Now is not the time to talk about gun control (2 Viewers)

[brandon]

T&P

10 killed in Boulder shooting: Victims identified, suspect charged

Police said 10 people were killed, including an officer, after a shooting at a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado.

www.google.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

sound plan
==========

Steve Bannon, right-wing media personality and former adviser to ex-President Donald Trump, suggested in a recent public appearance that children should be armed with guns in order to ward off bullies.

Previously a chairman for conservative outlet Breitbart News, Bannon served as chief executive officer for Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, and later became his chief strategist during the former president's first seven months in the White House. Since leaving the Trump administration, Bannon has hosted the War Room podcast series and advocated for far-right political projects globally.

On Tuesday, Bannon broadcast an episode of his podcast from Turning Point USA's America Fest, during which he advocated for American children to receive firearms training in school, arguing that possessing guns would also help them combat bullying, a suggestion that drew cheers from the conservative crowd at the event.

"We should get kids off social media and start teaching them the proper use of guns, how to defend themselves, their own self-defense," Bannon said. "Should we not make that an integrated part of the education so they're not picked on or not threatened and certainly not scared, right?"

Newsweek reached out to gun control advocacy group Everytown via email on Tuesday for comment.

In response to the continuing national trend of gun violence in schools, numerous Republican lawmakers have argued that the answer to the mass shooting problem is more guns in schools, not stricter gun control laws, as Democrats have argued. These arguments have largely suggested training teachers to use firearms and hiring more security for schools, less so arming children............

MSN

 

[Postingless]

sound plan
==========

Steve Bannon, right-wing media personality and former adviser to ex-President Donald Trump, suggested in a recent public appearance that children should be armed with guns in order to ward off bullies.

Previously a chairman for conservative outlet Breitbart News, Bannon served as chief executive officer for Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, and later became his chief strategist during the former president's first seven months in the White House. Since leaving the Trump administration, Bannon has hosted the War Room podcast series and advocated for far-right political projects globally.

On Tuesday, Bannon broadcast an episode of his podcast from Turning Point USA's America Fest, during which he advocated for American children to receive firearms training in school, arguing that possessing guns would also help them combat bullying, a suggestion that drew cheers from the conservative crowd at the event.

"We should get kids off social media and start teaching them the proper use of guns, how to defend themselves, their own self-defense," Bannon said. "Should we not make that an integrated part of the education so they're not picked on or not threatened and certainly not scared, right?"

Newsweek reached out to gun control advocacy group Everytown via email on Tuesday for comment.

In response to the continuing national trend of gun violence in schools, numerous Republican lawmakers have argued that the answer to the mass shooting problem is more guns in schools, not stricter gun control laws, as Democrats have argued. These arguments have largely suggested training teachers to use firearms and hiring more security for schools, less so arming children............

MSN

Well maybe we should also give them tanks and grenades. This guy is insane.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Just a few months had passed since Ben Wheeler was slaughtered by a gunman with an AR-15 at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and his mother was on Capitol Hill pleading with a U.S. senator to understand her grief.

Francine Wheeler wanted to know what Sen. Heidi Heitkamp would do if it had been her 6-year-old child who was murdered.

“She would not look at me,” Wheeler recalled recently about the April 2013 encounter with the newly elected Democrat from North Dakota, a conservative state with deep support for gun rights. Heitkamp was “defensive, unkind, and not interested in helping or listening to the stories of our loved ones.”

When the session ended, Heitkamp stayed in her office “sitting at the table with her head down,” recalled David Thomas, a lobbyist who escorted Wheeler and other Sandy Hook parents to the meeting. As the entourage left, Lara Bergthold, another consultant helping the families, said she heard the senator “break out into sobs.”

Over the course of nine wrenching days that spring, mothers, fathers, siblings and other loved ones touched by the Sandy Hook massacre shared their raw feelings with senator after senator.

They exhorted lawmakers to expand the federal background check system — a measure that would not have stopped the Sandy Hook assailant, a mentally disturbed 20-year-old who stole guns his mother had legally purchased, but that experts said could save lives and, more to the point, was so overwhelmingly popular among the public that it could win enough votes to pass.

