Every day, pundits, politicians and newsmakers try to predict what’s next in American politics. Horse races, winners and losers and “top things you need to know.”
After the horrific shooting in Las Vegas, prognosticators had an unfair advantage. We’ve learned from our country’s recent history of gun violence what happens after. What we haven’t learned is how to stop repeating the cycle. 1) It ain't a "cycle." Calling it a cycle doesn't make it so.
This week, I joined Rep. Elizabeth Esty (D-CT) and several of my colleagues from the Nevada Congressional delegation — Reps. Dina Titus, Ruben Kihuen, and Jacky Rosen — to work toward interrupting the tragic cycle of inaction. The tragedy is in the thinking that more laws against the gun owners who did not help the shooter, or who were restricted by local, state and federal law from having the tools to counter shooters, will prevent murder.
We introduced the Keep Americans Safe Act to ban high-capacity magazines.
Like bump fire stocks, high-capacity magazines are designed to make killing more efficient, and not much else.
As a hunter I met this week put it, if you take more than one shot at a deer you’ll be getting the “white tail salute.” The 2nd Amendment ain't about hunting. It's about holding the government at risk should they decide to become sporty, like banning magazines.
And even before the unspeakable violence tore through his city last week, Las Vegas Sheriff Joe Lombardo said, “I’m a very avid hunter, I was in the military myself, and there’s no need to have a high-capacity magazine for any practical reason.” Sez you. I was in the military myself and I took the same oath as Lombardo, which apparently he has broken.
As we emerge from our grief after the new “worst mass-shooting in American history”— a title unwillingly claimed by the city of Orlando after the Pulse nightclub shooting just over a year ago — we are committed to finding policy proposals that the vast majority of Americans will support to help stop this unacceptable violence. Trying eliminating gun laws. They don't help anyone, and they punish the innocent.
Combined with bump fire stocks, high-capacity magazines allowed the Las Vegas shooter to kill 58 concertgoers in a matter of minutes. The shooter could have done the same thing in 15 minutes without the bump fire stock, and arguably without the standard capacity magazine.
But the massive scale of violence extends so much further. High-capacity magazines make killers capable of firing dozens of bullets before reloading. In the recordings captured by victims in Las Vegas, you can hear the killer fire 90 rounds in just ten seconds. There is no "massive scale of violence" that involves standard capacity magazines. Those who have wantonly murdered with standard capacity magazines have done so because they were murdering bastards, not because of the capacity of the magazine. It is a critical distinction, one the writer chooses to ignore.
Bullets rained down on a crowd of 22,000 injuring over 500 people.
Limiting magazines to ten rounds would be a small step toward safety. It would also be popular. The 2nd Amendment is not subject to popular opinion. Rights are God given and not subject to the whims of a coterie of tyrants who want to use the offices of government to commit theft and murder, all in the holy name of Public Safety. If you look over how tyrants came to power -- and maintain their power -- you will find that those who used the excuse of public safety were cynical liars who used a public sentiment to increase their power and the power of the government. And in so doing destroyed as many individual freedoms as they could in the process. What the writer advocates is no different.
Banning high-capacity magazines is supported by 72 percent of Americans, including law enforcement officers, military veterans and gun safety advocates.
We admit that this legislation won’t fix everything and won’t end gun violence. It won’t address the majority of the 33,000 lives lost to gun violence every year in this country, half of which are suicides.
But without 30-round magazines, mass killers would be forced to spend time reloading, precious time that could allow a victim to escape or law enforcement to intervene.
If that time could help save at least one life, it would be worth it. If eliminating laws that hold the power of the state over gun owners would encourage individuals to arm up and help stop violence, it would be worth more. And in the process it would restore rights and civil liberties to the people.
We have already progressed through much of the usual cycle after Las Vegas. The headlines followed the same familiar form: this many killed, that many injured.
But the victims of gun violence are innocent Americans who deserve better. The families they have left behind deserve better. And every American today deserves better, too. The victims were first and foremost disarmed in an environment in which law enforcement would not have stopped the shooting. In my estimation, it would have taken two riflemen to slow the shooter down and four to stop the shooting altogether. And the best part is, it is cost free to the government. Just get the government's boot heels off the people, and allow them to decide for themselves how to protect themselves. Kops protect themselves firstly, and their commanders second. Gun laws don't work in the US. We are the Arsenal of Democracy. Stop trying to pass laws that run counter to civil liberties.
We cannot allow ourselves to become numb, and we cannot allow ourselves to remember the victims of gun violence as mere statistics.
Will this cycle be different?
Banning high-capacity magazines is not a bold new idea. These devices were illegal until 2004 when Congress allowed the Assault Weapons Ban to lapse. That was a mistake, and it’s time to correct it by renewing restrictions on these devices which have no purpose other than highly efficient murder. Yes, Congressman: Put the power to murder efficiently into the hands of the state alone.
It’s time for Congress to do something about gun violence. Try resigning.
It’s time to convert all of our thoughts and prayers into action.
It’s time to overwhelm the gun lobby and my colleagues beholden to them with passionate common sense.
Let’s pass the Keep Americans Safe Act and ban high capacity magazines.
