Stop the presses

Ok, but with that strategy nothing gets done. Just voluntarily pull the whole thing and blame Republicans.

Like I said, there were more than one version of the amendment. Republicans chipping away isn't a unique plan. The minority party dilutes the majority's intiatives. It's not even noteworthy.

Not true. With that strategy, you come back at it with members in more moderate/swing districts more willing to work with you. That's how you get a Collins or an Ayotte.
There's a difference in compromising where both parties lose something and get something and the modus operandi of the GOP since 2008. They play an either/or game trying to make sure nothing gets done.
 
Add Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire to the list. Expanding background checks clocks in a 75% approval in her state and she voted against it. So here is a Senator who's constituents are telling her "This is how we feel" and she votes contrary to that.


The contentious political fight over gun control moved into the White Mountains of New Hampshire on Tuesday as gun-control activists began to focus on Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) as a prime target in their effort to revive their push for stricter gun laws.

Ayotte was a key, high-profile vote against the bipartisan plan to expand the national gun *background-check program, which failed in the Senate two weeks ago despite overwhelming public support and extensive efforts by the White House. The failure was widely seen as a triumph for the National Rifle Association.

Back home this week for a series of town hall meetings, Ayotte is facing new constituent anger and a coordinated effort by gun-control groups to turn her vote into a political liability. These organizations include Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the group founded by New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I), and the liberal think tank the Center for American Progress. Other groups are deploying organizers to New Hampshire, Arizona, Arkansas, Nevada and North Dakota in hopes of shaming moderate senators of both parties who voted against the background-check plan.

In New Hampshire, the national organizations are partnering with local groups that plan to follow her across the state.

“As simple as a background check is, it’s not burdensome,” said Karen Fester, 62, of Bath, N.H., a retired postal worker and member of a local gun club. “It’s just that the people who own gun shops or run gun shows don’t want their way of life threatened.”

Fester showed up in hopes of putting pressure on her senator even though she doesn’t expect Ayotte to change her mind. But by showing up, “it might make her pick up the phone or respond to my e-mails,” she said.

State Rep. Steve Shurtleff (D) gave Ayotte credit for facing her detractors at several scheduled town halls this week but said he thinks the senator will have to answer to voters on the background check vote, even if her re-election is still more than three years away. With his advancing age, he said, “I forget things a little more often. One thing I will remember in 2016 is Senator Ayotte’s vote on this very important legislation. Especially in the wake of the terrible tragedy we saw at Sandy Hook.”


FULL STORY: Sen. Kelly Ayotte becomes focus of gun-control groups after voting against background checks


 

I was going to say earlier, but thought it was unnecessary to mention, that it's not like it was a straightforward vote for an amendment on background checks.

I'm not for a federal gun registration, you are.

If this bill would help that concept along then it's not surprising that it failed.

Every Tom, Dick & Jane should be compelled to

(1) submit to background testing; and

(2) register his/her gun.

Said differently, "People" (him and her are people, right?) should be required to do 1 and 2.

Did I argue against that concept or those specific restrictions?

I thought I endorsed them.



tumblr_inline_mllwnqD8Q41qz4rgp.gif


 
Obama should blame Tea Party, not NRA, for gun control defeat

Sen. Ted Cruz: Republican Leaders Are "Yelling" At Me
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/geHPipl6mt8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Tim Carney: Obama should blame Tea Party, not NRA, for gun control defeat
Tim Carney
April 28, 2013 | 9:00 pm

President Obama, according to his own telling, would have passed a gun control bill supported by nearly every American, but the National Rifle Association drove in trucks full of money and lobbyists, buying off senators.

Obama's story isn't true. The NRA doesn't work like the lobbies Obama is coziest with. And the NRA also wasn't the tip of the spear in the gun-rights fight this month. Here is the way things really went down:

The gun-rights resistance on Capitol Hill began in late March with two first-term Tea Party senators declaring they would filibuster consideration of the gun-control bill. Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, wrote a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid explaining they would oppose invoking cloture on the "motion to proceed" to the bill. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., soon joined them.

