I literally rescheduled the next 3 comics so I could do this one today. Please address all hate mail to your cat. Ding dong, the witch is dead! Or at least her fucking AWB is.
Hehehe. OK, another statement I can issue to make you hate me: don’t you feel like a fucking retard for running out and buying an AR-15 a month ago, because you thought the AWB was going to happen?
Edeet: On reflection and hangover this morning, that last statement was overly inflammatory. So instead, I’d point out a kickass advertiser at the top of the page, and give them a permalink in this post because fuck yeah owls.
No, but I am happy I found a lawyer that wanted my AR for a few thousand more than it was worth.
Nope, had mine well bought back 6-8 months ago or some shit. I’m going to love the post-panic flooding of the market though. Hopefully prices will be through the floorboards.
We can but hope. I built a shit-hot AR 13 years ago for, IIRC, about $750. I don’t especially need another poodle shooter, but it’d be a nice counterpoint to my collection of C&R bolt guns.
It’ s not completely dead yet, back door amendments happen all the time. Besides the thing they really want is the background checks. Can’t have reliable compliance to background checks without registration dontcha know.
Actually, the bill is not being brought up for a vote but they are leaving it as an optional amendment to other bills.
I has a shotgun! 😀
…
what.
Feinstein’s been pretty cool, and fought the good fight, on a lot of other issues, though.
So on this one she got trounced. Fine. No harm done.
Leave her alone; she’s old and will probably be gone for good, someday soon.
I asked before, and it wasn’t rhetorical: What has Feinstein done that you think she’s fought such a good fight for? She was one of the first California politicians I ever really studied, and maybe I’m just missing something? As far as I can tell, she’s the worst kind of 1%er, a fucking awful human being who believes that being a politician makes her divinely superior to the plebeians under her thrall. Pro-big business, anti-gun, pro-PATRIOT Act, pro-FISA, pro-war, she’s pretty much set herself up in a little world where she’s royalty, and Californians are her serfs. The word gets thrown around a lot by teabaggers, and I hate to use it, but I also hate shying away from it just because the baggers used it: Feinstein is pushing a ridiculous Socialist agenda, in a very literal definition of the word. She would like to expand the government’s influence into the private lives of citizens until they control everything, take everything, and give as little back as possible. What are these amazing achievements she’s done that I’m totally unaware of?
As a Californian, I agree. During the upset over SOPA and PIPA, she said “I didn’t know that everyone was against this!”. She failed to talk to her constituents when she was pushing for things SOPA, PATRIOT Act and now the AWB part deux. I’ve sent her office multiple emails and have gotten the response (when I got one at all) “we’ll just have to agree to disagree” at best, ignoring me at worst. She’s an out of touch politician who needs to be removed from office so someone with a brain can run things. Why she keeps getting the votes to put her back in is beyond me.
Whether she pushes a Socialist agenda, I don’t know what goes on inside her head or for what reasons.
Tim, I don’t know how you managed to get only rare responses to your emails to Feinstein. She wrote me back so much that I finally had to disable my filter & file of Feinstein emails. But I didn’t delete it, and here are some samples from my inbox:
(James, here is some of what Feinstein has stood for over the years, besides just being generally a liberal Democrat in the face of the Bush administration, and later the Tea Party)
2006 -Worked for approval of an asbestos claims and litigation reform bill
Took a strong stand vs. Pres. Bush’s plans to sell-off over 85,000 Acres of California’s National Forests :
Statement by Senator Feinstein –
“This proposal is a terrible idea based on a misguided sense of priorities. First, the Administration is proposing to sell off our treasured public lands to help finance the President’s irresponsible budget. And second, the Administration plans to rachet down and then terminate an important program that has been the life-blood for rural schools in California and many other states. I will do everything I can to defeat this effort.
