Category: Anti Civil Rights ideas & “Friends”
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senators have moved to the brink of an agreement on a bipartisan gun violence bill, Democrats’ lead negotiator said Tuesday, potentially teeing up votes this week on an incremental but notable package that would stand as Congress’s response to mass shootings in Texas and New York that shook the nation.
Nine days after Senate bargainers agreed to a framework proposal — and 29 years after Congress last enacted a major measure curbing firearms — Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told reporters that a final agreement on the proposal’s details was at hand.
The legislation lawmakers have been working toward would toughen background checks for the youngest firearms buyers, require more sellers to conduct background checks and beef up penalties on gun traffickers. It also would disburse money to states and communities aimed at improving school safety and mental health initiatives.
“I think we’ve reached agreement,” Murphy said. “And just we’re dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s right now. I think we’re in good shape.”
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, the chief Republican bargainer, spoke on the Senate floor moments later and said he, Murphy and the other two top Senate bargainers had “reached agreement.”
The senators did not initially say how they’d resolved the two major stumbling blocks that had delayed agreement on the plan’s legislative language.
One was how to make abusive romantic partners subject to the existing ban that violent spouses face to obtaining guns. The other was providing federal aid to states that have “red flag” laws that make it easier to temporarily take firearms away from people deemed dangerous or to states that have violence intervention programs.
If enacted, the election-year measure would spotlight a modest but telling shift in the politics of an issue that has defied compromise since Bill Clinton was president.
After 10 Black shoppers were killed last month in Buffalo, New York, and 19 children and two teachers died days later in Uvalde, Texas, Democrats and some Republicans decided that this time, measured steps were preferable to Congress’ usual reaction to such horrors — gridlock.
What’s uncertain is whether the Senate agreement and its passage would mark the beginning of slow but gradual congressional action to curb gun violence, or the high water mark on the issue. Until Buffalo and Uvalde, a numbing parade of mass slayings — at sites including elementary and high schools, houses of worship, military facilities, bars and the Las Vegas Strip — have yielded only gridlock in Washington.
Republicans refused to include proposals in Tuesday’s compromise that were sought by President Joe Biden and Democrats to ban assault weapons or raise the minimum age for buying them, prohibit high-capacity magazines or require background checks for virtually all gun sales.
It seemed likely a majority of Republicans — especially in the House — would oppose the legislation. Underscoring the backlash GOP lawmakers supporting the pact would face from the most conservative voters, delegates booed Cornyn at his state’s Republican convention Saturday as he described the measure.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has said his goal was for his chamber to debate and vote on the legislation this week. Momentum in Congress for gun legislation has a history of waning quickly after mass shootings. Lawmakers are scheduled to begin a two-week July 4th recess at the end of this week.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he supported the outline bargainers announced last weekend. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., also said she backed the effort and seems sure to set up votes on it as quickly as she can.
California would be the first state to require gun owners to buy liability insurance to cover the negligent or accidental use of their firearms, if lawmakers approve a measure announced Thursday.
“Guns kill more people than cars. Yet gun owners are not required to carry liability insurance like car owners must,” Democratic state Sen. Nancy Skinner said in a statement.
She said the costs of gun violence shouldn’t be borne by taxpayers, survivors, families, employers and communities: “It’s time for gun owners to shoulder their fair share.”
The state of New York is considering a similar requirement in the wake of numerous recent mass shootings and a rise in gun violence.
In January, the Silicon Valley city of San Jose approved what’s believed to be the first such insurance requirement in the United States.
No insurance company will cover the misuse of a firearm, predicted Sam Paredes, executive director of Gun Owners of California.
He said such requirements are an illegal infringement on gun owners’ constitutional rights.
“We don’t believe you can put precursors on the exercising of a constitutional right,” Paredes said. “By requiring somebody to get insurance in order to exercise their right to keep and bear arms, that ceases to make it a right.”
Skinner is amending an existing bill on another topic to allow gun owners to be held civilly liable if their firearms are used to cause property damage, injury or death.
The bill would also require gun owners to have insurance that covers loses or damages from the negligent or accidental use of their firearm. And they would have to keep proof of insurance with their firearm and show it to police if they are stopped for some reason.
