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“There should definitely be harsher gun control,” said one advocate for stricter gun laws.
“It’s just an antiquated thing,” another said of the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
“There’s a national embarrassment at how many people are killed by gun violence,” a third professed.
Well, their conviction was put to the test recently when these gun control advocates were given a firearm and taught to shoot it (Mild language warning):
“I fired once and I wanted to take a nap,” one of the gun control advocates confessed.
“I’m not as scared as I was,” another added.
“I felt kind of badass,” the third individual said of the process of cocking and firing a shotgun.
While none of these individuals have probably changed their minds about the need for new gun control legislation, the impression one gets from watching them fire a weapon suggests that they may have fewer illusions about the ease of pulling the trigger.
“It was kind of enjoyable, but then I was getting sickened at me feeling enjoyable about it,” one of this experiment’s subjects confessed.
“This is a fun thing, but not every fun thing is legal,” another noted.
Over the weekend, a rather important decision regarding gun rights was handed down in the Palmer v. DC case: the District of Columbia’s ordinance that prevents law-abiding citizens from carrying their firearms outside of their homes is unconstitutional. It’s a decision that’s been pending for five years – and it applies to both open and concealed carry.
In the decision written by Judge Frederick Scullin of the New York District Court for the Northern District of New York, he said:
In light of Heller, McDonald, and their progeny, there is no longer any basis on which this Court can conclude that the District of Columbia’s total ban on the public carrying of ready- to-use handguns outside the home is constitutional under any level of scrutiny. Therefore, the Court finds that the District of Columbia’s complete ban on the carrying of handguns in public is unconstitutional.
Accordingly, the Court grants Plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and enjoins Defendants from enforcing the home limitations of D.C. Code § 7-2502.02(a)(4) and enforcing D.C. Code § 22-4504(a) unless and until such time as the District of Columbia adopts a licensing mechanism consistent with constitutional standards enabling people to exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms.4 Furthermore, this injunction prohibits the District from completely banning the carrying of handguns in public for self-defense by otherwise qualified non-residents based solely on the fact that they are not residents of the District.
The 2008 Heller decision struck down DC’s handgun ban as unconstitutional, affirmed that the Second Amendment is an individual right; and that it applies to the residents living in our capital city. It also neutralized the anti-gun talking point regarding using the “well-regulated militia” to justify gun control policies:
The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
The 2010 McDonald decision extended parts of Heller to the states, specifically the right to own a gun in the home.
This is a rather huge victory for Second Amendment supporters. Gun owners can essentially carry their firearms in DC, a place where exercising such a right was verboten for decades.
Although, it seems the city’s 10-round magazine restriction is still in effect. Nevertheless, the city is rushing for a stay in the Palmer decision to prevent hordes of gun-toting tourists from shooting up the city. But DC’s police chief, Cathy L. Lanier, instructed her officers to not arrest anyone carrying handguns on the street (via Washington Post):
D.C. police were told Sunday not to arrest people for carrying handguns on the street in the wake of a judge’s ruling that overturned the city’s principal gun-control law.
However, the D.C. attorney general’s office said it would seek a stay of the ruling while the city decides whether to appeal.
In an order approved by Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier, police were told that District residents are permitted to carry pistols if the weapons are registered. Those who had not registered their handguns could be charged on that ground, the instruction said.
…
Meanwhile, Ted Gest, the spokesman for the D.C. attorney general’s office, which defended the handgun ban in court, said it will “be seeking a stay shortly,” so the order by U.S. District Judge Frederick J. Scullin Jr. may not be in effect for long.
“Its time of effectiveness could be very short,” Gest said.
Legal experts have said that in many cases all parties in a lawsuit are given the opportunity to appeal a ruling before it takes effect. However, it was decided at some point Sunday that Scullin’s ruling took immediate effect, and that set off efforts to bring the city into compliance.
Scullin, a senior U.S. District Court judge who normally sits in the Northern District of New York, wrote in his ruling that he was stopping enforcement of the law “unless and until” the city adopted a constitutionally valid licensing mechanism.
