Who can argue that it’s crazy or wild to suggest that the “registration, license and insurance“ that every cop asks for at every traffic stop wouldn’t be reasonable when somebody is found with a gun?
Of course once again Thom has riddled his post with a common sense approach to a complex problem wholly created and implemented by the Republican Party.
It makes total sense and it’s a logical approach to gun safety that includes revenue for states and profits insurance companies. In fact it’s so logical my brain is spinning around in my skull trying to find any argument against it.
There is none, other than the Party of Death and Destruction won’t do anything that could upset it’s base.
States could pass legislation just like they do with cars. PA needs a state inspection every year for vehicles, while other states have different requirements.
This is the place we start to make our families safe from gun violence. It’s reasonable, revenue producing, profitable and fairly easy to implement. Most people would be happy to comply for safety reasons. Republicans will hate it.
The main argument against this insurance proposal is that it will not deliver the promised positive effects and will have negative effects. The positive effects will be thwarted because there are 400 million guns in circulation (and growing daily), and the functional life of a firearm is up to a century. Thirty years after this law has passed, the only guns that will be out of circulation are those belonging to the less affluent who dropped out because of the burden of fees and regulations. Until gun availability among criminals is reduced, the less affluent are those most likely to need a gun for righteous self-defense. Instead this plan is disarming them and making the right to self-defense something that the rich can buy while the poor are deprived.
I believe there are many that will be thankful and participate in a program such as this. Fines for not registering and completing a safety course should be the same as driving violations.
Also, to buy ammo, a current license you’ve completed all the necessary requirements must be produced. It’s worth a try.
Even if the US overcame all objections, repealed the second amendment, and passed a mandatory-surrender law, non-compliance would hobble the program. If we matched New Zealand’s compliance (33%), there’d still be about 115 million guns. That’s ~32 guns per 100 people, a much higher ratio than almost all other countries, and, while the law-abiding would comply, criminals would not. Their cost may go up, but guns enable them to make money.
In Germany people are required to have 1.1 million € worth of liability insurance to own a gun. Guns are required to be kept locked up and police can randomly check that they are. A family who did not do this properly, had a son who went and shot multiple people in a school in 2011. His parents and sister changed their names afterwards and moved away. Life would have been much simpler if the dad who was licensed had just locked up the guns properly. His son would not have gotten permission to use one because one must be licensed and under the age of 25 must pass a psychological test. However, Germany still has people committing suicides with guns, which is just higher in households with guns in general. Roughly 1 million people of the 84 million in Germany own guns. There are around 5 million guns. So, all of these people are paying for liability insurance, and have had to get licensed to carry a gun, which includes training. To do so, they have to be hunters, join a shooting club, or prove that their life is in danger. I have read that in Switzerland the vast majority of firearm related deaths are suicides. They have few restrictions on gun ownership, but more than the US. All Swiss males have mandatory conscription so they learn to use arms because they get formal training between the ages of 18 and 34. So, while they are a neutral country, they are also prepared to have every male of those ages do battle.
From what I have also heard, the NRA also doesn’t mention that in Switzerland, they do not permit ammunition to be kept in the home, it must be locked in a safe armory.
Regrettably, this is true. They don’t defend African American legal gun owners, and market racialized fear by means of selling gun ownership as masculine and white. This dates back to when Harlan Carter and his colleagues effected a hostile takeover of the NRA at their 1977 convention in Cincinnati.
When I read Thom's forward. My mind flipped I thought immediately of Philando Castile, when traffic stopped he advised the cop that he had a permit for a gun, and the coward shot him dead on the spot. 40 seconds from traffic stop to dead.
I was and still am angry at Philando Castile’s unjustified and unnecessary murder. The police officer responsible was of course never disciplined, and the NRA didn’t say a word to criticize Mr, Castile’s murder. The NRA is concerned excluding with protecting the rights of white gun owners exclusively.
Thom has made this commonsense argument time and time again. How could anyone not be onboard with it? Cars have myriad uses, only 1 of which is to kill or injure. Guns have a total of 2 uses: Training and field implementation (killing/ incapacitating). Vehicles are regulated fairly comprehensively, while gun regulation is virtually nonexistent. Why?
I suspect the "why" is what we're really after, and I'm fairly certain it contains some very sinister and cynical purposes.
Thanks Thom, I have thought this for a long time. The absurdity is breathtaking when it’s looked at like that! Seems like this needs to be repeated over and over.
And the chorus from the gun lobby screeches ‘I have a Right to won a gun as stated in the Constitution! There is no Right to own a car!!’ Repeat over, and over and over and…
I agree with the proposal! Never going to be put into law by the maga rats who hold office in state and national legislatures
Exactly. We must vote for candidates who understand we voted for them to implement the will of the people. We vote you in, and we will vote you out if you fail to do so. Fiercely.
