Blogging for gun safety reform and changing the conversation about the role of guns and gun violence in our communities. Common sense gun laws and gun safety reform and gun rights are not mutually exclusive.
In 2013, the agency had said the plans could violate International Traffic in Arms Regulations. The government also had won several rounds of litigation with Wilson and his company since 2015.
Guns right groups, law enforcement officials and legislators have opposed the printing of guns.
“I don’t think that we really want to be in a world where Hamas in the Gaza has an ability to download a capacity for an AR-15 that could endanger security in that region, and the same thing could happen around the world,” Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat, said at a hearing earlier this week with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
But with just hours before an Aug. 1 deadline when Mr. Wilson has said he will upload many more schematics — including instructions for making AR-15-style rifles — alarmed public officials had accelerated their efforts to to prevent Mr. Wilson from moving forward with his plans.
Attorneys general in eight states and the District of Columbia filed a joint lawsuit in federal court in Seattle on Monday attempting to force the Trump administration to prevent Mr. Wilson’s nonprofit organization, Defense Distributed, from making the technical plans for the plastic guns available online.
Today even President Trump weighed in on the controversy that his very own administration allowed in the first place. Take a look at the screen grab above. What he doesn’t understand ( no surprise) is what this is about- it’s not about the guns being sold. It’s about the blueprints for the guns becoming available for people to make their own guns. I suppose they could be sold after the guns are made which is another issue altogether.
I rarely agree with the President but it doesn’t make sense. Further, what makes even less sense is that his administration is allowing this to happen. Why didn’t he know that? Why didn’t they know this would cause a sh&6 storm in the public and in Congress?
Why did the President talk to the NRA about this? The NRA may not even like this idea given that if people start making their own guns they won’t be going to their local Federally Licensed Gun Dealer to buy them. And that is what this is all about. If we follow the money, we can learn a lot.
From the linked article above, Dana Loesch has weighed in on behalf of the NRA:
Dana Loesch, a spokeswoman for the N.R.A., mocked Democrats last week for concerns about the 3-D guns, and said that attempts to regulate the technology would be “absolutely unenforceable.” The guns were “what the rest of us call freedom and innovation,” she said in a video segment posted last week on NRATV, the organization’s online video channel.
“What I’m opposed to is technology unchecked,” said David Chipman, a retired Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives special agent. He says 3D-printed guns present a real and present danger because they’re both unregulated and untraceable.
“We are basically handing the keys to the store to terrorists and armed criminals,” he said.
Frightening thought.
The man who wants to post these blueprints to make guns is a self described anarchist. What could possibly go wrong? As an anarchist and a Libertarian, he doesn’t really like laws. He believes that this technology may supersede gun laws and make them obsolete.
Because there has been a proliferation of guns built with do-it-yourself kits obtained online, gun-control advocates have maintained that 3-D-printed guns are a future threat. Adam Winkler, professor at UCLA School of Law, said that when printing technology becomes more reliable and affordable — which, he said, is undoubtedly coming — it will have dangerous consequences for public safety. “Climate change isn’t affecting us today, but people can be concerned about the future,” he analogized. For now, though, the 80-percent-unfinished DIY gun looms larger.
From the above article: ” Wilson relishes that he edged his way into American gun-control politics.”
What is that about? Sounds like Wilson is pretty impressed with what he has created and the fuss it has caused. But it’s more than politics. It’s public safety. It’s about lives.
Technology is mostly a good thing. But we are finding out how technology has become a vehicle to attack countries and threaten their national security and democracies. The investigation into Russia’s influence in our 2016 Presidential election proves how easy it has become to infiltrate the websites and emails of candidates and organizations. Social media sites are vulnerable to attacks.
Facebook announced Tuesday afternoon that it has removed 32 Facebook and Instagram accounts or pages involved in a political influence campaign with links to the Russian government.
The company says this included efforts to organize counter-protests August 10-12 for the white nationalist Unite The Right 2 rally planned in Washington that weekend.
So how is this all related to 3D guns? Cyberattacks are one thing. We know they are happening. I got a message yesterday from Instagram asking if I had signed in from an Android in another part of the country. The answer was no and I changed my password. My daughter got an email from Google saying that her son’s email ( which he almost never uses) had a sign-in from a Russian site. We know now that Senator Claire McCaskill’s account was hacked by Russians as well as those of 2 unnamed Senators.