That rump of three senators expanded to a platoon of 18 who eventually signed onto the letter. In the end, 29 Republicans and two Democrats opposed proceeding to the bill -- well short of the 41 needed for a filibuster. Many allies criticized this failed filibuster, but its leaders argue it was crucial to eventual victory.

"After you get the 29" votes to filibuster, one conservative staffer put it, "you know who to beat up." The filibuster effort, by this telling, was something of a whip count by a guerilla unit of conservative freshmen.

So Lee, Cruz, and Paul -- and their staffs -- set out to work on those Republicans who were less than firm. Almost the entire GOP conference was pretty strong in opposing the Democrats' more Draconian gun control proposals -- such as an assault weapons ban -- but the conservative rump didn't want any new regulations on gun ownership by law-abiding citizens. Cruz, along with almost every other Republican, signed on to an alternative bill by Sen. Charles Grassley, which mostly beefed up the current federal database behind background checks.

Anything more ambitious was a nonstarter in the eyes of Cruz, Paul and Lee. Specifically, they rejected the proposal by Sens. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., to create a mandatory universal background check. Toomey-Manchin was the only real chance Obama had of passing a gun control bill. If that went down, gun control went down.

According to conservative staffers, Gun Owners of America was the most active outside group in early efforts to block all gun control efforts including Toomey-Manchin. As GOA and conservative senators worked to close GOP ranks, the NRA came in to seal the deal.

So, the Obama account is wrong in part because it portrays the NRA as calling all the shots within the GOP on guns. But it seems it was Cruz, Lee and Paul who drew the line, and then the NRA came in to hold that line.

But here's the other way Obama misrepresents the NRA's role in this gun control fight: The NRA doesn't function like corporate lobbies, which lean on an army of highly paid, revolving-door lobbyists from K Street firms.

In the first quarter of this year, the NRA spent $700,000 on lobbying, slightly less than the American Forest & Paper Association spent.

The NRA's political action committee is large -- it spent about $19 million last election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, with nearly $1 million going directly to candidates and about $12 million in independent expenditures. Only a couple dozen PACs are larger.

But the NRA's real power is its large and passionate membership of 3 million to 4.5 million. "What [lawmakers] value is the endorsement," NRA President David Keene tells me, "not the check. ... Voters who vote on Second Amendment issues look to the NRA for leadership on that."

All NRA members get a monthly magazine. Every election year, the November issue (which arrives in October) includes an insert grading candidates in all the races for that ZIP code, from state legislator up to president. Many members take that insert to the ballot box with them.

Most Republican lawmakers, especially those who came up through state politics, have had to deal with the NRA. It's on their minds.

On April 10, the NRA wrote all U.S. senators a letter declaring "the NRA will oppose any amendments offered to S. 649 that restrict fundamental Second Amendment freedoms," explictly including Toomey-Manchin. "[V]otes on all anti-gun amendments or proposals will be considered in NRA's future candidate evaluations."

That clinched it. On the Toomey-Manchin amendment, Republicans set a 60-vote threshold, and 46 senators voted no.

So Obama has reason to be upset with the NRA. But his real enemies are the Tea Party, which brought in unruly conservatives, and the NRA's membership.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/tim-c...ot-nra-for-gun-control-defeat/article/2528342
 
Every time I speak against registration, I point out federal gun registration.

I am fine with the current level of it for guns at levels different than federal.



Okay, I get it. When I said:


Every Tom, Dick & Jane should be compelled to

(1) submit to background testing; and

(2) register his/her gun.

Said differently, "People" (him and her are people, right?) should be required to do 1 and 2.


you weren't really agreeing, when you said . . .


Did I argue against that concept or those specific restrictions?

I thought I endorsed them.
 
Neither one of us specified federal vs state because it wasn't necessary for the sake of that particular argument.

Yeah, I guess "EVERY" implied something other than federal -- since that would have been the appropriate entity to impose uniformity of law and application with respect to matters involving the Federal Constitution.