I understand that between 400-500 parcels totaling over 85,000 acres in 16 different National Forests have been identified by the
Bush Administration for possible sale in California. If the Forest Service truly does not want these parcels, then I urge that they be
considered for land exchanges to acquire beautiful areas facing development threats. California’s remaining wildlands are
diminishing at a rapid rate, and we need, at the very least, to keep what we have, not to sell them off to the highest bidder.”
Supported the public being able to purchase individual cable channels, also known as “a la carte” purchasing, and supported keeping cable costs low
Was a cosponsor of the “Consumer Telephone Records Protection Act of 2006” (S. 2178), which would criminalize the theft, sale or illegal use of cellular, landline or Voice Over Internet (VOIP) records. Vehemently opposed the sale of personal phone records, as a violation of privacy.
On government electronic domestic eavesdropping:
“On February 6th, the Senate Judiciary Committee held the first of a series of hearings into this matter, at which Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified about the legality of the program. He provided none of the documents the Committee required for proper oversight,
and his assurances alone did not allay my concerns. Instead, he propounded a radical legal theory of presidential power largely unrestrained by either Congress or the courts.
I have carefully reviewed the Constitution and the laws relating to this domestic intelligence activity, along with the President’s statements and those of the Attorney General and other Administration officials. I believe that the electronic surveillance program was not conducted in accordance with U.S. law.”
(these are all exceprts from emails I recieved from Sen. Feinstein–the whole of each response would be too long to replicate here)
On open access to the Internet and the policy of network neutrality:
“It is vital to Americans and to our economy that we provide access to an open Internet…”
Regarding the “Stop Deceptive Advertising for Women’s Services Act” (H.R. 5052)
“Like you, I support the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and believe all women should have access to reproductive health services. I found your comments very helpful and have noted your support for H.R. 5052. As you know, the bill would require the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to establish rules to prohibit falsely advertising the performance of
abortion services…”
There.
That’s some ofthe good fights she’s fought. At least in the past–and she’s been our Senator for MANY years, along w/ Boxer–I find the woman is generally on the right side of things(meaning not The Right heh).
We still have free speech, and Feinstein’s far from perfect, so go ahead and criticize her. And I’ll continue to point out that she’s been good more often than not, especially in years past when we really needed a congressional army vs. Bush et al.
I hope that also you note, James, evidence that I do in fact write my Congressfolk–okay, more in the past than currently–and get involved,; I don’t just think about it.
I didn’t like her ridiculous tirade vs. auto weapons either. I’m glad it got shot down
but I don’t paint her black over it.
Uh.
You know those are mass mail, and she didn’t actually send you anything? Form letters? If you had emailed her opposing any of her stances, you would have received the exact same response. If you don’t believe me, try it.
Negatory; I did oppose her on some issues, or thought I did, and got some responses that were ..educational.
Incidentally, yeah duh I know they’re mass mail; that’s not the point at all.
You asked “What has Feinstein done that you think she’s fought such a good fight for?”
I answered.
And now what, you wanna portray me as some Mickey Mouse Club wannabe who gleefuly believes that she has the real Mickey’s autograph or something? Please.
Yeah, sorry, that was all from back in 2006. I’ve got more recent emails, but listing all the good points Feinstein’s supported, and quoting excerpts from her emails to me (before I stoped collecting them), would fill what’s left of the night, and
it’s late.
actually, i’m glad i bought my second AR lower before Maryland bans them. state ban actually might happen. knew the federal ban wouldn’t.
“The Abyss of California”
A classic…..
Damn California gas cans.
It’s still early. All they need is another “crisis too good to waste” and the Wicked Witch of the West will crawl back up out of her cave.
Or, that amendment will be attached at the last moment, like in 1986, after all the bipartisanship has been worked out.
I won’t rest easy until we’ve cleared all the trash out of both CONgress and the White House.
Fed may have been defeated but now is the time to pay very close attention to what your local officials are doing. Backroom overnight deals like we got saddled with in New York are the next thing to worry about.