Paredes had similar objections to a second bill that also would affect gun owners’ costs, this one by imposing an excise tax on firearms and ammunition.
The bill would impose an excise tax equal to 10% of the sales price of a handgun and 11% of the sales price of a long gun, ammunition or parts to build firearms.
Democratic Assemblyman Marc Levine estimated his bill would bring in more than $118 million annually that would go toward gun violence prevention programs.
Because it would impose a tax, Levine’s bill would require approval by two-thirds majorities in the Legislature. His similar measure last year fell four votes short of the 54 it needed in the 80-member Assembly.
The bills are among numerous firearms measures being considered by California lawmakers this year, including one that would make it easier to sue gun-makers and another that would allow private citizens to sue those who traffic in illegal weapons.
IMAGE SOURCE,REUTERSThe lead Republican negotiator for what would be the US Senate’s first gun control bill in a generation has walked out of talks with Democrats.
Texas Senator John Cornyn has played a key role in drafting the framework of a proposed firearms bill following mass shootings in Texas and New York.
Leaving Washington, he said: “I’m through talking.”
The plans include tougher checks for buyers under the age of 21 and cracking down on illegal gun purchases.
The proposals have shown some rare cross-party cooperation on the issue of gun control, but still fall far short of what many Democrats and activists have been calling for.
Recent attempts to tighten gun laws in the US – which has the highest rate of firearms deaths among the world’s wealthy nations – have failed to get the required support in Congress.
The flurry of action comes after 19 young children and two adults were killed at a school in Uvalde, Texas, less than two weeks after a racially motivated shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, left 10 dead.
But Mr Cornyn’s walk-out has placed a question mark over the legislation’s future. Axios, a political outlet, reported earlier on Thursday that conservative colleagues of the Texas senator are frustrated at his handling of the talks and want time to consider the text of any proposal before it is introduced to the chamber floor.
The legislative window to pass a new law is narrowing as November’s mid-term elections loom, but the lead Democratic negotiator said he was still hopeful the bill could go to a vote next week.
A bipartisan group of senators has been working to draft the text of a bill for lawmakers to vote on before they leave for a two-week 4 July recess.
But they have become bogged down in recent days, as Democrats and Republicans disagree on provisions that would strip certain Americans of their guns.
Mr Cornyn told reporters on Thursday that now is the time for action: “I don’t know what they have in mind, but I’m through talking.”
Earlier in the day, he warned that time was running out to reach an agreement.
“We’re about run out of our rope here, and we got to make some final decisions today if we’re going to be able to get this on the floor next week,” he told radio host Hugh Hewitt.
Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy and North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis told reporters later on Thursday that the group was still inching towards an agreement.
“To land a deal like this is difficult. It comes with a lot of emotions,” said Mr Murphy, who is leading the Democratic negotiations.
“It comes with political risk to both sides. But we’re close enough that we should be able to get there.”
Senators say disagreements remain over incentives for states to enact so-called red flag laws, which allow police to seize guns from people deemed dangerous. Talks are also ongoing to close the “boyfriend loophole”, which permits abusive partners to buy guns.
If both the Senate and House of Representatives can agree on a bill, it would go to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law.
President Biden has said the plans are a step in the right direction but fall far short of what he called for.
Despite the high rate of firearms deaths, many people in the US cherish their gun rights, which are protected by the Constitution’s Second Amendment to “keep and bear arms”.
These are the first gun safety laws in decades to receive this level of bipartisan support, with previous Democratic attempts at strengthening controls frustrated by Republicans.
Similar efforts in the wake of a previous school shooting at Sandy Hook in Connecticut nearly a decade ago – in which 20 children and six adults were killed – failed to get the required number of votes in Congress.
The Senate, or upper chamber of Congress, is currently split – with 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans – and legislation must have 60 votes to overcome a blocking manoeuvre known as the filibuster.
Ten of the 20 senators who proposed the measures are Republicans, meaning the new legislation could reach that threshold.
Last night, news broke that the Biden Administration is taking behind-the-scenes steps to further strangle the already constricted market for ammunition in the United States. The move could result in a reduction of the commercial production of 5.56 caliber ammunition by over thirty percent.