:rolleyes:
 

Gun Vote Hurt Senators in Alaska,
Nevada and Arizona, Poll Says



FE_DA130411begichpryor620x413.jpg




The gun debate captured the attention of the nation and in the weeks since a background check bill died on the floor of the U.S. Senate, a Democratic polling firm's findings show senators who voted against the bill might want to rethink their decision.

Public Policy Polling released the latest in a series of surveys it has conducted that show five senators who voted against a bill that would have required all gun sales over the Internet and at gun shows to be subject to background checks, are in hot water with voters.

The survey was conducted last week between April 25 and 26. PPP surveyed more than 1,000 voters in Alaska, 600 in Arizona, 500 in Nevada and 600 in Ohio.

"The background checks vote is a rare one that really is causing these senators trouble back home," Dean Debnam, president of PPP said in a release. "All five of these senators ... have seen their approval numbers decline in the wake of this vote. And the numbers make it clear that their position on Manchin/Toomey is a major factor causing the downward spiral."

Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.According to the poll, the gun vote is responsible for making Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., the least liked senator in office with an approval rating of just 32 percent. (He is stealing the title from Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.) The latest poll shows that more than 50 percent of his constituents disapprove of him.

The PPP poll also showed that in a future election, 52 percent of voters in the state were less likely to cast a ballot for Flake because of his position on the background check bill.


Murkowski. A PPP poll in February had Republican Murkowski with a 54 percent approval rating, one of the highest in the country. In the poll released Tuesday, she is at 46 percent with 41 percent disapproving of the job she is doing in Washington.


Begich, a Democrat, also saw his popularity slip from 49 percent to 41 percent as he eyes a challenging path to reelection in 2014. Begich's gun vote hurt him most among Democrats in the state who are unlikely to vote for the Republican in 2014, but it also set him back among independents.


REST OF THE STORY


 
Yeah, I guess "EVERY" implied something other than federal -- since that would have been the appropriate entity to impose uniformity of law and application with respect to matters involving the Federal Constitution.

:rolleyes:
As far as I know, every state requires registration. Why would "every" have to imply federal?

This isn't the first time I made and argued this distinction. That argument you're quoting didn't have registration as a main point. Why do you think it's odd that a clarification wasn't made by either of us?
 
As far as I know, every state requires registration. Why would "every" have to imply federal?

This isn't the first time I made and argued this distinction. That argument you're quoting didn't have registration as a main point. Why do you think it's odd that a clarification wasn't made by either of us?

No reason at all Greed. No reason at all. As we've seen, the U.S. Congress, the body then considering national Background Check legislation, was not serious either.

As usual, you were just trying to be coy -- when a straight-forwardness was all that was required. :smh:

But, your coyness aside, what is the difference if every state, as opposed to the national-central government, imposed a requirement that every gun must be registered and every transfer must be logged ??? A way out for gun enthusiast to argue registration is impossible and too cumbersome because some states participate and some don't -- while a "central" registration would work just fine (and, because its uniform) the most effective, efficient and less costly to operate???
 
BTW, I would be very happy if "Every" state required background checks AND registration - on each transfer of a weapon. Works fine with motor vehicles.
 
No reason at all Greed. No reason at all. As we've seen, the U.S. Congress, the body then considering national Background Check legislation, was not serious either.

As usual, you were just trying to be coy -- when a straight-forwardness was all that was required. :smh:

But, your coyness aside, what is the difference if every state, as opposed to the national-central government, imposed a requirement that every gun must be registered and every transfer must be logged ??? A way out for gun enthusiast to argue registration is impossible and too cumbersome because some states participate and some don't -- while a "central" registration would work just fine (and, because its uniform) the most effective, efficient and less costly to operate???
Why do you bother asking me a question right after saying my answers are without substance?

Do you not comprehend that we are different people?

The federal government is not high on my list of competent institutions. I dont see them as the obvious efficient, effective, cost conscious, or likely to apply any law uniformly choice. When something is to be applied to "every" person, my default, unlike your default, doesn't have to be the feds.
 
