Behind the Ad: Gabby Gifford's super-PAC comes out with a new ad on Newtown anniversary

By Richard K. Barry

Who: Americans for Responsible Solutions

Where: Nationally

What's going on: On the one-year anniversary of the Newtown school shooting, former Rep. Gabrielle Gifford and her husband Mark Kelly have released a new ad through their super-PAC.

According to Huffington Post:

The ad, titled "Silent Night," is set to a somber instrumental of the classic Christmas song. It features a brief montage of pictures showing the mourning that followed last year's elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., which left 20 children and six adults dead. At the end, the commercial flashes a message: "30,000 die each year from gun violence. How long do we have to wait for Congress to act?"

It should be noted that Congress has passed no gun control laws since the Sandy Hook shooting and most lawmakers have said the tragedy has not changed their views on gun violence.

On the anniversary of Newtown, Mark Kelly issued this statement:

"In the weeks after Newtown, we heard politician after politician give eloquent speeches -- promising that they would keep our communities safe. They promised that they would honor the dead in Newtown," he said. [...]

"The Senate, it seemed, was in the grip of the gun lobby. Gabby and I were disappointed, but we were not defeated," Kelly said. "The fight is not over. And America will not forget Sandy Hook."

Behind the Ad: W. Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin responds to the NRA

By Richard K. Barry

(Another in our extensive Behind the Ad series.)

Who: Sen. Joe Manchin (D)

Where: West Virginia

What's going on: Manchin has a new 30 second spot in which he talks about being a lifelong member of the National Rifle Association but says that he isn't tied to them on every issue.

The Washington Post:

“I’m a lifetime NRA member, but I don’t walk in lockstep with the NRA’s Washington leadership, this administration or any interest group,” Manchin says in the commercial, which debuted Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Throughout the ad, Manchin is handling a gun.

Manchin and Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) introduced a measure on expanding background checks for those wishing to purchase guns, though the legislation failed in the Senate earlier in the year. This has made Manchin a target of the NRA.

 In the spot, Manchin tells viewers to tell the NRA to support expanded background checks.

 

(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)

The new gun-control movement, post-Newtown

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I wasn't terribly disappointed when the Manchin-Toomey gun bill was defeated in the Senate (even though it got well more than 50 votes, because of a Republican filibuster), because it was a bad bill. But it did include an expanded background checks provision, along with various pro-gun provisions, and so in the end it was probably better than nothing.

And yet in defeat that bill did more for the gun-control movement that it would have done had it ever become law, and in that sense a lot of good may come from what at the time seemed like a serious, embarrassing, and revealing setback.

Actually, though, it started not on April 17, 2013, but on December 14, 2012, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza, armed with a semi-automatic rifle, killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. There had been many other mass shootings previously in America, including recently at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, but Newtown was different. It was a brutal attack on a school, where parents leave their children and expect them to be safe, and the fact that so many children were killed in cold blood was simply too shocking, too powerful, too overwhelming, to ignore. (And there was a cultural/racial element to it as well. This wasn't inner-city Detroit. This was a part of America with which more Americans, including the political and media elites who shape public opinion, could identify. It's easy, sadly so, for many to ignore the plight of a city like Detroit. But if it could happen in Newtown, it could happen anywhere.)

This is not to say that the country was suddenly ready for significant gun control. That will take time. No, if not that, it was at least ready for something meaningful to be done to curb gun violence, to put a stop if at all possible to a mostly unregulated gun market that has resulted in guns, including weapons of mass destruction for which there is no reasonable justification for private ownership, falling into the wrong hands way too many times.

President Obama himself took the lead. In an incredibly moving vigil in Newtown a few days after the shooting, he said:

We can't tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.

And this: 

Charlotte, Daniel, Olivia, Josephine, Ana, Dylan, Madeline, Catherine, Chase, Jesse, James, Grace, Emilie, Jack, Noah, Caroline, Jessica, Benjamin, Avielle, Allison, God has called them all home. 

For those of us who remain, let us find the strength to carry on and make our country worthy of their memory.

