All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Tami]

I’d voted for changing the 2nd. I have no problem with people wanting to bear arms, but, there should be limits. I’m okay with homeowners and business owners having handguns and shotguns to protect their property, but, there is no sane reason John and Jane Q. Public should own assault rifles like the AR-15 which was used in the Ulvade shooting and scores of other incidents.

Thing is, you don't need a constitutional amendment to own a gun, just like you don't need a constitutional amendment to own a car, or a knife, or pretty much anything. The problem is that as long as there is a constitutional amendment for guns, there can't be any regulations because judges will rule that it is a Constitutional Right to own a gun, any gun.

Getting rid of the amendment doesn't get rid of guns, it just gets rid of the legal justification for having a gun.

[thwhtGuardian]

Thing is, you don't need a constitutional amendment to own a gun, just like you don't need a constitutional amendment to own a car, or a knife, or pretty much anything. The problem is that as long as there is a constitutional amendment for guns, there can't be any regulations because judges will rule that it is a Constitutional Right to own a gun, any gun.

Getting rid of the amendment doesn't get rid of guns, it just gets rid of the legal justification for having a gun.

That's how the Right narrowly define it these days but historically it was never interpreted that way until fairly recently. There were lots of restrictions of guns in the past...some of them enacted by the ACTUAL Founding Fathers. It's one of those fun hypocrisies of the Right, they like to say that it's their "originalist" reading of the Constitution that makes them oppose common sense gun restrictions but ignore that in congruence with enumerating the right to bear arms in the Constitution the Founding Fathers were also against public carrying of weapons, against the concealed carry of weapons and they enacted laws that demanded that weapons must be stored unloaded in homes and even decreed the number of feet away from a weapon that the black powder had to be stowed(which effectively meant that the ammunition had to be stored out side the home while the gun must be inside).

The best bit though?

That wacko right wing fantasy of needing guns to stand up to a tyrannical government being the reason for the second amendment?

Pure fiction.

In fact, one of the earliest official acts of the then Continental Congress(even before the Declaration of Independence) read as follows:

Resolved That it be recommended to the several Assemblies, Conventions and Committees or Councils of Safety, of the United Colonies, immediately to cause all Persons to be disarmed, within their respective Colonies, who are notoriously disaffected to the cause of America, or who have not associated, and shall refuse to associate to defend by Arms these united Colonies, against the hostile Attempts of the British Fleets and Armies, and to apply the Arms taken from such Persons in each respective Colony, in the first place, to the Arming the continental Troops raised in said Colony, in the next, to the arming such Troops as are raised by the Colony for its own defence, and the Residue to be applied to the arming the Associators; that the Arms when taken be appraised by indifferent Persons, and such as are applied to the Arming the Continental Troops, be paid for by the Congress and the Residue by the respective Assemblies, Conventions, or Councils or Committees of Safety.

Sure it was the eve of war, but the Founding Fathers voted unanimously that they had the Right to take away the weapons of anyone who didn't swear loyalty to the Revolutionary Government and not a single one of them batted an eye at establishing that right.

So not only is it silly that Cletus and Jim Bob think they have any hope of standing up to the armies of the Federal Government...but the very idea that the Founders supported their right to do so is absurd as well. But heck, when those kinds of people are the source of your information should you really expect them to be correct and educated?

[Tami]

Hundreds gather at church for blessing ceremony featuring AR-15s

Nuttier than a nut farm.

NEWFOUNDLAND, Pa. -- Hundreds of crown-wearing worshipers clutching AR-15 rifles drank holy wine and exchanged or renewed wedding vows in a commitment ceremony at a Pennsylvania church on Wednesday, prompting a nearby school to cancel classes. With state police and a smattering of protesters standing watch outside the church, brides clad in white and grooms in dark suits brought dozens of unloaded AR-15s into World Peace and Unification Sanctuary for a religious event that doubled as an advertisement for the Second Amendment.

World Peace and Unification Sanctuary in Newfoundland believes the AR-15 symbolizes the "rod of iron" in the biblical book of Revelation.

The Rev. Sean Moon, who leads the church, prayed for "a kingdom of peace police and peace militia where the citizens, through the right given to them by almighty God to keep and bear arms, will be able to protect one another and protect human flourishing."

Moon is the son of the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a self-proclaimed messiah who founded the Unification Church, which critics regard as a cult. The younger Moon's congregation is a breakaway faction of the Unification Church, which had distanced itself from Wednesday's event.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Tom Goolsby, a former North Carolina State Senator and comb over enthusiast who in his time in office, supported massive cuts to education, a state constitutional ban on same sex marriage, voter ID laws that disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters, voted for a law to prevent climatologists from North Carolina from being able to discuss climate change, was the sponsor of the repeal of the Racial Justice Act, and was the man who snuck an amendment onto a motorcycle safety bill to turn it into one of the most radical pieces of anti-abortion legislation in the country. When his legislative agenda began to create weekly protests at the state capitol, known as Moral Mondays, for being led by the Reverend William Barber, Goolsby took the very adult approach to take out an opinion editorial in the local paper to call them “Moron Mondays”, in which he lied about there being no members of the legislature among the group’s numbers. Goolsby lasted less than two terms in office, resigning in August 2014 shortly after being sued by the rest of the law firm where he worked for financial fraud, which makes him even harder to elect.

On this date in 2016, 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” presented its original profile of the sitting U.S. House Representative for Colorado’s 6th Congressional District, Mike Coffman, who prior to going to Washington, D.C., had a career in Colorado state politics that went all the way back to 1989. Back in 2012, Mike Coffman was at a campaign fundraiser when he volunteered his opinion about the Birther conspiracy, saying, “I don’t know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don’t know that. But I do know this, that in his heart, he’s not an American. He’s just not an American.” Well, word of this disgusting moment leaked to the public, and Coffman was forced to apologize. Mind you, robotically repeating that apology to local news reporters in Colorado who chased him down for comment might not have been the best way to make it seem genuine. He apparently doesn't like the negative publicity about it, since he was caught having his Congressional staff trying to edit the fact that it ever happened from his Wikipedia page, earning him top honors in a Buzzfeed article about members of Congress wasting taxpayer dollars to have paid staff scrub their Wiki pages. But in terms of policy, Mike Coffman isn't any less of an extremist. Say, for example, his repeated support for Congress trying to make fetal Personhood a thing, and make life start at conception. Coffman voted to do so as a state legislator in 2008, and again after hitting Washington, D.C. in 2010 in the Tea Party Wave. In 2011, he also sponsored legislation that tried to redefine the legal definition of rape, specifying whether it was “forcible rape” or not. As you might expect, Coffman's also is a climate change denier, believing scientists' research cannot be trusted, and there's financial pressure on the scientists to cut their funding unless they produce studies that say it DOES exist. And THAT is a decidedly different paranoid conspiracy theory, right there. But it's far from his only one. In October of 2012, Coffman told reporters he believed President Obama would engage in a last minute military engagement to cement his bid on winning the presidency over Mitt Romney (and spoiler alert, nothing of the sort happened). Believe it or not, in spite of Mike Coffman having a history of voting for conservative interests, Colorado's 6th Congressional District held it for four terms after the Tea Party Wave, even though it has a +1 Democratic lean the Cook Partisan Index. After two years filled with disastrous town hall appearances for Coffman where constituents lambasted him for trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or how in the wake of the Parkland shooting, they demanded gun control… Mike Coffman got bounced from office in the 2018 Blue Wave by Jason Crow, who bested him by 11 points.

[worstblogever]

On this date in both 2020, as well as 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” first profiled the sitting U.S. House Representative from Indiana’s 9th Congressional District, Trey Hollingsworth, who was first elected to office in 2016. He is the 12th wealthiest member of Congress as of this article’s posting, with a net worth of over $50 million. He self-funded his first campaign for Congress, having carpet-bagged his way up from his home in Tennessee to end up getting a seat in Congress.

And what immediately brought Trey Hollingsworth near the front of the queue of people we had planned on profiling was his remarks on Covid-19 in April of 2020, where he came out hard in favor of reopening the country, considering hundreds of thousands of people dying “the lesser of two evils” when compared with the GDP being lower:

”The social scientists are telling us about the economic disaster that is going on," he said. "Our GDP is supposed to be down 20% alone this quarter. It is policymakers' decision to put on our big boy and big girl pants and say more deaths is the lesser of these two evils. It is not zero evil, but it is the lesser of these two evils and we intend to move forward that direction. That is our responsibility and to abdicate that is to insult the Americans that voted us into office."

To which, we have a fine rebuttal to say, “Go f*** yourself and your ‘big boy pants’, Trey. People’s lives matter more than your stock portfolio.”

At this time, we are relieved to report that Trey Hollingsworth has opted to not run for re-election in 2022, which is likely due to the fear of getting bounced from office anyway after he was one of 35 Republicans who voted for an independent commission to investigate the failed coup attempt carried out for Donald Trump on January 6th.

We’re not giving him too much credit for just that once doing the sensible thing, and instead, will just offer our fondest “good riddance” salutes at this time, while looking forward to him being gone in 2023.

[Zelena]

Ted Cruz angrily quits interview after being confronted about gun control

On Wednesday Cruz spoke to Mark Stone, US correspondent for Sky News, at a vigil in Uvalde.:

Cruz said: “If you want to stop violent crime, the proposals the Democrats have, none of them would have stopped this.”

Stone said: “Many people around the world just cannot fathom, ‘Why only in America? Why is this American exceptionalism so awful?’”

Cruz said: “You know, I’m sorry you think American exceptionalism is awful.”

Stone said he thought “this aspect of it” was awful.

“You’ve got your political agenda,” Cruz said, putting his hands on the reporter’s shoulders, saying “God love you” and walking away.

Stone and another reporter pursued, asking, “I just want to understand why you do not think that guns are the problem in America” and “Why is America the only country that makes this kind of mass shooting?”

Stone said: “You can’t answer that, can you, sir?”

[babyblob]

Ted Cruz angrily quits interview after being confronted about gun control

On Wednesday Cruz spoke to Mark Stone, US correspondent for Sky News, at a vigil in Uvalde.:

Cruz said: “If you want to stop violent crime, the proposals the Democrats have, none of them would have stopped this.”

Stone said: “Many people around the world just cannot fathom, ‘Why only in America? Why is this American exceptionalism so awful?’”

Cruz said: “You know, I’m sorry you think American exceptionalism is awful.”

Stone said he thought “this aspect of it” was awful.

“You’ve got your political agenda,” Cruz said, putting his hands on the reporter’s shoulders, saying “God love you” and walking away.

Stone and another reporter pursued, asking, “I just want to understand why you do not think that guns are the problem in America” and “Why is America the only country that makes this kind of mass shooting?”

Stone said: “You can’t answer that, can you, sir?”

I am pretty sure he will make his points clear at the NRA convention this week.

[babyblob]

My question is why are simple things like Better Back round checks, Red Flag laws, simple things that the GOP fight against. Why are those so god awful? How do those take away anyones freedoms. If a person cant pass a back round check they should not have the Freedom to own a gun,

And it says a lot about a party and their followers that wanting to take steps to protect people is some horrible agenda and the people wanting to fight for those are just the worst humans in the world.

[babyblob]

It is sick that Cruz and Abbot will be safer at a gun rally that has banned guns from the event then a group of children just going to school. But hey "That's Merica!" Right?

[Malvolio]

We don't need to change a word of the 2nd Amendment. We just need to go by the actual words, not the perversion of them that the NRA has bribed Congress into going by. You know, that "Well regulated" part.

[babyblob]

We don't need to change a word of the 2nd Amendment. We just need to go by the actual words, not the perversion of them that the NRA has bribed Congress into going by. You know, that "Well regulated" part.

We dont need more regulation. Doesnt any one here watch Fox News. Gun crimes are only committed by minorities in LA, Chicago, and New York. And Mass shootings are rare. The only reason people talk about them so much is because the media is so focused on them.

[Catlady in training]

It depends on the context. The odds that an individual will be affected are pretty low. It's still going to happen every now and then in a big country with lots of guns and violent maniacs.

I assumed that the comparisons to 9/11 were not about the number of casualties, but about the common sense of tragedy, possibly trauma, that people all over the country experience. A human being doesn't have to be affected personally by a tragedy to feel its effects.

You're talking about Trump who was more a populist candidate than a true Republican. And just because some might perceive him as a "bad apple" he doesn't represent all Republicans

If he doesn't represent them, why haven't they distanced themselves from him after... well, anything he did? I think they are all resigned to back him up by now.

America is a truly laughingstock failed state when it comes to civilian gun violence if Zelensky takes time out from Russia trying to murder him/subjugate his country to say Texas is not okay.

Yeah, I thought the same. If the leader of a country that lost at least 257 children in the war by the latest count, plus had thousands of them kidnapped who will most likely never be found again, takes time to offer you condolences for your kids being murdered during state of peace, you are screwed.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

I am pretty sure he will make his points clear at the NRA convention this week.

Hardly a coincidence that convention is being held in a red state. A blue state governor would’ve ordered it canceled, or, at the very least, postponed out of respect for the shooting victims, then took his chances with any legal fight the NRA dredged up.

[babyblob]

Hardly a coincidence that convention is being held in a red state. A blue state governor would’ve ordered it canceled, or, at the very least, postponed out of respect for the shooting victims, then took his chances with any legal fight the NRA dredged up.

They have to hold the convention. if they did the decent thing and postponed it or moved it to another area that means the Dems and their liberal agenda would win.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

They have to hold the convention. if they did the decent thing and postponed it or moved it to another area that means the Dems and their liberal agenda would win.

Perish the thought.