The family members exposed their anguish to the harsh glare of the political spotlight, handing out postcards with smiling pictures of the young victims — one wearing a Superman T-shirt, another holding a pink umbrella — alongside admonitions such as “Honor Her Life.” The card for Ben Wheeler, featuring his first-grade school portrait, asked, “What is worth doing?”

If there was ever a moment when major gun laws stood a chance of passing, this was it.

The nation had been seized with horror by the Dec. 14, 2012, massacre in Newtown, Conn., that killed 20 children and six adults — the deadliest shooting ever at a K-12 school and, for many Americans, a gruesome introduction to the carnage that a gunman with an AR-15 can inflict.

President Barack Obama, who had just been reelected, called for dramatic new gun restrictions. Even the National Rifle Association, which had held the line on gun policy for nearly 20 years, was engaged with lawmakers about a possible legislative response.

The question facing members of Congress that spring was whether they would act to try to prevent future Sandy Hooks — or if the shattered windows, blood-soaked classrooms and decimated bodies of Newtown foretold the inevitable future of a nation in which the tools of mass death would remain readily available.

They would do nothing.

Days after her meeting with Wheeler, Heitkamp joined three other red-state Democrats and 41 Republicans to successfully block the background check bill the Sandy Hook families had begged her to support.

A more sweeping proposal that would have banned many semiautomatic weapons failed that day by an even wider margin, with opposition from 16 members of the Democratic caucus. A ban on high-capacity magazines like the one used by the Sandy Hook shooter also fell short.

Now, as mass shootings have become more frequent in the decade since Sandy Hook, four current senators and three former senators have taken the remarkable step of recanting some or all of their 2013 positions.

In emotional interviews with The Washington Post in recent weeks, some expressed deep regret for not pushing at the time for measures to restrict made-for-combat weapons or taking other steps to slow the violence that would only grow more common in the years to come…….

The six others who described to The Post their changed perspectives on gun policy were Sens. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Angus King (I-Maine) and Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), as well as former senators Mark Begich (D-Alaska) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.).

It is rare for politicians to shift their views on policy issues as culturally divisive as gun rights.

But the expressions of remorse underscore how the failure to change laws in response to Sandy Hook continues to haunt many who held power at the time — prompting some of them to openly wonder if they allowed short-term political considerations to cloud their judgment on votes that might have saved lives.

Obama, addressing Sandy Hook families last year at an event commemorating the 10th anniversary of the shooting, called Congress’s inaction that spring despite his personal lobbying “perhaps the most bitter disappointment of my time in office, the closest I came to being cynical.”……….

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2023/assault-weapons-ban-debate-gun-control-ar-15-mass-shootings/

 

[Booker]

Obama, addressing Sandy Hook families last year at an event commemorating the 10th anniversary of the shooting, called Congress’s inaction that spring despite his personal lobbying “perhaps the most bitter disappointment of my time in office, the closest I came to being cynical.”

If ever anything was going to be done, that was the time.

 

[MT15]

 

[Optimus Prime]

A federal appeals court on Saturday cleared the way for a California law that bans the carrying of guns in most public places to take effect at the start of 2024, as the panel put on hold a judge’s ruling declaring the measure unconstitutional.

The ninth US circuit court of appeals suspended a 20 December injunction issued by a judge who had concluded the Democrat-led state’s law violated the right of citizens to keep and bear arms under the US constitution’s second amendment.

The three-judge panel issued an administrative stay that put the injunction on hold until a different ninth circuit panel can consider whether to issue an even longer pause while the litigation plays out.

The measure, which was set to take effect 1 January after being signed into law in September by the state’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, was enacted after a landmark ruling in June 2022 by the conservative-majority US supreme court that expanded gun rights nationwide.

The supreme court in that case struck down New York’s strict gun-permit regime and declared for the first time that the right to keep and bear arms under the second amendment protects a person’s right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense.

The ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen also set out a test to assess the constitutionality of gun laws by holding that they must be “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation”.

California, which has some of the strictest gun-control laws in the United States, was among a group of states with laws similar to those in New York and, following the US supreme court’s decision, moved to revamp its firearms regulations.

