NRA and Russia ties

Gun negligence

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The other day I wrote a post about accountability with guns. It’s hard to come up with words for the negligence and irresponsibility exhibited by far too many gun owners and gun carriers. Ever since states have allowed for the public carrying of guns we have seen an increase in people who carry either intentionally or unintentionally shooting another person. Florida is where it all started as the state that has served as the cauldron of gun rights laws that have bubbled up into other states.

Gun owners and permit holders have been involved in many incidents of negligent and irresponsible behavior with their guns over the years and I have written about them many times in this blog.

A recent incident in Sanford, Florida, shows why it is a terrible idea for people to be allowed to carry deadly weapons in public places:

Deputies said the weapon fell out of the gun owner’s holster while he was walking through the dining room of the Cracker Barrel at 200 Hickman Circle in Sanford.

Deputies said William Hoback was talking to the checkout counter when his gun slipped out of his holster and fired.

The bullet hit a kettle, which sent fragments flying.

Three people were hit by the shrapnel, including a restaurant manager and Hoback’s fiancé.

You can’t make this stuff up. But almost worse than the incident itself is the response to it by law enforcement:

After Hoback realized what had happened, he apologized and explained it was an accident.

Deputies agreed, so he was not charged.

“This shooting doesn’t appear to be intentional and the conduct doesn’t appear to be so reckless that it would support the charge of criminal negligence,” said WFTV legal analyst Bill Sheaffer.

Sheaffer said even though the shooting doesn’t rise to the level of criminal negligence, the victim could file a civil lawsuit.

The public has a right to know if the man had a permit to carry and if the restaurant allows people to carry guns inside. Perhaps Cracker Barrel will reconsider any policy they have about gun carriers given this incident. If they don’t, one wonders what the effect this incident may have on their business. Will those injured hold the restaurant accountable for their belief that people carrying guns will do no harm because they are “law abiding” gun owners?:

In recent years, many states have relaxed their concealed carry laws, on the theory that concealed-gun carriers deter crime. But there is no credible evidence that permissive laws prevent or deter crime. In an analysis of states with right-to-carry laws, Stanford researcher John Donohue and colleagues found that states that passed right-to-carry laws experienced 13 to 15 percent higher aggregate violent crime rates, over a period of 10 years, than comparable states.

Don’t believe the NRA and gun rights myths about guns for self defense making us safer. This is why research about gun violence is so important. Facts matter.

Sanford, Florida may sound familiar to you. That would be because it was in Sanford that George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin in 2012 claiming self defense and then getting away with it.

Look at what Zimmerman is up to now:

Accusing Zimmerman of “revictimizing individuals whose lives were shattered by his own misguided actions,” Crump, Fulton and Martin said there is no credible proof to back Zimmerman’s claims.

“This tale defies logic,” they said, “and it’s time to close the door on these baseless imaginings.”

Klayman, the founder of Judicial Watch whose other clients include the conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, made headlines this year when a legal ethics panel recommended that he be suspended for misconduct regarding his actions toward a female client who had refused to enter into a romantic relationship with him.

Again-you just can’t make this stuff up. In case you forgot Jerome Corsi was involved with Trump and the Mueller investigation. There is something very wrong with things in the American gun culture. Up is down and down is up. What a tangled web is woven. The NRA=Russian money influence on the 2016 election=corruption=the NRA’s track towards investigations into its’ non-profit status and financial mismanagement and difficulties.

You just can’t make this stuff up.

Florida’s gun death rate is high compared to states that have stronger gun laws though under intense pressure from the students from March For Our Lives after the Parkland shooting, even the conservative Florida legislature and governor responded by passing stronger gun laws.

Florida has been the research center for the NRA’s loose gun laws. It was the first state to pass a Conceal and Carry law and the first to pass Stand Your Ground under the leadership of the NRA’s own Marion Hammer. We can see how that is working out in real time:

(…) NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer has singlehandedly written Florida’s gun laws for the past 40 years and has done more than any Florida lawmaker to ensure that pretty much anyone anywhere in Florida can buy whatever kind of gun he or she wants — including a disturbed teen like Cruz. Hammer’s influence extends even further too: She influences elections by personally instructing NRA members to vote against pro-gun-control candidates. Lawmakers are terrified of her.

In America, lawmakers have let the NRA terrify them. That is why the Dickey Amendment was passed in 1996 and flew under the radar for decades. The public did not know about it and did not understand that a law that actually denied the Centers for Disease Control and other federal agencies was passed by those in the pocket of the NRA. Because?… rights.

Just as research has been done on other public health and safety epidemics, it should be done on the causes and effects of gun violence. Because of research on auto accidents, we now have seat belt laws, drunk driving laws, safer roads and fewer auto accident deaths. And gun death rates have now surpassed auto accident death rates. Because of research into the effects of second hand smoke on those who don’t smoke, we have laws banning smoking in public places and healthier communities.

Just this past week, finally after decades of talking about this and lobbying to get Congress to fund research into gun violence, it happened. This is a victory for common sense and for the future of our country’s safety. If even one innocent person’s life is saved because of this research, it will have been worth the money and the research. From this article:

Dr. Robert McLean, the president of the American College of Physicians, applauded the funding bill and said in a statement that “the alarming rate of injuries and deaths related to firearms brings to light the glaring lack of research and data.””For over twenty years, we’ve desperately needed up-to-date research about firearm violence and intervention and prevention strategies to reduce physical as well as emotional injuries caused by firearms,” McLean said.”While $25 million is a great start, it pales in comparison to the amount needed to address this public health problem,” said Dr. Joseph Sakran, the founder of This Is Our Lane, a movement started by physicians in response to the National Rifle Association.For more than two decades, the CDC has avoided firearms research because of its interpretation of the so-called Dickey Amendment, named after the late Republican Rep. Jay Dickey of Arkansas.

Since 1996 hundreds of thousands of Americans have died from gunshot injuries and more injured. Since 1996 the NRA managed to get states to pass laws that have become dangerous to the average American. Since 1996 the rate of mass shootings has risen and many hundreds of our precious children have been slaughtered. Since 1996 the number of conceal carry (or open carry) incidents and even deaths are on the increase.

This is not the America we deserve or should have. We deserve to be safe from people whose guns somehow fall out of their holsters ( or pockets or purses) and fire off “unintentionally” harming innocent people while eating out or shopping. We deserve to know the truth and get the research into gun violence which has now become one of the top policy issues in our elections.

It is unconscionable that we have let this happen. Our leaders have been complicit in a scheme to normalize the carrying of guns and normalize daily shootings.

It is not normal.

We are better than this.