Technology is in many ways helpful and we couldn’t do without it- or I couldn’t any more. But it also causes some bad things to happen. There’s cyber stalking. There’s cyber advertising which is more than annoying. There are now cyber plans for guns made by a printer at home. The man who developed the plans claimed his first amendment rights.
I’m obviously not an attorney so don’t know the intricacies of the law regarding first amendment rights. But what about skirting federal and state gun laws which keep us from becoming a lawless society? We all have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Laws are enacted for good reasons and most of them have to do with public safety and security.
If the plans lead to a terrorist making a gun and shooting a politician because the gun he made is undetectable to metal detectors, is that OK with our Congress? With President Trump? With Cody Wilson? With the NRA? Where do responsibilities end when it comes to rights? Or maybe the question is, where do responsibilities begin?
What’s OK when it comes to guns and gun violence?
We are crossing a dangerous line and leaving all common sense behind us. This is the result of a gun culture that values gun sales and second amendment rights over the ability to actually keep people who shouldn’t have guns from getting them anyway.
So the President calls the NRA to talk to whoever he talked to about 3D guns. I would be interested in knowing to whom he spoke and what that person’s position is on these guns. Are they OK with it? They seem to be OK with domestic abusers, terrorists, felons and those adjudicated mentally ill being able to buy guns without background checks from private sellers. So what about 3D guns?
The NRA remains silent about the Maria Butina case and the fact that Russian money was funneled into its’ organization for the purpose of helping the campaign of Donald Trump.
The NRA has not mentioned the shooting of a “good guy” with a gun by Aurora, CO. police after said “good guy” shot and killed an intruder during a burglary. The officers thought the “good guy” was the intruder since he was standing in his house with his loaded gun in his hand:
Metz said officers who arrived at the scene heard gunshots inside the home and ran into an armed man. An officer shot the man, who died at an area hospital.
After clearing the scene, according to Metz, officers found a juvenile injured inside and a man shot dead on the bathroom floor. The child was taken to a hospital for “serious, but non-life-threatening injuries” caused by the intruder, he said.
This knee-jerk response to gun violence is not only nonsensical, it is outright dangerous. The bottom line is, guns beget gun violence.
The Violence Policy Center (VPC) recently released Firearm Justifiable Homicides and Non-Fatal Self-Defense Gun Use, which uses available federal data to determine that, despite the myths propagated by the firearms industry and gun lobby, private citizens rarely use guns to kill criminals or stop crimes. (…)
There’s a simple explanation for why gun owners believe guns make us safer: The gun industry and the National Rifle Association (NRA) have spent decades convincing Americans that firearms are the best answer to any possible danger.
The NRA falsely claims that “millions” of Americans use guns for self-defense every year, a number that pro-gun advocates continually use to push their agenda — even though it has been shown to be factually inaccurate.
(…) The “good guy with a gun vs. bad guy with a gun” trope is a gun lobby and firearms industry myth. Our research found that a gun is 34 times more likely to be used in a criminal homicide than to kill in self-defense.
Technology has presented us with all kinds of new conundrums. Do rights allow us to do absolutely anything we want? Should a right to bear arms allow felons, terrorists and domestic abusers the right to make guns with no background checks? Do rights allow for anything to be put on the internet no matter what harm it could cause to individuals or the national security of our country?
I don’t have the answers. But the questions are important.
We deserve the answers and we deserve a country where we don’t have to worry about plastic untraceable guns being available to anyone who can make them.
The man shot and killed by Aurora police was defending his family from a naked stranger who had burst through the front door of their East Montview Boulevard home in the wee hours of Monday morning, grabbing an 11-year-old boy who was sleeping on a couch and attacking him.
This sounds positively bizarre and frightening. In this case it seems the grandfather was justified in shooting the intruder who clearly intended to harm a family member. I have no quarrel with using a gun in that situation.
The problem came with the chaos and police not knowing what was happening. Things happened very quickly and decisions were made in an instant.
Could everyone have taken a second to deal with this differently? Perhaps but we still don’t all of the facts.
It would be interesting to know if the door was locked to prevent the man from bursting into the home. But that, too, may also come out with further investigation.
“I want to reserve a space for the humane. I hope I would react humanely. And I hope it would affect me. But does that lead me to apologise for what was done? And I appeal back to standard discussions about respect for civil liberties. What does that mean? It means people will abuse these rights. But what does it mean, as a structural feature, to have access to military weapons as a society? I’m not trying to brush it off but it means accepting people will abuse their liberties, but that’s why they deserve protection. If no one is going to abuse a gun, it wouldn’t be a right worth protecting. If no one was going to make a speech, we wouldn’t need to defend the principle of freedom of speech. The same thing with the right to be secure in your possessions.”
