Sometimes it’s a choice between mockery, and climbing the UT clock tower. Gail Collins chooses the less violent alternative:
Yes, if you are on the terrorist watch list, the authorities can keep you from getting on a plane but not from purchasing an AK-47. This makes sense to Congress because, as Graham accurately pointed out, âwhen the founders sat down and wrote the Constitution, they didnât consider flying.â
__
The subject of guns turns Congress into a twilight zone. People who are perfectly happy to let the government wiretap phones go nuts when the government wants to keep track of weapons permits. A guy who stands up in the House and defends the torture of terror suspects will nearly faint with horror at the prospect of depriving someone on the watch list of the right to purchase a pistol…
__
Graham wanted to make it clear that just because he doesnât want to stop gun purchases by possible terrorists, that doesnât mean heâs not tough on terror.
__
âI am all into national security. … I want to stop reading these guys their Miranda rights,â he said.
[…] __
The Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on âTerrorists and Guns: The Nature of the Threat and Proposed Reforms,â concerned a modest bill sponsored by Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. It would allow the government to stop gun sales to people on the F.B.I. terror watch list the same way it does people who have felony convictions. Because Congress has repeatedly rejected this idea, 1,119 people on the watch list have been able to purchase weapons over the last six years. One of them bought 50 pounds of military grade explosives.
__
Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City and his police commissioner, Ray Kelly, dutifully trekked down to Washington to plead for the bill on behalf of the nationâs cities. The only thing they got for their trouble was praise for getting the city through the Times Square incident in one piece. And almost everyone had a good word for the T-shirt vendor who first noticed the suspicious car and raised an alert. Really, if someone had introduced a bill calling for additional T-shirt vendors, it would have sailed through in a heartbeat.
__
Gun legislation, not so popular.
__
Lautenbergâs bill has been moldering in committee, and that is not going to change.
__
âLet me emphasize that none of us wants a terrorist to be able to purchase a gun,â said Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who nevertheless went on to argue against allowing the government to use the terrorist watch list to keep anyone from being able to purchase, um, a gun.
__
âSome of the people pushing this idea are also pushing the idea of banning handguns,â said Graham, darkly. âI donât think banning handguns makes me safer.â
Ash
I loathe guns, but I’d buy one and wave it around the halls of Congress if only to give all these motherfucking jackasses heart attacks.
[/not really, FBI dudes]
pharniel
that’s some mighty fine doublethink there.
some other guy
âLet me emphasize that none of us wants a terrorist to be able to purchase a gun,â said Senator Susan Collins of Maine, “but still.”
Kirk Spencer
While I think Lieberman’s ‘strip their rights’ bill is the bigger tale, yes, this is stupid.
Hi, we think you’re a terrorist. Therefore we’re going to violate your first and fourth amendment rights. But you’ll be relieved to know your second amendment rights are inviolate.
chopper
that’s why i can’t wait for the scotus to decide the mcdonald case. if they incorporate the 2nd amendment under either due process or equal protection, both of which apply to all persons under the jurisdiction of a state, everybody including non-citizens will have the basic right to keep and bear arms.
illegal immigrants with concealed weapons! muslims with a green card and a gun!
either that or they won’t incorporate and the right wingers’ heads will explode.
Alex S.
The traps of ideology….
They would have to throw away their originalist reading of the Constitution and their ultimate pro-gun stance to close that loophole. If just one domino falls, everything else follows.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
This kind of writing is why Gail Collins has become my favorite columnist.
If Linday Graham did not exist, we could not invent him. Not even DougJ could write that line.
olga
Actually, I agree that the terrorist watchlist shouldn’t be used for preventing people from buying guns, if only because there are so many people on it who have nothing to do with terrorism and just have similar names (or, in some cases, are little old ladies).
I am all for stronger gun control, though. Quite a lot of the illegal guns in NYC are bought legally in places like Virginia , N. Carolina, Georgia, etc. and then brought here.(source)
atlliberal
Well we all know that giving Terrorists Miranda rights is much more dangerous than giving them gun rights.
Idiots
Maybe we should allow stupidity to be probable cause to revoke ones right to serve in congress.
Maybe we should have a constitutional literacy test before they are allowed to run.
Ash Can
Because, ya know, terrorists are SO much more dangerous with Miranda rights than with guns.
MikeBoyScout
And yet none of the MSM Sunday hosts who can’t seem to go a month without bringing on the very serious Lindsay Graham will call him out on this crap.
h/t to Sully who brought it up, but as bad as Chimpy McBush and Darth Cheney were, can you imagine where we’d be now with Grandpa Walnuts/Moosilini in the exec branch with dip-shitz like Lindsay & Lierman giving advice from their exalted position as confidants to old man McCrazy?
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Heh.
Omnes Omnibus
@Alex S.: You would think so, but the wingnut mind is capable of many amazing things. They will find a way to square that circle.
jwb
I thought that was a great Onion piece. I mean where did they find someone who looked so much like Lindsay Graham and Susan Collins. The Onion is just amazing!
Oh, wait, you mean Graham and Collins were playing themselves and it wasn’t performance art?
Never mind.
SGEW
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
I must say, I can’t decide which of the Collins sisters is funnier, Gail, or Susan.