Under California’s new law, people could not carry concealed guns in 26 categories of “sensitive places” including hospitals, playgrounds, stadiums, zoos and places of worship, regardless of whether or not they had permits to carry concealed weapons.

The law, Senate Bill 2, also barred people from having concealed guns at privately owned commercial establishments that are open to the public, unless the business’s operator posts a sign allowing license holders to carry guns on their property.

A group of concealed-carry permit holders and gun rights groups, including the Second Amendment Foundation, Gun Owners of America and the California Rifle & Pistol Association, sued, arguing the law was unconstitutional.………

Court ruling clears way for California to ban carrying guns in most public places

Starting 1 January, gun owners in the state may not carry in ‘sensitive places’ such as hospitals, playgrounds and stadiums

www.theguardian.com

 

[MT15]

Do they have a clue how stupid they look?

 

[bird]

Do they have a clue how stupid they look?

Well, fear, and in some cases overcompensation. If one of them were confronted with an active shooter they would likely kark themselves.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Parents of children massacred in the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting are stepping up their anti-gun violence campaign by exposing how the firearms industry is marketing weapons of war specifically to vulnerable adolescents.

In a fresh stage in their battle to staunch the rising loss of life from mass shootings, Sandy Hook parents are pressuring gun manufacturers to stop what they say is a cynical and aggressive effort to sell military-style weapons to young and impressionable Americans. They are alarmed by a shift in tone in gun advertising in which, they say, major companies have consciously decided to boost profits by targeting kids as young as 10.

“They are telling lonely and isolated children, ‘This is what you need to be a man, this is what’s going to make you powerful, this is how you avenge yourself on those who bullied you – you need an AR-15,’” said Nicole Hockley, CEO of the Sandy Hook Promisefoundation.

Hockley’s youngest son, Dylan, was six when he was murdered in the December 2012 Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. He was one of 20 six- and seven-year-olds gunned down, along with six adult staff.

The new Sandy Hook pressure campaign, dubbed Untargeting Kids, comes at a critical time in the US with mass shootings and gun deaths among those under 19 increasing at startling rates. Between 2019 and 2021, firearm deaths among US children and teens rose by 50%, making them the leading cause of death for these age groups above even car accidents.

This year has also seen a record high of 327 school shootings, according to the National Center for Education Statistics – double the year before. Overall, mass shootings are becoming both more frequent and more deadly, according to the Violence Prevention Project.

A growing number of those tragedies are perpetrated by young males aged 21 and under.

At the same time, sales of the AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle have soared, making the weapon the best-selling rifle in the US, with about one in 20 US adults owning at least one, according to the Washington Post.

The new Sandy Hook campaign follows the group’s successful lawsuit against Remington, maker of the Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle that was used by the Newtown shooter. The suit forced Remington and its insurers to settle for $73m, tipping the company into bankruptcy.

Critically, Remington was also obliged to hand over thousands of documents revealing its inner workings and strategy. The trove revealed that in 2011, a year before Dylan and the other Sandy Hook victims were killed, the Cerberus Capital venture company that had bought Remington and other gun companies came up with a new ambition – to create “America’s foremost firearms empire”.

A memo titled 2011 Planning Creative Brief that was discovered among the disclosed documents laid out the plan. It specified the demographic groups that were to be targeted, including “Millennials” and “Youth”.

At the time the memo was written, millennials were aged between 10 and 14.

“These were kids who were not legally old enough to buy a firearm, but they were preparing the market ahead – and that’s really disturbing,” Hockley said. “In the last 10 years, it’s gotten significantly worse, with firearms specifically designed for child-sized hands and much more aggressive marketing on social media.”

An example of the trend is the social media message that was posted on 24 May 2022 by Daniel Defense, one of the largest privately owned firearms manufacturers. It consisted of a photo of a young boy, maybe aged six, with a large assault rifle across his lap and an extended clip on the floor beside him.

An adult’s finger is pointing down at him, with the caption: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

On the same day that message was posted, an 18-year-old shooter armed with an M4 carbine produced by Daniel Defense entered the Robb elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and killed 19 children and two teachers.……….