Yes, the country was finally ready, at least for expanded background checks, and perhaps for much more, and they overwhelmingly expressed that in poll after poll. 

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Behind the Ad: The NRA comes to the rescue of Sen. Kelly Ayotte

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our extensive "Behind the Ad" series.) 

Who: The National Rifle Association.

Where: New Hampshire.

What's going on: Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) has been getting hammered for her vote against recent gun control legislation. The fact that she represents a state close to the horrific events in Newtown, Connecticut hasn't helped her, and her polling numbers have taken a hit.

The NRA has now come out with a new pro-Ayotte ad, their first TV ad in the state, though they have been running spots on the radio there.

The ad starts with a picture of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has been backing ads critical of Ayotte for her vote against gun control legislation that failed in the Senate. It suggests that the attack is in some way inaccurate, though Ayotte's vote is a matter of public record.

The ad is built on the premise that Ayotte has in the past voted for other measures that the NRA believes are consistent with public safety:

The ad goes on to highlight a series of Ayotte's votes that it characterizes as working to improve background checks, reform the mental health system and increase resources to prosecute criminals using guns.

Even if true, her no vote on the highest profile gun control measure in a long time makes her vulnerable and she and the NRA know it:

According to a Public Policy Polling survey, half of voters said Ayotte's vote on background checks made them less inclined to vote for her, and only a quarter said it made them more likely to support her.

Lucky for her she isn't up for re-election until 2016.


(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)

Tyranny and the end of gun culture

By Frank Moraes

Ed Kilgore over at Political Animal has a great article, None Dare Call it Treason. It is about the new NRA president, James Porter, and his loose talk of tyranny and violent opposition to it. I know the kind of guy. There is an enormous subsection of the male population who have fantasies about taking up arms against the government. And it isn't limited to conservatives (although it primarily is). I've talked to young slacker game addicts who have told me about their desires to make their simulated urban combat real. Of course, most of these people do not go out and join the army. They just live with their fantasies. In fact, I dare say that most of them are cowards. Regardless, I think that is usually what's going on when some guy says something like, "Obama's not a valid president, somebody ought to take him out!" (Not that Porter would go so far; he would just say that Obama is a "fake president.")

Kilgore notes that these kinds of guys normally think of themselves as ultra-patriots. Yet they are "deliberately courting the impression that loyalty to their country is strictly contingent on the maintenance of laws and policies they favor, to be achieved if not by ballots then by bullets." You know: treason. In fact, I think it is only because of conservative mythology that we as a society put up with this. We apparently have to take it as given that Timothy McVeigh is a patriot, right up to the point that he starts bombing government buildings. If it were reversed—if liberals went around talking armed insurrection—the FBI would be all over them. But we are supposed to assume that conservatives are patriotic, even though right now, conservatives are the only major group in our society that are rightly called revolutionary.

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The NRA keeps ramping up the nasty, brutish, short, and crazy at its annual meeting

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The NRA has a crazy new neo-Confederate anti-government president and at its annual meeting this weekend in Houston it's been plumbing the depths of gun-nut craziness.

As usual, there was Wayne LaPierre, the face of the organization, using militaristic rhetoric and the usual paranoid delusions of the right to ramp up the fearmongering, as if being able to own any gun you want, whatever your fetish, whatever your own delusions, is the only freedom that matters, or rather the only component of freedom that matters, in the Hobbesian state of nature of the gun nuts' imaginings. (Hobbes viewed the state of nature as a dystopia leading to civil society; LaPierre and the rest of the nuts consider it, or something closely resembling it, their utopia. Yes, what I'm saying is that the NRA's project involves at its core the undoing of civil society and the replacement of it with life that is nasty, brutish, and short.)

And then there was this gem:

Gun owners should store a gun in their kids' room, according to a 'Home Defense Concepts' seminar offered at the National Rifle Association's Annual Meeting, comments that came just days after the fatal shooting of a two-year-old at the hands of her five-year-old brother.