The move, if completed, would dramatically reduce availability of ammunition for America’s most popular rifle (and, not coincidentally, the one most targeted by gun prohibitionists).
Supplies would undoubtedly plummet and prices would undoubtedly skyrocket, putting the availability of ammunition for self-defense, training, and competition out of reach to many Americans.
News of the move was broken by Larry Keane, the general counsel and senior vice president at the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the leading trade association for America’s firearms and ammunition industries. Keane on Wednesday night published a tweet, which stated: “The U.S. Military is actively considering shutting down the sale [of] M855/SS109 ammo from Lake City to the commercial market.”
The cartridges mentioned in Keane’s post are very popular forms of 5.56 caliber ammunition, the most common caliber for the AR-15.
Close followers of Second Amendment issues will remember that these same rounds were targeted by the Obama/Biden administration under the guise of relabeling them “armor piercing ammunition,” which is banned from commercial sale by federal law. The resulting (and righteous) furor from the Second Amendment community was so intense that it culminated in Obama’s ATF director, B. Todd Jones, quitting his job. Jones had been the first and only confirmed ATF director since Senate approval became required for that post.
Lake City is a sprawling ammunition plant in Independence, Missouri, originally established by Remington in 1941 to manufacture and test Ammunition for the U.S. Army. It is currently owned by the government and operated by private contractors and produces well over a billion rounds of ammunition per year.
Ammunition in excess of the government’s requirements has long been made available to the private commercial market. Lake City’s output, according to some estimates, accounts for one-third of the 5.56 caliber ammunition available to U.S. consumers.
Of course, gun prohibition advocates have a long-standing desire to ban the AR-15 and other types of semiautomatic long guns outright. Joe Biden in particular loves to brag of authoring the so-called “assault weapons” ban that Bill Clinton signed into law in 1994. Congress, however, allowed the ban to expire 10 years later, after a Department of Justice sponsored study was unable to substantiate any significant crime reduction benefit from it.
Needless to say, this attack on America’s ammunition supply is just the most recent in a long line of anti-freedom attacks by the Biden Administration.
NRA will be working to fight this effort to crush America’s ammunition supply, just as we did with the last attack on M855 ammunition, and will provide updates as more information becomes available.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — On Wednesday, families of victims and survivors of the mass shootings in Uvalde and in Buffalo, New York, testified on Capitol Hill.
“I came because I could’ve lost my baby girl,” a Uvalde father told lawmakers.
Many Americans now begging for stricter gun control, universal background checks, banning assault weapons, and red flag laws, which allow certain people to petition a court to have firearms taken away from someone they consider to be a threat.
State representative Vincent Dixie (D-Nashville) said he thinks red flag laws would help keep Tennesseans safer. “Red flag laws will keep people who do not need to have guns from having them. That’s one thing that’s needed. But we also have to do something about the illegal guns on the streets as well.”
Dixie added he’d like to see the permitless carry law repealed and tighter gun regulations overall.
“We definitely need to register each gun. We need to know who has guns and they need to know how to use them,” Dixie said.
On the other side of the aisle, many Republican lawmakers disagree. Some even calling red flag laws unconstitutional. In a statement sent to News 2, Representative Jeremy Faison (R-Cosby) questioned the effectiveness of red flag laws:
“From my perspective, red flag laws appear unconstitutional or ineffective. Forcibly taking someone’s gun from their house without due process creates a hostile environment for law enforcement and potentially criminalizes law abiding citizens. I am interested in how we can better equip our local schools and how we can do better with mental illness.”
On Monday, Governor Bill Lee signed an executive order aimed at strengthening school safety in Tennessee, but it didn’t mention anything about guns. He went on to tell reporters that he currently has no plans to talk about gun reform.
“We’re not looking at gun restriction laws in my administration right now,” Lee said.
Dixie said the governor needs to take a stronger stance. “I think this executive order was extremely weak and I think it puts more work on people that are already strained and stressed in their daily jobs.”
Right now, there are 19 states with red flag laws on their books, including California, Colorado, and Florida.