#Enough

The NRA- again

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A screenshot of image taken at House Judiciary Committee hearing

In the last year or so I have written plenty about what is going on at NRA headquarters in Virginia. It is not pretty. In fact, it is downright ugly. The organization is in what I would call meltdown mode. The IRS 501 C3 status is in question. Russians have infiltrated the organization in what appears now to be to aid in the election of President Trump in 2016. In fact, before 2016 the Russians were palling around with the NRA in a new article revealing what many of us have long suspected:

The report pulls back the curtain on the cozy relationship Russian agents had with the NRA by focusing in part on a 2015 trip gun group leaders took to Moscow. Russian agent Maria Butina, who was sentenced to 18 months in prison earlier this year after pleading guilty to conspiring against the U.S., worked in tandem with former Russian government official Alexander Torshin to get NRA officials to Russia. (…)

In a January 2015 email to David Keene, Butina bragged that Torshin’s appointment to the Central Bank of Russia was “the result of a ‘big game’ in which he has a very important role,” and said the new role would allow Torshin to travel to the U.S. more often to meet with NRA leadership.

Now, to add insult to injury, it looks like the NRA is willing to get involved in the 2020 election as well in what could be an illegal quid pro quo with the President. How could it possibly be anything else when we learned yesterday that the President met with the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre to allegedly ask him for help funding his impeachment defense? And by help, I mean in dollars, not sense. In return, apparently, according to the article, LaPierre wanted something – for the President to drop any talk of working to stem the epidemic of gun violence in the country he leads.

From the article ( in case you think I am making this up):

President Trump met in the White House on Friday with Wayne LaPierre, the chief executive of the National Rifle Association, and discussed prospective gun legislation and whether the N.R.A. could provide support for the president as he faces impeachment and a more difficult re-election campaign, according to two people familiar with the meeting.

During the meeting, Mr. LaPierre asked that the White House “stop the games” over gun control legislation, people familiar with the meeting said. It was not clear whether Mr. Trump asked Mr. LaPierre for his support, or what that support would look like.

Of course La Pierre denied that he wanted something in return but in observing his behavior for decades now, we all understand that LaPierre would like nothing better than to stop any talk of background checks, or Extreme Risk Protection Orders, or assault weapons, or funding research into the causes and effects of gun violence, or any gun measures that would reduce gun violence.

Why is the word “game” used so often here? The fact that 100 Americans a day die from gunshot injuries is not a game. The fact that American lives are being snuffed out almost weekly in mass shootings is not a game. The fact that our children are slaughtered regularly in their schools is not a game. The fact that Americans have such easy access to guns that daily suicides and homicides occur all over our country is not a game.

More and more this is like reading a spy novel. It is happening right in front of us in broad daylight. The victims are now the entire country, the rule of law, honesty, national security, American lives, extortion, shakedowns of foreign leaders, resignations of people involved with the President, truth, gaslighting of America, and other ramifications of this corrupt behavior.

This past week I traveled to Washington D.C. for a meeting and then attended the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the assault weapons ban. Listening to the testimony was sobering. Even more sobering and disturbing was the lengths to which some Republican members of the committee went to distort the truth about what banning certain types of assault weapons would mean. It was stunning to hear one of the witnesses called to the hearing by the Republicans on the committee proclaim that she and other women loved their AR-15s so much that taking away these guns from women would be taking away a woman’s right to choose. We all knew what that line meant.

Another line made for quoting was a woman who was an ex-police officer proclaim she would not comply with any law to ban assault style rifles. What happened to law abiding citizens and officers of the law? And more to the point, what does that really mean? I think we understand the not so veiled inference that people will keep those guns and be ready to use them.

Representative Buck of Colorado even had a photo of himself with former Representative Trey Gowdy flashed on the screen in the room showing the two of them fondling an AR-15 with an American flag design on it. The purpose of the photo was to ask one of the pro gun witnesses if that looked scary to her. This line of reasoning is losing its’ relevance given the rash of mass shootings in our country. Of course AR-15s and the like are scary weapons. It is not just the design. It’s the damage done by them and the loss of human life that we should all be scared of.

One of the witnesses was a trauma surgeon from El Paso who was called to the hospital to attend to the gunshot victims of the El Paso Walmart shooting. His testimony was hard to hear as he described the injuries to the victims. The father of one of the Parkland students was in the room. A survivor of the Las Vegas shooting was in the room. Other victims were there. They understand full well what those injuries mean. They mean death and severe injuries. When you listen to the surgeon describe the injuries and how different they are from handgun bullet injuries, you know that assault style weapons are, indeed, scary. He noted that he this was like a war zone scene rather than a hospital because of the number of victims, the amount of blood and the types of injuries.

You can watch the graphic video here:

Stunning. This is an American tragedy that has left a trail of carnage and NRA lapdogs in Congress do nothing about it and have done nothing about it for decades. We were there to let them know we wanted them to #DoSomething.

Sitting next to Dr. Tovar is Dayton, Ohio Mayor Nan Whaley who testified about the smell of bleach at the scene of the mass shooting in Dayton as clean-up efforts began. This is what stuck with her and this is the ripple effect of gun violence and the memories that never go away.

After the hearing we attended the rally to #endgunviolence on the Capitol lawn where hundreds of victims and survivors were there to listen to speeches from Congressional leaders who actually care about ending gun violence. Following the rally another smaller group walked into the office of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. This group stayed for 90 minutes with a staffer who heard their stories and wondered why McConnell has refused action on an issue of grave national importance and urgency.

So now we know that our efforts have been fruitful in bringing the issue of gun violence prevention to the forefront of election issues. But we also know that our very own President will make a deal with the NRA to stop any more discussion because of his corrupt behavior and possible impeachment. What a sad state of affairs. Common sense is nowhere to be found amongst the Republicans and the NRA.

All I know is that something is changing. The waves of support are strong and getting stronger. Common sense will prevail in the end.

Loopholes

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After traveling in Greece, I am recovering from jet lag and getting back to my life. Nothing stopped in the U.S. while I was gone of course. The Mueller report was released with all of the concomitant and expected chaos and controversy. The weather was awful in Minnesota while I was gone. Actually the weather was cool and a bit rainy in Greece for the first part of our trip and our guide explained that the snow capped mountains we saw were very unusual for April in Greece. In a normal year, there is not snow on the mountains in April there. But this was not a normal year.

Clearly it is not a normal year in the U.S. A President and presidency is run amok. The Mueller report revealed that there were enough instances of obstruction of justice to make us all know that this is not normal. And there is no excuse for calling it not normal because what is happening is frightening and dangerous to our democracy. But never mind, the President and his sycophants carry on as if there is nothing to see here even though it is as obvious as a large wart on someone’s nose that we have a serious crisis on our hands.

Speaking of crises- the coverage of the NRA convention, going on as I write, has been amusing and interesting. It reveals an organization also run amok.

From the article:

Turmoil racking the National Rifle Association is threatening to turn the group’s annual convention into outright civil war, as insurgents maneuver to oust Wayne LaPierre, the foremost voice of the American gun rights movement.
The confrontation pits Mr. LaPierre, the organization’s longtime chief executive, against its recently installed president, Oliver L. North, the central figure in the Reagan-era Iran-contra affair, who remains a hero to many on the right.
Behind it is a widening crisis involving a legal battle between the N.R.A. and its most influential contractor, Ackerman McQueen, amid renewed threats from regulators in New York, where the N.R.A. is chartered, to investigate the group’s tax-exempt status. With contributions lagging, the N.R.A. is also facing an increasingly well-financed gun control movement, motivated by a string of mass shootings.