Vishnu Schist
Taking away the terrorist’s guns might deny most baggers and small penis republicans their fondest wet dream; act one has them re-fighting the battle at the Davidian compound in Waco Texas with the other side winning. The second act in this tragedy is the south winning the civil war finally. The third and final act is Jesus killing every other motherfucker who ever:
a. Read and believed a biology textbook.
b. Voted for a democrat.
c. Pronounced the word “American” correctly.
d. Is a foreigner, unless you are Jewish and live in Israel, in a settlement in which case you have a year or so to get your shit together.
cleek
some parts of the Constitution are more equal than others
MattF
Ha Ha. Tsk tsk. Expecting logic from politicians. Silly rabbits.
mellowjohn
i still don’t get the miranda warning kerfuffle.
these knuckleheads seem to believe that what have come to be called “miranda rights” don’t exist until the police read them off the card.
everybody has miranda rights all the time. the reading of them ensures that you can’t plead ignorance to them and get off on one of those hated “techicalities.”
and i should think by now that anyone who’s ever watched a cop show has the warning memorized.
Vishnu Schist
fuck you comment moderation.
Gregory
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
They also didn’t consider the concept of a repeating rifle, let alone automatic weapons.
What a jackass.
flukebucket
I like that. I like that a hell of a lot.
Alex S.
@Omnes Omnibus:
You’re right about the ordinary wingnut. Still, I do actually believe that Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham are intelligent people caught in a trap of their own making.
V.O.R.
“Sometimes itâs a choice between mockery, and climbing the UT clock tower.”
False dilemma. There’s always profanity and insults.
I’d say that’s the proper response at this point. Mockery and sarcasm are for the first 3 decades of a debate.
Rommie
OT, but a bit related as far as short-term memories
The Russians had a tanker taken by Pirates a couple of days ago – and they took it back, killing one pirate and capturing the rest.
If you read the comments anywhere the story is posted and open to them, there’s a flood of (I’m paraphrasing) “Yeah, you Rooskies show that weak-kneed Librul Obama how to deal with Pirates!”
I can only envision the Aflac Duck, or Peter Griffin, or just about anyone you want to substitute, staring in silence for 10-20 seconds after reading something like that. Just Wow.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@Gregory:
I am really surprised that Graham has sussed out that the Constitution was written sitting down.
cleek
and yet… as easy as it is for would-be-terrorists to buy guns, we haven’t seen any terrorist gun assaults in the US.
maybe this whole FREAK THE FUCK OUT mindset our “leaders” are in is inappropriate to the reality of the situation ?
scav
Does this mean they did a cost-benefit analysis and found that their allegiance to the second amendment was more cost-effective than their allegiance to the rest of the Constitution and the safety of their constituents?
and Graham, sweetheart? Along with airplanes, I don’t think the founders considered semi-automatics.
david mizner
You mean:
“Lindsay Graham: Let Terrorist [SUSPECTS] Have Guns, not Miranda Rights.”
Not defending the idiot, but there’s no need to mimic right-wing demagogy.
scav
@cleek: because, of course, if it hasn’t happened here yet (as opposed to say, Mumbai or maybe Fort Hood), it’s never ever ever going to happen so no reason to plan against it.
colleeniem
OT: Utterly and totally: but here is a link to the pics of the devastation in Nashville, which isn’t (yet) getting the attention it deserves, because people are going to need a lot of help to get through this and rebuild.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/flooding_in_tennessee.html?camp=localsearch%3Aon%3Atwit%3Abigpic
And a story here:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h87GMzKVJcVvgjfYT9n4QC0F8tegD9FGBJM82
And another useful link here:
http://www.redcross.org
cleek
@mellowjohn:
the idiots have no idea what “Miranda rights” means but they know they’re supposed to bay and howl every time their master speaks the phrase.
RSA
I liked this line, too. (“accurately”. Hah.) Elsewhere on the Intertubes, I once constructed a list of things that the founders were and were not aware of. For your amusement:
Diseases run rampant, and there’s a controversial idea going by the name of germ theory to explain why. It will take another 50 years or so before the theory is formalized and it begins to be accepted.
Opium is widely viewed as a cure-all. It’s most often taken in the form of laudanum, a solution of opium in ethyl alcohol.
Statistik is a foreign term of German origin. It will be another 50 years before it comes into use in English, to mean numerical data collected and classified.
An expert, well-trained soldier, using a common musket of the time, might at best be able to load and fire shots at regular 20 second intervals.
It’s recently been hypothesized that stars are not uniformly distributed throughout the universe; those disks of stars in the sky are galaxies.
All human beings have a common origin, but it won’t be known for some 75 more years that this origin is in “lower” forms of life.
The word “dinosaur” will not be coined for another 50 years. In fact, it will take almost that long before more than a single genus of dinosaur is identified.
“[M]any of the Framers [understand] the word ‘religion’ in the Establishment clause to encompass only the various sects of Christianity.” [John Paul Stevens]
Copyright is a legal concept applying to books and maps printed on paper, and nothing else.
artem1s
Guns don’t kill people, Miranda rights kill people.
cleek
@scav:
that’s really not what i said.
slippy
@Alex S.: Heh. I don’t. They are morons helplessly carried along by their head-crushing stupidity. Graham in particular seems to be a staggering fucktard of epic imbecility.
burnspbesq
Dumber than a box of rocks. Don’t know what else to say.
Linda Featheringill
Sacred cows are interesting, aren’t they?
