Weekend open thread
The most reliable way of carrying out a proof, obviously, is to follow pure logic, a way that, disregarding the particular characteristics of objects, depends solely on those laws upon which all knowledge rests. Accordingly, we divide all truths that require justification into two kinds, those for which the proof can be carried out purely by means of logic and those for which it must be supported by facts of experience.
What will you try to prove this weekend?
June 30, 2012 - 6:00 AM
“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” Interesting that the GOP has not mentioned this phrase in the Fast and Furious investigation.
Yeah you’re right Richard. I don’t know why Holder didn’t say that to Issa during congressional testimony regarding F/F and the death of Brian Terry.
The phrase you mention of course has to do with gun(control) laws in states and municipalities and whether citizens have the right to arm/defend themselves and to what extent. I don’t think it pertains to the federal government allowing guns to be obtained by felons/drug cartels from a neighboring country.
And speaking of phrases never mentioned…”Operation fast and furious, begun in the fall of 2009, was authorized by the following individual(s)…” That would sure clear up a few things for an administration priding itself on transparency.
Richard, what I find interesting is news this morning about new laws going into effect in Virginia tomorrow.
Now you have to have a pre-abortion ultrasound but you can buy more than one hand gun a month.
It’s the stupidest thing. Lady, you there….we’re going to do everything we can to stop you from killing your fetus. Dude, you there…..have another hand gun in case you need to kill someone.
It boggles the mind.
I see the Imperial President has struck again.
Oh, the horror!
http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/310886
…Any relief from the insanity is welcome,” Roanoke Superintendent Rita Bishop said.
More than 60 percent of Virginia’s public schools during the 2010-11 academic year failed to meet federal AYP benchmarks, including 17 schools in Roanoke, 11 in Montgomery County and five in Roanoke County.
Arkansas, Missouri, South Dakota, Utah and Virginia are the latest of the 24 states to be approved for No Child Left Behind waivers; the applications of 12 more states and the District of Columbia are under review, according to federal education officials….
A report from NPR about what’s driving up college costs. Note the audio version of this is longer than the printed summary.
http://www.npr.org/2012/06/26/155766786/whats-driving-college-costs-higher
#1 Amazing isn’t it?
RJB and gdad, about #1 you are correct. The adage is true here too. Criminals aided by an incompetent government sting, authorized by the Obama justice department, killed a federal agent and god knows how many more people in Mexico. The guns were the tools used. To say otherwise is like saying carpenters don’t build houses, hammers do.
To #5 (Scott M.): The NPR piece on college spending/tuition was an interesting listen. I especially interested to learn how state support has changed over the years: It’s basically remained steady on an inflation-adjusted, per-student basis. However, it typically dips during recessions (when state revenues decrease). Tuition rates rise to compensate, but then don’t go back down when the state funding picks back up.
I wish Carey had spent more time discussing prospective solutions to the problem of ever-rising tuition rates, though. Somehow I find “more online courses” and “cracking down on crappy for-profits” to be insufficient to address the huge debt burdens that America’s young are accruing these days.
DOJ refuses to prosecute contempt charges against itself. No surprise, here or historically.
The civil suit will move forward and eventually a judge will review the docs & make a decision. Holder & Obama will fold before then, they’re out of cards.
#1 Seriously Richard, has anyone ever advocated selling firearms to known, violent criminals?
Guns don’t kill people, stupid politicians, sometimes with anti-gun agendas, do (and in F&F, did).
BUD, Chuck, and Jim Lucas – If guns don’t kill people, and criminals will get guns from somewhere whenever they want them, then your arguments for either gun control or against fast and furious fall apart. You and the House are arguing both sides.
From my readings, Congress has essentially shut down all work along the boarder with their investigation and now the drug lords are running wide open.
#12 Congess doesn’t do the work. DOJ & ICE do, along with the cooperation of state & local law enforcement. That is, until Obama & company decides to punish a state that goes off the reservation.
As to drug lords “running wide open”, not much new here, and with weapons provided by Holder & company. As to any increase in such due to Congress shutting “down all work”, please, as you have your readings, please share.
#11 Criminals don’t get guns from somewhere, “whenever they want them”. In this case they did get them from Holder & Obama’s DOJ & BATFE.
The very people striving to deny legal & law abiding citizens such. Other than that, I honestly don’t understand what you are trying to say.
Like the typical right wing haters, some are simply proving that the truth and actual facts matter less than you obsession with blaming Obama. No surprise, here or historically.
