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Posted on 02/24/2013 10:30:08 PM PST by Seizethecarp
A not-so-small miracle is unfolding before our eyes. After nearly two decades in which established opinion insisted that it would never again be possible to pass sensible regulations of firearms, the unthinkable is on the verge of happening.
This week, Sen. Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is expected to announce plans to start marking up gun bills to send to the Senate floor, proposals that will include ideas put before the country by President Obama and Vice President Biden. The president's agenda, in turn, was inspired by advocates and legislators, mayors and police chiefs, who have been working quietly in the wilderness for years.
Told over and over again that members of both parties were forever destined to do the National Rifle Association's bidding, these supporters of thoroughly moderate and reasonable weapons measures never gave up and never surrendered. Their time has come.
Behind the miracle, of course, lies the profound tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School and the loss of "26 beautiful lives," as Lynn McDonnell, mother of 7-year-old Grace McDonnell, one of those beautiful lives, put it at a conference in Connecticut last week.
Suddenly, Americans in large numbers (and the media, too) started noticing how extreme, even wacky, the rhetoric of the gun manufacturers' lobby has become. Their talk about representing the "real America" was exposed as a fraud: "Real" Americans don't resist pragmatic solutions to the problems of mass violence.
Oh, yes, and it was also finally noticed that a majority of Americans doesn't own guns, that gun ownership has dropped over time, and that this real majority does not want to be forced to live in a world in which everyone is terrorized into buying a weapon.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
Thanks for the laugh.
A little about this liberal:
NPR’s Shocking Turn: A Real Conservative Frustrates E.J. Dionne
By Matt Vespa | February 18, 2013
Last Friday’s All Things Considered segment on NPR was a real treat because David Brooks was absent, and therefore, couldn’t be his squishy self alongside liberal columnist E.J. Dionne. National Review’s Mona Charen, a real conservative, filled in for the New York Times pseudo-Republican, and effectively countered Dionne’s Obama cheerleading.
The two were asked by host Robert Siegel to analyze the president’s State of the Union address last week, and to no one’s surprise – that Dionne was fawning over the speech, while Charen took a more pragmatic approach.
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Now that's just not true. If you repealed the current 20,000 or 22,000 or whatever it is grossly infringing laws, I'm sure even pro-rights people wouldn't mind having 5 or 10 new ones if they were sensible. (For real, not in some liberals's "mind")
ISRA COMMENDS ARTIST JOE FOURNIER FOR GUN SAFETY CARTOON
CONTACT: Richard Pearson, Illinois State Rifle Association, (815) 635-3198 WEB SITE: http://www.isra.org
SPRINGFIELD, IL - - The following was released today by the Illinois State Rifle Association (ISRA):
The ISRA is commending political cartoonist Joe Fournier for his courage in publishing a cartoon that plainly reveals the true sentiments of so-called “gun safety advocates.” The nationally syndicated cartoon, which appeared Sunday in the “Chicago Tribune,” depicts Vice President Joe Biden gleefully assassinating NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre with a shotgun. “Lawful firearm owners have known for a long time that the gun control movement wants us gone – by any means necessary,” said ISRA Executive Director Richard Pearson. “A few years ago, renegade Chicago priest Mike Pfleger openly called for the ‘snuffing’ of lawful firearm dealers and elected officials who oppose gun control. More recently, we heard Chicago Police Superintendent McCarthy say he would train and instruct his officers to shoot people holding concealed carry permits. Now we have a quarter-page cartoon in a major market newspaper where the Vice President of the United States appears to give the green light to murdering supporters of our 2nd Amendment. I hate to think of where this will all end.” “But, in any case,” continued Pearson, “I’d like to commend cartoonist Fournier for his Rushdie-like courage in bringing this all to a head. The gun controllers no longer need to hide behind their hallmark platitudes about protecting the children and all that is good. The gun controllers may now muster and get behind Joe Biden in executing the final solution to the gun problem. Or so they may think”
- - - The ISRA is the state’s leading advocate of safe, lawful and responsible firearms ownership. For more than a century, the ISRA has represented the interests of millions of law-abiding Illinois firearm owners.