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Chile’s far-left President Gabriel Boric said on Monday that he hoped to “imitate” a policy implemented by leftist Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that would significantly limit gun ownership in the country.
Boric made the remarks while visiting Canada. Both leaders are expected to attend this week’s Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, California.
“We have discussed details about the firearms restriction policy that has been promoted in Canada for quite some time, which has had very good results and which, in Chile, we also want to precisely imitate as well, because good ideas are great to replicate in our countries,” Boric said in a joint statement with Justin Trudeau at the end of the diplomatic encounter.
In the same statement, Boric called for international firearm control legislation.
“We have to promote international legislation. Hopefully an awareness will be generated, beyond our borders, that the possession of firearms is bad for societies,” Boric asserted. “That is why we do it from Chile to Canada, hopefully with all the countries that are close, hopefully it will be of some use.”
The meeting between Boric and Trudeau took place a week after Trudeau announced a complete freeze on handgun sales in Canada. Boric’s gun control statements in Canada are a continuation of his government’s ongoing push towards firearm control in Chile.
On May 19, Chile’s Ministry of Interior and Public Security presented the “Fewer Guns, More Safety” program. Through it, the Chilean government will seek to establish a legal framework to reduce both legal and illegal access to firearms in Chile.
Before traveling to Canada, Boric, in his first annual speech as president on June 2, called for a total ban on gun ownership in Chile.
“Armed violence will not be tolerated in our country. And that is why our ‘Fewer Guns, More Security’ Program proposes the radical limitation of its legal access,” Boric said in his annual address.
Additionally, he asked the Chilean congress for “all support to pass a law that allows us to move towards the total prohibition of possession of weapons and at the same time strengthen the institutional framework.”
“A Chile without firearms is a safer Chile,” Boric added. According to the Investigations Police of Chile, there were a total of 50 reported firearm related deaths in January 2022, up from 35 in January 2021.
Currently, Chilean law allows any resident over the age of 18 to legally own up to two firearms, provided they go through an extensive procedure which includes registering with the national firearm authority, obtaining psychiatric approval, and passing an official exam on the proper use and maintenance of firearms. Obtaining a carry permit for said firearms is a completely separate process and certain firearm types, such as semi automatic, are outright forbidden by law.
Chile and its citizens have been victims of continuous leftist violence and rioting since 2019, when then-President Sebastián Piñera faced condemnation because the capital, Santiago, proposed a fare hike for public transportation. The alleged fare hike protests rapidly morphed into acts of terrorism with no overt relation to the Santiago subway: multiple churches burned down, supermarkets looted, and residential communities attacked.
Violent attacks continued through last year’s presidential election, when leftists supporting the winner, Boric, assaulted family-friendly campaign events for rival José Antonio Kast. Boric did little to stop the attacks.
As a result of the ongoing wave of violence unleashed by leftist protesters, Eduardo Vergara, Chile’s undersecretary for crime prevention, lamented on a radio interview held on April 18 that Chile is experiencing “its worst security moment since its return to democracy.”
During a May Day celebratory march in the Meiggs barrio (neighborhood), Chilean journalist Francisca Sandoval was shot in the face. Saldoval died after being in ICU under critical condition for 11 agonizing days. Protesters disturbed a silent vigil honoring her memory.
On May 14, a group of armed delinquents broke into the house of Chilean Defense Minister Maya Fernández Allende. While she was not at home at the time of the incident, the perpetrators, who made it out with stolen electronic devices and a vehicle, punched her son and handcuffed her husband. Fernández Allende is the granddaughter of Salvador Allende, Chile’s socialist president overthrown by Augusto Pinochet in 1973.
That same night, one of the drivers of the presidential escort was assaulted by three unidentified men. The bodyguard was shot in his arm. Perpetrators threw the victim on the street and took away the stolen government vehicle.
Shortly before these attacks, Boric pleaded with the same leftist groups he once supported to stop “normalizing violence.”
