Breakthrough?

Joe Manchin hints at possible gun reform breakthrough: “It feels different” (Newsweek)

CNN: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says he encouraged Republican Sen. John Cornyn to begin discussions with Democrats to see if they can find a middle ground on legislation to respond to the Texas elementary school shooting.

Even NRA members are ready for “gun safety reform”. Please, Dems, Stop calling it “gun control”. That just fuels right wing crap you’re planning to send helicopters to seize guns from law-abiding citizens.

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Author: craigcrawford

Trail Mix Host. Lapsed journalist, author & retired pundit happily promoting nothing but the truth for Social Security checks.

61 thoughts on “Breakthrough?”

  1.  Please, Dems, Stop calling it “gun control”. 

    craig, lately the only folk who seem to be using that term are NOT the dem pols but the tv talking heads and print media.  msnbc anchors have switched to “gun safety” and so have some on CNN but judy woodruff on PBS still says “control”.  bills in critterville and the march-for-our-lives kids use the term “common sense gun laws.”

  3. I’m tired of appeasing the Rt wing snowflake “eff your feelings” goobers by trying to find nice things to call necessary legislation. 
    Legislatively, they need a foot in their ass and their noses rubbed into the mud.  
    But, ok, whatever it takes until we can get enough senators.

  4. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/26/gun-buying-age-texas-handguns-rifles-uvalde/

    “…a growing number of lawmakers in Texas and beyond are calling for the minimum age to purchase assault rifles to be raised to 21 from 18…”

    “Only six states — Florida, Washington, Vermont, California, Illinois and Hawaii — have increased the minimum purchase age for long guns to 21, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The majority did so following the 2018 massacre in Parkland, Florida, where a then-19-year-old assailant killed 17 people at a high school.”

    “The ban infringes the right of all 18-to-20-year-olds to purchase firearms for the exercise of their Second Amendment rights, even for self-defense in the home,” the NRA argued in a court filing, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “The ban does not just limit the right, it obliterates it.”

    “Government attorneys, however, argued that because “18-to-20-year-olds are uniquely likely to engage in impulsive, emotional, and risky behaviors that offer immediate or short-term rewards, drawing the line for legal purchase of firearms at 21 is a reasonable method of addressing the Legislature’s public safety concerns.”

    “A federal judge upheld the law last year; the NRA is appealing.”

    The NRA is appealing? Huh. I find the NRA repulsive.

  5. a song to sing as the gun-obsessed congregate in Houston:

    This parody was first published in March of 2018. Not surprisingly, it is as relevant today as then. Nothing has changed. Will it change now?

  6. Gov. Greg Abbott cancels appearance at Houston NRA convention this weekend, will travel to Uvalde instead (msn.com)

    […]

    Abbott is only the latest in a string of cancelations for the event, which will be held Friday to Sunday at the George R. Brown Convention Center downtown. Daniel Defense, the gun manufacturer that produced the AR-15-style assault rifle used by the shooter, planned to be an exhibitor at the convention but dropped off the schedule on Thursday, in addition to shutting down its social media accounts. 

    In addition, several musicians who planned to play at the convention’s Saturday night “Grand Ole Night Of Freedom” concert pulled out on Thursday, including “American Pie” singer Don McLean, who was the first to announce he would cancel. 
    “In light of the recent events in Texas, I have decided it would be disrespectful and hurtful for me to perform for the NRA at their convention in Houston this week,” McLean said in a statement.
    Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner is facing calls to call off the event altogether but said Wednesday that the city “simply cannot cancel.” At a Thursday afternoon press conference where he outlined the city’s safety plan for the event, he urged the NRA to postpone the convention for “a week or two.”
    A group of organizations, including Black Lives Matter Houston and the Harris County Democratic Party, will hold a protest near the convention center at Discovery Green at noon on Friday. Democratic candidate for governor Beto O’Rourke, who interrupted Abbott’s press conference on Wednesday in Uvalde to condemn the governor’s stance on gun control and was quickly escorted out, plans to attend the Houston demonstration.

  7. We need to see who is going to the bloody gun meeting. With the musical talent not showing up it means less cover for the gqp willing to suck in more cash to retire with.