So, what about reciprocity of concealed carry permit holders? The ruling was applicable to them. DC’s Fox5 News’ investigative reporter Emily Miller, formerly of the Washington Times, reported yesterday that concealed carry permit holders from other states would be honored in DC.
STUNNING DEVELOPMENT: DC Police Chief Lanier just told force not to arrest a person who can legally carry a gun in DC or any state.
More — DC police chief using guidance from AG — grants full reciprocity for all open and concealed carry from others states. — Emily Miller (@EmilyMiller) July 28, 2014
Only gun arrests now in DC can be DC residents with unregistered guns and non-residents who are prohibited under federal laws.
Nevertheless, before law-abiding gun owners enter DC, there are a lot of questions that need answering. What buildings and areas prohibit concealed carry in DC? Is concealed carry permitted in bars if one does not imbibe? Are hollow points legal? If a gust of wind blows a gun owner’s jacket open that reveals a firearm, is that cause for arrest for failing to conceal? It’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Last year, Texas passed SB 299 to address this issue of failure to conceal a firearm for permit holders in the state.
And what about Vermont residents? A sea of anti-gun legislatures surrounds the state, but it has great gun laws, most notably you don’t need a permit to conceal carry.
Luckily, Dave Kopel, a pro-Second Amendment attorney, addressed some of these issues, which included him saying that it probably isn’t wise to open-carry your AR-15 into DC since the ruling only applied to handguns. He also noted that he couldn’t find a copy of Chief Lanier’s notice to DC Police regarding the Palmer decision, which persons carrying in the city should have on them just in case. I’m not a lawyer, but that seems to be just plain common sense until statues become more clearly defined.
Nevertheless, I wish law-abiding gun owners who choose to carry in DC safe travels.
UPDATE: Courtesy of Stephen Gutowski of the Capitol City Project, here’s the order Chief Lanier issued to DC Police following the Palmer decision. It addressed questions raised about Vermont gun owners and Virginia residents, where you don’t need a permit to open carry.
So… how’s that whole gun free zone thing in Chicago working out? Even though they came close to setting a new record over the 4th of July, things in the Windy City aren’t slowing down much. The toll just for Friday afternoon through Saturday morning was impressive in a pretty horrid way.
A 10-year-old girl was shot in the head and critically injured by a stray bullet fired into her home in the Garfield Park neighborhood Friday afternoon, authorities said.
The girl, and another 12-year-old shot in the same neighborhood, are among 22 people shot between about 3:30 p.m. and 3 a.m.
The 10-year-old was shot in the head in the 3900 block of West Gladys Avenue about 9:35 p.m., said Police News Affairs Officer Amina Greer. The girl was taken, initially in critical condition, to Mount Sinai Hospital, according to the Chicago Fire Department, and later was considered in extremely critical condition, according to police. Police said she was brain dead.
If you have the stomach for it, you have to click through to the complete story to get the full sense of just how bad things are. Various victims, singly or in groups of twos and threes, were intentionally attacked or simply caught in the crossfire as collateral damage. The violence ranged from those who died on the spot to “grazing wounds” which required minor treatment. One woman was described as having a non-life-threatening gunshot wound above her right eye. I’m not entirely sure how a shot above the eye winds up being “non-life-threatening” but I’m glad she’s going to be okay.
I thought Rahm Emanuel was supposed to clean up this town, and his various anti-gun ownership moves were going to be a big part of the solution. Or am I misremembering that? In any event, one has to wonder how firmly his supporters are standing behind him, given the results these policies are producing. According to at least one headline, people may be getting fed up with it.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel could have his hands full in his reelection campaign if a certain challenger decides to run against him, a new poll released Friday shows.
In a poll commissioned by the Illinois Observer and conducted by Strive Strategies, 40 percent of respondents said they would vote for Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle over Emanuel if Preckwinkle opted to run in the 2015 election.
Twenty-eight percent of respondents to the poll of 724 likely voters, which was conducted using robocalls and has a margin of error of 3.49 percent, said they were undecided in the hypothetical showdown of the Democratic lawmakers.