BTW, I would be very happy if "Every" state required background checks AND registration - on each transfer of a weapon. Works fine with motor vehicles.

As would I.

How else would we know how a person who is not supposed to legally have a firearm got one? The Boston bombers had $h!tload of guns, bought illegally, so "Who sold them guns?" is a question I'd like answered. If those guns were registered in a central place, whether Boston or DC, we could know relatively quickly who is supposed to have them and ask how they ended up in the hands of suspected terrorists.
 
Why do you bother asking me a question right after saying my answers are without substance?

Do you not comprehend that we are different people?

The federal government is not high on my list of competent institutions. I dont see them as the obvious efficient, effective, cost conscious, or likely to apply any law uniformly choice. When something is to be applied to "every" person, my default, unlike your default, doesn't have to be the feds.

Contray to YOUR beliefs, the government, federal or state, is not high on my list either. But they exists and its our (people's) job to understand their roles and make them work as best we can, hopefully, from within. I hope you're able to reconcile what appears an ever growing dislike of government with reality, without resort to fertilizer and the sort.
 
As would I.

How else would we know how a person who is not supposed to legally have a firearm got one? The Boston bombers had $h!tload of guns, bought illegally, so "Who sold them guns?" is a question I'd like answered. If those guns were registered in a central place, whether Boston or DC, we could know relatively quickly who is supposed to have them and ask how they ended up in the hands of suspected terrorists.

I'm just waiting to see if you're still posting a couple of months from now. Then I'll know. YOU didn't get that big promotion, recently. :lol:
 
The contentious political fight over gun control moved into the White Mountains of New Hampshire on Tuesday as gun-control activists began to focus on Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) as a prime target in their effort to revive their push for stricter gun laws.

Ayotte was a key, high-profile vote against the bipartisan plan to expand the national gun *background-check program, which failed in the Senate two weeks ago despite overwhelming public support and extensive efforts by the White House. The failure was widely seen as a triumph for the National Rifle Association.

Back home this week for a series of town hall meetings, Ayotte is facing new constituent anger and a coordinated effort by gun-control groups to turn her vote into a political liability. These organizations include Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the group founded by New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I), and the liberal think tank the Center for American Progress. Other groups are deploying organizers to New Hampshire, Arizona, Arkansas, Nevada and North Dakota in hopes of shaming moderate senators of both parties who voted against the background-check plan.

In New Hampshire, the national organizations are partnering with local groups that plan to follow her across the state.

“As simple as a background check is, it’s not burdensome,” said Karen Fester, 62, of Bath, N.H., a retired postal worker and member of a local gun club. “It’s just that the people who own gun shops or run gun shows don’t want their way of life threatened.”

Fester showed up in hopes of putting pressure on her senator even though she doesn’t expect Ayotte to change her mind. But by showing up, “it might make her pick up the phone or respond to my e-mails,” she said.

State Rep. Steve Shurtleff (D) gave Ayotte credit for facing her detractors at several scheduled town halls this week but said he thinks the senator will have to answer to voters on the background check vote, even if her re-election is still more than three years away. With his advancing age, he said, “I forget things a little more often. One thing I will remember in 2016 is Senator Ayotte’s vote on this very important legislation. Especially in the wake of the terrible tragedy we saw at Sandy Hook.”


FULL STORY: Sen. Kelly Ayotte becomes focus of gun-control groups after voting against background checks




Kelly Ayotte says she backs gun checks​



120506_kelly_ayotte_reuters_328.jpg



Facing a wave of intense criticism and plunging poll numbers after opposing a bill to expand background checks on gun purchases, New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte tried some damage control in an op-ed published Monday.