Sandy Hook parents press gunmakers to stop marketing weapons of war to kids

Families of children killed in massacre call out manufacturers’ push to sell weapons to adolescents

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

(FOX40.COM) — Days after a federal appeals court ruled to temporarily uphold a new California law that bans carrying guns in public spaces, the Sutter County Sheriff’s Office announced they will look at each circumstance on a case-by-case basis.

“We have no interest in criminalizing constitutionally protected behavior,” said Sutter County Sheriff Brandon Barnes and Sutter County District Attorney Jennifer R. Dupré in a joint social media post on Wednesday. “We took an oath to uphold our Constitution and will work to protect the rights of our citizens.”

The controversy stems from Senate Bill 2, which became law on Jan. 1. The new law bans licensed concealed gun holders (CCW) from carrying their firearms at bars, places of worship, parks, public events, stadiums, casinos, financial institutions, medical facilities, on public transportation, and other public places.

On Dec. 26, 2023, a federal judge blocked the new California gun control law from taking effect on Jan. 1, however, days later, a federal appeals court reversed that decision while the issue went through litigation.

Federal judge blocks new California gun control law from taking effect in January 2024
“This issue is far from being resolved and we are hopeful the courts will rule in favor of our constitution,” Sutter County Sheriff’s Office and district attorney said. “We will continue to keep our community informed on this important issue.”..........

MSN

 

[brandon]

It’s Thursday, so there’s a school shooting.

January 4, 2024 - One student killed, several wounded at Perry High School in Iowa, officials say | CNN

A 17-year-old gunman killed a sixth grade student and wounded five other people Thursday at Perry High School near Des Moines, Iowa, authorities said.

www.cnn.com

 

[MT15]

 

[Optimus Prime]

Yet another “I’m resigning for health and or family reasons. That it coincides with the embezzlement and drug fueled hooker orgies scandal is purely coincidental”
============

The longtime chief executive of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, is stepping down at the end of the month, the gun rights organization has announced, days before a civil trial in New York is set to explore allegations he used the group as his “personal piggy bank”.

The NRA issued a short statement from LaPierre via X, formerly known as Twitter, in which he said: “I’ve been a card-carrying member of this organization for most of my adult life, and I will never stop supporting the NRA and its fight to defend second amendment freedom. My passion for our cause burns as deeply as ever.”

Membership of the association had dropped off significantly in recent years, as mass shootings rose across the US and legal action was taken against the NRA over allegations of corruption, amid financial struggles.

LaPierre, 74, said his departure would be effective from 31 January. He has been in charge of the NRA since 1991. The organization said Andrew Arulanandam, the head of NRA’s general operations, will become interim chief executive and vice-president.

While LaPierre cites ill health for standing down, the timing comes just days before the start of the New York trial that is poised to scrutinize his leadership and alleged financial mismanagement.

A lawsuit from the New York attorney general, Letitia James, accuses LaPierre and other executives of illegally diverting tens of millions of dollars from the NRA and spending organization funds on personal trips, “no-show” contracts and other questionable expenditures.……

Wayne LaPierre to step down as chief executive of National Rifle Association

LaPierre, 74, has cited health concerns but resignation comes days before he faces civil trial over alleged misuse of NRA funds

www.theguardian.com

 

[Eeyore]

It’s Thursday, so there’s a school shooting.

January 4, 2024 - One student killed, several wounded at Perry High School in Iowa, officials say | CNN

A 17-year-old gunman killed a sixth grade student and wounded five other people Thursday at Perry High School near Des Moines, Iowa, authorities said.

www.cnn.com

Trump tells supporters 'we have to get over it' after Iowa school shooting

His comments came after nearly 36 hours of silence and a day after his GOP rivals addressed the shooting that took the life of a sixth grade student and injured others.

news.yahoo.com

 

[MT15]

The Iowa shooting has claimed another victim.

 

[zztop]

For the GOP this spin only applies if you are a shade of pink. If you are a darker complexion, it is terrorism

 

[MT15]

 

[MT15]

Tragedy averted. He had RPGs???