Good job, President Obama. The NRA is a paper tiger with five million fanatical members in a country of 319 million: let them stand with the terrorists, violent criminals, and no-hope GOP bottom feeders.
Gun ownership nationwide has plummeted from 47 percent of households in 1973 to 31 percent in 2014, according to the NORC research institute at the University of Chicago. In 1980, 28 percent of individuals owned guns, today that’s down to 22 percent (hunters, incidentally, are down from 32 percent of the population in 1977 to just 15 percent in 2014). In the wake of Sandy Hook and San Bernardino, among other recent atrocities, only an extremist minority supported by corporations who serve profits over people oppose strengthened gun safety legislation.
Thus, the vehemence and desperation of the pro-gun lobby: just like racism, sexism, intolerance toward GLBT people, and a majority non-hispanic white America (projected to flip from 62 percent of population in 2014 to 44 percent in 2060 by the Census Department), among other trend lines, they are on a historical ebb tide. As politically instructive statistics, 39 percent of white adults lived in a household with firearms in the 2010-2014 period compared to 18 percent of blacks and 15 percent of hispanics, and 15-19 percent of residents of cities and larger suburbs had firearms at home, compared with 56 percent of people in rural areas. (About twice as many wealthier households, 44 percent of those with income over $90,000, had firearms compared with poorer families: just 18 percent of those with incomes under $25,000). Democrats are much better aligned with the future, if our constituents vote. Guardian:
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee issued one of the fiercest statements, saying: “In America we believe in the constitution, not confiscations, dictatorships or Kings, and Obama’s newest assault on the Second Amendment is a blatant, belligerent abuse of power.” Huckabee, who is currently lagging far behind the polls, added: “I will never bow down and surrender to Obama’s unconstitutional, radical, anti-gun agenda.”
Earlier this week, New Jersey governor Chris Christie called Obama “a petulant child” for pushing gun control while former Florida governor Jeb Bush worried that the executive action would set a “quite dangerous” precedent.
In contrast, Democrats praised Obama’s action. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton tweeted: “Thank you, @POTUS, for taking a crucial step forward on gun violence. Our next president has to build on that progress – not rip it away.”
This particular change in policy seems really minor in the spectrum of gun issues. I wonder: do regular folks see this as a big deal, as no big deal, as something else? Do they roll their eyes hard at Mr. Huckabee or Mrs. Clinton’s statement?
At what point does turning the rhetoric up to 11 on every little change in policy related to a politically charged issue get old?
It’s hardly a paper tiger, especially since future Senate majorities will rely on the likes of Heidi Heitkamp and will punish the rare pro-gun control Republican like Toomey or Kirk. Future House majorities are at least 4-6 years away, and will likely rely on some ‘pro gun’ Democrats like the 2006-2010 House Majority.
We underestimate our enemy at our peril. I strongly oppose their agenda, but it is their agenda that is currently allowed in Washington and not ours. Obama should never have been reduced to this display of desperate leadership, but any proposal he made was dead on arrival in the NRA’s Congress. If anything this action is a paper tiger in terms of reducing actual gun violence. Any victory is a welcome one, but let’s not get carried away at who is holding the chips right now.
a huge effect from what I’ve heard. Bill Bratton said so for what it’s worth. So why should Obama implement them? Because even small victories are important. Otherwise, there is no battle. Given his emotional speech today, I think our President takes this issue personally. My guess, based on my own experience as a minor elected official, is that he feels responsible for his people and will do what he can.
The NRA has no real opposition to its lobbying. And most people are on the side of common-sense gun control. We need to fight them anyway they can.
This is not the game changer Bob makes it out to be and the NRA is not the political paper tiger he thinks it is. If the Patriots end up playing the Bengals it would be foolish for Belichick to make a game plan against the Cleveland Browns, or to say ‘mission accomplished’ after a 5 yard gain if we are losing the game by several points.
