Posted on 02/16/2018 3:04:09 PM PST by Kaslin
Let’s cut the holier than thou antics. Every time there’s a mass shooting and politicians from the GOP offer their thoughts and prayers to the victims, the liberal media doles out the tired National Rifle Association donation talking point. Here’s how much money NRA gave to x congressman or x senator. Okay—what’s the issue? We have a Second Amendment. We have a constitutional right to own firearms. You don’t think organizations will spring up and support this piece of our Bill of Rights?
Yesterday MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle took a swipe at Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), who offered his condolences to the families of the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida. On Wednesday, Nikolas Cruz, who had been expelled for disciplinary reasons, ventured back onto campus with an AR-15 and shot and killed 17 people. Ruhle reminded Portman that he has received $3 million in NRA donations, though that figure is over the course of his entire career in public life. Also, should we be shocked that a midwestern politician supports gun rights?
Go on and mainline Think Progress right into your veins if you like, but leave me out of it.— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) February 15, 2018
Thoughts, prayers & $3mm in donations from the NRA. https://t.co/GguOJGIbnp— Stephanie Ruhle (@SRuhle) February 15, 2018
“If only Sen. Portman hadn’t raised $3m from the NRA over the last *30 years*, about 10% of what he raised for his 2016 re-election alone, the senator *from Ohio* might not be so supportive of the rights of gun owners. Do I have this talking point correct?” tweeted Commentary’s Noah Rothman, who was formerly with Hot Air.
Via Mediaite:
The Ohio senator’s tweet apparently drew Ruhle’s attention, who responded by calling him out for donations he has received from the NRA.
“Thoughts, prayers & $3mm in donations from the NRA,” she replied.
Expressions of “thoughts and prayers” have become a reoccurring cudgel in the debate on enacting gun control in the wake of mass shootings, with those in support of gun control arguing that condolences are a poor excuse for inaction.
The Dallas Morning News’ Jay Caruso, formerly of RedState, touched upon the fact that The New York Times’ NRA donation sheet appears to have included NRA PAC money.
So this NY Times piece is where @bessbell got the garbage figures of how much Senators got in “donations” from the NRA. https://t.co/SJtHVUaD58
Scroll all the way to the bottom and you’ll see the following disclaimer: For all Congress members, total includes both direct— Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) February 16, 2018
campaign contributions as well as outside money spent on behalf of candidates from the N.R.A.'s Political Action Committees and directly from the N.R.A.'s 501(c)(4) social welfare arm, which does not have to disclose its donors to the public.
So they counted “issue ad”— Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) February 16, 2018
spending as “donations” which is complete hogwash.— Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) February 16, 2018
Caruso questioned whether issue ads should be considered donations in the sense of how liberals are trying to slam the nation’s oldest civil rights organization.
So, when Planned Parenthood was accused of trafficking aborted baby parts, where was the outrage? Oh, that’s right—this is a progressive organization. They get a pass. And the donations PP gives to its congressional allies are not even brought up. Still, if liberals want to try and shame Second Amendment supporters by trying to say gun control is about saving lives (because life is sacred), shouldn’t there be some pause about receiving donations from the nation’s largest abortion provider? For Democrats, yes, It’s all about saving lives concerning mass shootings, until the discussion moves to lives that are in utero.
Look—I’m not fan of Planned Parenthood, but they have the right to donate to candidates who support their agenda in the same manner that the NRA has the right to help candidates that will help their initiatives. Some say the NRA is too powerful. I say it’s just about right. I mean what's the point here? How dare the NRA, Planned Parenthood etc. exercise their right to support candidates?
In fact, why didn’t Democrats push through new gun laws when they had significant majorities in the House and Senate in 2009-2010? Allahpundit has some thoughts on that. Spoiler alert: it may have to do something with Obamacare being unpopular, red state Democrat issues, and the stimulus package. It proved to be a bridge too far:
Given the moral urgency of both problems, why didn’t St. Barack and his caucus of innocents in Congress do anything to solve them when they had the power to do so? They could have passed amnesty. They could have banned, ahem, “assault weapons.” They didn’t. Why?
