Jump to content

Will Congress finally consider some gun control legislation?


Ms. Spam
 Share

Recommended Posts

Wow...so that's what you got out of this morning?

Naw. But I'm sure others will offer some sort of impression.

 

This guy was from IL. That's a long way to go to wreck a baseball practice. Also way to many Congressmen and witnesses are giving statements to news people. Feels like they're going to taint the testimony.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

Also way to many Congressmen and witnesses are giving statements to news people. Feels like they're going to taint the testimony.

 

Well, the guy's dead, so it doesn't matter. Not that the prosecution of a mass shooting would have been all that difficult.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest El Chalupacabra

Just wondering since their baseball practice was interrupted by an M4.

 

At the very least they should consider digitizing and storing records because they have to chase the paper trail if there is any on these guns.

Spam, I can't find a quote for you, but today I heard an audio clip of Jeff Flake, AZ senator and present at the shooting was asked what his position on gun control is now and if he would support some kind of change, and he essentially said how he supports the Second Amendment, and today is an example of someone misusing that right (I personally can't stand him, but at least you can say he's consistent). I am sure at this point, other republicans echo Flake. And with the shooter, James T Hodgkinson, being apparently left wing....

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/14/homepage2/james-hodgkinson-profile/index.html

....the dems, at least any who speak out about wanting gun control, are now on the defensive on the issue (Fox news as usual)

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/06/14/scalise-shot-what-virginia-attack-should-teach-us-second-amendment-is-not-problem-in-fact-it-can-save-lives.html

 

Meanwhile, later yesterday, after the shooting (and not long after Flake said all that), someone else across the country literally goes postal....

 

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/14/us/san-francisco-shooting/index.html

 

So, no. I doubt anything will happen except the usual rhetoric on both sides for a couple weeks, with no action by either side taking place.

 

Did you REALLY expect anything less? Or different, for that matter. I mean besides knee jerk reactions on both sides, anyway.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I didn't get a chance to watch news yesterday after work but I'm interested in seeing how this plays out, now that we know the shooter was a liberal.

 

A serious national discussion on the overheated rhetoric coming from the left in which we question the notion of a "resistance" working to thwart the president by denying him a functioning government set to follow his orders as chief executive, a college campus culture where "protesters" are allowed to disrupt, often violently, a conservative speaker and, with the complicity of the administrations, deny them their 1st Amendment rights and make them fearful for their safety, talk about assassinating the president being openly wished for in conversation with a thousand times more frequency than I've heard for any other president, including our last two controversial presidents, and even moderates singled out to be professionally punished for previous association with with conservatives.

 

Naw, just kidding. That's only if the victim were a Democrat, even if the gunman was simply mentally ill and not politically motivated.

 

[singsong]Gun control, gun control! What do we do when the gunman and/or victims doesn't provide for a tidy conservatives are evil narrative fit? Spam for gun control![/singsong]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I didn't get a chance to watch news yesterday after work but I'm interested in seeing how this plays out, now that we know the shooter was a liberal.

I feel bad for Bernie but all the campaigns had people who did shady things. Hillary's conspired to torpedo Bernie. But we have to face that there needs to be something. One of the Congressmen at that baseball practice was going to introduce legislation eliminate the paper trail and federal tax on firearm suppressors.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

...a "resistance" working to thwart the president by denying him a functioning government set to follow his orders as chief executive...

 

 

Isn't that a goal of many conservatives, too? "Starve the beast" is an old slogan of conservatives. Maybe it's a common goal that fringe left and fringe right activists can join forces to achieve?

 

...a college campus culture where "protesters" are allowed to disrupt, often violently, a conservative speaker and, with the complicity of the administrations, deny them their 1st Amendment rights and make them fearful for their safety...

Please define "often". Though I am not a lawyer, can a university really deny a speaker their 1st Amendment rights? I understood the 1st Amendment as preventing Congress from passing laws regarding freedom of speech. Does it apply to universities, too?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What this should do is get Congress and the Senate serious about these leaks. One of the congressmen last night said what was disturbing to him was that the locations of the Republican and Democrat practices were private. I'm guessing this was to be able to hold a practice without someone coming to protest or disrupt them. Not so much as to keep away disgruntled constituents with guns.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Isn't that a goal of many conservatives, too? "Starve the beast" is an old slogan of conservatives. Maybe it's a common goal that fringe left and fringe right activists can join forces to achieve?

 

Starving the beast is completely different. That's using the power of the purse and taxes to prevent government expansion.

 

It's nothing like members of an agency going rogue and setting their own government policy.