The people are frustrated and angered by the lack of compliance, the abject refusal of our representatives to comply with the electorate’s demands. The chickens are coming home to roost, the party of traitors and fascists formerly known as the GOP are going down in flames as crazy takes it’s toll on candidate quality. The House and Senate are already wringing their hands over people like George Santos, Marjorie Three-Toes and a host of low quality politicians who have no idea what they’re doing. Their days are numbered.
We are fighting a similar battle in the state of Ohio. The General Assembly, the state Senate and federal congressional districts are heavily gerrymandered to favor Republicans. The state legislature pays far more attention to big money, and we just hate our former statehouse Speaker Larry Householder received 20 years and former GOP chairman Matt Borges received 5 years in Federal prison for accepting bribes from First Energy for enacting a bill that stuck Ohio taxpayers with the cost of bailing out First Energy’s failing power plants. Several First Energy executives received prison time for their crimes.
The General Assembly felt free to ignore voters’ wishes to draw nonpartisan districts when we voted in favor of a referendum requiring them to do it. They kicked the can down the road and did nothing, and before the 2022 election, they ignored three separate orders from the Supreme Court of Ohio requiring them to redraw fair senate districts, and now the Supreme Court is 4-3 in favor of Republicans, and one of the justices is Governor Mike DeWine’s son.
Ohio’s blatant Republican gerrymandering is also the reason why we have all around Trump fluffer and ignoramus Gym Jordan in Congress. Many of us want to know exactly what Gym knew about the doctor who sexually abused members of OSU’s wrestling team. I suspect he knows a lot more than he’s willing to admit.
This year, our “esteemed” Secretary of State, Frank LaRose, ran an August election to attempt making it more difficult to amend the state Constitution, even though a recent state law banning August special elections had gone into effect. We resoundingly defeated LaRose’s effort to make it harder to amend our state Constitution. We also voted to put reproductive issues in the state Constitution and voted to allow statutory recognition of the right to use recreational marijuana. The Republican houses were not very pleased and 4 Republican General Assembly members threatened to remove jurisdiction to hear these cases from the Supreme Court, but the current speaker shot down that idea.
LaRose is running a well funded campaign to get rid of Sherrod Brown as a senator from Ohio. Sherrod Brown has actually done rather a decent job. Peter Thiel bought JD Vance his seat as junior senator from Ohio, and unfortunately the Democratic candidate didn’t conduct a very good campaign.
Kathy, I’m well of all the Republican machinations to divert and run rough shod over the will of the people. My sister is retiring this year from teaching in a district east of Columbus. I despise people who’ve cheated to get into positions of power and then think they’re above the law. The gerrymandering is illegal declared by the SCOTUS yet they continue to ignore the law. OH is going to find out.
Unfortunately, in Common Cause v. Rucho, SCOTUS declined to ban gerrymandering caused in order to grant one party political advantage. SCOTUS has shown that the Republican majority is not interested in protecting voting rights. They have already demonstrated this with gutting Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act and legalizing campaign finance bribery in Citizens United. To give SCOTUS some credit, they did mandate that Alabama was required to create two black majority districts under the Voting Rights Act, but they could have saved themselves the trouble by leaving the VRA intact in the first place.
State voters have to litigate these issues under state constitutional law. In Pennsylvania, the legislature was required to redraw voting districts based on the state constitution’s requirement that districts be drawn as compactly as possible. Despite Robin Vos’s (Wisconsin’s GOP state speaker) threat to impeach a newly appointed Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, a majority of the court is likely to decide that Wisconsin’s state and Federal electoral districts are illegally gerrymandered.
When Ohio’s previous court (with Maureen O’Connor as chief Justice) determined the Ohio state’s senate districts were illegally drawn, the majority decided that the state’s districts were illegally gerrymandered under state law. Chief Justice O’Connor was the deciding vote in this case. Now that Chief Justice O’Connor is retired, she is working to get an initiative on the ballot that would have a citizens’ redistricting commission draw state and federal districts.
This is true, but Tim Ryan and Nan Whaley didn’t run especially great campaigns, even though I voted for both of them. I read Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” and I got the impression that he was treating Appalachian people with some disrespect. He seemed to present the worst examples of behavior of some people of Appalachian origin as characteristic of all people of Appalachian origin. Vance’s mother and grandmother “Memaw” were from Appalachian Kentucky, but Vance himself was born and raised in Middletown, Ohio, which is also the hometown of Chicago Tribune editor and columnist Clarence Page.