Strange, isn’t it? I’m a quite liberal person, and yet I predicted the AWB would go nowhere. And lo and behold, it went…nowhere. And so the ammo and gun manufacturers made a killing, so to speak. So who exactly actually exploited the death of innocents in this instance? Those who over-reacted and demanded that “something be done”, or those that fed the panic and hysteria over “d’ese comin’ to take ar gunz!!!”?
Did you see any articles or ads by any gum manufacturer that said Obama was coming for your guns? I sure didn’t, and here in TX we would be a prime market for those ads. It wasn’t a plot or exploitation by gun makers. It was a gift they got form Morons like Feinstein and Biden.
Please, you haven’t seen the various social media posting by different companies, talking about the ban and other hysterical fears like the UN Illicit Arms Trade Treaty?
Owen…that’s the Social Media…if you scan FB on any given day you will find people that think Elvis is alive, Kennedy was shot with a magic bullet, Sandy Hook was a Hoax, and that LOLCats is still funny.
The Internet is full of Stupid People.
Well, dey WUZ comin’ to taek ar gunz. Not ar fault dey wuzn’t upta finishin’ whut dey startid.
Guess that’s easy for someone to say who doesn’t live in #$%@*$ Kali-Rado.
Thank Heaven for Magpul and the “Boulder Airlift.”
Peter “Kalifornicated” Camper.
@Jlgrant The AWB can still be offered as an amendment, and like MilsurpShooter said the backroom deals are the next thing we have to worry about.
Please call and/or email your elected officials and find out what their stance is and let them know that anyone that votes for an amendment from Feinstein’s AWB will loose your vote in the next election.
been ducking the news for years. thanks for keeping me up to date.
” don’t you feel like a fucking retard for running out and buying an AR-15 a month ago, because you thought the AWB was going to happen?”
funny.
Now, if we are lucky, the bitch will get voted out of office in this next election so that she cant try this crap again.
Frankly I think we should exile the entire anti-gun lobby for life to some Communist nation where they presumably would be satisfied with the local gun laws. Feinstein, Reid, Schumer, Kaine, Biden, Brady, Cuomo, Bloomberg, et al, all ought to reserve places on the next slow boat to Shanghai and quit poisoning the USA! The fraudulent scams including all AWBs, magazine limits, and ammo limits are all unconstitutional and should be float tested in the Potomac.
..
what is that??
A taco exploding due to Obammunism.
AH yes. Of course. Silly me.
(and here all along I thought it was Jay Leno’s fault. Because the Dorito Taco actually does that)
Okay, I need someone to explain this joke to me. What’s the connection between spilling food and Obama? I just am not “getting” it. 🙁
You’re close, but not quite on the joke.
Is it… Attempting something fancy and failing miserably?
Blaming Obama for shit that he had nothing to do with.
Aha! I get it! 🙂
(Yes, I am incredibly thick sometimes.)
Thanks. I was really beginning to feel left out.
Reid is the reason there’s no AWB; but I agree with the rest of your list. Reid is an awful human being, but he’s good on gun rights.
No, Reid isn’t good on gun rights. I’ve never seen anything to suggest he wouldn’t sell his grandmother to hold onto power. He’s just smart enough to realize that this bit of foolishness would be political suicide for him personally and the Democrat Party generally. Just look back to ’94; it took twelve years for the Dems to take back congress. And it would have taken a lot longer, if the Republicans hadn’t repeatedly screwed up by the numbers.
So this is what “good” on gun rights looks like:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/04/09/reid-mcconnell-guns-filibuster-senate/2067877/
“If Democrats fail to achieve the 60-vote threshold required to end the filibuster, Reid pledged to use procedural tricks provided to the majority leader to gum up the Senate legislative calendar to continue to force votes on gun legislation. “It will take a little bit of time, but we’re going to do it,” he said.”
Ever been to Sacramento? “Abyss” is surprisingly accurate.
Who says the AWB is dead just because it won’t be part of the initial bill? Didn’t Feinstein introduce the ’94 ban as an amendment to the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act because it wasn’t going to be part of the initial bill?