  9. Moscow Mitch “gave permission” to Corncob Cornyn…..That is obscene.

  10. Also obscene: How many children, and then how many adults have died in mass shootings before gop starts to think yeah, durr, maybe we oughta do something.  About Moscow Mitch and his “permission”—How long from today’s date until jerkoff republicans find some objection and use it to pull out?  Wanna start a pool?
    The GOP are obscene.

  11. Jackie Calmes
    French newspaper Le Monde: “If there is any American exceptionalism, it is to tolerate the fact that schools in the United States are regularly transformed into bloody shooting ranges…Indeed, America is killing itself & the Republican Party is looking the other way…”

  12. Obscenity:  If the Federal Govt should decide to come down and bust your ass for some reason or other, your AR-15 will be just about as effective as anything a bunch of school children could do to defend themselves against it.  Bunch of obscene dumbasses.  And that’s all I have to say about that.

  14. So long as the filibuster is in place there is an exceedingly small chance any kind of gun legislation will pass the Senate UNLESS Repugs think they will suffer in the next election from voters who will hold them responsible for stopping or delaying action that voters believe would save the lives of kids. Make a list of every legislator who (a) receives money from NRA, (b) attends any NRA event and/or (c) does not vote for gun safety legislation and hang that and their prior votes around their necks.  Poobah you said Dems need a clear message – there’s a clear message, at least on this issue. 

  15. Doctor HC Richardson
    One of the key things that drove the rise of the current Republican Party was the celebration of a certain model of an ideal man, patterned on the image of the American cowboy. Republicans claimed to be defending individual men who could protect their families if only the federal government would stop interfering with them. Beginning in the 1950s, those opposed to government regulation and civil rights decisions pushed the imagery of the cowboy, who ran cattle on the Great Plains from 1866 to about 1886 and who, in legend, was a white man who worked hard, fought hard against Indigenous Americans, and wanted only for the government to leave him alone. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-26-2022?s=r
     
     
     

  16. That image was not true to the real cowboys, at least a third of whom were Black or men of color, or to the reality of government intervention in the Great Plains, which was more extensive there than in any other region of the country. It was a reaction to federal laws after the Civil War defending Black rights in the post–Civil War South, laws white racists said were federal overreach that could only lead to what they insisted was “socialism.” 

  17. Which has morphed into the myth that only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun. Well that myth has been exploded.

  19. ‘No way to prevent this’: why the Onion’s gun violence headline is so devastating | Media | The Guardian

    After each mass shooting in the US come the familiar rituals: the thoughts and prayers, the presidential visits, the flood of media coverage – and a darkly memorable headline from a fake newspaper.
    “No way to prevent this, says only nation where this regularly happens.”
    The Onion’s reposting of its piece, with a few details localized to the latest shooting, has become an expected part of the cycle, underscoring the horrific toll of national paralysis.
    The brief article reports: “Citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place,” with a bleak quote attributed to a different person each time: “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them.”
    This week, however, the site went for the jugular. Normally, the piece appears as the site’s lead story after an attack. But after the shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 21, the Onion filled every slot on its homepage with different iterations of the story, making its point all the more grim.
    “This was a gut punch,” said Chad Nackers, the Onion’s editor-in-chief. The fact that the elementary-school violence occurred within days of a mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket, allegedly by a white supremacist, “hammered home the repetition of it for us”, he said. That fuelled the layout decision: editors sought to “emphasize this and show it in sort of a meta way”.
    The article first appeared in 2014, after the misogynistic Isla Vista killings in California, which left six people dead. Now it has appeared 21 times. “I didn’t recognize the headline for what it would become,” says Jason Roeder, who wrote the original piece. “I was just exhausted by this country’s special station in the mass murder hierarchy and wanted to express that.”
    The story serves as a potent example of humor’s ability to cut through political and media-driven noise – an increasingly challenging task in a post-truth era when, as the creators of South Park said in 2017, “satire has become reality”.
    The Onion piece is “not a belly-laugh type joke”, Nackers says. Rather, it’s “kind of putting all the pieces together and exposing the truth”.
    […]
    It probably won’t change anything, “because we Americans are addicted to the way guns make us feel,” Roeder adds. “But at least there’ll be an artifact of how many chances we let slip away.”

