Significantly Less Than Meets The Eye

The National Rifle Association raised a lot of eyebrows when in response to the firearm controversy following the mass shooting in Las Vegas, it issued a statement reading

The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semiautomatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations. In an increasingly dangerous world, the NRA remains focused on our mission: strengthening Americans' Second Amendment freedom to defend themselves, their families and their communities. To that end, on behalf of our 5 million members across the country, we urge Congress to pass National Right-to-Carry reciprocity, which will allow law-abiding Americans to defend themselves and their families from acts of violence.

It's not clear whether the NRA is suggesting it would support regulation of bump stocks only in return for national right-to-carry reciprocity. It's not clear even if the organization was referring to bump stocks. However, former US Representative Harold Ford (D-TN), a centrist Democrat (to the extent Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would be considered center-left), assumes it was. On Friday evening's Real Time, Ford stated

I was for restrictions and some restraints. 

The real takeaway from this is that for the first time in my lifetime, the NRA has demonstrated support for some kind of restraint, therefore blocking, at least for a conversation, this chip that you can put on one of these guns and make it an automatic weapon...

After Olivia Nuzzi, Washington correspondent for New York magazine, tried to inject a word, Ford continued

Let me finish my point. But I'm not crazy- understand what I'm saying. I'm 47 years od. I served in Congress ten years. They never expressed even a willingness to have this conversation. Now, that doesn't mean that we should folow their leadership. The fact that we're even here, we shouldn't have these weapons. I would agree with Steve 100% but the reality is I think we're making some progress here, and if Paul Ryan is true to what he (says) that he's going to bring this bill to the floor, you're going to have Democrat and Republican alike supporting this. I think the NRA did this.

Skeptical that this is a major reform, Bill Maher responded "....and that is what you're happy with?"  The former congressman replied "No, no, don't put  words in my mouth. This is the first time the NRA has ever stepped forward I'm not praising- I'm not a member of the NRA."

Helpfully correcting Ford, Nuzzi noted

If you look at what LaPierre actually said about bump stocks, he said they would maybe look at the issue.  He then had to reassure his supporters- the supporters of the NRA- that they would not be banning these things, that they would not be confiscating them.





The technology chief at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in 2010 issued an opinionF that "we find that the bump stock is a  firearm part and is not regulated as a firearm under Gun Control Act or the National Firearms Act" because "The stock has no automatically functioning mechanical parts or springs and performs no automatic mechanical function when installed." The New York Times now explains

The stock “bumps” back and forth between the shooter’s shoulder and trigger finger, causing the rifle to rapidly fire again and again. The shooter holds his or her trigger finger in place, while maintaining forward pressure on the barrel and backward pressure on the pistol grip while firing.

The bump stock is not banned under federal law even though it allows a weapon to fire at nearly the rate of a machine gun without technically converting it to a fully automatic firearm. (It is illegal for private citizens to possess fully automatic firearms manufactured after May 19, 1986; ownership of earlier models requires a federal license.)

“The classification of these devices depends on whether they mechanically alter the function of the firearm to fire fully automatic,” Jill Snyder, a special agent in charge at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said at a news conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday. “Bump-fire stocks, while simulating automatic fire, do not actually alter the firearm to fire automatically, making them legal under current federal law.”

Recall that the NRA suggested "additional regulations" for "devices designed to allow semiautomatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles."   But the ATF believes bump stocks do not allow the  firearm to fire automatically and therefore did not call for regulation of these devices.

By issuing its statement, the NRA might have been pretending it is reasonable. Or it may have been trying to co-opt any initiative to implement real gun safety legislation. Perhaps it was even attempting to give cover to pro-gun (as most are) GOP members of  Congress, as when it (and White House advisor Kellyanne Conway) tweaked the "Obama administration" for having "approved the sale of bump fire stocks on at least two occasions."  Whatever its motivation, however, the National Rifle Association has successfully confused and/or convinced much of the mainstrea media and such public figures as Harold Ford.






