Black and Brown people are not political pawns. The @NRA doesn't get to use us to prove a point-while repeatedly devaluing Black and Brown lives.— Brittany Packnett (@MsPackyetti) March 6, 2018
View my latest for @Mic.pic.twitter.com/HAuZMCehhC
In the wake of the tragic Parkland shooting, it's become clear that there’s a hypocrisy when we talk about America’s gun violence problem — @MsPackyetti explains for Mic. pic.twitter.com/cQ5jMWgfbP— Mic (@mic) March 6, 2018
State Senator Paul Sanford (R from Huntsville) said, “The President should set an example and tell the Secret Service that protects he & his family to lay down their arms! Executive Order that!”EYE am trying to figure out how making it more difficult for Americans to sell guns unless they obtain a license translates into Obama is coming for your guns? Strike that. EYE know how.
"The fact you are allowed to arm yourself while calling Obama a 'gun-grabbing' tyrant kinda proves he's not."What part of We the Peeps are fed up with up with gun violence don't the mainstream media and the GOP understand?
At no point yesterday did any Republican candidates or lawmakers point to anything specific in the president’s policy that they found objectionable. Not one measure, not one idea, not one initiative, not one paragraph, nothing.EYE thought republicans were pro life?
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Breitbart News is reporting that Georgia Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) President Sam Mosteller has been suspended from the organization following his call for Black families to “exercise their Second Amendment rights” by arming themselves against police.There's just one little problem, Sam Mosteller didn't call for Black families to "exercise their Second Amendment rights by arming themselves against the police. THIS is what he actually said.
“We’re going to have do something in our community to let the rest of America know that we are not going to be victimized by just anybody whether it be police or folks that decide that Black people are thugs and we need to control the Black community.”Mosteller is calling for black folks to exercise their Second Amendment right to protect themselves FROM the police, not AGAINST the police. Words matter. And what is wrong with African Americans exercising their rights? There is no out cry when whites exercise their right to protect themselves.
He goes on to say, “You know, the SCLC stands for nonviolence, but nonviolence hasn’t worked in this instance. You stand there, (police) shoot. You run, they shoot. We’re going to have to take a different tack. Nobody is protecting the Black community! I am going to advocate, at this point, that all African-Americans advocate their 2nd Amendment rights.” In addition to calling on families to arm themselves, Mosteller is also organizing recalls of the sheriffs of all counties where unarmed Black people have been shot by police.
Gun sales in and around Ferguson, Missouri, have soared in recent weeks, as the city waits to find out whether a local police officer will be indicted for shooting an unarmed teenager in August, according to CNN. A grand jury investigation into the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown is expected to reveal its findings sometime this month, putting many residents who fear riots in the wake of the ruling on edge. Some gun shops near Ferguson have seen gun sales double or even triple in recent days, local radio reported.Despite public opinion to the contrary blacks have a long tradition of taking up arms to defend themselves of racial violence.
“This is very abnormal,” Steven King, of gun retailer Metro Shooting Supplies in nearby Bridgeton, told KMOV News radio. “With all the rumors on the Internet, they are saying every neighborhood is unsafe, there is a possibility of a strike in any neighborhood.”
“active self-defense against violence,” is a tradition that developed alongside nonviolent resistance, and that “even before slavery had been outlawed, Black Americans took up arms when their lives and livelihoods were threatened.”Well we can't have black folks defending themselves when their lives and livelihoods are threatened in America.
The historical record provides compelling evidence that racism underlies gun control laws -- and not in any subtle way. Throughout much of American history, gun control was openly stated as a method for keeping blacks and Hispanics "in their place," and to quiet the racial fears of whites.So there you have it, if we want comprehensive gun control laws all black folks have to do is start exercising their Second Amendment rights....
If supporters of the right to keep and bear arms want their pleas to be heard in their proper context, they might consider talking a little less about Valley Forge and a little more about Jim Crow — and attempting to fill their ranks with people who have known much more recently what tyranny really looks like.Eye am just saying.....
To rectify this gap in the unstated “guns for everyone” mentality of Alabama’s Republican-led legislature, lawmakers have proposed an amendment to the state’s gun laws that would allow minors to acquire their very own pistols. At the moment, the law is on a bit more even keel, stipulating that “no person shall deliver a pistol to any person under the age of 18.” Lawmakers want that changed to allow minors to have pistols, but only if they get the permission of a “parent, guardian, or spouse who is 18 or older (?)”And they wonder why police shoot first and ask questions later?
The bill, if passed, would also eliminate record-keeping requirements from the Code of Alabama, removing language that mandates firearm dealers "keep a permanent record of the sale of every pistol, revolver, or maxim silencer, showing the date of sale, serial number, or other identification marks, manufacturer's name, caliber and type, and also the name and address of the purchaser."Who could possibly think this is a good idea?