The problem with Wilson’s argument is that’s it’s an argument, one that you might formulate in the sixth-form debating society. And on the other side, there would be a dead person. Your mother, perhaps. Or your son who, if it hadn’t been for Wilson, and his desire to push the boundaries of internet freedom further, would still be alive. But I can’t get through on this point.
Coming from an avowed libertarian and anarchist, these are worrisome words. “The right to secure your possessions” is an interesting turn on language. Given that every day, there are incidents where otherwise “law abiding gun owners” don’t secure their possessions and people end up dead, what in the world does this guy mean?
Criminal laws often change because of shifting societal attitudes or in response to other events. One example is the decriminalization and reduced penalties involved in possessing small amounts of marijuana. But the destruction caused by the opioid epidemic and explosion in prescription drug misuse and abuse has led to the opposite result. Louisiana laws regarding possession of heroin, opiates, and prescription drugs have become harsher, and prosecutors throughout the state have been aggressively seeking convictions as part of efforts to fight the crisis.
It is not hard to understand why law enforcement is attacking these crimes so vigorously. In 2016, for the first time in history, more people died in New Orleans from drug overdoses than were killed in homicides. It is estimated that 175 Americans die from opioid overdoses every single day, and the personal and economic damage caused by opioid abuse is astronomical.
If you are arrested for possession of heroin or the unlawful possession of opioids or other prescription medications, you could be facing hefty fines, significant time behind bars, and other serious consequences.
And so, there are shifting societal attitudes in response to gun violence. In fact, 97% of Americans agree that we ought to require a criminal Brady background check every time a gun is sold. That doesn’t happen as we all know. Private sellers are allowed to sell guns in their possession to anyone who wants to buy them. It could be a felon. It could be a domestic abuser. It could be someone who has been adjudicated mentally ill. The seller wouldn’t know that of course, unless the buyer was subjected to an easy and quick background check through the FBI’s National Instant Check System.
But if one can possess a plastic gun made at home on a 3D printer, who is to know anything about the person who has made that gun?
Last month, the agency agreed to settle a multi-year legal battle with Texan Cody Wilson, who claimed in a lawsuit the government infringed on his right to free speech for posting the programming code online to print a 3D gun. He was ordered to take it down for violating US export laws.
The administration said in the settlement, which was not made public but provided by his attorneys to certain media outlets, that Mr Wilson’s charity group Defense Distributed could post the code online and it agreed to pay $40,000 of his legal fees.
And further:
“The government fought us all the way and then all of the sudden folded their tent,” Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation, a gun rights group who assisted Mr Wilson on the case, told CNN.
Though the lawsuit had been filed during the Obama administration, Mr Gottlieb said much of the case had been handled by career civil servants not political appointees of Mr Trump.
Was it Russian money as is asked in the above article?:
The F.B.I. and special counsel Robert Mueller are investigating meetings between N.R.A. officials and powerful Russian operatives, trying to determine if those contacts had anything to do with the gun group spending $30 million to help elect Donald Trump—triple what it invested on behalf of Mitt Romneyin 2012. The use of foreign money in American political campaigns is illegal. One encounter of particular interest to investigators is between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian banker at an N.R.A. dinner. (…) Torshin—who Spanish authorities wanted to arrest in 2013 on money-laundering allegations—made energetic efforts to ingratiate himself with the Trump campaign. (Torshin was never charged and has denied any wrongdoing in the money-laundering case.) He met Donald Trump Jr. at a private dinner during the N.R.A.’s convention in Louisville, Kentucky, in May 2016. Alan Futerfas, a lawyer for Trump Jr., has dismissed the conversation between his client and Torshin as “all gun-related small talk.”
Really? “Gun related small talk”? Doubtful.
Since the above linked article was written, we now know about an actual Russian spy who spent some time getting to know leaders from the NRA and other conservative folks who had influence into the Trump campaign. I wrote my last post about this.
So back to 3D guns. Is there any common sense at all to allowing anyone to make a gun in the comfort of their own home?
The answer just has to be NO. People who will be a danger to themselves or others, if they have the funds to invest in the required printer, could make a gun like this and carry out a crime against an innocent person(s). This is just not the kind of America we want or should have. Gun rights do not include anything that anyone wants to do. There are limits.