“A Fortune investigation reveals that the ATF never intentionally allowed guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. How the world came to believe just the opposite is a tale of rivalry, murder, and political bloodlust.”
http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2012/06/27/fast-and-furious-truth/
“The ATF is hobbled in its effort to stop this flow. No federal statute outlaws firearms trafficking, so agents must build cases using a patchwork of often toothless laws. For six years, due to Beltway politics, the bureau has gone without permanent leadership, neutered in its fight for funding and authority. The National Rifle Association has so successfully opposed a comprehensive electronic database of gun sales that the ATF’s congressional appropriation explicitly prohibits establishing one.“
Now, you tell me how they could “seize guns” when no matter what they suspected, they were met with “…[P]urchasing multiple long guns in Arizona is lawful,” Patrick Cunningham, the U.S. Attorney’s then–criminal chief in Arizona would later write. “Transferring them to another is lawful and even sale or barter of the guns to another is lawful unless the United States can prove by clear and convincing evidence that the firearm is intended to be used to commit a crime.”
The long and powerful arm of the NRA is more to blame than Obama and Holder!
#15 “a comprehensive electronic database of gun sales” is nothing but newspeak for gun registration. Even then, it would have nothing to do with point of sale, and therefore is totally irrelevant to what happened in F&F. Such registry, and by any other name, was expressly forbidden by Congess when approving NICS.
That is; “the truth and actual facts”.
#16 Forget the fact that FFL operators contacted BATFE to report possible straw sales and were told to proceed. Even forget the fact that BATFE later tried to protect their backsides by charging same said dealers. And forget the fact that Obama/Holder have indeed used the (their) F&F fiasco to illegally target specific states to limit long gun sales…..
….if you don’t know, or don’t care to distinguish between, legal firearms sales, and illegal sales (all sales are bad?), then I guess you have a point.
Dear Dr. Schultz…prioritizing enforcement is one thing. “Legislating” an entire set of specific criteria for blanket amnesty, is quite another.
The fact that Obama “doublespoke” it, not withstanding. Fox got it right.
Some gun owners must also have a lot of stock in companies that make tinfoil.
RJB, I’m not against stings or police operations. I’m just against it when they are done incompetently and then covered up for political purposes. I am against straw purchases and gun running. If you can come up with an idea beyond the typical antigunner’s knee-jerk panic-stricken response of outlawing everything and deny law-abiding citizen’s their 2nd amendment rights via prior restraint, then I’d like to hear it. Otherwise it’s just more election year fear-mongering from the left about big bad guns and how criminals would just magically disappear if guns weren’t so easy to get.
#20 GDAD….aside from being such a clever fellow (where do you come up with that wit?!)….your posts are always full of pertinent info and you always make a solid point. Thanks!
Jim Lucas, why don’t you point me to the statute that says a Federally Licensed Gun Dealer who supposedly “contacted BATFE to report possible straw sales” should have sold a gun under that “assumption”? Regardless of the alleged BATFE response it was wrong, was it not? Do you have a source for that particular charge BTW? Was it the disgruntled dip wad from Roanoke who brought this whole sordid, facts challenged mess into the media circus perhaps? If the BATFE agents could not get prosecutors to allow them to seize guns from supposed straw purchasers, how could they get permission to stop a sale? Do you have real evidence any dealer was “told to proceed”?
You assume that BATFE arrests were to “protect their backsides” instead of stopping known straw purchaser sales why? Because only law enforcement and not gun dealers are the bad guys?
If guns from these states are flooding Mexico and it is readily apparent they are, why on earth would the same people screaming for Holder’s head and blaming Obama, for that situation, NOT want to “target specific states to limit long gun sales”? Is the math really that hard for you?
This is a perfect example of the NRA and the gun culture warriors wanting to have it both ways, and you cannot. You cannot fight gun interdiction efforts and scream second amendment and then scream “gun walking” when they get away with it. This is classic hypocrisy.
“With 853 gun dealers in Phoenix alone, the seven-agent Fast and Furious team never stood a chance. Straw purchases are hard to prove and carry minimal penalties so prosecutors are not motivated to pursue these kinds of cases.”
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/06/30/walking-back-on-gun-walking/
Maybe you gun culture warriors do not find 853 gun dealers in a city of 1.5 million but it looks like a guntopia to me!
Chuck, how does law enforcement prove a “straw purchase”?
“P]urchasing multiple long guns in Arizona is lawful,” Patrick Cunningham, the U.S. Attorney’s then–criminal chief in Arizona would later write. “Transferring them to another is lawful and even sale or barter of the guns to another is lawful unless the United States can prove by clear and convincing evidence that the firearm is intended to be used to commit a crime.”
You tell me how the hell they ever had any chance of stopping the guns?
#16 I do agree as to the “long and powerful arm of the NRA….”. Protecting civil rights for 140+ years.
Just saw some narrow misses on my way home. Apparently, too many people don’t know that when the traffic signal is not working, the intersection becomes a four-way stop. Just ’cause the light isn’t working, doesn’t mean you can blast right through. Which many did…narrowly missing cross traffic.
