Utah scolded by national gun-violence group

[Common Sense Party]

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence this week gave Utah, Arizona and Alaska all scores of zero, and said they “do not have a single common sense gun law on their books.”

{snip}

“I’m glad we got a zero from that group. I actually wish we would get a negative score from them — like an F-minus-minus,” said Rep. Curt Oda, R-Clearfield, a concealed weapons permit instructor who this year passed a bill that erased a 1,000-foot gun-free buffer around schools. He failed on another controversial “feral cat” bill to allow shooting feral animals in rural areas.

Oda said that in Utah, “We continually push for safety and education. But the ‘antis’ don’t want education. They just want an all-out ban. Their mission is to get rid of guns all together.”

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/faith/51760186-90/anti-bill-brady-gun.html.csp

[Common Sense Party]

1. I wish the Brady Bunch would come out and save us here in Utah.

We're drowning in the blood flowing from the carnage wrought by CCW permit holders. Drowning, I tell ya!

:sarcasm:

[Hoyt]

2. I think they have a point.

[Common Sense Party]

14. I'm sure you do.

Which point would that be?

[cleanhippie]

18. Of course you do. What, exactly, that point is, is a whole other matter.

[AtheistCrusader]

35. The people of Utah? Yes, they do.

[ileus]

3. I wish Virginia would get a 0... :( Congrats Arizona and Alaska

[damntexdem]

7. Sure, salute the most-idiotic of public policies imaginable.

I swear that some people seem to want to promote blood baths in this country -- as if we needed such promotion.

[WatsonT]

11. Utah is a blood bath?

They're near the bottom of the list for violent crime (ie, they have some of the lowest rates of gun violence). Meaning that these brady rankings are a joke.

[Common Sense Party]

13. It's chaos out here! The Wild West! Little old ladies are gunned down

every day in the town square! All the Mormons wear Kevlar magic underwear!

Somebody please save us!

WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!








Sarcasm?

yup

[rrneck]

26. Kevlar magic undetwear...

The possibilities are endless... and endlessly funny!

:rofl:

[cleanhippie]

19. "I swear that some people seem to want to promote blood baths in this country" - Bwahahahahahahaha!

:rofl:

[WatsonT]

36. Have any of these folks even attempted to provide statistics to back up such claims?

I have yet to see it. But surely one has at least tried in the past?

[Hangingon]

21. I hope Texas gets a 0

Sure, I salute the most-idiotic of public policies of this special interest group.

[beevul]

38. And yet the bloodbaths seem to keep happening where your favored public policies are in effect.

And yet the bloodbaths seem to keep happening where your favored public policies are in effect, chicago, schools, and on and on, at a rate that would seem higher than places where your favored public policies AREN'T in effect.

Tell me, which of them is idiotic again?

[MicaelS]

43. Every single time a CCW bill has been proposed

People with your attitude have screamed "There will be rivers of blood in the streets!" "People will be shooting each other over parking places!" "There will be bodies EVERYWHERE!" Well guess what, none of those things have happened. And members in this forum have posted numerous times that the rate of crime, and convictions by CCW holders is lower than the national average.

I swear, I'm cynical enough to believe some people REALLY do want blood baths in this country, only so they can scream "See we were right about all those guns on the streets! Ban them now!"

[Oneka]

4. A clue for the Brady's

You may want to rethink your strategy of informing everyone just how bad you suck
at political advocacy.


Umm.,.,. You're welcome.

[Ship of Fools]

5. Get rid of guns altogether? Riiiiight.

No chance in hell now of even modest changes. I do take issue, though, with anyone who honestly believes in the "slippery-slope" bullshit when it comes to strengthening common sense laws re: gun ownership/acquisition. Had some reasonable shit been done early enough (in the 1980s or 1970s?) I would know four out of a total of nine -- yes, NINE -- fewer suicides in my lifetime, including my dad who pumped 15 cents of fucking lead into his skull.

[Common Sense Party]

12. Common sense in what way? What new laws or which strengthened

laws would have prevented all those suicides? Would everyone have to undergo psychological counseling every year? And if you've ever had a suicidal thought you lose your guns?

[Ship of Fools]

17. Um, no to your last question --

else there would be a gazillion fewer of us critters running around and shitting on the planet ... HOWEVER:

Each of the suicides to which I'm referring happened in my hometown. Each has its own convoluted and sorry story. I realize my previous comment was a little broad-brushed and cryptic, but to put it lightly I'm pretty passionate about the need for gun laws in this country to be much better enforced.