And speaking of limits and the NRA, can we touch for a minute on the tragic incident in Florida, the gunshine state, involving a white man who shot and killed a black man in a dispute over a parking space? Because of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, the shooter will most likely go free. There is still another step but the sheriff has said he will not charge the man with murder because of this law. Read below:
Sheriff’s detectives said Michael Drejka, 47, approached Jacobs while her boyfriend Markeis McGlockton, and the couple’s 5-year-old son, Markeis Jr., went into the store. Drejka and Jacobs began arguing about her parking in the handicapped parking space.
Witnesses told police that McGlockton came outside, walked over to Drejka while he was arguing and “forcibly pushed” Drejka, causing him to fall.
“This is a violent push, this wasn’t a shove, this wasn’t just a tap,” Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said during a Friday press conference.
In response, the news release stated, Drejka pulled out a handgun while he was on the ground and shot McGlockton in the chest.
“Witnesses say McGlockton walked back into the convenient store where he collapsed,” the release stated. He was taken to a hospital where he died.
The state of Florida has made it even harder for victims’ families to get a hearing in court over the murder of an unarmed ( most often) loved one:
The framework of Florida’s ‘stand your ground’ law was changed this year, Gualtieri said. Before, the defendant/shooter used “stand your ground” as a defense and had to prove they were in fear of further body harm, the law now says the state attorney has to provide “clear and convincing evidence” that the defendant/shooter is not entitled to “stand your ground” immunities.
“Nowhere else is there anything like this in criminal law where somebody asserts something and the burden then shifts to the other person,” Gualtieri said. “That’s a very heavy standard and it puts the burden on the state.”
Gualtieri said the case will go to the state attorney. Meanwhile, “Drejka will not be charged, will not be arrested by us … either (the state attorney) will concur or not and if he concurs, there will be no arrest.”
Thanks NRA.
Over 30,000 Americans are killed by bullets every year. It is a health care epidemic.
Elections are coming. Vote for candidates who will actually care about saving lives. Gun rights and gun safety reform are not mutually exclusive no matter what the corporate gun lobby would like you to believe.
WASHINGTON– Attorneys representing the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Everytown for Gun Safety and Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence have informed a Texas federal court that they anticipate filing legal action within days related to a settlement that would allow new designs for downloadable, untraceable guns to become public and available world-wide as early as August 1. The gun safety organizations urged the court to consider the public safety and national security risks posed by the settlement, which would let Defense Distributed —a company run by a self-proclaimed anarchist who wants to undermine gun safety laws —post its gun blueprints online in the form of Computer Aided Design files.
“[T]his settlement is far from ordinary,” the gun safety organizations write in a letter available here. “It is dangerous, irreparable and – as the government itself has emphatically argued for years – raises issues of national defense and national security of the highest order. It is also, we believe, illegal.”
This is very good news indeed. National security is at stake here. What kind of country to we want? I would argue that we don’t want people making 3D guns in their living rooms and potentially committing acts of terror on the American public.
I want to start this post by recognizing that today is the day before the anniversary of the tragic murder of 12 and the injuring of 58 by bullets at an Aurora, Colorado movie theater. My friends, Sandi and Lonni Phillips are grieving for their murdered daughter, Jessica Ghawi who was brutally shot that day 6 years ago. They have gone through hell and back after that day. Who wouldn’t? I stand with them in their pain and their attempts to make changes to our gun laws and to support other victims. Thanks to the NRA, the shooter at the theater was able to purchase a hundred round drum magazine so he could carry out his massacre.
Remember the victims of that horrendous shooting: Jonathan Blunk, Alexander Boik, Jesse Childress, Gordon Cowden, Jessica Ghawi, John Larimer, Matt McQuinn, Micayla Medek, Veronica Moser-Sullivan, Alex Sullivan, Alexander Teves, and Rebecca Wingo. And let us also remember that the injured have and will suffer from life long injuries and likely PTSD after the horror of the shooting scene.
Thank you NRA. Thank you corporate gun lobby.
Since July of 2012, about 200,000 Americans have been killed by bullets and we have experienced multiple (1772) horrific mass shootings– Sandy Hook, Charleston, Las Vegas, Pulse Nightclub, Parkland, Sutherland, …………………………………………………………………………….
Our Congress has done nothing.
Thanks NRA.
And meanwhile, closer to to the present as the families of the Aurora shooting try to honor their loved ones’ deaths and both remember and try to forget what happened that day, the NRA is still at it. I assume you have read or heard the news about the arrested Russian spy and her connections to the NRA and Republicans.