Although the AWB is still unlikely, I think calling it dead is premature. If they can convince lawmakers that introducing it as an amendment will limit their exposure on a vote they may garner more support.
This, oh so this. It isn’t over until it’s over, and that’s not going to be until 2014 when we start throwing the bums out.
Which bums are going to replace them?
Exactly.
Republican, democrat, same shit, different piles.
I’m still dumbfounded that we continue to elect people to run our nation that we wouldn’t trust to watch our pets.
A lot of times we kick them to Washington just to get them out of our own states. E.G.: Bernie Sanders, Janet Napolitano, John McCain, John Chaffee, Spiro Agnew, John Sununu…
The “mental health” prohibitions are the backdoor to a complete gun ban.
Read the DSM V and what now constitutes “mental illness”.
Surfing the web too much? “Internet Addiction.”
Sitting on your ass too much? “Apathy Syndrome”
Forget to call your mom on Mother’s Day? “Parental Alienation Syndrome”
Get depressed during the cold, dark winter? “Seasonal Affective Disorder”
Grieving your dead mother for more than six months? “Complicated Grief Disorder”
Take more than one shower per day because you have bad BO or chew gum because your breath smells bad? “Olfactory Reference Syndrome”
Pick at scabs? “Dermatillomania”
Like to daydream and don’t think fast on your feet? “Sluggish Cognitive tempo”
Eat alone, when depressed, more than twice a week”? “Binge Eating Disorder”
That’s not what the DSM says. It may surprise you to hear it, but they actually are professionals. Forgetting to call your mom isn’t getting you diagnosed as having a mental illness.
My characterization of PAS was a bit exaggerated, but the rest were taken straight from the wikipedia page on the DSM V.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olfactory_Reference_Syndrome:
Individuals with ORS often engage in time-consuming behaviors in an attempt to alleviate their perceived odor. Common compulsive behaviours include:[1]
Repetitive showering and other grooming behaviors.
Excessive use of deodorants, perfumes, and mouthwash.
Repeatedly scraping of the tongue
Repeatedly checking the source of the alleged odor.
Seeking reassurance from others that there is no odor.
Avoidant personality: a fear that individuals detect foul odor when in social environments.
Frequent visits to doctor regarding their perceived foul odor.
Repeatedly accusing family members of emitting foul odors.
Excessive use of scented candles.
Over-consumption of mint and/or gum.
So, too much gum chewing and showing repeatedly (e.g. more than once is the definition of “repeated”) will be a “mental illness” under the DSM V.
Try another, Binge Eating Disorder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binge_eating_disorder
Both of the following must be present to classify as Binge Eating Disorder.[5]
Eating, in a discrete period of time (e.g., within any 2-hour period), an amount of food that is definitely larger than most people would eat in a similar period of time under similar circumstances
Feels loss of control over eating during binge. In other words, they feel that they cannot stop eating and they cannot control what they are eating and how much they are eating.
Also, an individual must have 3 or more of the following symptoms:
Eats an unusually large amount of food at one time, far more than a regular person would eat.
Eats much more quickly during binge episodes than during normal eating episodes.
Eats until physically uncomfortable and nauseated due to the amount of food consumed.
Eats when depressed or bored.
Eats large amounts of food even when not really hungry.
Often eats alone during periods of normal eating, owing to feelings of embarrassment about food.
Feels disgusted, depressed, or guilty after binge eating.
The binge eating occurs, on average, at least twice a week for 6 months.
The binge eating is not associated with the recurrent use of inappropriate compensatory behavior and does not occur exclusively during the course Bulimia Nervosa or Anorexia Nervosa.
Who hasn’t met this definition of “binge eating” at least once their life?
“Once in their life” does not get you a diagnosis. I for one would prefer if truly unstable people don’t get guns.
On this one I have to vehemently disagree. You are incorrect.
