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Our Moloch

ksinger

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There must be some small nod to the terrible reality the day after at least.

This is a bit florid, but sadly, not far off base. Written after Sandy Hook, it could have been written 10 minutes ago. So we can all come here and read it after the next one and the next one and the next one and....

Our Moloch
Garry Wills

Few crimes are more harshly forbidden in the Old Testament than sacrifice to the god Moloch (for which see Leviticus 18.21, 20.1-5). The sacrifice referred to was of living children consumed in the fires of offering to Moloch. Ever since then, worship of Moloch has been the sign of a deeply degraded culture. Ancient Romans justified the destruction of Carthage by noting that children were sacrificed to Moloch there. Milton represented Moloch as the first pagan god who joined Satan’s war on humankind:

First Moloch, horrid king, besmear’d with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears,
Though for the noise of Drums and Timbrels loud
Their children’s cries unheard, that pass’d through fire
To his grim idol. (Paradise Lost 1.392-96)

Read again those lines, with recent images seared into our brains—“besmeared with blood” and “parents’ tears.” They give the real meaning of what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School Friday morning. That horror cannot be blamed just on one unhinged person. It was the sacrifice we as a culture made, and continually make, to our demonic god. We guarantee that crazed man after crazed man will have a flood of killing power readily supplied him. We have to make that offering, out of devotion to our Moloch, our god. The gun is our Moloch. We sacrifice children to him daily—sometimes, as at Sandy Hook, by directly throwing them into the fire-hose of bullets from our protected private killing machines, sometimes by blighting our children’s lives by the death of a parent, a schoolmate, a teacher, a protector. Sometimes this is done by mass killings (eight this year), sometimes by private offerings to the god (thousands this year).

The gun is not a mere tool, a bit of technology, a political issue, a point of debate. It is an object of reverence. Devotion to it precludes interruption with the sacrifices it entails. Like most gods, it does what it will, and cannot be questioned. Its acolytes think it is capable only of good things. It guarantees life and safety and freedom. It even guarantees law. Law grows from it. Then how can law question it?

Its power to do good is matched by its incapacity to do anything wrong. It cannot kill. Thwarting the god is what kills. If it seems to kill, that is only because the god’s bottomless appetite for death has not been adequately fed. The answer to problems caused by guns is more guns, millions of guns, guns everywhere, carried openly, carried secretly, in bars, in churches, in offices, in government buildings. Only the lack of guns can be a curse, not their beneficent omnipresence.

Adoration of Moloch permeates the country, imposing a hushed silence as he works his will. One cannot question his rites, even as the blood is gushing through the idol’s teeth. The White House spokesman invokes the silence of traditional in religious ceremony. “It is not the time” to question Moloch. No time is right for showing disrespect for Moloch.

The fact that the gun is a reverenced god can be seen in its manifold and apparently resistless powers. How do we worship it? Let us count the ways:

1. It has the power to destroy the reasoning process. It forbids making logical connections. We are required to deny that there is any connection between the fact that we have the greatest number of guns in private hands and the greatest number of deaths from them. Denial on this scale always comes from or is protected by religious fundamentalism. Thus do we deny global warming, or evolution, or biblical errancy. Reason is helpless before such abject faith.

2. It has the power to turn all our politicians as a class into invertebrate and mute attendants at the shrine. None dare suggest that Moloch can in any way be reined in without being denounced by the pope of this religion, National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre, as trying to destroy Moloch, to take away all guns. They whimper and say they never entertained such heresy. Many flourish their guns while campaigning, or boast that they have themselves hunted “varmints.” Better that the children die or their lives be blasted than that a politician should risk an election against the dread sentence of NRA excommunication.

3. It has the power to distort our constitutional thinking. It says that the right to “bear arms,” a military term, gives anyone, anywhere in our country, the power to mow down civilians with military weapons. Even the Supreme Court has been cowed, reversing its own long history of recognizing that the Second Amendment applied to militias. Now the court feels bound to guarantee that any every madman can indulge his “religion” of slaughter. Moloch brooks no dissent, even from the highest court in the land.

Though LaPierre is the pope of this religion, its most successful Peter the Hermit, preaching the crusade for Moloch, was Charlton Heston, a symbol of the Americanism of loving guns. I have often thought that we should raise a statue of Heston at each of the many sites of multiple murders around our land. We would soon have armies of statues, whole droves of Heston acolytes standing sentry at the shrines of Moloch dotting the landscape. Molochism is the one religion that can never be separated from the state. The state itself bows down to Moloch, and protects the sacrifices made to him. So let us celebrate the falling bodies and rising statues as a demonstration of our fealty, our bondage, to the great god Gun.