“Out of state special interests are running false ads attacking me and even lying about my efforts to prevent gun-related violence,” Ayotte, a Republican, wrote in the op-ed, published by Patch news sites in New Hampshire. “I want to set the record straight: I support effective background checks and in fact voted recently to improve the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).”​


SOURCE


 
Mark Pryor Defends Vote Against Gun Control

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/m5JDuTkHt20" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

In the first ad of his reelection campaign Mark Pryor fires back at gun control advocates who have targeted him because of his 'no' vote. "The mayor of New York City is running ads against me because I opposed President Obama's gun control legislation. Nothing in the Obama plan would have prevented tragedies like Newtown, Aurora, Tucson or even Jonesboro," Pryor says. "I'm committed to finding real solutions to gun violence while protecting our Second Amendment rights."

"No one from New York or Washington tells me what to do. I listen to Arkansas."

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/05/31/mark_pryor_defends_vote_against_gun_control.html
 
Why Newtown Didn't Change America

Why Newtown Didn't Change America
By Jeffrey Goldberg
Dec 18, 2013 9:27 AM CT

Gun-control advocates both gnashed their teeth and wrung their hands last weekend -- a year after the Newtown, Connecticut, massacre -- over their inability to advance their movement’s agenda. Newtown, in the view of many people (including those who know better) should have been the incident that finally catalyzed revolutionary change.

What explains the apparent helplessness of the gun-control movement? Here are a few possible explanations:

1. This is the obvious one: The National Rifle Association and smaller groups to its right (yes, there is space to the NRA’s right) remain enormously potent. The NRA has successfully polarized the debate over guns: To many of its members, support for gun control means opposition to liberty. But the NRA, like any successful lobbying group, is successful in part because it's pushing on an open door. Gun ownership is a powerful political and cultural signifier across much of this country -- just not the parts where most of my journalist colleagues reside.

2. It is true that gun owners are a minority in this country and opponents of any form of gun control are a decided minority. But, the NRA and the members of Congress it lobbies know that with guns, as with any emotion-driven cause, it is the intensity of effort, rather than the sheer number of supporters, that is the defining metric of success. The majority of Americans might support efforts at closing the gun-show loophole -- the loophole that does not require background checks on certain kinds of gun buyers -- but what are they doing about it, apart from alerting telephone pollsters of their support? Second Amendment absolutists call, and write, and demonstrate and donate, in defense of what they understand to be their way of life and the essence of freedom itself. The NRA’s opposition is, in the main, not nearly as passionate and unbending.

3. Many Americans decline to assign blame to the tools used by criminals to kill; instead they blame the killers themselves. An analogy: When a drunk driver kills an innocent person, no one blames the car. Gun owners -- the vast majority of whom own their guns legally and store and use them responsibly -- simply don’t understand why their rights should be curtailed because other people are criminals, or idiots.

4. The bulk of fatal shootings in the U.S. fall into two main categories: Suicides and gang-related violence. Certain traumatic moments -- such as Newtown, Aurora and Columbine in Colorado, and Virginia Tech -- focus the public's attention on the threat of random shootings. But attention wanes because gun violence is, in fact, a distant threat for most Americans.

5. Gun-control groups have failed to explain to doubters why the current, Newtown-inspired, campaign for universal background checks isn’t a non sequitur. The Newtown killer stole the weapons he used in his massacre from his mother, who purchased them legally. More stringent background checks would not have stopped this horror from happening. The Newtown massacre is as much a manifestation of a mental-health care crisis, as it is a sign of a gun crisis. Legislators should have spent the past year working harder on issues related to mental-health care, and not quite so hard on a series of fixes that would not have stopped this massacre.

Gun-control advocates, and their friends in Congress and state legislatures, must admit to themselves that the fixes they propose are mainly symbolic. There is a striking timidity to the gun-control movement. America is awash in guns -- about 300 million are now in private hands. Mainstream, incremental, gun control measures, if enacted, would not reduce the number of guns in society, and they would only work at the margins of the problem. In other words, laws that would have prohibited the Newtown killer’s mother from acquiring her weapons would have been more helpful. (I am still a supporter of universal background checks, though I believe that their impact would be minimal.)

