“Which is what got me thinking in the first place about what would have happened if the Tsarnaevs had been shooters rather than bombers. Maybe I am wrong about how things would have played out. But the country, or large parts of it, would finally have been forced to confront its cognitive dissonance about gun violence and terrorism, which, at the very least, would have been educational.” John Cassidy, What If the Tsarnaevs Had Been the “Boston Shooters”? [via newyorker.com]
Here is the gun grabbers game plan:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/daily/round-two-for-gun-control-may-take-a-next-newtown-20130424
From the article:
A week after gun legislation suffered a stinging defeat in the Senate, an uncomfortable realization has settled over the Capitol that it will likely take another mass shooting or similar tragedy to reignite momentum for gun control.
President Obama called last week’s vote “round one.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pledged that it was “just the beginning.” But gun-control advocates, both inside and outside of Congress, have identified no immediate path forward to alter a political landscape that left them five votes short in the Senate of passing a bill requiring expanded background checks for gun purchases.
Focus in the Capitol has already shifted to immigration, renewed fiscal skirmishes, and the Boston bombings (though some questions remain over how the suspects obtained firearms). Even Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., the chief Republican coauthor of the background-check plan, has said it is time to move on.
Proponents of new gun restrictions still hope to use the 2014 elections to upend the current dynamics, in which voting against the gun lobby is deeply feared, especially in GOP-leaning states. They plan to rely upon the impassioned pleas of the families of the Newtown shooting victims, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s money, and former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ national stature. Before the next election, though, the truth is that another tragedy may be the only way to shake loose the legislation.
“Unfortunately, tragically, regrettably, there’ll be other incidents of gun violence that will remind us of how much is at stake,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat who has pushed hard for new gun laws after the December shooting that left 20 elementary school students dead.
The calls for stricter gun laws were loudest in the immediate aftermath of Newtown. But as the weeks and months passed, the powerful National Rifle Association, which opposed virtually any new firearm limits, including background checks, regained its footing.
On Wednesday, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough told Toomey that he was still shocked that the Senate couldn’t pass expanded background checks with 60 votes when it was an issue supported by “95 percent” of the public, as Scarborough put it.
“I would suggest that we heard from the 5 percent who opposed—several times from each one of them,” Toomey replied. “It was a much more vocal and much more passionate expression from that camp.”
To advance the bill in the future, added Toomey, “I think the most important thing, frankly, is members of Congress need to hear from people—and the people who support these background checks need to be as vocal as those who don’t.”
It is a shortcoming that gun-control advocates acknowledge. “We talk about that as the passion gap, and we have to close that,” said Ladd Everitt, spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. He said his group had spent the last week “thanking and spanking” senators for their votes.
“If we really want to succeed, what we really need to do is demonstrate that our movement can reward allies and punish people who vote against us,” Everitt said.
Accusations that the White House did not move fast enough have been a recurrent critique of the administration’s handling of the gun issue after the Newtown massacre.
Expanding background checks reaps as much as 90 percent support in polling. But a new Pew Research Center/Washington Post poll shows far more division on the recent gun bill: 47 percent of Americans were “disappointed” or “angry” at the legislation’s defeat, but 39 percent were “very happy” or “relieved.”
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., the other chief architect of the bipartisan compromise on background checks, suggested last Friday that the legislation would have proven “much more acceptable” if it had been on the floor in January. That’s when emotions still ran high after Newtown and the gun lobby was more divided.
“At that time we could have done something. So you seize the moment,” Manchin said, though he and Toomey didn’t reach a deal on background checks until April. Manchin has said he will continue to pressure his colleagues, one by one, though such an approach seems unlikely to break the deadlock.
Now, at least, Democrats and their allies have a package of gun-control measures—led by the Manchin-Toomey proposal—ready to be enacted practically immediately. Reid can bring the failed background-checks effort back to the floor at almost any time.
Please correct me if I misunderstood, but did he just basically say ” It’s a shame those innocent people were blown apart rather than shot. A shooting would have served my goals nicely”. And “We” are the evil ones…………
Yes.
Sounds like something Piers Morgan would say. It is painfully obvious after Boston how much they (gun grabbers) crave tragedy and human suffering so they might have an opportunity to appeal to the emotionally weak and/or otherwise misinformed general populace.
Another moron with nothing substantial in his brain so he turns to the “What if” game.
What if the knock-off Jihadis opened fire, and an armed citizen in the crowd drew and neutralized the threat?
What if Luke Skywalker hadn’t destroyed the Death Star?
What if the moon was made of cheese?
What if Eleanor Roosevelt could fly?
I think it’s funny how in one of the comments the commenter says you can buy “guns and military hardware on ebay”. While you may get military items you can not buy actual firearms on ebay. I really wish people would get their facts straight before making statements that are just flat out wrong.
I wondered the same thing, since it was just before the big Senate vote.
If that had happened, I’d be having to start making my tinfoil hat.
But there was a large police presence, I’m guessing, at the finish line. So MAYBE that was a risk they didn’t want to take.
Or more likely, they wanted to “bomb and run” so that they could drop another bomb off in New York. And then someplace else.
After all, they may be terrorists, but they aren’t stupid. Just driven by a radical belief system.
I imagine after New York there would have been some other kind of bomb. I can think of a whole lot of things you can do with gasoline and styrofoam or other “household items” that would make nastier devices.
Their goal was in fact to continue bombing major cities. First Boston, then Times Square, then maybe Philadelphia or Chicago or Washington DC. They would have continued until caught or killed, and their fatal flaw was staying in Boston for too long. If they’d left within that first 24 hours, they’d have gotten away with it–and they wouldn’t have been caught until a few dozen more people were dead.