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Wrong Party In 2016

Todd Eberly, who believes the result of the last presidential election "points not necessarily to a realignment in American politics or to a result influenced by nefarious forces," gives unrealistically short shrift to the impact of James Comey, Russian meddling, Wikileaks, and the fixation of the American media on emails.  Still, he makes a good point when he concludes

It was the manifestation of years, in fact decades, of rising levels of discontent by a growing number of disaffected voters. And into the midst of that discontent entered two immensely unpopular candidates for president. One, a former senator, a former secretary of state, a former candidate for president, the spouse of a former president, and the heir apparent to an outgoing two term president, was the embodiment of the very political establishment that populist uprisings rail against. The other candidate … wasn’t. And that is “what happened” on Election Day 2016.

Though the St. Mary's College of Maryland professor probably is unaware, his analysis sheds doubt on the assumption that had Hillary Clinton not been the Democratic nominee, the presidential election would have been a slam-dunk for her party. The thesis relies heavily on exaggeration of the number of Obama to Trump voters. Though they are near-legendary, only 9.1 percent of the individuals who voted for incumbent Obama in 2012 switched to his very antithesis, Donald J. Trump, four years later.

They may have been pivotal- as almost anything is in an extremely close election- but they accounted for less than ten percent of Obama's 2016 votes. Nevertheless, the assumption persists that had Barack Obama not been barred from seeking a third term, he would have garnered the vote of very nearly 100% of the individuals who voted for him in 2012.

Eberly points out that exit polls found that in 2016 "69 percent of voters were either dissatisfied with or angry at government," 39 percent "said the quality that mattered most to them in a new president was that he/she can bring change," and "fully half of all voters said government already does too much as opposed to too little." That was a firm foundation for the election of an anti-establishment, conservative politician over a centrist politician representing the establishment.

So, too, did right-track, wrong-track numbers. In the ninth month of the floundering Trump presidency, with a legislative agenda stalled, fear of war against North Korea, mounting evidence of collusion with Russia, a staff in disarray, and disturbing tweets almost daily, the numbers are now 56.1% negative and 35.2% positive. On November 5, 2016, the corresponding figures were 62.4% and 27.1%.  Stunningly, American voters are more positive now about the direction of the country than they were a few days before the presidential election.

Nevertheless, as Eberly explains, "given her resume" Mrs. Clinton had

had no choice but to be the establishment candidate. In the midst of that populist ire, she ran as the candidate of Mr. Obama’s third term. She wrapped herself in the cloak of the Obama agenda. She did all of this in a year when most voters did not want the establishment to win. Neither candidate was viewed as honest or likable, and most voters were not happy with the choice presented them in 2016. In a rather telling finding, fully 60 percent of voters said Mr. Trump was not qualified to be president. Yet he still managed to win 20 percent of those folks; 2016 was an election based on discontent and frustration, not qualifications and temperament.

Donald J. Trump was (and still is) the wrong man, but one who was running at the right time, when the electorate wanted to "throw the bums out," as it once was phrased. Nate Cohn discovered that 65% of Obama-Trump individuals voted in the 2016 primary, and of those "54% percent reported backing Mr. Trump in the Republican presidential primary... a sign that many of them are pretty strong and consistent supporters of Mr. Trump." Moreover, only "29 percent of white, no-college Obama-Trump voters approved of Mr. Obama's performance, and 69 percent disapprove."

Hillary Clinton, whether or not the right woman, represented the incumbent party at the wrong time. The American people looked at the previous 8-12 years and said "not four more."  It's something neither she nor her critics want to acknowledge, but sometimes facts get in the way of  a good story.

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The "Independent" Donald Trump

On September 9 The New York Times' Peter Baker wrote

Now in the White House, President Trump demonstrated this past week that he still imagines himself a solitary cowboy as he abandoned Republican congressional leaders to forge a short-term fiscal deal with Democrats. Although elected as a Republican last year, Mr. Trump has shown in the nearly eight months in office that he is, in many ways, the first independent to hold the presidency since the advent of the current two-party system around the time of the Civil War.