The methodology behind that poll is rather sketchy, so I wouldn’t be betting the farm on it at this point, but it could still wind up being an early indicator. Chicago is in a lot of trouble in a number of areas, but violent crime is certainly at the top of the list for most voters these days. And Rahm’s policies are clearly not working. Will this wake people up to the futility of gun free zones when they are in the middle of a street war or will they just elect a new face with the same liberal policies? Time alone will tell.
No one doubts that Chicago has a significant problem with violence. As of Monday, the city logged its 200th homicide this year, a shooting that followed a dozen other shooting murders over the Independence Day holiday weekend, and dozens of more wounded in other incidents in the same time frame. It’s worth noting, though, that this is the latest the city hit its 200th homicide in the last four years, according to Red Eye Chicago, and that the homicide rate is down 4% over last year, which was the lowest year for Chicago homicides in nearly 50 years.
Still, it’s looking pretty violent on the streets of the Windy City, despite having some of the toughest gun-control laws in the nation. It’s so violent out there that Roland Martin calls for the National Guard to impose something very akin to martial law on the streets of Chicago to save what he calls … “Chiraq”:
A major American city is quickly being lost to guns, gangs, drugs and hopelessness, and political and business leaders are giving lip service to the problem. Yet while our politicians dither, the city’s Southside and Westside residents are living in perpetual fear, afraid to walk the streets.
It’s time for Mayor Rahn Emanuel to put his ego and political ambitions aside. It’s time for him to ask the state police and the National Guard to come into Chicago and assist the police department in regaining control of the city’s streets.
Except that he’s not really limiting their role to simple law-enforcement assistance:
Some critics have said that putting troops on the ground is the wrong signal to send. I disagree. There is no reason the National Guard can’t drop a dragnet over the hot spots in Chicago. They can erect barricades and check points, inspect cars, confiscate guns, run warrant checks and shut down the cartels in the city.
In effect, Chicago needs a troop surge like what we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan. If we wanted to make the lives of residents there safer, why not do the same for Americans?
Perhaps because law enforcement in the US is properly left to civilian authority? And how, precisely, would the National Guard “shut down the cartels in the city”? The implication here is that they would do so through a military occupation that bypassed civil law, even though the National Guard has no idea who these cartels are and no expertise in “shutting them down.” Martin treats the National Guard like a Deus ex machina law-enforcement organization rather than the reserve military and logistical power that it actually is.
The National Guard can get mobilized by governors to address emergency situations, but that’s almost always in the context of providing logistics for relief efforts after natural disasters. In some cases — Hurricane Katrina was one — the National Guard does provide for law enforcement, but that only happens when civilian authority collapses. Civilian authority hasn’t collapsed in Chicago, and as the statistics suggest, it’s far from the worst Chicago has handled without calling for martial law and the suspension of the Fourth Amendment.
Maybe Martin should listen more carefully to “some critics,” who seem to have a better grasp on both the law and reality. And while it’s considered trite to mention this, maybe Chicago should rethink their enthusiasm for gun-control laws that clearly don’t keep firearms out of the hands of criminals, but ensures that most of the potential victims are defenseless. That way, Chicago might not need the National Guard or the Super Friends Justice League to impose martial law, and some criminals might have second thoughts about operating in the Windy City. At the very least, it would be a novel — and constitutional — approach to the chronic problem.
In Colorado, they take their gun rights seriously — even if their elected representativesforget to do so. In a segment this morning, CBS News featured the waitresses of Shooters, a popular restaurant in Rifle, Colorado, who carry food, drinks, and firearms on the job. The owner began carrying her pistol openly and the staff followed her lead — and now the restaurant has embraced the concept, even offering training for concealed-carry permits that has a free burger and fries to go along with the class:
The town is called Rifle. The grill is called Shooters. So it’s no surprise that the waitresses have an unusual dress code, CBS News correspondent Barry Petersen reports.