Exactly. These guys weren’t suicidal. And the reason more people didn’t die is that, thankfully, all these home-grown Jihadists haven’t proven to be very good bomb makers.
So far.
And the administration could pretend it was a spree killing and not a terrorist attack as they did with Fort Hood.
Would it be awful to say it’s a shame he wasn’t standing next to the backpack? Yeah, I think so too. Only a libtard would say such a thing.
I’m pro freedom, thus pro choice. A fetus is not a human being.
At what exact point does a fetus become a human being?
Can everyone please stop implying that the lockdown was mandatory? They were not ordered to stay in their homes.
“Which is why my definition is anything with distinct individual human DNA with active cell processes.”
Yup
The issue is not with the kids, but yet the parents. Children, in this sort of foolery, is not uncommon. I even did it once as a 5yr old when a certain family would not let their kid come out and play. It was not just anyone but the chief of police of said town. After he returned me to my house I recieved quite a severe repremanding from my mother that by todays standards would be undoubtedly considered borderline child abuse. I never did anything like that again, nor did she ever have to do that again herself. At the age of 12 I completed the FL firearms training course & my mother was right there with me at every class. I love my Mother dearly for this lesson in life. Kids make mistakes, that is why the law prohibits children from being charged & convicted. The ultimate responsibilty is to that of the parents.
The ignorance seethes from both the article and most of the comments.
Does anyone recall that scene in Lethal Weapon 3 where the gangbanger’s mom slaps Murtagh for shooting her kid? The dad then stares him down and growls, “You find the person that put that gun in my boy’s hand.” I wasn’t a gun person then, but that scene still reeked of wrongness to me. Grief aside, I couldn’t believe people would blame someone else for their kid’s murderous behavior.
Simple sir, I don’t. I would much rather watch pawn stars, which, btw, isn’t that often.
We can still buy off the old ones, right?
Those are some expensive hacksaw blades.
Why didn’t they just replace the barrels, or have the old ones shortened? Seems like a waste of money to me.
The current crop of dems, including Obama, love to use “for the children” for anything they can. They also love to parade around children to use as props.
Except on abortion. Lol.
It’s funny because it’s true. And I’m pro choice (well, mostly, I’m pro choice up until the point of viability, at which point only if there is a mother’s life in danger). Both sides pick an arbitrary point not based on science “conception” or “the moment it completely pops out it’s a baby, before that it’s not a person! Honest!”. Reality is both are essentially “religious” arguments based on “faith”. And as a religious person I want my gov as far away from my religion as possible. Thus, how about we base it on reality where is that there is a HUGE DIFFERENCE between an abortion at 3 months, ethically, and one at 7 months. Or just leave it up to the states and you know, focus on what matters to 99.9% of americans right now–jobs. But I usually end up making both sides mad. Sigh. 😛
I’d agree that abortion laws are completely under the domain of the state governments not the federal. As far as religion, atheists are not completely amoral so abortion is a moral issue but that doesn’t make it a religious one.
There are serious problems with the viability solution. First and foremost is that premature babies are now viable earlier than they were in 1973. Someday (probably not that far in the future) a newly fertilized egg will be able to be removed from the mother and incubated in a laboratory. Therefor a zygote in 2113 may be viable but a fetus in 2013 is not. It makes no sense to tie morality to the flexible state of medical technology. Furthermore, the child is completely viable from the point of conception as long as it stays in the womb. If you have to yank it out to make it inviable how is that not murder?
At three months, that fetus has had his or her own heart beating for over 2 months on it’s own pumping blood that is frequently a totally different blood type than his or her mother. I realize many people try to tale the reasonable middle ground, but sometimes the middle ground between right and wrong is still wrong.
This is great if you want more anti-gunners to believe were all just illiterate rednecks.
The government can murder us, imprison us, force us at gunpoint into FEMA internment camps (defined concentration or gulag camp), force us into a slave work camp and confiscate any and all of our property or wealth. I think this is tyrannical and dangerous and all citizens need to vote anyone that want gun control out of office ASAP. God bless all in the coming day.
I loved the way Tom put on a shooting school, you can’t say it was just a show.
May you R.I.P. Tom
I’ve been ranting about this show being not good for the firearm enthusiast community since it came out. Violations of gun safety, making everything shot at blow up and constantly using full auto weapons DOES NOTHING POSITIVE for the low information voter when it comes to firearms.
I wish that show and company would just go away.
Wonder what they served for dinner at the local hoosegow? Problem solved (sort of).
hey buddy, this is a incredibly exciting post
If it’s any consolation we have something of an over-saturation of gun love on the video game side of things, so it kinda evens out.
On a side note I am not saying I’m against guns in video games (hell, I’m currently working on one that’s all about guns and self-sufficiency) just that guns are the rule rather than the exception in most franchises and titles nowadays.
A great disturbance in the force, I feel.
Seems the price is to high right now. You are paying a lot for R&D. Would like the price to come down to $4.000 to $4500. Gap and others are proven to do what they say, this one has not. Just my 2 cents. have a great week.
You might look up the IDPA (Internation Defensive Pistol Association) or USPSA (United States Practical Shooting Association – which I’ve never tried).
This is not a commerical.
I just shot my first IDPA and believe me, my target shooting is good in a lane but not so good when they set up 5 scenarios (multiple targets, multiiple targets at different distances, innocent targets (oh well, some didn’t make it), shooting in a building and targets that rotate and move back and forth, and moving while shooting, using concealment, etc). My presumed skills shooting at a moving target and while moving were awful. It was a big surprise to me how poorly I did.
Even after explaining the course of a specific scenario, I failed to follow the course properly (too nervous – not concerned about looking foolish, just concerned that I paid attention to the scenario). So, based on this first time and the stress I felt, how well would I do in a real gunfight? . . . . . .I need more practice!