Amid the sprawling scandal over Russian interference with the 2016 election, there’s long been an odd subplot over Russian ties to, of all groups, the National Rifle Association — ties that, according to McClatchy, have been investigated by the FBI.
Now the arrest of 29-year-old Russian national Maria Butina on charges of conspiracy and acting as an agent of a foreign government has put those questions about the famous gun rights group on center stage.
But despite the new indictment (which is not part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe), the full extent of what happened here remains mysterious.
Odd subplot is right. It’s not normal and it’s more than odd. But the Russians knew that the NRA would be helpful… because that’s the kind of organization it has become.
Ted Nugent dedicated a song during his concert on Tuesday in Virginia to “dumb f***” protesters like Andy Parker, who is the father of a gun violence victim.
The outspoken Republican rocker, who’s no stranger to controversy, said to the audience, according to the Roanoke Times, “If I get too political, f*** you.”
Nugent also dedicated his set to “everybody, including those dumb motherf*****s that were protesting me because they’re still grieving. When you lose a loved one, we pray for you when you lose a loved one. We all prayed for him, didn’t we? How the f*** do you hate the Nugent family when we’re praying for you? You dumb f****.”
Yes. It’s true. That is what he said. I know Andy and Barbara Parker. Their daughter Alison was shot and killed on live TV almost 3 years ago now. Why would Nugent attack the father of a young woman so brutally murdered by someone who should not have had a gun? The NRA must sanction this kind of totally offensive and crude rhetoric because they have not denounced it. What you don’t say is as important as what you do. The true agenda of the NRA is out there in plain site for all of us to see.
Sixty-nine percent of NRA members expressed support for comprehensive background checks. A proposal to implement universal background checks would apply to all gun sales, rather than just purchases made at licensed retailers, according to the Giffords Law Center, a gun control advocacy group.
Or maybe some of the irresponsible gun owners who, on a regular basis, “accidentally” fire their guns and hurt or kill someone? Like this father? He shot and killed his 6 year old daughter while cleaning his gun. There are no accidents with guns. They are lethal weapons designed to kill. Everyone needs to
There is really no question that Russia has been involved in our last Presidential election. Trump is having trouble publicly admitting it but he knows about it and has since before he was inaugurated our 45th President. Not sure what to call this but many words come to mind.
The NRA was also involved in the Presidential election in ways that we should all question. Answers need to come forth. We know that the NRA spent $30 million to get Donald Trump elected. But now it seems like more than just money was spent on the election:
The F.B.I. and special counsel Robert Mueller are investigating meetings between N.R.A. officials and powerful Russian operatives, trying to determine if those contacts had anything to do with the gun group spending $30 million to help elect Donald Trump—triple what it invested on behalf of Mitt Romneyin 2012. The use of foreign money in American political campaigns is illegal. One encounter of particular interest to investigators is between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian banker at an N.R.A. dinner.
The Russian wooing of N.R.A. executives goes back to at least 2011, when that same banker and politician, Alexander Torshin, befriended David Keene, who was then president of the gun-rights organization. Torshin soon became a “life member,” attending the N.R.A.’s annual conventions and introducing comrades to other gun-group officials. In 2015, Torshin welcomed an N.R.A. delegation to Moscow that included Keene and Joe Gregory, then head of the “Ring of Freedom” program, which is reserved for top donors to the N.R.A. Among the other hosts were Dmitry Rogozin, who until last month was the deputy prime minister overseeing Russia’s defense industry, and Sergei Rudov, head of the Saint Basil the Great Charitable Foundation, one of Russia’s wealthiest philanthropies.
It worked. And now she is behind bars without bail.
It’s hard to fathom this intrigue. It reads like a spy novel but it’s happening in real life. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
The NRA is not your father’s NRA. The NRA is not an organization to support gun owners and hunters. It is an organization that is an arm of the Republican party and its’ intentions are to elect people who will support their agenda to loosen gun laws, to nominate Supreme Court justices who will help loosen gun laws and to make sure the country’s majority does not get what they want and need to be safe in their communities.
We ought to be better than this. The corruption is palpable and increasingly dangerous for our democracy. We just cannot let this be our country. We are the model of democracy for the world. If we become an autocracy and just another country beholden to corrupt leaders at the top and big money, we can expect to see bad things happen.
I, for one, am going to continue pushing for common sense and protesting the influence of Russians and the big money NRA in our politics.
“The hostile environment created toward gun advocates in the Northeast is not unlike the hostile environments a black man would have experienced in the South hundreds of years ago,” he said Tuesday.