Count me as not sad about this state of affairs. The NRA has stopped common sense gun legislation for way too long for its’ own financial and political purposes. They are not considering the loss of life in increasingly large numbers, spewing hate and paranoia instead of working with us to find solutions to our national gun violence epidemic. It’s time for a reckoning. They have wielded undue influence and money for decades as the bodies pile up. The American public is against what they are doing but some of our lapdog politicians are too afraid to stand up. That is changing though as the U.S House passed several gun laws in the new Congress to keep people who could be dangerous with guns from getting them. The Minnesota House is poised to do the same and other states have passed recent laws to make their residents safe from shootings.

The second amendment is NOT sacrosanct as we are finding out. Laws have passed in spite of the now weakened NRA. The organization has veered off course and they are eating their own. The NRA allegedly took money from the Russians. That is a scandal worth investigating. They have misused their non-profit status over and over again. We all know about the money they take in from gun manufacturers and now, possibly foreign countries.

And meanwhile, during the now controversial and as usual, hateful NRA annual convention, Maria Butina, Russian operative(?) was sentenced to 18 months in prison. She tried to claim she was not a spy. If that is true, pigs will fly. Butina’s job was to get to the Trump campaign via the NRA which the Russians knew could happen. Because of course, the NRA gave more money to Trump’s campaign than has ever been given to any other campaign.

They exploited campaign finance loopholes and now they are getting caught. As is explained in the above article Giffords is taking them on in a lawsuit. It’s about time for accountability:

The worst news for the NRA, however, may be a new lawsuit filed against the Federal Exchange Commission. The FEC is being sued by nonprofit group, Giffords, for failing to uphold financial laws allegedly broken by the NRA.

Back to the second amendment, misusing its’ meaning is ripe for those who are true believers in the hype about an amendment written in the late 1800s when powder guns were the norm. Look, for example, at an article about a Minnesota teen ( 16 years old) who wore a shirt to school displaying the American flag with bullets and handgrenades instead of stars of stripes. Patriotic? NOT. Considering the number of school shootings and lockdowns that our kids must endure, this is plain and simply provocative and meant to be so. From the article:

Valerius said he wore the sweatshirt as a show of support for the Second Amendment, and feels that there should be a “loophole” in the dress code for that type of expression. He wore it to school again Friday.

A loophole? Let’s talk about loopholes that allow anyone, even domestic abusers, teens, felons and those adjudicated mentally ill to purchase any kind of gun they want and then use it to kill people. That is a loophole.

An example of this wonderful loophole in our gun laws is the vigilante extremist who was arrested at the New Mexico border with Mexico for essentially kidnapping asylum seekers. He was a felon with a gun. Where did he get the gun? Easy enough in America. From the article:

Hector Balderas, New Mexico’s attorney general, said federal agents had arrested the leader, Larry Mitchell Hopkins, who had been operating under the alias Johnny Horton Jr. Mr. Balderas said in a statement that Mr. Hopkins was arrested on charges of firearms possession by a felon.

Sigh. Innocent people are terrorized every day by gun extremists. We have our very own home grown terrorists who think they can do anything with their guns and their rights. Only in America.

Trump has been busy encouraging this danger by speaking total falsehoods, fear and paranoia at the NRA convention. It was sickening, actually, to watch and hear but the gun toting crowd loved it. Er, uh, oops- they can’t carry their guns at NRA conventions because……?

Trump also announced during this crazy speech that he would make the world less safe by refusing to sign on to the U.N. Small Arms Treaty which NRA lapdogs in Congress and now the Presidency claim will take away gun rights in America. I like this reasoning from the article quoted from the Protect Minnesota Facebook page because it explains the second amendment and gun rights nonsense so well:

” 1) The NRA, on behalf of gun manufacturers, gets Trump to revoke the small arms trafficking agreement. 2) Arms manufacturers get rich selling guns to gangs in countries like Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras. 3) Armed gangs make life unbearable for the citizens in those countries. Thousands are forced to leave and walk across a continent to “safety” in the US. 4) Trump convinces Americans the these asylum-seekers are dangerous criminals. 5) Frightened Americans buy more guns to protect their families. 6) Arms manufacturers get even richer. The NRA has done its job.”

This is the fact checking of his speech which is always necessary because Trump never tells the truth while speaking to his base:

Members of MS-13, a violent street gang, are a tiny fraction of the number of people apprehended while trying to illegally cross the southwestern border.
In the 2019 fiscal year thus far, border officials apprehended more than 360,000 people trying to illegally cross the border. Of those people, 221, or 0.06 percent, were MS-13 members.

(See above statement from Protect Minnesota)

(…) The 2014 Arms Trade Treaty regulates international sales of conventional weapons (like tanks, combat vehicles, warships, missiles and firearms). It does not “surrender American sovereignty” over gun laws to the United Nations or hand enforcement powers over guns to “foreign bureaucrats.”
The United States was a signatory to the treaty, but did not ratify it as 101 other nations have. Mr. Trump withdrew the United States’ signature during his speech.
The treaty aims to establish international norms for regulating arms sales between countries and addressing illegal arms sales. It prohibits selling weapons to nations that are under arms embargoes or will use them to commit genocide, terrorism, war crimes or attacks against civilians. (…) “It has absolutely no effect on U.S. domestic gun laws,” said Daryl G. Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, which supports the treaty.
Adam Winkler, a Second Amendment expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, agreed and noted that withdrawing the United States as a signatory would have very little impact given that the Senate never ratified the treaty. What Mr. Trump is relinquishing, Mr. Kimball said, is a seat at the international table to set global standards and better enforcement in countries most affected by the illegal arms trade. (…)

You can watch a video of his entrance when someone in the audience throws a cell phone at the President. Thank God no guns are allowed inside of the convention.

Well, back to loophole nonsense. Why would the NRA want to have this woman teaching gun safety to others? She shot an unarmed person and got away with it- another loophole. From the article:

A former Tulsa police officer acquitted in the shooting death of an unarmed man is expected to teach a National Rifle Association course next month.

I want to end with where I began- with our trip to Greece where the origin of the phrase “Molon Labe” began:

Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC), one of the most famous battles in history . King Leonidas of Sparta said the phrase Molon Labe (means “Come and take them” in ancient Greek) to Xerxes I of Persia 2492 years ago when the Persians asked the Spartans to lay down their arms and surrender.

The second amendment apologists have misused this one as well. We visited the site where the battle of Thermopylae took place and where this phrase was used in its’ original context.

The “second amendment” folks claim this phrase for their own purposes which is to let people know that they will resist any attempts to take away their guns or their rights as if that is going to happen. It is yet another loophole in language that has been exploited for political purposes.