December 15, 2012, 5:25 pm
 

arkieb1

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I wondered at all if anyone was even going to mention the latest school shooting spree. The all powerful, politically unquellable NRA has the blood of every dead man, woman and child on their hands that occurs in these incidents that's all I'm going to say.
 

Matata

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I read an article the other day about the gruesome reality of the brutality of the Vegas massacre seen through autopsies of the victims. The aftermath we see is sanitized -- grieving humans and perhaps a flower topped coffin. It allows us to put protective distance between us and the brutality. Perhaps it's time we unveil the bloody horrific reality of mass murders. Show the photos of those broken bloodied bodies in the news, on posters in front of the orange house, at every meeting of the NRA. Make them look death straight in the face and hope that they choke on their thoughts and prayers.
 

missy

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Yes, no one person can be blamed for all the gun massacres occurring with alarming (though any is too many) frequency. When will the madness stop? When will we come to our collective senses? I would have thought surely long before now yet nothing has changed. Because politics and game playing continues (big) business as usual. :blackeye:

Powerful piece @ksinger.

@Matata is this the article? Or at least makes a similar point.

https://qz.com/1092174/las-vegas-sh...oral-duty-to-watch-footage-of-mass-shootings/
 
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Calliecake

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Until our citizens apply common sense gun laws and restrictions not a damn thing will change. No one other than our military needs these types of guns or magazines with more than a few bullets. Guns are not toys. People need to find another hobby.

Marco Rubio has received over 3 million dollars from the NRA (other politians have been given more money). I’m using Rubio as an example because this shooting happened in a Florida. Rubio sends his thought and prayers after every school or mass shooting. Do you really think he cares about school shooting victims? He has been bought and paid for by the NRA.

As US citizens, we are all to blame for these shootings. We continue to allow them to happen by voting politicans in office who refuse to make changes. This country’s love affair with guns is disgusting.

We know bump stocks helped cause so many people to be shot and killed in Vegas. They are STILL legal.

I can’t imagine how horrific this must be for the families of these children. The children and their families will be affected mentally from what they experienced yesterday, and yet our country doesn’t see the value in getting people the help they need for their mental health.

It’s our responsibility to leave the world a better place for our children. We are failing miserably.
 

Ally T

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@Matata I completely agree with everything you say here.
 

partgypsy

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I don't know what to say. I feel it doesn't make any difference. The right to bear arms is in the constitution. I personally interpret that to mean we as a country are allowed to have a self-raised militia, but lawyers before me interpreted it as broadly as possible, where even 12 year olds can go to places to shoot semi-automatic weapons, and people buy guns at gun shows on the same day with no background checks. Ironically it seems the same people who fight against the right for a woman to have an abortion, are strangely silent when adults and children are mowed down by guns. So why say anything?
 

Snowdrop13

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Rise up. Protest. Lobby. Surely there’s something that can be done? My niece lives in the US- she told me a horrifying story about being involved in a minor car incident; the other driver pulled a gun on her and her husband. How can the “rights” of the few be more important than the safety of the majority??
 

arkieb1

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Rise up. Protest. Lobby. Surely there’s something that can be done? My niece lives in the US- she told me a horrifying story about being involved in a minor car incident; the other driver pulled a gun on her and her husband. How can the “rights” of the few be more important than the safety of the majority??

If only it were that simple - groups like the NRA buy off politicians that make and pass laws as demonstrated in the Rubio example above and they brainwash the public into fearing and rejecting stricter gun control laws, so it isn't even about an outdated amendment any more it's about who is controlling or should I say preventing better legislation from occurring and what their economic interests are in doing so.
 

arkieb1

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27868036_2010710602586438_5079356822017728281_n.jpg
 

Matata

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:(2

Screen Shot 2018-02-15 at 3.34.16 PM.png
 

Arkteia

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I am on a fence. Not because of the constitution (They didn't have AR15s at that time). But because each time something is prohibited, there is a black market formed, giving more jobs to our criminals.