The measure is sponsored by three state senators: Arthur Orr, Greg Reed and Clay Scofield (all Republicans). A matching House bill is being sponsored by Ed Henry, Micky Hammon, Barry Moore and Corey Harbison (all Republicans). It’s unclear why the group of lawmakers felt that kids needed additional relaxation of existing gun laws.
"This world will be a dangerous world - more dangerous than it is today. I hope that deal doesn't come through. If it does, Congress is going to speak on it and I believe we will turn it down. Thank God (Republicans) are in control of the Senate and the House."I submit Sweet Home Alabama will be a dangerous state - more dangerous than it is today.
Bills like these may be a victory for the NRA, but they are, without a doubt, putting the lives of children in danger. How warped is the mentality of Alabama’s pro-gun lobby that they feel that kids need handguns? How many of Alabama’s children need to die before the “freedom” of a child to carry a pistol isn’t worth the sacrifice? These are questions Alabama lawmakers must answer.I thought republicans were pro-life?
Republicans aren't pro-life. They are just pro-birth. And there's a big difference between the two.RedEye
With Columbus Day upon us once again, we must ask the question: Why, exactly, are we still celebrating Columbus Day?Seattle votes to celebrate 'Indigenous People Day" on Columbus Day
A darker side of Columbus emerges in US classroomsThe resolution that passed unanimously Monday honors the contributions and culture of Native Americans and the indigenous community in Seattle. Indigenous Peoples’ Day will be celebrated on the second Monday in October.
Tribal members and other supporters say the move recognizes the rich history of people who have inhabited the area for centuries.
“This action will allow us to bring into current present day our valuable and rich history, and it’s there for future generations to learn,” said Fawn Sharp, president of the Quinault Indian Nation on the Olympic Peninsula, who is also president of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians.
Columbus’ stature in U.S. classrooms has declined somewhat through the years, and many districts will not observe his namesake holiday on Monday. Although lessons vary, many teachers are trying to present a more balanced perspective of what happened after Columbus reached the Caribbean and the suffering of indigenous populations.
“The whole terminology has changed,” said James Kracht, executive associate dean for academic affairs in the Texas A&M College of Education and Human Development. “You don’t hear people using the world ‘discovery’ anymore like they used to. ‘Columbus discovers America.’ Because how could he discover America if there were already people living here?”
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.@Keith_Dailey @Kroger I've been a customer for 27 years. You'd rather have this guy? #GroceriesNotGuns #MomsDemand pic.twitter.com/NeNqggPDbS
— Cornelia (@PaladinCornelia) October 10, 2014
GOP+NRA = Pro-WHAT??? pic.twitter.com/PPUVxFinGL
— Arlene Schulman (@msdirector) April 9, 2013
The first screening of this pro-gun propaganda documentary starring Ted Nugent, Wayne LaPierre, and other borderline-psychopathatic talking heads will be tomorrow -- followed by theatrical and DVD releases and, apparently, distribution through PBS:What Victor said...This also shows the extent to which Conservatives have bent PBS and NPR to their will, by threatening to defund them for being excessively Liberal.
How many more innocent children and civilians will we have to bury before the gun nuts and their acolytes recognize that the tide of public opinion isn’t on their side? They can either participate in the discussion…or they may wake up to discover that the issue has been decided for them without their input.What Bob Cesca said:
Everyone’s afraid to appear too “extreme” when discussing gun control legislation. No one wants to offend the gun people. But extremism never stopped the NRA and the utter wackadoodles and firearm fetishists lurking in plain view — their American flag shirts and ridiculous bumper stickers flaunting their “right” to buy and keep as many guns as they can afford, and to use them in a wide variety of inexcusably psychotic ways.
Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss. Don't expect Porter to be a breath of fresh air bringing with him a new way of doing things. As is traditional, Porter will come to the presidency following two years as first vice president and two years as second vice president of the organization. He has also been the head of the NRA's legal affairs committee and a trustee of the NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund. Porter's father was the NRA's president from 1959 to 1961 and chaired the 1977 annual meeting at which hardliners took over the organization and began transforming it into the no-compromise lobbying powerhouse the group remains today.For more on Porter check out the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence's Meet The NRA project. Here is a snippet.
Addressing the administration of President Barack Obama, Porter stated, “I get so sick and tired of all these people with this fake president that we got who wants to say, ‘Well, you know he hadn’t done anything bad for gun owners.’ I say, let me tell you something bad that he’s done. His entire administration is anti-gun, anti-freedom, anti-Second Amendment.” Porter accused U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder of being “rabidly un-American” and involved with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in “trying to kill the Second Amendment at the United Nations.” He explained, “Right in the United Nations today, they have an initiative that would make it illegal for individuals all over the world to own firearms. And that’s what they’re passing. And that’s what this administration is supporting.” In truth, the U.N. Small Arms Treaty to which Porter is referring would set only international standards for the export of conventional weapons—leaving domestic laws regulating the possession of firearms untouched.