The course was taught by Rob Pincus, who owns the popular firearm instruction company I.C.E. Training. Pincus argued that, in the event of a home invasion, parents would instinctually run to their children's room anyway, they might as well have a gun stored there to kill two birds with one stone:

PINCUS: How about putting a quick-access safe in your kids' room? [...] Good idea or bad idea? We have an emotional pushback to that. Here’s my position on this. If you're worried that your kid is going to try to break into the safe that is in their bedroom with a gun in it, you have bigger problems than home defense. [Laughter]... In the middle of the night, if I'm in the bathroom or getting a glass of water or in the bedroom or watching TV in the living room, if that alarm goes off and the glass breaks and the dog starts barking, what's the instinct that most people are going to have, in regards to, "am I going to run across the house to get the gun, or am I going to run over here to help the screaming kid?" And if I'm going to go to the kid anyway, and I have an extra gun and an extra safe, why not put it in their closet?

Oh, sure, what could ever go wrong?

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Craziest Republican of the Day: Pat Toomey

By Michael J.W. Stickings

No, not for his and Democrat Joe Manchin's less-than-stellar but probably better-than-nothing gun control bill that went down in the Senate because of a Republican filibuster but because he is blaming his fellow Republicans for its failure.

And not because he's necessarily wrong, because he may be right, but because it's generally not a wise thing to do to criticize Republicans if you're a Republican yourself, particularly if the Republicans you're criticizing pretty much dominate the party. Actually, it's not just unwise, it's fucking crazy if you have any hope of getting your party to support you ever again:

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) revealed that some members of his party opposed expanding background checks for gun sales recently because they didn't want to "be seen helping the president."

Two weeks ago, only three Republican senators voted for the bipartisan background checks amendment sponsored by Toomey and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), despite overwhelming popular support for such a measure.

"In the end it didn't pass because we're so politicized. There were some on my side who did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted to get done, just because the president wanted to do it,” Toomey admitted on Tuesday in an interview with Digital First Media editors in the offices of the Times Herald newspaper in Norristown, Pa.

Republicans are "politicized" and obstructionist -- opposed to anything and everything the president wants to do simply because it's the president? Sure. This has been the Republican strategy ever since Obama took office. It's a way of life now for Mitch McConnell and the minority Republicans in the Senate.

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Behind the Ad: The NRA comes to the aid of Sen. Ayotte

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our extensive "Behind the Ad" series.)

Who: The National Rifle Association.

Where: New Hampshire.

What's going on: Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) was the only Northeastern senator to vote against the background check plan, which was an integral part of the gun legislation defeated in the Senate.

She is planning three town hall meetings soon and will likely be confronted by angry demonstrators along the way. While she is not up for reelection for three years, many critics are promising to work against her.

According to one:

"I have worked on a lot of issue campaigns in this state and I've never seen this level of natural momentum on any issue," said Judy Stadtman, a founder of Project for Safer Communities N.H., which is one of several liberal groups working together across the state to track the senator this week.

But she does have friends, notably the National Rifle Association. They began airing radio ads on Monday that criticize politicians who only "care about their power," instead of the safety of their children.

Seems like a pretty weak position, which is not where the NRA is used to finding itself.

As for Senator Ayotte, I'd be worried if I were her.

Listen to the NRA ad:



(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)

Ted Cruz goes squish

By Mustang Bobby

Jennifer Rubin, the right-wing columnist for The Washington Post, is peeved at Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) for not playing nice with other Republicans and calling those who supported background checks for guns "squishes."

For starters, it's just not smart to annoy colleagues whose cooperation and support you'll need in the future. Second, as a conservative he should understand humility and grace are not incompatible with "standing on principle"; the absence of these qualities doesn't make him more principled or more effective. Third, for a guy who lacks manners (see his condescending questioning of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) he comes across as whiny. They yelled at me! Boo hoo, senator.

When liberals go after each other, it's like watching Quakers argue: "Friend, I have a concern," and you can practically hear the sorrowful sighs. Not so with conservatives. They can really get into it.