He can imagine himself as anything he wants, even as a President, as one elected with a majority of the popular vote, or as one elected without the intervention of a foreign power. But "independent," he most assuredly is not.

For some context, consider that Franklin Foer (albeit twenty years ago) explained

Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 case legalizing abortion, made fetal viability an important legal concept. The Supreme Court ruled that states cannot put the interests of a fetus ahead of the interests of the pregnant woman until the fetus is "viable." The court defined viable to mean capable of prolonged life outside the mother's womb. It said this included fetuses that doctors expected to be sustained by respirators. The court accepted the conventional medical wisdom that a fetus becomes viable at the start of the last third of a pregnancy, the third trimester, sometime between the 24th and 28th week (a pregnancy usually lasts 38 weeks). Because the point of viability varies, the court ruled, it could only be determined case by case and by the woman's own doctor. Even if the fetus is viable, the court said, states could not outlaw an abortion if the woman's life or health was at stake.

In recent years, several states have restricted or outlawed abortions after 20 weeks on the notion that a fetus can feel pain at that point, despite the Supreme Court's decision in 2014 to leave in place a lower court's ruling to overturn a 20-week ban in Arizona.  Although not all fetuses are conceived equally, a spokesperson for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has concluded that fetuses "do not have the capacity to process, recognize or feel pain during the second trimester."

Typically denying science, Republicans in Congress are forging ahead with "The Pain-Capable Unborn Children Protection Act." Politico reported Thursday that

Senate Republicans want to follow the House and vote to ban abortions after 20 weeks. But doing so would likely reopen an internecine fight over the filibuster with the lower chamber — and the president.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Thursday will reintroduce his bill to ban abortions nationwide after 20 weeks of pregnancy, which failed on the Senate floor two years ago, 54-42. It’s sure to fail again if Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell brings it up.

Surely, our President, who "has shown that he is, in many ways, the first independent to hold the presidency since the advent of the current two-party system around the time of the Civil War," would recognize this as an unacceptable effort to circumvent the nation's highest court.  That, though, would be in only the fantasy world Baker inhabits, because

holding another unsuccessful vote after House passage Tuesday is not so simple with Donald Trump as president: He’s said he’d sign the bill if it gets to his desk. And he hates that Senate Republicans won’t abandon the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold, which is the only thing stopping the federal ban from becoming law.





Majority Leader McConnell has long been reluctant to abolish the filibuster and Senator Graham says “Some of the strongest supporters of the idea of not eliminating the legislative filibuster are the pro-life groups. What we’ll do is grow public support for the idea that abortion on demand is not the right answer." They probably recognize that when some year Democrats retake Congress, they might introduce the "Restore Womens' Rights Act," expanding reproductive freedom.

Such legislation might be passed at that point, and signed by the President- unless he is one of those supposedly independent-minded chief executives who do as the Republican Party tells them they should do.





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No Problem With Guns

Media critic and Fox News host Howard Kurtz at 11:08 a.m. Monday tweeted "Gun control is a legitimate issue, but for the Dems already raising it after Las Vegas massacre, could we just have a day before plunging in." Responding to a barrage of criticism, Kurtz responded in three tweets, the first almost reasonably,: "Getting strong pushback from gun control advocates. Just saying it can appear insensitive to do this instantly & we don't have all facts." The third, however, read in part I said one day is decent interval... Let’s just wait till passions cool & people forget about it, right?"

Kurtz should have claimed that his Twitter account had been hacked, given that he had implied that passion is off-base upon the murder of 59 people and that legislation cannot be discussed until the victimes have been erased from memory.

Candidate Donald Trump had a different perspective. Less than eleven hours after a gunman on June 12, 2016 shot and killed 49 individuals at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, he tweeted "Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!"

