#note: passing house doesn't mean it will pass senate and become law

[quaranmine]

😐

[emmie-time]

Lots of people in the notes fundamentally not understanding what the president actually does, how treaties work, how presidential elections work and live in unserious land where Joe Biden can magic us out of these issues but just is choosing not to, congress can veto an executive order and currently its GOP led, abortion is an issue that was decided by the Supreme Court (packed by trump for a 6/3 republican bent) most current sitting judges are republican. The anti abortion stuff can only be fixed if we can flip the house and the senate and get congress back in order same with Gaza. The reason that order went through is cause congress liked that idea.

Like does no one remember how bills become laws? Or that like every sitting president is always up for reelection barring being Nixon, every single one always runs 2 terms cause putting up an unproven new guy is a strategy that will guarantee your loss in an election year if you have a sitting president of your party. It shows you lack confidence in the candidate and lowered the trust of the party in the public eye.

Every single shitty thing everyone is complaining about is a GOP presented bill or plan or budget or regulation, and since they have a majority in every branch but the house they can just push it up to the Supreme Court which they have done a bunch and forgo the house ruling. Like Joe Biden isn't se malevolent villain out to destroy the US he's cleaning up another guy's mess cause your parents watch too much fucking fox news and hate queer people and immigrants. You want to effect change? You don't do it with a smashed window and a gun until step like 5

First you need to flip your states which requires you to vote. Oce you flip the state and local gov it's easier to pass dem resolutions, 2 justices on the Supreme Court have discussed retiring if trump doesn't win. If Biden picks (bitch McConnell is retiring) that difference is suddenly 5/4 dem, then because we voted in the state elections that flips the house, then you vote for your senators by midterm we could flip both meaning bills pass smoother for dems. The trick here is to vote a more progressive candidate in your state elections and local elections, cause that's how you push the Overton window not every four years but the work in between. You show people what we can do with more progressive people in government. It's hard and it sucks and it's not as fun as screaming revolution but it's the community building part of that, when you're on step one you can't jump all the way to step five without the in between steps.

[rorygilmre]

Leah. I'm terrified. What's going to happen if biden doesn't win?

what happens is we can’t stop. we can’t stop fighting, we can’t stop paying attention, and we can’t stop pushing for change. 

on a much more real note, i honestly think there will be lots of marches and possibly riots post-election day is trump is re-elected. that’s why there’s so many posts about staying safe and stocking up on groceries in case you can’t leave your house, etc. there could be outcries that last for weeks or months. 

nothing will be easy if biden doesn’t win, but we can’t give up. we have to survive and we have to outlast trump, no matter what. let spite fuel you, if nothing else. don’t let that man defeat your will and your fire. 

i am also going to take this moment to remind everyone that this election does not stop with the president. no president can pass laws or bills if the senate or house is against them. your local elections are just as important (i’m scared for my local elections too, personally). 

i ALSO also want to say that, even if biden wins, we can’t rest. we can’t just become passive just because it’s not trump. if we stop paying attention, they start taking advantage of that. we have to continue to follow our government and call them out on their BS when it happens. just because it’s biden doesn’t mean the world will automatically heal and fall into place. 

[scretladyspider]

Pro tip: Yelling "CAN SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" on every post doesn't make what you say right. But then again, you already say that you don't care that people know what they are talking about or that they have sources that disprove your idiocy, didn't you? You just want to virtue signal.

Alright. I’m done being another resembling polite or nice. You’re gonna act like a dick, you’re gonna get treated like one.

Concerning the background check loophole: “The Gun Control Act of 1968 requires anyone engaged in the business of selling guns to have a Federal Firearms License (FFL) and keep a record of their sales. However, this law does not cover all gun sellers. If a supplier is selling from his or her private collection and the principal objective is not to make a profit, the seller is not “engaged in the business” and is not required to have a license. Because they are unlicensed, these sellers are not required to keep records of sales and are not required to perform background checks on potential buyers, even those prohibited from purchasing guns by the Gun Control Act. The gun show loophole refers to the fact that prohibited purchasers can avoid required background checks by seeking out these unlicensed sellers at gun shows.” Source Oh look another source oh no I don’t know what you’re gonna do with another source!  

From Time Magazine concerning the Charleston loophole: “Nearly three thousands guns were sold to people with criminal records, mental illnesses or other prohibitive circumstances in 2015, according to the FBI’s latest operations report on background checks, released in late September.

