Category Archives: Gun Lobby

May 8, 2013 · 9:27 PM

Connecticut gun rights group smears father of boy killed at Sandy Hook

Neil Heslin screenshot

More despicable “gun rights” smear campaigning.

This man lost a son to gun violence and what they do is smear him to shut him up.  Something tells me that Neil Heslin will not be silenced or deterred by this group of low-life idiots.  In fact I hope the blow-back from their actions is swift and fierce.

The Raw Story

A small Connecticut gun rights group gained attention on Wednesday after issuing a press release that smeared the father of a boy killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Connecticut Carry released a “rap sheet” of Neil Heslin, listing his multiple arrests for driving under the influence and conviction for felony narcotics possession. The group also published a document entitled “Neil Heslin’s Troubled Past,” which included lawsuits related to foreclosure, collection efforts, and child support.

“So often we find that the strongest critics of the right to bear arms are those people who cannot be trusted with firearms themselves,” the nonprofit group wrote it its statement. “A felon within arm’s reach of the president of the administration so dead set on background checks. No better testimony to how ineffective background checks are needs to be presented.”

Heslin has spoken out in support of stronger gun laws, including expanding criminal background checks and restricting high-capacity magazines. His appearances on TV and at legislative hearings have made him one of the more well-known relatives of the victims of the tragic school shooting, which left 20 young children and 6 adults dead.

“While we all, as humans, share in the sorrow and outrage of Mr. Heslin’s tragic loss, as well as everyone who lost someone on that terrible day; we don’t all have to feel ok with Mr. Heslin profiting off of the tragedy and hurting the gun owning, law abiding citizens who did nothing wrong that day,” Connecticut Carry said.

How Heslin is profiting from his advocacy is unclear. The Huffington Post contacted several prominent gun control groups, but none of them said they ever employed Heslin.

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April 17, 2013 · 4:44 PM

SENATE KILLS BACKGROUND CHECK AMENDMENT

 

Background-Check Amendment Fizzles

The Huffington Post

The Senate failed to muster sufficient support Wednesday for a gun-buyer background check bill that’s supported by nearly 90 percent of Americans, voting the measure down in a procedural vote that likely dooms any major legislation to curb gun violence.

The measure — painstakingly crafted by the bipartisan duo of Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) — was seen as the key to getting the first measure in decades to address the sorts of mass slaughters that so recently horrified the country in Newtown, Conn., where 20 children and six teachers were gunned down, and in Auroro, Colo., where moviegoers where killed in a theater.

The amendment failed 54 to 46, falling short of the 60-vote threshold needed to break a filibuster of the measure, even as victims of the Sandy Hook shootings watched from the Senate gallery and activists at a vigil outside the Capitol read the names of people slain since then, hoping to prompt action.

Passage of the background check amendment had been seen as key because it represented a bipartisan agreement in a highly polarized debate, and would have preserved a major part of the overall bill that many advocates against gun violence saw as a minimum step toward stemming gun massacres.

Stronger measures up for a vote also appeared headed for failure, including a ban of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines. The only significant steps that all sides agreed on were stemming illegal trafficking of weapons and improving mental health efforts.

The background check measure would have expanded the current check system to cover sales of weapons on the Internet and at gun shows.

Democratic aides privately conceded that with the failure of background checks, the rest of the bill would likely go down. One described it as a “pyrhic victory,” noting that a majority of the Senate backed the bill that is so popular outside the halls of Congress. “It’s the farthest we’ve come,” said the aide, speaking on background to talk freely.

The aides saw little hope of it being resurrected, although leaders kept that option open.

Opponents argued that the expanded check system would have laid the groundwork for a national registry of gun owners, although the measure expressly forbid such a step with a 15-year jail sentence for anyone who tried to do that.

They also called it a useless step that would achieve little.

“Expanded background checks would not have prevented Newtown,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Neb.) said.

But Toomey said his amendment would have at least been a modest step in the right direction.

“The goal was to see if we can find a way to make it a little bit more difficult for people who have no legal right to have a gun for them to obtain it,” Toomey said. “That was the goal.”

The Seante failed to meet it.

 

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April 3, 2013 · 9:36 AM

Head Of Gun Organization: ‘Time To Hunt Democrats’

The gun lobby will eventually “hang” itself  by making statements like this…

Think Progress

As the Senate prepares to take up a comprehensive gun violence prevention plan later this month, gun advocates have amped up their already inflammatory rhetoric against any additional gun regulations. Ahead of President Obama’s visit to Colorado on Wednesday to promote the measure, one local gun organization promised to give him and other Democrats a hostile welcome.