But here is what's wrong:

A) guns are unbelievably cheap. Should be changed, as today any hick on welfare can afford to stockpile ammo. See Cruz's Instagram posts.
B) guns require no insurance. This is what I think needs to be changed. A car needs an insurance. Why not a gun? I think that there is only one, more powerful lobby, that can regulate gun ownership. Insurance companies. Give them jobs. Regulate. If you have to buy insurance for each gun, you may not afford that many. And insurance companies have good ways of screening customers.

Make uninsured gun ownership illegal. Hit owners of multiple guns financially. Raise sales taxes on guns. This will be a good start.

(On a side note - many people dropped the ball here, but about that family that let in Nikolas Cruz after his mom died...how normal is it to let in a person with AR-15? Which he has to lock, but has a key to the drawer?)
 
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AGBF

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There must be some small nod to the terrible reality the day after at least.

This is a bit florid, but sadly, not far off base. Written after Sandy Hook, it could have been written 10 minutes ago. So we can all come here and read it after the next one and the next one and the next one and....

Our Moloch
Garry Wills

Few crimes are more harshly forbidden in the Old Testament than sacrifice to the god Moloch (for which see Leviticus 18.21, 20.1-5). The sacrifice referred to was of living children consumed in the fires of offering to Moloch. Ever since then, worship of Moloch has been the sign of a deeply degraded culture. Ancient Romans justified the destruction of Carthage by noting that children were sacrificed to Moloch there. Milton represented Moloch as the first pagan god who joined Satan’s war on humankind:

First Moloch, horrid king, besmear’d with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears,
Though for the noise of Drums and Timbrels loud
Their children’s cries unheard, that pass’d through fire
To his grim idol. (Paradise Lost 1.392-96)

Read again those lines, with recent images seared into our brains—“besmeared with blood” and “parents’ tears.” They give the real meaning of what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School Friday morning. That horror cannot be blamed just on one unhinged person. It was the sacrifice we as a culture made, and continually make, to our demonic god. We guarantee that crazed man after crazed man will have a flood of killing power readily supplied him. We have to make that offering, out of devotion to our Moloch, our god. The gun is our Moloch. We sacrifice children to him daily—sometimes, as at Sandy Hook, by directly throwing them into the fire-hose of bullets from our protected private killing machines, sometimes by blighting our children’s lives by the death of a parent, a schoolmate, a teacher, a protector. Sometimes this is done by mass killings (eight this year), sometimes by private offerings to the god (thousands this year).

The gun is not a mere tool, a bit of technology, a political issue, a point of debate. It is an object of reverence. Devotion to it precludes interruption with the sacrifices it entails. Like most gods, it does what it will, and cannot be questioned. Its acolytes think it is capable only of good things. It guarantees life and safety and freedom. It even guarantees law. Law grows from it. Then how can law question it?

Its power to do good is matched by its incapacity to do anything wrong. It cannot kill. Thwarting the god is what kills. If it seems to kill, that is only because the god’s bottomless appetite for death has not been adequately fed. The answer to problems caused by guns is more guns, millions of guns, guns everywhere, carried openly, carried secretly, in bars, in churches, in offices, in government buildings. Only the lack of guns can be a curse, not their beneficent omnipresence.

Adoration of Moloch permeates the country, imposing a hushed silence as he works his will. One cannot question his rites, even as the blood is gushing through the idol’s teeth. The White House spokesman invokes the silence of traditional in religious ceremony. “It is not the time” to question Moloch. No time is right for showing disrespect for Moloch.

The fact that the gun is a reverenced god can be seen in its manifold and apparently resistless powers. How do we worship it? Let us count the ways:

1. It has the power to destroy the reasoning process. It forbids making logical connections. We are required to deny that there is any connection between the fact that we have the greatest number of guns in private hands and the greatest number of deaths from them. Denial on this scale always comes from or is protected by religious fundamentalism. Thus do we deny global warming, or evolution, or biblical errancy. Reason is helpless before such abject faith.

2. It has the power to turn all our politicians as a class into invertebrate and mute attendants at the shrine. None dare suggest that Moloch can in any way be reined in without being denounced by the pope of this religion, National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre, as trying to destroy Moloch, to take away all guns. They whimper and say they never entertained such heresy. Many flourish their guns while campaigning, or boast that they have themselves hunted “varmints.” Better that the children die or their lives be blasted than that a politician should risk an election against the dread sentence of NRA excommunication.

