 2012.

As regular readers know, I have been compiling nationwide figures on shootings since this past March, including deaths and woundings, broken down by the city in which they occurred.  The numbers are starkly unbelievable and should shock the apathetic American public that has been shunning gun control.  Since March 2012 there have been 432 deaths from 1,056 shootings; woundings were added to the report in June and in only 2 months there have been 628.

Keep in mind that these figures represent only those reported by the media and, thus, considered somewhat conservative.

To extend the data above by James Alan Fox that stopped in 2010 re. mass shootings, there were 28 that occurred since Columbine in 1999 through 2011, including the shooting and severe wounding of former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords in Tucson, Arizona in Jan. 2011 where 6 were killed and 18 others wounded.  Most notable from the 28, the massacre at Virginia Tech where 32 were killed, 15 wounded.  Then Fort Hood, Texas with 13 dead and 42 wounded.

But that was just the warm up.  2012 exploded during the summer with 17 wounded with an assault weapon at a Tuscaloosa, Ala. bar.  Then the mass shooting at the Aurora, Colo. theatre killing 12 and injuring 58.  Next it was the Sikh Temple in Wis. where 6 were killed and 4 wounded.  Which brings us up to the incident at New York’s empire State building.  Fox comments that this trend is likely to continue with around 300 million guns in the hands of Americans.

Also from BuzzFeed.com, Philip J. Cook, crime scholar and Ludwig's coauthor on Gun Violence, “believes adversarial political rhetoric is a possible contributing factor. He criticizes the NRA for ‘promoting the idea that Obama's goal is to take away guns and they have to fight to prevent that from happening,’ an idea he says has stirred up fringe gun enthusiasts and led to record-breaking rises in gun purchases and concealed-weapon applications in many states.

NY Mayor Bloomberg with his group
Just moments before the Empire State building shooting, NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg on WOR’s John Gambling Show said, “I don’t know what it takes, John.  Somebody asked me what would shock Congress. Well, they had a Congresswoman shot…. And that didn’t seem to do anything,” the mayor said. “The Founding Fathers I don’t think ever envisioned AK-47’s in the hands of people."  The congress is clueless and Obama afraid of the NRA.
Mayor Bloomberg has been asking for new gun regulations for years and in a
CBS NY article they are spelled out:

·       Require background checks for every gun sold — 40 percent of all guns are sold without background checks

·       Stronger enforcement of straw sales, where someone buys a gun for someone not eligible to own one

·       A requirement that states enter criminal and mental health records into the federal background check system

I would add to this the banning of all assault rifles and high capacity magazines.

When will this country wake up?  Following all other developed countries in gun control and leading that group plus many third-world countries in deaths from shootings should confound the simplest-minded person.  We are not a nation of dummies, although some congressional leaders and states like Arizona would challenge that notion.  We have a chance to do what’s right with the escalation of gun violence.  The question is…are we smart enough to do it?

Friday, July 27, 2012

NRA members defy organization’s leader wacky Wayne LaPierre

MAIG's Mayor Bloomberg
The National Rifle Assn. (NRA) membership told Mayors Against Illegal Guns, via pollster Frank Luntz, that they support sensible gun control.  This must have sent CEO Wayne LaPierre into the atmosphere; this fanatic is and has had a no-negotiations position for years.  Even on assault weapons and high capacity magazines.  Even after Virginia Tech, Tucson and now Aurora, Colorado.  The CrooksandLiars blog calls it a “real split” with “rabid” NRA leadership.

I have regularly put down NRA members because it seemed to me that they were as rabid as old Wayne and his minions but, hopefully, I am wrong.  Most of my conclusions were based on comments I have received when writing about gun control; many are absolutely unprintable, and that does say something for at least a portion of the members.  Also, I was crucified by NRAers when I posted on Daily Kos, eventually being thrown off the site for my views on gun control.

MUST SEE Young Turks video on Frank Luntz poll:

Here’s what New York Mayor Richard Bloomberg’s MAIG group found out:

87 percent of NRA members agree that support for 2nd Amendment rights goes hand-in-hand with keeping guns out of the hands of criminals.

There is very strong support for criminal background checks:
  • 74 percent support requiring criminal background checks of anyone purchasing a gun.
  • 79 percent support requiring gun retailers to perform background checks on all employees – a measure recently endorsed by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the trade association for the firearms industry.
  • NRA members strongly support allowing states to set basic eligibility requirements for people who want to carry concealed, loaded guns in public places. By contrast, the NRA leadership’s top federal legislative priority – national reciprocity for concealed carry permits – would effectively eliminate these requirements by forcing every state to allow non-residents to carry concealed guns even if they would not qualify for a local permit.