I think Obama gave a great speech, showed some rare emotion, and it was obvious how much his impotency on this issue pains him and drains him. I know he cares. I strongly hope we can someday have a Senate and House of Representatives that cares just as much. Doing that will require recognizing the real stranglehold the NRA, our court system, our campaign finance system, and the very design of our Senate holds on this contentious issue.
It also means recognizing that not all of the polling is going our way, not when the conversation turns to the real killers like assault weapons and hand guns and beyond baby steps like background checks. This will require a lot of education and persuasion beyond simply dismissing a large portion of the country as gun loving rednecks, it will require a cultural shift in addition to a political change. The marriage equality movement did a good job taking soft opponents and turning them into soft proponents, the gun control movement has to do the same.
This is precisely an example of something that CAN happen without the cooperation of a GOP Congress. I’m also pretty sure the public favors assault weapon bans, though maybe not quite as overwhelmingly as some other things. I know you have said you would repeal the 2nd amendment if you were king for a day, but between not wanting to push federal legislation, being less than enthused about denying guns to those who may commit acts of terror, and what feels like cowering before the NRA I have to wonder.
Anyone who grew up in North Cambridge bought penny candy from Pat Terlizzi who took the 5am bus from Arlington Heights to his store every day for nearly 20 years before he was gunned down in his own business. I never met my grandpa because of a gun crime. I take this issue very seriously.
I explicitly said otherwise. I explicitly said I would vote for every gun control bill before Congress were I elected. Pointing out they currently have zero hope of passage is not the same as actively opposing it.
Thanks Dubya, but that billion dollars would save more lives through programs like Operation Ceasefire that differ from the no fly list in that they a) work and b) don’t ruin the lives of innocent people and c) aren’t being challenged by the ACLU. A no fly list wouldn’t save my grandpa, it has prevented hunderds of innocent people from enjoying their god given right to move about the country.
I am now cowering towards the enemy by recognizing they currently are kicking our asses and have been for decades? When the same strategy has failed multiple times, it is in fact essential to call for something different if you truly support your side. If anything what you are doing is the equivalent of waiving the Mission Accomplished banner when the war is far from over, and far from being won.
What I won’t do is demonize lawful gun owners who we should be enlisting in our efforts instead of lumping in with racists, terrorists and homophobes. What I won’t do is call the bare minimum a great victory. What I want do is lie to the victims and their families by claiming background checks would have stopped mass shootings. It is time we are honest in our rhetoric, honest about the hard work ahead, and honest that the bare minimum is far from enough. That’s all I am asking for. But sure, insult me and my grandpa and make this another partisan issue of red v blue. Lets see how many lives that approach saves.
…and as I just heard noted on MSNBC, even little victories contribute to momentum. The NRA has beaten us in large part because we buy the political narrative and let them. They are bullies that require standing up to. I didn’t intend you to take my comments quite so harshly, but I was baffled by when your argument seemed to be we have to focus on what works in the current political climate, you still bashed actions by the President which COULD be done even in the current political climate. Nobody here or in the WH is demonizing lawful gun owners, the vast majority of whom are open to many of these reforms. You said you would vote for federal legislation, but you also pretty clearly did not want to expend much effort on the basis of it can’t happen. I don’t know where the gun that killed your grandfather came from and nobody is promising a panacea, but if his killer had not gotten hold of a weapon or if the weapon were generally not available maybe you would have known him.
I explicitly was pitying the fact that this was all he could do. I didn’t say don’t expend energy on this, but also simultaneously expend energy in places where we can change laws or make policy without NRA opposition. It’s a two pronged approach rather than the trench warfare that is getting us very little in terms of tangible progress towards reducing gun deaths. And Bob painted gun owners with a broad brush comparing them to racists and homophobes and claimed the declining levels of gun ownership were proof our side was winning and the NRA is in its death throes. I remember another politician making a death throes promise, and I am reluctant to do it here when the enemy is powerful. That doesn’t mean I want to give up, it does mean I want to try any strategy that can work which may include unconventional tactics it’s not expecting in addition to the stuff we are already doing.