3. It has the power to distort our constitutional thinking. It says that the right to “bear arms,” a military term, gives anyone, anywhere in our country, the power to mow down civilians with military weapons. Even the Supreme Court has been cowed, reversing its own long history of recognizing that the Second Amendment applied to militias. Now the court feels bound to guarantee that any every madman can indulge his “religion” of slaughter. Moloch brooks no dissent, even from the highest court in the land.

Though LaPierre is the pope of this religion, its most successful Peter the Hermit, preaching the crusade for Moloch, was Charlton Heston, a symbol of the Americanism of loving guns. I have often thought that we should raise a statue of Heston at each of the many sites of multiple murders around our land. We would soon have armies of statues, whole droves of Heston acolytes standing sentry at the shrines of Moloch dotting the landscape. Molochism is the one religion that can never be separated from the state. The state itself bows down to Moloch, and protects the sacrifices made to him. So let us celebrate the falling bodies and rising statues as a demonstration of our fealty, our bondage, to the great god Gun.

December 15, 2012, 5:25 pm

I really think that was a great article, k. I found it a bit long, sometimes restating what had already been stated, but not too florid. I like its insights. If it were shorter, the insights would have been punchier.

Thanks very much for posting that. (And I had never seen it before, although it was written after Sandy Hook.)

Deb :wavey:
 

telephone89

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The american constitution was updated to allow women to vote and to disallow slavery. I dont understand why people wont let the gun one be updated. It irks me when someone says its a "constitutional right". it wasnt even IN the original constitution!
 

ksinger

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The american constitution was updated to allow women to vote and to disallow slavery. I dont understand why people wont let the gun one be updated. It irks me when someone says its a "constitutional right". it wasnt even IN the original constitution!

You DO understand that it is genuinely difficult it is to amend the constitution, I hope? More so now, than ever. Or at least amending it the way we've done all amendments since the founding is ultra-difficult at present.

But never fear, ALEC and the Koch's are working tirelessly behind the scenes, leveraging disaffection with government and pushing for a constitutional convention. I'd like to say that would never happen, but it's a totally whack world we're living in right now, so maybe not so out of the realm of possibility anymore. If that happens, the US is well and truly done, screwed, down the toilet.

http://thehill.com/homenews/state-w...et-to-plan-possible-constitutional-convention

Back to guns though, it would be much easier and more sensible to try to restrict sales and ownership of particular weapons or classes of weapons.
 

telephone89

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@ksinger Of course it is difficult, but it isnt infallible and has been done. I agree that restrictions and regulations should be easier, but even that is protested with how it's a right to own a semi automatic or modern hunting rifle - based in 2nd amm.
 

ksinger

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@ksinger Of course it is difficult, but it isnt infallible and has been done. I agree that restrictions and regulations should be easier, but even that is protested with how it's a right to own a semi automatic or modern hunting rifle - based in 2nd amm.

Saying the 2nd amendment was not a part of the original constitution is hair-splitting to a silly degree.

And I never said restrictions should be easier, just that attacking the problem from that direction would be more sensible, and more likely to get real traction. The idea of cracking open the constitution instead of doing things legislatively is going for the more difficult-to-achieve solution over the easier, and really, just shows how IMO, the populace, regardless of political stripe, no longer really has even a basic level of agreement that our form of government is good and workable. I believe the country is blowing apart within the minds of the citizens, and the mind is where any government exists. Agreement to abide by the precepts of the "American experiment", is all we've ever really had. Once people lose a base level of agreement? I think you're seeing it.

So right now, gun regulation by any means, is NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. Or at least, not until congress is flipped very firmly back into the democrats hands. This administration's love affair with extremely well-armed white nationalism is too deep.

We are heading into very very interesting times.

I warned of right-wing violence in 2009. Republicans objected. I was right.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...an-uproar-i-was-right/?utm_term=.f20dcca4a862


c
 
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missy

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Disgraceful. Disgusting. Unconscionable.:cry2:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/02/every-attempt-to-change-gun-laws-under-trump.html



How Republicans Have Been Making Gun Laws Worse Under Trump
By Margaret Hartmann@MargHartmannShare
15-trump-nra.w710.h473.jpg

In 2017, Trump told the NRA, “You have a true friend and champion in the White House.” Photo: Mark Cornelison/TNS via Getty Images

A short time after 17 people were killed in a shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school on Wednesday, Florida senator Marco Rubio said he hoped the people already talking about gun control would “reserve judgment.”

in 2018, and at least the 273rd school shooting since 20 first-graders and six adults were slaughtered in Newtown, Connecticut. After that tragedy, Rubio tweeted that he was praying for Newtown, and there would be “plenty of time for policy debate later.”