How about a chorus of “Happiness is a Warm Gun”? All in unison, now . . . . . .
slippy
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
Now, if only Graham would try sitting his OWN stupid ass down to READ it.
Omnes Omnibus
@mellowjohn: I have a pet peeve about people saying that the Constitution “gives” anyone any rights. One of the founding principles of this country is that people already have these rights (see, Declaration of Independence), and the Constitution simply enumerates a number of these pre-existing rights. Seriously, this pisses me off to no end. Assholes.
/rant
Donald G
@mellowjohn:
Adam-12 has been out of production for decades and isn’t widely syndicated anymore. Do today’s crime shows still even have the ritualistic reading of the rights scene, or are the perps in today’s crime dramas so obviously guilty and the fictional cops so jaded that no one even bothers to pay lip-service to the presumption of innocence and the Miranda reading is but a corny relic of dated crime dramas only fit to be lampooned?
Yeah, Joe Friday may have had a stick up his ass when it came to hippies and anyone who didn’t meet his personal standards, but at least Jim Reed and Pete Malloy read everyone their rights before taking them in.
stuckinred
@cleek: Um, Ft Hood was done with guns.
scav
@cleek: sorry, trying to flesh out the comment as I read it. could you explain? thanks.
artem1s
Also, too, think of all the white wing militias out there that would have be raided every 5 minutes when their members make their daily firearm purchase with their morning coffee.
doesn’t the ATF have enough to worry about without THAT headache!
Joey Maloney
@olga: What olga said. The so-called terrorist watch list is useless and completely extrajudicial. How do names get added? The government won’t tell us. How do names get removed? The government won’t tell us. What are the criteria for deciding if someone should be on the list? The government won’t tell us. Due process? Trust us, we’re the government.
How anyone can call themselves an advocate for civil liberties and yet support curtailing anyone’s right or privilege to do anything, from buying a gun to picking their nose and flicking the booger at Dick Cheney’s portrait, is beyond me.
PurpleGirl
The dissonance is amazing but it no longer surprises me.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Shorter L.G.: You don’t have the right to remain silent. You do have the right to all the guns you can cram into your basement.
someguy
The good thing about the measures to keep people on watchlists from purchasing weapons, is that it all the usual errors that apply at airports will apply to gun nuts trying to arm up to prepare for Teh Negropocalypse.
Y’know all those misidentifications, duplicate name problems, capricious watchlisting and hassles you hate with TSA? Well, they’re going to work to our benefit this time and keep more guns out of public hands.
Sometimes, unintended consequences are good ones.
Sinister eyebrow
I’d have to say that particular line of legal reasoning makes Graham possibly the worst lawyer ever to pass the bar. However, with so many members of the Federalist Society falling over themselves every day trying to prove me wrong he won’t hold on to that title for long.
poledancer
WTF has happened to innocent until proven guilty??? Just because somebody puts you on the watchlist doesn’t mean that you have done anything at all to warrant that. A friend of mine who works at the NCTC used to quasi joke that she was going to put her ex-boyfriend on the list for cheating on her. She was only half kidding.
I mean, fuckin A, come on. Taking away peoples rights – be it 2nd Amendment, Miranda, etc. – from people that have been ACCUSED of crimes, not convicted. I view the people that are gung ho about this “law” as the same kind of people that are gung ho about cops killing dogs in front of kids and old people and tasing pregnant women – reasonable suspicion of wrong doing has replaced due process the same way that false equivalencies have replaced actual journalism.
cleek
@stuckinred:
i don’t really buy that Ft Hood was a “terrorist” act. seems more like a person with a gun went nuts and shot a bunch of people.
but for the sake of this argument, let’s just agree that it was. well, that makes one incident. we’ve had a serious Islamic terrorism issue since at least 1993, anyone can buy a gun, and yet… one.
we have something like 100 handgun deaths every day in the US.
see the imbalance ?
if the goal of terrorism is terror, the terrorists have clearly won.
SGEW
@stuckinred:
More specifically, a handgun. But this only begs the question[1] of whether or not the Ft. Hood shooting was technically “terrorism.”
The Ft. Hood attack could be seen as an act of violence against uniformed “enemy” soldiers in order to fulfill a religious belief; it was not violence against anonymous civilians in order to foment fear in the general population and/or provoke a political response. Under certain definitions of “terrorism,” it fails the test (it was either a failed “domestic sectarian insurgency,” if you will, or a random shooting by a critically mentally ill individual).
But, of course, as the editorial board of Newsweek pointed out not so long ago, “terrorism” really just means “religiously motivated violence by Moslems” nowadays. Language changes, I guess.
[1] No, really. I’m pretty sure that this is an accurate use of the idiom.
[ETA: I see cleek got in ahead of me.]
stuckinred
@cleek: Hey dawg, you said none. Mofo shoutin about allah and shooting people is what it is.
Michael
Here’s a fine example of hysterics at the FReak.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2507872/posts
kay
I love this.
Michael
@Sinister eyebrow:
If it were up to me, in confirmation hearings, an affirmative answer to “are you now or have you ever been a member of or affiliated with the Federalist Society” would be an immediate disqualifier for any job above the level of janitor.
scav
Then again, if it happens to be an over-reaction to terror that tips the scales and possibly opens debate about regulations that can help, in some some way, prevent or mitigate the deaths of those 100s of people a day or possibly that one life of the president, well. . . politics is weird that way. When the single one shot was Raygun, suddenly regulations were slightly more palatable to some.