Vance did spend summers and vacations in the part of Kentucky his mother and grandmother came from, so he came to know something of life in Kentucky. What he doesn’t seem to realize is that his experiences gave him opportunities few others ever had, and he seemed to forget this in his writing. I also found Vance to be an utter opportunist when it came to running for the Senate. Before he ran for the Senate, Vance was rightly opposed to Donald Trump and saw him as a political liability. However, after Vance received a hefty amount of cash from Peter Thiel, he changed his position 180 degrees and Vance then couldn’t say enough about how great he thought Trump was. I didn’t vote for him, but he got in anyway,. I don’t want to see Frank LaRose defeat Sherrod Brown as Brown has been a good senator. I’d hate to see LaRose in that seat.
I agree - many people are not aware that LBJ tried to get universal gun registration and insurance requirements into the 1968 Gun Control Act, but those provisions were not adopted. To be frank, gun bans will not work, because almost no one will vote for them. When writing the 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA), Congress originally proposed a straight ban on private ownership of machine guns and sawed-off rifles and shotguns. But they were afraid the conservative Supreme Court of that time would overturn the law, so they instead laid out requirements for registration with the ATF, a full background check and a $200 transfer tax to purchase such restricted weapons. That approach passed muster with the Court. My feeling is that all high-capacity semi-automatic weapons would be covered by the NFA under the term "Paramilitary weapons" and otherwise treated as currently restricted weapons are handled by the NFA. In addition, all Glock pistols would be brought under this "new NFA" because there is a device (called a "Glock switch") that turns all Glocks into true machine guns. Adding an insurance requirement should be easy - the extremely destructive effect of these weapons is very well documented. The advantage of a national law is that it will affect every such weapon in the country. With our current Supreme Court, no attempt to ban any weapons will succeed, but a rational attempt to control the illegal and irresponsible use of such weapons should pass muster.....
Thom's rationale, while perfectly reasonable to rational people who believe in a government of, by, and for All the people, will not alter the mindset of the pro-fascist, anarchist right-wing who see guns as essential to their plans to bring about an end to democracy and to protect and defend fascism once established.
They see the Second Amendment as essential to protect themselves from a tyrannical government
which they see the U.S. government as being. This is just ONE MORE reason why those of us who believe in Democracy must continue to understand and shout from the rooftops what is at stake in the present moment. Once again "these are the times that try men's souls", and once again we must "resolve that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Yes Mr. Cassidy, I think you are correct. The best reason, the most powerful argument to own a firearm is to use it against the democratic government of a country. This is the not-so-hidden argument of the right wing supporters of oligarchy. They have no idea what they are asking for. The consequences are just as bad for them as for everyone else.
The problem with their ideas is that a bunch of semi trained firearm owners are no match for a modern, well-armed, trained and disciplined army. What Trump wants to do if he’s re-elected is to immediately invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, which would allow him to call out Federal troops and Federalized National Guard members against anyone who dares protest. It’s tremendously ironic that the only president responsible for causing an insurrection in response to losing a legitimate election is now willing to invoke it to quell any dissent to his criminal and unconstitutional behavior. In addition, if Trump is re-elected, he will also weaponize the Department of Justice to go after any of his critics, and this would include journalists, bloggers, or ordinary citizens who point out his misconduct.
Mr. Hartman. Occasionally the simplest, most obvious arguments are also the most perspicacious. They seem simple and obvious to the rest of us only after a brilliant individual voices them. Only then is it easy for us to see through the fog. Thank you for this idea.
I never get it why we don't pay attention to Japan that has no school shootings. Maybe you could write about American myopia, where we ignore what other countries do that works, the Norwegian criminal justice system also being on that list. Here's a post I put out a while back that covers both of them: "Our Shocking Ignorance about Guns & Prisons": https://suespeaks.org/shocking-ignorance-guns-prisons.
Regrettably, Americans are completely ignorant about life in other countries. We also have a history of tolerating violence, especially when such violence is directed toward people of color. Many Americans don’t speak foreign languages and get offended if they hear others speaking a foreign language. Our ignorance about the rest of the world is frankly abysmal. We also have this mistaken idea that there is nothing we have to learn from or about foreign countries, and that is also seriously mistaken.
The truth is that America’s unique history has produced this exceptional situation. For over two centuries, gun buying has been effectively unrestrained. Neither a total stoppage in gun sales nor even repealing the 2nd amendment would significantly reduce the volume in the short term. No other country has had to deal with that.
Also, note that the data prove that the US is uniquely violent. Our non-gun homicide rate in 2010 (1.7 per 100,000 people) was more than double the total homicide rate in non-US, high-income countries (0.8). So even with zero gun homicides, the total US homicide rate would still be more than double their total rate.