They didn’t ban them because they cared more about getting elected than they did about these supposed national emergencies. The Virginia Tech massacre was just two years old when Democrats assumed power in 2009, which also happened to be the 10th anniversary of the Columbine shootings. Rampage killings at American schools were very much on the national radar. But Democrats had a problem: Having inflamed right-wingers by passing a massive stimulus shortly after Obama was sworn in and then driven the right crazy by ramming ObamaCare through, they worried that pushing any more big-ticket Democratic priorities would cost them control of Congress in the midterms. I remember them in early 2010 trying to talk themselves into believing that the poor polling for O-Care would turn around as voters got to know the new law better and that a midterm rout would be averted. But they were never sure enough of that to go all-in on gun control and amnesty too. They knew that, to maintain a sizable congressional majority, they’d need their red-state Democrats to get re-elected, and two major pieces of liberal legislation on top of the stimulus and ObamaCare was simply too much.
In all, spare me the holier than thou antics, left wingers. When I want to be told about the sanctity of life from those who get money or support an organization that aborts children, I’ll let you know. It's always the Second Amendment advocacy groups that get slammed for donating to politicians who support their agenda. It's just so tiring.
I’ll tell you who is stained with blood:
Anyone and everyone who publically declares schools “gun free zones”.
You might as well just draw a target on the kids backs...
The left always says that the GOP is beholden to the NRA..well the left is beholden to Planned Parenthood..they would NEVER defund them..EVER..and besides, leftists don’t consider babies to be actual human beings til they are born..when in the womb its A OK to kill them
Excellent point.
Wayne LaPierre had it right back in the 90’s when he said that Clinton was just fine with gun deaths, so long as it advanced the Lefts agenda of did-arming law-abiding citizens.
Liberals WANT this kind of stuff to happen. They love nothing more than dancing on kids coffins and spirit cooking with the blood of victims.
It they didn’t, why did they deny a vote in the Senate on $300 million to provide security measures to schools?
The way it works in the alternate universe liberals live in.
I was thinking earlier on how many weekends in Chicago make an equivalent body count to a school shooting like the one in Florida? Then I took it further and though how illegal alien drunk drivers does it take to create such massacre? And then on to how many hours does it take for all the abortions in the U.S equal thas massacre ?
That day 17 innocent students were killed by a gun. That same day >3000 innocent babies were killed by abortion. And guns are the problem?
Can LEGAL immigrants who are not citizens buy a gun?
I just sent another large donation to the NRA. The NRA had nothing what so ever to do with this kook bird. The FBI dropped the ball on him because they were busy trying to bring our duly elected president down when they weren’t in adulterous texting on the job 50,000 times but the NRA is a great and much needed constitutional protector.
Sounds like the guns are a minor nuisance in comparison. Oh, PP picked a stupid fight.
Do Non-Citizens Have the Right to Keep and Bear Arms?
by Johannes Paulsen Apr 28, 2015
Are non-citizens entitled to the same protection of their constitutionally-protected natural rights that U.S. citizens receive? That is the crux of the issue in the matter of Messmer v. Harrison. On Friday, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina answered in the affirmative with respect to the right to keep and bear arms. The plaintiff, Kirsten Messmer, is a legal permanent resident residing in Wake County, North Carolina, but a citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany . . .
She wanted to obtain a North Carolina concealed handgun permit for self-defense purposes. Ms. Messmer was barred, however, from obtaining such a permit by North Carolina General Statute §14.415-12, which reads, in pertinent part:
(a) The sheriff shall issue a [concealed handgun] permit to an applicant if the applicant qualifies under the following criteria:
(1) The applicant is a citizen of the United States and has been a resident of the State 30 days or longer immediately preceding the filing of the application.
Ms. Messmer brought suit in federal court, arguing that §14.415-12 violated her Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, as well as the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the law.
The District Court agreed. Judge Terrence W. Boyle held:
It is abundantly clear that resident aliens possess many of the same Constitutional rights as citizens in a variety of other situations. Moreover, other courts to consider this issue have ruled that resident aliens possess Second Amendment rights. Two federal courts have actually ruled that similar, though not identical, statutes violated the Second Amendment. Additionally, a federal court found that a very similar state statute violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause….
The Court further finds that in the absence of preliminary injunctive relief, plaintiff will suffer irreparable harm. The deprivation of a constitutional right, even if only briefly, constitutes irreparable harm….
Traditional legal remedies are inadequate to relieve the harm in this case. The inability to carry a concealed firearm for self-defense cannot be quantified by money damages any more than can the experience of being discriminated against solely based on one’s citizenship status. In contrast, the harm to defendants if an injunction is granted is virtually nonexistent.