Two suicides were those of teenagers, both of whom accessed guns that were not locked up. I think it's pretty common sense that gun ownership should be conditional to an understanding of gun safety laws, especially when there are children in the family. Think about Florida and pRick Scott's law banning physicians from discussing gun issues ... wtf?

The other two were adults, which included my dad, who had mental disorders. And yes, anyone with a mental disorder needs to check in if they care to own a gun, in my fucking humble opinion.

[one-eyed fat man]

31. One Florida prick riled the other

It never would have been an issue if a prick doctor hadn't told a woman who declined, to either to answer the question or GTFO and take her child to another pediatrician. That led to a denial of care vs. privacy debate.

It's a plain old-fashioned pissing contest, one dog trying to prove to the others he can get higher up the tree.

[Ship of Fools]

32. didn't realize that, thanks

pRick should look deep into his soul-less self and see the blatant hypocrisy of this issue vs. privacy/abortion rights ... it would take me all night and a bottle in front of me to figure out the analogy there (or lack thereof).

[gejohnston]

42. assuming he has a soul, I doubt it is deep.

Like most corporate right wingers, he does not care about abortion or guns, they are divide and conquer tactics and distractions while his corporate buddies rip us off. Just like Newt's "family values".

[RSillsbee]

16. I am sorry you've had to endure so many tragedies i n your life NT

[Ship of Fools]

22. kind of you to say, thanks

these were many moons ago, i'm ok with it all now ...

[RSillsbee]

24. Some scars never heal NT

[X_Digger]

20. The problem is..

We've had gun control proponents tell us that their strategy will be just that.. a slice at a time..

"In fact, the assault weapons ban will have no significant effect either on the crime rate or on personal security. Nonetheless, it is a good idea . . . . Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation." Charles Krauthammer

We're going to have to take one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily -- given the political realities -- going to be very modest. . . . e'll have to start working again to strengthen that law, and then again to strengthen the next law, and maybe again and again. Right now, though, we'd be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal -- total control of handguns in the United States -- is going to take time. . . . The first problem is to slow down the number of handguns being produced and sold in this country. The second problem is to get handguns registered. The final problem is to make possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition-except for the military, police, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors-totally illegal.

Pete Shields, founder of Handgun Control, Inc. which is now the brady campaign

"Brady Bill is "the minimum step" that Congress should take to control handguns. "We need much stricter gun control, and eventually we should bar the ownership of handguns except in a few cases,"

Rep. William L. Clay D-St. Louis, Mo

I think you have to do it a step at a time and I think that is what the NRA is most concerned about, is that it will happen one very small step at a time, so that by the time people have "woken up" to what's happened, it's gone farther than what they feel the consensus of American citizens would be. But it does have to go one step at a time and the beginning of the banning of semi-assault military weapons, that are military weapons, not "household" weapons, is the first step."

Stockton, California Mayor Barbara Fass

"I shortly will introduce legislation banning the sale, manufacture or possession of handguns (with exceptions for law enforcement and licensed target clubs). . . . It is time to act. We cannot go on like this. Ban them!"

Sen. John H. Chafee R.-R.I., In View of Handguns' Effects, There's Only One Answer: A Ban, Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 15, 1992

""My staff and I right now are working on a comprehensive gun-control bill. We don't have all the details, but for instance, regulating the sale and purchase of bullets. Ultimately, I would like to see the manufacture and possession of handguns banned except for military and police use. But that's the endgame. And in the meantime, there are some specific things that we can do with legislation."

Bobby Rush; Democrat, U.S. House of Representatives, Chicago Tribune, Dec. 5, 1999

"Mr. Speaker, my bill prohibits the importation, exportation, manufacture, sale, purchase, transfer, receipt, possession, or transportation of handguns and handgun ammunition. It establishes a 6-month grace period for the turning in of handguns. It provides many exceptions for gun clubs, hunting clubs, gun collectors, and other people of that kind."

Rep. Major Owens (D-Brooklyn, N.Y.), 139 Cong. Rec. H9088 at H9094, Nov. 10, 1993

"I would like to dispute that. Truthfully. I know it's an amendment. I know it's in the Constitution. But you know what? Enough! I would like to say, I think there should be a law -- and I know this is extreme -- that no one can have a gun in the U.S. If you have a gun, you go to jail. Only the police should have guns."