  21. the hill:

    The manufacturer of the semi-automatic rifle an 18-year-old gunman used in a deadly school shooting in Texas on Tuesday posted a photograph days before the tragedy of a child holding a rifle.
    Daniel Defense, which manufactured the DDM4 V7 rifle used in the mass shooting that left 19 children and two adults dead in Uvalde, tweeted a photo on May 16 of a little boy sitting on the floor holding in his hands a rifle of a similar model to that used by the Texas gunman.
    “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it,” a cutline reads above the photo.
    The tweet, an apparent reference to a Bible verse, ended with a prayer emoji.
    [continues]

    https://nbatitlechase.com/2022/05/25/photo-daniel-defense-where-salvador-ramos-bought-ar15s-is-still-advertising-its-gun-with-children-in-the-ads-playing-with-the-guns/

  22. that referenced bible verse only applicable to children lucky enough to become old

  23. So Beto’s Pissed – Wonkette

    […]
    The Times reports that once mean Beto was gone, Greg Abbott, his hands covered in proverbial blood just like every other Texas Republican, just bitched and moaned like he actually cares about the kids who were murdered yesterday:
    “There are family members who are crying as we speak,” he said. “Think about the people who are hurt and help those who are hurt.”Mr. Patrick added: “This is not a partisan issue. This is not a political issue.”
    Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick and everybody else on that stage, go fuck yourself.
    [continues]

  24. meanwhile, reports of violence of another sort that was cheered on by loser former guy. noteworthy that a goper leaning paper reported it. wonder if and how faux news did.

    Deseret

    During the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol building, some demonstrators burst out into the chant “Hang Mike Pence” as they protested against certifying the results of the 2020 election. Now reports indicate that the House committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 has heard testimony indicating that former President Donald Trump approved of the chant.
    When former Vice President Mike Pence accepted the election results, the mob converged on the Capitol, chanting for his death. Politico reported that three people “familiar with the matter” said Trump approved of the chant. Two of the three people with whom Politico spoke said that the detail of Trump’s approval has appeared in more than one testimony before the committee.
    It’s unclear what Trump did or said, but Politico reported that then White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows informed several people “that Trump had signaled a positive view of the prospect of hanging the vice president.”
    [continues]

  25. I don’t get the GOP political fear. FL legislature and then-Gov Scott raised age for assault weapons to 21 after Parkland and no one lost office.

  26. A lady I’ve known for years on Facebook used to tour Texas schools as a storyteller wrote the following.  It should be required reading for every politician.

    Trigger warning.

    I’m boring some of you, because I can’t seem to post about anything but Uvalde right now.  You’ll have to get over it, because this school shooting punched me right in the gut.  You see, early in my storytelling career I told stories in Uvalde…probably to the parents of some of the beautiful faces you see on your television screen.

    I remember children rolling on the floor laughing at the antics of Lazy Jack, and howling, like Coyote, at the moon with me.  That’s what I see in my mind’s eye when those faces come on the screen … but I see something more.

    Many years ago, in almost another lifetime, I cleaned up after a suicide.

    I was the second person on the scene when my neighbor blew his brains out with a handgun in the bathroom of his home.  I called 911.  I met his wife at the door when she rushed home from work and tried to shield her from seeing what was left of her husband.  But she had to look, and, of course, it was devastating.

    When the body was removed, she started for the house to clean up the scene, but I wouldn’t let her.  I didn’t want that to be one of her memories of her husband.  I made neighbors take her away, while I (pregnant, with a belly as big as a barn) went in with buckets and rags.

    On my knees, I mopped up blood that had pooled beneath the crinkled linoleum.  I climbed up on the tub to wipe brains from the ceiling.  I scooped up tissue and gristle and teeth.  It was the teeth that got to me.

    Healthy, grown men stood outside and wouldn’t enter the room with me (the cowards), while I carried out buckets of blood and gore and dumped them in our burn barrel.  I was told that what I saw was worse than some saw in VietNam.  It was the stuff of nightmares, but I try not to think about it.

    But, Uvalde brought all that back when the news reports said that DNA was required to identify some of the bodies.  I knew then *exactly* what the first responders saw.  I knew what had happened to those precious children.

    Now, every time I close my eyes I wake trembling.  In my dreams the faces of those babies morph into the gore I saw on that bathroom floor.

    I wish that our *illustrious* lawmakers had to clean up the gore at a scene.  Maybe then they could find it in their stone cold hearts to enact some legislation to put a stop to this.

    So, don’t expect me to stop talking about Uvalde, and other school shootings any time soon.  I’m a little worked up about it.

    Shelly Cumbie Tucker

     

     

  27. I’m in the “I’ll believe it when I see it” mode right now.
    Until our lawmakers actually take action and pass something… it’s all just the same blah, blah, blah…
     
    Bink… thank you for that Hitchens piece last night…

  29. Our school was tough, boy; we had our own coroner.
    We used to write essays like “What I Want to be if I Get to Grow up.”
    —Lenny Bruce

  30. Thank you, RR, for the memes of such high quality i sometimes share them with irl pals!
     
    🤝

  31. They can take all those cowboy hats and stick ’em.   Boots too.

    Sideways.

  35. I’ll have to look it up and see……

    but basically the thought just occurred to me and it sounded funny so i kneejerked it into the mix…..

    I looked it up and STILL don’t know what it means…..lol

  36. Interesting reading the calls for (politicians) change.  Nothing is gonna change but the time of day.  I’m 79 years old and during my life time I have seen more horrific violence, more guns, more crazies, more illegal drugs, more control of our lives, more communication, more verbal threats, more people, more cars, more traffic, and more guns, guns, guns, better guns that can shoot til the barrel melts, and more of the same droning politicians who are career hacks.  With all this more “stuff” what makes anyone think anything is going to change.  I doubt I will live to see the wheels really come off our society, but me thinks that’s where “you” are heading; I don’t want to see it.  Hi Craig….Mike

  38. Call your congresspeople, Pilar, ask them if they believe an 18 year old should be able to buy assault weapons, report back 👍🇺🇸

  39. The school-shooting generation is of voting age, now, not getting shot is a rather compelling reason to hit the polls, just saying

  40. If so how would you know that? (I was referring to the solipsist question.)

  41. Timeline – WaPo

    The gunman, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, fired more than 100 rounds starting at 11:33 a.m. More than an hour later, at 12:36, a child called 911 and was told to stay quiet, and at 12:47 she asked a dispatcher to “please send the police now,” McCraw said. Police did not breach the room with a Border Patrol tactical team until after that, officials have said.

    Honest to god.  Shooting for an hour and 11 minutes between the first shot and the 911 call asking to “please send the police now” at 12:47.  There is no conceivable excuse.

  43. That has to be one of the dumber things an NRA member could say – wait, no, it’s not at all one of the dumbest things they can come up with.

  44. Craig:  A bolt action .44 caliber, single shot, can take down an Elephant let alone a pig; no need for an AR.  The lunacy of the number of these things out there is beyond comprehension…it must be in the hundreds of thousands. Any new gun control is a waste of time when we have more guns than people.  We need to sterilize the lunatics.
     
     I just Googled the number of AR style of guns in the US: over 20,000,000.  I suppose I am a for real anti-gun nut.  Carried one for 30 years, all it got me was trouble and it is now hidden in my bedroom.  It may be that one day I will wish I was carrying.

  45. I seldom agree with Henry Olsen, but here’s the beginning of his piece at WaPo today.

    What good is law enforcement if we cannot trust it to keep Americans safe? That’s a question I bet many Americans are wondering after two revelations in recent days.

    The first concerns details of the police response to the school shooting in Uvalde, Tex., earlier this week. While details are still being uncovered, it appears police officers refused to confront the shooter while there was time to save lives. Instead, they spent time corralling distraught parents outside the school and rejected pleas to do their jobs and storm the building — even as students were calling 911 from inside the classrooms. At best, they demonstrated incompetence on a massive scale. At worst, it was cowardice and a refusal to fulfill their responsibility to protect the public.

    I haven’t read beyond that yet, but after that, what can he really say that would take the edge off that?

  46. The whole “we can never get rid of all the guns because there already so many” argument doesn’t apply if you consider the guns used in these mass-shootings are always purchased new, from gun dealers.  The Uvalde shooter didn’t find an AR in Grampy’s attic, he bought it

  50. School is out for summer here.  Those poor kids were looking forward to swimming, riding bikes, and all of the things kids do on summer break.  They almost made it.  Just a few more days.