Compliance with the law is not a cognizable hardship on a defendant. Carandola, 303 F.3d at 521 (“[A] state is in no way harmed by issuance of a preliminary injunction which prevents the state from enforcing restrictions likely to be found unconstitutional. If anything, the system is improved by such an injunction.”).
(See pp. 2-4 of Messmer; rather extensive citations to other court decisions by Judge Boyle are omitted.)
The Judge went on to say that the defendants did not offer a strong argument to limit the North Carolina permitting regime to citizens, and Sheriff Donnie Harrison, the lead defendant, “stated that he agreed with plaintiff that the law at issue in this case was unconstitutional.” If that wasn’t enough, “resident aliens are allowed to possess firearms on their premises and are even allowed to carry firearms openly in North Carolina.” Judge Boyle therefore granted the plaintiff’s preliminary injunction, stopping the Sheriff or other North Carolina officials from enforcing §14.415-12.
Overall, a good result and one which I think is eminently reasonable. I think there’s three things worth considering about this case going forward.
(1) Sometimes it’s the local elections that make a real difference. It’s the local elections that put the people in office that are most likely to have a direct impact on your day-to-day lives. Messmer is an excellent example of this. Sherrif Harrison could have fought this tooth-and-nail. Instead, it appears that he recognized an unconstitutional law when he saw it and offered no defense for it when challenged in court. As a result, the original complaint was filed in March, and the preliminary injunction was granted at the end of April. Instead of trying to drag out the fight, Illinois-style, the local officials frankly acknowledged the issue with the law, and let the chips fall where they may.
(2) If it’s unconstitutional to deny a resident alien the equal protection of firearms laws, how can it be constitutional to deny a non-resident U.S. citizen that same protection? Constitutionally, it’s one thing for Illinois to say (for instance): we’re not going to recognize your Pennsylvania license to carry firearms because Pennsylvania doesn’t have a training requirement, while the firearms experts in Illinois have concluded that ordinary citizens should only carry a firearm after a 16-hour training course. It’s quite another for Illinois to say that, and then deny everyone except the residents of four states the opportunity to take the 16-hour training course and jump through the other administrative hoops just like Illinois residents.
(3) As Professor Volokh discusses on his blog, bans on firearms carry by illegal aliens have been uniformly upheld. But, I’m starting to wonder…why? An illegal immigrant is subject to apprehension, incarceration and deportation for the the misdemeanor offense of improper entry (with a maximum punishment for first-time offenders of 6 months in prison,) not necessarily for committing a violent crime. Pew Research Center estimates that there are 11.2 million illegal immigrants in the country, constituting 3.5% of the population, and 5.1% of the labor force. If the right to keep and bear arms, like the other rights specified in the Bill of Rights is a natural civil right predating the Constitution, is it right to deny illegal aliens this right, if they’re otherwise not guilty any other crime?
(Hat tip: Felix F.)
DISCLAIMER: The above is an opinion piece; it is not legal advice, nor does it create an attorney-client relationship in any sense. If you need legal advice in any matter, you are strongly urged to hire and consult your own counsel. This post is entirely my own, and does not represent the positions, opinions, or strategies of my firm or clients.
I see that more than 900,000 unborn children were aborted in 2016. That is about 100 per hour, or in the ballpark of how fast the children were being murdered in the school in Florida. The members of the (D) party defend abortion as a sacrament in their secular religion yet blame guns for the school shooting. Its always the guns.
Since 1980 the NRA has spent about 200 million on political campaign . In 2017 alone unions spent over 1.3 Billion on campaigns ,,,, where’s the outage ?
About 3,000 babies are murdered every day of the year in America and the left thinks it’s great.
Democrats and liberals can take their crocodile tears about shooting deaths and shove them.
Let’s compare statistics:
Babies killed by abortion: Over 2700 per day.
People killed by any means including guns: Around 40 homicides by any weapon, including snowballs, tools and bare hands per day.
Babies have blood.
Number of INNOCENT people killed by guns each year in America, hundreds.
Number of innocent people killed by abortion each year in America, millions.
Government subsidy of people buying guns each year, zero dollars.
Govrnment subsidy of people having abortions, half a billion dollars just to planned murder alone, each year.
Fuch the socialist liberal hypocrites to hell.
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