Really bad people have been hiding behind civil rights from the time they were written. Nothing new there.
The temerity of the NRA to fight so hard against BATFE on gun “rights”, even for straw purchasers and then to scream about guns getting to drug gangs is the kind of hypocrisy they have done for decades. Denigrate law enforcement and influence the courts then blame them when what you want works. They are literally part of the problem. They have prosecutors to cowed to even attempt interdiction, or seizing of weapons. What a mess, and defending it as civil rights is even more distressing. That just admits that there is no solution and the BATFE should stop trying.
Chuck, must have touched a nerve. But you assume I am anti gun.
Jim Lucas – Wish I had the cite, it was an interview onn NBC or CNN or possibly 60 minutes with the boarder patrol guys. They were upset because all the workers are so afraid of the Congressional investigation, no one will do anything.
Looks like you guys that are so concerned with guns getting into the wrong hands would want some controls on weapons.
#23 “Jim Lucas, why don’t you point me to the statute that says a Federally Licensed Gun Dealer who supposedly “contacted BATFE to report possible straw sales” should have sold a gun under that “assumption”?
Patently silly. FFL dealers whether you care to realize/admit or not, are under great BATFE scrutiny. They were told to proceed, that is the entire essensce of F&F, if the BATFE were not monitoring known cartel purchases, how pray tell, were they going to attempt to trace the sales? That was the very purpose as they claim. They allowed the illegal sales. Nobody denies this but you, please share your inside knowledge.
Guns “flooding Mexico” come from many sources, China, Venezuala, and military & police defectors. Mexico does not allow private ownership, working out well, isn’t it?
“Long guns” sold legally in the U.S. are not the weapon of choice to the drug cartels. There are over 300 million long guns & hand guns legally owned in the U.S. Citing specific states is but the tip of what Obama/Holder wanted to do. Given that they let the weapons “walk” is the hight of arrogance & hypocricy.
“With 853 gun dealers in Phoenix alone, the seven-agent Fast and Furious team never stood a chance. Straw purchases are hard to prove and carry minimal penalties so prosecutors are not motivated to pursue these kinds of cases.”
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/06/30/walking-back-on-gun-walking/
Maybe you gun culture warriors do not find 853 gun dealers in a city of 1.5 million but it looks like a guntopia to me.”
Once again you refuse to differentiate between legal & other purchases. And in the very case you continue to crow, illegal purchases intentionally propagated by the Holder/Omama DOJ & BATFE.
#27 From the beginning of it’s existence the NRA has stood to protect civil liberties. Beginning with black’s rights to own weapons after the civil war.
They continue the effort, for all, winning huge Constitutional victories in D.C. & Chicago. They fight for such rights throughout the nation.
There is, of course, no problem with passionately expressing one’s opinion. You have, what is IMO, a very nasty tendency to denigrate anyone who disagrees with your view of what you think some utopian, progessive society should be. From the wives of SCOTUS Justices, to 300 million legal gun owners, to the 4.5 million NRA members.
#28 Richard, I will gladly accept your portrayal of the news story. Yet, anectdotal or not, it is beside the point. Nobody wants guns “into the wrong hands”. Nobody wants screaming volitions, or child pornography on the net. The very essence of our civil rights has always acklowledged the need to accept some abuse. Like the “valor” case.
And, by the way Richard….whose are the “wrong hands”? Who get’s to decide? I am certain you know the history of gun confiscation by totalitarian governments on all sides of the political spectrum, and the desire of many in this nation to do the same.
Richard, freedom desires vigilance, and ability. The founding fathers knew this.
RJB, you assume I don’t want control on guns. However, you are also diverting attention from the incompetence of Holder et al. and their subsequent refusal to cooperate with Congress’ inquiry. That is the issue here. It is interesting that you want to give Obama’s bumblers a pass on their failed op that allowed guns to fall into the cartel’s hands but you then want to use the fact that it happened as an argument for gun control.
Sandi, the US Attorney left out another illegal act that law enforcement can track. It is also illegal to provide a gun to someone who is ineligible to purchase or own it himself regardless of whether you can prove it is intended to be used in a crime. There are also laws that restrict the exportation of firearms. Let’s try enforcing these laws instead just making everything illegal for everyone, you know infringing on those pesky rights and all that.
My #30 Correction please. Not 300 million gun owners, but 100 million gun owners (300 million guns). Thanks.
32. The President has the rights of executive privilege as has been upheld by the Courts. The fact that it bothers you is inconsequential. Congress for political purposes is causing problems in the enforcement and protection of our boarders and ATFs enforcement of gun movement. That should concern you more than executive privilege.