Things look really bleak for the Republicans when you lay everything out the way Greg Sargent did in his column this morning. Steve Benen drives home the same point. Recent polling is brutal for conservatives. On almost every issue being debated in Washington right now, about two-thirds of the American people either side with the Democrats or side with the position that the Democrats are espousing.
Even assault rifle and large ammo cartridge bans have majority support.
On the other hand, only a quarter of the people seem to be paying attention to the debate over the sequester. At a certain point, I think people tune out when there is one fiscal crisis after another. I think this is also bad news for Republicans, because when the sequester kicks in, a lot more people will start paying attention, and they’ll all be hopping mad.
But . . . Benghazi!, Benghazi! Benghazi!
And, Solyndra, Solyndra, Solyndra.
Fast and Furious!
Is that still a thing?
I’m no expect on who is who in the environmental movement, but Obama’s picks for EPA and Energy Secretary look solid and confirmable.
Solid yes, but the R’s will look at what leverage they can gain in each by holding them up. Keystone? Look at what Lisa M is doing with Interior pick so that she can get her Alaska road.
They’ll be hopping mad, and then vote disproportionately Republican in the 2014 midterms anyways.
You can do the wrong thing, repeatedly, within the memory of the median voter, and promise to do it all over again if you are voted in this time, and still win.
Ask David Cameron.
I never get in here fast enough to comment on the subject I want to – so here I go off subject (plus I lost all my email contact info, so I can’t write directly).
Get off the blunderbuss comments, already. I’m sane, and I don’t think the right to bear arms entitles us to rpg’s – but it does entitle us to reasonable weopons, in my opinion. And yes, semi-auto rifles designed for hunting that hold sixish shells are reasonable – and they are not assault weapons. Yes, they are legitimate for hunting, it’s pretty hard to drop a deer with one shot, no matter how good you are.
Our nations founders did pretty well at prognostication, which is why the wording of most items has held up well over time. They said arms, not blunderbuss, knowing full well that weapons would improve over time.
Should your average citizen be able to purchase huge clips? No. Should they be able to purchase weapons that can be easily changed from semi to full auto? No. Should they be able to purchase any of the other myriad weaponry that is out there? No.
But if you take it further than that, you can add me to the nutball crowd shouting about peeling my weapon from my cold dead hands.
Because if you go further than that, you really will have the old “if all guns are illegal, only criminals will have guns” thing going on.
Be reasonable, Boo.
what are you responding to?
He is responding to:
I don’t give a rat’s ass if shooters are so incompetent as to require 100 rounds to drop a fucking deer. If you do, you should stay OUT of the fucking woods until you can shoot. No competent person, none, need a 30 round mag to kill a deer. If you do, you are a typical NRA moron, and need the gun for testicular support, not hunting.
I despise all NRA wacks. There is NO compromise with these people. Once they have a big gun and get those big gun jollies, you can’t take it out of their hands. The old “cold dead fingies” is really “cold hard dick”.
Just for once, I’d like to hear an NRA gunsuck offer a reasonable statement. But you never hear one.
And, in any case, why not use a semi-automatic hunting rifle. The assault weapons are really no different, but they are generally less-suited for the job. An assault weapon is just a semiautomatic rifle that is made to look like an automatic military-style one. And, most often, they are fitted for ammo better-suited for killing a person than a deer. But, really, if you want to defend your home from multiple intruders, the semi-automatic hunting rifle will work just as well.
All depends on how you define assault weapons. There is more of a distinction, in my mind, than you are drawing.
I’m responding in general to several things you’ve posted. And yes, I know you are exagerting in some instances to make a point. Somewhere along the line you commented on needing more than one shot to drop a deer, etc. The point I’m trying to make is this: I’m a life long hunter. My children hunt. Despite this, I’ve never personally owned a gun in my life – and I won’t. My eldest boy got a shotgun for Christmas, though, and that is a good thing.
For home protection from multiple intruders, a shotgun would serve you best. Rifles are more unwieldy and do not project a pattern at all.
Where did spell check go, by the by?
My definition of an assault rifle is the same as the government’s during the 1994-2004 ban.
Okay?
Functionally, such a gun doesn’t do anything that your semi-automatic hunting rifle doesn’t do. You pull the trigger, it fires one bullet. Pull it again, it fires another. So why ban one and not the other?
Mainly because we have a cultural problem with people thinking they’re in the fucking army or they’re getting ready for the apocalypse. You don’t need a fake M-16. You don’t need a goddamn attachment for a grenade launcher or a flash suppressor. You want to fight off the FBI and the ATF? Use a shotgun or a hunting rifle. You’re going to die a fiery death either way.
I don’t know why the ban was ever let expire.
Well, I do know why, but I never agreed with it.
But the blunderbuss comment was over the top, and over the top feeds the flames. Stay with me in the ranks of the sane.
I don’t know what “blunderbuss” comment you are referring to.
Pretty sure this goes back to your Monday post “Red State Hypocrisy”
(In which it appears someone is taking this as your serious gun control position.)
