We need to retreat from this culture of violence, not reload again...
By louisehartmann
Since the shooting of Representative Giffords – Members of Congress are now worried about their own security – both in DC and their home districts. In the nation’s Capitol – Congress has access to enhanced security thanks to the Capitol police. Though that’s not good enough for Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert – the guy who’s just about afraid of everything from gays to terror babies. He’s proposing legislation that would allow Members of Congress to carry guns in DC and get this – even on the House floor. I guess he took Sarah Palin’s speech to heart on Wednesday when she talked about how politicians of old settled their difference with pistol duels.
Outside Washington - back in their home districts – Members of Congress must rely on local law enforcement to provide security. A task that’s increasingly difficult as states are bankrupt and are forced into laying off police officers – mainly thanks to irresponsible tax cuts and fiscal policy brought to us by Republican state Governors and right-wing ballot initiatives over the last few decades. In response – Republican Peter King – is calling to borrow money from China to provide Members of Congress with personal security when they’re outside of Washington, DC. King is also introducing legislation to ban carrying firearms within 1,000 feet of himself or any of his 534 colleagues.
It's unclear how average citizens like us can qualify for that same protective barrier. Fear isn’t exclusive to Congress though – it’s also felt among gun owners in the wake of Tucson. Owners of gun shops across Arizona have seen weapon sales nearly double in the days since the massacre as people fear tougher gun laws could be coming down the pike. Reagan and Palin and the rest of the GOP are right – we are an “exceptional” nation. Of all the advanced nations in the world – we’re the only one that thinks more guns equals more security. And after each new gun massacre jolts our nation year in and year out – we refuse to change. We need to retreat from this culture of violence, not reload again.
Comments
#2
Then the electeds pay for this protection out of their own pockets or resign, If they want American Taxpayers to pay for it... then put Americans back to work where we can pay for it!
#3
Being a displaced son of the great state Gohmert represents, Texas, I know the sentiment. But I cant imagine a lack of security while they are in DC. As a lifetime gun owner I really dont want new legislation that will be debated as "Gun Control" legislation. I would support "Idiot control" measures such as the fairness doctrine. If we made it illegal to load large magazines people would carry many smaller legal magazines or multiple handguns or theyd simply break the law and keep their 30 and 50 round magazines. I will carry a butterknife if they thats the law. I will abide by the law of the land. You know I'm fairly deadly with a good wrist rocket many birds and squirrels I've eaten at the campfire would attest if they could.
Thanks for taking my call/ talking up my issue today with the congressman.
#4
Wow!! Do you think this guy could killed 6 and wounded 20 with a baseball bat? You freaks don't even want to ban 30 round clips. Who needs a 30 round clip? Any law enforcement officer will tell you that most gunfights are over after a total of 6 rounds from both sides. It is the rare occasion that large amounts of bullets are fired and usually only if the bad guy has AN EXTENDED MAGAZINE!! Also, anybody that thinks people use 30 round 9mm extended mags to protect themselves from grizzlies in alaska doesn't know much about grizzlies. If you get two shots off at an attacking grizzlie you are lucky and they better be bigger than a 9mm cause if that is all you shoot at the animal you are just going to piss it off. The 9mm acp was designed for one thing, killing humans, so don't bring that protection from animal stuff to the argument. The narcotic effect that holding, owning and shooting a firearm has on a segment of this population needs to be recognized for what it is, an addiction. Maybe we can get some help from the new health care law for recovering firearms addicts. Most of them need as much counseling as the perp from tuscon.
#5
OK here is a thought. Have the Democrats get on board this proposal but with an amendment that they will not compromise on. Place a tarrif on all imports of something (cell phones?) sufficiently high to do two things, 1) pay for the enforcement of the law and 2) reduce the deficit by the same amount. Then carry this logic through on EVERY bill that the Retards propose. By the end of the year we will have the income to make a real difference to the deficit and will have created 1,000´'s of jobs. This would also be a plan to cover the "costs" of the tax cuts that they will be pushing. Lets see who has spine in Congress.