    Gun manufacturers should be paying for those tiny caskets, and, maybe the store that sold the guns and alllll of that ammo should pay for therapy for the families and all of the surviving kids and their families, too.

    They will try to turn this around as a failure of law enforcement.  Many failed those kids, but the monster with the assault rifle made it all possible.   
     

  51. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/27/greg-abbott-texas-uvalde-shooting/

    “Abbott’s Friday appearance in Uvalde came as he skipped the National Rifle Association convention in Houston, where he instead deliver pre-recorded remarks that were shown to the audience minutes before his news conference began. In the video address, Abbott continued to make clear he does not view gun restrictions as the answer to the massacre.”

    “At the Uvalde news conference, Abbott continued to resist policy proposals that center on firearms and was noncommittal about the prospect of a special legislative session on gun violence.”

  52. https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/27/politics/ron-johnson-school-shooting-wokeness-comments/index.html

    “We stopped teaching values in so many of our schools,” said Johnson in an interview with Fox Business on Thursday. “Now we’re teaching wokeness, we’re indoctrinating our children with things like CRT, telling some children they’re not equal to others, and they’re the cause of other people’s problems.”

    “To his credit, anchor Neil Cavuto pushed back, noting that “these shootings, Senator, were going on long before CRT and wokeness, right?”

    “Johnson would not concede the point.”

    “I think CRT has been going on under the radar for quite some time as well,” he said of critical race theory. “Wokeness has been. Liberal indoctrination has been. This is a much larger issue than what a simple new gun law is gonna — it’s not gonna solve it. It’s not gonna solve it.”

  56. Johnson may represent Wisconsin but it sure seems like he lives Florida, based on recent reports. 
     
    Probably hates cheese, too.  And Wisconsin.  And the people that live there

  57. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/05/we-dont-deserve-beto-orourke

    “The only public figure with the guts to confront cynical Republicans over gun laws and the Texas massacre was a defiant Democrat who the media class long ago dismissed: gubernatorial nominee Beto O’Rourke.”

    “When rare instances of idealism and courage are framed by political elites as mere opportunism, is there any hope left?”

    https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Protesters-gather-outside-NRA-convention-in-17203581.php

    “There are some, including those who have lost those who are most dear to them, who say it’s too soon to talk about what we’re going to do to prevent this from ever happening again,” O’Rourke said to the crowd. “I hope you agree with me, that the time for us to have stopped Uvalde was right after Sandy Hook. The time for us to have stopped Uvalde was right after Parkland. The time for us to have stopped Uvalde was right after Santa Fe High School. The time for us to stop mass shootings in this country is right now, right here, today.”

    “O’Rourke also addressed those attending the NRA convention across the street from the protest, calling for them to join the fight against gun violence. “You are not our enemies. We are not yours,” O’Rourke said. “We extend our hand open and unarmed in a gesture of peace and fellowship to welcome you to join us to make sure that this no longer happens in this country.”

  60. https://reasonstobecheerful.world/dementia-music-healing-brain-neurology/

    “His words on the topic remain as evocative and poetic today as when he spoke them in 1991 before the U.S. Senate’s Special Committee on Aging: “Though the nervous system is sometimes compared to a computer, I think it is much more like an orchestra or a symphony. I think we are musical through and through, from the lowest levels of rhythm in our nerve cells to the highest levels. There is a vast range of neurological disorders in which this inner music is impaired, and all of these can be transformed by the healing power of music.”

    “…study participants listened to two different types of music: music that dated back at least 25 years, and music that was new to them. What they found was that the different types of music activated different parts of the brain. With new music, brain activity appears limited to mostly auditory processing, but not deep processing. Familiar music, however, stimulated more regions more significantly in a way that is deeply encoded in the brain. Those regions are associated with emotion, cognition, and autobiographical memory, and are minimally affected by early-stage Alzheimer’s. “This is one of the reasons, possibly, that some musical memories are preserved, because they’re encoded in such widely distributed regions,” Thaut says. “So the chance that some of the regions associated with music-based memories are preserved is just higher.”

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