The GOP is pushing anarchy to prove democracy can't work. The GOP has been doing this for the last 50 years and giving the rich tax breaks. When they come to power, they will probably round up all the guns first thing. Nobody is going to like raw capitalism, except the 1 percenters.
Whenever the Republicans have taken over the Congress and Senate during and after Reagan’s terms in office, they immediately start showing how incapable they are of governing. They have this idea that they don’t want government to work, and immediately prove the point when they get into office. This most recent session presents good examples of that. First, it took them two weeks to elect a Speaker, and they elected Kevin McCarthy, who was only too eager to grovel to nihilists like MTG and Matt Gaetz in order to get the job. MTG and Lauren Boebert proceeded to have a cat fight about it in the Capitol’s ladies room, because MTG supported McCarthy and Boebert did not.
After installing McCarthy as Speaker, the GQP then began to play chicken with congressional appropriations and threatened a shutdown to get their way. Since McCarthy wasn’t obsequious enough for the wingnuts, Gaetz single-handedly removed McCarthy as McCarthy had given Gaetz the power to do it. They then immediately expressed a desire to impeach President Biden, even though they lack any evidence or constitutional foundation to do it. It seems to me that the real reason they want to impeach Biden is because he’s not Donald Trump, which is not one of the constitutional grounds for impeachment.
Following these fiascos, the Republicans elect a backbencher Christian Nationalist as Speaker, Mike Johnson of Louisiana. Mr. Johnson’s beliefs make it fairly clear he doesn’t want a constitutional government, but a theocratic government under a particularly strict form of Christianity, which blatantly violates the First Amendment. Furthermore, Mr. Johnson has a record of troublesome statements and voted against certifying Mr. Biden’s election.
You are absolutely correct about the Republicans. They are engaging in petty, self-indulgent politics and failing to propose legislation that would actually do some good for the American people. They prefer to enact legislation that benefits their wealthy campaign contributors, and legislation they themselves favor. They have gone out of their way for the last 40 years to prove that government doesn’t work, and they are too lazy to do the work for which we elected them because they have no incentive to do it. They have reached the point where they want an incompetent wannabe dictator back in office in order to make all the decisions and to permit them to rubber stamp the dictator’s desires.
"When [the GOP] come to power, they will probably round up all the guns first thing."
Do you think that such a roundup is possible? I don't think the 30% of US adults who own guns are so brainwashed that they say to Democrats "You'll never take our guns" but turn around and comply if Republicans tried to do it.
Carolyn, I don't know what Jewish has to do with it? I see all races are greedy, and they are full of religious charlatans. They all need a maximum wage, that is for sure.
The majority of Americans want to be safe. When politicians tell them that common-sense gun control measures will make them safe, those measures poll well. On the other hand, as described in the NYT piece from 6/3/2022 entitled "Voters say they want gun control; their votes say something different," when the presumptions and details of such measures are extensively explored after being put on the ballot, they are frequently rejected and often by large margins.
I don’t doubt it, but it’s the NRA who has the biggest amount of clout and a large amount of money to lessen protections about firearms in public. The NRA has been the lobby for gun manufacturers ever since Harlan Carter and his allies took over the NRA in the late 1970s. The NRA has had some financial losses in recent years, with membership and dues declining and revelations about handsome salaries paid to NRA head Wayne LaPierre and other members of the board. The NRA seems to have a fantasy that we are living in a recreation of the Wild West as depicted in American movies, but the crime rate as a whole is much lower than it it was in the 1960s and 1970s.
To cut its losses, the NRA attempted to move to recharter itself as a nonprofit in Texas with the blessing of Texas governor Greg Abbott. Right after this, the NRA tried to file a chapter 11 bankruptcy case to reorganize itself and get a number of their debts discharged. The bankruptcy judge wound up dismissing the case based upon jurisdictional grounds as the NRA was and still is chartered in the state of New York.
Of course once again Thom has riddled his post with a common sense approach to a complex problem wholly created and implemented by the Republican Party.
It makes total sense and it’s a logical approach to gun safety that includes revenue for states and profits insurance companies. In fact it’s so logical my brain is spinning around in my skull trying to find any argument against it.
There is none, other than the Party of Death and Destruction won’t do anything that could upset it’s base.
States could pass legislation just like they do with cars. PA needs a state inspection every year for vehicles, while other states have different requirements.
This is the place we start to make our families safe from gun violence. It’s reasonable, revenue producing, profitable and fairly easy to implement. Most people would be happy to comply for safety reasons. Republicans will hate it.
The GOP, the dictatorship, death and destruction party! I like it.