In an interview with NPR, former NRA lobbyist and founder of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners Dudley Brown compared deer hunting season with election season, when gun owners would be free to “hunt Democrats”:

Brown complains universal background checks are just a step towards identifying gun owners so the government can seize their weapons, and he calls the 15-bullet limit on ammunition clips arbitrary. He’s promising political payback in next year’s election that could cost Colorado Democrats their majorities.

“I liken it to the proverbial hunting season,” Brown says. “We tell gun owners, there’s a time to hunt deer. And the next election is the time to hunt Democrats.”

The analogy between elections and hunting is a favorite among conservatives; former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was widely condemned for her website’s map placing crosshairs over vulnerable Democratic districts in 2010.

Brown left the NRA in the 1990s because he felt the NRA was “kissing up to politicians.” The NRA, at the time, blasted Rocky Mountain Gun Owners as an “extreme right gun group” and called Brown the “Al Sharpton of the gun movement” for his inflammatory approach. Since then, the NRA has been pulled much farther to the right and is much more aligned with the “extreme” beliefs of RMGO. Both the NRA and RMGO believe there is a UN conspiracy to take away guns. The NRA and Republican lawmakers have warned of “tyranny” and compared Obama to Hitler and Stalin.

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March 26, 2013 · 11:17 AM

Rand Paul and Ted Cruz threaten filibuster on guns

Rand Paul (left) and Ted Cruz are pictured in this composite photo. | AP Photos

Is this really about the libertarian values of ‘smaller government‘ or is this the directive of the NRA via a couple of “campaign donations”?

Politico

Sens. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee are threatening to filibuster gun-control legislation, according to a letter they plan to hand-deliver to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office on Tuesday.

“We will oppose the motion to proceed to any legislation that will serve as a vehicle for any additional gun restrictions,” the three conservatives wrote in a copy of the signed letter obtained by POLITICO.

Reid plans to bring up a gun-control measure that focuses on broadening background checks and cracking down on interstate gun-trafficking after the current Senate recess.

Conservatives are concerned that once that bill reaches the floor, amendments could stiffen restrictions on gun control.

Moreover, they understand that Reid intends to allow liberal amendments that would limit clip capacity and ban certain assault weapons to be offered — even though they would be defeated — to give Democrats a chance to vote on them. For moderate Democrats in competitive states, that amounts to an opportunity to vote no and show allegiance to gun rights.

Though they don’t use the word “filibuster” in the letter, the conservatives are leaving no doubt that they would filibuster on an initial procedural question — the motion to proceed.

Lee staged a test vote on the issue during consideration of the Senate budget last week. He tried to amend a point of order against gun control legislation to the budget but fell short. It needed a three-fifths supermajority and failed 50-49, needing 60 votes to pass. But the final tally emboldened Lee, Paul and Cruz because they were so close to a majority and a filibuster takes just 41 votes to sustain.

 

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January 16, 2013 · 9:18 PM

Has the NRA lost it entirely?

Has the NRA lost it entirely?

This article speaks to the NRA’s ad that targets Sasha and Malia Obama. (The announcer calls them: “the president’s kids”.)

Salon – Joan Walsh

While Obama signs 23 executive orders on gun control, the organization takes a bizarre shot at his family

On the eve of President Obama announcing his gun control agenda, based on Vice President Joe Biden’s task force recommendations, the National Rifle Association needed to go big: to remind Americans that the organization protects their gun rights, and to remind politicians that they’re a smart and formidable political force they’d be unwise to cross.

Instead, they showed us the truth: They’re part of the vast and increasingly incompetent right-wing conspiracy that’s sacrificed its own effectiveness for the pleasure of hating Democrats generally and our first black president in particular.

You’ve either seen or read about the ad: A narrator intones, “Are the president’s kids more important than yours?” (Huh? you might say.) “Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their schools? Mr. Obama demands the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, but he’s just another elitist hypocrite when it comes to a fair share of security.”

Of course, the NRA ignores the common-sense answer to its own question: Every president’s child is protected by armed guards. They’re called the Secret Service. Outside of the fever swamps of anti-Obama hatred, no one could possibly have a problem with that, let alone call it hypocrisy.

Just the way Fox News’ insularity and reality denial has been a form of media and political malpractice, harming its viewers by shielding them from the Obama victory to come in 2012, the NRA has disabled itself by wallowing in anti-Obama hatred and paranoia.  On the eve of the president’s big stand, when they most needed to show their supposedly formidable political muscle, instead they showed that they’re completely tone-deaf and politically silly. That’s because they’ve been marinating in the bile of Obama’s enemies, where the president’s modest moves on guns, in the wake of the Newtown massacre, are a trigger to call for his impeachment – thanks, Ed Meese, Mr. Iran-Contra! – or worse.