The photo shows the famous statue of King Leonidas.

Resisting common sense and any attempts to keep the rest of us safe from danger and shootings by exploiting the meanings of language is disingenuous at the least. They are like the goats ( in photo from my trip taken on the Greek island of Kefalonia) who take risks, follow the ersatz leader and sometimes do dangerous things that could hurt the herd.

Working together works out better in the end for all of us. In Greece and in most other democratized countries, they think the U.S is just crazy when it comes to guns. Our guides told us that in Greece, it is very hard to get a gun of any kind. They are only used for hunting and not much for that , as it turns out. When it comes to semi-automatic assault rifles, they proclaimed their dangerousness and surprise that in America, just about anyone could have one. They don’t believe that guns are necessary for much of anything in Greece and their gun death rate , among the lowest in the world, proves that they have common sense. The ancient Greeks were very wise as are the modern Greeks that we encountered on our trip.

And so it is always instructive to travel for many reasons but getting a perspective on what’s going on at home is useful and mind expanding. We are a country unto our own when it comes to loopholes and gun laws.

Let’s build a wall against gun violence

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I say it’s time for a wall. This wall would be an invisible wall around our kids, our schools, work places, in homes, and everywhere people are shot. It should be around people like the Coast Guard member who is a right wing extremist ready to kill as many Americans as possible– but just liberal media and lawmakers. The wall in this case would stop him from shooting people by making sure he doesn’t have guns. From the story:

A 49-year-old Coast Guard lieutenant charged with stockpiling weapons and drugs is being described as a “domestic terrorist” who was planning “to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country,” according to court documents filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland on Tuesday.
Federal prosecutors say Christopher Paul Hasson, a self-described white nationalist living in Silver Spring, Md., was amassing firearms since at least 2017, while cultivating plans to launch a widespread attack on prominent Democratic lawmakers, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and several high-profile television anchors from MSNBC and CNN.

There are hardly words for this kind of thinking. And where was our President, the one who actually has promoted violence at his rallies and who demeans people and attacks the media and liberal lawmakers? What was his statement condemning this?

Would he have commented if the terrorist was targeting him, or Mitch McConnell or Rush Limbaugh? This is a heinous domestic act of terrorism in the works and he says nothing? He wants to build his wall to keep out all of those illegal immigrants who are committing crimes, raping women, shooting people and are generally worse people than our citizens.

We need a wall to keep domestic terrorists from acts of violence against innocent Americans who they hate for whatever reason. But when your own President is encouraging this, perhaps we need a wall around him. We need a wall around his tweets. We need a wall around his angry fallacious nonsensical comments in short segments at cabinet meetings or on the White House Lawn on his way to a rally where he ramps up fear and paranoia.

We need a wall around our current gun culture which promotes the owning and carrying guns by everyone. We need a wall to keep the corporate gun lobby from spewing lies about current legislation before Congress. For example, H.R. 8 which will require background checks on all gun sales has an exception for family member transfers of firearms. Nonetheless, the message coming from pro gun lobby Congress members is the opposite.. They tell us in meetings ( and yes, they have done this) that their father will have to go to jail if he gives his guns to his son. NO. WRONG. This is a myth. But they believe it. We tell them otherwise to set the record straight to break through the wall of ignorance and false interpretations.

Facts matter. They are stubborn things. But in order to change things to get common sense legislation passed in this country and my state, we must get above, over, under and around the wall stopping gun safety reform.

Do we want to save lives or not? That is the question.

The answer is education, changing the conversation, changing the culture and changing the laws. Of course it also means changing our Congress members if they hide behind the wall of power, influence and money of the NRA and the corporate gun lobby.

Yes. We need a wall. It will not be the ridiculous wall that the President envisions and has promised his base. That wall may never happen anyway because of the insistence of our President on avoiding the legal way to get funding for his vanity project. Going around Congress to declare a national emergency was a power grab of epic proportions not seen before.

And yes, it has been mentioned that a Democratic President could declare a national gun violence emergency and start passing laws to make sure we are all safer. Or, God forbid, take guns away from dangerous and prohibited people. The right wing media is already all a twitter with any mention of this idea.

The NRA is sort of like the President in that way. They have grabbed power through lies over decades and fomented myths that got traction until the majority started seeing through them and insisted on the truth. After the Parkland shooting, the students showed us the way to challenge these common misperceptions and how to speak more boldly. And that is what it will take to break through the wall.

Next week the Democratic led House will vote on H.R. 8 and it will pass. The Republican led Senate will be afraid of the wall of myths and influence to do the right thing. They keep their power by allowing themselves to be influenced by a corrupt organization allegedly in concert with the Russians to get Trump elected President.

They will stand behind their wall of ignorance and spineless allegiance to the extremists who demand their support.

It’s time to build a wall around our communities to keep innocent children and adults from being shot- just because. Easy access to guns is the wall of tragedy and violence that has left families bereft and dealing with life long trauma. It’s time to tear down the wall of influence of the corporate gun lobby and the extreme philosophy that took over too many in Congress in the last few decades.

We have memorial walls for military victims. We build walls in memory of other victims. We have walls of flowers and crosses after mass shootings. Some believe we should have a national memorial wall to gun violence victims. There are certainly enough of them to deserve a very long wall- longer than the VietNam wall since more have died from bullets since 1968 than in all American wars in total.

Walls keep people out and they keep people in, depending on the situation. Which do we want?

Change will start next week. It’s way past time but it’s encouraging nonetheless.

We are the majority. We are united against gun violence. We want common sense. We want public health and safety. We want gun safety reform. We want the truth. We want the facts. We want to prevent and reduce gun violence.

NRA news

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This morning we learned the news that former President George H.W. Bush has died. I am not a Republican and did not support President Bush’s policies but he served with honor and integrity and was an honest man. Many Americans look back to those days and remember that at the least, there was not corruption, daily lies and chaos. 

George H.W. Bush had the integrity to resign from the NRA when the organization made verbal attacks against law enforcement after the Oklahoma City bombings. He wrote a letter resigning his life membership from the NRA.:

I am a gun owner and an avid hunter. Over the years I have agreed with most of N.R.A.’s objectives, particularly your educational and training efforts, and your fundamental stance in favor of owning guns.


However, your broadside against Federal agents deeply offends my own sense of decency and honor; and it offends my concept of service to country. It indirectly slanders a wide array of government law enforcement officials, who are out there, day and night, laying their lives on the line for all of us.


How refreshing. The current occupant of the White House is so far from doing anything honestly and above board that we look back at former Presidents who have the courage of their convictions with admiration.