In Ms. Rubin's case, it's not surprising that she'd be put out. She just got herself pilloried by just about everyone for the puff piece she wrote last week about how wonderful George W. Bush was and how history will treat the gentle fool with kindness. Then in comes this new senator from Texas like he was Godzilla and Washington was a Japanese fishing village. Squish. There goes the compassionate-conservative rehab.

What's interesting is that it's not like they didn't know what they were getting when he ran. He campaigned as a whack-job, he won the primary against the hand-picked Republican establishment candidate, and he won as a whack-job. Unlike Democrats -- or anyone with prefrontal development beyond the age of 14 -- he never learned that once you get into office you pretty much have to learn that to do much more than get your 15 minutes on C-SPAN, you have to work together. Your constituency is slightly larger than the Tea Party rally in the parking lot of Family Dollar in Buzzard Gulch.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Cartoonists against gun violence

By Richard K. Barry

In a short film sponsored by Mike Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns, some of the country's most celebrated cartoonists contributed their work to encourage lawmakers and Americans to address gun violence.

It's narrated by actors Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Julianne Moore. 



(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)

Don't primary red-state Democrats

By Frank Moraes 

After a string of clueless attempts to be iconoclastic, Jonathan Chait managed to write something that is both iconoclastic and right, "Senate Democrats Wise to Block Background Checks." His argument is very simple: red-state Democrats have to make some non-liberal votes to maintain credibility with their voters; this bill was almost completely useless, or, as Chait puts it, "a compromise of a compromise"; therefore, this was a good bill to vote against. And as I noted on Monday, the final law could have been much worse than nothing at all.

One thing that Chait doesn't mention is that as much as these red state Democrats may annoy us from time to time, they are very strong members of the team. In fact, currently the Democratic Party has more discipline in the Senate than the Republican Party. So the calls I'm hearing from certain corners that we could to primary these red-state Democrats are just crazy.

There is a related issue that I think is really important. Democratic politicians from blue states are often quite conservative, especially on economic issues. Dianne Feinstein, from my own great state of California, comes to mind. When it comes to red-state Democrats, a primary challenge might end with a Republican winning the general election. But why aren't we primarying Democrats in blue states?

One of our biggest political problems is that the Republican Party is too extreme and the Democratic Party not extreme enough. One way to fix this would be to enforce a little ideological purity on our representatives from liberal areas. After all, what makes the Republican Party unacceptable is not that Orrin Hatch of Utah is an extremist. He's from an extremist state; he should be extremist. But why do the people of the very liberal state of New York have an economic conservative as governor?

So we need to stop this nonsense about primarying red-state Democrats and start talking about primarying their blue-state counterparts who have no good reason for being as conservative as they are.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Even Joe Scarborough is making sense on gun control

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Look, he's an irrational blowhard who basks in the supremacy of his gut, and his claim to represent the center with his generally center-right views is ridiculous (if also Broderian Beltway orthodoxy), but he's hardly an ideological extremist of the sort that currently dominates his Republican Party, and his response to the Senate's failure to pass the compromise expanded background checks bill, including a strong critique of the GOP, was nothing if not admirable:

You don't ignore 90 percent of what the voting population wants when you're talking about the safety of Americans, of our families, of our communities, of our schools. The safety that we feel when we send our kids to malls, to churches, to college... I just want to be clear. I said this party is heading towards extinction. Talking about the 2013 version of the Republican Party. A new Republican Party, though, is going to come in its place. This sort of extremism is going to be called out by the 90%. We're the 90% and we are going to win. This is just the first battle.

Well, I hope he's right, though I would note that the Manchin-Toomey proposal wasn't exactly a great bill. Maybe it would have been a start, but a lot more is needed, including reforms that don't have 90% popular support and so require even more "courage" from legislators. (And more than just Obama's proposed executive actions.)

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The song of the Furies

By Carl 

Witnesses to them that died,

The blood avengers at his side,

The Furies' troop forever stands.

Aeschylus was more right than he knew.

I'll leave it to Gabby Giffords to explain what this post is about:

SENATORS say they fear the N.R.A. and the gun lobby. But I think that fear must be nothing compared to the fear the first graders in Sandy Hook Elementary School felt as their lives ended in a hail of bullets. The fear that those children who survived the massacre must feel every time they remember their teachers stacking them into closets and bathrooms, whispering that they loved them, so that love would be the last thing the students heard if the gunman found them.