Good grief. So not true. And more:
The Georgia trooper was far friendlier. In another video taken by someone in Melchior’s entourage, the trooper said he saw Melchior drive past in the armored vehicle — missing the replica machine gun at that point but still with Utah Gun Exchange logos on the side — and thought “I gotta talk to this guy.”
The Georgia officer had a tattoo that appears to be the logo of a paramilitary organization called The Three Percenters, which bills itself as a national defense organization. He ended up signing the truck and left with a T-shirt for the gun exchange.
In Melchior’s view, it showed a divide among members of law enforcement.
“We received different treatment under the law based on who we encountered,” Melchior said. “That’s problematic.”
I couldn’t disagree more. What’s problematic is that the Georgia officer shrugged off the lunacy and the potentially dangerous and intimidating vehicle as they harass students around the country. And what’s more, is the tattoo sported by the officer showing where his sympathies lie- presumably not with common sense gun legislation.
This is not normal and not necessary. No one is going to take guns away from law abiding citizens. What is their point? In case you missed it, there was a good back and forth conversation as written on Twitter that a Parkland student posted. In the end, a gun rights advocate and a gun safety reform minded student survivor could agree on some basic truths. That is what can be accomplished if we put our heads together. It’s hard to do that if guys come around armed and driving wannabe tanks.
This is not child’s play or funny. This is serious business involving intimidation and armed citizens so afraid themselves that they are trying to get others to be afraid. But the students are not afraid.
This is also how true change will happen. Kudos to the Parkland students who are having these amazing common sense conversations.
“His mother was an enabler, and his mother contributed to this significantly,” Gualtieri said at a Tuesday meeting of the commission, held at the BB&T Center in Sunrise. “To the point where at one time when they said that he wanted to buy a gun and the counselors from the school said he shouldn’t have a gun, his mother said ‘I don’t care. If he wants a gun, he can have a gun.’”
But a review of Nikolas Cruz’s psychiatric memos show it wasn’t as simple or uncontested as that. His mother initially resisted and they battled over the issue.
A mental health counselor paid a visit to the Cruz home in September 2016 when Nikolas Cruz acted out because his mother refused to take him to get a state-issued ID, which he would have needed to buy a gun. He turned 18 that month, legally old enough to make the purchase on his own. (…)
“I’m not concerned, and l’m not afraid,” she said. “My son has pellet guns and has always respected the rules of where they can and can’t be used.”
The school’s JROTC program already had banned Cruz from firing guns with the group during shooting practice.
A longtime friend of Lynda Cruz’s said she thought Lynda Cruz gave in to her son’s desire to buy a gun because she feared him. He had been physically violent with her, according to Broward Sheriff’s Office records and recent witness statements.
“I think she was afraid of him, actually,” the friend said.
His mother was wrong. She should have been concerned. More people should be concerned about how easy it is to get their hands on guns and use them to murder others. This is simply not OK.
None of this is OK. It’s time for it all to change. The only way it will change is to change the lapdog politicians who are afraid of the corporate gun lobby and armed people like the guys traveling the country in a look alike army tank to intimidate kids who are just trying to stop the shootings.
Happy July 4th. Today is, of course, the day we celebrate our independence from a tyrannical government. If we are not vigilant we could be there again. Freedom obviously means different things to different people. But universally it should mean that people ought to be free from violence; free from oppression; free to express opinions; free to live a life without fear of losing health care, a way to make a living, being able to make decisions about own’s own body, free from intolerance and racism, free from discrimination , losing the right to vote, the fear of not being able to marry who you love, the right to the rule of law, the right to live in society within reasonable and common sense rules and laws so that what is good for the most of us is good for all of us. For one never knows when those freedoms might unexpectedly be taken away by circumstances beyond our control or by despotic and self serving leaders.
This morning I read this column written by Dana Milbank, writer for the Washington Post ( the media outlet Trump loves to hate) about our freedoms. From his article:
This isn’t just a linguistic de-emphasis of freedom; Trump has made common cause with dictators and played down human rights abroad while starting a trade war with democratic allies. At home he has questioned due process for refugees, taken immigrant children from their parents, imposed a travel ban on several Muslim-majority nations and declared the media the enemy of the American people. He is now poised to shift the balance on the Supreme Court away from abortion rights and gay rights.
In a very real sense, the fight against Trump is a battle for freedom.
The conspiracy theorist tweeted his prediction on Monday, accompanied by a video in which he claimed that “elite publications” were calling for a “civil emergency” using civil unrest and “racial strife” to force out President Trump.
