The Senate can’t get 60 votes on background checks at gun shows, and I don’t even know what to write anymore. I mean honestly. This is a measure with 90% approval, and it’s so on the margin of what needs to be done to prevent the type of violence that’s been happening.
Background checks and limits to the amount of ammunition that can be fired before reloading are where the debate is. Maybe it’ll be a bit tougher for the worst people to get guns. Maybe the next killer will have to reload and maybe move on before he’s killed as many of the children in a room. Maybe only 10 or 15 kids will die in the next attack. Nothing to address handguns, or urban crime more generally. And that is too fucking much.
I don’t know what to say, except maybe thank God Gabby Giffords can still write.
I watch TV and read the papers like everyone else. We know what we’re going to hear: vague platitudes like “tough vote” and “complicated issue.” I was elected six times to represent southern Arizona, in the State Legislature and then in Congress. I know what a complicated issue is; I know what it feels like to take a tough vote. This was neither. These senators made their decision based on political fear and on cold calculations about the money of special interests like the National Rifle Association, which in the last election cycle spent around $25 million on contributions, lobbying and outside spending.
I don’t know what I can possibly add to her piece, except a determination to keep working. And of course fuck Instapundit.
Maybe we could find a couple of Republican senators who at least are willing to vote for background checks on Chechen terrorists before we let them buy guns and gunpowder?
From 1,
And don’t forget pressure cookers, too!
You sure Giffords can write? Her congressional testimony was written by her health care aide.
Seriously. She’s now a tragically malfunctioning prop for the left. Were she healthy and still in the House, with the district she represented her vote might have been No had this gone past the Senate.
Don’t forget she had herself photographed shooting an AR-15 for campaign purposes. There was a reason she thought that would make her look good to her constituency.
@3
Fifteen Democrats voted against a semiautomatic rifle ban.
http://online.wsj.com/article/.....oveLEFTTop
Fifteen.
Look at the states from which they hail. Colorado. Utah.
If Giffords was still in the House and this vote came up, she would likely be a No vote as well.
The following US Senators (90% of Republicans) voted on Wednesday to continue to allow the background check gun show loophole.
As a result, if Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev — a terrorist who killed three people and injured hundreds — is convicted and serves out his time he can walk into a gun show and buy an AR-15 with a hundred round clip without a background check. Walk in, buy the gun, walk out and maybe visit another Boston Marathon.
Alexander (R-TN)
Ayotte (R-NH)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Baucus (D-MT)
Begich (D-AK)
Blunt (R-MO)
Boozman (R-AR)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coats (R-IN)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
Cruz (R-TX)
Enzi (R-WY)
Fischer (R-NE)
Flake (R-AZ)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Hatch (R-UT)
Heitkamp (D-ND)
Heller (R-NV)
Hoeven (R-ND)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Johnson (R-WI)
Lee (R-UT)
McConnell (R-KY)
Moran (R-KS)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Paul (R-KY)
Portman (R-OH)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reid (D-NV)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rubio (R-FL)
Scott (R-SC)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)
I love this new you, bobby. You’ve been getting your nasty, personal, cutting attacks on lately. You like to talk about masks being dropped, and you’re practicing that little fan-dance beautifully.
-Climate-change denial….CHECK
-Added bonus of validating ID loons and other religious nuts/bigots……CHECK
-Muslim-baiting….CHECK
-Smearing a public servant who took a bullet to the head and has demonstrated far more articulate discourse in the aftermath than you could on your best day……..CHECK
You’re not the rational greed-head I originally took you for…no, no. You’re really coming out of the irrational bigot closet big time.
Applause, applause, bobby….you must feel so relieved.
@ 5
You can get hit by a bus the next time you cross the street, MBS. Or struck by lightning. Or a SWAT team could break down your door because they’ve got the wrong address and put a bullet into you for having the gall to stand up and yell WTF at the intrusion.
All of those are possible as well.
You’d better not cross streets, better stay in the house, and you’d better move so they don’t happen.
Three people died in the marathon bombing this week, MBS.
How many inner city children died due to gun violence in Chicago in the past month or so? Does Chicago have more restrictive gun laws than most municipalities?
No wonder you concentrate on the rareties. The mundane deaths of inner city residents despite more strict gun laws don’t fit the meme.
http://www.freerepublic.com/fo.....6934/posts
Clearly this is the face of a woman hell-bent on restricting semiautomatic weapon use.
Now, had, they really, REALLY wanted to do something in the Senate, they could have brought up the background checks amendment in a different manner (link @ 4):
A word, first, about that Senate “minority.” Majority Leader Harry Reid was free to bring the deal struck by West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin and Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey to the floor for an up-or-down vote, and this background-checks amendment might have passed. It did convince 54 Senators, including four Republicans.