The part of the EO that has SSI report mental illness for background checks was exactly the kind of under the radar policy that can have a major impact, so I applaud the President for that and the other positives in this. I just think we need to be reality based as part of our vigilance and recognize we have to make a cultural change as well as a political one.
He simply pointed out that gun ownership, like racism and homophobia, was a trend on the decline.
And the NRA knows it. That is why its members are so freaked out. But they are a tiny minority.
Thanks Bob. Damon Linker had a sensible proposal as well, don’t ban assault or semi automatic weapon ownership but ban their private storage. You want to shoot an AR-15 at the range, eat your heart out. That’s about as harmful to the public as skeet shooting. But there is no rational reason for anyone to have that kind of firepower in the home. If my buddy in the National Guard has to leave his rifle at the base, the average citizen has to leave it on the range.
As he put it in the piece:
While he severely underestimates potential NRA opposition to it in his piece, I think it would be a good wedge between gun owner hobbyists and the real extremists. When visiting friends in Texas I was initially appalled that he had a concealed carry license, but I realized that he and his neighbor who also had one are completely opposed to the open carry movement. So there are gradations and variations within the gun culture that can and should be exploited to separate the sportsmen and women from the nutjobs.
Win or lose on the sustainability of his EO, Obama has placed the Right in the limelight – the majority of Americans want something, IMO, done about gun silents and the irrational proliferation of military weapons in the hand of civilians.
If the Right focuses on this issue as a campaign issue, they will further alienate the genral electorate.
Forget the politics, the President is talking some real sense here. From the Guardian piece:
I know, I know, we can never fully forget the politics, but he’s picking the right fight.
Mandating it for the military and police? It would certainly help bring the price down and create a market for it, and it might even help mitigate against some of the trigger happier police forces out there. Presumably this would run into the brick wall of Congress, but it is definitely something passable at the state level in Massachusetts that would have more of an impact than adopting illiberal no fly lists.
I do not believe that the government will ever mandate the buying of “Smart guns”. Smart guns will never be 100% reliable, and in the military you may often need to pick up and use a different gun in a battle. For the same reason the police are not limited on “high capacity” handguns.
as I watched President Obama yesterday and as a former NRA youth member — one glaring truth REALITY struck me.
Since the enactment of the Brady background check law 2 million folks — either criminals or mentally dangerous —- have been screened out and stopped from purchasing a gun legally. How many lives has this law already saved ?
Just because we can’t do everything to stop gun violence doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try and do something.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
… and Democrats ignore the nuances at their peril. For good or ill, the broad dynamics of gun control favor the Right at present. Going after James on this is blaming the messenger.
From ABC News (quoted at length for context):
The president’s executive actions on gun control target policy elements – background checks and mental health access – that have received broad public backing. Gun control more generally, though, has seen declining support recently.
In a Pew Research poll in July, 85 percent of Americans favored background checks on all private gun sales and gun show sales – a step further than the president is set to propose. We had a very similar result in an ABC News/Washington Post poll in April 2013, with 86 percent support for background checks on gun sales at shows or online.
On mental health, in a CBS/Times poll in December, 77 percent said they thought that better access to mental health treatment and screening would do a lot or some to reduce gun violence. Considerably fewer, 50 percent, though stricter gun laws in general would achieve that goal. Further, in October, we found that the public by a very wide margin, 63-23 percent, saw mass shootings in this country more as a reflection of problems identifying and treating people with mental health problems than of inadequate gun control laws.
Support for gun control in general has diminished lately in other measures. In an ABC/Post poll in October, the public divided almost exactly evenly between giving a higher priority to protecting gun ownership rights or enacting new gun control laws, 47-46 percent. That marked a shift from early 2013, when we found a 12-point preference for new gun control laws.
Additionally, just last month, for the first time, we found majority opposition to a ban on assault weapons, 53 to 45 percent.