 

 

 

Please define "often". Though I am not a lawyer, can a university really deny a speaker their 1st Amendment rights? I understood the 1st Amendment as preventing Congress from passing laws regarding freedom of speech. Does it apply to universities, too?

 

Public universities are an arm of the government and have pretty much been treated the same way as public schools. See Healy v. James, Widmar v. Vincent, and Rosenberger v. University of Virginia for a few examples. If the university administration is facilitating mob rule by declining to protect the civil rights of conservative speakers to speak safely, that seems to me to be a rather clear violation of the 1st Amendment. Private schools are, of course, a different matter. There is a method that works, which is to let the protesters know that while their rights to protest will be protected, if they break the law or attempt to deny the other side their rights, that is not protest, it is not protected (Driver take note of that), and it will be punished firmly and appropriately. None of this "They can't punish all of us" stuff. If they have to suspend 200 students for a semester, an appropriate sanction for denying a person their rights and/or causing them to be fearful of their person, so be it. Actions have consequences and when the consequences are known in advance and above all believed, the behavior is curtailed. If the administration is complicit and engages in wink/nod empty threats and orders the police to stand down, then the violence gets progressively worse over time.

 

See the classic Woodward Report from Yale (1974) as the model for handling these protests. When applied, it works.

 

As for how often, I wouldn't have any trouble compiling a lengthy list if you wish for me to start tracking them down, and I'm sure I'd be missing a ton that flew under the radar or were stopped at an early stage and we never knew about, and the frequency has been accelerating in the past few years.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How "private" would something like that be? How many aides, friends, and family members would also know? How many of them would share on social media, for organizational purposes? Is "leaking" really the problem?

Leaking is a problem. Not so much this problem. When congressman who were at the practice say that they couldn't understand how the shooter knew they were there because that info was private(not saying classified), it only adds more questions to an already messed up situation. But alas it has been reported that the NY Times published the location of the practice a month ago based on information they received. So yes leaking is a problem. Not THE problem.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please define "often". Though I am not a lawyer, can a university really deny a speaker their 1st Amendment rights? I understood the 1st Amendment as preventing Congress from passing laws regarding freedom of speech. Does it apply to universities, too?

The overarching problem is quite bad, and getting worse. The UC Berkeley Milo Yiannopoulos riots were bad, and made all the more disturbing by just how deep the rot goes. Complicity with the rioters permeates the college at all levels and even extends to the municipal government. The whole Evergreen fiasco has taken it to a whole new level. Campus Reform is a good clearinghouse for information on this kind of thing. Jonathan Haidt's heterodox academy, which is more liberal generally speaking, is another. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is still another.

 

Defenders of no-platforming will claim that no speaker has an inalienable right to speak on any college campus, and that no-platforming therefore does not constitute censorship in any real way. This is a disingenuous argument, for reasons this article goes into detail on. Suffice it to say, it is rather dishonest to uphold the college's right to decide who can and cannot speak as being paramount when arguing in favor of a college's right to disinvite a speaker, while simultaneously pressuring, or blackmailing, the same college into disinviting speakers who happen to disagree with you. This kind of dishonesty is sadly typical of kinds of activists who advocate no-platforming.

 

The Yale report that Poe links to mentions: "We urge that all University catalogues, as well as the faculty and staff handbooks, include explicit statements on freedom of expression and the right to dissent." Only a handful of college campuses in the US have actually done this. The Chicago Principles, named for the university of the same name, is the beacon and the standard here. And that is the tip of the iceberg of what is needed.

 

Ultimately, a legislative solution will be required, given how deep faculty and administrative complicity in the radicalization of higher education goes. A good set of proposals for at least a starting point, though a lot of legalities would need to be hammered out, can be found here.

 

The radicalization of higher education is a complicated and serious issue. Do not be fooled into thinking of this in strictly left-right terms. A lot of left wing people (myself among them) are looking at what's happening in places like Evergreen with disgust.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"I was feeling much like the Devil, there was something burnin' deep inside of me" Song was playing when I parked my car. Stuck in my head. There is no escape anymore. Olympia is no escape.

 

PS, obviously "Junkie Man" is more fitting to the shooting, but that isn't the song that was playing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My car is old enough that it has a tape deck, which is how I use my iPod. I just put it on while I'm doing some late night cleaning.

I'm also old enough that 10:30 is late.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wasn't going to go here, I tried to stop myself, I couldn't.

 

This shooter was armed similarly to the Aurora, Sandy Hook, and Pulse nightclub shootings. In this case the only death (so far) is the assailant. What is different here? What stopped the shooter from walking through the dugouts and slaughtering all the sheep where they cowered?

 

And you want to disarm me...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.