HR 38

What is the N.R.A. doing?

commongunsense, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments

mafiaAs the Russian investigation by Congress and the special counsel Robert Mueller continue, we are learning about the extent of the influence of the Russians into corners we did not necessarily expect. But we shouldn’t be surprised at anything. Ever since Trump was elected it’s been a surprise a day and daily chaos and dysfunction, if not corruption.

Is that by design, incompetence, craziness or whatever other word has been used to describe what is going on? Kleptocracy has been mentioned as a cause for this American travesty. It’s so hard to determine what is going on but things are coming into closer focus.

It’s becoming more difficult to discern the difference between the NRA and the Republican party of late. What exists today is not your father’s or grandfather’s NRA. Back in the day, the NRA was a sportsmen’s organization, supporting hunting and shooting sports and training people ( and kids) how to properly handle their guns and be safe with them while hunting and shooting for sport.

Today? Not so much. A hostile take-over of the organization occurred in 1977 and it hasn’t been the same since.

After the corporate gun lobby managed to get laws passed to allow just about anyone to carry guns in most of our states, the NRA stood to make some money by offering classes to instruct prospective permit holders how to safely carry loaded guns in public and about the laws in a particular state. (You can even get a free gun on this site if you sign up).

Sigh.

One wonders, as an aside, what will happen if the NRA and the corporate gun lobby gets HR 38 ( Concealed Carry Reciprocity) or “arm anyone” bill passed into law? Why? Because 13 states don’t even require any hours of training before allowing someone to pack heat in public places and 3 have some version of the idea of “constitutional carry”. What will happen to the NRA revenue stream if classes are not required? They can hope that the bill to allow the legalization of gun silencers passes ( which by all rights it should not after the Las Vegas shooting) so a new source of revenue will open up.

That bill, too, is the clever theft of language to change something into something it isn’t. You just have to love that the bill is named the “Hearing Protection Act“.  The bill was included in a House Natural Resources Committee bill called the SHARE Act. Seriously- what do gun silencers have to do with natural resources? Another theft and co-opting of language. The goal is to remove gun silencers from the National Firearms Act which was passed for good reason after the mafia used gun silencers and machine guns to silence their enemies.

We get it. If we allow silencers ( and then possibly machine guns) to be sold like every other firearms instead of the now very strict regulations,  the consequences will be dangerous. Because of that law, it is extremely rare but not unheard of for them to be used in crimes. 

Back to “constitutional carry”. This is the stealing of a right ( second amendment) as written in our Constitution to make it into something it was not intended for. Tricky but we get it. It is the theft of the right to be safe and to make sure those who carry loaded guns are at the least, minimally trained to carry that deadly weapon.

You would think this is only common sense. But you would be wrong.

What about bump stocks? They are still being sold. Will Congress pass a law requiring at the least, a Brady background check before purchasing? Or will they be outlawed all together after the Las Vegas shooting?

This is insanity and more mass shootings waiting to happen.

The NRA has become an arm of the Republican party. That is pretty well known. But in the last few days we have discovered that a prominent member of their organization helped arrange a meeting between a Trump campaign leader and a Russian for the alleged purpose of helping Trump get elected.

This is like a spy novel. The intrigue is fascinating. Now we know what we have suspected. The NRA is an extremist organization and not in existence to just support shooting and hunting sports. They are a lobbying organization with a lot of power, control and influence in Congress and on our sitting President. This is dangerous.

As shooting deaths rise and lapdog politicians work to help the NRA and others in the corporate gun lobby with profits and more influence, we are becoming less and less safe from gun violence. I say this is an untenable situation.

Sigh.

Let’s take a look at the above linked article about Russian influence in the 2016 election:

 A conservative operative trumpeting his close ties to the National Rifle Association and Russia told a Trump campaign adviser last year that he could arrange a back-channel meeting between Donald J. Trump and Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, according to an email sent to the Trump campaign.

A May 2016 email to the campaign adviser, Rick Dearborn, bore the subject line “Kremlin Connection.” In it, the N.R.A. member said he wanted the advice of Mr. Dearborn and Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, then a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Trump and Mr. Dearborn’s longtime boss, about how to proceed in connecting the two leaders.

Russia, he wrote, was “quietly but actively seeking a dialogue with the U.S.” and would attempt to use the N.R.A.’s annual convention in Louisville, Ky., to make “ ‘first contact.’ ” The email, which was among a trove of campaign-related documents turned over to investigators on Capitol Hill, was described in detail to The New York Times. (…)

The emailed outreach from the conservative operative to Mr. Dearborn came far earlier, around the same time that Russians were trying to make other connections to the Trump campaign. Another contact came through an American advocate for Christian and veterans causes, and together, the outreach shows how, as Mr. Trump closed in on the nomination, Russians were using three foundational pillars of the Republican Party — guns, veterans and Christian conservatives — to try to make contact with his unorthodox campaign.

You really can’t make this stuff up.

