Gun Control Debate

[N.E. Brigand]

Another step on the road to yesterday:



That's a 2015 post by Texas's governor.

[Dave_LF]

It was actually that exact tweet and the thoughts I had in response to it that made me hibernate my account

[N.E. Brigand]

Conservative journalist Megyn Kelly complains that after every mass shooting, all she hears are calls for gun control rather than for increased mental health (she favors a "greater willingness to lock people up with protocols for civil liberties," but of course she offers no specifics about how to manage that balance). The debate about gun control is over, she says: "You have LOST. It's DONE."

Just in my own lifetime, the laws and rulings around gun control have changed considerably. Was the argument "done" in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan signed gun control laws? Obviously not, or we wouldn't be where we are now. We can change it again.

[RoseMorninStar]

This is the Congressman who represents Allen, Texas, where fifteen people were shot in a mall there yesterday, eight of whom died:



Arguably, he's worse than the killer, because his commitment to inaction made this mass murder possible and will lead to more murders.

And even if the problem were a lack of mental health care, he said nothing when Texas's governor cut more than $200 million for mental health services.

I would not even say arguably. Using the congressman's own argument one could say 'god' put him in a position of power to do something about the horrific murders, mental illness, and gun violence and he's doing nothing but 'thoughts & prayers'. I'd say that's the worst sort of hypocrite. Evil. Blame it all on 'god' not doing anything.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[N.E. Brigand]

Aric Toler of Bellingcat found what appears to be the Allen TX killer's social media profile, which is hosted on a Russian website. He had swastika and SS tattoos.

[N.E. Brigand]

Aric Toler of Bellingcat found what appears to be the Allen TX killer's social media profile, which is hosted on a Russian website. He had swastika and SS tattoos.

It turns out that there was a little doubt about the last point, because the apparent selfie of a tattooed man on the killer's social media feed didn't show his face. Right-wing personalities like Tim Pool (with Elon Musk's seeming endorsement) had seized on this point to argue that the real killer was a CIA plant or that this social media feed was doctored to make conservatives look bad (the killer had approvingly quoted Pool). But as Toler noted two hours ago, citing this story in the Allen American:

"Texas police have just confirmed that the shooter had Nazi tattoos."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Not much can be read into this in terms of what the court will do in the end, but it is still good.

[RoseMorninStar]

I would think that the gun violence and fear it generates has got to start affecting the economy. If lives lost aren't a motivator, perhaps lost revenue will be.

I doubt I will ever understand the disparity between holding a zygote as the ultimate in preciousness yet the lack of regard for life once it passes through the vaginal canal. I can't imagine it's anything other than power over women.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

19 years ago, while mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom directed city clerks to grant marriage licenses to same sex couples, even though doing so violated state and federal law, and was illegaleverywherein the U.S. Now, less than 2 decades later, same sex marriage is the firmly-entrenched law of the land.

Now, as governor of California:

[N.E. Brigand]

There are so many stories like this that the thread would consist of nothing else and would be ten times as long as it is if I posted all of them, but every now and then, one of them jumps out at me for some reason:



Preschools should probably offer firearms training for toddlers.

[RoseMorninStar]

[Sunsilver]

"Ohio law doesn't require guns to be securely stored, and doesn't require safety training."

That's sick!

I was going to post something lighthearted about a 'violent' incident in Richmond Hill, Ontario, the town I used to live in, but after seeing the above, I just can't. It wouldn't be appropriate.

Like the song says, "When will they ever learn?"

Voronwë, I hope that proposal gains some traction, but I'm extremely doubtful it will.

[RoseMorninStar]

I cannot help but contrast that awful, senseless death and those who support virtually no restrictions on guns against those (who are often the same people) who are adamant about restrictions on women's healthcare decisions and claiming to be 'pro-life'.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Sunny, the proposal is not meant to gain traction any time soon. Newsom is playing a long game.

[N.E. Brigand]

I'm not sure I knew that former Chief Justice Warren Burger, a Republican who served as Assistant Attorney General in President Dwight Eisenhower's administration starting in 1953, was appointed to the Supreme Court by Eisenhower in 1956, and was elevated by President Richard Nixon to chief justice in 1969, said of the National Rifle Association in 1991 (five years after his retirement from the court) that "The gun lobby's interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American people by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime."

Also in 1991, Burger, then the Chancellor of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, wrote in Associated Press op-ed that "the real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies, the militia, would be maintained for the defense of the state" and also that the "very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires".

[N.E. Brigand]

A federal judge, ruling that it violates the Second Amendment to prevent felons from possessing firearms, observes that originalism isn't originalist.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Harry Litman
@harrylitman
By a 5-4 vote in a shadow docket case, Supreme Court reinstates Biden Administration ghost gun program, pending review. Barrett and Roberts join progressives; other 4 dissent.

[Frelga]

Shadow Docket and the Ghost Gun sounds like the first book in a YA series.

[N.E. Brigand]

Good point from historian Kevin Kruse: