Politics The Donkey in the room...the Democrats today

Feinstein's pushing another cosmetics ban for rifles, which has repeatedly driven away a huge number of people who would otherwise be straight ticket democrat voters. Armed gays don't get bashed, armed jews don't get gassed.

 

Actually, while gun control was probably not a core voting issue, the NRA took a big hit in Virginia earlier this week, with more than 13 seats flipping from NRA incumbent Republicans to gun control Democrats (11 of the 13 were women candidates)

While the assault weapons ban is overreach , there is widespread public support for limiting high capacity magazines similar to existing state legislation in California, Colorado (limited), Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York.

And IMO, this is just appalling: "Armed gays don't get bashed, armed jews don't get gassed" at so many levels.

 

You're confusing correlation with causation. The incumbent party getting flipped during midterms happened to Obama as well.

They're not "high" capacity, they're standard capacity, and it's another example of an asinine law that harms law abiding gun owners while leaving criminals untouched. Aside from the fact that it does sweet fuck all since previous spree killers have simply carried more magazines or weapons and reloaded more often. Reloading is not some ten minute sit-down process like Feinstein and the "shoulder thing that goes up" crowd think it is.

Tell it to my family that survived the holocaust because they could shoot back. Tell it to my friends' family that didn't because they couldn't.

 

No, not really.

The biggest difference from previous "waves" is the overwhelming number of woman candidates in Virginia who tend to be more supportive of gun control.

And, if you also consider current polling and exit polls in Virginia.

No again.

They are expanding capacity and the larger "gun rights" argument is nothing new.

I dont claim gun control laws and limits on semi-automatic weapons will prevent gun crimes, but they can deter some and that is enough reason for their enactment w/o infringing on anyone's rights.

Personally, I would prefer to see a more comprehensive, multi-disciplinary approach to dealing with gun violence, but unfortunately Republicans in Congress simply wont consider anything other than making it a "mental health issue" and cutting funding for mental health services.

Sorry, but your personal story aside, this is ignorant revisionism. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that a right to bear arms in Nazi Germany would have protected Jews (3% of the population) from the the brown shirts, the SS and the government's institutional policy with no limits on armed enforcement.

As a Jew, I find that gun advocates claim to be aappalling with absolutely nothing to support it.

The Hitler Gun Control Lie

Nazi Gun Control Theory

 

More on what makes last week's election in Virginia (and across the country) different from previous "wave" off-year elections.

We're also seeing more young people in science running for office for the first time in response to Trump and conservative anti-science agendas.

3,000 Scientists Have Asked for Help Running for Office to Oppose Trump

 

The Warsaw Ghetto rebels held off one of the strongest armies in the history of humanity for a month in the heart of its own territory. Today Israel has survived war after war of genocide waged against it by multiple enemies far larger than it, who receive just as much cash if not more from the US and other countries. Guns are the difference between 1947 and 1967.

And yknow what's appalling? Citing Salon and wikipedia.

 

My last comments on this:

Jewish armed resistance in the Warsaw ghetto was heroic in large part because of the nature of the ghetto and the network of tunnels and hiding places that only served to delay the inevitable (more than 10,000 killed) in fighting a military force far superior in its armed capacity.

As a family member of holocaust survivors, I don’t want to diminish those heroic efforts of a Jewish underground in Poland and elsewhere (e.g. Kovno ghetto in Lithuania that I’ve posted about in other discussions and my relative's role in the underground). But to suggest a right to bear arms in Hitler's Germany ( or occupied Poland) would have changed the outcome is revisionism at its most extreme by gun rights advocates to support a political agenda and has no relevance to reasonable gun control in the US in response to a growing gun violence epidemic.

And raising the issue of Israel and its national defense against foreign enemies, which I support, has even less relevance to the Second Amendment rights of individuals and the fact that those rights are not absolute.

 

"Growing gun violence epidemic"? Our violent crime rate has dropped by around 80% in the last 30ish odd years. We're not in the middle of a "growing gun violence epidemic", we're in the middle of what is objectively the safest and least violent period in US history. Furthermore gun crime is not evenly distributed in the slightest, it's incredibly densely concentrated in a handful of areas and is overwhelmingly drug and/or gang related. Our violent crime rate is a product of catastrophic failures of government policy and rampant inequality that have produced populations crippled by generational poverty and who have been exploited by organized crime.