A few days after 14 persons had been shot and killed in San Bernardino, California the previous December, Trump advocated a "total and complete shutdown" of the entry of Muslims to the United States "until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on."  After Orlando, San Bernardino, candidate Trump characteristically leapt to conclusions before passions had cooled and all the facts were known.  He waited less than a day before tweeting about these horrific events, as well as about Charleston, the Paris attacks, and the EgyptAir crash.

After the Las Vegas disaster, President Trump says "we'll be talking about gun laws as time goes by," meaning never if it increases safety but soon, if it does not. Without evidence he called Stephen Paddock a “sick man, a demented man.” Granted Trump is impulsive, bigoted, and ignorant.

But what is Paul Ryan's excuse? At a news conference Tuesday, the House Speaker

also said proposed legislation to make it easier to buy gun silencers is not scheduled for a vote this week, but he did not indicate when it would come for a floor vote.

“We cannot let the actions of a single person define us as a country,” Ryan said. “It is not who we are. Instead what truly defines us are the act of heroism we witness after the tragedy.”

Many things define us, including the mass shooting- three dead, two injured- which took place earlier Sunday in Kansas.

But the Speaker did tell us what his excuse is. Ryan stated

“one of the things we have learned from these shootings is often underneath this is a diagnosis of mental illness.”

He cited legislation passed last year aimed at expanding access to mental health services.

“That law is now being implemented,” Ryan said. “So I think it is important that as see the dust settles, and we see what is behind some of these tragedies, that mental health reform is a critical ingredient to making sure that we can try and prevent some of these things from happening in the past.”

But Ryan did not address moves made by the GOP and President Donald Trump earlier this year that reversed an Obama administration regulation to make it more difficult for those who are on Social Security for mental illness to be able to purchase guns.

So that is his excuse- the mental health dodge, from a guy who as Speaker spearheaded the effort to make it easier for mentally ill individuals to buy firearms.





Representative Joe Kennedy- from the famous Massachusetts Kennedy family-responded "All due respect Mr. Speaker, you and your party celebrated taking mental health care from millions just months ago at the White House."

No respect necessary or deserved.  It may be a well-meaning Howard Kurtz wanting to talk about guns after we've forgotten the carnage they've wrought or Donald Trump and Paul Ryan taking refuge in the safe, largely irrelevant shelter of mental health. Either way, there is a powerful constituency for averting the eyes and pretending it is an aberration, not an essential trait of our national character.





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Nothing Doing

Politico reports

Democratic lawmakers called for swift congressional action in response to the Las Vegas shooting that left at least 59 dead — the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history — with Sen. Chris Murphy saying it is “time for Congress to get off its ass and do something” on gun control.

Murphy, who led a filibuster on the Senate floor last June in protest of legislative inaction following the Pulse club shooting, called it “cruelly hollow” for politicians to not back up their words of sympathy with a governmental response.

“This must stop,” Murphy said in a statement Monday morning. “It is positively infuriating that my colleagues in Congress are so afraid of the gun industry that they pretend there aren’t public policy responses to this epidemic.”

He added: “It’s time for Congress to get off its ass and do something.”

Well, that won't happen, and there are two reasons, one well understood and one not.

Both the GOP popular base and the most powerful lobby in the USA would militantly oppose any effort to control firearms. Jonathan Swan 

asked Steve Bannon whether he could imagine Trump pivoting to the left on guns after the Las Vegas massacre. "Impossible: will be the end of everything," Bannon texted. When asked whether Trump's base would react worse to this than they would if he supported an immigration amnesty bill, Bannon replied: "as hard as it is to believe actually worse."

Swan points out that both of the President's sons are very pro-gun and- unlike mainstream Republicans and organizations- the National Rifle Association stayed loyal to Trump throughout the campaign.