Today’s NRA meeting could become a touchstone for the #newtruther movement as the GOP mainstreams more insanity.
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) May 3, 2013
Read on.I don't always agree with Philadelphia Daily News columnist Jill Porter---if I remember correctly, she even ripped family court a time or two when I was an administrator there---.
But her article concerning guns, gun violence, and its disturbing and frightening effects on our community was right on point. And she raises some relevant economic issues that I didn't even consider.Here is what she wrote:I DON'T KNOW about you, but I'm going to spend my tax-refund incentive check to buy a gun.
Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that individuals - and not just members of militias - have the right to bear arms, it's the least we can do.
Really.
I was going to buy a dining-room rug, but that won't boost the economy nearly as much as having more guns in circulation.
I keep hoping A-merry-cans will wake up, but sadly, I know we won't. I mean if someone can execute a schoolhouse full of little Amish children and it doesn't get a rise out of the sick f#$ks at the NRA, I don't know what will. I mean a bunch of n***ers killing each other in the inner cities is fine. We all know those Negroes don't have anything better to do than take drugs and kill each other. But what about those good citizens [*wink wink*] in places like Kentucky and Virginia? Do they deserve to die? I don't know, call me crazy, but I bet if there were less guns there would be less killings.
~~Physicians For Social Responsibility-Los Angeles~~"Do you feel safer with a gun in the house? When you bring a gun into your home, you dramatically increase the risk of someone you love being injured by that gun. Research has shown that with each 1,000 gunshot victims that come to our hospitals, less than two victims are actually using a gun for self-defense at the time.(5) The majority of gunshots are due to suicide, homicide (due to escalated arguments between loved ones), and accidental firings than to self defense. In fact, more guns are fired in the United States in the act of suicide than for any other reason.(6) To put simply: suicides, homicides (due to arguments), and accidental firings would be much less likely if the gun were not in the house in the first place."
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| Fist Dap Americans Against the Tea Party |
Some lawmakers are inviting victims of gun violence, and Obama is expected to push Congress to support a package of measures crafted in the aftermath of the slaughter of schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., in December.Not so much if you are invited by a democratic member of Congress, and are the mother of a dead American soldier and a peace activist like Cindy Sheehan, who was arrested in the House Gallery after refusing to cover up her T-Shirt that said "2,245 Dead. How many more?" -- a reference to the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq, before President Bush's State of the Union Address.
“I am excited to have a patriot like Ted Nugent joining me in the House Chamber to hear from President Obama,” Stockman said in a statement. “After the address I’m sure Ted will have plenty to say.”
I don't like the imagery, O. Pandering to the gun nut crowd is not cool. A picture of you at Hadiya Pendelton's funeral would have been more like what I wanted to see. That, and a stirring eulogy along with a call for all of us in the black community to start taking responsibility for our children. You should be working overtime from the bully pulpit on that issue, but instead you are trying to prove to wingnuts that you actually shoot skeets every now and then. *scratching my very bald head*
Skeet shooting and bowling? Man the things you do to make some folks love you.
The gun control debate is not about how well, or even if Obama can shoot. It's about all the fools running around with weapons of war in an alleged civilized society. That's all it's ever been. Except when it turns racial, like now, when the focus is on Obama's “manliness” or when Black Panthers were legally carrying weapons in public, back in the day. Talk about about faces, the NRA nearly gave itself whiplash back peddling on guns in public when black men took to the streets peacefully inside their own neighborhoods. The panthers didn't kill anybody, but the government declared open season and killed them.It's not about YOU. It's not about THEM. It's about our COUNTRY. The sooner you and your staff remember that, we ALL will be better off.
What we are witnessing in America's cities is what one mayor has called "slow motion mass murder." The response from the federal government to address the daily death toll must be comprehensive and, most importantly, must be backed up with local law enforcement resources so that parents in cities like Chicago bury less of their children every year.RedEye tiptoeing away from the computer to go pray for little Ethan and his family.
Growing up around guns and owning them as an adult affords a person memories and experiences that strangers to guns may have trouble understanding. The divide is phenomenological, not political (or not political until it gets to be), like the gulf between those who’ve had sex and those who haven’t or those who smoke and those who’ve never lit up. Pulling a trigger and being prepared to do so cuts patterns in the self. Depending on the nature of your social life, which time around guns can shape and color in ways that I’ll describe, you might forget that these patterns are even there, because you’re surrounded by people who share them—until someone or some event challenges you to answer for your thinking.