That’s the result of what many see as a flaw in the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). At licensed firearm dealers–but not private shows or sales, including those facilitated online–a background check is required to determine the prospective buyer’s eligibility. Data show that roughly 90 percent of these checks come back with an answer immediately, but the remainder are delayed so the FBI can further investigate eligibility.

If three business days pass without a verdict from the FBI, licensed dealers can sell the gun anyway, unless prohibited by local law. If the background check later comes back negative, federal authorities are supposed to retrieve the weapon.

This provision, technically called a “delayed denial,” became more commonly known as the “Charleston loophole,” for enabling Dylann Roof to purchase a handgun he later used to kill nine people in a Charleston Church in June 2015. In an email to TIME, FBI spokesperson Stephen Fischer said he could not confirm that FBI’s 2015 data included Roof’s gun, due to pending litigation.Since 1998, the delayed denial provision has put a total of 58,779 guns in the wrong hands.” ohhhhhhh what’s that is it a source? oh my goodness what are you gonna do with someone who backs up their fucking opinion and actually was doing that the whole fucking time, oh goodness me 

Concerning mental illness and the purchase of firearms being allowed to people with mental illnesses who may not be okay to handle them: “As we explained in a 17 February 2017 post, this rule — which never went into effect before being rescinded — did not change any existing laws regulating who is allowed to purchase guns. It merely would have provided a new way to enforce existing restrictions on gun sales by allowing a transfer of information from one agency to another. There are now, and have been for some time, laws that seek to limit gun sales to anyone “who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or who has been committed to a mental institution” per Title 18 section 922(g) of the United States Code. However, according to the Associated Press:The Obama rule would have prevented an estimated 75,000 people with mental disorders from being able to purchase a firearm. It was crafted as part of Obama’s efforts to strengthen the federal background check system in the wake of the 2012 massacre of 20 young students and six staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

The rule was rescinded using a legal procedure called the the Congressional Review Act, which, prior to the Trump Administration, was obscure and little-used. It allows regulations passed in the final days of one administration to be rescinded with a simple majority vote in both chambers of Congress during the first 60 days of a new administration. The Senate sent their repeal of the Obama-era measure for Trump’s signature on 15 February 2017 — almost a year before the Parkland shooting to the day — and Trump signed it into law the next week, on 28 February 2017.While the law did not change who is required to be the subject of background checks, it is true that Trump signed into law the repeal of a measure that would have plausibly prevented certain classes of mentally ill people from purchasing firearms by allowing a new data source to be included the system that runs those background checks. As such we rank the claim mostly true.” Source another source another fucking source 

Further concerning mental illness and the rollbacks concerning mentally ill persons and our access to guns: 

“Florida’s Republican governor, Rick Scott, a Trump ally, said he had discussed with Trump and GOP leaders how to restrict gun access to the mentally ill.

Federal and state laws already attempt to do this, in many cases with a ban on gun ownership for people who have been treated in mental institutions.Kraus noted that a year ago Trump rolled back an Obama-era law that aimed to prevent certain mentally ill people from buying guns. But he suggested that is beside the point.“There’s a great naivete to what the president and the governor are proposing,” Kraus said. A history of violent behavior, alcohol and substance use, and previous criminal behavior are all more pertinent factors to consider.

Dr. Garen Wintemute, director of a violence prevention research program at the University of California, Davis, said gun violence restraining order laws in California and Washington are “a much more focused approach.” The laws allow courts to keep guns out of the hands of people who pose threats to themselves or others.” Meaning that those laws are not nation wide. It’s from PB-FUCKING-S.  

And I include those as a chronically mentally ill person. Which reminds me.

Concerning the truth about whether mentally ill people are the majority responsible for gun violence and mass shootings: 

“Mental health is often a big problem underlying these tragedies.”  — House Speaker Paul Ryan

There’s a link, but it’s more limited than widely thought.

Mr. Ryan’s claim reflects a common misconception. According to various polls, roughly half of Americans either believe that failing to identify people with mental health problems is the primary cause of gun violence or that addressing mental health issues would be a major deterrent.

That conclusion is not shared by experts or widely accepted research.

In an analysis of 235 mass killings, many of which were carried out with firearms, 22 percent of the perpetrators could be considered mentally ill.