Like many of his GOP colleagues, Rubio has repeatedly tweeted that his thoughts are with the latest mass-shooting victims, yet somehow it’s never the right time to dig in on the underlying causes. In the past year Democrats have introduced more than 30 pieces of legislation aimed at combatting gun violence, and only four have had GOP sponsors, according to the Washington Post.

That isn’t to say that Republicans have been inactive on gun-related issues. Since President Trump took office, he and other Republicans have launched several efforts to loosen gun-control laws. There are also a handful of GOP lawmakers who expressed interest in fixing the gaps in existing laws that appeared to play a role in recent mass shootings — yet so far, nothing has come of those efforts. Here’s what Washington has been up to.

Trump Blocked a Rule That Made It Harder for the Mentally Ill to Obtain Guns
In December 2016, the Obama administration finalized a rule that would have added people receiving Social Security checks for mental illnesses and deemed unfit to handle their own finances to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). The rule was written in response to the massacre in Newtown and the Obama administration predicted it would have added 75,000 people to the national database.

Both the NRA and the ACLU said the law violated the Second Amendment rights of the mentally ill without due process, and Congress quickly voted to overturn the rule, mostly on party lines. President Trump signed the measure into law in February 2017, with no public signing ceremony. Since then Trump has continued to say mass shootings are a “mental-health problem,” not a gun problem.

15-lapierre.w710.h473.jpg

President Trump with NRA executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre during a meeting on Trump’s Supreme Court nomination of Neil Gorsuch in the White House on February 1, 2017. Photo: Pool/Getty Images
Trump Made It Easier for “Fugitives” to Buy Guns
The 1993 Brady Act, which mandated federal background checks on gun purchases, says that gun dealers can’t complete the sale if the prospective buyer is a “fugitive from justice.” Since 1998, the background-check system issued 180,000 denials for that reason. For years the FBI argued that this restriction applied to anyone with an outstanding arrest warrant, while the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives said it only applies to people with outstanding warrants who have fled across state lines to avoid prosecution.

In February 2017, Trump’s Justice Department sided with the ATFand purged about 500,000 people previously labeled “fugitives” from the system. In October, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reportedthat there had already been an 80 percent decline in the number of gun sales denied to “fugitives,” compared to the previous year:


Nationwide, there were 1,581 gun sales or carry permits sought by fugitives that were declined between March and August in 2016; 18 percent of all denials. This year, there were 321 denials based on entries in the “fugitive from justice” category in NICS, or 4 percent of all denials nationwide.

GOP Moved to Loosen Gun Restrictions on Federal Lands
Carrying loaded firearms on the roughly 12 million acres of federal lands controlled by the Army Corps of Engineers has been banned since the 1970s, with the exception of areas that allow hunting and target shooting. In March the Corps gave notice in a lawsuit over this policy that it is “reconsidering the firearms policy challenged in this case, as well as plaintiffs’ requests for permission to carry firearms on Army Corps property.” The House GOP also tucked a rider that would change the policy into an energy-appropriations bill.

On March 2, his first day in office, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke revoked a ban on using lead ammunition on wildlife refuges. The Obama administration had implemented the ban two months earlier to prevent plants and animals from being poisoned by lead left on the ground or in their water supply.

Republicans Advanced a Bill to Make It Easier to Buy Gun Silencers
A bill that would loosen restrictions on buying gun silencers, known as the Sportsmen’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act, was originally set to get a hearing on June 14, 2017, but it had to be delayed when a gunman opened fire that morning on members of Congress practicing for a charity baseball game, seriously injuring Majority Whip Steve Scalise and wounding four others. It was marked up by a House committee in late September, but the vote was delayed again after 59 people were fatally shot during a concert in Las Vegas on October 1.

A day later, Politico reported that the vote wasn’t anticipated “anytime soon” — but it’s expected to pass eventually. The bill would also make it more difficult for the ATF to classify ammunition as “armor piercing,” and ease restrictions on the interstate transportation of weapons.

