AP Photo | Text added by Dan

Note from Dan: The message below is from Eddie Seay and Mary Croft.

“Saturday at noon, Oranizing for Action of Roanoke and of Franklin County, along with Citizens Against Gun Violence and Moms Demand Action will have a short, impromptu rally. I know this is Earth Day and many of us have plans for a day of fun in the Grandin area, but this is important too!

Please take just a few minutes out of your day to stand with us in solidarity, and pass this on to your friends and colleagues. If we are going to get this done, we MUST BE LOUDER THAN THE OPPOSITION!

“On Saturday at Noon people will be gathering nationwide to say thanks to their Senators who voted yes for background checks.

There will be a short impromptu event at Elmwood Park at 12 Noon on Saturday focusing on praising the efforts of Senator Kaine and Senator Warner for their Gun Violence Prevention Efforts, yet letting Congress know that we are not going away! Read more »

Your daily Letter to the Editor — April 18, 2013

The recent shooting at the New River Valley Mall demonstrates one of the prime motivations for young male social misfits: a desperate quest for attention — in this case, amply rewarded by a three-page spread in The Roanoke Times.

The news media need to examine their role in the well-documented contagion factor in which each of these episodes contributes to the next vulnerable male picking up his gun to achieve lasting, dubious fame.

W.D. CLarkson
CHECK

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Note from Dan: Seriously? No news (about gun crimes) is good news? The letter above is rather stunning in its ridiculousness. I’m sure the gun industry and many gunners would love it if media coverage of gun tragedies was banned/censored. The public outrage over such tragic and horrible incidents causes the National Rifle Association and its ilk  a lot of trouble, and forces them to spend money so they can keep selling as many guns as possible to the American public.

The National Rifle Association is doing high-fives today. Using lies and midirection, they’ve defeated federal legislation that would tighten the requirements for background checks on people purchasing firearms. President Obama is angry. Watch:

Here’s a summary of his major points, from Think Progress:

1) “I’m going to speak plainly and honestly about what’s happened here because the American people are trying to figure out how can something have 90 percent support and yet not happen.”

2) “This legislation, in fact, outlawed any registry. Plain and simple, right there in the text. But that didn’t matter. And unfortunately, this pattern of spreading untruths about this legislation served a purpose, because those lies upset an intense minority of gun owners, and that in turn intimidated a lot of senators.” Read more »

E. St. Bernard, La. | Infrogmation | Wikimedia Commons

Your daily Letter to the Columnist — April 15, 2013

I just want to predict that all of your right-wing commenters will use today’s tragedy as an argument against gun control.

Because when people can bomb each other what good will gun control do?

A bogus question, but some form of it will appear in your comments.

Thanks for your work,

Dusty

Saturday Night Live’s take on the gun control measure before the Senate.

Junior Walker and the All Stars!

Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-South Carolina | AP Photo

There are plenty of mostly rational gunners (such as Dave Hicks and John Wilburn) out there. And then there are the ones who seem incredibly reality-challenged. In the latter category we have Rep. Jeff Duncan, a Republican congressman from South Carolina.

He has taken to warning of expanded background checks on gun buyers with the interesting argument that it could lead to Rwanda-style mass murders. This is the guy, mind you, who earlier compared White House executive orders on guns to a dictatorship.

From Duncan’s Facebook page:

“Ask yourselves about a National gun registry database and how that might be used and why it is so wanted by progressives.

Read about the Rwandan genocide, the Hutu and Tutsi tribes. Read that all Tutsi tribe members were required to register their address with the Hutu government and that this database was used to locate Tutsi for slaughter at the hands of the Hutu. (Since the government had the names and addresses of nearly all Tutsis living in Rwanda (remember, each Rwandan had an identity card that labeled them Tutsi, Hutu, or Twa) the killers could go door to door, slaughtering the Tutsis.

Not with firearms, mind you, but with machetes.

I use this example to warn that national databases can be used with evil consequences.”

