Robert Gibbs: In full retreat from a new AWB, Helen Thomas pissed

[Pullo]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tz9HmMJ7uw


Think Progress is puzzled too..

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/09/obama-assault-weapons/



I think Obama is light years ahead of the media on this one.

[MADem]

1. I suspect you are right. He's denying the GOP a wedge issue on a national level.

"They're gunna take errr guns!!!" would have been the rallying cry, no matter how erroneous that remark might have been.

He's leaving it to the states for now.

It's a shame that we can't have a sensible way of managing this issue....but what's good for the goose is not always good for the gander.

[biopowertoday]

2. Obama's website says he supports the assalt weapon ban.......

In fact, in the “Urban Policy” section currently on the White House website, the Obama administration affirms its support of reinstating the Assault Weapons Ban:

· Address Gun Violence in Cities: … Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent.

In the wake of news-grabbing gun violence, why is the Obama administration now backing off its repeated pledge to ban the most dangerous weapons that Obama previously said “belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets“?

[yay]

4. Probably because he want's to be reelected.

Along with many members of congress.

[otohara]

3. What Do You Mean

Obama light years ahead of media?


In one year, firearms killed no children in Japan, 19 in Great Britain, 57 in Germany, 109 in France, 153 in Canada, and 5,285 in the United States. (Centers for Disease Control) http://www.neahin.org/programs/schoolsafety/gunsafety/statistics.htm

[Pullo]

13. How many of those were with "assault weapons?"

Bans of any type are not the right direction, IMO....especially completely ineffective pieces of trash like the Clinton AWB.

During the period the assault weapons ban was active no one stopped selling ‘Assault Weapons’ instead these guns were altered slightly so that they no longer offended legislators delicate sensibilities and life went on without a hitch. Firearm manufacturers stopped putting threaded barrels on their guns and stopped selling magazines that held more than the requisite 10 rounds. They renamed these new versions of their firearms and kept selling them; The AR15 became the XR15 and the firearm industry didn’t even notice this bill.

In fact the legislative director of the “Violence Policy Center” even pointed out the legislation did nothing saying,

“The 1994 law in theory banned AK-47s, MAC-10s, UZIs, AR-15s and other assault weapons. Yet the gun industry easily found ways around the law and most of these weapons are now sold in post-ban models virtually identical to the guns Congress sought to ban in 1994.”

The most laughable thing, however, is that it is specifically SEMI-automatic firearms. The Assault Weapons Ban had no bearing on fully automatic weapons. These weapons remain under the purview of the 1934 National Firearms Act. Not to mention the belief that these ‘Assault Weapons’ are somehow more dangerous than any number of other semi automatic weapons that existed at the same time and fired the same ammunition simply because they had a pistol grip or a flash suppressor.

http://geekpolitics.com/assault_weapons_ban_is_baloney/

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

21. Your own figures conflict with your link and with the actual data.

What year are you claiming 5,285 children were killed with firearms?

David

[krispos42]

26. I think you mean "firearms were used to kill..."

Regardless, it does not mean that no children (humans under the age of 18 is the definition, I hope?) were murdered, it just means that they didn't die of bullet wounds.




That's besides population differences, which your stats do not account for.




I made this handy-dandy graph last year. FYI UK gun-related homicides are at historic lows.







Keep in mind that the UK banned and I believe confiscated what we could call "assault weapons" in 1988 or so and handguns in 1997.

[dana_b]

5. Helen Thomas is rightfully pissed

I know there are a lot of law abiding gun owners who would never do such things but there are sick people (some who got their assault weapon legally) who go on murderous rampages. If they didn't have an assault weapon, maybe, just maybe people would not have died. I know, I know, the 2nd amendment and all that. God knows we don't want their rights trampled.

But what about the rights of the dead?

[AndyA]

6. But what about the rights of the dead?

The pro-gun group will tell you that dead people are dead. What do they need rights for? :shrug:

It would seem their right to bear arms outweighs others right to live.

Then there's the trust issue. We're supposed to trust everyone who has a gun legally to do the right thing. Would the pro-gun group trust a stranger alone with their young daughter? Could one just pick a stranger off the street and let that person take their young child for a couple of hours?

The answer is almost always no, yet we're supposed to trust that same stranger to carry a lethal weapon around and not kill someone with it. It doesn't make sense.

[jmg257]

17. Our right to arms (it is your's too, I assume) does NOT outweigh the right to live.

The right that is secured does not provide protection for the mis-use of that right. Hence the crimes of conspiracy, slander, murder, robbery, assault, etc.