Well, I don’t and never have belonged to the NRA, but I can tell you that plenty of people who believe it is a good thing that guns are legal are plenty sane. Either you didn’t read closely what I wrote or you’re just sounding off. I agree with the portion of the post you pulled out.
No one hunts with a 30 round magazine, to the best of my knowledge. You certainly don’t need it, and where I live you can’t legally load more than six rounds. I see no legitimate reason for a gun to have a higher capacity than that.
But if you go so hard the other way with gun ownership, you’re just as bad as the pro-gun nuts, and you alienate those who are reasonable.
I am reasonable. In the 60s, I was in Rifle Club. I shot a lot, Marksman 2nd class.
I have no problem with gun ownership.
What we need is
No one who is suggesting limitations wants to end gun ownership. However, there are PLENTY of limitations which will reduce criminal ownership.
I’m down with all of that.
Add one more thingy, most law enforcement wants, a test fire of each and every weapon produced, to give a record of what the bullet fired looks like for criminal comparison in case if crime. This would allow law enforcement to have a record of each weapon to look at to find the weapons used in crimes, and with the paper work of gun sales a way to track how criminals are getting their weapons.
This is why a small minority in the “nra” doesn’t want this because their illegal gravy train would end.
The Founders also said something about the “arms” being “necessary” for “well regulated state militias” (to protect the “security” of the state from the federal gub’mint) but those little textual aspects of the second amendment seem to have dropped out of consideration by the 5 conservative male activists masquerading as “justices”….
No reasonable person wants to ruin or burden legitimate hunting interests and nothing being proposed would do that.
I agree that nothing that is being seriously proposed would do that. And those things should be made law – some of them I can’t believe haven’t been law.
Yes, Repubs absolutely are flouting the will of a majority of Americans on virtually every issue facing the country. Perhaps even angering a majority of Americans.
Of course, a million more Americans also voted for a Dem House than a Repub one, but our corrupt and degenerate “system” delivered an unconquerable 35+ vote Repub majority in the national legislature. Through “legal” gerrymanders quietly and systematically engineered across the nation. As we here all know.
Our crazed “conservative” Repubs know they are virtually untouchable, that’s why they are behaving this way. They aren’t afraid of national public opinion. They aren’t afraid of the toothless and compromised corporate media. Hell, they aren’t even afraid that Dems and Obama will begin to argue that the entire Repub House majority is illegitimate and the product of intentional corrupt gerrymanding.
They know Dems won’t seriously call their legitimacy into question and begin to explain what Repubs pulled in The Great Gerrymander of 2010. Even though that is the only effective message we have.
Most people think this election indicated a desire for “divided government” (the term Obama keeps unhelpfully repeating). They don’t know that Repubs rigged the system. And that Repubs don’t give a rat’s ass about public opinion across the nation.
Hey, the Republicans are talking so much smack about the sequester I almost believe they might actually let it happen for a few hours or even a day or two before caving. Now, they did talk a prodigious amount of smack before caving on taxes and the debt limit, but this time they seem to really mean it, so I can see them toughing out a bit before another anti-Hastert vote.
Or until March 27 when the federal government will shut down all “non-essential services” unless Congress passes a new continuing resolution on spending.
The GOP is going to take a drubbing in the court of public opinion but nothing is going to change until redistricing in 7-10 years.
Enjoy the ride.
Tom Delay thought his mid-decade redistricting plan locked in a Republican House, too.
I have faith that the Republicans can fall off the table this time, too.
Polls are not the same as voting districts. A such polls mean nothing to them. The Taliban has the mountains to hide in secure districts that they obtained by winning the decennial elections. Drones can’t get them out of the mountains so they are going to stay come down rat lines and plant booby traps, mortar people and carry out assassinations. The only thing that will destroy them is to let them blow the economy up and thus exterminate themselves when people have no food or work.
Since Lincoln is so big in consciousness let’s use him to discuss destroying the Taliban. During the Civil war the first 3 years were basically lost as the military commanders did not want to take up arms against the South because they had no love for African Americans, many held slaves themselves and this was the source of their wealth. They were well aware many of the soldiers were fighting brother against brother, were reluctant to fight and hoped for a political settlement until Gettysburg. Literally in the middle of the battle Hooker was resigned his command and Meade was made overall commander. Meade decided to fight, Lincoln made his decisions about slavery to make the slaughter morally defensible when Meade won to continue the slaughter of the South to win. There was never an invansion of the North again.
President Obama and the rest of the Dummycrats are at this same nexus. When will they fight and bloody the Taliban. Right now watch/read/listen to any Dummycrat operative, MSNBC and damn near every liberal/ progressive blog and everyone addresses the Taliban as though they weren’t a monolithic group. That there are some reasonable ones. I ask where? Who has apologized for their behavior towards the country? Who has renounced nullification, a policy designed to provide cover for extreme capitalism-human beings as assets? It is the same policy which girds their objection to abortion, gay rights, equal pay for equal work and control of a woman’s body because each of these people are not seen as Human Beings but assets.This is the real battle being fought. This is the battle to keep the union whole. A battle to decide what capitalism means in America.
Who has apologized for their behavior toward this country?
Geezus, another fucking turd drops from the Repukeliscum turd hole. Why did he end up here?