Among the factors informing these views are doubts about the effectiveness of gun control laws, a belief that the Constitution protects individual gun ownership, a sense that a gun in the home makes it “a safer place to be” (up very sharply from 35 percent in 2000 to 63 percent last year) and concerns about terrorism. Again in our poll last month, while 42 saw stricter gun control as the better way to deal with terrorism, 47 percent, instead, said the better approach was to encourage more Americans to carry guns legally. (Further, as a point of background – 37 percent of Americans say someone in their household owns a working gun, per a poll we did in 2013. Other surveys report slightly higher figures; we have found that those include ornamental and non-firing weapons.)
Ultimately, despite the differences on policy, gun violence is widely seen as problematic. Eighty-two percent in our October poll called it a serious problem facing the country; 58 percent, “very” serious.
The Senator from CT who has probably worked closest with Sandy Hook victims had this to day:
That’s all I was trying to say, he said it far more eloquently than I did. The NRA is hardly a paper tiger, the ball is largely in their court, let’s keep pressing forward and fighting on every front-including the fronts neither our side nor our opposition are even paying attention to like the inner city.
He made reference to Chicago in his remarks announcing his actions and has in the past as well. It is his hometown after all. The nice thing about executive action is that there’s no opportunity to lobby while people like Congress get their act together. He can just come out and announce a fait accompli leaving the NRA with not much more to do than stomp their collective feet.
at the CNN gun forum, astronaut Captain Mark Kelly, husband of Congresswoman Gabby Gifford asked a question ?
He said there are 350 million guns in 65 million homes in America today. To those conspiracy theorists who believe the big, bad government is coming to take their guns : exactly how would the government force their way into 65 million American homes and forcibly confiscate 350 million weapons out of the ‘cold dead hands’ of resisting gun owners ?
Could someone—ANYONE— Ferris Bueller :)— please answer that question ?
Your honor, I rest my case.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
You solve a big problem by breaking it into smaller problems and solving those.
350 million guns.
Start with the low hanging fruit – an assault weapons ban, ban on standard capacity magazines (hi-cap is a misnomer invented by politicians, as they were designed to have 20-30 round magazines), ban features such as pistol grips, barrel shrouds, and folding stocks for some reason. People get on board because they looks scary and are used in very few crimes, but are crimes that generate lots of media buzz. Use the media to push this agenda.
Now we’re down to….what, 200 million guns? Next lets work on handguns You go to the people with data showing how many murders are made with handguns every day. You depend on people not knowing their constitutional rights to convince them they don’t need handguns for “hunting”, and that a shotgun is actually a better weapon for home defense (I agree with that point). You start on a local level (all politics is local, after all) and move the bans up the scope until finally reaching a federal level.
What are we at now? 30 million guns? That’s how you do it, Fred. Gradually, using a mixing in with the fact that guns are inherently dangerous with a big dose of fear, a dash of ignorance, and the knowledge that many people simply do what their told whether it’s the right thing or the wrong thing. Obama doesn’t want our guns, but he would like to lay a foundation for his successors to take them. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
The first step is to ban or significantly slow the manufacture of new guns.
America is the largest weapons exporter in the world. We produce well over TEN MILLION guns per year. Today’s guns do not age or deteriorate by sitting on a shelf.
I also note another incongruity in Mr. Kelly’s question — the absurd numbers involved. We’re talking about 350 million guns in 65 million homes. That’s an AVERAGE of more than FIVE weapons per household.
I understand that hunting is a popular sport. I have a hard time believing that more than half of US households are so committed to hunting that they keep five weapons for their hunting convenience.
I’d love to know the distribution of those 250M guns in those 65 M households. I strongly suspect that it’s more likely to be a scale-free distribution (like so many other similar things), so that a huge number of households have ONE gun, and handful of households have MANY guns.
I’d like a public registry, like the public sex offender registries, showing the location of any household with more than 2-3 weapons. I’d like a public registry showing the names of any residents with more than, say, six weapons legally owned by them.
