Analysis: Obama's home state offers a lesson on path to gun laws

[Tuesday Afternoon]

By Greg McCune | Reuters

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The failure of President Barack Obama's home state of Illinois to pass new restrictions on guns could prove instructive for Obama's own fledging campaign to enact stricter national gun laws.

Within days after a gunman killed 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, some Illinois state legislators sought to capitalize on the national outcry about gun violence to launch a new broadside on the availability of guns.

The Illinois proposals were similar to the plan unveiled by Obama on Wednesday to ban so-called assault weapons and ammunition clips that permit rapid firing of multiple bullets.

But even in Illinois, a so-called blue state that went for Obama in the November presidential election, the gun proposals faltered early in the process, done in by the state's urban-rural divide and opposition from the country's powerful gun lobby, the National Rifle Association.

Although the bills were approved by an Illinois Senate panel, with Democrats in favor and Republicans against, the plan never made it to a vote on the floor of the state Senate -- despite a Democratic majority.

The measures were seen as too restrictive, and some doubted they would work. Lawmakers were distracted by other issues, also a factor in Washington.

more at link:
http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-obamas-home-state-offers-lesson-path-gun-191817411.html

[Bay Boy]

1. Step one...

...surround yourself with an ocean. Oops I thought it was going to be about Hawaii.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

2. as with most of our Presidents, I think it could safely be considered that Obama can claim

a dual state residency . . .



Since he ran from Illinois, I would consider it to be his prominent Home State.

ymmv.

any comment about the content of the OP?

[krispos42]

3. Anybody informed knows that "assault weapon" is a distraction

It's not the military-style protruding pistol grip, or the military-style bayonet lug, or the military-style telescoping or folding buttstock, or the military-style flash-reducing "suppressor", or the military-style black plastic furniture, or the military-style black matte finish on the exposed metal that makes the gun shoot so fast...


...it's the gun's operation: Semi-automatic.

And they way it is fed: detachable magazines.


Unless any state's or the federal legislature is going to address these two issues AT THE SAME TIME, there can be no real, measurable, reduction in the ability of an individual gun to shoot many rounds in a short period of time.


And even that is arguable. Slide-action and lever-action rifles and shotguns don't shoot that much slower than a semi-automatic, and the only reason there are no detachable-magazine-fed lever-action rifles and relatively few detachable-magazine pump-action rifles is because there is no demand for them because... people can buy semi-automatic rifles instead.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

4. yet, there are those who choose to reamin willfully ignorant about the misnomer of the

terminology and some of these have the power to enact laws . . .

[Eleanors38]

11. Correct. And one of the reasons why there is lack of clarity...

is the desire among many controllers to keep their foot in the door for future bans.

[safeinOhio]

5. If you don't think Sandy Hook was the tipping point,

what would you guess it'll take? Hundreds instead of of 10s of innocents killed in a mass murder rampage? A right-wing, racist unregulated militia like the klan or skinheads attacking a minority community to start their dreamed about race war? An attack on a police station or military post? The attacks are not coming at a slower or less deadly rate.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

6. that it was a tipping point - I concur. That we are focusing on a subset of violence because of the

tool of choice by that particular violently insane criminal is where I have issues, problems and further questions about the focus of our society.

the largest mass murder of children did not involve guns. 38 children murdered:

Andrew Philip Kehoe (February 1, 1872 – May 18, 1927) was an American farmer and treasurer of his township school board, notable as a mass murderer for killing his wife, and 43 other people (including 38 children), and injuring 58 people by setting off bombs in the Bath School Disaster on May 18, 1927. He committed suicide near the school by detonating dynamite in his truck, causing an explosion which killed several other people and wounded more. He had earlier set off incendiary devices in his house and farm, destroying all the buildings, as well as two horses and other animals.

more at link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Kehoe

[safeinOhio]

7. Good example.

He place dynamite under the school. Try to purchase dynamite today, even at a gun show.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

8. oh please -

Dynamite is mainly used in the mining, quarrying, construction, and demolition industries, and it has had some historical usage in warfare. However the unstable nature of nitroglycerin, especially if subjected to freezing, has rendered it obsolete for military uses.

more at link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Dynamite

eta: link

[safeinOhio]

9. That is right and at the time

He purchased it at the local hardware store, no questions asked.
Oh please? You used it as an example.

Your post was about civilian gun laws, not military tactics.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

10. the military does not use dynamite.

do you have anything to say about the OP or not?

[Hangingon]

13. Dynamite is often stolen from construction sites.

[Eleanors38]

12. Jeeez, that gun. Try melting it and get vapor for your efforts.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

14. doesn't it seem to you that if we solve the violence issue then it would also stand to reason

that the "gun" violence issue would also be resolved?

[Eleanors38]

15. Sure does. Don't know how it would be done, but I think what ever works...

would involve NGOs at least as much as well-targeted government programs. Sometimes I think socio-pathology has become a near-legitimate form of expression in our rapidly de-legitimizing society. "Gun-violence" grossly misses the point.