NRA members support many common state eligibility rules for concealed carrying:
  • 75 percent believe concealed carry permits should only be granted to applicants who have not committed any violent misdemeanors, including assault.
  • 74 percent believe permits should only be granted to applicants who have completed gun safety training.
  • 68 percent believe permits should only be granted to applicants who do not have prior arrests for domestic violence.
  • NRA's idea of gun control
  • 63 percent believe permits should only be granted to applicants 21 years of age or older.
If you have been reading this blog, you know that a great majority of what I have been advocating is included here.  It is also written about in other blogs like New Trajectory and Common Gunsense.  The Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence, States United to Prevent Gun Violence and the Brady Campaign all support similar types of regulation.  The only issue not addressed is the banning of assault weapons and high capacity gun magazines.  See the Luntz poll here.

Wacky Wayne will no doubt find countless things wrong with the poll, probably even attacking pollster Frank Luntz, most assuredly Mayor Bloomberg and the mayors Against Illegal Guns.  But maybe the time has come to challenge
Wayne LaPierre and his NRA leadership on the grounds that most all of the absurdity he has spouted in the past is just plain garbage and we are finally fed up with it. 

Read my two-part series on the fact that the NRA’s influence on political elections is virtually nil here and here.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG) uses Super Bowl to launch latest drive for more gun control

The Giants beat the Patriots 21 to 17 in the 2012 Super Bowl where no one turns down the sound on commercials that can sometime be as interesting as the game itself.  One in particular stood out on February 5, showing New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino vying for their local teams, food etc.  But the real focus of the 30 second commercial was a new push by Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG) for more gun control.

Bloomberg and Menino co-founded the organization in 2006 which currently has more than 600 mayors nationwide participating.  Their main thrust is to keep criminals from getting illegal guns. 



A good example of their work is the recent sting by MAIG at an Arizona gun show, a state where gun laws are the loosest in the nation.  MAIG investigators bought guns from a private weapons dealer there without anything but the money it took to make the purchase.  They even told the seller they probably could not pass a background check.  The seller simply laughed at their comment and sold them the guns, which is illegal.

MAIG plans to keep the heat on for more gun control right through the November election, although the Democrats still cringe at the thought of supporting any gun discipline legislation.  Unfortunately, there are more people in the U.S. with guns now and these newly created National Rifle Assn. gun worshippers are fixated on no control so anyone can buy a gun and take it anywhere.  And there lies the problem.


Arizona gun show sting

According to a Reuters report, “Members of the MAIG says it is not trying to take guns away from their legal owners, just to close loopholes that allow criminals to get guns and move them around undetected.”  Although murder is down in New York and nationwide, the mayors also comment that they still see too many killings of cops and teens.  It is rare for a day to go by in Arizona without a shooting, some of which end up as deaths.

This gun show loophole/background checks issue is one area that needs fixing.  But another is required education and training before you can own a gun.  Arizona has nothing, zip.  Most states don’t.  I decided to ask an expert so I contacted Ladd Everitt, Director of Communications for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and asked the following question: “Can you tell me the average gun training/education a gun owner is required to have?”  His answer below.

“If they're simply purchasing firearms, none whatsoever.  If they are going to be carrying that gun in public, they MIGHT be required to have training.  In 28 states you can now openly carry a loaded gun in public with no permitting, screening or training.  Four states now require no permitting, screening or training to carry a concealed firearm in public. 

And even in ‘Shall Issue’ states that require one to obtain a permit to carry a concealed firearm in public, several have no training requirement.  In Arizona, it is wide open.  Law enforcement would have no idea what the background of a gun carrier is until he opens fire (unless that individual voluntarily obtained a permit to carry a firearm into certain sensitive public spaces).”

Phew!  That means a mentally unstable person from Arizona could walk into a gun store there and buy a Glock 19 with a 15-round clip, hop in his car, and assuming Congress passes HR 822, the federal open-carry bill, with a carry permit drive to any state and commit mass murders like Jared Loughner in Tucson and Seung Hui Cho at Virginia Tech.  Assuming he wasn’t caught, he could be on his merry way to another state to commit more mayhem.  Only in America.

More on MAIG later.

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