And on that fringe, of course, everyone knows the president is just a big fat elitist hypocrite. Over on that fringe, Sasha and Malia Obama don’t elicit feelings of tenderness and protectiveness like they do in the rest of the country. They elicit feelings of contempt, as the children of “elitist hypocrites,” if they provoke any feelings at all.

In the real world, we know that our first black president has faced more assassination threats than any president in history, and that the Secret Service has a particularly tough job protecting him and his family. In the NRA’s world, wingnuts pray for his death with Psalm 109, which asks God, “may his children be fatherless and his wife a widow” and “may no one … take pity on his fatherless children.)

And no, I’m not quoting some lone NewsMax commenter or a Breitbart blogger’s tweet: The verse has been popular among right-wing ministers and politicians since Obama’s inauguration. It’s spawned bumper stickers. Almost exactly a year ago, Kansas’ Republican House Speaker Mike O’Neal was emailing it around to his political allies. “At last — I can honestly voice a Biblical prayer for our president! Look it up — it is word for word! Let us all bow our heads and pray. Brothers and Sisters, can I get an AMEN? AMEN!!!!!!” O’Neal refused to apologize. Then he apologized. Then he retired. Wayne LaPierre might want to look to O’Neal for inspiration.

To be fair, maybe the NRA is simply saying that every child in America should be protected by an armed guard, like Sasha and Malia Obama are. That would be consistent with LaPierre’s creepy maxim: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” (More to the point: That would sell a hell of a lot of guns, the NRA’s real goal.) In reality, though, the ad springs from a reflexive belief that most Americans share LaPierre’s contempt for the president.

We don’t, Wayne. We just reelected him. He’s the first president since Dwight Eisenhower to get more than 50 percent of the vote twice. Your hatred is blurring your vision and hurting your political aim. That’s bad for the NRA but it’s good for the rest of us.

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January 4, 2013 · 4:03 PM

Former NRA President: Banning Assault Weapons Is Like Banning People of Color

Am I the only one who has the feeling that right-wing zealots from all facets of the political spectrum are imploding?

They are using the craziest excuses to justify their twisted logic.  It’s both incredibly humorous and downright scary…

Think Progress

The National Rifle Association has repeatedly thumbed its nose at calls for stronger gun safety measures after the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. Current NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre shocked many by attacking these efforts and calling instead for armed guards in every school. Still, on Wednesday, past NRA President Marion Hammer took the lobbying organization’s pro-gun radicalism to new heights.

On NRA’s news show, Hammer warned that gun owners are “in for a massive fight like we’ve probably never seen before,” in which the government will take guns away “in order to control the masses.”

When asked about proposals to ban certain kinds of assault weapons, Hammer also charged that guns are suffering discrimination similar to racism against people of color:

HOST: And they even admit it’s about banning the ugliest guns. They admit it.

HAMMER: Banning people and things because of the way they look because of the way they look, but here they are again. The color of a gun, the way it looks. It’s just bad politics.

Watch it:

Despite a string of mass shootings and casualties in recent years, the NRA’s clout has effectively stifled conversation about America’s gun violence problem. But with the public’s renewed horror at the deaths of 28 people in Newtown, most of them children, the gun lobby’s grip may be slipping. Democrats introduced a slew of gun safety bills on the first day of the new Congress that would ban high capacity clips and drums, certain kinds of assault weapons, and close the gun show loophole that allows people to buy guns without a background check.

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December 27, 2012 · 12:15 AM

Far Right Website Newsmax Shoots Down NRA Israel Myth

This should tell you everything you need to know about their politics

This should tell you everything you need to know about their politics

The NRA can’t rely on truth to support their positions so they resort to such blatant lies that even a far right publication has to call them out on it…

Addicting Info

Whatever side of the gun control debate you’re on, everyone can agree: there’s something different this time. Whether we’ve reached a tipping point and we are collectively tired of the unnecessary violence or the crime was so shocking that it can not be rationalized, it’s clear that the usual bag of NRA tactics is not working.

Nothing has made this more clear than the outright rebellion from reliable right-wing sources. The New York Post  labeled NRA Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre a “Gun Nut.” Fox News has been uncharacteristically subdued and now, even Newsmax, a website known only for being an outlet for right-wing propaganda has turned its back on the NRA in a bit of rarely seen journalistic integrity:

Israel’s policy on issuing guns is restrictive, and armed guards at its schools are meant to stop terrorists, not crazed or disgruntled gunmen, experts said Monday, rejecting claims by America’s top gun lobby that Israel serves as proof for its philosophy that the U.S. needs more weapons, not fewer.