Mike in NC
True fact: people loves their guns so much in SC that the state has periodic ‘tax holidays’ where you can stock up on all the firepower and ammo you can carry without paying any sales tax.
jibeaux
The legislation would also curtail the buying of, say, fifty pounds of explosives by folks on the no-fly list. That would seem to be good, and relevant to the methods of terrorism, no?
DanF
@artem1s: Guns don’t kill people, people on planes kill people.
stuckinred
Buncha lawyers up in here. Being a terrorist and being mentally ill are not mutually exclusive.
PurpleGirl
@Donald G: I don’t remember hearing the Miranda warning being stated all the time on the shows I watch; there are often statements of the right, scenes where the suspect is asked to sign either a waiver of rights or acknowledgment that the rights were explained, and scenes with lawyers complaining about how Miranda was or was not given. So while it’s not the statement as done in earlier days, Miranda is still a component of many story lines.
KCinDC
What the hell!? Audio ads? Please dump that Wal-Mart gift card ad immediately.
MikeJ
@cleek:
Did you mean in the US? Leila Khaled springs to mind from an earlier time.
cleek
@stuckinred:
ok. if you insist. (i’m not interested in arguing about it)
that makes one terrorist+gun incident in the 17 years since the WTC bombing.
but if yesterday was a typical day, 100 people in the US were killed with guns. that’s over 600,000 dead in the same time period.
yet our country is obsessed with terrorism and is willing to whip out the WhiteOut and wipe out the parts of the Constitution that interfere with the impossible goal of keeping us 100% safe from terrorism.
SGEW
@stuckinred:
Definitely agree. In fact, I’m personally convinced that most “terrorists” (let’s just say that means “perpetrators of mass violence” of whatever stripe) are pretty much mentally ill by definition. But that starts getting into a whole other topic . . .
AhabTRuler
stuckinred: Yes, actually there is an ungodly number of lawyers that infest this site. Fortunately, a JD is considered to be a non-transmissable disease. :-)
cleek
@stuckinred:
ok. if you insist. (i’m not interested in arguing about it)
that makes one terrorist+gun incident in the 17 years since the WTC bombing.
but if yesterday was a typical day, 100 people in the US were killed with guns. that’s over 600,000 dead in the same time period.
yet our country is obsessed with terrorism and is willing to whip out the WhiteOut and wipe out the parts of the Constitution that interfere with the impossible goal of keeping us 100% safe from terrorism.
it’s like we want to be terrorized.
mike in dc
One guy with a pair of handguns killed a couple dozen people at Virginia Tech. Give the 19 9/11 hijackers the right guns and send them into a shopping mall from 4 different directions, and the body count would be in the hundreds.
But we can’t stop people on the “no fly” list from purchasing firearms because LOOK OVER THERE!
stuckinred
@cleek: ok
Hypnos
“But, of course, as the editorial board of Newsweek pointed out not so long ago, âterrorismâ really just means âreligiously motivated violence by Moslemsâ nowadays. Language changes, I guess.”
“Mofo shoutin about allah and shooting people is what it is. ”
Heh, that was quick.
jibeaux
Well, I don’t want to get too creative about thinking up ways for terrorists to kill us, but as they say, we focus too much on fighting the last battle. One stupid shoe bomber tries to get on a plane, so now for decades we have to walk barefoot and sockfooted through airport security while our shoes get scanned. So I think it’s not a very good idea to discount the harm that terrorists could do with firearms just because its use has been limited in the past. A group of terrorists with access to both firearms and explosives — both of which would be covered by this legislation — could cause a great deal of destruction. For example, the firearms could be used to kill a relatively few people but set off a panic or a stampede towards a much larger explosive, a la Eric Rudolph. I certainly take cleek’s larger point about 100 handgun deaths a day, but significant handgun legislation just isn’t politically feasible — as should be evident from the fact that significant handgun legislation as to terrorists doesn’t seem to be politically feasible. We are just, as a nation, kind of crazy.
poledancer
Odds of being killed in a terrorist attack – 1 in 23 million
Odds of being killed by lightening – 1 in 500,000
Odds of dying due to heatstroke – 1 in 50,000
I really wish we had grown-ups in charge that weren’t afraid of things like math. But instead we get hysterical crying about terrorism day in and day out. Grow. The. Fuck. Up.
edit – PS – a big shout out to BP who seems to be the only ones interested in safeguarding us against Gulf Coast shark attacks – so keep your heads buried in the sands bitches, at least BP’s got our back.
Hypnos
@SGEW: true that. And if you stretch a bit, it gets to “fanatical belief in an ideology that ultimately brings you to commit violence is a mental illness”.
aimai
The problem isn’t that the “watch list” is bad. Its that the second amendment/gun lobby lunatics won’t permit any kind of recording of gun sales and ownership *at all.* If the gun show loophole were closed, if reasonable waiting periods were enforced, and if gun records linking buyer to specific guns were kept *like our god damned vehicle liscencing laws* we wouldn’t have any problem. Graham and company are against treating guns like any other dangerous substance (cars, trucks, explosives) or any other professional responsibility (medical liscense, mover’s liscense, insurance etc…) If people who buy and sell guns had to also carry liability insurance the entire gun industry would crash to a halt except for a select few who could actually afford the insurance and hunters with good records. And the record keeping associated with it would prevent criminal purchase of guns.
aimai
Comrade Scrutinizer
@cleek:
__
There have been a number. Back in the 50’s, Puerto Rican Nationalists were involved in an attack on Blair House in an attempt to assassinate Truman, and later there was an incident where four Puerto Rican Nationalists opened fire in the House chamber, hitting five Representatives.