Overall, mass shootings by people with serious mental illness represent 1 percent of all gun homicides each year, according to the book “Gun Violence and Mental Illness” published by the American Psychiatric Association in 2016.” source another fucking source 

Further support that mentally ill people are not the goddamn scapegoat of fucks like you:

A 2016 academic study estimated that just 4 percent of violence is associated with serious mental illness alone. “Evidence is clear that the large majority of people with mental disorders do not engage in violence against others, and that most violent behavior is due to factors other than mental illness,” the study concluded.  oh look at that it’s a fucking academic paper and it’s a fucking source 

A 2015 study found that less than 5 percent of gun-related killings in the United States between 2001 and 2010 were committed by people diagnosed with mental illness. hmmm is that a source that backs up a thing that I actually give a shit about? Is it?  

Further concerning background checks and guns: 

Concerning background checks and mental illness: 

Further: “Mental health records are overwhelmingly under-reported to the federal and state databases scanned during a background check. For example, while the majority of states now have laws that require them to submit records to the F.B.I.’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, known as NICS, there is little enforcement, and the comprehensiveness of those records vary significantly.” oh my goodness am I hurting your precious pride with these sources?   

Concerning what can actually be done: “Gun violence researchers say that no law can eliminate the risk of mass shootings, which are unpredictable and represent a small minority of gun homicides over all. But there are a handful of policies that could reduce the likelihood of such events, or reduce the number of people killed when such shootings do occur. And several of them have strong public support. 

…Expanding background checks for gun purchasers to a wider range of gun sales was also judged effective and popular. It is an idea that was considered by Congress in 2013, but failed to win enough votes to become law. Some popular measures, like strengthening sentences for illegal gun possession, were deemed less effective. And some measures that experts thought could reduce deaths, such as banning all semiautomatic weapons, were less popular, though a majority of people in our survey still approved.

The attack at a Las Vegas concert on Sunday was unusual even among mass shootings. Stephen Paddock, the shooter, appeared to have used modified semiautomatic weapons that fired at the rapid pace of a machine gun. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California has proposed legislation that would prohibit so-called bump stocks, the devices found on several of his guns. At least some Republicans in Congress have expressed openness to the idea.

When we developed our list of measures, we focused on policies that were not part of federal law. And we gathered ideas from advocates on the left and the right – some part of the mainstream political conversation, and some extremely unlikely to be considered.

No state has adopted more than a handful of the ideas our experts deemed to be effective, but some states have adopted more of our experts’ preferred measures than others. Nevada has adopted relatively few. In the accompanying table, we compared Nevada with California, which has been particularly aggressive about passing gun-control measures, and Mississippi, which is among the most permissive in its approach to firearms. The table omits policies that could be instituted only by the federal government.” what’s this! what’s this! there’s a source over there!  

Also, there isn’t a source for this, this is just something you and some others have misinterpreted, and that was that I was against schools having safety officers. I am definitely not against that, at all. But they’re not the people who let me into the schools I work for. That would be the secretaries who then sometimes follow me down the hall and ask what I’m doing there. Sometimes I enter with a bag. Additionally, in the district I work in there is one school resource officer for five schools, and one is about fifteen minutes from all the others. With the amount of damage that can be done in just five minutes - I do not want to imagine what could happen in fifteen. 

Concerning the alarming access of Americans with anger issues and access to guns (the idea of anger management being a part of gun training was something I proposed that some rejected): “As if that weren’t troubling enough, the study found “a significant three-way association among owning multiple guns, carrying a gun, and having impulsive angry behavior.” People who owned six or more guns were about four times more likely to be among those carrying around both a gun and a chip on their shoulder than those with only one gun. 

The NRA calls for better mental-health care as a way of deflecting calls for gun control. But even if more gun owners received treatment for mental-health issues, Swanson says that, while his team “did find that many of these individuals would meet criteria for some kind of psychopathology, it didn’t tend to be the kinds of disorders that characterize populations that are involuntarily committed and would thereby lose their gun rights under existing federal law.” Many of these angry gun-owners abused alcohol or drugs, or suffered from depression, anxiety, PTSD, compulsive gambling, and other personality disorders that would not make them ineligible to buy a gun or two—or seven.” oh my goodness a source for that, wow, who’dda thunk i’d actually done some goddamn research and another one here oh my goodness there’s another one! is that another source? oh my! 

