WASHINGTON — The universe of potential changes to federal gun laws seemed to shrink Wednesday during an occasionally fraught Senate hearing on gun violence as lawmakers and proponents of more gun rules tussled with gun rights advocates over the availability of some types of weapons and ammunition. In the end, chances for a ban on assault weapons dimmed, and compromise seemed elusive.
The hearing, the first held by the Senate Judiciary Committee since the mass shooting last month in a Newtown, Conn., school, began on a poignant note as former representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was critically injured in a 2011 shooting, addressed the committee slowly and with passion, essentially begging them to come up with legislation to address gun violence.
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Let us not forget that th NRA only represents 1.5 million out of 300 million.
Salem: The NRA has over 4 million members. Since this "gun debate" started, it has added 250K members.
This also brings up an interesting point. Many people think the NRA speaks for all gun owners, obviously it does not.
According to the U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services, there are approximately 80,000,000 gun owners in the U.S.
In 2010 (the last year for which data is available from the ATF)
5,459,240 Total weapons were manufactured
2,258,450 Pistols
558,927 Revolvers
1,830,556 Rifles
743,378 Shotguns
67,929 Misc (frames, starters guns,etc)
The NRA is demonized in this debate for blocking legislation. It is also accused of whipping up paranoia among its members to promote gun sales for the manufacturers. That does not equate with 80M gun owners and only 4M NRA members. Evidently 76M people have acquired guns without being whipped into a frenzy by the NRA. The numbers above would also indicate that more than just NRA members are buying guns every year.
The debate is not just with the NRA, it is with a very large segment of American society.
You can hold out the NRA as the devil, but then witch hunts have always been popular. The result has always been hanging or burning of the innocent with no reduction in evil.
The 1.5 million is a quote from LaPierre in December 2012. You're saying he deliberately lied and made up a smaller number than actual? Are you serious?
The NRA has the deserved reputation of blocking reasonable gun legislation. They do this with money and threats. The Grover Norquist of guns,, you might say. There are enough people fed up with the gun situation as it exists. We'll be patient and wait for the elections to see who thinks the status quo is OK. If the pols are afraid of what the gun lobby will do, they should give a little more thought to the situatiuon and consider the hundreds of millions who are not going to accept business as usual.
Great post, pvalen! Well said!
PV: Therein lies the rub, what is "reasonable gun legislation"? NY is quickly finding out that Cuomo's idea of "reasonable" isn't being viewed that way by a considerable portion of its population, not necessarily affiliated with the NRA. His idea's would not even come close to flying anywhere but here in the NE. Dianne Feinstein's idea of "reasonable" is meeting with the same welcome across the country.
Evidently you have not been following the news, one of the primary reasons Feinsteins bill is given little chance of success is because of those elections. Unlike the NE, many democratic seats in the rest of the country depend on not advocating gun control. You should also be aware that many other states have "recall" provisions and the people are willing to excercise them. So it is not wise for a pol to say one thing on an issue like this, then vote a different way once elected.
You speak of hundreds of millions. Do a little math please. Only about 130M people vote in a national election. Hardly HUNDREDS of millions. There are 80M gun owners, half of those don't vote either. Doing the math, that leaves about 90M. Out of those, many don't care one way or the other. It is a good technique to try to sound like the pro legislation group has hundred of millions, but the numbers just aren't there.
A better question is: Why doesn't the Brady Bunch have 4M members with lots of money? They have gagillionaire backers like George Soros and others behind them? Certainly they could match the paltry 200+M the NRA has per year to operate?
I think the answer is simple, it is not just the NRA and your allegations that cause this "reasonable legislation" to fail consistently.
The NRA doesn't even know how to manage a public relations campaign. Instead, they will infuriate people. Like me who grew up around guns--every pickup had a gun rack full of rifles and those weapons were usually loaded. The public needs to heal from some very serious tragedies and we don't need Uncle Wayne running his mouth about the right to bear arms. Thanks to the missteps of the NRA, legit gun owners are going to lose. Public perception is very powerful.
The NRA has gained over 250K members since this started. You are right of course, public perception is very powerful. Here in the NE, where rights have been trampled on for years, this is viewed as business as usual. Travel out of this strange corner of the US and you will encounter very different attitudes.
Uncle Wayne wouldn't be running his mouth if it were not for the likes of Dianne Feinstein, Cuomo, and Patrick viewing this tragedy as an opportunity to make an attempt at the largest gun grabs in US history. Feinstein did not even wait for the funerals of those kids, so do not talk about the public needing time to heal. Cuomo rushed a bill through his legislature without public debate.