A good friend of mine was depressed after the death of a family member. They went to a psychiatrist for the very first time. That psych asked my friend if they were having any suicidal thoughts. My friend truthfully answered that they’d thought about it.
My friend was locked up in a mental institution for 72 hours, and now has a diagnosis on their medical charts of Suicidal Depression. My friend lost their job over this. This friend of mine is fighting the doctors hard, but finding out that getting such a diagnosis removed is close to impossible.
I am keeping this vague for my friend’s privacy.
It is very possible to get a diagnosis of something you don’t want on your records after just one visit to a doctor. If you try to tell me otherwise, I cannot believe you.
Too true, and this was a point I mentioned in the anti-gun-control paper I wrote for my capstone course at Cal State.
I’d scan & send it to you–I used to share it as a resource, for people arguing the whole debate–but
by now its statistics, which were worthy at the time, are outdated. Most of them.
Actually, I liked your first statement the first time I read it last night and I still like it.
VOTE LIBERTARIAN! They want to take over the world…and leave you alone.
I cannot vote for any political party whose stance on social welfare boils down to “fuck the poor.” Although I agree on various Libertarian stances, too many of their candidates seem to believe that ANY kind of taxation = tyranny, and that social services are but a hair’s breadth from abject communism. I can’t get on that wagon. I am a moderate Liberal, and I find many things to agree and disagree with in ALL parties. That’s the biggest problem. Nobody represents me totally in Washington, be they a politician or a political party, and it’s getting more than a bit depressing.
It’s sad that it comes down to that, but yeah, I don’t have any party that fits me either. The best case scenario is a politician whose horrific ideas are in an area they have no influence over.
Requiring people to be responsible for themselves is not “fuck the poor” – it’s “If you make bad choices, you have to suffer the consequences”.
Also, there’s absolutely nothing stopping you from giving to charity. The problem being that you think that people (other than yourself of course) shouldn’t have the right to spend their money as they see fit and instead some of it should be forcefully taken from them and spent as you decide.
I’ve met very, very few Libertarians who are against all taxes – they were merely against taxes that serve only to take money from one person and give it to another. As an old French Economist once said, “If I do not have the right to do something, what right do I have to petition someone else to do it on my behalf?” If you couldn’t guess, he was referring to the fact that theft is illegal, yet people like you think it’s 100% acceptable to ask a government employee to point a gun at someone and forcefully take their money to spend as you see fit.
Take it as moot that you and I are not going to agree on this, as our personal beliefs currently stand. Rationalizing that the impoverished “made bad choices, and have to suffer the consequences” is just a very roundabout way of saying “fuck the poor.” You can put all the frosting on that turd that you want – it’s not going to turn into a birthday cake. The statement also shows an incredible dose of naivete, or at the least ignorance of how and why there is a level of poverty in this nation that most politicians will have you believe doesn’t exist. I grew up in that level of poverty. My family took government assistance for a little over a decade due to some really horrible shit that happened, and we fought our way out of it.
You think we didn’t go to our families for assistance? To charities? To the church? We did. We were scrambling to keep the kids fed and not freezing to death. Guess what? Those things were not enough. Now, here’s the little thing that most Libertarians seem to think:
Welfare keeps the impoverished from becoming desperate. If we hadn’t had that assistance, which so horribly murdered your wallet, I’m sure, we would have become desperate. Desperate poor folks do not just curl up and die. They do not just expire in a back alley like some waif in a sad comic by Jack T. Chick.
Desperate people commit desperate acts.
Put bluntly: if I was starving to death, and you had a sandwich, and I asked for some of that sandwich, and you said some greedy shit about “you made bad choices, starving person, live with your consequences,” how long do you think it would take me to rustle up a shank of broken window glass and cut your fucking throat?