“I am carrying a Ruger 357 Blackhawk,” said Ashlee Saenz, a waitress at Shooters. “I like the old style revolvers, and I just like big guns.”
When owner Lauren Boebert started carrying a gun openly, which is legal in most parts of Colorado, the waitresses accessorized as well. …
“Maybe if someone wandered in from New York City, from Washington D.C., they might be a little worried, said Doug Yajko, an area doctor. “But the local people, plus the people in western Colorado, are not going to be worried by someone with a handgun.”
Funny you should mention that, Doc. Rolling Stone has a featured interview with Michael Bloomberg out today, who helped push some of the gun-control legislation that Governor John Hickenlooper signed and then regretted. Bloomberg dismisses the efforts of the NRA’s recalls in Colorado, sniffing that they targeted communities with no roads, or something:
Has running Mayors Against Illegal Gunsfor the last eight years made you more or less optimistic about this issue? Well, there are 16 states that already have [background checks], and they’re populated states. So there’s a big chunk of the country that’s already protected by these laws. And, yeah, you’re not going to get everybody until you get to a tipping point, but the fact that you save a lot of lives is not something to sneer at. And the fact that you can’t save every life is not an argument not to try to save any lives.
In Colorado, we got a law passed. The NRA went after two or three state Senators in a part of Colorado where I don’t think there’s roads. It’s as far rural as you can get. And, yes, they lost recall elections. I’m sorry for that. We tried to help ‘em. But the bottom line is, the law is on the books, and being enforced. You can get depressed about the progress, but on the other hand, you’re saving a lot of lives.
Colorado Springs has no roads? I wonder if Bloomberg knows that they have indoor plumbing, too. (I’ve been there and can confirm this personally, in case anyone wonders.) Nothing says we relate to you like a mayor of New York City assuming that the locals haven’t yet heard about asphalt yet. That’ll surely help Hickenlooper, who was recently forced to admit that he consulted with Bloomberg on gun control after denying it in a meeting with law enforcement. Sharks gotta swim, bats gotta fly, and elitists gotta impose nanny states, y’know.
I’ve heard more than my fair share of ignorant, biased arguments against Stand Your Ground laws in my time, particularly since the Zimmerman case. The has been a particularly useful tool for low information, anti-gun rights activists because it allows them to blend a combination of straw-men and stereotypes into one toxic mash-up. A typical example along these lines would be; Of course you like SYG laws. That way, when a white person is “threatened” by having too many black faces around they can just gun them down..
The people repeating these fables aren’t the problem here. The issue is the number of less engaged folks who may not know many details on one side or the other and who keep hearing this repeated until they actually begin to believe it. In an effort to stem the tide of intentional ignorance, Eugene Volokh (of The Volokh Conspiracy) removes all the Latin phrases and lawyerspeak and pens a primer for those in need of a clue.
In all states, shooting someone who is simply impeding you, shouting at you, and moving towards you loudly and aggressively (absent more), is a crime. The crime is called, assuming you shoot and kill the person, “murder.” (It could also be attempted murder if you miss, or aggravated assault if you hit and injure the person.) Yup, same crime as if the person wasn’t impeding you, shouting at you, or moving towards you loudly and aggressively (though in some states, it’s conceivable that if the person is shouting insults at you and that is viewed as “adequate provocation” — unlikely, but conceivable — you’d get lucky and get off with a voluntary manslaughter charge).
This is because “stand your ground” simply means that, if you reasonably believe that you face imminent death, serious bodily injury, rape, kidnapping, or (in most states) robbery, you can use deadly force against the assailant, even if you have a perfectly safe avenue of retreat. In non-stand-your-ground states, when you face such threats outside your home (and, in some states, your business), you can only use deadly force against the assailant if you lack a perfectly safe avenue of retreat. In no states are you allowed to shoot someone who is simply shouting at you or moving towards you loudly and aggressively, unless you reasonably believe that you’re in danger of death, serious bodily injury, or the other harms I listed. (When the person is coming into your home, in many states you can indeed shoot, but that doesn’t apply to confrontations on the public street.)