We must be free of this anger, fear mongering and downright lunacy. The fact that our President is on board with this guy says it all.
McConnell delivered his remarks amid a push for tougher gun safety laws in America, after a school shooting in Parkland, Fla., claimed 17 lives.
Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter, Jaime, was killed in the Florida attack, said McConnell was full of it.
“Honestly, the man should resign. He either is intentionally useless or he’s just evil,” Guttenberg told the Daily News.
The outspoken activist insisted there’s plenty the federal government could do to combat violence in American schools.
“They could allow the CDC to study gun violence. They could strengthen background checks, ban high capacity magazines,” he said. “There’s a lot they can do, but they can’t do anything if they’re not allowed. Mitch McConnell is nothing more than a roadblock.”
The Kentucky Republican, who has a 93% rating from the NRA, has repeatedly blocked gun-control proposals.
This is what we’ve got right now in America. Lapdog politicians who are pushing to restrict many of our other freedoms but willing to ignore one of the most important freedoms- to live without gun violence.
STOP.
YES WE CAN STOP SHOOTINGS. YES, THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CAN ACT TO PREVENT GUN VIOLENCE PASS A BRADY BACKGROUND CHECK LAW AND A RED FLAG LAW.
MR. MAJORITY LEADER- STOP THE STUFF AND NONSENSE.
And further, of course, is the hope on the right that any nominee for the Supreme Court open position will further erode the laws that have kept us free and safe from some of the gun violence. The far right and the corporate gun lobby have shown us they resent any restrictions on guns- the kind of guns, who can carry them, and where they can be carried. One of their favorite justices, Antonin Scalia, knew that there should be some restrictions and said so in the 2008 Heller decision– something the corporate gun lobby and Congress loves to conveniently forget. So we do have some constitutional rights to be safe from gun violence after all.
This line of reasoning posed by the corporate gun lobby and the far right extremists ( and even the current GOP party leaders) is dangerous and will lead to chaos and yes, Mr. Jones, even violence. Let’s hope that is not the case but the threat will not be coming from the Democrats who want to stop the violence. Look to those who believe in conspiracy theories, threaten journalists with violence, try to restrict basicl freedoms, rights to vote, and stockpile their weapons for a future war against their own government.
Let me just say that on this July Fourth holiday, what can be done is a commitment to changing the conversation about the causes and effects of gun violence, change the gun culture and change the laws so we can be safe and free from gun violence in our schools, our places of work, our shopping malls, our homes, our parks, our wherever we gather together as a community.
If we give up our freedoms such as freedom of speech and others without also challenging the idea that the misinterpreted meaning of the second amendment means freedom for anyone to purchase and own any kind of gun and carry it anywhere one pleases, we will be giving up our democracy.
Stay firm and strong and keep fighting attempts to take away our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Happy Fourth. Stay safe out there everyone. There are some restrictions on fireworks and personal fireworks can lead to injuries. Celebratory shooting is simply not OK no matter what anyone says. What goes up must come down- a simple law of Physics not understood by some irresponsible gun owners. Shooting off guns on the Fourth of July is dangerous business and not in the spirit of the celebration.
This is a great day to think about what you can do about our national public health epidemic and our national dilemma about freedoms and civil rights. The best thing you can do is to consider all of this and VOTE in your primaries and the November election.
Common sense is at stake. Lives are at stake. Freedoms are at stake.
Of course we can’t draw a direct line between what the NRA threatens about journalists and what happened in Annapolis, Maryland a few days ago. But we can draw some conclusions about what our own President and hate filled organizations like the NRA are saying about the freedom of the press in America- one of the pillars of a democracy and our own country since its’ inception.
“Of the thousands of people I’ve dealt with in court, this guy stuck,” McCarthy told USA TODAY. “I was extremely scared that he was going to do something to me and my family.”
McCarthy says he became a target of Ramos’ rage after representing a woman in 2011 who accused Ramos of stalking her and threatening her online.
The woman told McCarthy that Ramos, who had gone to the same high school as she did, had been harassing her online since 2009. McCarthy described it as the “worst case of harassment and stalking I have ever encountered in my career.” (…)
McCarthy stated repeatedly that no one had ever frightened him the way Ramos did. He called Ramos a “classic loner” and “as angry and obsessive an individual as you will ever meet.” He also said Ramos viewed anyone who opposed him as an enemy.