Among other more recent incidents, the 1977 Hanfi Seige in DC, the 1993 CIA headquarters shooting, a 1994 attack on Temple Beth Israel in Oregon by a member of Volksfront, a 1997 shooting at the Empire State Building, the 1999 shooting at the LA Jewish Community Center, a 2002 incident at the El Al counter at LAX, a 2009 shooting by a white supremacist at the Holocaust Museum, etc, etc.
While some of these attacks were committed by one or two individuals, they all expressed definite political motivations for the attacks.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@KCinDC: Adblocker is your friend.
demo woman
Lieberman wants to introduce a law preventing the reading of miranda rights to possible terrorists. Hopefully another Senator with guts will add an amendmennt to include closing the gun show loophole. Poison pill anyone?
scav
@aimai: They have rather shut down debate entirely — if we were having 100s of deaths a day from Children’s Tylenol or spinach year after year after year, . . . .
twiffer
so, being “…all into national security…” means: a) we should do nothing to prevent those whom we suspect of being terrorists from legally purchasing concealable weapons and actual explosives (not everyday items that can be used as bomb ingredients, but, well, bombs); b) if we arrest someone whom we suspect of actually having committed a terrorist act, we should render any information they provide inadmissable in court because telling a suspected terrorist of the rights they have, regardless of whether we inform them or not, is somehow a bad thing?
excuse me, i’m going to go bang my head against a brick wall until that logic makes a lick of sense. or i simply drive shards of my fractured skull into my brain and die. whichever comes first.
SGEW
@Comrade Scrutinizer: Wow. I had forgotten about a lot of those. I wonder how many of them could have been prevented by more rigorous regulation? Would increased security have mitigated the effects?
@jibeaux:
Interesting sidenote to that: William Gibson was starting to write Spook Country when 9/11 happened; he realized that a central plot point of his was based on a fictional terrorist attack, done in a new and creative way that he had imagined. He says that he had to completely remove it from the book and never describe it to anyone, ever, as he didn’t want to give anyone any ideas; when asked about it, he only responded “thankfully, nobody else has thought of it yet,” and looked both a little wry and a little haunted. It must be weird to feel too visionary.
A Guest
@cleek:
That isn’t even close. The total homicide rate in the US is about 6/100000, which means around 60 people per day die and are classed as victims of homicide.
Guav
The flip side of this is that people who are horrified by the idea of not giving accused terrorists their full set of constitutional rightsâand people who at any other time would rail against (and have in the past) the absurdity of the arbitrary and secret “Terror Watch List”âseem to have no problem with using this list to deny people their rights without due process, simpy because they don’t like guns in general.
You guys are no more consistent than Graham.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
The ability of Republicans to hold two opposing viewpoints simultaneously is astounding.
OK – racially profile a person with dark skin or an accent
Not OK – prevent suspected terrorists from buying guns
You can violate someone’s civil rights because they’re Latino but you can’t violate a possible terrorist’s gun rights because…shut up, that’s why.
I hate gun fetishists.
Califlander
There’ve been quite a few gun killings in this country since 9/11 that were explicitly political in nature or intended to induce mass fear. The Ft Hood shootings come to mind, but so do the DC sniper shootings, the Unitarian Church shootings, and the killing of Dr. Tiller. I’m reasonably sure that’s not an exhaustive list.
Cerberus
@cleek:
Uh…
Dr. Tiller, that black southern mayor who had his windows shot out from all sides, Virginia Tech, LA Fitness, the Unitarian Church shoot-up, the neo-nazis who were targeting the Holocaust museum, Columbine…
Terrorism =/= Islamic terrorism and there have been a large number of terrorist attacks by white guys involving guns even in the last couple of years, much less the last two decades (and the major shoot-outs a number of cults and militias had with law enforcement). Indeed guns seem to be the number one tool of white-guy domestic terrorism in the modern era now that lynching has fallen out of favor and bombings tend to get the wrong media attention.
I mean, if you want to talk about Islamic Terrorism on our shores, then there really isn’t much room for one involving guns as the number of incidents we have is 1 and the number of attempted incidents in the last decade or two can easily be counted on both hands.
Not that I agree with either bill, though I find the use of it a brilliant attempt to get people cheering the Lieberman bill to sound like Graham just did. If they want to continue taking us down this path, I have no compunction about using their bullshit against them.
Omnes Omnibus
@Guav:
Where the hell do you get that from?
scav
@Guav: The watch list is a total farce and needs to be cleaned up. Being willing to take advantage of this political opportunity to get a little debate going on about an otherwise sacred-cow-untouchable issue I’ll cop to. If we can slow down people getting on planes, even fucking five-year-olds named Sam Adams, we can slow down peoples abilities to buy guns. If UT thinks it can slow down womens’ right to a legal abortion by forcing her to watch an ultrasound, we can slow down people’s ability to buy guns. If it takes the possibility that the watch list may be used to slow down getting guns that provides the impetus to clean up the bloody watch list, then YAHOO.
twiffer
@Omnes Omnibus: apparently the 9th amendment is one of those that doesn’t really count:
frankly, every asshole who cries “it’s not in the constitution!” should be reminded of the 9th amendment.
it is also telling that amendments 4, 5, 6, 7, & 8 ALL deal with protecting the people from abuse of the law (well, maybe not 7 so much anymore, that one might need to be adjusted for inflation). that’s half of the bill of rights.
