Good. They should fail. The âTerrorist Watch Listâ needs to be massively reformed before it should be used to keep people off planes, stop traveling across borders, buying guns or anything else. It is a blatant power grab by the executive branch from the courts and even legislative branches, and needs more oversight and transparency.
Using it in this way merely validates it as it exists, and I hope they all fail.
âWhy The Gun Control Measures Up For Votes In The Senate Are Expected To Failâ
Thatâs pretty simple to figure outâŚthe NRA, their money and the US Senators and Congresspeople the NRA has bought with that money.
This is not rocket science.
To think the terror list ban is what is proposed because the votes are not there to ban assault weapons is despicable. For the NRA, aka Republican bought Senators, to make the issue the list rather than a measure to get what we can for our safety, is upsetting.
The media did NOT give the filibuster the needed coverage. They need to hound every single senator and list their vote, run a database to let the country know who is complicit in this.
Calling for the media to help us stay safe.
The Democratic proposals have 90% approval across the board, and that is still not good enough? Something is really screwed with our politics. There is only one way to move this ball. Democrats have to get off their asses this fall and elect a whole bunch of new senators and congress critters. Our currently elected Democrats need to be loud and proud right now. Take advantage of the high percentage of people who are in favor of stopping people on the no fly list from buying guns and are also in favor of ending the gun show loophole.
Will the Senator from Vermont be there to cast his vote? Yeah or Nay?
Cornyn wants to put the burden on the Justice Dept to go to court within 72 hours and show âprobable causeâ why particular sales should be permanently banned. Why force the Government to reveal ongoing investigations? Why not put the burden on the person denied the right to purchase a gun to show (1) that he/she has no other guns, and (2) why being denied the right to purchase in this prticular case will cause harm? I am sure the NRA and right wingers will immediately fund a Legal Assistance group or deploy a network of volunteer lawyers. Why force the Justice Department to do anything?
get the nays on the record. pound them in the fall as the shills that they are for the nra and the gun and ammo lobbies.
Because no Republican official or prominent NRA member or their own families were killed, thatâs why.
The day that a close family member of the gun lobby is slaughtered meaninglessly will be the day that the light bulbs come on.
Pop a cap in Lapierreâs ass and watch him change his tune.
On the simple principle of the matter, because when it comes to denying rights, the burden should always be on the Government. The Government has vast and sweeping powers, including - but not limited to - picking you up under suspicion of being an enemy combatant, and holding you indefinitely without legal counsel or even questioning while they make that determination. And while technically, American citizens canât be picked up under this law nothing in the law requires that they let you prove youâre an American. So if they want you disappeared, all they have to do is not listen when you claim they canât do it.
The Governmentâs the party with the power - they should always be the one forced to justify denial of any rights. As soon as they donât have to do it with one right, the door is opened to let them find parallel reasoning to deny the rest of them.
I have spent my adult life defending peopleâs rights in two different fields. I dont feel like if you already own a gun or guns, you necessarily have a right to buy another, or a semi- automatic regardless of whether you own one at all. I also dont feel like acquiring the semi automatic Sig Sauer used in the Pulse massacre or an AR-15 that can be easily upgraded to fully automatic is something that ought to be a sacred right. When the NRA and right wing people agree on the sanctity of the Fourth,Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, then I will be more receptive. But the reason the GOP is so concerned about the due process rights of the person on the watch list is because they are pandering to the Birther-Militia types who think the idea of the Second Amendment is they can arm themselves to fight the Federal government in some mythical revolt. The rest of your statement I have no problem with.
I completely agree that the NRA and the GOP arenât negotiating in good faith here⌠that doesnât mean we can afford to set a dangerous precedent.
Well, I enjoy your ideas. I dont see what is dangerous about severely curbing semi-automatic assault weapons. I think the modern day John Birchers who preach the need for armed struggle against the Federal Government whenever a Democrat is president is a demographic to which the modern Dixiecrat GOP is beholden. I think the dangerous precedent is that the NRA was able to get Congress to restrict funding on research on gun violence, and that these folks can hoard military arsenals at home.
Curbing semi-automatics isnât dangerous. Whatâs dangerous is establishing the precedent that the Government can curb your rights without warning or notice, and then place the burden of demonstrating that youâre entitled to your rights on the citizens. Theyâre rights. Youâre entitled to them.
When the question of limiting rights comes up, the burden must be on the government. The moment it is not, they are not the rights of free citizens, they are the privileges of subjects - as Justice Sotomeyor stated to well in her dissent on profiling.
Certainly, justifications can be conceived of that make it very reasonable, in our current position, to accept placing that burden on the citizens for this thing or that thing. And in that limited application, itâd be harmless - or even a public good. But as soon as that very limited situational justification is accepted as law, it becomes precedent, and someone down the line will use a similar justification to attack free speech, assembly, or any of our other rights.
You donât put a bad precedent into law. Once you do, it becomes almost impossible to get it out - especially when that precedent expands the power of the government to actively prevent you from getting rid of the precedent.
Go after the guns. Pass a law that says âif you want to buy a gun with an internal magazine, it needs to be a revolver, bolt-action, lever-action, or pump-action. Break- or muzzle-loading firearms are also ok. Clips* for loading into a rifle are fine. Removable magazines are not. Weapons with removable magazines require the same kind of federal license to purchase as full-automatic weapons.â
But understand the limitations there, and realize that youâre never going to confiscate the weapons that are already out there. The moment you try, youâre proving all of the NRA agitprop right, and the political blowback will doom all gun safety measures for a generation or more. At best, you can initiate a buy-back program and make it illegal to transport those weapons with removable magazines without that same license.
*- probably donât need to clarify this, but on the off-chance that anyone is confused by that statement, a clip is just that: itâs a clip, like a money clip. It holds X number of bullets in a straight line (usually 3 or 5) and when you slap a clip into the rifle, the clip pops off the bullets and is pretty often lost in the grass somewhere. Itâs a time-saving measure that doesnât expand the number of bullets stored internally in a rifle.