Oddly enough, Swan still believes Trump might oppose congressional Republicans' efforts to loosen restrictions on silencers. However, a more realistic (and cynical) Steve M. recognizes

It's hard to imagine a more Trump-like political organization than the NRA. Both are relentlessly on offense. Both threaten their friends (who'd better not show any disloyalty) while brutalizing their enemies (who are deemed less than human because they dare to put up a challenge). Both claim they're the only bulwark against the apocalypse, which both claim is amok in the streets as we speak. ..

Of course, Trump has tossed aside people whose eagerness for a brawl resonates with his own -- Bannon, Mike Flynn. But they embarrassed him, or failed him, or tried to steal his spotlight. The NRA doesn't do that. It stays in its corner, pumping out propaganda to its loyalists -- and remaining loyal to Trump.

And what would Trump gain by breaking ranks with an organization that's more popular than he is? 

That's America's real shame -- no matter what the NRA does, it still has a remarkably high level of support. 

All of that is sad, but true.  Less well understood- and rarely if ever acknowledged- is that there simply is no constituency for gun safety legislation.

Senator Murphy cares. But he is from Connecticut, and memory of the Sandy Hook massacre focuses the attention. Additionally, Murphy is a Democrat and Connecticut is one of the few states where worship of  the Second Amendment is not a prerequisite for political survival. And despite efforts by Gabby Gifford and husband Mark Kelly, or Michael Bloomberg, there is no organization on the gun left to rival the NRA.

There are few if any other states in which the need to keep firearms away from dangerous individuals or to restrict weapons with no legitimate purpose other than to law enforcement is a salient issue. There also are very few individuals for whom gun control is a defining issue.

In the wake of Hillary Clinton's  stunning defeat, two factions dominate the quarrel over Democratic Party policy.  One group wants to strengthen the appeal to people who in recent years have been most enthusiastic about, and most faithful to, the Party's candidates. Such as Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and the DNC emphasize the interests of blacks, hispanics, gays ("LGBT"), women without children, educated individuals in the knowledge/information sector, and others who have been traditionally disadvantaged in American society.

The other group, represented by the likes of Bernie Sanders, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and Robert Reich, prefers an emphasis upon groups such as the lower middle class and working class (especially whites) whose support for the Democratic Party has been eroding for decades, as demonstrated by Donald Trump's dramatic victory.  These individuals generally have been left behind by privatization, outsourcing, "free" trade, and other hallmarks of globalization.

Except after a mass shooting, rarely does any prominent (or not prominent) member of either faction say anything about guns. Anything.  There is simply no Democratic interest group, whether organized labor, blacks, immigrants, women's rights  supporters, environmentalists, criminal justice reformers, students,or some other for whom the issue is dominant. None. Additionally, when someone such as Senator Joe Manchin invokes the interests of "rural" Americans, he's not talking about limiting access to dangerous weapons (a clueless Tom Perez avoiding the issue in April, below).

There are two obvious lessons. Chris Murphy is- courageousl-, spitting into the wind. And the best that can be expected of Donald Trump is nothing.









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Steve Scalise: God Is On My Side

I don't like to bury someone when he or she is down. However, Steve Scalise is no longer down. Don't take it from me but from Politico's Tim Alberta, whose love poem to the House Majority Whip includes

Fifteen weeks later—having teetered on the edge of death and endured several major surgeries, countless hours of physical therapy and lots of restless nights alone with his vivid recollections of that June morning—Scalise hobbled into the House chamber on Thursday and received a Roman general’s welcome from his colleagues. The scene was surreal, he tells me afterward, just as the one at the park had been. His close friend, Speaker Paul Ryan, joked that Scalise was recognized to speak from the House floor for as long as he wanted. Stepping into a moment he had visualized for months, the congressman was poignant and powerful, hitting the right notes and leaving Washington teary-eyed all over again. 

Scalise notes "four people got shot but walked away, and the shooter’s dead. I don’t think anybody would predict that. And that’s because of the skill and presence of my Capitol Police security detail."