On Wednesday, a minority of senators gave into fear and blocked common-sense legislation that would have made it harder for criminals and people with dangerous mental illnesses to get hold of deadly firearms — a bill that could prevent future tragedies like those in Newtown, Conn., Aurora, Colo., Blacksburg, Va., and too many communities to count.

Some of the senators who voted against the background-check amendments have met with grieving parents whose children were murdered at Sandy Hook, in Newtown. Some of the senators who voted no have also looked into my eyes as I talked about my experience being shot in the head at point-blank range in suburban Tucson two years ago, and expressed sympathy for the 18 other people shot besides me, 6 of whom died. These senators have heard from their constituents — who polls show overwhelmingly favored expanding background checks. And still these senators decided to do nothing. Shame on them.

The former congresswoman is far more eloquent than I could be in reaction to the cowardly, blood-thirsty vote that took place in the Senate yesterday, as 45 traitors voted to block a yes or no vote on... and here Congresswoman Giffords and I differ in what she defines as "common-sense"... on a bill that amounted to the Democrats throwing up their hands and saying, "Fine! YOU write a gun control bill!"

President Obama was rightly angry at the 45 senators, saying, "unfortunately, this pattern of spreading untruths about this legislation served a purpose, because those lies upset an intense minority of gun owners, and that in turn intimidated a lot of senators."

There it is: he called them "cowards" to their faces.

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"A pretty shameful day for Washington": Republicans block highly popular gun control measure to expand background checks

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Well, it was a bad bill (Manchin-Toomey, a bipartisan "compromise" that only a few Republicans supported), but it was something (expanded background checks mixed with various gun-"rights" provisions approved by the gun lobby (not the NRA, though, which is opposed to any and all gun control), and I suppose it was better than nothing (or maybe not), but it failed yesterday because of the Republican filibuster and the ongoing Republican demand that anything Republicans don't like requires a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate (to hell with democracy):

It failed by a vote of 54 to 46, with five Democrats voting against it. Only four Republicans supported it.

Democratic Sens. Mark Pryor (Ark.), Max Baucus (Mont.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Mark Begich (Alaska) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) voted against it. Reid supported the measure but voted against it to preserve his ability to bring the measure up again.

GOP Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Susan Collins (Maine), Pat Toomey (Pa.) and Mark Kirk (Ill.) voted "yes."

Some are saying it's a major blow for President Obama, who of course, post-Sandy Hook, has made gun control a central policy commitment of his second term. I'm not so sure. Expanded background checks have overwhelming public support (even most Republicans support them), even if the country remains divided on more comprehensive reform.

Even this limited measure only failed because the extremist, NRA-indebted Republican Party used the filibuster and benefitted from the disproportionate representation of small, rural states in the Senate to block it. And, really, that's the story here -- so much so that the president can continue to take his case directly to the people while further isolating the Republican Party way out on the far right.

Obama called yesterday "a pretty shameful day for Washington," and that, too, is part of the story. The president's approval ratings aren't great, but they're way higher than Congress's, and he can now make the case that a Congress no one likes won't even pass a hugely popular measure that is pretty much the least that ought to be done in the wake of the Newtown massacre (not to mention every other instance, day after day, of the appalling gun violence that plagues the country).

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Gun bill could be worse than nothing

By Frank Moraes 

(Ed. note: I take a similar view of Manchin-Toomey, supposedly a wonderful bipartisan compromise, in a post I put up this morning -- see here. -- MJWS)

Have you seen the opening to this past weekend's Saturday Night Live? (You can also watch it here.) The skit makes fun of what I wrote about last week: "The Great Liberal Gun Policy Victory." In the end, I argued, what we would get is a law that is almost useless. I'm never one to avoid accountability, so let me lay it on the line: I was wrong.

The law would be worse than useless.