I believe we could actually expect the opposite from our current President. Anything for his base. And who is his base? Are the NRA extreme gun rights advocates a large part of his base? Let’s take a look at the number of members of the organization compared to the total U.S. population. From an article written by Mike Weisser ( Mike the Gun Guy) in the Huffington Post in 2017:

Now since the NRA itself claims only to have 5 million members, how do we explain that all of a sudden the organization has added 9 million more to its membership rolls? Here’s how the NRA is handling it as of today: “we have millions more Americans who support us and will tell pollsters they are members, even when they are not.” And to underscore this point, the NRA website also linked to a story from The Washington Times (a real, balanced piece of journalism) which states that the Pew report shows that 21 percent of gun owners had contacted a public official about gun policy at some point in their lives, but only 12 percent of the non-owners said they did.

Another article posted after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida analyzed the numbers game played by the NRA in order to make the organization seem bigger and more powerful than it actually is:

Still, if there are an estimated 55 million gun owners in the U.S., even at 5 million members the NRA would account for less than 10 percent of the gun owning community.
“Let’s say it’s 10 million [members],” said Ware, the South Carolinian gun owner. “That’s still a fraction of the gun owners out there.”

A fraction of the gun owners out there- that is significant. If this is the organization that has successfully bought and paid for many of our elected leaders and represents a fraction of gun owners and even fewer Americans, we ought to be yelling from the roof tops to demand the action that over 90% of Americans want. 

Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the passage of the Brady Law. Back in 1993, even the NRA supported the idea that if someone wanted to buy a gun their background should be checked out to make sure they were not a felon, a domestic abuser, someone who was adjudicated mentally ill, etc. This was a no brainer. But when the law passed, with support of the NRA, there was an exception for private sellers of guns. That exception has proven to be deadly. There are many examples of mass shooters, domestic abusers and others who got guns through private sales and used them to murder innocent people. Columbine. Wisconsin Spa shooting. Charleston church shooting……..

Since the passage of the law, according to Mark Glaze, writing for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence:

Under the current law, only people who buy their guns from federally licensed gun dealers are required by federal law to pass a background check. Unlicensed “private sellers” who sell at gun shows or over the Internet, are not required to conduct checks – a major gap that has grown exponentially larger as a portion of the marketplace for guns has moved online and away from bricks-and-mortar dealers.
Felons and other prohibited purchasers are well aware of this private sale loophole – and they exploit it every day. Researchers have estimated that as many as 22% of gun sales are conducted by private sellers – with no background checks and no questions asked.
In response to this lethal gap in the law, 20 states and the District of Columbia have acted to expand background checks to include at least some private sales, including those conducted by unlicensed sellers at gun shows, on the Internet and anywhere else.
And these laws are saving lives: when, in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting massacre, Connecticut enacted a universal background check system, the state saw a 40% reduction in gun homicides and a 15% reduction in gun suicides.
Overall, from 2009 to 2012, states that required background checks on all handgun sales or permits had 35% fewer gun deaths per capita than states without that background check requirement.
Researchers have also found that, after adjusting for population, states that require background checks on all handgun sales experience less than half as many mass shooting incidents (52% fewer) as states without that background check requirement. (…) Brady background checks are more popular in America than pizza. A 2018 Quinnipiac poll showed that 97% of Americans support universal checks, including 97% of gun owners. And a 2012 survey by GOP pollster Frank Luntz found that even 74% of NRA members support this common-sense reform.
And we know voters have their eye on this issue. Polls both before and after the 2018 midterms showed gun safety was one of the top issues for voters. And a survey of 11 battleground House districts conducted by the Brady Campaign and the American Federation of Teachers showed that voters were much more likely to support candidates who support universal checks.

Change and common sense are coming to America. The 2018 elections will prove to be a game changer in America for many reasons. 

The news of the day is happening fast and furiously. Much of it is related to the Mueller investigation into whether our very own President colluded with the Russians and now, as a result of the investigation, there may actually be attempts at obstruction of justice.

Buried in some of this news was this one about the Russian woman, Maria Butina,  who allegedly attempted to help the Russians gain access to the President through the NRA. It should be more alarming that this happened but then, it’s become such an everyday occurrence that alarm has become complacency or else not wanting  to know.

Let’s look at what this article is saying about the consequences to the country and to the NRA once Butina spills her knowledge:

Prosecutors now allege that Torshin was, in fact, directing Butina’s gun rights networking in the US, as part of a Russian influence effort. If the government wants to get to the bottom of whether the NRA was getting Russian money to boost Trump, Butina may possess valuable information about Torshin’s role in the alleged scheme. (…) Butina, as Torshin’s collaborator and as Erickson’s partner, was smack dab in the middle of this effort in May 2016. In fact, during this same month, Butina herself was part of a group that unsuccessfully sought a meeting with the Trump campaign. So it’s likely she could shed light on Erickson’s and the NRA’s efforts to connect Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin. (…) Though the campaign declined, Butina went to the event. During the audience Q&A, she asked Trump a question about whether he had plans to continue Russian sanctions, which Butina called “damaging” to both the American and Russia economies. Trump reassured her that he didn’t think the sanctions were needed. In May 2016, as the NRA hosted its convention in Louisville, Butina briefly met with Donald Trump Jr., and gave a speech at a NRA fundraiser involving Kentucky Republican Gov. Matt Bevin

I don’t know about you but I smell trouble ahead for Butina, the administration and the NRA. The organization is now having financial and legal problems related both to this investigation and the intense scrutiny placed on the NRA after the Parkland shooting. The activated students have not been shy about going after the powerful interest lobby. And it’s past time for that to happen. But it took the future generation to do what many of the adults have been unable to do. 

This article explains more about the NRA’s financial problems:

More noteworthy than its drop in contributions, though, was its decline in membership dues. The NRA took in more than $128 million in dues last year—a significant sum, but down considerably from the $163 million it took in the year prior. That decline, more than the drop in direct contributions, appears to indicate a dwindling, if still formidable, base of public support. Asked for comment on the decline, an NRA spokesperson pointed to reporting showing that the organization’s magazine subscriptions have shot up this year, interpreted as an indicator of an accompanying membership surge. (…) That loss in funding comes at a tricky political moment for the organization. Rarely has the NRA had so staunch an ally in the White House. But the group, which built significant political heft on the back of Obama-era threats to key gun-rights priorities, has also become a lightning rod in the still-raging debate over gun control and mass shootings in the U.S. And several recently elected House Democrats ran explicitly on pledges to go after the gun lobby when in office.
Under President Trump, the NRA has also adopted a more aggressive advocacy posture exceeding its traditional focus on gun-rights issues exclusively. It recently launched a stand-alone political commentary platform, NRA TV, that has veered into culture-war issues at best tangentially related to the Second Amendment.


So where are we? I say we are at an important time in our country’s history. One cannot avoid the sense that the corruption, lies and coverups are coming to a head. The involvement of the NRA in some of this news will not be good for the organization- once a respected group that supported gun safety and hunters. Things have changed. The country is going to experience more chaos and controversy.