Rosie Takes on the NRA, Ottawa Sun, April 29, 1999

"A gun-control movement worthy of the name would insist that President Clinton move beyond his proposals for controls -- such as expanding background checks at gun shows and stopping the import of high-capacity magazines -- and immediately call on Congress to pass far-reaching industry regulation like the Firearms Safety and Consumer Protection Act introduced by Senator Robert Torricelli, Democrat of New Jersey, and Representative Patrick Kennedy, Democrat of Rhode Island. Their measure would give the Treasury Department health and safety authority over the gun industry, and any rational regulator with that authority would ban handguns."

Josh Sugarmann (executive director of the Violence Policy Center, Dispense With the Half Steps and Ban Killing Machines, Houston Chronicle, Nov. 5, 1999

"We will never fully solve our nation's horrific problem of gun violence unless we ban the manufacture and sale of handguns and semiautomatic assault weapons."

Jeff Muchnick, Legislative Director, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, Better Yet, Ban All Handguns, USA Today, Dec. 29, 1993

"The goal of CSGV is the orderly elimination of the private sale of handguns and assault weapons in the United States."

Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, http://www.csgv.org/content/coalition/coal_intro.html (visited June 20, 2000) (boldface added) ("The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence is composed of 44 civic, professional and religious organizations and 120,000 individual members that advocate for a ban on the sale and possession of handguns and assault weapons.")

"Waiting periods are only a step. Registration is only a step. The prohibition of private firearms is the goal." U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, December 1993

"We're bending the law as far as we can to ban an entirely new class of guns." Rahm Emmanuel

"We're going to hammer guns on the anvil of relentless legislative strategy! We're going to beat guns into submission!" Charles Schumer

"Banning guns addresses a fundamental right of all Americans to feel safe." Diane Feinstein

"I don't care about crime, I just want to get the guns." Howard Metzenbaum

"I am one who believes that as a first step the U.S. should move expeditiously to disarm the civilian population, other than police and security officers, of all handguns, pistols and revolvers ...no one should have a right to anonymous ownership or use of a gun." Dean Morris

"I do not believe in people owning guns. Guns should be owned only by the police and military. I am going to do everything I can to disarm this state." Michael Dukakis

"If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them...'Mr. and Mrs. America, turn 'em all in,' I would have done it." Diane Feinstein

"No, we're not looking at how to control criminals ... we're talking about banning the AK-47 and semi-automatic guns." --U.S. Senator Howard Metzenbaum

"What good does it do to ban some guns? All guns should be banned." U.S. Senator Howard Metzanbaum, Democrat from Ohio


"Until we can ban all of them , then we might as well ban none." U.S. Senator Howard Metzenbaum, Senate Hearings 1993


"I'm not interested in getting a bill that deals with airport security... all I want to do is get at plastic guns." -U.S. Senator Howard Metzenbaum, 1993

"Nobody should be owning a gun which does not have a sporting purpose." Janet Reno

"We have to start with a ban on the manufacturing and import of handguns. From there we register the guns which are currently owned, and follow that with additional bans and acquisitions of handguns and rifles with no sporting purpose." Major Owens

"If it were up to me we'd ban them all." Mel Reynolds CNN's Crossfire, December 9, 1993

“If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees.”
And…
“When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans ... And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. That's what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the public housing projects, about how we're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to try to make people safer in their communities.” Both quotes from Bill Clinton, Former President of the United States

Who are we to not take them at their word?

[Ship of Fools]

23. well --

who are we to believe that total elimination could even possibly at all? they're just blowing smoke.

These idiots (krauthammer, really?) are ideologues and we all know what that means. Sorry, but they aren't the majority. You can keep any list you want, but no one with an ounce of common sense in our real world believes that total elimination of guns would be politically possible, let alone possible at all, as the real nuts would start using them ... i truly believe your list represents the slim minority.

[RSillsbee]

25. Possible or not these folks are NOT blowing smoke

They have every intention of carrying out their stated goals. Whether or not they achieve them is up to us

[Ship of Fools]

28. don't get me wrong--

they're as passionate about the whole gun debacle as anyone like myself, but they blow smoke. they use their high profiles as politicians to provide release for that passion. they blow smoke (and they know it) because they believe that since they are on the "right" side of the argument, they can make the most extreme statements. sort of like repukes. they go ahead and gum up the system, and if anyone was crazy enough to sue all the way to scotus, scotus will chew them up and spit them out (like anti-abortion shenanigans currently on the state level).

me? i just get to type a few sentences about it, get to feel self-righteous, but i know that the USA is a gun-toting institution now and probably will be until its demise, whether i like it or not. that's all.