Fortunately, the congressman has the benefit of a Capitol Police security detail because he's one of the five most important members of the US House of Representatives.  But to hear him tell it, he has the benefit of someone (or something) more important than law enforcement personnel. CBN News, "a Christian perspective," reported

Rep. Steve Scalise, seriously wounded in a shooting attack at a Washington, D.C., baseball field three months ago, returned to Congress today, summing up in four words his survival and recovery: "It starts with God."

The 51-year-old Majority Whip was shot in the hip and the bullet tore through blood vessels and internal organs.

As he lay wounded on the field with gunfire erupting all around, Scalise said he began to pray and experienced "an unbelievable sense of calm, knowing that at that point it was God's hands"....

He gave thanks to God for his survival and recovery.

"So, I am definitely a living example that miracles really do happen."

His survival, he contends, "was in God's hands" and due to "a lot of divine intervetnion from God."

Someone should ask Scalise whether God intervened in the lives of the 50+ individuals murdered by Stephen Craig Paddock on Sunday night as

The Las Vegas shooting at the Route 91 music festival near the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino became the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, with at more than 50 people dead and more than 200 wounded. 

This is reportedly the worst but

News of shooting incidents at everyday places like offices, schools and shopping malls seem to have become numbingly common, and a 2014 FBI study found that the number of mass shootings has increased in recent years.

Perhaps Steve calise can tell us why two years (and one day) ago there was no miracle for the ten (10) individuals shot dead at a community college in southern Oregon. He owes it to us, to the nation, to explain why he was spared while others were sacrificed to Second Amendment absolutists. If he cannot, he should spare us the smug, self-serving message that God chose him to save as others to gun violence he and his fellow travelers have shown no interest in curbing.









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Put Up Or Shut Up

Three years ago, in August, 2014, National Basketball League commissioner Adam Silver banned Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling from the league, fined him $2.5 billion, and forced him to relinquish control of the team so it could be sold.

Sterling had committed a felony, committing the unspeakable crime of uttering racially biased remarks to his girlfriend, who proceeded to make them public.

This maneuver was engineered by the commissioner who now, Fox Business reports

says he expects players to adhere to league rules and stand for the national anthem amid a wave of protests in the NFL and other sports.

"Many of our players have spoken out already about their plan to stand for the anthem," Silver said Thursday. "And I think they understand how divisive an issue it is in our society right now."





Donald Sterling was revealed as a bigot or, as some would describe it, a racist.  The movement to kneel prior to games in the National Football League (to which Silver was reacting) began as an effort by quarterback Colin Kaepernick to protest perceived racial bias in law enforcement.

Silver's actions may seem a contradiction.  So what has changed in those three years to reveal Adam Silver as almost as hypocritical, in public, as Donald Sterling was bigoted, in private?

You know the answer to that.  We've had the dramatic election of a man who practiced racial discrimination in his business career, rose to the presidency on the basis of denying that the first black president was born in the USA, seems to regard blacks as his personal property, and plays footsies with white supremacists. Bluster is his style, intimidation his intent.

And Adam Silver has changed his tune, radically- but there are two common threads to this transformation. The first is that in both instances, he is wrong.  It was reprehensible that Donald Sterling got the figurative death penalty for remarks that can be heard in most bars in many households across the country almost any night. (Bob Dylan: "well, if my thought dreams could be seen, they'd probably put my head in a guillotine.") And he is wrong now.

In both cases, moreover, Donald Sterling is caving in to pressure.  He presides over a league in which- unlike the NFL- the players union has considerable influence. So, too, do its stars, most of whom are black.

Unlike in the NFL, the NBA's rules are what the marquee want them to be. Silver slammed the door on Sterling largely because the players forced him to act. With the NBA's exhibition season upon us, it's up to the players to decide what to do about what they wish to accomplish. If they want to bring attention to racial bias in law enforcement and/or the courts, they have it within their power to do so. (We're looking at you, LeBron James.)





If the superstars in the league determine what they want to accomplish, the other players will follow and Silver (as he did with Sterling) will fold. The ball is in their court.





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