This is where, if you follow the usual Libertarian argument path, you say something like “let ’em try it, I got an AR-15 and a hound dawg.” And then I point out that you have to sleep sometime, and to a desperate person, that hound dawg will look pretty delicious. And then you say some silly shit about how you and your friends, in a perfect Libertarian paradise, would be able to form a militia to protect against those pesky poor people. And then I point out that any nation that says “fuck the poor” ends up having a really, really bad time. Pre-revolutionary France found that out the hard way. If you really think a lack of social welfare is the answer, I recommend you check out nations that don’t have it. Places where if you have even a middle class income, chances are your loved one disappears while grocery shopping one day, and six hours later you get their index finger in a box with a note that has a price tag on it.
Fuck all of that. I’ve lived in poverty in America, and I’ve been to those kinds of countries. The statement “even the poorest family in America lives better than most people in poorer nations” should not be a rallying cry to strip welfare benefits from our poor. It should be a point of national pride. Because if this country ever becomes so callous, so lacking in compassion as to actually say “fuck the poor,” I will not want to live here.
Now, if you have a deviation from the previously outlined argument, I’m all ears. But you could say I’ve debated this one before. And please, don’t try to frost a turd any further.
Social welfare for the truly poor–e.g. desperate enough to shank you for a sandwich (as opposed to just general psychos and thugs who shank you for the hell of it)–is cheap. Keeping the poors’ heads above water is a drop in the budget bucket.
What is killing the budget is “welfare” for:
1. The Military Industrial Complex.
2. Big Corporations with Armies of Lobbyists (primarily the TBTF financial services industry).
3. Transfers to Middle Class Boomers (e.g. Medicare and Social Security).
Spot on. Personally, I think Corporate welfare needs to just go the fuck away.
You forgot two wars put on someone else’s credit card.
Hear hear.
Honestly after the second paragraph I just skimmed it. [deleted further]
Then after that sentence, I guess we’re done here.
You need to run for office. This country needs your brand of thinking.
I *like* the fact that I don’t have to become an expert in road repair to keep the roads I drive on in serviceable condition.
I *like* the fact that I don’t have to dig my own well and become an expert chemist just to get a cup of clean bacteria-free water.
I *like* the fact that I don’t have to turn my house into an *actual* fortress to keep starving poor people from stealing my food.
And yes, I even like the fact that “activist judges” strike down laws that fail to meet minimum standards of constitutional decency (Bloomburg’s soda law, for example).
What pays for all that? Taxes. Do I *like* paying taxes. Of course not. But I like taxes a HELL of a lot more than the alternative!
To be fair, I understand – and hell, I even support – why most Libertarians want to abolish the current tax code and write something that makes goddamn sense. Shut down the Fed and go to the gold/silver standards. These things make sense, or could.
But you get on the subject of welfare, and, as was in evidence in another comment that I deleted, many Libertarians absolutely lose their shit. They want to live in a fantasy world where if you ignore the poor, they die without kicking up a fuss. They want to live in a nation where the churches and families of the poor will take care of them, and they personally will not have to deal with those smelly, greedy, lazy poor people.
I cannot recommend enough to my fellow Americans that they go visit another country. A poorer country. A place without the social welfare net that we have. Fuck, man, Mexico is right fucking there, you can hitchhike into it. Check that place out. Watch their daily news reports of theft, robbery, and kidnappings. Many of these crimes aren’t being perpetrated by vague, nefarious “drug cartels”, but from people who want to make a buck off those who have slightly more than they do.
Then come back here and see that shit not happening all over the place.
We live in a society. Much of our taxes go to making that society work. And yes, one of the VERY SMALL portions of that tax money is spent making sure the poor aren’t desperate and dying. Bawwwwwwwww, those greedy welfare people! Taking what’s RIGHTFULLY YERS, and STEALIN FROM YA!
If Welfare was such an easy road to good times, more people would get on it. And the people who argue against it usually have never HAD to resort to it. I’ve lived through it, and I know what it’s like. There are so many other places where our tax dollars are being splashed about like so much latex paint, on shit we DON’T need, but many Libertarians first want to try to dress ME down because once upon a time, my family lived on Welfare.
