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Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign speaking now at National Press Club

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derby378 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-01-07 12:18 PM
Original message
Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign speaking now at National Press Club
Says our response to gun violence is "to hit the snooze button," blames "weak gun laws."

Also said, "Is insane too strong a word to describe our gun policies?"

Three things Helmke suggests we can do:
1. Apply Brady background checks to all gun purchases.
2. Reduce access to weaponry that is not designed for sport or (in Helmke's opinion) self-defense.
3. Give police tools and resources needed to fight gun crimes.
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derby378 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-01-07 12:27 PM
Response to Original message
1. Gotta hand it to him...
Helmke just said that most gun owners are willing to put up with a little red tape in order for the nation to avoid more yellow tape. Good line.
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billbuckhead Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-01-07 12:56 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. It's a national sin we have such high murder rate
Standing up to the bloodthirsty money grubbing gun lobby is a test of America's moral character. It's no accident that many of the leaders of the gun "rights' movement are also leaders in other neoCON activities such as the American Enterprise Institute grover norquist, duke cunningham, dick cheney, ad nauseum.








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derby378 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-01-07 11:12 PM
Response to Reply #2
5. "Guilt by association?"
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billbuckhead Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed May-02-07 11:49 AM
Response to Reply #5
7. Many of the bad guys flock together around guns, can't deny reality
Ever see that picture of Susan Ralston sitting with Karl Rove on election night? She was NRA honcho Grover Norquist's personal assistant before Rove and they all orbit around Abramoff and Cheney.
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derby378 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed May-02-07 08:55 PM
Response to Reply #7
8. Sounds like: "I reject your reality and substitute my own"
When you try to lump in honest, law-abiding gun owners in America with the likes of Karl Rove and Jack Abramoff, you're not making any headway here.
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billbuckhead Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed May-02-07 09:04 PM
Response to Reply #8
9. Like those wonderful gun enthusiasts who threatened lynching a Pa. legislator?
Pa. lawmaker wants investigation of gun-rights sign that invoked lynching

Associated Press

HARRISBURG - A Philadelphia lawmaker said Wednesday he has asked Capitol police to investigate whether any laws were broken when two participants in a gun-rights rally held up a banner calling for him to be "hung from the tree of liberty."

If police determine that criminal charges are warranted, "then we'll take it from there," said state Rep. Angel Cruz. "We live in strange times, and we take all threats seriously, because we just don't know who's capable of doing what."

Cruz also hopes to find a way to prevent similar actions from happening again.

"We want an investigation so we can find out how we stop these kinds of actions," he said.
---------------------snip-----------------------
<http://www.observer-reporter.com/OR/Story/04_26_GunRightsRally_2>

But they learned that from Charlton Heston threatening to supply the rope to lynch Al Gore back in 2000.
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-..__... Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-01-07 02:07 PM
Response to Reply #1
3. Helmkes notion of red tape...
is to use it to redact the 2nd amendment out of the Bill of Rights altogether.

The yellow tape he can use to wrap around his mouth.

The day I accept any idea or legislation put-forth by the pinheads at the Brady Campaign, is the day I turn in all my firearms to be melted down into manhole covers or some foolish "guns are bad" memorial.
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derby378 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-01-07 11:08 PM
Response to Reply #3
4. I share your sentiments...
...but at least I can grudgingly admire Helmke's command of the English language as he tries to get his point across.
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treelogger Donating Member (145 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed May-02-07 12:59 AM
Response to Original message
6. The devil is in the details.
You know, in theory I could even agree with items 1 and 3.

I think it would be good if all gun purchases were to be processed through FFLs. Except, to make that a reality, the process has to become much more convenient. Reduce the current 3-page form to a few lines. After all, there is no need to spend a whole page asking you dumb questions, when everyone knows what the correct answers should be (why ask people whether they are a felon, that is perfectly obvious from the database). Get rid of waiting periods. Make the FFL transfer free. Make it so any police station or city hall or county office has to act as a FFL, so it is easy to find one.

It would be wonderful if the police had the tools to fight gun crimes. Gun crimes give law-abiding gun owners a bad name. I would love it if we could take places like Oakland, Comptom, or Detroit, and get all the illegal guns off the street. That would require house-to-house searches, checkpoints, the suspension of all probably cause and criminal process, and would leave the constitution and civil rights in tatters. Somebody recently suggested that it would be a good thing if all of Compton were napalm'ed, because it would greatly reduce the crime rate in LA. That ridiculous example shows that his suggestions for "tools and resources" would probably not be acceptable. Where I do agree with him: Funding for law enforcement should be greatly increased, so law enforcement actually has a chance to go after criminals. If I remember correctly, Oakland has about 100 murders a year; of those, only a few dozen get seriously investigated (the others are ab initio hopeless to follow up on), and the conviction rate is in the single digits per year.

He claims that our gun policies are insane. I agree. They do very little or nothing to reduce violence and crime. Instead, they are a placebo, which makes politicians and anti-gun voters think that they have "accomplished something". To the typical Brady campaigner or democratic politician, a sense of accomplishment means getting the republicans or the NRA mad at you. In the US society, with its deep socio-economic rift, there is little one can do to reduce violent crime, without first fixing the problem of an underclass that lives in slums.

I'm sure I would totally disagree with his idea of which weapons are designed for sport or self-defense. On several levels. First off, this is supposed to be a free country. Meaning that as long as I don't infringe on anyone else's rights, I don't need to justify why I want a particular gun, so the notion that it needs to be justified by sport or defense. Second, his idea of "sport" is probably highly restrictive. In my book, the AR-15 is excellent for service rifle competition. As would be the H&K G36. In Sweden and Germany, sport shooters can get automatic weapons (meaning machine guns), why not in the US? For IPSC competition, normal-capacity magazines (not the restricted 10-rounders) are just about a must. And the .50BMG makes a fine round for long-range (mile or so) rifle shooting; it is the most cost-effective round that has good accuracy at these distances.

So, of all his speech, I think there is one minor point I agree on, and that is closing the "gun show loophole" (which is NOT a loophole, it was explicitly designed to be there, because today's FFL transfers are too heavy-weight to be used for person-to-person transfers).
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-..__... Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed May-02-07 11:09 PM
Response to Original message
10. Looks like Helmkes press conference only generated slightly more interest than this thread.
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&num=10&lr=&as_ft=i&as_dt=i&as_rights=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&tab=wn&scoring=n&q=%22paul+helmke%22

Eliminate the CNSNews.com links and what do you have?

The radio is on, Paul... but no one is listening.

Stick a fork in it... the gun control issue is dead.

Works for me. :smoke:
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