I’m one of those Americans who DO want government to come and take the guns. I agree that there are large geographic areas where multiple weapons may be needed to protect a household. Those areas do NOT include the Boston metropolitan area (I’m speaking of the official MSA now). Even that need might be handled as easily by making government-owned (and therefore controlled) weapons available.
The premise that Americans have a right to own guns is, in my view, comparable to the premise that Americans have a right to own slaves.
Because whatever reason you have for wanting it, the only practical effect it would have would be a drastic increase in the number of burglaries and stolen guns.
…but I too am at a loss regarding how I benefit from knowing or being able to find out that my neighbor owns a gun.
my children would be instructed to never enter their home. That’s one way I would benefit.
Note: when my kids have playdates at other kids’ homes, I do ask the parents about gun ownership. If the parent owns a gun and isn’t an officer of the law, nope, my kid doesn’t play there. Easy enough. That will get harder as the kids get older — and yes, being able to check up on the houses of all their friends from the Internet would be a bit easier and more comprehensive.
I feel EXACTLY the same way. I did the same thing.
I guess it didn’t occur to me that legal gun ownership would be a deal breaker when it came to visiting, but OTOH I could see the grounds for concern. It’s too bad that secure storage of such weapons and keeping them unloaded when not in use is not an obvious best practice to some.
10,000 kids injured or killed in the US each year. Lots of different circumstances, and cautionary tale: the data is spotty and so specifics may be off by 25 percent or more.
9 out of 10 involve male patients, and I have a son. Black boys suffer at a higher rate than other races; my son is white. About 1/2 are intentional, but about 1/3 are accidental, and then there’s the suicides (my children are too young at this time for the third category). One in six who didn’t die suffered injuries that could lead to long term disabilities, such as brain and spinal injuries. For adults and children, Massachusetts is near the bottom of firearm deaths per capita, and we live in Massachusetts.
Modern society is filled with risks. Automobiles are probably the biggest danger to kids, and frankly guns are low on the list. But, it’s a risk that is entirely avoidable. So if you’re my father-in-law, brother-in-law, or a law enforcement officer, my kids can spend time at your house after we’ve had a conversation about your firearms. If you’re not in that list, my child will be happy to have your kids to my house to play.
When my children were young, I did what I could to manage the various societal influences they were exposed to. I made sure that I had met the parents before my children went to the homes of friends. My children did not play in homes where the parent were openly or flagrantly racist, sexist or homophobic. Like stomv, I asked about guns and applied similar criteria. My children’s friends were always welcome in our home. In the towns where we lived while they were little (Billerica and Dunstable), there were a few homes where these issue arose. It was not a big deal.
One of our family friends at that time was a Massachusetts parole officer who had a service weapon in connection with his job. He, too, had several young children. His policy was to break down his weapon when he was at home and reassemble it when he left for work. We were comfortable with that.
I get that there are people who want to own guns who either (a) can’t obtain them legally, or (b) would prefer not to pay retail. Still, the idea that someone is going to storm the armories, so to speak, doesn’t make a damn bit of sense to me. If someone owns five guns, I’d put pretty good odds on one of those guns being on his person, and him being eager to use it.
So, what evidence do you have that theft of guns would increase?
You want a gun free america. I genuinely don’t think you want the government to come and take the guns, though. I know you have kids, maybe grandkids. Today’s government taking guns away might seem like a pill you could swallow, but with that precedent set, what could the government of your grandkids do? What mandates could they set, or actions take knowing they have already superceded constitutional rights? We might not always have level headed or well-meaning people running the government.
Yes, I do indeed want a gun-free America.
The Constitution that we already have provides a mechanism that, in my view, is perfectly capable of accomplishing that. That mechanism is to amend the Constitution to essentially repeal the Second Amendment.