Karen Tumulty and Ed O'Keefe reported at The Washington Post, "Gun Debate in Senate Likely to Feature Amendments to Weaken or Strengthen Laws." They pointed out that the gun lobby and their pals "are working on a series of amendments that could have the opposite effect -- loosening many of the restrictions that exist in current law."

What kind of amendments? Things that far outweigh anything positive in the bill:

Most worrisome to those who advocate new gun limits is an expected amendment that would achieve one of the National Rifle Association's biggest goals: a "national reciprocity" arrangement, in which a gun owner who receives a permit to carry a concealed weapon in any one state would then be allowed to do that anywhere in the country. Other pro-gun proposals would make it easier for dealers to sell their merchandise between states or let certain people who had been treated for mental illness regain the right to buy weapons.

You may be wondering, what are those amendments that could "strengthen" the law that the title of the article refers to. Well, in the article, they only mentioned one: the assault weapons ban. And they noted that it has effectively no chance of passing. But that concealed carry reciprocity? Last time the Senate voted on it, it got 58 votes.

Things are not quite as bad as it seems, however. Everyone thinks that if these amendments get passed, it will just kill the bill. And maybe that is for the best. As Jonathan Chait noted this morning, "Any real effort to address the plague of mass gun violence will require not a catalyzing event, or even a string of them, but years of organizing and effort." I would only add that the liberals have to stop meeting conservatives 90% of the way. The worse case scenario, as we see with concealed carry reciprocity, is much worse than 100% failure.

Wouldn't it be sad if our response to Sandy Hook was to make such tragedies more likely.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Manchin-Toomey: A gun control "compromise" manufactured by the gun lobby

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Gun-crazy "bipartisanship"

I wrote on Friday that there was no hope in hell of meaningful gun control legislation getting through Congress. Manchin-Toomey may be a "bipartisan" "compromise," insofar as it has a few Republican backers, but even if it were to get through the Senate it would still have the House to contend with -- and there the NRA, which opposes the measure, has even more sway. Which is to say, we're a long way even from this limited measure making its way into law, and it may never get there.

Ah, but the tide is turning, is it not, what with two Republican senators -- John McCain and Susan Collins, joining Mark Kirk -- coming out this weekend in support?

Well, there's your "bipartisanship" on an issue that has the overwhelming support of Americans: Democrats plus a few Republicans. And we're not talking about a comprehensive gun control package here. This is just expanded background checks (important, yes, but not nearly enough). And even then McCain's support is a tad wishy-washy: he's "very favorably disposed," which is not a full endorsement, leaving him more than enough room to back out. What's more, Republican Jeff Sessions, a staunch opponent, said yesterday that he didn't think the measure would pass, and co-sponsor Pat Toomey acknowledged that passage is an "open question."

And again, this is just the Senate.

But okay, let's say it does pass, and let's say House Republicans buck the NRA, however unlikely, and support it, doing the least they can do as a way to make it seem like they're doing something, appealing to popular opinion, while pushing off having to do anything else. And let's say President Obama signs it, which he would, even though he's called for much more, because it's something, and something is supposedly better than nothing, and he likes the whole bipartisan thing anyway.

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As Homer Simpson says, "It's funny because it's true"

By Richard K. Barry

This is a clip from last night's opening skit on Saturday Night Live, in case you missed it:

New Rep. Robin Kelly: Sucking and blowing on guns

By Richard K. Barry

One thing that you have to do in politics is win the races you're supposed to win. I'm sure there's a Vince Lombardi quote to this effect, I just can't think of it at the moment.

It may not get a lot of attention when things go as everyone expects they will, but it sure provides a lot of unwanted attention in politics when, as they say, man bites dog. 

So, with nary a headline outside of Chicago, Robin Kelly kept ex-Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.'s House seat for the Democrats in the IL-02 on the South Side of Chicago and its southern suburbs. She defeated Paul McKinley on April 11 by a margin of 71 to 22 percent in a race that was expected to be won by precisely this sort of big margin. 