Bob L
bahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha We can take away every constitutional right of suspect terrorists BUT the right posses the basic instrument needed to commit acts of terror. bahahahahahaa
James F. Elliott
If there is a single less-serious way of being “tough on terror” than “Stop reading them their Miranda rights,” I don’t know what it is.
Guav
@cleek:
There’s an average of 16,000 firearm homicides in the US per year, or 44 per day, not a 100.
You’re including suicides in your total, which isn’t really useful in this context, I don’t think.
DanF
@aimai: Yeah – but our founding fathers couldn’t have envisioned planes and cars and stuff or they would have had their own second amendment also, too.
Guav
@scav:
Great, unless it results in everyone just getting more screwed, not less. This is how I see it: Don’t play games. Pick a side, and be consistent.
If you think denying rights based on the watch list is bullshit, then fight it across the board. Also, I agree with you about the ultrasound, but that has nothing to do with the watch list, so I don’t see how that ties into this at all.
Comrade Dread
Let me try to follow the stupid…
We’re perfectly willing, in the name of national security, to let law enforcement spy on whomever they wish with national security letters and warrantless wiretapping, we’ll be happy to ship an accused terrorist to prison indefinitely without legal recourse and we support giving the government the authority to torture accused terrorists for information, but hell no, we can’t possibly restrict their ability to buy guns and fucking explosives because one innocent person might be denied the right to carry an AK-47.
Sigh…
Our entire government is really a live action performance art dark comedy, isn’t it?
jackie
I’m all for this. We need these gun fanatics on our side to get some attention to what is going on with this list. A few of these folks end up on it, for whatever reason, and all of a sudden this security theater will get some attention.
Who am I kidding. No one ever gets in trouble for the nonsense and the bulk of the country goes insane when one of these things is shown to be ineffective and demands a more intrusive ,equally ineffective replacement. And if some crony can sell the intrusive and ineffective piece of magic tech to the government then there is a perfect storm of stupid, scared and greedy. It will only get worse.
Marcelo
Um what?
Who the hell is talking about banning handguns? That’s not even on the table. How did he get from terrorist watchlist to banning all the guns? What kind of strenuous link is that? Some of the people pushing the things Lindsey Graham supports also push nuking Iran, and I don’t think nuking Iran makes ME safer. So take THAT, everything Lindsey Graham supports.
It doesn’t bother me because it’s stupid, it bothers me because it’s purposefully disingenuous and it reinforces the meme that Obama wants to take away our guns and pushes that button for all those people who might otherwise think letting people on the terrorist watchlist have guns is a bad idea.
aimai
@Cerberus:
I really have to agree with Cerberus. As a woman, and a liberal, and a jew I have a really different “map” of terrorist activities with guns and I see them happening all the time in domestic disputes, when I was growing up with skin head activity, and in the various shootings associated with PP and abortion clinics. There’s a whole lot of “terrorism” going on, highly political, aimed at terrorizing a swathe of the population and using fear to achieve goals not achievable through either the legal system or the ballot box.
aimai
bushworstpresidentever
You didn’t quote the best line:
cintibud
@Guav: I disagree about suicide data not being relevant. Between the fact that several of my friends killed themselves with guns and my own battles with depression I have decided I should not own a gun. However with the current gun mania I sometimes wonder if I am the last guy on the block to own one. Needing a gun for self-protection is becoming a self fulfilling prophecy as an “arms race” is raging in this country – much to the delight of the manufacturers.
luminousmuse
My Father, the late Historian William Manchester, was awarded the Navy Cross for action in combat on Okinawa. He was a friend of John Kennedy, and wrote a well known account of Kennedy’s assassination, The Death of a President. When Bobby was shot in 1968, my father threw his combat 45 in the Connecticut. After that he tirelessly supported gun control, giving money and speaking for the Brady Group. Yet when he died 6 years ago guns were more available than ever. I’m glad he’s not around to see this current nonsense.
scav
@Guav: You’re assuming we can put into place a 100% perfect logical solution immediately at a swell foop. I’m arguing about the political realities of getting a debate started on this issue. I want the debate, I’m not sure what the best, let alone what the most feasible solution is. I just know this knee-jerk equating of regulating gun purchases with banning gun ownership is bat-shit irritating.
Oh, and I’m ever so sorry if my consistency doesn’t live up to your expectations. The ultrasound thing was there as an example of how people sometime apparently being fine with slowing down the implementation of legal actions.
Guav
@Marcelo:
The Violence Policy Center, for one.
Sir Nose'D
For a few years I have been kicking around the idea of creating the “Free Guns for African-Americans” foundation, with the expressed goal of ensuring traditionally-excluded groups of Americans can fully participate in and enjoy their second amendment rights.
Now I must ask myself: how would Lindsay Graham and the NRA crowd react to this foundation? In other words, how many seconds until heads exploded?