The process for amending the Constitution has worked reasonably well for more than two centuries. No constitutional rights are “superceded”. The government of my grand-children can do no more than today’s government can do. The path I propose makes no assumptions about the level headedness or well-meaning-ness of people running the government tomorrow. It relies instead on the safeguards that have already been in place.
I neither see, contemplate, nor propose any dark, draconian government frivolously ransacking homes. That image is, in fact, a fiction of the NRA. I similarly see no armed confrontation pitting half of American households (those with guns) against the other half (those without guns). That, too, is a fiction.
I see, instead, a grassroots movement emerging to finally END the insanity of the NRA. I see that movement accomplishing this goal through the lawful, measured, and fully-constitutional processes that have ended similar insanity in our past. There were, after all, loud voices proclaiming that society as we know it would collapse if consenting adults were allowed to have sex with and marry whomever they wanted of whatever gender they wanted. Consenting adults are now able to do what they want in their bedrooms and are allowed to marry. Society has not collapsed.
When the Second Amendment is essentially repealed, I am confident that a lawful and practical process will be put in place to collect and destroy existing weapons that are no longer legal for private citizens to hold. I am confident that those citizens will be compensated for the fair market value of such takings. I am confident that nearly all citizens will comply with this. I am confident that all this will come to pass peacefully and with all government actions following the rule of law and providing due process to every affected citizen.
There may be isolated criminals who resist this, and I am confident that government authorities will deal with those isolated criminals.
I want a gun-free America. We have the legal and societal foundation in place to accomplish that if we but use it.
I reject your fear-mongering about “pills” to “swallow”, “superceding constitutional rights”, and the rest. We have more than enough ACTUAL overreach of government right now. In my view, it is not helpful or constructive to invent more.
We can and should lawfully bring about a gun-free America, through the process of repealing the Second Amendment*.
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*If someone can define what “well-regulated militia” means in America today and tomorrow, I’m happy to preserve some wording that retains that right. In my view, the very concept is hopelessly obsolete and is of only historical interest
There IS still a second amendment to contend with regarding guns whereas the thirteenth nullified any right someone may have thought they had to own slaves. Someone, maybe who doesn’t care about getting elected, needs to propose repeal of the second amendment. Before JConway jumps down my throat about the art of the possible this does not mean we should not do any number of other things. I’m not even 100% outright repeal is the best solution myself. Simply proposing it, however, will have the effects of shifting the Overton window and force gun rights advocates out from behind the Bill of Rights to debate on the merits why this right is still a necessary and proper one to protect.
If I’m your neighbor, I don”t think I need to know whether you have guns.
But collectively we need to know where guns are, so they should be trackable and registered. We probably can’t register the ones out there now, but we could register all new guns. Then as the registered owner you have to report any sales (or any giveaways) like we do know with cars, and that sale is taxed.
The Supreme Court would have to rule on whether that’s Constitutional. (I know how I’d vote.) But once it became institutionalized over time, it wouldn’t seem intrusive.
I really don’t believe that more than half of the households in Somerville have five weapons in each home. That’s why I’m nearly certain that these 350 MILLION guns are not distributed evenly among these SIXTY FIVE million homes.
If there’s somebody in my neighborhood that has more than six guns, I most certainly DO want to know it — so that I know what houses to stay away from. I’m MUCH more concerned about a neighbor with half-dozen semi-automatic weapons than a neighbor convicted of a sex-crime ten years ago.
I agree that I don’t need to know the location of each neighbor who owns a single handgun or shotgun.
I thought I was pretty clear that about the registry containing only those who own SIX or more weapons.
You have a reasonable formula for reducing the numbers of guns over time, but I reject the premises of your final paragraph. Fred was pushing back on the conspiracy nightmare scenario that all of a sudden the feds are going to start banging down every door to conduct warrantless searches and seizures of any and all firearms.
They rated his statement that violent felons can buy guns on the Internet.
They noted that such transactions would be illegal, and he didn’t explicitly say that, but noted that he said they CAN buy guns, not MAY buy guns.
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