When the truth is revealed, let’s hope that Americans will have the common sense to handle whatever happens peacefully without violence. There is a worry that those gun rights extremists, many of whom own many guns just in case they need them for an insurrection, may not stay on the sidelines:

“It seems like this is a theme that’s kind of resonating out there — that the militias feel there is an impending civil war that’s brewing between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, the militia versus antifa,” Johnson said. “That’s very concerning when you have a movement that is as well-armed [as militias], and conducts paramilitary training, and stockpiling and prepping and everything else. When you have them getting paranoid and discussing the possibility of a civil war, it’s not out of the realm of possibility of them actually trying trying to instigate it or provoke it.”

And so I end where I began- with my tribute to former President George H.W. Bush and his honor and integrity. And with my concern that the current occupant of the White House and the related investigations into corruption, collusions and possible obstruction of justice could lead to possible violence. The NRA is in the middle of both my tribute and my concerns about the current situation.

Another shooting anniversary and NRA spies amongst us

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yellow roseI 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.

Yes it’s true. There are Russian/NRA spies working on behalf of the Republicans and our very own President:

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.

You just can’t make this stuff up.

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I wrote a blog post on my former blog site about sleeping with an NRA spy. It seems that anything goes with the organization that is opposed to common sense laws that could save lives.

Now of course, the NRA has become an extremist organization where board members like Ted Nugent regularly speak hate and violence themselves.:

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.

The irony of all of this is that the majority of NRA members do NOT agree with the agenda of the organization to which they have paid their membership dues. The majority want Brady background checks on all gun sales which the NRA has scuttled all attempts to pass in the U.S. Congress- even after the shooting of 20 6 and 7 year olds at Sandy Hook Elementary School:

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.

The other irony is that the outspoken and offensive Ted Nugent didn’t allow gun carrying concert goers to carry their guns into his latest Roanoke concert. What is he afraid of? I will remind my readers that Alison Parker was shot and killed in Roanoke. Is that why? Was he afraid of the Parker family? Because Andy is so scary when he speaks out against the violence that took the life of his daughter.

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

Or maybe someone who intentionally means harm. Remember the shooting at the Las Vegas concert?

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.

Maria Butina apparently used sex to gain power and influence into the Republican party on behalf of the Russians. She inserted herself into CPAC, the religious right wing and the NRA to get information and to influence elected leaders and others to get Trump elected.

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.

Big money and guns

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Print

The NRA, the Russian investigation, power, money, corruption, influence on elections, Trump and the 2016 campaign. What could possibly go wrong?

If this allegation is true, it shows how far the corporate gun lobby will go to gain and hold on to their influence over our political system. From the article about the FBI investigation into the influence of Russian money, the NRA and the Trump election:

However, the NRA reported spending a record $55 million on the 2016 elections, including $30 million to support Trump – triple what the group devoted to backing Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race. Most of that was money was spent by an arm of the NRA that is not required to disclose its donors.

Two people with close connections to the powerful gun lobby said its total election spending actually approached or exceeded $70 million. The reporting gap could be explained by the fact that independent groups are not required to reveal how much they spend on Internet ads or field operations, including get-out-the-vote efforts.

We know that Trump attended the NRA’s annual meeting to lie about his support for their dangerous policies. And we know he received a large campaign donation from the organization along with support by way of letting supporters know that they should vote for this unfit man:

A supporter of restrictions on guns before he entered politics, Mr. Trump became a fierce champion of gun rights during his bid for the White House, earning early backing — and $30 million in campaign support — from the powerful lobbying group.

“Only one candidate in the general election came to speak to you, and that candidate is now the president of the United States, standing before you,” Mr. Trump said. “You came through for me, and I am going to come through for you.”

There it is for all to see.

This is simply corrupt and absolutely not OK. We need to keep our eyes and ears open.

The book, “Dark Money” reveals the extent to which this is happening in our democracy, if you can call it that given that money is buying elections and influencing important decisions on behalf of the American people. From the review of the book:

A careful exposé of the libertarian agenda, spearheaded by the Koch brothers, to “impose their minority views on the majority by other means.”

As people who read my blog know, I often talk about how the gun lobby represents a distinct minority of Americans and even gun owners. But their agenda is about money and influence which works against the majority. For decades that money and influence has bought us terrible policies that are dangerous to public health and safety. Such laws as “Stand Your Ground” and ” Constitutional Carry” allow people with guns to get away with murder and for people to openly carry guns in public places where most people do not want them. And if the agenda of passing “Concealed Carry Reciprocity” were to move forward and get the support of the Senate, just about anyone would be allowed to carry loaded guns wherever they go.

These are the wishes forced on us by the minority who have money. Money talks.

Left in the wake of all of this are the victims. But victims don’t talk. Sometimes they have a voice and survivors like former Representative Gabby Giffords, for example, speak as well as they can in demanding common sense in the halls of Congress and state legislatures.

Unfortunately for us, her voice and the voices of others like her are not loud enough compared to the voices of money. Many of our politicians are lapdogs for the gun lobby. I posted this Brady Campaign video in my last post as well. It is still relevant:

Woe unto us if we let the money continue to influence the safety and well being of the public. The bodies are piling up in front of our eyes.

In Minnesota a few days ago, the combination of icy roads, an accident, and guns came together to lead to the death of a young driver:

What happened next was spelled out Wednesday in a criminal complaint that said Weiss, 25, of Rochester, who has a legal permit to carry a gun, shot the teenage driver of the other car at point-blank range when a confrontation flared.

The Olmsted County attorney charged Weiss, who says he acted in self-defense, with second-degree murder in the death of Muhammed Rahim, 17, the middle child of a family that fled Iraq six years ago. The charge is a felony that, with a conviction, carries a potential prison sentence of three to 40 years.

Weiss was arrested and jailed. He has since been released on bail.

Rahim’s passenger told police that he thought Weiss wanted to fight after the collision. He said he and Rahim threatened Weiss and that Rahim even dared Weiss to shoot him. There were no punches thrown, according to police, but Weiss said Rahim shoved him once in the chest.

Incidents like this should not lead to death. This was an accident, a misunderstanding, perhaps some strong words. But if one man had not had a gun, the other would be alive today. And claiming self defense may or may not work here. The victim was unarmed and only ( maybe) had words with the shooter. Is that enough to kill someone?

But Minnesota does not have a Stand Your Ground law. We have fought against it for many years in the face of fierce support by the corporate gun lobby’s influence on some of our state legislators. Would this man be able  to get away with murder with no trial if a Stand Your Ground law was in place?

This is yet another of those “good guys” with guns that Wayne LaPierre so famously and nonsensically said after the shooting of 20 first graders, held up when pretending that only good guys with guns can stop bad guys with guns:

Sigh.

Sometimes even in states with Stand Your Ground laws, shooters have not gotten away with murder. The case of Jordan Davis, shot in Florida by a gun permit holder because of teens sitting in a car playing loud music, showed that murdering an unarmed person who simply annoyed someone isn’t an excuse.

We are better than this.

The confluence of the Russia investigation into their influence on our 2016 election, with the NRA is an interesting situation. If the findings come out showing that it was, indeed, true, we need to hold the NRA responsible for their actions and expose the truth about dark money and guns.