#3
In my estimation, it would have taken two riflemen to slow the shooter down and four to stop the shooting altogether.
IIRC, something very much like that happened during the Texas Tower shooting of 1 Aug 1966. A student gave his rifle to a local cop who showed up with only a handgun. Some civilians living nearby took their hunting rifles down from their mantels and started shooting back from ground level. A four man team got to the top of the tower, went through to dead & wounded there to kill the shooter. They themselves were in danger from being shot by return fire from below the tower. Years passed before the bullet marks at the top were repaired.
#6
And not to forget the CDC finding that over 100,000 patients die in hospitals every year due to negligence. I'm not sure if that figure included the government's own VA.
[The Hill] Steve Bannon is becoming a problem for Republicans on tax reform.
President Trump’s former chief strategist is threatening to support right-wing opponents to every GOP senator up for reelection, aside from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
He argues that GOP senators are falling short in enacting the Trump agenda, blasting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his conference over the failure to repeal ObamaCare.
If the GOP follows up with another loss on tax reform, Republican senators know it will just give Bannon more ammunition to use against them.
"There’s one antidote to Steve Bannon: success," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters on Tuesday.
A win on tax reform could quiet Bannon, Graham suggested.
#2
The American People elected Donald Trump for a reason.. We want what the Senators won't perform... refuse to perform. Just how do you think that is going to play out at Election Time.?
The American People can kick your chair over and step in your face. You don't give us what we voted for and see what happens. You think our electing Donald was some sort of Fluke? You were surprised by that?
You refuse to give us what we want? Mouth in a suit...you are in for another surprise in 2018. You can go back to looking for a job, yourself. The world is full of surprises for people who don't listen.
h/t Instapundit
Has someone lit the Victim-signal in the sky? For the last several days my Facebook page has been lit up with women "me too-ing" about how they also were harassed and are as victimy, helpless, and deserving as any would-be Hollywood A-lister flung across Harvey Weinstein’s casting couch.
It’s all "I too was harassed" and "being a woman is so terrible" and "no one is safe" and "patriarchy."
It might be unkind of me, but my first thought ‐ right after, "Really, I didn’t know Bill Clinton’s staff was that big" ‐ was "No, you were not sexually harassed, because the penalties for that are straight-up horrendous unless you happen to be a big-time leftist. At worst you were inconvenienced by having a pass made at you by a guy you found unattractive."
This thought could be wrong and unkind. Young and hapless women often allow things to happen to them that are objectively sexual harassment.
...Is there a lot of that type of thing? Yeah, there probably is, particularly where young, stupid women work. And it’s probable a lot more goes on where immigrants work, particularly illegal immigrants, whose position is precarious.
But in general, that kind of harassment is only a real problem when it’s an industry dominated by very few gatekeepers. These industries/professions -- the arts, publishing, filmmaking, politics, etc. -- are almost all dominated by the left.
...Oh, and in those fields, particularly as more women rise to prominence, men get harassed too, in the exact same way.
So all these women donning the vestments of holy victim can climb off the sacrificial altar. This isn’t an #allwomen or #yesallmen. This is human.
The story of humanity proves that those with power often took their "payment" in sexual favors. From kings to ministers, history is littered with the excesses of powerful men and their bastards. But if you look up close, the women who rose to power did the same. Queens and Empresses, and even noblewomen, often treated young men of no fortune as toys.
It’s a human thing.
Now, this is not excusing it. It is also human to kill and eat your enemies, and I’ve been assured we don’t do that anymore, no matter how much people annoy you on the internet.
But that sort of bad behavior stops, not by piling on and saying "me too" or worshiping the victims for being so courageous as to admit they let themselves be victimized, but by doing something about it.
What can you do about it? Well, if you’re in one of those industries that are dominated by liberals behaving badly, and you don’t have the courage to give up your career for the sake of exposing the bad people (and honestly, you shouldn’t have to. No one should have to. But the world doesn’t run on "should"), you can build alternative paths to success. Build under, build over, build around so you don’t need to go through the corrupt gates.
And if you aren’t in one of those industries, you can learn to distinguish between real abuse and an unwanted come-on. Real abuse ("you put out or you don’t have a career") only happens where the guy (or gal) knows he can get away with it. Circumvent, refuse, expose.
As for unwanted propositions? Be real. You’re human. Unless you have three eyes and fifteen elbows, some of them on your teeth, someone is going to find you attractive. Depending on how the come-on is attempted, the appropriate response is a slap (yes, violence does solve something) or a kind "Thank you but no."
Yes, if you’re a woman it will be mostly men who will give you a sexual come-on. (Though some of us seemed to attract equal-opportunity interest, at least when young.) This doesn’t mean all women are victims and all men are predators.
It means you’re a woman and men are attracted to women, and not all of them are couth in their approaches.
"Me tooing" in comments, writing heartfelt sniveling stories of how you’re still traumatized, and hashtag activism will do absolutely nothing.
If women want to be in the workplace (as they more or less always were, other than a few exceptional periods), sex will rear its interesting head.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[The Hill] Steve Bannon is becoming a problem for Republicans on tax reform.