#6
First off, who is to determine who needs what sized clip? Also, do you really think that if clips were reduced to 6-10 rounds a clip that would change anything? Keep in mind a criminal will plan accordingly and either bring more clips or more loaded guns to accommodate for such an event to get his/her point across for mass murder. It is a known fact that crimes of multiple killings in large gatherings were involving multiple weapons per perp as they were prepared for the situation. This is lunacy to think that clip size will actually make any difference. You have to be a shallow thinker to discredit the ingenuity of those who ultimately wish to kill people. I feel sorry for you that you couldn't see past that and understand the overcoming and adaptation of the common criminal. Also, owning a gun is not an addiction at all as it takes a discipline and respect like no other to practice safety and the ability to properly fire the weapon. Obviously, you have never served your country, owned a gun or practiced the correct use of a firearm. Unlike you, we are not inspired by Rambo movies and own guns to reinact Dirty Harry movies. Some of us are responsible, law abiding citizens that wish to protect ourselves and our families and know how to face situations of peril. Go back to your cushy lifestyle and let the real Americans guard the rights and freedoms you so exploit. It wasn't an amendment in the Constitution for no reason, so badgering those who own guns is a direct insult to our forefathers who provided this land to you in the first place. So don't go trying to pull up stupid stats on gun related deaths and gang deaths as that has no merit and isn't warranted. I will defend your right to preach your rhetoric while I carry my gun to exercise MY right. I hope you can live with that.
#7
People who don't understand economics shouldn't try and pretend that they do. Tariffs work just fine when they are applied like other countries apply them; it's called leveling the playing field. The manufacturing base left because the GOP rewarded companies with tax breaks for relocating offshore. rsmithnocal 's attempt to rewrite history and economics would be amusing if weren't so sad. Never argue with an idiot; they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-chicago/arizona-tragedy-doesn-t-...
#8
Thom, you talk of Reagan and the onset of changes that have taken place since his presidency. Like the closing of mental institutions and the people like Jared that have been let loose on society. In my opinion it was H.W. that was steering the boat and his puppet masters that are purposely out to destroy this country. I can't think of anyone in my lifetime that has done more damage than his son W. IQ 75. I say reload, not guns but our minds with the knowledge that these people are the danger to AMERICA the greatest country that this planet has ever seen. Countries around the world use to worship us and copy us for the benifit of their own people. Lyndon Larouche has warned us about this for decades. H.W. put him in prison to try and shut him up. The man is 88 and still going strong telling the real truth of what is happening to our world and being an economist and statesman has offered insight and solutions that will work for all of mankind and yet one of the countries leading patriot.
LAROUCHEPUB.COM Check their sight out.
#9
Here is my response to all conservatives rising or sitting.
#10
Is Fascism Lurking?
In the past, during the depression, there was a plot to overthrow Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was exposed and neutered. Could something like that happen again?
Maybe it doesn't have to, what with hawks already in control of Congress, major media outlets, the military and poised to slash the power of unions and curb progressive social programs including public education.
Several writers believe that if and when fascism comes to America it will be packaged in a friendly form tied to beneficial advertising slogans and public interest messaging. It will be sold, 1984-style as being unavoidable, even cool, and in our best interest.
Louisiana Senator Huey Long, once said, "Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism."
#11
Rather than "retreat from this culture of violence", how about we transform it. Concepts of civility have gone down the tubes in this nation in the recent past and we can lay most of that loss on the corporate media's doorstep. "If it bleeds it leads". Popular culture celebrates antagonism and violence. Yet, in the middle of the 20th century, PSA's about civility ran on television daily, especially during the daytime when kids were watching (and that was during the McCarthy era!). When was the last time you saw something like that on the "public" airwaves, much less on cable? It's time mandatory public service announcements concerning civility and public safety were again part of both the priviledge of using public airwaves, as well as in the curriculum of public education. I guess that means legislation, right? Well, how about Congress tries a little bi-partisanship that goes beyond toothless feel-good resolutions?
#12
@making progress, it can happen again but only the conservative crazies can do it. We are currently seeing the overthrow in America of the middle class, the loss in manufacturing jobs, and the closing of 40,000 to 47,000 factories. Are we down to 9% of our manufacturing jobs? The U.S. Supreme Court is more powerful than the president and congress combined.
#13
I BELIEVE THAT WE ARE CURRENTLY A FASCIST, A NAZI, A BANANA REPUBLIC, AND A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY!!!