If the shoe fits….
The main argument against this insurance proposal is that it will not deliver the promised positive effects and will have negative effects. The positive effects will be thwarted because there are 400 million guns in circulation (and growing daily), and the functional life of a firearm is up to a century. Thirty years after this law has passed, the only guns that will be out of circulation are those belonging to the less affluent who dropped out because of the burden of fees and regulations. Until gun availability among criminals is reduced, the less affluent are those most likely to need a gun for righteous self-defense. Instead this plan is disarming them and making the right to self-defense something that the rich can buy while the poor are deprived.
Sorry. I can’t buy into your argument.
I believe there are many that will be thankful and participate in a program such as this. Fines for not registering and completing a safety course should be the same as driving violations.
Also, to buy ammo, a current license you’ve completed all the necessary requirements must be produced. It’s worth a try.
Even if the US overcame all objections, repealed the second amendment, and passed a mandatory-surrender law, non-compliance would hobble the program. If we matched New Zealand’s compliance (33%), there’d still be about 115 million guns. That’s ~32 guns per 100 people, a much higher ratio than almost all other countries, and, while the law-abiding would comply, criminals would not. Their cost may go up, but guns enable them to make money.
In Germany people are required to have 1.1 million € worth of liability insurance to own a gun. Guns are required to be kept locked up and police can randomly check that they are. A family who did not do this properly, had a son who went and shot multiple people in a school in 2011. His parents and sister changed their names afterwards and moved away. Life would have been much simpler if the dad who was licensed had just locked up the guns properly. His son would not have gotten permission to use one because one must be licensed and under the age of 25 must pass a psychological test. However, Germany still has people committing suicides with guns, which is just higher in households with guns in general. Roughly 1 million people of the 84 million in Germany own guns. There are around 5 million guns. So, all of these people are paying for liability insurance, and have had to get licensed to carry a gun, which includes training. To do so, they have to be hunters, join a shooting club, or prove that their life is in danger. I have read that in Switzerland the vast majority of firearm related deaths are suicides. They have few restrictions on gun ownership, but more than the US. All Swiss males have mandatory conscription so they learn to use arms because they get formal training between the ages of 18 and 34. So, while they are a neutral country, they are also prepared to have every male of those ages do battle.
From what I have also heard, the NRA also doesn’t mention that in Switzerland, they do not permit ammunition to be kept in the home, it must be locked in a safe armory.
The NRA is a racist, authoritarian organization. It's original charter was to protect the public, it is now an instrument of white Christian racism.
Regrettably, this is true. They don’t defend African American legal gun owners, and market racialized fear by means of selling gun ownership as masculine and white. This dates back to when Harlan Carter and his colleagues effected a hostile takeover of the NRA at their 1977 convention in Cincinnati.
When I read Thom's forward. My mind flipped I thought immediately of Philando Castile, when traffic stopped he advised the cop that he had a permit for a gun, and the coward shot him dead on the spot. 40 seconds from traffic stop to dead.
I was and still am angry at Philando Castile’s unjustified and unnecessary murder. The police officer responsible was of course never disciplined, and the NRA didn’t say a word to criticize Mr, Castile’s murder. The NRA is concerned excluding with protecting the rights of white gun owners exclusively.
It is tragic.
Thom has made this commonsense argument time and time again. How could anyone not be onboard with it? Cars have myriad uses, only 1 of which is to kill or injure. Guns have a total of 2 uses: Training and field implementation (killing/ incapacitating). Vehicles are regulated fairly comprehensively, while gun regulation is virtually nonexistent. Why?
I suspect the "why" is what we're really after, and I'm fairly certain it contains some very sinister and cynical purposes.
Thanks Thom, I have thought this for a long time. The absurdity is breathtaking when it’s looked at like that! Seems like this needs to be repeated over and over.
And the chorus from the gun lobby screeches ‘I have a Right to won a gun as stated in the Constitution! There is no Right to own a car!!’ Repeat over, and over and over and…
I agree with the proposal! Never going to be put into law by the maga rats who hold office in state and national legislatures
Exactly. We must vote for candidates who understand we voted for them to implement the will of the people. We vote you in, and we will vote you out if you fail to do so. Fiercely.
The people are frustrated and angered by the lack of compliance, the abject refusal of our representatives to comply with the electorate’s demands. The chickens are coming home to roost, the party of traitors and fascists formerly known as the GOP are going down in flames as crazy takes it’s toll on candidate quality. The House and Senate are already wringing their hands over people like George Santos, Marjorie Three-Toes and a host of low quality politicians who have no idea what they’re doing. Their days are numbered.
