Defenders of 2nd Amendment Quick To Throw 1st to the Wolves
April 22, 2013

 
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Free Speech only when I sayWho could have seen last week coming? Certainly not my Sunday Night post, which was quickly upstaged by a deadly bombing in Boston and a fertilizer manufacturing plant explosion here in my home state. Also last week, even the pathetic watered-down gun-control bill with over 90-percent support couldn’t get past a Wingnut minority in the U.S. Senate… well, correction, technically it DID pass, winning “54 to 46”… which in any NORMAL government would have been enough to become law. But not in our now-dysfunctional government where it now takes a SUPER MAJORITY to pass ANYTHING the minority objects to. Bill Maher had it right last Friday when he said, “Senate Republicans sent a clear message to the terrorists last week. If you want to kill a lot of Americans, use a gun.” Gun advocates call the defeat “a victory for the 2nd Amendment!” But then ask them what we should do instead and the answer is invariably: “Censor/ban violent videogames and movies! Block dangerous websites! Don’t allow Muz’lims to build that Mosque!” Oh, and while we’re at it, let’s declare (our particular brand of) Christianity the official religion. “Free Speech”? There’s a zone for that! Isn’t that interesting?

You’ve probably heard this “battlecry” before:
 

The Gun Nut Battlecry

 

“The second amendment is there to protect the first!” Yeah, but who’s going to protect it from YOU, the gun-wielding nuts that seem ready, willing and able to sellout the first amendment if it means they get to keep their toys? President Bush violated The Bill of Rights left & right for seven years all in the name of “security”… which reminds us of another once-popular Right-Wing battlecry: “Those who would give up essential liberty in the name of security deserve neither!” Yet, that’s EXACTLY what they did under George Bush because he let them keep their guns (well, actually, he didn’t, but IOKIYAR.)

Jon Stewart also rightly pointed out last week that when it comes to “terrorism”… a FAR less frequent crime… Republicans are prepared to move heaven & earth, trample every constitutional right from “Habeus Corpus” or “Miranda”, to “indefinite detention of American citizens without trial”, all to prevent the next attack. But when it comes to far more prevalent (and lethal) acts of gun crime, we can’t even agree to make it harder for convicted felons (or even an alQaeda terrorist) from going to a gun show and buying a semi-automatic assault rifle no-questions-asked.

Last week I Tweeted (are you following M.R.S. yet?):

If there’s one person to blame for the inability of our government to pass even the most rudimentary and publicly popular piece of gun control legislation just four months after the slaughter of twenty 7 year olds and six teachers, look no further than Senate Majority Leader (for now) Harry Reid (D-NV) for refusing once again to reform the grossly abused filibuster. Senator Reid said recently that he “didn’t even have 40 votes” for an earlier form of the gun control bill to justify bringing it to a vote. Reid does not seem to understand that the “60 vote threshold” enables more people to vote “No”. If a Senator knows a bill is likely to fail because it won’t meet the olympian “60 vote threshold”, it’s a lot easier to vote No on a bill no one expected to pass anyway. Visa vie, few people want to be on the losing side having to explain why they didn’t vote for a popular bill. So arguing that you “didn’t have enough votes to reach SIXTY” is a canard because the ability to win over the 5 or so extra votes needed to pass is a LOT easier when they know you only need FIFTY (plus the VP) for something to pass.

But now, following their inability to pass even this “toothless” attempt at gun control, we hear Democrats adopting the rhetoric of the minority that obstructed them, saying “Yeah! Maybe we DO need to look at violent movies and videogames“… despite the fact these same violent movies and videogames are available in nearly every other country on Earth without the same bloody carnage seen in America day after day.

Republicans are now asking: “What is it about our culture that breeds such violence?” It couldn’t POSSIBLY be our balls-to-the-wall mega-macho gun culture where every idiot with a gun thinks he’s Wyatt Earp. Lord no! It must be those darned movies and videogames!
 

Postscript: Another popular battlecry during the gun-debate:

“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” – Thomas Jefferson.

 

is a fraud. He never said it. The closest he came was:

“No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms [within his own lands or tenements]”

 

…making NO mention of “government tyranny”. Just thought you’d like to know.

 


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April 22, 2013 · Admin Mugsy · One Comment - Add
Posted in: Crime, Guns & Violence, Partisanship, Politics, Right-wing Facism, Right-Wing Insanity

One Response

  1. Grant in Texas - April 23, 2013

    I’ve traveled to 49 nations now and everywhere you see mostly American movies playing as they are most popular.  Gamers are just as numerous in Japan, Australia, and elsewhere as they are in the USA but they don’t seem to have a problem with gun violence.  Maybe such low gun deaths elsewhere is because the rest of the world ‘s nations have gun control measures in place.  Born before WWII, my earliest memories are playing “Japs and Germans” where we children used our homemade rifles to play war games.  They were most often fashioned from broom handles, nails for triggers and sights, etc., as there were no metal toys to be found and the newly invented plastics hadn’t arrived on the market to be used in toys and housewares.  After the war, we boys wore holsters with steel cap pistols everywhere so we could play “Cowboys and Indians” so for several more years we continued playing “killing games” (sometimes with the “lethal” Red Ryder B-B rifle!).  When school let out in the early 50’s afternoons and our homes began filling up with their first television sets, we watched Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Cisco Kid, Hopalong Cassidy and Sky King taking out the “bad guys” until dinner time.  However, many of us didn’t even grow up to become hunters.  I have a shotgun in my home but not sure it works anymore as its been collecting dust for decades.  It was my grandfather’s so is more of an heirloom now.

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