Posted Sun Feb 24 14:00:16 CST 2013
But temporary political consequences don't matter unless R's can be found and elected who'll actually repeal stuff. As it is now, Dem's have the ascendancy for a while and do their best to move the ball on tyranny. Sometimes they fail, sometimes they make some progress. Eventually they fall from favor and are replaced by R's, who sometimes pass tyrannical laws of their own, but mostly do not, and stop efforts of Dem's to do so. BUT....they never repeal anything, and defeat of some government-empowering proposal isn't the symmetrical opposite of enactment. If it's enacted, it's presumed by all that the question is settled for all time, while defeat just means we don't get whatever it is this year. You notice how it works? The ratchet only ever moves in one direction. You can't win a football game playing only defense, even if you were good at defense, and R's aren't very.
Americans in large numbers (and the media, too) started noticing how extreme, even wacky, the rhetoric of the gun manufacturers’ lobby has become.
“Where’s Senator Byrd when we need him to pull his pocket constitution out and wave it around while berating his colleagues?”
No mention by Dionne of SCOTUS refuting the collective delusion for decades on the left that the 2A does not protect an individual right to “keep and bear arms”...
Heller was the true “miracle”...SCOTUS upholding at least part of the founder’s intent in the 2A.
The only “miracle” (violation of SCOTUS oath) that could save the gun-grabbers would be for SCOTUS to suddenly reverse Heller!
I've often thought that a compelling campaign promise would be to repeal at least one useless bill a week and dismantle at least one government agency or program per month.
Holy smokes! That last one really tells the story. I’m on so many ‘notify when stock arrives’ lists online my e-mail will be swamped if they ever do get their shipments in. There is nothing left anywhere. Stuff that usually sells slower than ice cubes in Antarctica is ‘out of stock!’
I was notified Friday that a gun accessory was back in stock and half way through my placing the order online the website reported it was out of stock and my order could not be filled!
Frustrating isn’t it? OTOH it’s a wonderful sign of just how much resistance is out there.
Really? Reid has a bunch of Red State senators he needs to get re-elected if he wants to keep his job. The last think he wants is DiFi hanging this millstone around their necks. He’s also been a genuine defender of the 2nd Amendment. He’s said that DiFi will get her vote in the Senate, but he’s also opened the process up to amendments by the GOP; a lovely poison pill maneuver. So what are you laughing at? Are you one of those GOP-Über-Alles types who expects gun owners to bend over for “the good of The Party”? Still pissed that the NRA wouldn’t help Sharron Angle make Chuck Schumer the new Majority Leader in the Senate?
Then why has he been letting them just roll over for the Democrat/liberal/progressive agenda on most everything? Why hasn't he given us a "the line must be drawn here" moment for any of the outrages that have gone on these past few years?
The last think he wants is DiFi hanging this millstone around their necks. He’s also been a genuine defender of the 2nd Amendment.
I simply do not believe it or, if he is then, I believe he's the sort of person who says all sorts of stuff but cannot lead others [rallying to that belief].
He’s said that DiFi will get her vote in the Senate, but he’s also opened the process up to amendments by the GOP; a lovely poison pill maneuver. So what are you laughing at?
Poison pill? Sorry, I don't believe the GOP-as-a-party has the balls to do any such thing. Let me know if they amend it to repeal the GCA and NFA though, then I'll buy that they're into putting a poison-pill to it.
Are you one of those GOP-Über-Alles types who expects gun owners to bend over for “the good of The Party”? Still pissed that the NRA wouldn’t help Sharron Angle make Chuck Schumer the new Majority Leader in the Senate?
No, I am simply aware that the GOP has an undeserved pro-2ND Amendment reputation. The termination of the AWB was due to a sunset clause, the GOP literally had to do nothing and the result would be the same.
The 2nd amendment protects our right to own legitimate deterrents to government tyranny. Semi-automatic weapons and large capacity weapons are legitimate deterrents to government tyranny. Efforts to restrict the people’s ownership of legitimate deterrents to government tyranny should be labled as such, not gun control. Feature the protection against government tyranny for which the 2nd amendment was included in our Constituton and our goals will be made more clear.
correction, large capacity magazines
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