But then Senators would actually be able to talk about what’s in it.
For some reason Obama and Reid decided that debating an issue on its merits either:
1) Wouldn’t enable it to be passed once the vote came
or
2) Couldn’t be spun as advantageously if they lost the vote.
Why not put it up for simple up-or-down vote, if passage is so important, HA libbies? You had 54 supporters.
Truth hurts, doesn’t it? Ask your Dem leaders rather than blaming the GOP.
@7 Kap’n Kornflake – Serial RENEGER,
Chicago has a terrible gun violence problem. A majority of US Senators tried to take a small step forward to correct our national gun violence problem.
90% of Democratic Senators were for a step forward.
90% of Republican Senators were for continuing to go the way we’ve been going; with all that entails for Chicago.
And as long as we’re asking questions, how many people in the US get struck by lightning or hit by a bus each day?
On average in the US every day, 87 people die
from gun violence, 33 of them murdered.
Every day, 8 children and teens die from gun violence.
@8 Kap’n Kornflake – Serial RENEGER,
Well if it says so @freerepublic.com it MUST be true!
@ 9
90% of Democratic Senators were for a step forward.
90% of Republican Senators were for continuing to go the way we’ve been going; with all that entails for Chicago.
See @ 8
Those ratios, had the amendment been brought up in a different format by Reid and Obama, would have resulted in a passed amendment.
How unfortunate that your leadership chose to have its minions, you included, cite useless statistics, rather than to get an amendment passed and actually ‘take a small step forward’, as you say.
@11 Kap’n Kornflake – Serial RENEGER,
See a psychiatrist.
@ 12
Nonresponsive, MBS. You need to change clips.
Truth hurts, doesn’t it, MBS? Something you wanted and could have had didn’t materialize because your ilk’s leadership decided to play games with an issue instead.
Look at it this way, MBS. Supposedly there’s 90% support for it, and yet Democrat leaders Obama (freshly re-elected, BTW) and Reid chose not to offer an amendment in a straightforward manner and have it debated, and then put to a vote.
Go ahead and blame GOP intransigence. I’ll point to Democrat leadership failure.
@13 Kap’n Kornflake – Serial RENEGER,
Freeper truth?
Do I have this correctly?
Your Freeper truth tells you that the reason 90% of Republican Senators voted to support the status quo of the background check gun show loophole, enabling convicted felons, to include convicted murderers, to buy semi-automatic weapons like buying a used car is the fault of and failure of “Democrat leadership”.
Yeah, that’s about your speed Bob.
@ 14
Had Obama and Reid elected to permit the amendment to be offered for debate rather than a vote in which 51 votes (including Biden’s) would get you a passed amendment, that debate would have enlightened you as to why the GOP and many Dem senators have a problem with the language, MBS.
Pity that did not occur.
@15 Kap’n Kornflake – Serial RENEGER,
Oh, the “leadership failure” prevented us all from being “enlightened” by the GOP!
Yes, Freeper Truth!
In the meantime, enlighten on this: Without a change to the gun show background check loophole (which 90% of the Republican Senators voted to leave as is on Wednesday April 17th) if Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev — a terrorist who killed three people and injured hundreds — is convicted and serves out his time he can walk into a gun show and buy an AR-15 with a hundred round clip without a background check. Walk in, buy the gun, walk out and maybe visit another Boston Marathon.
Enlightening?
I don’t believe your 90% bullshit for a second…
You can’t have our weapons.
And we can’t trust he government. Pull your heads out of your asses. Everything they do they do wrong. Everything they touch they corrupt. They will corrupt this.
No way, no more anything. May they never pass another bill.
@7
Well, it did. I think most of those laws got swatted down by the Supreme Court a while back.
Local gun laws don’t work, when you can travel a few minutes outside of city and get what isn’t allowed inside of the city. NICS background checks and other crime prevention tools, like one aimed at stopping straw gun buys, don’t work when you have 20 years worth of Republican’s pushing NRA backed legislation that guts the ATF’s ability to do it’s job. The ATF is massively underfunded and hamstrung because of the actions of the Republican Party and their bosses at the NRA. One of the results of this is a whole lot of dead kids in Chicago, their blood is on the Republican Party and the NRA’s hands.
There was no chance getting any further gun control through DC. Let the UN try. Now that will be enough to P off the rest of the US some of whom were damn happy to have a weapon in their home when Boston when it was in lockdown.
All in favor of gun control raise your right arm high…Sig Heil