15-bump-stock.w710.h473.jpg

A bump stock, like the one used in the Las Vegas shooting. Photo: George Frey/Getty Images
Congress Discussed Banning Bump Stocks, Has Yet to Pass Anything
After a “bump stock,” which makes a legal semiautomatic firearm function like an illegal automatic weapon, was used in the Las Vegas shooting, Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein introduced a bill that would ban the devices. Even a handful of Republicans said they wanted to look into outlawing bump stocks, including Senators Ron Johnson, Lindsey Graham, and John Cornyn. However, many GOP lawmakers backed off after the NRA said their legality should be addressed by the ATF.

In early December, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the matter and the ATF initiated a new review of bump stocks. The ATF already told Congress in 2010 and 2013 that it doesn’t have the authority to regulate the devices, and the agency’s acting director warned that they might conclude again that they need guidance from Congress. “It’s hard to believe this is anything other than another way for Republicans to stall congressional action,” Feinstein said.

Rather than waiting for Congress, at least 15 states and other municipalities began considering their own bump-stock restrictions. New Jersey and Massachusetts have already enacted new laws banning bump stocks (which were illegal in New York and California prior to the Las Vegas shooting).

Paul Ryan Ignored Calls to Form a Select Committee on Gun Violence
In the wake of the Las Vegas shooting, Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called on Speaker Paul Ryan to create a Select Committee on Gun Violence that would “study and report back common sense legislation” to stop mass shootings. She also asked him to take up a bipartisan bill that would establish mandatory background checks. Ryan did not respond. Two days after 26 people were killed in a Texas church shooting on November 5, Democrats tried to force a vote to establish a gun-violence select committee, but their effort drew no Republican support.

15-congress.w710.h473.jpg

People on Capitol Hill to protest the concealed carrying of guns on December 6, 2017. Photo: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images
House Passed Bill Allowing Concealed Carry Across State Lines
The gunman in the Texas church massacre was kicked out of the military for domestic assault, which should have prevented him from purchasing a semiautomatic rifle. But the Air Force later admitted that it failed to submit his records to the federal database.

In response, Senators Chris Murphy, a Democrat, and John Cornyn, a Republican, introduced the Fix NICS Act, which aims to improve the reporting of criminal records and domestic-violence data to the FBI. It seemed like the rare piece of gun legislation that could make it out of both chambers of Congress.

Then it was tacked on to the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, which would allow people granted a concealed-carry license in their state to conceal a weapon anywhere in the country, overruling other states’ gun laws. That top NRA legislative priority passed by a vote of 231-198 in December, mostly on partisan lines.

The combined bill is likely DOA in the Senate, where it would need the support of nine Democrats. Murphy and Cornyn are calling for the two bills to be considered separately, but it’s unclear when the bills might get a vote.

Trump Proposed Cutting Millions of Dollars From the Background-Check System
Trump’s fiscal year 2019 budget, which he rolled out two days before the Florida shooting, calls for reducing funding to the National Criminal Records History Improvement Program and the NICS Act Record Improvement Program, which give states federal grants to improve reporting to the national background-check database. Trump proposed cutting their funding from the current $73 million to $61 million, a 16 percent reduction.
 

Matata

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From Facebook. Epic idea.

Screen Shot 2018-02-16 at 12.28.12 PM.png
 

Maria D

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the populace, regardless of political stripe, no longer really has even a basic level of agreement that our form of government is good and workable. I believe the country is blowing apart within the minds of the citizens, and the mind is where any government exists. Agreement to abide by the precepts of the "American experiment", is all we've ever really had. Once people lose a base level of agreement? I think you're seeing it.

Wow. That hit me right in the gut. You are so right. Scary times.
 

luv2sparkle

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Every time this kind of tragedy occurs all I can think, is why can we not come up with a solution to this problem? We have been grappling with it since Columbine and not one president or congress since has been able to come up with a solution that would make a difference.
 

Matata

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guncontrol.jpg
 

House Cat

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Maybe the kids of this nation will be more effective than the adults. They are staging walk outs and marches on the capital. One article said they wanted marches on capitals of every city. I keep wondering how we, as the adults of this nation, can effectively support them. How can we give them the boost they need RIGHT NOW? Because I have felt powerless for too long.
 

Loves Vintage

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HouseCat - Thank you for posting this. We happened to be watching tv yesterday and saw Emma Gonzalez speaking on MSNBC (the only cable news channel we get.) She is truly remarkable and an inspiration. I believe she and her classmates are the voice of the next generation. The students expressed that they are hoping for marches in other large cities. Do you know if any marches will be going on in your area?
 
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