#14
From the American government, the American corporations, and the American rich we are living in a country where these triads are playing Ponzi schemes, shell games, smoke and mirrors, and bait and switch tactics through corruption, fear, manipulation, hatred, and lies. In 2012 I will vote either for a Democrat or a Republican. If I vote for a Democrat, I will experience either puking or diarrhea. If I vote for a Republican, I will experience a BOTH ENDER. A BOTH ENDER is where a person experiences simultaneously puking and diarrhea. I know that at least once I have experienced a BOTH ENDER. Sitting on the toilet with a barf bucket in both hands is a terrible experience.
#15
I'm a lifelong Republican/fundamentalist who, in recent years, left both folds in disgust. I voted for Obama and now carry on conversations with old GOP buddies to try to raise their consciences about the fallacies of the Right. The best book I read all year was "Unequal Protection" and am now utilizing "Screwed" in my Internet conversations and Facebook. I was just thinking that "quacks" are to the medical profession what the Right is to Congress these days. They are working directly for the "corporate person" and selling the American middle class down the river.
#16
ARE AMERICANS BECOMING ADDICTED TO THE KILLING OF GOD'S CHILDREN?
#17
War is a narcotic.
War is a narcotic. War gives certain people a high. Bush has claimed that he has recovered but you never recover from an addictive personality. The longer a war lasts the more power goes to the government.
We start hating through language and from language we start to want to kill people. War gives the addictive personality meaning. Bush seemed like he could not exist without war. The state begins to define our being. The state must control us in order for us to kill. We cannot look at another person as part of humanity. Friends do not want war. You must, in war, want to kill and a person cannot be a friend to a person whom he is out to kill. People become intoxicated in war toward killing. You lose yourself and your identity as a human person in war.
If you oppose war, you court physical violence to yourself by the nationalists who desire and crave killing and war. You need moral courage to oppose war in America, a land that is overrun by nationalists who want killing and war.
Human beings do not want to kill other human beings. When Bush and Cheney were in power they turned away from people who had empathy for us after 9/11. We had an opportunity to build friendships but we became racists.
The Republican Party possesses extremists who are doing great damage to our relations in the world. Once you become violent, you hang onto and remain violent because you cannot behave any other way. Violence comes back to haunt a country. Our violence to other countries will come back to haunt us. We do not have the right to control other people.
#18
Sometimes you have no choice but settle for eggs scrambled with or without katchup. I prefer a dill pickle on my scrambled egg sandwich with perhaps a little dab of tobasco, leave it to Rush and Hanity to load on the Katchup , they are hard at it as we speak.
#19
Thanks Alan! Louise
#20
There is more security and police where he works in DC than anywhere else on the planet, but if members want to carry concealed, they should. Extra money from China for their security Oh Hell no. If I'm having dinner at my fav place (Outback Steak house ) shameless unpaid plug. And a congressman comes in there, am i supposed to run to the parking lot and stuff my .40 cal Taurus in the trunk? Idiot control is more practical than gun control Thom. Limiting the good people with gun permits also limits our ability to protect and [possibly save lives. The criminals and killers will buy their guns stolen or smuggled, illegally in some dark alley (probably in every town in the USA there is this type of "dark alley") let us concealed carry folks do what we have stated and even sworn to do. Protect and stop a heinous killer from killing us personally or any other innocent person. I dont know about anyone else but I am damn good with any sort of weapon. I could have shot that Tucson killer in the right eye or the left from 100 feet away even with him moving around a bit. Trust us that have those skills to do what we say we will do and have done already when we had the fateful opportunity. We are your neighbors, you really can trust us.
#21
"GG is a Friend of Gun Rights," her distinguished colleague stated on my television.
Sports fans are shooting the bobble head off a coach they don't like, because "It's all part of sports," another man said.
What will it take to make a gun as disgusting as cigarettes and special opi?
Graphic depictions of explosive blood splattering, tissue macerating massacrees up close, as shown on popular fictional films called thrillers, seem to have only heightened American blood lust.
Our Movement of Flower Power must be reloaded, and this time not shut down by Walker's CIA. No more backing off. It's flowers or nothing. Guns must be forged into instruments for gardening as it has always been written.
So here's Pemiscot County liquid mud in yer eye- GH, and WA WA, BABA WAWA.
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King is also introducing legislation to ban carrying firearms within 1,000 feet of himself or any of his 534 colleagues.
I want the idiots in Congress to pass a law that no one can have a firearms within a mile of ALL AMERICAN CITIZENS. King needs to understand that his SHIT STINKS LIKE MY SHIT.