Posted on 12/12/2013 1:32:15 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
To get to Joe Manchin’s private office in the Hart Senate Office Building, you first pass through a lobby where you encounter a small bronze statue of an Old West lawman holding a firearm — an award given to Manchin several years ago by a chapter of the National Rifle Association for his unswerving defense of gun rights. Then you turn down a hallway, past several framed photographs of children who were victims of the massacre a year ago at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. The combination of the bronze rifleman in the lobby and the young faces on the wall suggests a particular viewpoint — I stand with gun lovers; I stand with victims of gun violence — that qualifies, in Washington anyway, as being nuanced, which is to say politically ill advised if not suicidal.
Even sitting behind his stately wooden desk in a suit and tie, Manchin, who is 66, possesses the craggy appearance of a small-town sheriff. As he proclaimed to me one morning in September, “I enjoy my guns, and my family enjoys their guns.” And indeed, Manchin, a conservative Democrat from West Virginia, won election to the U.S. Senate in 2010 partly on the strength of a memorable TV ad depicting him firing a bullet through President Obama’s cap-and-trade bill that had been anathema to coal miners in his state. But Manchin’s outlook changed the day he came back from a hunting trip last December, having learned of the 20 children and six adults slaughtered at Sandy Hook. That unique horror motivated him in a way that other recent mass shootings in Tucson and Aurora, Colo., had not....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Nothing nuanced about it. If the principal of the school had been armed it could have been stopped before a single child was harmed.
The power of the NRA comes from its members!
” The combination of the bronze rifleman in the lobby and the young faces on the wall suggests a particular viewpoint “
that one has exactly nothing to do with the other.
But as propaganda, it’s pretty clever to link the two.
Ha ha ha the article even goes on about “internet gun sales” needing background checks.
Not one thing he proposed for law would have prevented that tragedy. Politicians always take the easy way out of problems.
Children were murdered. Lets attack the tool. Far easy to do then attacking the problem. Mentally ill humans.
Could being the operative word.
There is unfortunately no assurance that the good guys will always win a gunfight.
Plus, in a surprise attack the attacker always has the advantage. That's why surprise attacks are so effective.
I’m sorry to say I’ve done work with these jokers. They are blind to anything which does not match their world view.
About half the desks have an Obama book on it. Some have more than one. There are obama pictures hanging on the walls. They think tea party people are slightly below axe murderers.
They about wet themselves when I told them I had been shooting the prior weekend and had even been shooting some full auto rifles.
Saw one of their fashion editors wearing an outfit that looked exactly like a Luftwaffe uniform minus the insignia. She had the shade of gray perfect.
I’d rather go down fighting then go down wishing I could fight.
To wit
Dialed 911 but 1911 solved problem first.
They figure he’s vulnerable because he’s a ‘Rat.
Less children would have been killed if the teachers had been armed. That’s something only liberals don’t understand.
What the NYT fails to understand, is that - I - and -you -, and every other law-abiding American that joins, are the NRA, not some paid lobbyist in Washington, D.C.
“Politicians always take the easy way out of problems.
Children were murdered. Lets attack the tool.”
Come now. You are not so naive as to believe this nonsense. “Attacking the tool.” is not the easy way out, as a great many politicians have learned to their sorrow. It is flying in the face of facts, logic, and the Constitution, in order to curry favor with the far left demagogues and the MSM, who are often one and the same.
The “easy way out” would be to call for repealing the Gun Free School Zones act, which has been a disaster for this country.
http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/2012/12/disastrous-gun-law-sparked-school.html
or, to call for more responsibility from the MSM, who continue to “Shout Fire! in Crowded Schools”,
http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/2013/01/stop-school-shootings-hold-media.html
or, easier still, simply hold candlelight vigils and do nothing else.
Yeah, if there had been an armed teacher or two at Sandy Hook, there would be no news about a would-be shooter taken out prematurely.
But at least the principal would have had the possibilty of stopping the rampage before it became the tragedy that it did. Even some chance of stopping it would have been better than no chance at all.
Absolutely. My only issue is with those who seem to think armed security or teachers are some guarantee of safety.
This is the heart of the matter, right here. I can't tell you how many times I've made the point to disbelieving libs that the gun-rights movement is really grassroots... that the NRA doesn't wield its considerable power due to industry money (the industry isn't that rich, really), but due to individual memberships from men and women scattered across the country.
The NRA really does represent a large number of people, and these people really do have strong opinions on gun control.
I vaguely recall that Manchin’s support by the NRA was revoked back in 2010...........
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