Sunday, February 10, 2013

Obama and Gun Control

Obama and Gun Control ***************** FLOTUS Michelle and WH power lady Valerie Jarrett, chief advisor to Obama attending the funeral of the young girl recently shot in Chicago (the girl who sang at the inaugural). Gabby Giffords will likely attend Tuesday's Obama SOTU address. Gabby will likely join several other family members of recent gun violence up in the Joint House/Senate balcony . Like the ol' Gipper applying superb pr gimmicks, Obama will use these folks to promote gun control. The reality, however, is that the most that Congress will do this year is some limits on magazine size, more comprehensive background checks, and encourgement of mental health professionals to notify law enforcement of some potential danger from patients. There will not be an assault weapons ban passing. The NRA is powerful; and has already bought dozens of Congressional politicos. The current Rolling Stone's political reporter Tim Dickerson has a good read on how the NRA has been transformed, from a former rep. for hunters and target shooters to a lobby for corporate gun manufacturers. These corporations control the NRA board make broad policy. The so-called millions of NRA members, what LBJ would have called the "piss-ants", is the army that the gun corporations arouse in order to get its' agenda into law. "...Billing itself as the nation's "oldest civil rights organization," the NRA still claims to represent the interests of marksmen, hunters and responsible gun owners. But over the past decade and a half, the NRA has morphed into a front group for the firearms industry, whose profits are increasingly dependent on the sale of military-bred weapons like the assault rifles used in the massacres at Newtown and Aurora, Colorado... ...The NRA's alignment with an $11.7 billion industry has fed tens of millions of dollars into the association's coffers, helping it string together victories that would have seemed fantastic just 15 years ago. The NRA has hogtied federal regulators, censored government data about gun crime and blocked renewal of the ban on assault weaponry and high-capacity magazines, which expired in 2004. The NRA secured its "number-one legislative priority" in 2005, a law blocking liability lawsuits that once threatened to bankrupt gunmakers and expose the industry's darkest business practices. Across the country, the NRA has opened new markets for firearms dealers by pushing for state laws granting citizens the right to carry hidden weapons in public and to allow those who kill in the name of self-defense to get off scot-free...." The NRA vs. America, Tim Dickerson, Rolling Stone, Jan. 31, 2013.

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