Far from the image of a heavily armed population where ordinary people have their own arsenals to repel attackers, Israel allows its people to acquire firearms only if they can prove their professions or places of residence put them in danger. The country relies on its security services, not armed citizens, to prevent terror attacks.

This is not a right-wing knee jerk defense of Israel in any sense. It is simply a statement of reality that stands in stark contrast to the NRA’s Wild, Wild west fantasy. Newsmax goes on:

“Israel had a whole lot of school shootings until they did one thing: They said, ‘We’re going to stop it,’ and they put armed security in every school and they have not had a problem since then,” LaPierre said on the NBC News show “Meet the Press.”

Israel never had “a whole lot of school shootings.” Authorities could only recall two in the past four decades.

…

Israel didn’t mandate armed guards at the entrances to all schools until 1995, the Education Ministry said — more than two decades after the Maalot attack and two years after a Palestinian militant wounded five pupils and their principal in a knifing at a Jerusalem school.

…

Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor spelled it out.

“We’re fighting terrorism, which comes under very specific geopolitical and military circumstances. This is not something that compares with the situation in the U.S,” Palmor said.

The only terror we’re fighting on American soil is the one instilled by groups like the NRA itself. Newsmax goes on to fully describe how superior Israel’s gun policies are in relation to America’s in the sense that the Israelis take the time to know who is buying a gun, why and to check whether they are a risk to public safety. All of this would be considered “tyranny” but gun “rights” advocates. It’s OK for the rest of the country to live in fear of the next gun massacre as long as a well-funded minority tells us they have the right to buy as many guns as they want.

This particular episode of America’s addiction to guns has not yet played itself out and the NRA may yet prevail with its bag of distractions and nonsense. This time, though, it will not be with quite the same amount of automatic support from the usual suspects. Hopefully that means the tide is finally turning and America can reverse the “shoot first, ask never” mentality that has overtaken us.

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December 17, 2012 · 12:29 AM

Five Lies The Gun Lobby Tells You

None of it is true…

Think Progress

America’s seems to be in for another debate over gun regulation after the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School left 27 (mostly children) dead. So it’s worth reviewing five made against regulating gun ownership in the United States:

MYTH #1: More guns don’t lead to more murders. A survey by researchers at the Harvard University School of Public Health found strong statistical support for the idea that, even if you control for poverty levels, more people die from gun homicides in areas with higher rates of gun ownership. And despite what gun advocates say, countries like Israel and Switzerland don’t disprove the point.

MYTH #2: The Second Amendment prohibits strict gun control. While the Supreme Court ruled in D.C. v. Heller that bans on handgun ownership were unconstitutional, the ruling gives the state and federal governments a great deal of latitude to regulate that gun ownership as they choose. As the U.S. Second Court of Appeals put it in a recent ruling upholding a New York regulation, “The state’s ability to regulate firearms and, for that matter, conduct, is qualitatively different in public than in the home. Heller reinforces this view. In striking D.C.’s handgun ban, the Court stressed that banning usable handguns in the home is a ‘policy choice[]‘ that is ‘off the table,’ but that a variety of other regulatory options remain available, including categorical bans on firearm possession in certain public locations.”

MYTH #3: State-level gun controls haven’t worked. Scholars Richard Florida and Charlotta Mellander recently studied state-to-state variation in gun homicide levels. They found that “[f]irearm deaths are significantly lower in states with stricter gun control legislation.” This is backed up by research on local gun control efforts and cross-border gun violence.

MYTH #4: We only need better enforcement of the laws we have, not new laws. In fact, Congress has passed several laws that cripple the ability for current gun regulations to be enforced the way that they’re supposed to. According to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, a series of federal laws referred to as the Tiahrt amendments “limit public access to crime gun trace data, prohibit the use of gun trace data in hearings, pertaining to licensure of gun dealers and litigation against gun dealers, and restrict ATF’s authority to require gun dealers to conduct a physical inventory of their firearms.” Other federal laws “limited the ATF compliance inspections” and grant “broad protections from lawsuits against firearm manufacturers and retail sellers.”

MYTH #5: Sensible gun regulation is prohibitively unpopular. Not necessarily. As the New Republic’s Amy Sullivan reported after the series of mass shootings this summer, a majority of Americans would prefer both to enforce existing law more strictly and pass new regulations on guns when given the option to choose both rather than either/or. Specific gun regulations are also often more popular than the abstract idea.

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