A better strategy would be to attack the problem frontally and encourage an open debate about the utility of Second-Amendment protections in a more-urbanized, 21st century U.S. Not that this is going to happen anytime soon. But piecemeal reforms aren’t going to happen anytime soon, either.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-18/why-newtown-didn-t-change-america-.html
 
Leading GOP senator offers bill on guns, mental health

Leading GOP senator offers bill on guns, mental health
By ALAN FRAM
August 5, 2015 6:51 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) — A leading Republican senator proposed a National Rifle Association-backed bill Wednesday that he said would make the federal background check system for gun buyers more effective and bolster programs for treating people with mental illness.

The measure drew criticism from groups advocating stricter controls over firearms, who said it doesn't go far enough and singled out provisions they said would make it easier for some unstable people to obtain deadly weapons. But it was backed by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, which advocates for mentally ill people, and groups representing police organizations, correctional workers and social workers, which combined with NRA support could broaden its appeal.

No. 2 Senate Republican John Cornyn of Texas unveiled the legislation in the wake of last month's mass shooting in a Louisiana movie theater by a gunman with mental problems. That and other recent firearms attacks have called attention to holes in the background check system and programs for people with psychological difficulties.

Cornyn said that while past bills have been designed to "drive a political wedge" on the issue, his was aimed at helping people with mental health issues to "hopefully pre-empt them from committing an act of violence." The bill's prospects are uncertain,

The bill's background check provisions are far weaker than Senate legislation that Republicans and the NRA killed two years ago; that legislation would have required the checks for firearms bought at gun shows and online. Cornyn has an A-plus voting rating from the NRA, which has long impeded gun restrictions in Congress but has backed some efforts to make it harder for mentally ill people to purchase weapons.

Currently, background checks are required only for sales by federally licensed gun dealers.

People who have been legally ruled "mentally defective" or been committed to mental institutions are already barred from buying firearms. But states are not required to send those records to the FBI-run federal database, leaving it uneven.

Under Cornyn's bill, states sending at least 90 percent of their records on people with serious mental problems to the federal background check database would get law enforcement grant increases of up to 5 percent. States providing less than that could see grants cut by similar amounts.

Gun-control advocates said the measure should have expanded background checks to online and gun show sales. They also complained that the bill would let some people discharged from involuntary psychiatric treatment, who currently need court approval to buy firearms, immediately purchase guns.

The bill would also require court action before barring gun purchases by veterans declared incompetent by the Veterans Affairs Department. Currently, such veterans cannot obtain weapons.

"Senator Cornyn would make it easier, not harder for seriously mentally ill people to access guns," said Arkadi Gerney, a gun policy expert for the liberal Center for American Progress.

The bill would give state and local governments more flexibility to use federal funds to screen for prisoners' mental problems and improve training for law enforcement officers and others on handling emergencies involving the mentally ill. It also would let civil judges order outpatient treatment for people with mental problems short of committing them to institutions.

Two weeks ago, John Russell Houser killed two people and wounded nine at a theater in Lafayette, La. Mental problems that his family knew about had not been sent to the background check system, and he bought the gun at a shop in Alabama. Police said Houser killed himself after a confrontation.

Dylann Roof, charged in June's massacre of nine people at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, bought his gun after an FBI background check examiner didn't discover that Roof had been arrested for possessing illegal drugs, authorities said. That should have blocked his purchase.

On Monday, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., introduced legislation providing extra federal money to states sending a broad range of data to the federal system, including information about the mentally ill, violent criminals and domestic abusers.

https://news.yahoo.com/no-2-senate-...gun-background-check-125856422--politics.html
 
Re: Leading GOP senator offers bill on guns, mental health

Leading GOP senator offers bill on guns, mental health
By ALAN FRAM
August 5, 2015 6:51 PM


Considering the make up of the republican/gun nut/NRA owned majority congress, I'll give it a snowball's chance in hell to get anywhere near a final vote.

Trump is causing the GOP to trying anything to get some control, as if they ever had any over the Tea Bagger based republican majority in the congress back.


Run Donald, run! :dance:
 
Back
Top