As Daily Kos reports:

Her bigger victory came in February's primary, where, despite starting off the race in third place, she made gun violence a central issue and rode a wave of anti-NRA sentiment to the Democratic nomination. Kelly has remained an outspoken advocate of gun safety regulations, a message she's pledged to carry with her to Washington.

She was sworn in yesterday and immediately got to work:

Saying children should be protected from gun-wielding criminals but 2nd Amendment rights should be preserved, newly installed U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly made her first remarks today on the floor of her new workplace, the House of Representatives.

"We can do both," she said of the twin aims in the gun debate.

Yes, well, I don't actually think Americans can do both, but that's the power of the mythology of gun ownership in the USA. Even Democrats have to say stupid shit like that. 

Craziest Republican of the Day: Jeff Duncan

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Republicans never fail to prop up their ideological extremism with the most ridiculous, uh, arguments:

Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) warned in a Facebook post on Thursday that a national gun registry would be similar to a database used by the ruling Hutu tribe in Rwanda in the 1990s to locate and slaughter members of an opposing tribe in a genocide that killed up to 1 million people.

*****

"The 2nd Amendment is (or should be) equal to the 1st Amendment and the 4th Amendment and all of the others," Duncan said in his Facebook post. "Ask yourselves why it is under attack? Ask yourselves about a National gun registry database and how that might be used and why it is so wanted by progressives?"

Duncan then likened it to a tribal registry in Rwanda.



"Read about the Rwandan genocide, the Hutu and Tutsi tribes," he continued. "Read that all Tutsi tribe members were required to register their address with the Hutu government and that this database was used to locate Tutsi for slaughter at the hands of the Hutu."

Duncan wrote that since the government had the names and addresses of nearly all Tutsis living in Rwanda, "the killers could go door to door, slaughtering the Tutsis."

He wrote that each Rwandan "had an identity card that labeled them Tutsi, Hutu, or Twa."

Duncan accused Democrats of "preying on the fears" of citizens.

Yes, that's right, this blithering idiot said that a gun registry would lead to genocide, as if the situation in the U.S. is the same as the one in Rwanda, with one tribe plotting to wipe out another and carrying out horrific mass murder. And he's accusing Democrats of "preying" on fear? Please.

You want fearmongering? There's no fucking gun registry, and there won't be one. It's just right-wing paranoia, stirred up by the NRA and other gun nuts to terrify, and mobilize, their followers against any and all gun control.

I'd say Duncan is engaging in such cynical exploitation himself, but he appears to be far too stupid for that -- and so crazy he actually seems to believe the shit he's spewing.

Not a hope in hell: Gun control now up for debate in Senate

By Michael J.W. Stickings

There was much ado yesterday about the bipartisan (but still mostly Democratic) Manchin-Toomey proposal to broaden background checks for gun purchases (specifically to cover gun shows and the Internet), a deal that broke the NRA-backed Republican filibuster (the cloture motion passing 68-31) and allows for debate on the Senate floor of a package of gun control measures supported by Obama and the Democrats (and, of course, opposed by most Republicans and the NRA).

Is it a step in the right direction? Yes. Is it possible that something will end up passing, even if it's just expanded background checks (which would certainly be good in and of themselves but which aren't nearly enough)? Sure. And is it encouraging that Majority Leader Harry Reid is demanding a renewed ban on assault weapons and limits on the size of ammunition magazines. Of course.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. You know how the Senate works, you know what Republicans are all about, and you know that the Republican-led House isn't about to support anything resembling meaningful gun control legislation. Indeed, as Jonathan Bernstein writes in a sober -- and depressing -- post looking past yesterday's pro-debate vote to what lies ahead:

[W]e still don't know that an intact bill can make it to the final vote stage in the Senate; we still don't know if an intact bill can defeat a filibuster to get to that final vote; we don't know whether the House would take up a bill if it did pass the Senate; and we don't even know whether a bill could get a majority in the House even if they did take it up. So there's a long, long, ways to go. What happened [yesterday] was the easiest part.

In other words, as it says over the gates of hell in Dante's Inferno: "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate."

As you may know, that translates as "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

With Republicans able to block whatever they want, there's really no hope at all.