The Problem with Congress? Look No Further Than the Gun Debate
With 11 of the 18 Senate Judiciary Committee members benefitting from gun lobby financial contributions, the impartiality of both their opinion and eventual votes is drawn into question. The Newtown incident has laid bare, as no other has in the past, the inherent conflict lawmakers face regarding their obligation to legislate in the public’s best interest versus special interest pressures that threaten their ability to retain office. This current debate has morphed into something larger than regulating the gun market. It provides clear evidence that our Congress needs to fundamentally change the way it operates.
Gun Safety and Children: Our Government’s Appalling Double Standard
Had a corporation in an industry federally regulated for safety been aware of a high level of product-related death and injury in children, obstructed attempts to look into the matter, obstructed dissemination of information about the matter, impeded the work of local, state and federal law enforcement, while continuing to increase public exposure to more powerful versions of the product that claimed multiple other young lives, those involved would have faced criminal prosecution. Yet our own lawmakers are so engaged while keeping firearms unregulated for safety and pocketing backdoor money from the gun industry through the NRA. The double standard is staggering. The behavior is reprehensible if not scandalous. Our free press should step forward, as only it can, to explore this issue.
Letter to Eric Cantor. Gun-Related Deaths in US Children: Government Complicity
Despite Information being available for at least 15 years showing that US children experience a grossly disproportionate loss of life from gunfire as compared to other wealthy industrialized countries, Congress has acted to obstruct both the generation and dissemination of such information while allowing increasingly more powerful weaponry onto the market. This while accepting NRA financial contributions derived, in part, from the very industry that financially benefits from its actions. It is argued that Congress, by its lack of intervention and obstructionist behavior, is complicit in contributing to the high level of gun-related death in America’s children. The Second Amendment was never intended to justify such a disparate loss of young life.
Gun Violence and Children: A Cold and Broken Hallelujah
The Newtown, CT massacre of 20 young children and six school staff by a gunman at their school has reignited the gun debate. Will the endpoint of proposed legislation be to reduce the frequency of mass killings and/or limit the carnage from such? Or should it be to bring the grossly disproportionate loss of life in US children from gunfire to parity with that from other industrialized nations. The two are different.
Achieving Gun Control: Exploiting The NRAs Unavoidable Implosion
The extremist position the NRA leadership takes in opposing virtually all gun control regulation, along with its associated anti-diversity rhetoric, has placed it at odds with the majority of gun owners, including its own membership, as welll as an increasingly diverse America. It is only a matter of time before politicians will find it necessary to distance themselves from the organization to keep or achieve political office. A multi-pronged political approach now exists that can compel lawmakers into taking action to curb gun violence in America.
Gun Rights Fatal Flaw: Attacking American Diversity
Although individual groups representing blacks, Hispanics, and women have called for stricter gun control measures in the past, none of them have carried enough clout at the polls to effect legislative change. But what we just witnessed in this past general election is a game changer.
Republican Economic Policy: When Facts No Longer Matter
“…there’s remarkable consensus among mainstream economists, including those from the left and right, on most major macroeconomic issues. The debate in Washington about economic policy is phony. It’s manufactured. And it’s entirely political…and in a particular direction: Angry Republicans have pushed their representatives to adopt positions that are at odds with the best of modern economic thinking. That may be good politics, but it’s terrible policy.” Betsy Stevenson and Justin Wolfers
JFK on the Press
More than ever, we need a press with ‘abrasive’ qualities, one that fact checks, digs for answers and participates in creating an informed public. But, has Joltin’ Joe left and gone away?
Guns vs Cars? Would You Send Your Child There
An alternative way to consider the risk difference between gun-related and traffic-related fatalities is presented. To permit the grossly disproportionate rate of gunfire deaths in US children to continue is indefensible. It is time that politicians are made to publicly defend their voting record in obstructing availability of information about the health risks of guns while expanding public exposure to firearms.
The Common Denominator of Right Wing Policy: Lost Lives
Politicians on the political right continue to pursue multiple areas of policy despite the well-documented, often substantial, and unnecessary loss of American lives associated with those policies.
Recent Posts
In Defense of the Assault Weapons Ban
The finding that the AR-15 rifle was being actively selected for premeditated indiscriminate mass killings in 2012 fundamentally changes the debate regarding Senator Feinstein’s Assault Weapons Ban. Not only does this finding take this weapon and mass shootings beyond anecdotal observations, it has predictive value. We now know with certainty that there will be another horrific premeditated and planned mass killing involving this weapon or another having similar rapid fire and high capacity capability. And it will be difficult to defend against as we cannot predict the timing, the venue, or the selected targets. It is clear that both the weaponry and background checks on all buyers should be addressed to reduce the opportunity for, and carnage of, future premeditated indiscriminate mass shootings. This should become a fundamental part of the upcoming debate on the Senate floor. Should meaningful gun control legislation fail in the Senate, for those senators who opposed there is little doubt that some would have swallowed a ‘poison pill’ regarding their political career.
Selection of the AR-15 Rifle in Premeditated Indiscriminate Mass Shootings
A total of four independent, premeditated and indiscriminate mass shootings occurred in the latter half of 2012. There was no connection between the shooters and the victims, and no reason was established in the selection of victims other than inflicting mass casualties. An AR-15 rifle was the weapon used in all four of these events. The odds of this particular weapon being selected for all four of these independent events simply by chance was estimated to be less than one in a million using two different approaches. The intentional selection of this firearm is additionally supported by the behavior of all four shooters. It is felt that this finding fundamentally changes the assault weapon debate. It is not that this weapon was simply being used at these events, there is little if any doubt that it was being intentionally selected as a weapon of choice in those premeditated indiscriminate mass killings. As this weapon is being actively sought for these events, leaving it unregulated and expanding public availability could only increase the opportunity for its use in future mass shootings of the nature we witnessed in 2012.
The Problem with Congress? Look No Further Than the Gun Debate
With 11 of the 18 Senate Judiciary Committee members benefitting from gun lobby financial contributions, the impartiality of both their opinion and eventual votes is drawn into question. The Newtown incident has laid bare, as no other has in the past, the inherent conflict lawmakers face regarding their obligation to legislate in the public’s best interest versus special interest pressures that threaten their ability to retain office. This current debate has morphed into something larger than regulating the gun market. It provides clear evidence that our Congress needs to fundamentally change the way it operates.
Featured Article
The Year the GOPs Con Game was Exposed
The GOP’s decision to reinstate tax cut policy in 2001 exposed their hand. It was not about deficit reduction, growing the economy, or job creation. It was about ideology and, no doubt, special interests. It was a backdoor approach where government revenue was cut in an attempt to curtail spending on popular programs they otherwise could not take head-on. This while obstructing the work of Congress, spinning a web of deceit about the benefits of their policy, and weakening our country’s financial standing. It’s time to play hardball during ‘fiscal cliff’ negotiations and force them to be specific about what spending cuts they are talking about to offset the tax benefits they wish to preserve for the wealthiest. They wouldn’t have the nerve.