Tag Archives: gun control

After Parkland shooting Congress takes action: funds bulletproof vests…for themselves

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A Congressional committee has voted to expand funding that provides bulletproof vests and other safety measures for fellow members even while speaker Ryan rules out gun control.

At a news conference after recently meeting with students representing victims of the Parkland high school shooting, House Speaker Paul Ryan said: Republicans would focus on law enforcement failures, not tighter gun control, in the wake of the latest mass shooting, which left 17 children and educators dead at a Florida school Feb. 14. 

The House did attach incentives for better sharing of gun crime data through the existing National Instant Criminal Background Check System, NICS, to a bill passed last December called “Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act.” But Senate Democrats considered the NRA-promoted expanded concealed-carry act a non-starter and the bill remained in the House.

But ‘ in-House’ safety concerns come first it seems. The Hill.com reports that nine members of the Congressional Committee on House Administration (six Republicans and three Democrats) by voice vote, have arranged to spend more money to keep themselves and their colleagues safe from gun violence.vested interest

The Committee on House Administration passed the measure by voice vote, amending the Members’ Congressional Handbook to define bulletproof vests for members as a “reimbursable” expense.

The amendment allows members to use taxpayer dollars to hire security personnel for events like town halls, to accompany them “during the performance of their official duties” or to be stationed at their district offices.

This increase in personal-safety funds comes on top of a previous increase they granted themselves following the shooting and wounding of Congressman Steve Scalise at a GOP baseball practice last summer. That measure provided each member an extra $25,000 for office and public-event security.

Maybe when they have provided themselves enough-bullet proof vests and security guard funding to feel safe they could schedule the time and courage to tackle the issue of gun violence for everyone else — you know, high school students and the general public, their constituents. Or, they could recycle some 1960s PSA’s advising the rest of us to just “duck and cover.”

St. Valentine’s Day Massacre 2018

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“St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” has a whole new meaning this year. Was the connection  intentional for the shooter who killed seventeen people and wounded fifteen others in one of the worst school shootings in history?  We’re already learning of a white supremacist association with the shooter,  so who knows what else is in his pathology?

Perhaps Donald Trump thinks its sufficient to opine on the shooter’s mental health and skirt the issue of gun control altogether, but I believe that says more about the Presidents’ own mental fitness than anything else.  After all, the shooter’s white nationalist ties make him one of the President’s peeps.

What is wrong with this country? For years now, the disfunction has been apparent to people all over the world. We Americans simply will not do anything about the availability of “weapons of mass destruction” in our own communities.

There are several possible reasons why foreign enrollment in U.S. colleges is trending downward, not the least of which is the poisonous quasi-official attitude toward non-white foreigners emanating from the White House, and the decline in government support for education in general. But compounding the problem must surely be the steady stream of horrific gun violence stories peppering the news. What parent wouldn’t think twice before allowing their child to study abroad in a country wracked with senseless violence?

The NRA has such a stranglehold over the GOP that even with a “normal” Republican president and congress, there would be absolutely no hope of any action on sensible gun control. They won’t even discuss it; and Donald Trump, always more of an instigator than a leader, is scared to even mention the word “gun” in his response to the horrific shootings…
quaking-in-his-boots scared.

In the absence of courage to discuss the obvious remedy, he and others in his party lay down a bunch of platitudes about mental health; but even that is a sham because the whole mess of them has been hell-bent on defunding every aspect of health and the social safety net at their first opportunity. We’re left with nothing but meaningless words.

Donald Trump wants a military parade and a useless wall: to hell with funding for social services and mental health initiatives.

Law enforcement’s big idea is to increase surveillance of all citizens in order to spot possible perps and presumably do a mental health intervention. Isn’t this a movie plot?

What happens when, inevitably, some future Donald Trump decides those interventions should not just happen to people who say they are going to kill somebody, but extrapolates the legal argument to people who express opinions against government policies or make art lampooning “Dear Leader?”

It’s the damndest slippery slope, but those who hug the second amendment couldn’t give a fig about the first.

Rational gun control isn’t rocket science. Strict permitting requirements should limit access to weapons like that AR-15, and the so-called “bump stock” modifications we heard so much about recently, to security professionals and sportsmen who have passed rigorous safety and mental health screening checks. All firearms should, at minimum, be registered every time they change hands. Why should the most lethal of our constitutional rights also give the broadest license to abusers?

 
I am disgusted.