That’s the basic crux of the debate for those who don’t wish to dig too deeply into it, and it should serve as a good primer for the uninitiated. Of course, there’s more to the story when you get down to the nitty-gritty details of individual cases. For example, if you feel “fearful for your life” but the facts of the case are insufficient to convince a jury that the fear was justified, you may not be exonerated. Further, as Volokh notes, a prosecutor may then be able to convince a jury that you were insincere in your claims of being in fear of you life, leaving you facing a full slate of charges.
Also, the “duty to retreat” doesn’t exist in too many states today, but where it does it will lead to frequent confusion and questions after the fact. If you are unfortunate enough to be caught in such a situation in one of these states, you may be forced to prove that you didn’t have a clear path to retreat from the danger at the time you made the decision to discharge your weapon. Volokh points out that you’ll rarely need such a defense if the potential assailant has a gun, since outrunning bullets isn’t generally held to be a viable option. But if the perceived threat was in the form of an assault with a knife or club – or even fists – and you were a fair distance away with safe shelter at hand, SYG will likely not be invoked on your behalf.
I’m not saying this isn’t complicated in some ways – pretty much everything in the legal arena is. But it’s also nothing remotely similar to the picture frequently painted by anti-gun rights nuts. Be forearmed by being well informed.
While interesting 30-second web ad making the rounds on Friday may sacrifice some clarity in the pursuit of cleverness, this spot communicates an important message.
“If they find it, they’ll play with it,” the narrator in PSA entitled “Playthings,” created by the group Evolve Together. “Always lock up your guns.”
With apologies for the explicit imagery, watch the ad below:
While this ad may not be the most coherent advocacy spot ever crafted, it’s basically harmless. “Our PSA is humorous, but the message is serious,” said Evolve Together co-founder Rebecca Bond. “Parents need to take ownership of safety in the house. If you don’t want kids to play with it, put it away – it’s up to you to keep your stuff locked up.”
Not so, say gun control advocates who are fuming over the ad which treats gun owners with some respect (if patronizing and risqué premises like this can be considered respectful).
Over at The Daily Banter, Tommy Christopher has some thoughts (mild language warning):
This requires ignoring the vast differences between gun culture and dildo culture, because aside from their similarities as surrogate penises, there’s little common ground there. Dildo owners don’t bring their kids along for dildo-using trips, or dildo practice, and you’re not going to rent a dildo at a dildo range and have it jump in your kid’s hand and kill him. Most kids don’t know you have a dildo, and won’t spend every available minute alone looking for it.
Coining a new term which is soon to be mandatory when talking about gun control on MSNBC, HyperVocal’s Neda Semnani called the ad a message from a “pro-gun-responsibility group.” Because “gun safety organization” just wasn’t catching on.
“The attempt to bring lightness to a heavy topic is much appreciated, but equating a sex toy to firearm seemed more than a little bit weird,” she added
“How do you get conservatives to love a gun-safety PSA? Perhaps the secret is to add a dildo. Or two,” read the lede in an article by Abby Phillip in The Washington Post.
Phillip noted that gun rights advocates like conservative radio host Dana Loesch appreciated the ad, but everyone on her side of the issue agreed.
“An ad about sex toys is supposed to make us think about an issue as serious as proper firearm storage when kids are in the house?” wrote TownHall’s Katie Pavlich. “The ad isn’t funny. In fact, it’s immature. Instead of promoting safe storage of firearms, it does the opposite by trivializing a serious issue.”
I guess the lesson is, as is frequently the case when it comes to contentious social issues, there’s no pleasing anyone.
This is a disturbing statement from a woman who’d like to head the federal government. Noah mentioned this quote in his commentary on the room to Hillary’s left. Gun control is one of few issues where she sent a signal to the party’s liberal base that she might be more boldly liberal than Obama. But this isn’t just an appeal to the Left on policy. It’s an appeal to the Left’s routine and increasing tendency to equate political speech they don’t like with physical violence. See, bothersome political speech with which you disagree is prized and protected. But violence against one’s fellow citizens is not. Convince the quite polite American public that certain forms of political speech are tantamount to physical violence, and chances are you can be rid of many of the voices you dislike.