The hypocritical calling for Hillary Clinton to reveal her ” acid washed” emails or lock her up is coming back to bite the Republicans and their supporters.

There are really no coincidences here. More from the article:

Indeed, evidence does appear to show deep ties between Mr. Erickson, the N.R.A. and the Russian gun rights community that were formed in the years when many American conservatives, put off by the Obama administration’s policies, were increasingly looking to Mr. Putin as an example of a strong leader opposing immigration, terrorism and gay rights.

The N.R.A. was one of Mr. Trump’s biggest backers during the campaign, spending tens of millions of dollars to help elect him.

Follow the money. Follow the influential lobbyists and you will get to the bottom of the mystery. For it’s nothing short of a mystery as to what is going on today. There is no common sense in any of this intrigue. There is danger. There is collusion. There is corruption. There is trouble.

If this is what we have become, God help us. We are no longer a democracy.

Guns should not be influencing national elections or our local or state elections. No Mr. Wayne LaPierre, the guys with the guns should not be making the rules. This is insanity itself and we must #resist.

Arm anyone

commongunsense, , , , , , , , , , ,

armed manWhile important things are going on in Congress concerning national security, raising taxes on the middle class, a President re-tweeting a white supremacist UK site with fake videos about muslims attacking others, they found time to mark up a bill to allow anyone to carry loaded guns in public.

You can’t make this stuff up. But in today’s political atmosphere, absolutely everything is turned inside out and left is right, up is down. You would be right if you think this is lunacy.

There is no reason for HR 38 to become law except that the corporate gun lobby wants it and their lapdog politicians are all too willing to bow down and acquiesce. The bill is stupid and dangerous. The Law Enforcement Partnership To Prevent Gun Violence is against it:

The complete lack of consistent training standards, the different standards for identifying individuals that are too dangerous to carry, the uncertainty of a document’s validity, and the exposure of agencies and police officers to civil liability create unacceptable risks to our nation’s 900,000 police officers and the public at large. We reject the idea that one state’s approach to carrying a concealed firearm will work across the country. States and localities should maintain their rights to legislate concealed carry laws that best meet the needs of their citizens. The National Law Enforcement Partnership to Prevent Gun Violence urges you to respect and defend state laws while protecting and supporting our nation’s police officers by opposing H.R. 38 and S. 446. Thank you for your support.

Most Americans are against it.

But never mind the majority.

It should be noted that the corporate gun lobby ( NRA, etc,) want this to happen soon just in case the Republicans lose their power. And after the news of the past few days, that may happen sooner rather than later. So many incidents, tweets, statements and policies are making America dangerous again. The gun death rate has increased over the past few years so now over 100 Americans a day die from gunshot injuries. This is due to more guns everywhere. More guns are making us less safe. There are more guns on our streets thanks to stolen guns, trafficking, purchasing without background checks and straw purchasing. I wrote about recent reports of stolen guns in my last post.

Facts matter. We have a President who lies to us every day- sometimes several times a day. The gun lobby is lying to us as well. And the very sad and tragic thing is that many in Congress believe it. Apparently 2 of the nation’s worst mass shootings occurring in the last few months does not faze them. They don’t seem to care about victims.

Where is common sense?

Let’s take a look at H.R. 38 for a minute. You can watch the hearing on the bill here. During the hearing, Congressman Bob Goodlatte, chair of the House Judiciary Committee unbelievably said that people with violent misdemeanors are “law abiding”. This means that those folks, though not felons and technically not prohibited purchasers should be allowed to carry loaded guns in public.

After 6 hours of discussion, the hearing ended with the committee voting in favor of the bill on a party line vote. In spite of any common sense arguments about public safety being at risk, the NRA bought and paid for politicians voted for yet another dangerous bill.

Now tell me that allowing people with no permit or training to carry guns wherever they want to is a great idea. One of the arguments from the gun lobby is that people don’t need permits to carry because, they say, you have to pass a background check to get the gun you will be carrying around with you loaded in public. That is totally false. We know that crime guns come from many places- one is from private sales on-line or at gun shows. Others come from stealing guns and some from straw purchases. Some of these aforementioned guns are trafficked. It’s easy to get a gun with no background check.

Concealed carry permit holders actually do kill people as this site from the Violence Policy Center shows clearly. Since 2007 when the VPC started keeping track, 1119 people have been killed by permit holders and 31 mass shootings have been committed by gun permit holders. That should be reason enough to kill this bill.

So now, if Congress passes the Concealed Carry Reciprocity bill, people with violent misdemeanors, those adjudicated mentally ill, domestic abusers and others who shouldn’t have guns in the first place can carry where you are.

We can expect an assault on public safety and we definitely will not be a safer nation.

What in the world are they thinking? Not about public health and safety.

Follow the money and power for the answer.

It’s not too late to contact your Representative and Senators to oppose this craziness. Please make some calls in the name of the victims of gun violence.

We are better than this.