The idea that we live in a "growing gun violence epidemic", let alone one where we need to ban cosmetic and safety features on the type of gun that kills half as many people as punching and kicking every year, is so far divorced from reality and all objective evidence as to be laughable if it weren't for the fact that the same people who speak such absurdities as "30 clip rounds per second" and "the shoulder thing that goes up" have convinced people to believe it and act on it.

 

You can ignore the data, but the epidemic of gun violence is real.

Death and severe injuries resulting from firearm related homicides, suicides, non-fatal shootings, accident shootings, neglegent shootings, etc. are at epidemic levels compared to other non-medical causes of death and severe injury and are both a public health and public safety issue.

At least, hopefully we put the comparisons to Hitler's Germany and Israel's national defense to rest.

You might want to look at CDC data on homicides, accidental/unintentional injuries, etc.
FastStats

And firearm mortality by state, with lowest firearm death rate in states with toughest gun laws (MA, HI, NY, CT...) and highest firearm death rate in states with weakest gun laws (AK, LA, MS...)
Stats of the States - Firearm Mortality

Now, I'm really done.

Have a safe day!

 

And you need to look at UCR Crime Data breaking down homicide by weapon type. You might also want to not completely ignore my point about poverty and inequality, which unlike gun laws isn't a spurious correlation disproven by places like Chicago and actually correlates soundly with gun crime.

As for your choice of sources, the CDC has decades of openly admitting they will do anything and say anything to push an anti-gun agenda. Some choice quotes:

 

And there you go again!

From Hitler's Germany to Israeli self-defense, to smearing the CDC, to ignoring the data on firearms fatalities and serious injuries, including many children, from all firearm use and not just in commission of a crime (UCR does not include suicide, accidental deaths, and other non-criminal data). compared to any other non-health causes of death and injury.

There is no reason for any further discussion.

 

And there you go again. Ignoring direct quotes from the CDC openly admitting a politicized agenda without regard to facts, and direct quotes from serious researchers explicitly explaining the methodological and scientific problems with the CDC's agenda driven publications, as well as ignoring hard data on firearm fatalities that contradicts your agenda.

 

CDC has been prohibited by legislation from funding or conducting firearm related research for 20 years (see Dickey amendment for Republican former House member who initiated the ban but now regrets how Republicans have politicized it).

But dont let that stop you from confusing data collection on deaths and injuries by all means with firearms related research.

 

Whoever told you that lied to you. The CDC has not ever been prevented from conducting firearms research despite openly admitting they don't care about facts in the slightest and are openly engaging in manufacturing papers to support a predetermined political agenda, as I just gave you in their own words.

This is the exact text of the policy:

 

I know exactly what the policy language says.

And the fact remains, that there has been ONE firearms related research project in 2013 tangentially funded indirectly with CDC money.

 

I just gave you the exact text of the policy. This isn't a conversation, this is not a debate, that IS the policy right there in plain black and white. That is the policy they're required to follow with their funding. That's it. There's no arguing about this.

I get that your relationship with facts you don't like is tenuous at best, but this is one even you can't pretend isn't real.

 

Its been fun!

You get an "A" for pushing the NRA line!

 

Analysis | Why gun violence research has been shut down for 20 years

Whatever the actual wording of the text the actual result is that it ended the funding for actual research.
Even after Obama told them to start doing the research again, they still fucking didn't.
Why the CDC still isn’t researching gun violence, despite the ban being lifted two years ago

We live in a culture where the NRA has more clout then the parents of murdered children.

 

They are gloating way too much over VA and NJ. If it was 2018's election, I could understand. But, the turnout was pathetically low around here, the candidates in Ohio did do very much differently from before, and they haven't done anything to unify the party from the Midwestern independents who could vote for a Democrat if the Republican is a horrible person, to the most devoted coastal Progressive.

Nothing has changed with the DNC, nothing has changed with the separate issue activist groups, nothing has changed with the Democratic media, nothing has changed on-line...