People like that, in my opinion, don’t deserve to live in a society. That’s not what a society is about. Let ’em go live in undeveloped forest or wilderness. Should be a fucking paradise to them.
I find no fault with any of your words. Pretty much the same stuff I think whenever I hear an anti-poor tirade.
One thing the far right seems to forget – poor people don’t cash their welfare checks and make money-bonfires… They spend that money on necessities AT LOCAL BUSINESSES. Every single penny of my tax money that goes to keep the poor from starving/freezing/whatever eventually comes back to me!
And if some poor person is able to get a job because they used welfare money to buy laundry detergent and wear a clean shirt to a job interview, then they can *leave* the welfare system.
Oy! I’m getting heartburn. Gotta stop thinking about this stuff right now.
ALL taxes DO “take money from one person and give it to another” [‘another’ being the government], to do with as said government sees fit.
So which taxes are Libertarians not against? I’m puzzled.
Is there such a thing as a Libertarian Socialist? I wanna be a Libertarian Socialist.
Libertarians simply don’t think that the way to help the poor is to extract money from somebody else at the point of a gun. Forced charity isn’t charity, and that’s why charity and government make bad bedfellows.
The argument that if government didn’t help the poor no one would is a non-starter. If a majority of Americans want to help the unfortunate, they will be helped. If a majority of Americans do not want to help the unfortunate, then a government that does is anti-democratic.
Don’t care. Most people in America are greedy and callous toward the poor. See my earlier argument – if you fail to help the poor, middle class folk start getting mutilated and held for ransom. If it takes redistribution of tax dollars to keep the poor from getting that desperate, I’m in.
And for the love of god, stop this argument of “at gunpoint”. ALL laws are enforced “at gunpoint” when you boil it down. I am forced, FORCED, I SAY, to wear clothing AT GUNPOINT. I could go nude, not hurting anyone, and hang off the monkeybars at my local playground, with my junk flapping in the wind, but POLICE OFFICERS will come and FORCE ME TO PUT ON PANTS… AT GUNPOINT! I AM BEING FORCED TO WEAR PANTS… AT GUNPOINT! TYRANNY! TYRANNY, I SAY! WE SHOULD ALL REBEL AGAINST THE TYRANNY OF PANTS AT GUNPOINT!
Politics poly meaning many, ticks are bloodsucking parasites.
And I’ll say it again anyway; the AWB is dead on arrival. It will not pass Congress, even tacked onto something else. But let me amend that to say, if we responsible gun owners continue to block even very sensible measures like universal background checks (which a strong majority of the country supports, including a majority of NRA members and whic the NRA itself used to support before a Democrat took office and think how that looks), then we stand a very good chance of that blind obstructionism causing more actual gun-hating politicians to get elected to replace those that obstruct; just look at what happened last November. The people are sick of obstruction for its own sake, and will punish us for it. Acting like the paranoid gun freaks too many already assume we all are will only result in us losing on issues that actually matter.
Answer me this: How would universal background checks have stopped any one of the tragedies?!?
oh, that’s right, it would not have stopped even a single one!!! All of the guns were either A) Legally purchased through the existing background check system OR B) Stolen from someone else who legally purchased those firearms through NICS.
The only thing that universal background checks would stop is transfers between friends and family. It would make it so that we have to get government permission to exercise our second amendment right, making it the only amendment which would require permission. It has the side effect of giving the government complete control over the purchase of firearms, a situation which i am not comfortable with given the governments propensity to add taxes and regulations to everything.
how about we start requiring a background check for you to excercise your first amendment rights? doesn’t sound too thrilling, does it?
The point to watch out for is that the AWB isn’t the end-game here. It was the big boogeyman they ran up the flagpole to make everybody s** a brick. Now that it’s off the table, all the gun owners breathe a sign of relief, and they will now try to pass some gun control, any gun control, hope that it isn’t fought hard because it looks minor in comparison, and the win goes in their column.