Still Life

January 17, 2013

7_by_GeliograficFoggy and way-warmer this early Thursday morning up here along California’s northern coast — no frost on the ground today!

Yesterday, President Obama unveiled a massive gun-control agenda — and the shit hit the fan from all the crazed people who believe guns are sacred and must be kept close to the breast or else death will come quicker than Superman can possibly fly.

(Illustration found here).

One example of such crazed goings-on — from Wonkette:

Andrea Mitchell interviewed one of the gun lobby’s many useless idiots, Erich Pratt (heh) of Gun Owners of America, and did us all the service of pointing out that she’s not allowed to go on the teevee and call people fucking cunts no matter how bad she wants to.
Nor can she go on television and announce the sailing dates of ships in wartime.
(Only Geraldo Rivera can do that.)

NRA president David Keene responded to Obama’s plans (via Mediaite) about gun registration and background checks, like laws governing vehicle sales: “Your right to a car is not guaranteed by an amendment to the constitution.”
We’re a crazed peoples, us Americans, and we don’t seem to even understand.
From the LA Times and background checks:

As it now stands, the database is missing millions of names of people who can’t legally own guns.
Federal agencies are supposed to turn over any relevant records — for instance, names of people who failed drug tests or those judged mentally ill — but most, including the Defense Department, haven’t provided anything.
Obama’s first order sets tight deadlines for agencies to identify records and begin to turn them over.
Many more records are under the control of states, but progress in moving them into the NICS system has been slow.
Studies have shown that millions of criminal and drug cases are still missing, in large part because of difficulties in making state court data mesh with the federal system.
Mental health records have been a particularly thorny obstacle: Because of privacy concerns, confusion and the difficulties in finding and converting paper records, most states have made “little or no progress” in turning those records over to NICS, according to a study last year by the Government Accountability Office.

And the problem is gun-pushers.
From USAToday and the blackout of gun-use studies:

Scientists and policy makers say they have little scientific data about gun violence after Congress prohibited federal agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), from offering research grants to study anything that could be used to promote gun control.
If Americans knew more about gun violence, they would take steps to end it, says Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns.
“That’s the last thing the Washington gun lobby wants,” Glaze said.
“To produce good public policy, you need good data.
The gun lobby has been working overtime to blindfold public policy makers for a generation.”

One avenue is to the gun makers, a portion of peoples unaffected by gun laws.
Via The National Law Journal:

It’s a plan with a tortured history.
Amid skyrocketing homicide rates during the 1990s, frustrated victims, gun control advocates and state and local governments tried to hold gun makers and distributors accountable through civil lawsuits.
Gun-rights groups responded by successfully pushing for limits on the legal liability gun makers and distributors could face in court.
The new legislation by Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) would undo provisions of that law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act of 2005, or PLCAA.
Schiff, who is working with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said gun makers don’t deserve special immunity against civil litigation.
“It’s time to roll back this protection as part of our larger effort on stopping gun violence in our country, and make everyone – including gun companies – accountable for their actions,” he said.

Guns-n-roses, anyone?

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