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| The Real Threats to America's Security |
Radio Boy, this Parody is just for you! Enjoy!Our vision of this country is the same: We want a place where we all have rights. Specifically the right to own a pile of military assault weapons without anyone monitoring us so we can train and plan and then secretly block the emergency exits to the building. It's a country where we have the right to fight for our freedoms against all enemies, foreign, domestic... or even the ones that might be imaginary. It's a home where my right to swing my fist ends where your nose, torso, neck, and the back of your head begin. But only after it's all over, because people don't have the right to ask what I do with my guns, or where I'm keeping them, or whether several psychiatrists think I need to be heavily medicated. That's just like what the Nazis did.
Are we safe yet?Weapon Wonderland Song Parody (to be sung to Winter Wonderland)By Madeleine Begun Kane
Gun sales surge. Are you listenin’?
Ammunition keeps glistenin’.
They’re arming tonight and causing a fright.
U.S. Constitution arms the land.
People die for no reason.
Children shot! ‘Tis the season.
A terrible blight, each night after night.
Gun rights absolutists harm our land.
NRA and cronies claim our homeland
Must allow their arms in every town,
Claiming guns will help us.
We say “No man!
“The murder stats have got to go way down.”
Weapon fans have conspired.
Now our nation is mired.
With lives we have paid.
New laws must be made.
Or soon we’ll have a gun in every hand.
Next month, the Supreme Court will take up a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the most effective law of its kind in the history of the United States. A century after the Civil War, the act, in abolishing many forms of discrimination employed by the Southern states, such as poll taxes and literacy tests, finally turned the legal right for African-Americans in those states to vote into an actual right to vote. Bipartisan congressional majorities have reauthorized the law four times, most recently in 2006. (It passed the House overwhelmingly and the Senate unanimously, and was signed into law by George W. Bush.) The question now is whether the Supreme Court will strike down the Voting Rights Act as a violation of states’ rights.
Gun violence saturates our children’s lives and relentlessly threatens them every day. It has romped through their playgrounds; invaded their birthday parties; terrorized their Head Start classrooms, child care centers, and schools; frolicked down the streets they walk to and from school; danced through their school buses; waited at the red light and bus stop; lurked behind trees; run them down on the corner; shot them through their bedroom windows, on their front porches, and in their neighborhoods.
“One of these mothers from Connecticut should do an Emmett Till moment; show the picture of their child dead in the classroom.”
That’s a text I received earlier this week from my TV One show producer. When I got it, a chill immediately went through my body just thinking about the possibility of seeing the carnage in such a photo.
When taping this week’s edition of my show, “Washington Watch,” Sirius/XM Radio host Joe Madison somberly said the same thing. Joe remarked that Emmett’s mother, Mamie, insisted on an open casket for her son so the world could see what was done to him by racists in Mississippi.
I cannot keep having the same argument with the same talking points anymore. I do not believe in taking every one's guns away. I do believe we need to have sensible regulations that are enforced. You cannot compare guns with knives or cars or swimming pools. You cannot insist that I am going to be raped and murdered because I think 30 rounds is too much for any civilian. You cannot possibly think that your pistol and your cammo backpack gives you the tools to fight against a fictional tyrannical government. I will continue to fight for what I believe in, by donating to the Brady center, by contacting legislators, by writing letters to editors, etc. What I will not do is continue to waste my time arguing with buffoons who insist that repeating NRA lies and propaganda is the way to have a rational dialogue about safety. Go on the NRA site if you want to brag about your right to have whatever weapon you want and keep on tellin yourself that if someone gets caught in the crossfire somehow its their fault for not being "prepared". Or a video game's fault, or an atheist's fault, or a socialist's fault. I'll find a solution, you keep hiding from one.How about this, let people keep their guns
Make possession of more than X rounds of ammo a felony. Pay whistle blower rewards for providing the name of ammo hoarders.The Founding Fathers never intended to for the second amendment to enable individuals to own what ever weapon they desired.
Require future ammo produced to go bad after 90 days.
Tax the sale of the new ammo to pay for the program.
There is no right to own ammo.
It was certainly not intended to enable groups of individuals to use deadly force against their own government. Instead, it was intended to enable government-led groups of white men to put down slave rebellions and to steal real estate from the Indians.Enough excuses. Enough memorials. Enough grief.
The problem of gun violence in the United States is complex, and as H.L. Mencken observed, "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." Advocating that we arm elementary school principals and kindergarten teachers is not only wrong but insane. We must stop allowing this kind of insanity to prevent us from having reasonable gun control legislation.Amen and Amen.