It is, or it should be, much to expect - to ask for most common people to surrender any of their basic rights, just because someone somewhere thinks someone else's life may be saved. Priorities usually start at home. And so those rights should not be expected to be given up lightly.

It always seems a bit funny that those most calling for the surrender of a right are those who will be immune from the loss, or who simply choose not to enjoy it.

[AndyA]

19. There's nothing funny about a person killed by someone who shouldn't have had a gun.

I speak from PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. That life can never come back. It devastated a family.

The right to life is a basic right. Which is more important? The right to live, or the right to bear arms? It's pretty obvious from recent headlines that we cannot have both. And once a person is dead, that's the end of their story. A person can still live their life without a gun.

I see no comparison.

[jmg257]

20. I agree. Nothing funny at all about most killings.

Also nothing funny about you or a loved one becoming a victim because you were rendered helpless to do anything about it.

Your experience guides your choices & opinions. I have my own experiences which guide mine.

Though it is possible we may agree often on who is "somone who shouldn't have had a gun".

[gorfle]

23. Which is more important.

The right to life is a basic right. Which is more important? The right to live, or the right to bear arms? It's pretty obvious from recent headlines that we cannot have both. And once a person is dead, that's the end of their story. A person can still live their life without a gun.

I will answer this straight up.

Our founders knew the risk of having an armed populace. No doubt there was firearm crime in their day, too. When you place deadly weapons in the hands of free men there will be those who are unable to hold their greedy and violent emotions in check and will use the weapons at their disposal for ill. Our founders were well aware of this, as it has ever been so since man first picked up a rock.

Our founders also knew that men can live without guns, or other arms. Yet they still chose to enumerate the right to keep and bear arms in our Constitution. Why?

Simply, they feared creating a powerful central government that could, through force of arms, enforce a tyranny over its governed people. To prevent this possibility, they devised a system whereby the central government had no standing army, and instead the people of the states would be armed to take its place or be able to counter it.

Yes, the right to life is a basic right. But the right to bear arms and so be able resist tyranny and oppression is far, far more important than any individual's life. Even my own. This is my view, and, I am certain, the view of our founders.

The murder and mayhem we endure as a result of the abuses of our freedom are simply the consequences of having those freedoms in the first place. It is not an acceptable solution to abrogate our freedoms in an attempt to secure safety from their abuses.

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, 1775

[Caliman73]

24. Yes the right to live is a basic right

If you are arguing that the right to live trumps the right to bear arms, then we have to take that argument to its completion. The right to live trumps pretty much any other right, or am I incorrect? I mean if you aren't alive then you cannot possess any other right. By that logic (that the right to live outweighs other rights) we will need to curtail any other freedom or activity that can potentially kill anyone. Driving, smoking, drinking alcohol, overeating, swimming; all of those activities have killed more people than the right to bear arms.

No one thinks that death is funny or that criminals having guns is acceptable. It is a risk we take for having freedoms. We try to mitigate the risks by addressing the root causes of violence though, not by restricting tools that might be used for violence. If you start taking away freedoms and/or objects, for the sake of limiting the risks to our lives, where do we stop?

[hack89]

30. The same logic fueled the Patriot act

give up some rights for some security.

[benEzra]

18. Only 3% of U.S. murders involve ANY type of rifle.

Far more people are murdered using shoes and bare hands, knives, clubs, and shotguns.

The "assault weapon" fraud is Patriot-Act-style scaremongering; a handgrip that sticks out does NOT make a civilian rifle more lethal or dangerous than a similar rifle with a traditional straight stock.

[Hoopla Phil]

27. Why let facts get in the way of a good emotional issue?

[Tejas]

33. Do you trust that person coming towards

you on a 2-lane at 60mph?

Why?


Some will scream straw(!) but if you insist on making the subject of trust a part of the issue (and it truly is) then I think mine is a fair question.

[slackmaster]

34. The rights of the dead have been infringed

It would seem their right to bear arms outweighs others right to live.

That looks a lot like a false dilemma to me.

[rl6214]

10. Weren't most of those shooting done with handguns

Are those the assault weapons you are talking about?

[spin]

11. So she recommends we reinstate a law that did little or nothing...

and expired because of that fact.

From a Report to the National Institute of Justice, United States Department of Justice published in June 2004:

• Should it be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement. AWs were rarely used in gun crimes even before the ban. LCMs are involved in a more substantial share of gun crimes, but it is not clear how often the outcomes of gun attacks depend on the ability of offenders to fire more than ten shots (the current magazine capacity limit) without reloading.
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/jerrylee/research/aw_exec2004.pdf

The Assault Weapons Ban is a dead horse. You can stuff it and prop it up but it's never going to pull a plow.