Guav
@scav:
Why? You brought up abortion but failed to look at the parallels. What if someone said “I just know this knee-jerk equating of regulating abortions with banning abortions is bat-shit irritating.”
They would only say that if they didn’t understand the strategy of the moralists in this country and how they are trying to achieve their goal.
The gun rights crusaders are not any different from the pro-choice crusaders in this regard. Both the pro-choice and pro-2A crowd have knee-jerk reactions to any regulations or restrictions on abortion or guns, because they both correctly understand that the people who want to ban abortions and gunsâthe pro-lifers and the gun control lobbyâcannot outright ban either, but must resort to death by a thousand cuts, restricting little by little.
Why do you have a knee-jerk reaction to one, but don’t understand the other? You’re rightâyour consistency doesnât live up to my expectations :)
Guav
@Sir Nose’D:
The “NRA Crowd” supported this:
And for well over a decade has been discussing The Racist Roots Of Gun Control and Laws Designed To Disarm Slaves, Freedmen, And African-Americans, so I don’t think they’d oppose your foundation at allâyou seem to be on the same page as them (although they don’t propose passing out free guns to anyone).
Hypnos
@Guav: in case you didn’t notice, abortions are extremely regulated, and some kinds are banned outright.
Similarly, cars are also highly regulated. How comes nobody screams of a “car ban” when they are forced to get a driving licence before being allowed to drive? How would an electronic database of gun purchases “ban” guns?
Guav
@cintibud:
Suicide is not relevant if we are discussing whether or not Americans would be terrorized by gun attacks (since we’re already used to high rates of firearm homicides, etc). Suicides aren’t “gun violence” or things that just “happen” to Americans out of the blueâit’s something that people do to themselves, and it’s not generally a physical threat to others.
Also, there is no evidence to show that firearm avilability has any impact on overall suicide rates (but it does absolutely impact suicide method). Here in NYC, guns are not readily available, but bridges and buildings are, so people who want to kill themselves here just use those insteadâthis has happened several times in the last month or so alone.
Mr Furious
Most cop shows these days give an abbreviated Miranda reading as the cuffs are slapped on at the conclusion of a scene as it fades to black. Rarely is it featured. In fact, I’d say, they really only recite it when the case is wrapped up and you know they are cuffing the right guy…
“Homicide” (best cop show ever) was the last one I watched religiously, and they constantly walked the line between “interviewing” suspects in the box without reading them their rights because they weren’t under arrest, and racing to get the info they need before the suspect can lawyer up.
Mr Furious
Reminds me of a great scene where Det. Pembleton (Andre Braugher) browbeats a confession out of a distraught teen (played by a young Isiah Washington) for a murder he didn’t commit, to make a point to his superiors.
Goddamn, that fucking show was great.
Mr Furious
Um, how many people who commit suicide without a gun go out in a blaze of wrist-slashing strangers or forcing sleeping pills down others’ throats… Suicide by handgun seems to me to have a pretty high correlation to gunning down one’s family, coworkers, strangers, etc on their way out.
Somebody who is contemplating killing themselves with a gun has far too great of a capability or temptation to spread it around, in my opinion.
I know I am connect two separate dots here, but no more than someone who attempts to draw a bright line between the two…
cintibud
@Guav: Just going from my personal experience. At least a couple of the folks I knew probably would still be alive if they didn’t have ready access to guns. They didn’t have to leave their house and find a bridge or tall building or find a rope, tie a noose, find an appropriate support and climb up on a stool. If they had swallowed pills or slit their wrists they may have considered the pain they would have caused and called for help, or could have been found in time to save their life.
In those cases, it was almost like a wild impulse that caught everyone totally by surprise.
Guav
@Mr Furious:
It happens more frequently than you thinkâa recent example hereâeither by strangulation, stabbing, fire, etc. But the vast majority of suicides (regardless of whether a firearm is used or not) are not murder/suicides.
In any case, the ones that ARE would have ended up in the “homicide” tally of the firearm death stats I’m referring to anyhow.
Guav
@cintibud:
Having suffered from severe depression yourself, and been suicidal, then you know that nobody really knows what’s going on inside your head, and few understand it. It’s pure speculation to say that we know they probably wouldn’t have done it if they didn’t have a gun. We don’t know how serious they were about dying. People are suicidal to different levels, and some people may choose less instantaneous methods because deep down inside, they don’t actually want to die. The people who absolutely DO want to die use things like guns, or tall buildings. Those who don’t take pills, etc.
Obviously, if someone is suicidal, it’s better if they don’t have access to a gun. But they also shouldn’t have access to a car, knives, medications, alcohol, or tall buildings and bridges. But someone committed to die is going to do it, regardless.
Speculation aside, there’s an easy way to figure this one out: You look at countries where restrictive firearm laws have been passed, and then you see if there was a substantial, permanent drop in the overall suicide rate corresponding with the legislation. We do not see this. We see significant drops in the FIREARM suicide rate, but we see increases in other methodsâthere is almost a complete substitution of other methods, and virtually no change in the overall rate (other than normal fluctuations).
asiangrrlMN
@Guav: The other difference is that legal abortions do not constitute any kind of danger to anyone outside of the woman having it while owning guns, obviously, constitutes danger to other people. I can have ten abortions without injuring anyone or affecting anyone else in the least. No one else is going to be physically affected by a woman’s decision to have an abortion. Plus, it’s done to a woman’s body and falls under the category of health. However, guns? Not a health matter. Not solely contained to the person with the gun. Not safe for everyone other than the person involved. To me, you are creating a false equivalence.