We cannot let a minority of people, and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people, hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people,” Clinton said during a live CNN town hall.
“We,” said the aspiring head of the federal government, “cannot let”—As in, “allow.” What remedy, pray tell, does she have in mind for this outrageous epidemic in free thought? “a minority of people”—The minority, the protection of whose rights Thomas Jefferson called a “sacred principle” in his First Inaugural Address and whose endangerment at the hands of a tyrannical majority James Madison called the Republic’s “great danger?” “and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people”— Regardless of the truth of this dubious assertion, she seems to repeat it to justify her advocacy for the prohibition of the minority’s dissent, which makes it sound like someone never glanced at a Founding document. “Screw ‘em, majority rules,” the working draft of the Constitution proclaimed. “hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority.”— Let me see if I can rephrase the idea of a “viewpoint that terrorizes the majority” in such a way that a longtime Democratic politician might understand it. There’s an old adage originally used to describe journalism and oft repeated by the activist Left to give itself airs— “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
Hillary Clinton and liberal activists are the comfortable. They require a “safe place” where the presence of others who deign to disagree cannot “trigger” them. Your mere opposition to an asinine limit on mag capacity, which was a demonstrable disaster in incompetent governance in her home state of New York, rises to the level of “terrorizing” for a woman who famously couldn’t figure out if that term applied to anyone involved in Benghazi. But for you, law-abiding citizen, not a problem.
Much of the Left desires that criticisms of gun control policies be banished from the public square. Espousing them is abetting child murder, in their eyes, no matter how much evidence or what arguments Second Amendment activists marshal. Hearing this argument from fellow citizens who call themselves liberal is disappointing.
Hearing it from a potential presidential candidate is creepy. Especially one who’d be taking the reins from an administration that flagrantly uses the power of the federal government to get people it doesn’t like to stop saying things of which it does not approve.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton embarked on a cable news blitz on Tuesday night which should dispel what remains of the notion that she is only engaged in a publicity tour for a book rather than a nascent presidential campaign. In those appearances, however, Clinton revealed her thinking on a variety of issues which indicate that she is well to the right of her party on a series of key issues.
During a town hall on CNN on Tuesday, Clinton was asked about a recent surge of unaccompanied minors rushing over the Mexican border. When asked what the United States should do about this predicament, Clinton endorsed deportation.
“They should be sent back as soon as it can be determined who responsible adults in their families are, because there are concerns whether all of them should be sent back,” Clinton said. “But I think all of them who can be should be reunited with their families.”
“We have so to send a clear message, just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay,” she continued. “So, we don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws or will encourage more children to make that dangerous journey.”
When the issue of marijuana use, both medical and recreational, was raised, Clinton hedged. She said that she does not believe “we’ve done enough research yet” on the benefits of medical marijuana and, while she endorsed a federalist approach to the recreational question, also expressed concerns about full legalization. “We have at least two states that are experimenting with that right now. I want to wait and see what the evidence is,” she said.
On foreign policy, Clinton did nothing to counter the prevailing notion on the left that she is far more hawkish than President Barack Obama. “I don’t think we should be retreating from the world,” Clinton said, in an implicit rebuke of the Obama administration’s unstated doctrine of global retrenchment.
She distanced herself from the present administration on Syria, noting that the White House should have armed the Syrian rebels “you know, two plus years ago.”
To the likely dismay of The New York Times editorial board, which praised the administration’s outreach to Iran on Tuesday, Clinton expressed doubts in the utility of a partnership with the Islamic Republic. “I am not prepared to say that we go in with Iran right now, until we have a better idea what we’re getting ourselves into,” Clinton said.
“What they (Iran) want to do in Baghdad is basically to envelop (Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki) in the Iranian embrace, maybe even use their own troops in Iraq, as they did in Syria. That is a very difficult position to put the United States in.”