We are fighting a similar battle in the state of Ohio. The General Assembly, the state Senate and federal congressional districts are heavily gerrymandered to favor Republicans. The state legislature pays far more attention to big money, and we just hate our former statehouse Speaker Larry Householder received 20 years and former GOP chairman Matt Borges received 5 years in Federal prison for accepting bribes from First Energy for enacting a bill that stuck Ohio taxpayers with the cost of bailing out First Energy’s failing power plants. Several First Energy executives received prison time for their crimes.
The General Assembly felt free to ignore voters’ wishes to draw nonpartisan districts when we voted in favor of a referendum requiring them to do it. They kicked the can down the road and did nothing, and before the 2022 election, they ignored three separate orders from the Supreme Court of Ohio requiring them to redraw fair senate districts, and now the Supreme Court is 4-3 in favor of Republicans, and one of the justices is Governor Mike DeWine’s son.
Ohio’s blatant Republican gerrymandering is also the reason why we have all around Trump fluffer and ignoramus Gym Jordan in Congress. Many of us want to know exactly what Gym knew about the doctor who sexually abused members of OSU’s wrestling team. I suspect he knows a lot more than he’s willing to admit.
This year, our “esteemed” Secretary of State, Frank LaRose, ran an August election to attempt making it more difficult to amend the state Constitution, even though a recent state law banning August special elections had gone into effect. We resoundingly defeated LaRose’s effort to make it harder to amend our state Constitution. We also voted to put reproductive issues in the state Constitution and voted to allow statutory recognition of the right to use recreational marijuana. The Republican houses were not very pleased and 4 Republican General Assembly members threatened to remove jurisdiction to hear these cases from the Supreme Court, but the current speaker shot down that idea.
LaRose is running a well funded campaign to get rid of Sherrod Brown as a senator from Ohio. Sherrod Brown has actually done rather a decent job. Peter Thiel bought JD Vance his seat as junior senator from Ohio, and unfortunately the Democratic candidate didn’t conduct a very good campaign.
Kathy, I’m well of all the Republican machinations to divert and run rough shod over the will of the people. My sister is retiring this year from teaching in a district east of Columbus. I despise people who’ve cheated to get into positions of power and then think they’re above the law. The gerrymandering is illegal declared by the SCOTUS yet they continue to ignore the law. OH is going to find out.
Unfortunately, in Common Cause v. Rucho, SCOTUS declined to ban gerrymandering caused in order to grant one party political advantage. SCOTUS has shown that the Republican majority is not interested in protecting voting rights. They have already demonstrated this with gutting Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act and legalizing campaign finance bribery in Citizens United. To give SCOTUS some credit, they did mandate that Alabama was required to create two black majority districts under the Voting Rights Act, but they could have saved themselves the trouble by leaving the VRA intact in the first place.
State voters have to litigate these issues under state constitutional law. In Pennsylvania, the legislature was required to redraw voting districts based on the state constitution’s requirement that districts be drawn as compactly as possible. Despite Robin Vos’s (Wisconsin’s GOP state speaker) threat to impeach a newly appointed Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, a majority of the court is likely to decide that Wisconsin’s state and Federal electoral districts are illegally gerrymandered.
When Ohio’s previous court (with Maureen O’Connor as chief Justice) determined the Ohio state’s senate districts were illegally drawn, the majority decided that the state’s districts were illegally gerrymandered under state law. Chief Justice O’Connor was the deciding vote in this case. Now that Chief Justice O’Connor is retired, she is working to get an initiative on the ballot that would have a citizens’ redistricting commission draw state and federal districts.
The DNC abandoned Tim Ryan and the entire state in 2022.
This is true, but Tim Ryan and Nan Whaley didn’t run especially great campaigns, even though I voted for both of them. I read Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” and I got the impression that he was treating Appalachian people with some disrespect. He seemed to present the worst examples of behavior of some people of Appalachian origin as characteristic of all people of Appalachian origin. Vance’s mother and grandmother “Memaw” were from Appalachian Kentucky, but Vance himself was born and raised in Middletown, Ohio, which is also the hometown of Chicago Tribune editor and columnist Clarence Page.
Vance did spend summers and vacations in the part of Kentucky his mother and grandmother came from, so he came to know something of life in Kentucky. What he doesn’t seem to realize is that his experiences gave him opportunities few others ever had, and he seemed to forget this in his writing. I also found Vance to be an utter opportunist when it came to running for the Senate. Before he ran for the Senate, Vance was rightly opposed to Donald Trump and saw him as a political liability. However, after Vance received a hefty amount of cash from Peter Thiel, he changed his position 180 degrees and Vance then couldn’t say enough about how great he thought Trump was. I didn’t vote for him, but he got in anyway,. I don’t want to see Frank LaRose defeat Sherrod Brown as Brown has been a good senator. I’d hate to see LaRose in that seat.