[Ship of Fools]

29. see if i can do this better

do you REALLY think that -- say, Bill C. -- would waste a lot of $ and political capital to sue his way up to the 5-4 right-leaning scotus on a losing issue? and, if the answer is ultimately no, why is it that so many slippery-slopers seem to me to be so hyper-vigilant about a suit that could never succeed -- based on the number of guns on the street and radical enthusiasts who would not stop short of using them to protect their "constitutional right"? (i put that in quotes, because i don't interpret it that way.) i'm just asking, not trying to be confrontational ... like i said, blowing smoke.

[X_Digger]

30. Janet Reno? Dukakis? Sen Metzenbaum? Bobby Rush?

Few of them will ever admit (again) what the total goal is, but they'll happily slice, slice, slice away until their goal is met.

Can you blame us for not giving them the first slice?

[Ship of Fools]

33. i guess, putting it that way, i get you.

it's just that i don't think enforcing existing laws would be slicing, and i don't believe them when they say that elimination is their ultimate goal, because they know its unobtainable in this lifetime (and there are much more pressing issues to address). so if their rhetoric is contained to that which is possible, i don't have a problem with it.

[X_Digger]

34. The other side of the coin is.. how can a resonable law be perverted..

And do you trust that it will always be applied equitably? By all future administrations?

Let's say the legislature passed a law saying that you had to get a permit from local law enforcement to own a handgun (which exists in a couple of states)- and when the law was passed, local sheriffs took permit applications at all hours of the say..

Then when a new sheriff was elected, the permit hours were reduced to 9:00am to 9:15am on Tuesday morning.. and the sheriff was conveniently absent on an 'emergency' call most Tuesday mornings..

Sounds far-fetched, right? Well, not really. In one or other of the Carolinas (I forget which), sheriff's routinely denied permits to those with a complexion less than lily white.

It was touted as, and in theory was, a 'reasonable' law- but it was perverted.

Chicago's another good example. After the McDonald decision, they changed their process for acquiring a handgun. Part of that requirement was that you had to demonstrate proficiency with it at a training course to include live fire at a firing range. One problem- they outlawed any public firing ranges in the city.

DC is a third one. Via zoning restrictions, the area legally available to open up a gun store is miniscule, and the location must be approved by the BATFE, the district police, and the zoning board. Even if you don't plan on opening a retail establishment, it's next to impossible to obtain a federal license to sell guns in DC for many of the same reasons. (And it's illegal for a DC resident to buy a gun in another state without transferring it to a DC FFL.)

We've seen what was originally touted as 'reasonable' turn into de facto bans and intentional impediments. So please forgive us for looking at each 'reasonable' proposal and asking, "What's to stop this one from being twisted?" and when the answer is, "the good graces of politicians"- we oppose it.

[spin]

27. Great post! Thanks. (n/t)

[lawodevolution]

37. Exactly, they said the "common sense" gun laws in the UK would not result in a slippery slope to

a gun ban.

[RSillsbee]

6. Is it actually valid to cal the Brady Campaign a "National Group"?

I don't think they have more than 6 members TYPO

[slackmaster]

8. The US Census Bureau ranked Utah as 45th among the states in rates of violent crime for 2006

1 being the most violent and 50 being the least.

http://www.census.gov/statab/ranks/rank21.html

The Brady Center people are smoking crack.

[WatsonT]

9. They are only "wrong" if you assume ending gun crime is their goal

if you believe it is about control and outright elimination of rights then they make a lot more sense.

[Common Sense Party]

15. 45? Not safe enough! I'm moving to Maine!

[ProgressiveProfessor]

10. The Brady Bunch is becoming less and less relevant over time

Wish other repuke lead groups would have the same happen to them

[jpak]

39. Rep. Curt Oda, R-MORAN-Clearfield

yup

[Common Sense Party]

41. Thank you for adding your words of wisdom and enlightenment to this thread

We are all the richer for your contribution.












Sarcasm?

yup

[Tejas]

44. Paul Helmke (Brady Inc) - 3 time REPUBLICAN MAYOR

[beevul]

40. A Brady campaigh spokesman was quoted as saying...