#Assault Weapons

[tomorrowusa]

Whenever there's another mass shooting, the MAGA-NRA sends out a text saying...

WE HAVE A THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS SITUATION

The Apalachee High School shooting took place in the district represented by Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA-10). "Mullet Mike" is a MAGA gun nut.

From imgur...

Resurfaced video shows Apalachee congressman's controversial gun stance after school shooting

Mullet Mike is being opposed in this year's election by Democrat Lexy Doherty.

The party which wants to regulate women's bodies refuses to do anything to regulate assault weapons. According to faux-hillbilly J.D. Vance, school shootings are a "fact of life".

Gutless Republicans in Georgia won't even consider enacting safe storage laws for guns. They are more interested in giving fellatio to the NRA than in protecting the citizens of Georgia.

[whenweallvote]

BREAKING: In a 6-3 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on bump stocks — a deadly accessory used to mimic automatic fire.

This regulation was put in place in 2017 after a mass shooting in Las Vegas where the shooter used bump-stock-equipped firearms, killing 60 people and wounding more than 400. 

Make no mistake: this ruling will put countless lives in danger. 

Gun violence prevention is on the ballot. Six states may vote on gun-related measures this November.

Our vote is our voice. Make sure you’re registered now at weall.vote/register.

[moonbean117]

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[phroyd]

Fact

Phroyd

[blueiscoool]

Defenders of Ukraine

Defender of Ukraine Dementra camouflages her assault rifle.

[tomorrowusa]

^^^ The GOP follow-up to Trump's desecration of Arlington National Cemetery.

When it comes to school shootings, you'll get nothing other than hollow thoughts and prayers from the NRA-GOP.

[moonbean117]

[pugetsoundsocialistrifle]

Puget Sound Socialist Rifle Association Statement on Washington State bills 1180 and 1240. (These bills are so-called “Assault Weapons Bans.”)

We sent a member to a public comment session on these bills but unfortunately they did not get a chance to speak. What follows is the statement we had prepared.

“The right to self-defense is a natural right, intuitive and "self-evident" to all rational beings. It is formalized in our state constitution (Art. 1 Sec. 24) and codified in our state laws (RCW 9A.16.20 Sec. 3). The incidence of hate crimes is increasing in Washington and elsewhere; victims of these crimes, primarily members of the BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities, should not be hindered in their ability to exercise the right to self-defense.

In fact, the rhetoric around our trans citizens has become so toxic that none of our many trans members felt comfortable sharing their name and face in a space where many of the speakers today and at least one representative on this committee seek to deny them a peaceful existence. One member did provide a statement and I would like to share her words with you now.

‘I am a transgender woman living in a country that appears to be descending into a transphobic fever dream. I am a gun owner. It appears that the two-party system is now a choice between a party of predominant gun owners that wants my community dead and a party that wants to prevent my community from effectively defending itself. In recent years, my community has experienced a rise in hate towards us and thus we have participated in a rise in self-defense training and gun ownership. We are supposed to have a right to self-defense according to the Washington constitution and a right to own firearms according to the U.S. constitution. Arbitrary and restrictive laws on gun ownership violate those principles. In the absence of effective firearms, I do not trust the police to defend us in the case of a dire emergency or even in day-to day life. I have been threatened, sneered at, and physically hurt by police in Washington State. Two SPD officers participated in the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. More Americans were killed by police in 2022 than any previous year on record. So why is it that the police deserve to carry AR-15 rifles and I do not? Is my life less precious than theirs? I do not believe so.’

Now, the rationale of those supporting this bill and likely the thoughts of some committee members right now is that it is law enforcement's job to intervene in such instances. That is a fatally flawed assumption.

Federal courts up to and including the supreme court have ruled repeatedly that the police have no constitutional duty to protect citizens who are not in custody, (DeShaney vs. Winnebago, 1989[3]; Town of Castle Rock vs. Gonzales, 2004 [4]), and if you're a homicide victim, there's a 1 in 3 chance that police won't even identify a suspect[6], and as of 2020, about a 50% chance that your murderer will be convicted[7]. We're left to conclude that we must keep ourselves safe.

This bill claims this is a public health emergency but in 2022 in WA more people were killed by police than in mass shootings and despite being 13th in gun sales nationwide, WA was 39th in gun violence in 2022.The FBI notes that in 2019, about 2.5% of all murders were committed with rifles of any kind, less than 1/4 of what was committed with knives [8].

https://gunresponsibility.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/2022WA-GV.pdf Those numbers hardly constitute a public health crisis.