Now that there are SIX Republicans on the US Supreme Court, we have some prework to do in preparation for reforming US firearms regulations.
I agree - many people are not aware that LBJ tried to get universal gun registration and insurance requirements into the 1968 Gun Control Act, but those provisions were not adopted. To be frank, gun bans will not work, because almost no one will vote for them. When writing the 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA), Congress originally proposed a straight ban on private ownership of machine guns and sawed-off rifles and shotguns. But they were afraid the conservative Supreme Court of that time would overturn the law, so they instead laid out requirements for registration with the ATF, a full background check and a $200 transfer tax to purchase such restricted weapons. That approach passed muster with the Court. My feeling is that all high-capacity semi-automatic weapons would be covered by the NFA under the term "Paramilitary weapons" and otherwise treated as currently restricted weapons are handled by the NFA. In addition, all Glock pistols would be brought under this "new NFA" because there is a device (called a "Glock switch") that turns all Glocks into true machine guns. Adding an insurance requirement should be easy - the extremely destructive effect of these weapons is very well documented. The advantage of a national law is that it will affect every such weapon in the country. With our current Supreme Court, no attempt to ban any weapons will succeed, but a rational attempt to control the illegal and irresponsible use of such weapons should pass muster.....
Thom's rationale, while perfectly reasonable to rational people who believe in a government of, by, and for All the people, will not alter the mindset of the pro-fascist, anarchist right-wing who see guns as essential to their plans to bring about an end to democracy and to protect and defend fascism once established.
They see the Second Amendment as essential to protect themselves from a tyrannical government
which they see the U.S. government as being. This is just ONE MORE reason why those of us who believe in Democracy must continue to understand and shout from the rooftops what is at stake in the present moment. Once again "these are the times that try men's souls", and once again we must "resolve that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Yes Mr. Cassidy, I think you are correct. The best reason, the most powerful argument to own a firearm is to use it against the democratic government of a country. This is the not-so-hidden argument of the right wing supporters of oligarchy. They have no idea what they are asking for. The consequences are just as bad for them as for everyone else.
The problem with their ideas is that a bunch of semi trained firearm owners are no match for a modern, well-armed, trained and disciplined army. What Trump wants to do if he’s re-elected is to immediately invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, which would allow him to call out Federal troops and Federalized National Guard members against anyone who dares protest. It’s tremendously ironic that the only president responsible for causing an insurrection in response to losing a legitimate election is now willing to invoke it to quell any dissent to his criminal and unconstitutional behavior. In addition, if Trump is re-elected, he will also weaponize the Department of Justice to go after any of his critics, and this would include journalists, bloggers, or ordinary citizens who point out his misconduct.
Completely logical and reasonable.
What a great idea! We should all write our legislators in US and State Capitols.
Mr. Hartman. Occasionally the simplest, most obvious arguments are also the most perspicacious. They seem simple and obvious to the rest of us only after a brilliant individual voices them. Only then is it easy for us to see through the fog. Thank you for this idea.
I never get it why we don't pay attention to Japan that has no school shootings. Maybe you could write about American myopia, where we ignore what other countries do that works, the Norwegian criminal justice system also being on that list. Here's a post I put out a while back that covers both of them: "Our Shocking Ignorance about Guns & Prisons": https://suespeaks.org/shocking-ignorance-guns-prisons.
Regrettably, Americans are completely ignorant about life in other countries. We also have a history of tolerating violence, especially when such violence is directed toward people of color. Many Americans don’t speak foreign languages and get offended if they hear others speaking a foreign language. Our ignorance about the rest of the world is frankly abysmal. We also have this mistaken idea that there is nothing we have to learn from or about foreign countries, and that is also seriously mistaken.
The truth is that America’s unique history has produced this exceptional situation. For over two centuries, gun buying has been effectively unrestrained. Neither a total stoppage in gun sales nor even repealing the 2nd amendment would significantly reduce the volume in the short term. No other country has had to deal with that.
Also, note that the data prove that the US is uniquely violent. Our non-gun homicide rate in 2010 (1.7 per 100,000 people) was more than double the total homicide rate in non-US, high-income countries (0.8). So even with zero gun homicides, the total US homicide rate would still be more than double their total rate.
The GOP is pushing anarchy to prove democracy can't work. The GOP has been doing this for the last 50 years and giving the rich tax breaks. When they come to power, they will probably round up all the guns first thing. Nobody is going to like raw capitalism, except the 1 percenters.