The continued violence has caused huge fluctuations in President Boric’s approval rating. Boric’s approval rating plummeted from 50 percent down to 36 percent a mere month after he began his presidency — bumping back to 44 percent after his first annual address.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
Like it or not — and many on the leftward side of the political spectrum don’t — firearms and civilian gun ownership have been part of our history and culture since before the nation’s founding and have become as American as mom and apple pie. May it ever remain so for lawful citizens. Not that my assertion based on historical reality would be accepted by many undaunted public health researchers and others dedicated to civilian disarmament.
The foes of civilian firearm ownership have a long and sordid record of revising history to fit their anti-gun narratives.
One researcher, an Emory University professor and Bancroft Prize winner, Michael A. Bellesiles, faked historical data to “prove” in his now discredited book Arming America: The Origins of a Natural Gun Culture that widespread gun ownership in early America was really a fiction.
Bellesiles contended that guns were, in fact, uncommon in the civilian population during the colonial and early periods of the Republic. Consequently, most Americans weren’t proficient with guns.
Bellesiles argued, citing non-existent probate court records, that widespread firearm use by the civilian population occurred only after the Civil War and that was only because the mass production of firearms had lowered to cost in owning one.
Only one of Bellesiles’ contentions was correct; that mass production decreased the cost of firearms while increasing their quality and accuracy. The rest of his argument was fabricated mendacity. His conclusions were wishful thinking, tailor-made for the liberal intelligentsia who opposed civilian gun ownership and received his book with great fanfare, and enthusiastically supported the great revelation he produced.
Yet Bellesiles’ conclusions, which contradicted well-known facts of American history, were preposterous for anyone with even a modicum of historical knowledge. How could early Americans survive the wilderness without possessing firearms and not be proficient in their use? How could colonists on the frontier, subject to Indian raids, protect their families? How could the colonial militia be ready at a moment’s notice not only to repel Indian raids but also to join with the British army in fighting in the French and Indian War (1756-1763), as Colonel George Washington and his militia did?
Most astounding of all, how could the celebrated event in American history we now refer to as Patriot’s Day (April 19, 1775) have taken place without the availability and familiarity with firearms? How could the minutemen, summoned by Paul Revere in his famous ride, assemble so quickly and with their muskets to fire “the shot heard around the world”? Why would American patriots prevent the British army’s attempt to disarm them and seize the arm depots at Concord, while passing by Lexington in the colony of Massachusetts? How could they have harassed the Redcoats all the way back to Boston if they were unarmed?
Bellesiles’ preposterous attempt at historical revisionism was truly audacious. Only an anti-gun “scholar” with a supreme capacity for arrogance and hubris would have even attempted this kind of fraud, but such dishonesty was only an illogical extension of the politicized “research“ that we have been exposing all along.
So, it didn’t take long for scholars to prove that Bellesiles’ “reseach” was fraudulent and his conclusions fabricated. His book a bag of lies conceived to reach the preordained conclusions that the American gun culture was actually a relatively new phenomenon, the result of a tragic civil war and an overabundance of cheap mass-produced weapons.
Bellesiles’ mendacity cost him his reputation, his coveted Bancroft Prize, and his position at Emory University, which is sadly also the alma mater for my post-doctoral neurosurgical training.
Foes of firearm ownership and the right to keep and bear arms lie often when the topic is guns. What they don’t know, they make up, whether in the media, popular culture, or academia. That’s how far the common denominator has fallen — in academics, entertainment, and in politics.
Written by Dr. Miguel Faria
Miguel A. Faria, Jr, MD is a retired professor of Neurosurgery and Medical History at Mercer University School of Medicine. He founded Hacienda Publishing and is Associate Editor in Chief in Neuropsychiatry and World Affairs of Surgical Neurology International. He served on the CDC’s Injury Research Grant Review Committee. This article is excerpted, updated, and edited from his book, America, Guns, and Freedom: A Journey Into Politics and the Public Health & Gun Control Movements (2019).
This article was also published on TheTruthAboutGuns.com on February 20, 2022 with the title of “The Anti-Gun Left Never Lets History Get in the Way of Its Narrative.“
This article may be cited as: Faria MA. Revising American History for the Sake of “Gun Control.” HaciendaPublishing.com, February 20, 2022. Available from: https://haciendapublishing.com/revising-american-history-for-the-sake-of-gun-control-by-miguel-a-faria-md/.