Day: January 10, 2011

As if on Cue

Rest assured, gun violence only ever provides reasons to put more guns into circulation and never, ever serves as an argument for stricter regulations or requirements for those who wish to own or carry a gun:

Our model legislation is called the Giffords-Zimmerman Act,“ said Heller. (Giffords staffer Gabriel Zimmerman, 30, was killed on Saturday.) "It would require the Arizona Department of Public Safety to provide firearms training, using firearms confiscated by the state, to members of Congress and people who work for them. Facilities would be made available to them in a way that wouldn’t interfere with the training of police and other safety employees.”

Heller speculated that a response like this could prevent future attacks on members of Congress. “I don’t think having a firearm on her would do Congresswoman Giffords any good,” said Heller. “However, if it was known that members of her staff were well armed, that very well could have dissuaded [the shooter].

Arizona is already one of the easiest states in which to purchase and concealed-carry a gun, no licensing required. That easy availability did nothing whatsoever on Saturday, unless you count getting a gun into the hands of a 22 year old with apparent mental illness. The solution, as always: just make guns more available. That’ll solve it.

Now go die in those equally opportune streets like a well-armed man. Preferably by being shot; just don’t expect healthcare if you haven’t pre-paid or are any shade of brown. That is all.

DeLay Gets Three Years

Senior Judge Pat Priest sentenced him to the three-year term on the conspiracy charge. He also sentenced him to five years in prison on the money laundering charge but allowed DeLay to accept 10 years of probation instead of more prison time.

The former Houston-area congressman had faced up to life in prison. His attorneys asked for probation.

As one who assumed he’d never be convicted, much less sentenced to actual time… I guess I still say I’ll believe it when the bars slam shut behind him. If and when they do: Good riddance.

DeLay Gets Three Years

On Random Thoughts 306 and 307

politicalprof:

#306: Does anyone believe that the tragedy in Arizona would have been less dangerous and less tragic if 20 people had pulled out their guns and started firing at the shooter?

#307: Did anyone else notice that in Arizona, one of the most gun-friendly states in the United States, that the shooter was subdued by people who hit him and jumped on him? Not by armed vigilantes who wielded their guns?

On this topic I’d only add: does anyone think that Arizona’s gun laws, which basically amount to “anyone over 21 can buy, concealed-carry, and be armed at any time and in any place” make that state a safer place to reside?

Every time an incident involving a lone shooter occurs in a state with stiff gun laws, we’re treated to moans about “if only they’d let more people carry guns there, they’d have taken care of it before it ever started”; when it transpires in a gun crazed, heavily armed state like AZ: sounds of silence.

Journalists: How many folks on the ground in the immediate vicinity had guns on them? In the store? In the parking lot? Yet it was a well timed open field tackle that reportedly incapacitated the gunman.

peterwknox:stfuconservatives:roxanneritchi:

A deleted tweet from Sarah Palin. She is deleting anything that may show what she has said and done and advocated: TakeBackthe20.com, her tweets, posts on Facebook. She started doing this BEFORE she bothered to extend condolences to Griffords, the other victims of the shooting, and their families.

Do not forget this.

She should not be able to go out in public ever again without being shown or asked about this. Every day, every appearance, every press event.

Source: formerlyroxy-blog-blog

Climate of Hate; Just the Beginning

It’s true that the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally troubled. But that doesn’t mean that his act can or should be treated as an isolated event, having nothing to do with the national climate.

Last spring Politico.com reported on a surge in threats against members of Congress, which were already up by 300 percent. A number of the people making those threats had a history of mental illness — but something about the current state of America has been causing far more disturbed people than before to act out their illness by threatening, or actually engaging in, political violence.

–Paul Krugman, who reports in his blog that he hated writing this piece. It is, however, absolutely essential reading.

Climate of Hate; Just the Beginning

…the attempted assassination of a sitting member of Congress is inherently political, and politics is the process by which democracies negotiate the solutions to public problems. Conservatives know this. If the shooter had been a member of a Mexican drug cartel as some conservatives assumed, they would be calling for stricter immigration laws and blaming the White House for lax enforcement. If the shooter had been named “Mohammed,” no amount of evidence of mental illness would have persuaded conservatives that Islam wasn’t the culprit, and that the administration’s terrorism policies had failed. Instead, the shooter appears to have lurked on the extremist fringe of right-wing politics, much like Byron Williams and James von Brunn, and so conservatives are calling for a calm and reasoned assessment of the facts. The guilt is individual, rather than collective.

Adam Serwer
To which I add: yep.

A Kind of Relief

George Packer made several excellent points last night, one of which seems to be this morning’s emerging “serious person” consensus on the Giffords shooting and the political motivations (and their sources) that all-too-clearly underlie it:

It would be a kind of relief if Loughner operated not out of any coherent political context but just his own fevered brain.

Emphasis on coherent. Because it’s plain there are a number of right-wing talking points in this guy’s spew. Gold standard, government takeover, and other usual suspects have already emerged from his internet wake without the official investigation even getting started. But because the spew was most definitely a spew, and one that somewhat rarely qualified as English, well, those were just coincidental ravings of a lunatic and not something he heard repeatedly and then acted on. Just a lone nut, and both sides do it anyway.
Well, Cokie, Packer is ready for you:

…even so, the tragedy wouldn’t change this basic fact: for the past two years, many conservative leaders, activists, and media figures have made a habit of trying to delegitimize their political opponents. Not just arguing against their opponents, but doing everything possible to turn them into enemies of the country and cast them out beyond the pale. Instead of “soft on defense,” one routinely hears the words “treason” and “traitor.” The President isn’t a big-government liberal—he’s a socialist who wants to impose tyranny. He’s also, according to a minority of Republicans, including elected officials, an impostor. Even the reading of the Constitution on the first day of the 112th Congress was conceived as an assault on the legitimacy of the Democratic Administration and Congress.

Absolutely right. Just absolutely goddamned right. It is no coincidence that the entire week’s House agenda was instantly sidelined. Boehner and the rest knew the whole purpose of it was to create a hateful political sideshow. Sound and fury signifying nothing, but most certainly working to gin up some more fury. What’s the point of continuing with it if you can’t go before the microphone to talk about the coming tyranny? So that will just have to wait till next week. Because the Beltway media culture steadfastly refuses to learn from anything, least of all repeated, targeted domestic terror attacks. Time and time again, whether it be against the IRS, a member of Congress, government buildings, what have you, these are each dismissed as lone nuts operating on some incoherent babble and most definitely not taking marching orders from other lunatics that are routinely given the microphone on the most popular media outlets in the country. Don’t worry your pretty little head over the fact that their manifesto contains extensive quotes from Beck, Limbaugh, Bachman, Palin, whomever. That’s just incoherent ramblings. Both sides are equally guilty, and here’s an anonymous DailyKos comment that proves it.