Here's a .pdf listing a high-level description of each of the steps Obama proposes to implement via executive order:
This is pretty innocuous stuff. No new laws, nothing Draconian, no "jack-booted thugs," just basically leveraging existing laws by calling for enforcement, including background checks, collecting data on guns resulting from crimes, mental health, training for law enforcement and sharing background check information between agencies.
These proposals would help law enforcement prevent the proliferation of guns in the hands of criminals, and if the NRA is truly concerned about that, which I have my doubts, they would embrace them. Its the wide open, "unfettered" access to guns that allow them to slip through cracks in the already flimsy laws the NRA insists upon, and land in the hands of criminals. The NRA and the GOP know that criminals are not getting their guns through theft, but through straw and other illegal purchases, and unregulated sales (Fast and Furious?). But a sale is a sale, and they know enforcement of existing laws and these common sense additions means sales go down. Sales, not "constitutional rights," is their number one goal.
To hear the NRA/GOP's over the top telling of it, Obama is negating the entire Constitution. These orders are common sense things we should have been doing all along. None of this affects current gun owners in any way. The NRA is probably right, in that if all of these proposals were in place, it may not have stopped the Sandy Hook fool, but that is no reason not to do anything.
This statistic haunts me: 85% of the children in the world killed by guns are killed in the US. If that's not enough to drive a civilized nation to action, I don't know what would. If for no other reason than just having the appearance of being concerned over Sandy Hook, it would make sense to get on board with what the President is proposing.
Its stupid of the far right not to embrace these executive orders, declare themselves "working with the president in a bipartisan fashion" and go home, still clinging to their guns and paranoia. Rather, they come off as the irrational, rigid ideological extremists that they are. They do what they do...
But their response is another indication of the knee-jerk, off the hook, obsessive opposition to the President, because of who he is. Obama could have gone to the NRA and said I will support whatever you propose, and then they would have urged the House to vote against that, because Obama is supporting it.
The over the top response just provides more proof of their insanity. And the source of it is not surprising:
The toplines show that Americans support an assault weapons ban by 58-39. I asked the Post polling team for a detailed demographic breakdown:
* White non-college men are by far the least supportive, at 43-55.
* Meanwhile, white college educated men support a ban, 57-41.
* White college educated women are even more supportive, 73-25.
* Nonwhites overall are also very supportive, at 63-33.
* Americans from the ages of 18-39 support a ban, 52-46.
Non-college white men are the only constituency that opposes a ban.
I'm not a big Michael Moore fan, but he was on to something with "Stupid White Men." They are acting very stupid; they're a minority increasingly out of step with the rest of the nation and are at the bottom of damn near every policy that makes us exceptional in a negative way vis a vis the western world, holding us all back, preventing sensible, common sense steps to improve things. This group seems to have an irrational obsession with guns that has a perverse psychological hold on them, where "the gun" is their last chance of maintaining the kind of dominance and control they've had over society, historically, that they feel is slipping away. Guns have become a religion, as there is no other issue, including faith, that conjures up the kind of absolutist position they take with guns. For example, their opposition to these proposals:
"5. Propose rule making to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun."
And this:
"13. Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime."
If you really are against criminals having guns, then why not enforce the laws on the books, or do common sense things like this? If you are a law abiding gun owner, none of this affects you.
Then again, this is more about that tribal obsession of an increasingly paranoid white minority, preventing this country from moving into the 21st century, than it is about anything else.
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