Finally, on the persistent issue of the Benghazi attacks, Clinton legitimized a congressional select committee investigation by conceding that there are several unanswered questions about that event. “There are answers, not all of them, not enough, frankly,” Clinton said. “I’m still looking for answers, because it was a confusing and difficult time.”
The former secretary of state added that “there’s a lot we don’t know” about the nature of the attack, who participated, and what their motivation was.
In a subsequent appearance on Fox News on Tuesday, Clinton answered a series of hard questions about the Benghazi attack, her role that night, and how members of Obama’s administration responded. Not once did she bristle over the nature of her interrogation, nor did she suggest, as she has in the past, that Fox hosts’ lines of questioning were motivated by partisanship.
Similarly, when asked if she agreed with the president that this and other scandals, like that involving the IRS’s alleged targeting of conservative groups with undue scrutiny, were “phony,” Clinton appeared to suggest that she did not.
“Anytime the IRS is involved, for many people, it’s a real scandal,” she conceded.
On the NSA’s domestic surveillance techniques, Clinton defended, albeit obliquely, the practice of the collection of bulk metadata without a warrant. Though she did endorse “changes” to that practice in order to comport with the protections in the Fourth Amendment.
Only on the issue of gun control did Clinton stake out a rhetorical position which could be interpreted as to the left left of the present administration.
“We cannot let a minority of people — and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people — hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people,” Clinton said on CNN of the expanded background checks which failed to pass the House or the Senate in 2013. “We’re going to have to do a better job protecting the vast majority of our citizens, including our children, from that very, very, very small group that is unfortunately prone to violence, and now with automatic weapons can wreak so much more violence than they ever could have before.”
Conservative groups will be perfectly justified when they decry the incivility of characterizing gun rights advocates as terrorists and highlight Clinton’s inexplicable insistence that the federal government must do something about the public’s access to “automatic weapons.” Liberal voters, however, will be comforted by Clinton’s apparent zeal for stricter gun laws.
In a post-game analysis of Clinton’s appearance on CNN, former White House advisor and current Crossfire co-host Van Jones expressed concerns that Clinton may be alienating Obama Democrats with her center-left approach to a variety of pressing policy issues. These performances certainly did nothing to reassure progressives like MSNBC host Krystal Ball who Tuesday called Clinton the Democratic Party’s Mitt Romney; “tone-deaf” and “unrelatable” as she is.
In concert with a NBC/WSJ poll released on Tuesday which showed Clinton has fallen back to earth as she reenters the political fray, these appearances might give Clinton’s potential progressive challengers a reason to rethink their position on a 2016 bid.
It’s bad enough for an executive to have to perform a walk-back. How about when an executive has to walk back the walkback? Jazz took note of Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper’s strange apology to law enforcement last week when his gun-control efforts backfired. Well, his apology has also backfired, thanks to Hickenlooper’s selective memory and the clear data record.
In this clip from Revealing Politics, Hickenlooper chides one questioner for asking why the governor talked about the gun-control agenda with Michael Bloomberg rather than the sheriffs. “Let’s stick to the facts,” Hickenlooper rebuked Weld County Sheriff John Cooke. “I never talked with Mayor Bloomberg.” Really?
Complete Colorado, which first reported the governor’s statement, had already obtained phone records from Hickenlooper’s cell phone showing that he did speak with Bloomberg last year.
Additionally, the conservative website Revealing Politics posted edited video of the exchange.
On Monday afternoon, Hickenlooper’s office acknowledged that the governor spoke carelessly.
“The governor often jokes about his ability to put his foot in his mouth, because he does,” said Eric Brown, the governor’s spokesman. “It is well established that Gov. Hickenlooper spoke with Mayor Bloomberg, as well as NRA President Keene and many other stakeholders in the gun safety debate. In fact, the governor released phone records on this matter.
“When the governor told an audience of sheriffs that he had not talked to Bloomberg, the governor was attempting to convey he never had a conversation with Bloomberg that influenced the decision he made. In no way did the governor intend to mislead the sheriffs or anyone else.”