 

UPDATE:

This New York Times article expands on the possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians through the NRA:

It’s important not to get carried away, if only because a scenario in which the Russian investigation ensnares the N.R.A., probably the most influential conservative group in the United States, seems a bit too much like Resistance fan fiction, too delicious to be true. Indeed, if it is true, it has devastating implications for the entire Republican Party, since many officeholders enjoy lavish financial support from the N.R.A. Still, an N.R.A. role in Russiagate would explain a few things, including why the N.R.A. has, in recent years, developed such a close relationship with Russia.

Follow the Money. People are dying. The gun industry profits. Gun laws are loosened. People unfit for office are elected with the help of the gun lobby. Our leaders are afraid to pass laws to save lives and protect us all from senseless gun violence.

The insatiable quest for profits for the gun industry, power and control of our democratic process may end in a very bad way. It would not be a surprise to most people who have come to understand that the NRA is not a gun rights group any more. It is an arm of the Republican party and is run by extremists.

Extremism in our legislatures

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Caroon
Published in the Duluth News Tribune

I have written many times about Stand Your Ground laws. As more states are now passing these laws more people will be in danger of being shot and injured or killed senselessly. Not that any shooting makes much sense.  This story from The Trace, highlights an example of the first “Stand Your Ground” case in Missouri after their new law passed:

Missouri was the first state to pass a “stand your ground” law since the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida brought notoriety to such legislation in 2013. Before taking that step, Missouri law followed the “castle doctrine,” which says that a person may shoot an intruder to his home, if perceiving the situation as life-threatening.

Schoeneberg, for his part, is worried about gun owners understanding that the new, more permissive “stand your ground” law still has limits. “I think that people think this is a license to do more than they’re really allowed,” he says.

This is the story of so many other similar cases. Can you shoot someone because of a cell phone robbery? If you can, should you? Can you shoot someone who is sitting drunk in the car in your garage? Should you? Can you shoot someone who has broken into your house and is taking a shower in your very own shower? Should you?

The answer is yes if you want to face the consequences.  If someone else’s life is worth so little that you would take it over things like this we have a serious public health and safety problem and a problem with the morality of taking human lives.  Some people think this is OK.

Some legislators in Minnesota are lapdogs for the gun lobby and will get a floor vote in the House on Stand Your Ground in the next few days. Why? Because rights…….Because ALEC…… Because the corporate gun lobby agenda…..

It’s that simple but it’s really that complicated.

Minnesota nice? Not so much. Because once you have the idea in your head that you can now shoot someone who you perceive to be a danger ( even if they really aren’t) you can shoot first and ask questions later.There is nothing about Stand Your Ground laws that are good for public safety and the health of our communities. In fact, the laws make our communities and families less safe.

But common sense about these things does not exist in the minds of those who have decided that laws like this are OK.

The gun extremists have been standing their ground as they push ludicrous and dangerous bills through our state legislatures and Congress. Consider permitless carry which did not make it far in the Minnesota House. From this article in The Trace:

The concept, rooted in constitutional originalism, assumes that the authors of the Second Amendment envisioned an unfettered right to wield a gun for personal defense. In this view, any limitation on an individual’s right to carry guns, however small, is unjust. Full stop. As such, passing constitutional-carry legislation is seen by proponents as a restoration, not an expansion, of gun freedoms.

As with the “campus carry” movement, the push for permitless carry has come from the grassroots more than from the National Rifle Association. While the nation’s largest gun lobby champions the latest bills in its press releases, local lobbyists who take the NRA’s absolutist rhetoric at face value find themselves chafing at its corporate model of working hand-in-glove with establishment politicians.

The resulting friction has fed into the upheaval taking place within gun politics (and American conservatism as a whole) since the rise of the Tea Party, which has left the NRA frequently following, rather than steering, the emboldened extremes of its coalition. Activists in several states told The Trace that the NRA — which did not respond to requests for comment for this story — has not helped their cause. In one state, they point to direct evidence that the NRA has undercut their proposals.

Hmmm. Even the NRA does not like these bills? It looks like Stand Your Ground is dead in the Minnesota legislature for this session. I wonder why? Many of us have sent post cards, sent emails and made phone calls. We have visited offices, held rallies against these dangerous bills, and held up signs outside of the House chambers. It is not a popular bill but again, pushed by extremists.

Then who are these extremists? They are in the minority when it comes to support for sensible gun laws. They are not members of your grandfather’s or even your father’s NRA. They are anti-Obama, anti government, anti immigration fanatics pushing for laws that they believe would allow them to protect themselves from zombies and “the other”. Scary stuff if you ask me. They are the “don’t tread on me” guys. They carry the Gadsden Flag for effect and as a symbol understood by other extremists.  Take a look in case you don’t know about it:  Anarcho-Gadsden_flag.svg

A local gun owner and now former NRA member wrote this great piece the other day in my local paper. He understands common sense and extremism and he has chosen the former. From his opinion piece:

The measure was supported by the NRA and its favored legislators. For decades I was a member of the National Rifle Association and had its conspicuous round insignia on my cars and trucks. I was even enrolled into the “National Rifle Association of America Millennium Honor Roll.” It wasn’t that I thought the NRA and its members had some ill intent when I decided to discontinue my membership; it was because of the evermore unlikeable image of the NRA to many people. An organization that used to mostly represented hunters and sport shooters, and even wildlife conservation has become a spokesperson for the manufacturers and marketers of military-like assault weapons. If you want to see this trend, just go to a gun show and see all the black and camouflaged semi-automatics that are replacing the aesthetically appealing guns with contoured fine wooden stocks and elegant inlays and engraving. These new quasi-machine guns have all sorts of unusual configurations and often are collapsible to be more easily concealed. The guns displayed at shows more and more like those in news photos of confiscated gang weapons.

Another sad aspect with the NRA: after every major shooting tragedy, out comes its leader, Wayne LaPierre, to warn us that the Constitution will be in jeopardy if some sensible legislation to reduce gun violence is passed.

The NRA does not represent gun owners any more and they are beginning to wise up as more and more extreme bills are pushed in our legislatures and Congress.

And the writer sums up the culture of gun extremism nicely as he says:

The stated purpose of the permitless carry bill in St. Paul is public safety. But this will not be achieved by having even more gun carriers who won’t bother with gun-safety training or the permitting process or who may be mentally ill.

Statistics notwithstanding, even an occasional widely reported “accident” — such as the Target shopper wounded when another customer’s gun went off or the horror of the Walmart shopper whose child got the pistol out of her purse and killed himself — has even more of us deciding we would prefer not to have guns casually carried around by the firearms-inept. It also defies logic to pretend that evermore pervasive guns will reduce the incidence of bar and road-rage shootings and urban gunfights.

The proposed law in Minnesota would have other adverse effects: Even more of those annoying, black-and-white “guns not allowed” signs would crop up. More potential visitors might think Minnesota is returning to gunslinging Wild-West days. The perception could grow stronger that we gun owners aren’t satisfied to have our guns safely at home, out with us hunting, or at a safe shooting range. And it certainly would not enhance our image of “Minnesota Nice.”