Whenever the Republicans have taken over the Congress and Senate during and after Reagan’s terms in office, they immediately start showing how incapable they are of governing. They have this idea that they don’t want government to work, and immediately prove the point when they get into office. This most recent session presents good examples of that. First, it took them two weeks to elect a Speaker, and they elected Kevin McCarthy, who was only too eager to grovel to nihilists like MTG and Matt Gaetz in order to get the job. MTG and Lauren Boebert proceeded to have a cat fight about it in the Capitol’s ladies room, because MTG supported McCarthy and Boebert did not.
After installing McCarthy as Speaker, the GQP then began to play chicken with congressional appropriations and threatened a shutdown to get their way. Since McCarthy wasn’t obsequious enough for the wingnuts, Gaetz single-handedly removed McCarthy as McCarthy had given Gaetz the power to do it. They then immediately expressed a desire to impeach President Biden, even though they lack any evidence or constitutional foundation to do it. It seems to me that the real reason they want to impeach Biden is because he’s not Donald Trump, which is not one of the constitutional grounds for impeachment.
Following these fiascos, the Republicans elect a backbencher Christian Nationalist as Speaker, Mike Johnson of Louisiana. Mr. Johnson’s beliefs make it fairly clear he doesn’t want a constitutional government, but a theocratic government under a particularly strict form of Christianity, which blatantly violates the First Amendment. Furthermore, Mr. Johnson has a record of troublesome statements and voted against certifying Mr. Biden’s election.
You are absolutely correct about the Republicans. They are engaging in petty, self-indulgent politics and failing to propose legislation that would actually do some good for the American people. They prefer to enact legislation that benefits their wealthy campaign contributors, and legislation they themselves favor. They have gone out of their way for the last 40 years to prove that government doesn’t work, and they are too lazy to do the work for which we elected them because they have no incentive to do it. They have reached the point where they want an incompetent wannabe dictator back in office in order to make all the decisions and to permit them to rubber stamp the dictator’s desires.
"When [the GOP] come to power, they will probably round up all the guns first thing."
Do you think that such a roundup is possible? I don't think the 30% of US adults who own guns are so brainwashed that they say to Democrats "You'll never take our guns" but turn around and comply if Republicans tried to do it.
Carolyn, I don't know what Jewish has to do with it? I see all races are greedy, and they are full of religious charlatans. They all need a maximum wage, that is for sure.
Happy Thanksgiving, to you and yours Thom.
I agrée with you Thom, but
A judge (judges?) just decided that Maryland can no longer force people to be fingerprinted and undergo gun training before buying a gun…
I think I read once that legally blind people in Michigan can own guns (& go hunting!)
I can’t imagine the insurance industry would want to come between someone and a gun.
If it’s common sense, Repubs won’t want any part of it. Our only chance is to vote in Dems, but not the corporate oligarchs like Manchin…
Manchin is stepping down, and unfortunately, the current GQP governor of West Virginia, Jim Justice, is likely to be elected to Manchin’s seat.
Yes I know. Manchin isn’t running for re-election because he was expected to lose. We don’t want other Dems though that are similar.
No one expected Sinema would gum up the works.
We all tend to agree about politics, and none of us own firearms. My brother and I especially loathe Trump, so we don’t have arguments.
A majority of Second Amendment advocates support background checks, gun licensing and banning assault weapons. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/07/25/poll-majority--support-universal-background-checks-gun-licensing-assault-weapons-ban
The majority of Americans want to be safe. When politicians tell them that common-sense gun control measures will make them safe, those measures poll well. On the other hand, as described in the NYT piece from 6/3/2022 entitled "Voters say they want gun control; their votes say something different," when the presumptions and details of such measures are extensively explored after being put on the ballot, they are frequently rejected and often by large margins.
I don’t doubt it, but it’s the NRA who has the biggest amount of clout and a large amount of money to lessen protections about firearms in public. The NRA has been the lobby for gun manufacturers ever since Harlan Carter and his allies took over the NRA in the late 1970s. The NRA has had some financial losses in recent years, with membership and dues declining and revelations about handsome salaries paid to NRA head Wayne LaPierre and other members of the board. The NRA seems to have a fantasy that we are living in a recreation of the Wild West as depicted in American movies, but the crime rate as a whole is much lower than it it was in the 1960s and 1970s.
To cut its losses, the NRA attempted to move to recharter itself as a nonprofit in Texas with the blessing of Texas governor Greg Abbott. Right after this, the NRA tried to file a chapter 11 bankruptcy case to reorganize itself and get a number of their debts discharged. The bankruptcy judge wound up dismissing the case based upon jurisdictional grounds as the NRA was and still is chartered in the state of New York.