Keep in mind there are a lot of databases out there. They list motor vehicles, real estate, supermarkets savings cards, taxpayers, etc. Duncan must be living in state of absolute paranoid terror.

Should someone like that have a gun?

Wikimedia Commons | Mocked up by Dan

The New York Times’ Joe Nocera is writing a blog called The Gun Report, and here’s a smattering from the past weekend:

Joshua Petersen, 21, shot his son Ryker, 5 months, in the head with a rifle, killing him, in American Fork, Utah. A 46-year-old man was charged Friday with aggravated assault after shooting his friend in the stomach in Holladay, Utah. A man shot and killed his brother in Millbrook, Ala., Friday night. Reginald Hill, 20, was found shot in Indianapolis, Ind., Thursday night, and in a separate incident, Larry Cole, 21, suffered multiple gunshot wounds. 26-year-old Richard Eichler was found shot inside a New Haven, Conn., deli, Friday night and died soon after. A 17-year-old boy was shot several times and wounded after an altercation in Columbus, Ohio, Friday afternoon. A woman was shot outside of a home in rural Meade County, Ky., by her former husband Friday evening. A 17-year-old was shot in the head and killed Friday night when gunfire erupted outside a party in Victorville, Calif.

Now that’s merely the first of 5 paragraphs of carnage from Friday. It continues on with Saturday and Sunday. One heartbreaking tragedy and outrage after another.

Meanwhile, those boobs at the NRA say the priority should be more gun in schools, but NOT strengthened background checks. The weirdness never ends.

Grafic by Dan

Let’s kick this off with a Catholic priest, now nicknamed “Monsignor Meth” who’s agreed to plead guilty to selling $300,000 worth of the drug in Waterbury, Conn. last year.

Heading south to suburban Pittsburgh, a handgun saved a man from a mugging (by 10-point buck) in a Walmart parking lot.  What did the authorities think about the gunner’s self-defense acumen? Frankly, my deer, they didn’t give a damn. He bagged his prey but got charged — where’s Wayne LaPierre when you need him?

Moving below the Mason-Dixon Line, our next stop is the State Capitol in Nashville, Tenn. The Volunteer State is getting as weird as Florida, eh? Recall, this is the place where the legislature’s No. 1 gun-in-bars advocate was arrested and charged with DUI while packing. This week, a couple of other lawmakers were freaking out about a new, floor-level sink outside the Capitol men’s room. In a self-humiliating manner, they publicly fretted that it was for Muslims to wash their feet prior to prayer. Nope — it was a common mop sink. Read more »

Wikimedia Commons

On Friday, a candidate for to the federal bench nominated by President Barack Obama withdrew from consideration. Her name is Elissa Cadish and she’s a state judge in Nevada.

The nomination wasn’t going anywhere. Though recommended by Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, it was being blocked by Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nevada. Why?

From the Associated Press:

Heller took issue with Cadish’s response on a 2008 election season questionnaire about the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Cadish wrote that she did not believe it was a constitutional right.

Proababy the AP overgeneralized what she wrote on that questionnaire. What Cadish most likely wrote was that she did not believe there was an individual right to keep and bears arms under the Second Amendment.

Until 2008, with its 5-4 ruling in Heller, the U.S.. Supreme Court had pretty much held the same thing for 100 or so years. So such a statement would not at all have conflicted with mainstream legal thought. Previous to Heller, the court had considered that the right to keep and bear arms existed within the context of a “well-regulated militia,” another well-known phrase in the Second Amendment.

In spite of that, the five justices in the Heller majority who evidently believed there is an individual right to guns were still confirmed. Whatever beliefs they had expressed on the Second Amendment prior to their ascension to the Supreme Court were not viewed as any kind of disqualification.

Yet now, with a judge who had expressed the opposite opinion, it seems more or less taken for granted that it’s a disqualifying factor. Which means now we’ve got a new litmus test, and a double standard to boot.