You are right, public perception is very powerful, keep in mind that the public extends beyond the borders of NE.
Reading thses posts, most have been very good but this one hits the mark. Yes, I'm a Patron Life Member of the NRA. I've wrung that bell here plenty of times but Cranky is correct. The approach the NRA is taking works great for some of the country but I'm not happy with their initial comments. They are doing a better job lately and need to take a very measured approach. Unfortunately Wayne seems to use the podium in a similar way that he talks about protection. He apparently needs to show that he's got more firepower and that's not always the best medicine at least not with the fire and brimstone speeches he's been known to use.
If the NRA doesn't get some new leadership, then they should be disregarded. The same holds true for the Republican party.
Sorry, won't happen, and your liberal politicians have no choice but to pay attention to them. Not here in NE, but everywhere else? You bet they do.
I have pretty much always disregarded the democrats, so what else is new?
Frankly, I am truly disappointed. A tragedy occurs. Anyone with an ounce of common sense can agree that we should all work to figure out how to prevent future tragedies like this. Within days, it turns into a "gun debate" with very little discussion of real solutions.
Almost immediately, people like Feinstein, Cuomo, Patrick all rushed to put forth legislation that would allegedly prevent or reduce future tragedies like this. Looking at the various packages, they all had the same theme running through them. Start limiting magazine sizes to less than 10 rounds. Cuomo's contained provisions for forcing lawful owners to sell their soon to be illegal magazines out of state or surrender them. Feinsteins went beyond "assault rifles" to begin many popular handguns used for self defense. Patrick's pushed the magazine limit to 7 rounds, in a state that already has a 10 round limit.
Some of these packages paid lip service to mental health issues, some didn't. Some address a form of "universal background checks" which other states cannot be forced to comply with, making them of doubtful use.
The bottom line is that all of the "legislation" was aimed at gun owners. Since a gun was used, somehow the solution must lie with gun owners. They must be gotten under control.
But gun owners know that in previous ban attempts in this country and elsewhere, the majority of guns and magazines are not turned in. Some of the legislation contains "grandfather" clauses which definitely neuter the stated purpose of the ban anytime soon.
No proposals are made to actually improve security at schools.
Ridiculous arguments ensue over constitutional rights, reasonable people would do anything to protect children (except provide security at schools), that gun owners bear the blame for Sandy Hook, ad nauseam.
No one is actually working to solve the problem. Instead they are all trying to use this event to further an agenda.
Anyone who actually believes that banning guns, whether in total or partial, will prevent this type of tragedy is a fool and is only trying to advance their anti gun beliefs while risking the lives of children.
The other arguments concerning other gun violence, homicide, suicide, accidental shootings are separate concerns that need to be addressed as separate issues. There is no "one size fits all" solution.
The politicians are trying to gage how they position themselves on this issue, having lost sight of the real goal, to prevent future Sandy Hooks. It seems like everyone else has too.
Guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people. More people with guns kill more people (often themselves). People with more powerful guns that shoot more bullets per minute kill even more people.
There are violent video games and movies all over the world. There are good and bad people all over the world. Only in countries with a high gun-to-person ratio do you also have a high gun death rates.
It's insipid and shameful to pretend that controlling access to weapons is not the answer to controlling death by weapons.
It's insipid and shameful to pretend that lots more armed "good guys" will prevent armed "bad guys" from killing people. Remember those NY cops who hit the by-standers outside the Empire State Building last August? Remember when Sgt. John Russell killed five of his fellow soldiers, all, we can say, trained and ready to deal with threats? More armed people do not solve this problem.
Keeping guns under control would. It is an obvious conclusion based on the evidence in hand. Denying this conclulsion, like all other denial of reality, is wrong.
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I have to hand it to you, History (carefully of course) - you write really well and you type really fast. Honest.
Thank you.
You're welcome...
For all of you who think defending your kids with a gun is BS, just two days ago:
http://www.click2houston.com/news/Home-invasion-suspect-arrested-after-woman-opens-fire/-/1735978/18331728/-/format/rss_2.0/-/s329rz/-/index.html
Woman home alone, kid at home. Three men broke in. Shot one in stomach. They fled. Arrested at hospital.
Anecdotes of this kind can be countered by anecdotes of the opposite kind, that's why anecdotes are not evidence. There is also no evidence that the proposed gun control would have made the story any different.
Here are some statistics:
Firearms and Suicide
http://www.afsp.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.viewpage&page_id=050fea9f-b064-4092-b1135c3a70de1fda
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It seems History can ony copy and paste from lunatic fringe sources and is incapable of independent thought. Is this Scott Brown in disguise?