[Hoopla Phil]

28. As long as it makes someone feel better, yes.

[spin]

31. Ooh, I feel good. Oops, I wet my diapers...

I've grown past the point that "feel good" laws give me a nice warm feeling.

[krispos42]

29. The problem is that....

....this argument style is an adaption of the reichwing's arguments against other rights that they were achingly eager to invalidate.



Like "terrorist", "domestic terrorist", and "enemy combatant", "assault weapon" is an arbitrary and perjorative term. It means whatever you want it to mean. In 1993 the term meant one thing, in 2009 the definition has been extended in California to include all rifles of one particular caliber, even single-shot rifles.


Besides, most of the guns used in the horrific murder sprees of the past 4 weeks have been handguns or pump-action shotguns, if memory serves.



Mass murder (lots of bodies in one incident) is historically rare in the US. It's amplified by the availability of media and the 24/7 news cycle, but 95% of all murdered people were killed in incidents with a single victim. About 1% of all murder victims are part of a 3-or-more mass murder.



I made this chart last year from DoJ data.







Of course, the data for this year will make that orange line spike up... :-(

[spin]

7. Gibbs mentioned a "coordinated strategy on violence"...

something that many of the pro-gun groups favor.

The sad part is that he didn't offer any details and seemed hesitant, unsure, weak and apologetic. While Helen Thomas is one tough cookie to confront, I would have been impressed if he would have shown more backbone and had given a strong positive answer.

He could for example have said, "The President favors more of a proactive rather than a reactive approach. The Assault Weapons Ban failed because it was a "feel good" law that really failed to address the problem of violence in our society. The President is working on a coordinated strategy to combat violence that will be far more effective then merely curtailing the sale of one type of firearm because of cosmetic appearance. Details of this plan will be announced in the near future. Next question."

[Warren Stupidity]

9. Historically, a "coordinated strategy on violence"

ends up being implemented as locking up more pot smokers and other drug users. Tough on crime - oh yes every politician has run on this since Nixon - and all it has done is create the Prison Industrial Complex to go with the Military Industrial Complex. We are now at the point where the federal government is so crippled with military spending and debt service on military spending that it cannot do anything else and the state governments are so crippled with prison spending that they can't do anything else. And the solution: more bombs and bombers, more cops and prisons.

[spin]

14. True, real solutions are expensive, so we should pass "feel good" laws...

which do little to address the problems we face.

So as Democrats we push a new AWB through and the President signs it. We all pat ourselves on the back and say, "Wow, we really did something important."

Politics as usual. Lots of pompous politicians strutting around like emperor penguins flapping their wings.



Yeah, that's why I voted for Obama.

[Pullo]

15. Here here!!!

[virginia mountainman]

16. The back slapping in your scenario would end abruptly on election night..NT

[aikoaiko]

8. Until the President says no new federal gun bans.., no one really knows

since his website still says he supports reauthorizing the AWB.

But I am sure Gibbs is correct that Obama does not want to pursue it now. I'm sure the administration sees all those people who are panic buying guns and ammo (even though money is tighter than ever) as potential angry voters should the ban actually get reinstated.

Its not very clear at all that these shooters wouldn't have used other guns to the same effect if there was a AWB.

[Furyataurus]

12. Someone needs to tell her

"assault" weapons are already "banned".

[gorfle]

22. heheheheheh

Heh, it's quite clear now that President Obama's administration is not going to touch this issue with a 10-mile long pole. They see the record gun and ammunition sales that have been going on since November and they are fully aware that any anti-gun legislation is going to turn all those buyers into angry voters when his term is up.

I strongly suspect, however, that when he wins a second term, you will see anti-firearm legislation passed then, as he will have nothing to lose.

[Caliman73]

25. unlikely

Even if President Obama himself has nothing to lose because of term limits, he is intelligent enough to understand that his colleagues in the Congress and his party's candidate to succeed him are still vulnerable on the issue.

I agree with the posters who addressed "feel good" legislation versus legislation aimed at tackling the root causes of violence. You can spend political energy on laws that appear to stop a problem or you can actually work on addressing the motivation for the problem. The CAUSE of violence is not guns. The tools with which some of the more reported violence is being carried out at this time are guns. Making more guns illegal is not going to stop people who are already inclined to commit crimes of violence from being violent. What more restrictive gun laws do is impact people who are already inclined to respect the law.

Fully funded programs to educate people on violence, increase job opportunities and economic security, and early mental health and psychological intervention are worthwhile legislative endeavors which would do far more to reduce violence.

[spin]

32. Well put. (n/t)