As for the watch list, I do have to reluctantly say that if it’s just suspects and if they have all their other rights, then no, they should not be banned from buying guys (if it’s legal. Such as, if they aren’t felons). That said, I think there SHOULD be more restrictions on gun-buying, and I am pro-Miranda. Oh, and countries with restrictive guns-buying laws may not have less suicides, but they do have less homicides.
Chuck Butcher
Another stupider than shit argument sparked by a right wing media whore politician.
Try to wrap your heads around this, you have no particular right to drive a car on public roads or get aboard an airplane. You do have certain rights enumerated in the BOR and a couple directly in the Constitution.
You really think that some asshole at a desk in some dept of some agency (local, state, fed) should have some suspicion and put your name on an invisible list and thereby void your rights? Now if you ask me if I like the TSA list, there a hell of a lot of false hits there and some people get seriously inconvenienced. There are false hits on the gun sales “Brady” check now, I personally had to raise hell with the OR State Police about it and got it fixed, try that with the Fed when you have no idea who has you on what list.
Damn I get so tired of people with one hobby horse or the other wanting to fuck up basic rights.
Mr Furious
All I’m saying is that a gun is too convenient, quick and comparatively painless/clean when it comes to a suicidal person who might take others with them…
And harder to escape or resist.
Sir Nose'D
@Guav: Good grief–now my head is exploding.
Guav
@asiangrrlMN:
I’m not comparing abortion and firearms themselvesâthey are obviously quite dissimilarâbut rather the strategies their opponents use (tiny steps) and the way those who defend both of those things react to those strategies (by reflexively opposing all tiny steps).
That being said:
Except, you know, the ten babies being killed. Now, I am pro-choice and don’t actually subscribe to that view of abortion, but the only reason there is a debate AT ALL is because a lot of people do feel that wayâthat’s why there is opposition in the first place.
In that sense, it’s also a good comparison, because both pro-lifers and the gun control lobby argue that they are trying to save lives. I disagree with both of them, but that’s not the pointâthat is their stated motivation.
Guav
@asiangrrlMN:
That’s just not true at all. Some do, and some have higher homicide rates than we do. Likewise, some countries with high rates of gun ownership have very low suicide rates, and some with very restrictive gun laws have high suicide rates (and vice versa).
It’s not useful to compare different countries to each other, because they all differ socially, culturally and economicallyâfirearm availability has little to do with the causes of homicide (or suicide).
melmoth
@luminousmuse:
Yes, well it only gets worse from here on out. Many’s a time I think Orwell was lucky to die so young and miss the carnival he foresaw.
mutt
well, lets see. We have a secret list, with secret criteria, made up of information from secret sources, completely hidden from ANY judicial oversight. As you know, thousands and thousands of people have found themselves on various “enemies lists” for no apparent reason. Placement upon it is not only SECRET, but unappealable.
And you think its a great idea to use that as a basis to deny fundimental rights.
ooooooo-kaaaaaay.
The gun nut argumnt AGAINST this is, and has been, for years, the IDEA of such a list.
If these people are actual threats, why are they running around loose?
I stand with the “gun nuts” here.
the skeptics.
Nerem
@mutt:
To be honest, it’s the opposite. They’re fine with the list and everything about it. They just don’t want the ‘right’ to procure weaponry to be be included as part of the rights removed when you’re on the list. The reason why people are wanting it to get it put on the list as a right taken away is because then making the gun nuts will finally oppose the list.
Guav
@Nerem:
Oh please, that is absolutely absurdâthe people pushing this are not civil libertarians trying to “trick” conservatives into opposing the list, they are well-known gun control advocates pushing this as a means of, you know, GUN CONTROL, and have never stated any opposition to the existence of the list whatsoever.
Guav
@Mr Furious:
Yet the fact remains that firearm availability does not significantly impact overall suicide rates one way or the other.
Boney Baloney
A weapon is what someone’s willing to use as a weapon. A 5″ heel in first class air travel. A 100 kiloton warhead in the Middle East. 1001 Uses for $35 Microwave Ovens in Bosnia — fortunately, they mostly stuck to “honey trap for $50m anti-radar missile,” but there’s no need to play fair.
Lightsaber-shaped 10W lasers mass-produced in China and available by the container-load to anyone with folding green — “don’t point in your eye” stickers sold seperately. Soap-bar-sized Chinese jammers that scram four diferent cell phone systems, GPS, WiFi, and metro police trunk transcievers for 100m around on battery power. Chinese black-market crap that would scare Paul Robeson white, frankly. I’d rather have a meth-head with a cheap copy AK on either side of my house than some of the stuff 14-year-olds can purchase in parts and assemble at home without triggering BATF watch-lists. Seriously, fertilizer is for people who blow up their nuts trying to strike a match. Time has moved on.
Some stuff scared even Nikolai Tesla, and the future is here, miniaturized, and mass-produced. SWAT crowd-control pants-crapping megaphones, my ASS. (You should excuse the expression.)
Serious terrorist revolutionaries would poke a live ferret up their asses before they’d hump a big old metallic firearm around when they were seriously on the prod for easily-frightened imperialists. Why worry?