( The political cartoon at the top accompanied this opinion piece and certainly does express the truth of the permitless carry bills).

How will we know “good guys” with guns from “bad guys” with guns if everyone is armed and no one has training or a permit. Further they can “stand their ground” and shoot someone without consequence. ( Or so they are led to believe).

It doesn’t always work out well for those who have claimed justifiable self defense. One such case is the 2014 Minnesota man who was lying in wait for two teens who were burglarizing his house. He lured them to his basement and shot them dead and shot many times claiming it was in self defense. It was brutal and bloody.

He shot the teens multiple times point blank and referred to them as vermin.

Good guy with a gun?

He was found guilty by a jury and went to prison. Luckily for all, Minnesota did not have a Stand Your Ground law but even then, when it is so obvious that a killing is not justifiable as in the case of Jordan Davis in Florida, shot by a white man because he did not like the loud music a car full of black teens were playing. 

He is in prison. Good guy with a gun?

Florida has a Stand Your Ground law.

The shooters made a terrible mistake and their mistaken ideas or perceptions turned deadly costing lives and sending them to prison. If you are prepared to go to prison over your deadly mistake, then by all means, carry a gun with no training or permit and stand your ground over perceived fear. Try to explain it to a jury and live with what you did.

This is extremism. We don’t need it or want it in our communities. It is making us all less safe. Even terrorists are benefiting from the NRA/gun lobby extremism as ISIS is informing their members that they can easily by guns at American gun shows and on-line with no Brady background checks. This is what the NRA claimed:

For the right-winger who wants to feel tough on terrorism but soft on guns, this tension has long been difficult to resolve. It became a lot harder at the beginning of May, when ISIS openly praised the U.S.’ lack of gun control. In response, the NRA released a video trotting out a wild conspiracy theory, claiming that ISIS is praising lax gun laws in an effort to dupe gullible Americans into supporting gun control.

Ludicrous. Dangerous. Stupid. You can’t make this stuff up.

An Ohio man fits the description of an extremist and home grown terrorist. Check this out:

More than 60 guns were found in the home of a man who fatally shot his former girlfriend, her co-worker and a newly appointed police chief before turning a gun on himself, authorities said.

The guns were found Friday at the home of 43-year-old Thomas Hartless by sheriff’s deputies and investigators from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation hours after the killings at a nursing home in Kirkersville, The Newark Advocate reported.

Kirkersville Police Chief Steven Eric DiSario died from a shotgun wound outside the nursing home. Nurse Marlina Medrano, who had previously sought protective orders against Hartless in connection with domestic violence cases, was shot multiple times with a handgun and a shotgun. Nurse’s aide Cindy Krantz was killed with a shotgun.

More than 60 guns. Domestic violence and protective orders. Police chief shot and killed and 2 others and then himself.

Extremism. Good guy with a gun?

And speaking of extremists, Donald Trump is actually considering appointing one of them (Sheriff David Clarke) to a high position in the Department of Homeland Security according to this article from The Trace:

Clarke’s resume as a public safety official is riddled with scandals and accusations of serious abuse. In May, a grand jury recommended that Clarke face criminal charges for his role in the death of a mentally ill inmate at the county jail after guards withheld water from the man for a week. In 2013, a woman falsely accused of drunken driving by one of Clarke’s deputies — the officer had crashed into her while watching a movie in his car — sued Clarke for civil rights violations. The outspoken sheriff, an avid Dallas Cowboys fan, also drew criticism after he had deputies detain a man who asked why he didn’t support Wisconsin’s own Green Bay Packers. After 15 years in office, he was headed toward a possible 2018 re-election campaign with two-thirds of local voters disapproving of his performance.

But as a right-wing firebrand, Clarke’s star has been steadily rising. He owes that in no small part to the National Rifle Association. Clarke, a regular Fox News contributor and public speaker, is part of a stable of public figures tapped by the NRA as the group has expanded its purview beyond gun rights and claimed for itself a role as a conservative vanguard that eagerly jumps into many of the nation’s most divisive cultural and ideological fights. (…)

Riding the NRA’s platform to national prominence, Clarke has used his turn in the spotlight to compare Black Lives Matter to ISIS (he called people protesting police shootings, “subhuman creeps”) and echo the NRA in dubiously linking immigration to violent crime. At a mid-October 2016 campaign rally, when Trump’s poll numbers were sinking, Clarke warned that the election would be rigged. “It’s pitchfork and torches times,” he said.

In the wake of Trump’s victory, reports emerged that Clarke had travelled to Russia and Israel in late 2015 with a delegation of gun-rights A-listers, including the former NRA president David Keene. In Russia, the group met with representatives of the much smaller Russian gun-rights community, including Dmitry Rogozin, a Russian deputy prime minister who supervises the defense industry and is under sanctions from the United States for his role in the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

Clarke’s expenses for the trip, estimated at nearly $40,000, were paid for with funds from the NRA’s top tier of donors, the Ring of Freedom, and the Right to Bear Arms, a Russian gun-rights organization.

What are they thinking? If this is the kind of law enforcement officer running things in Milwaukee and then possibly at a national level, or public safety is in serious trouble. We don’t need these kinds of extremists getting away with running important institutions and departments anywhere.

It would be a travesty if Clarke is appointed and doesn’t need Senate confirmation. The Trump administration is in enough hot water over their failure to properly and thoroughly vet at least one high level official ( General Michael Flynn). This carelessness and obedience to power and money is absolutely not draining the swamp. It is overflowing what we already have and leading to cynicism and decision making based on power, control and money.

Who’s in charge? Where is common sense? What kind of communities do we want for our children and families?

If the Trump administration stands their ground about Clarke, we will know exactly why their is potential corruption and total lack of decorum and concern for our country’s security. Trump himself has potentially compromised our national security by allegedly giving classified information to the Russians. What could possibly go wrong with Sheriff Clarke in town?

It’s absolutely necessary that we have qualified, serious and ethical people running our country. Homeland security is serious business. Putting a gun extremist in a high level position is ludicrous. Is this a payback for support of the NRA? Just asking.

Our safety and democracy depend on it and we must demand that our safety comes first before adherence to the agenda of an extremist group.

The majority of gun owners and the majority of Americans don’t want extreme and dangerous gun bills.

It’s time to stand up and stand against extremism wherever it rears its’ head.

Join groups like Protect Minnesota, working to end gun violence in my state. And the Brady Campaign, a chapter of which I lead in Minnesota and sit on the national board. The Brady Center’s new Disarm Hate and Arm People with Facts crowdrise campaign. The facts are that guns in homes and on our streets are causing risk to our families and communities. This crowdrise campaign is in part in memory of the 49 people shot and killed at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando last June 11th. As we approach the first anniversary of that shooting, it’s important to remember how easily one hateful extremist could snuff out so many lives.

#Enough