Really? The point of the question was to ask why Hickenlooper talked with Bloomberg rather than law-enforcement leaders in his own state. Clearly, the intent of the answer was to avoid answering that question by misleading Cooke and the other sheriffs into thinking that no such conversations took place. I don’t know how the dictionaries at the Colorado capital define “mislead,” but Merriam-Webster defines “mislead” as “to lead astray : give a wrong impression.”
This still leaves the question open to Hickenlooper. Why would he seek advice on a Colorado law-enforcement issue from a former mayor of New York City rather than the law-enforcement leaders in his own state, especially since the latter would have to enforce whatever law Hickenlooper got passed? The walkback from this walkback of the previous walkback should be fascinating.
Maybe Hickenlooper’s office can contract with the people who did the credits to this film. Either that, or they can start talking about llamas!
Something strange is afoot in the Centennial State and it has to do with Governor Hickenlooper. After signing on to a gun control bill which had plenty of people upset – to the point where some of his own law enforcement folks were suing him – he has suddenly apologized.
Governor John Hickenlooper is offering an apology to some of his fiercest rivals on the issue of gun control: Colorado’s sheriffs.
The governor’s mea culpa came Friday when he spoke before an assembled group of sheriffs from around Colorado.
A Hickenlooper spokesman confirms that the Governor apologized to the sheriffs for not meeting with them prior to the passage of gun control bills they opposed. Hickenlooper also said his administration didn’t do a good job anticipating pushback on gun control. According to his spokesman, Hickenlooper pledged better communication in the future.
This is curious. The GOP – with Tom Tancredo as their candidate – has been hot on the Democrat Governor’s heels for a while now, particularly since the signing of the gun control law. But as recently as last month, the conventional wisdom was that the crisis was past, Hickenlooper was out of the woods, and was sitting on a somewhat slim but still manageable seven point lead in the polls. He’s been faced with a number of other decisions which have drawn some of the attention away and mended a few fences, including some controversial drilling legislation and his veto of a water management bill which environmentalists had been pushing for.
But if things were looking cozy enough to save his seat at the Governor’s mansion, why offer an olive branch to the Sheriffs now? Moe Lane at Redstate (where I first saw the story) asks what may be the pertinent question.
I wonder what John Hickenlooper’s internal polling is telling him?
Good question. We haven’t been hearing as much chatter from the RGA about Colorado for a little while, but now I’m wondering if this seat is back in play?
After the failure of his Mayors Against Illegal Guns group to sway public opinion in favor of more gun control, Michael Bloomberg announced earlier this year that he would be funneling at least $50 million to a new, “grassroots” organization now called Everytown For Gun Safety with the hope of “outmuscling” that scourge of civilized society, the National Rifle Association, and their ill-begotten political influence (because of, you know, their five million official members and millions more sympathizers). In what is only Everytown’s latest display of choosing deliberate exaggerations, lies, and scare tactics over honest conversation, the group recently updated their running list claiming that there have now been at least 74 school shootings just since the massacre at Newtown in December of 2012, which a HuffPo editor then helpfully mapped out:
Here’s the Washington Post‘s version, too. Any school shooting is an unacceptable tragedy for which we should be looking for practical, effective solutions, and an average of more than one school shooting every week is all the more eye-poppingly horrifying. It sounds like we have an outright epidemic on our hands — but, have there really been 74 “school shootings” in just eighteen months? Charles C. Johnsen, a.k.a. @ChuckCJohnson on the Twitters, took a closer look at the various crimes that Everytown has been lumping into its list, and unsurprisingly, quite a few are undeserving of the designation of a “school shooting.” Here’s a sampling of some of his research:
Another fake school shooting listed by Everytown. Northwest High School principal shot by her ex-husband on campus. http://t.co/RwwVbPmbL5
It certainly seems like suicides and gang violence should be delineated from “school shootings” (in which the “mass” is pretty much implied) as separate problems, no? Unless, of course, your real goal is to falsely portray an America in which wildly violent, deadly, and indiscriminate gun violence is increasing — rather than the actual trend in which it has for two decades been sharply decreasing.