“He described adverse parties as belligerents,” McCarthy said. “Like he’s at war.” (,,)
In another post, Ramos makes mention of a shotgun, saying “My bullets are words.” Police say Ramos used a shotgun in the shooting on Thursday.
He also posted multiple times about the 2015 attack at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, even including photoshopped images of one magazine staff member with a bullet hole in his head and blood on his face. His loathing of the press may not have been just fixed on the Capital. In 2014, he posted his thoughts on the beheadings of James Foley and Steven Sotloff and accused the press of propaganda. “Journalists making a living (literally) by participating in propaganda is nothing new,” he wrote. “Think about it.”
Ramos hadn’t posted on the account since January 2016, but just moments before the shooting on Thursday, a message was posted: “F— you, leave me alone.”
How and why did this man have a gun? Until we make it more difficult for people like this to legally ( or illegally) purchase or get their hands on guns, we can expect to see more senseless loss of life.
… “To the politicians who would rather watch America burn than lose one ounce of their own personal power, to the late night posts that think their opinion is the only opinions that matter.
“To the Joy-Ann Reids, the Morning Joes, the Mikas. To those who stain honest reporting with partisanship.
“To those who bring bias and propaganda to CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times… your time is running out. The clock starts now.”
Yes. She said this.
With rights come responsibilities. That goes for the first amendment and the second amendment.
And we have ample evidence about what our President thinks about the media– except of course what can realistically be called state TV or Fox news. And let us also remember that Trump gets his own views about things from Fox news- not the other way around. There are many people serving in his administration who have worked for Fox news. That alone should be of concern for us all. From the above linked article:
Berman said that while he does not doubt Trump’s sincerity in saying journalists should not be “violently attacked,” he finds it “hard to believe” Trump’s comments aboard Air Force One that he has “a lot of respect for the press.”
Berman’s comments were followed by a montage of Trump attacking the press in past speeches and rallies, including calling media “fake news,” “absolute scum,” “disgusting” and “very dishonest.”
Much of Trump’s criticism of the press has been directed at CNN, which he has repeatedly labeled “Fake News.”
“Fake News”- what a clever way to go after the truth. The truth is that the “fake news” is coming from the mouth of our very own President who lies every day and demeans his critics. This has served to rile up his base and ferment fear and paranoia that could erupt into more than verbal attacks.
Threats to the first amendment are more dangerous than threats to the second amendment. For one can lead to the other. If we don’t have a free press, we don’t have anything. The idea that that individuals are stockpiling guns to protect themselves from the government could very well turn into attacks on our democracy itself.
These are potentially frightening times for our country.
These are hallmarks of autocracy.
Finally one journalist had the courage to speak out at a recent press availability. Thank you Jim Costa.:
Someone must do this before more tragic incidents happen.
In what other democratized country not at war do Presidents speak like this? We have examples of oppressive regimes and dictatorships where this happens. But not in America have we ever seen this before.
This is frightening and should be alarming even to the rank and file NRA members and Trump supporters. If this were coming from a Democrat, there would be hell to pay. It would not be tolerated or accepted- period.
But the Republicans in Congress have no courage or the will to speak out. They are aiding and abetting this kind of dangerous behavior. Until something happens similar to or worse than the shooting at a newspaper office in Annapoli, Maryland they won’t.
At what point will common sense happen? It could just be too late. We will rue the day we allowed this to take place.
We are better than this. And we are not going to let it go unnoticed. It’s time for all Americans who want to preserve our democracy and the rule of law to stand up. And that includes you Congress.
My last post was about the availability of blueprints to make 3D guns in the privacy of your own home. It’s a bad idea and now a whole lot of other people agree with me:
I want to start this post by recognizing that today is the day before the anniversary of the tragic 
What makes a group of grown men so afraid? A group of students traveling the country advocating for gun safety reform. It’s called #RoadToChange.
Happy July 4th. Today is, of course, the day we celebrate our independence from a tyrannical government. If we are not vigilant we could be there again. Freedom obviously means different things to different people. But universally it should mean that people ought to be free from violence; free from oppression; free to express opinions; free to live a life without fear of losing health care, a way to make a living, being able to make decisions about own’s own body, free from intolerance and racism, free from discrimination , losing the right to vote, the fear of not being able to marry who you love, the right to the rule of law, the right to live in society within reasonable and common sense rules and laws so that what is good for the most of us is good for all of us. For one never knows when those freedoms might unexpectedly be taken away by circumstances beyond our control or by despotic and self serving leaders.
Of course we can’t draw a direct line between what the NRA threatens about journalists and what happened in 
commongunsense 