Another thing - how the flying fuck does it make sense that people who operate guns should not have to take a class in order to get a license but i have to go through extensive training to drive a car, which is also a device that could kill in the wrong hands? Especially when 37,000 people die in road crashes each year.  Please explain why in the shit that makes a dickload of sense. Are you seriously going to try to argue that guns aren’t dangerous? That training is a bad idea? That mandatory training is unfeasible? Seriously? and look I even sourced that. 

Considering the NRA and the damage they have done and continue to do:

gasp! a source that details further how politicians have been paid huge amounts by the NRA and how they treat the people who turn their back on them like shit! oh my goodness!  

Gun reforms that have been proposed since Sandy Hook and have not passed: 

The Manchin-Toomey Bill (2013)

This bill, which gained traction soon after Sandy Hook, would have required background checks for all gun sales between private dealers, including gun shows and websites that sell guns. Right now, those checks are only mandated for federally licensed gun dealers.

A popular talking point among opponents of the bill—which ultimately led to its demise—was that it would establish a federal firearms registry and keep track of all gun owners. That was not true; it actually strengthened the existing ban on such a registry.

“The gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill,” President Barack Obama said of the legislation in 2013. “They claimed that it would create some sort of Big Brother gun registry, even though the bill did the opposite.“

Assault Weapons Ban (2013) 

One month after the Sandy Hook shooting, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) introduced a bill with 24 cosponsors that would be a new version of the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, which expired in 2004.

The new bill would have banned certain kinds of semiautomatic weapons, ones that can accept detachable magazines and have at least one military feature, such as a pistol grip, telescoping or a grenade launcher, among other characteristics. The previous, expired ban used a “two-feature” rule, meaning that the rifles could have one of those military features, but not two.

But before the bill got to the Senate, the National Rifle Association fired up a powerful campaign to stop it. In the end, Democrats were part of the reason the bill flopped. Fifteen of them opposed it, along with 44 Republicans and one Independent. Many of those opposing Democrats came from conservative-leaning states, like Alaska and Louisiana, and this bill did not have the overwhelming support it needed to guarantee them re-election if they supported it. 

Automatic Gunfire Prevention Act (2017)

After the Las Vegas shooting in October, Feinstein and Representative Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) introduced this bill to ban bump stocks, which essentially convert semi-automatic weapons into fully automatic ones. It gained bipartisan support in the wake of the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history, with Congress members on both sides of the aisle promising change.

But the bill was stalled when the NRA voiced its opposition—after initially saying it wanted to regulate bump stocks—by clarifying that it believed the regulation should fall instead to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The agency, which might not actually have any power to regulate bump stocks (as it has said in years past), announced jointly with the Department of Justice last week that it was going to start a review of bump stocks. 

Terror Gap Bills (2016) 

After the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida (the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history at the time), several senators moved to introduce four measures to close what was termed “the terror gap” in the federal background check system. It would have added suspected terrorists, like Omar Mateen, the gunman in Florida who had been under investigation by the FBI twice, to the federal background-check system.

The Senate rejected them: These measures left both sides of the gun debate unsatisfied. Gun rights advocates found it an ineffective solution to terrorism, and even gun control advocates said it didn’t do enough, because suspected terrorists could still buy their guns from gun shows or independent dealers who did not fall under the scope of the federal background check system. The NRA again campaigned to stop the measures.

source for all of these, what, that’s crazy that these are actually factual! no way! 

On the epidemic that is school shooting: “They were born and raised in a society where mass shootings are a thing,” she said, recalling how much her community and schoolmates blamed themselves for the attack by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. “These students are saying, ‘No, no — these things are happening because you all can’t figure it out.’ They’re angry, and I think that anger is appropriate. And I hope they don’t let us get away with it.” ohhhhh no another source HMMM WHAT NOW 

Oh, and further, here is the rate of deaths of students in school shootings in 2018 VS deaths in members of the military in deployment: 

oh my goodness is that a source! fucking shocking!  

I actually have to go, this took entirely more time than you deserve. i’m actually tempted to keep going but I have to meet someone for dinner. 

Also, real quick, not sure how it’s virtuous to notice that children are being murdered and shit isn’t being done about helping it stop less? Maybe that’s just... not being a dick?

TL;DR: You don’t get to say “I care about children too!” if your facts are shit and you care more about what the second amendment stands for than you do actual facts and fucking doing something.