However, attempting to reduce gun violence is a worthwhile endeavor. Over the course of decades, study after study have concluded that the greatest indicator for violent crime and gun violence is economic circumstance. Poverty. This bill does not attempt to address the cause of gun violence. It is merely a misguided and ultimately ineffective attempt to address a symptom.

Passage of this bill would merely be a pyrrhic victory for democrats. Doing nothing to address the cause or symptoms of violent crime while providing ammunition for conservatives to campaign against vulnerable seats locally and nationwide. It would force more citizens to rely on ineffective and untrustworthy law enforcement while ignoring the scary but undeniable fact that ultimately, we keep us safe.”

[protoslacker]

Under Feinstein’s leadership, the intelligence committee conducted a wide-ranging, five-year investigation into CIA interrogation techniques during President George W. Bush’s administration, including waterboarding of terrorism suspects at secret overseas prisons. The resulting 6,300-page “torture report” concluded among other things that waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” did not provide key evidence in the hunt for bin Laden. A 525-page executive summary was released in late 2014, but the rest of the report has remained classified. [snip] In the years since, Feinstein has continued to push aggressively for eventual declassification of the report.

I was surprised how the news of Senator Feinstein's death affected me in a "life flashing before my eyes" kind of way.

We live in trying times. The stunning severe weather events across the globe this year are shocking and painful, but at the same time hard to grasp.

The political assasinations of San Fransisco Mayor George Moscone and Board of Supervisors member Harvey Milk were notable to me at the time as shocking and hard to grasp.

Tucker Carlson oddly might help younger people to understand how these events were painful. Carlson in his college yearbook listed membership in the Dan White Society and Jesse Helms Foundation. Dan White was the assailant, and Jesse Helms a long-serving arch-segregationsit and anti-gay senator.

Declassification of the Senate Intelligence Committee's "torture report" would be a fitting tribute to Senator Diane Feinstein.

[porterdavis]

There was a small team of seasoned forensic experts tasked with processing the scene at the Sandy Hook school massacre. They were told the Attorney General of the US, Eric Holder, was coming. They worked on preparing the area..."so he could see how 80 rounds fired into a three-by-four-foot bathroom trenched the cinder block. How 16 children crammed in that tightly had not had the space to fall where they stood. How innocence could be transformed to gore in an instant." (Emphasis added)

I have always maintained that if one mother could see her way clear to release autopsy photos of her child after being shot by an AR-15, those guns would be banned within 6 months.

They are weapons of war purpose-built to inflict maximum damage and death on its target. For those to be available for purchase without background checks or training and licensing, carried openly in public anywhere is an obscenity. America is now reaping what it has sown. May God have mercy on her soul.

[tendie-defender]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The battle over gun safety laws in America. By Gary Taxali May 10, 202

* * * *

Supreme Court is asked to invalidate all local bans of assault rifles.

         A case on the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket” could result in a surprise order invalidating local bans on assault rifles. See Ian Millhiser in Vox, A Supreme Court case seeks to legalize assault rifles in all 50 states.

         Per Millhiser,

The Supreme Court could hand down a decision any day now in National Association for Gun Rights v. City of Naperville, a case that could legalize assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in all 50 states.

Should the Supreme Court accept that argument and overturn these laws, it would have sweeping implications for the entire country. That decision would need to be followed throughout the entire nation — which would most likely mean that neither any state nor the US Congress could ban assault rifles or high-capacity magazines.

That said, there is some uncertainty about whether the Court will issue a sweeping pronouncement right away on the legality of assault rifles. The Naperville case arises on the Court’s “shadow docket,” a mix of emergency motions and other expedited matters that the Court sometimes decides without full briefing or oral argument.

         If the Supreme Court’s reactionary majority issues an emergency order invalidating local bans of assault rifles, ‘all of Neptune’s great oceans’ will not wash away the blood on their hands. Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett are not that stupid. They hear the footsteps of history gaining on their corruption and hubris.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[arlengrossman]

Why Didn't Someone Think of This Before?

By Arlen Grossman/ October 27 ,2023 After mass shooting, new speaker calls for prayer that ‘senseless violence can stop’ Mike Johnson has opposed gun control measures for years, and opined about the role of faith in response to violence Amazing! Two Days Into His New job, and he already has a solution to this horrible problem in America: Prayer! Why Didn’t Anyone Else Think of This? Speaker…