Skip to main content

What are they afraid of?

By


On the surface, it would seem the Old Mackie is back in town, questioning the young guns in his party on their proposed filibuster of the Senate bill to bolster background checks and other measures that would allow state and federal law enforcement agencies to have a better record of the gun trafficking in this country.  As it is, you can buy handguns at gun shows and avoid the five-day waiting period mandated by the Brady Bill.  There are any number of other ways to avoid registration of guns.  Yet, Rand Paul has threatened to launch another filibuster, and has the support of 12 fellow Republican senators, leading Sen. McCain to ask, "what are they afraid of?"

The intent of the bill has the backing of 90% of the American public, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, including 74% of NRA members.  McCain was part of a bipartisan Senate committee that forged the bill, after Dianne Feinstein's attempt to introduce a new federal assault weapon ban ground to a halt.  The new Senate bill would have no ban, not even on high capacity clips like those used in the Newtown massacre, which Connecticut has banned.  It is about as innocuous a gun bill as a gun advocate could ask for, while still offering some substance.

For years police have been asking for better background checks and registration that would allow them to track down firearms used in the over 8500 homicides recorded by the FBI in 2011.  Handguns are the weapon of choice, resulting in over 6200 deaths.  Assault rifles are the prime weapons used in multiple shootings.

But, the bill does not really address the nearly 1000 accidental shooting deaths each year, including this recent one in Tennessee.  It also doesn't address the 19,000 suicides carried out each year with firearms, including this recent one where a military recruiting officer apparently chose to end his affair with a 17 year old recruit.

It seems incidents like these have little or no impact on Sen. Rand Paul, who not so long ago went on for 13 long hours on how drones were killing innocent persons all over the world, and could be used on American soil.  Instead, he looks to bathe in the political limelight again, along with fellow young guns Ted Cruz and  Mike Lee, who want to join him in his filibuster, no doubt because of all the attention Paul got last time around.  I'm glad to see Mackie call them out.

Comments

  1. James FergusonApril 11, 2013 at 1:13 PM

    I see Tom Coburn is trying to throw a wet blanket on the bill,

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/10/tom-coburn-gun-background-checks_n_3056893.html

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more