Per Dave Weigel, tomorrow’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on stand-your-ground laws (which would have given Rep. Louie Gohmert a chance to question Trayvon Martin’s mother) have been postponed due to the Navy Yard shooting.
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JR
How was a Senate committee meeting going to give a member of the House a chance to question a witness?
Spaghetti Lee
Given that today’s shooter (‘today’s shooter’, for fuck’s sake) was black, I expect some congressfreak or right-wing rag writer to work that into their coverage of the hearing, i.e. ‘Despite what the left would want us to believe, mass shootings are not restricted to white conservatives, and given the strong possibility that Trayvon Martin acted aggressive, the parallels are easy to draw,” i.e. “OMG black people are scary!” Can’t wait, eh?
chopper
that pretty much sums the whole country up, don’t it?
lahke
Sounds like they decided to politicize it. Tsk tsk.
kc
@JR:
I dunno, but: http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/hearing.cfm?id=9ef0cae481fa37b34652bb4623328c97
kc
I actually don’t see the point of such a hearing.
Yatsuno
@kc: Doesn’t look like they’re on the same panel per that list. Poor Louie.
kc
@Yatsuno:
I’m sure he would have been very respectful.
kc
@Yatsuno:
But look, Mary Rosh is on his panel! He can give her a nice public tongue bath.
Yatsuno
@kc:
Brain bleach. Naow plz and thankee.
RandomMonster
Clearly it’s not safe to hold a hearing on that when there are indiscriminate senseless shootings going on a mile away.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
So we not only have another tragic shooting, but we get another round of ‘GUN GRABBERS ARE THE WORST MOST EVIL ULTRA-MEGA TRAITORS EVER!!!’ all over, and yet another fight that the NRA will probably win again. I’m half expecting a ‘Trayvon Martin Act’ that requires mandatory gun ownership for Neighborhood Watch members at this point
It’s just wearying when these things happen and yet the worst tragedy to so many people is how much Gun Grabbers hate America and need to be stopped before everything is banned, before the bodies are cold and anyone even mentions a sniff of ‘Gun Control’ save the ones freaking the hell out about it. And again, the hysterics will probably win, because Guns are the only Freedom that really matter in this country.
mai naem
Nothing’s going to change until one of the GOP’s crown prince is shot and killed. And there’s not guarantee in that either. I am not advocating this by any means, but if they lose somebody really really important to their movement, their bird brains may actually absorb the extent of the damage done by guns. And, it can’t be somebody just greviously injured(see James Brady,) it’s got be a fatality. Also, there’s got to be somebody on that side of the aisle ready to run with the ball.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Other than giving Republican douchenozzles a forum the point of these hearings is exactly what? Congress is more than ever the place where good ideas go to die so why even pretend that it’s going to do something about SYG laws? The dozens who have been killed or wounded over the past year or so have not been sufficient to make Congress give up sucking NRA dick. The death of Trayvon Martin or the mere 13 dead in today’s mass shooting will do nothing to get the NRA’s balls off of their chins.
? Martin
@mai naem:
Wouldn’t slow them down any. They’d just take it as evidence they need to be even more armed. No, it needs to be prominent members of their own movement killing innocents to get them to stop. They’ll meet anger with anger. They might respond to shame and guilt, though.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@mai naem:
You’re overlooking the fact that the unfortunate clown prince would be immediately beatified by his party which would then use the incident to push for even more guns because self-defense.
The Dangerman
@mai naem:
One more body? No one that important in America; maybe the Pope if he visited, but even he being lost wouldn’t change the situation. It would have to be something truly shocking; I don’t even want to speculate what that might be if Sandy Hook didn’t change anything.
Maybe if the Republicans were backed into a corner completely and Obama was getting the pliers and the blowtorches ready and they HAD to choose either a tax increase or gun control, well, then gun control it would be.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@mai naem:
They’d probably just blame Obama or whatever top Dem there is at the time for hating America and killing defense spending and what not, which will be lifted up as the REAL reason this happened, and encouraging all Real ‘Mericans to be armed at all times since Gov’t is obviously super-extra incompetent and/or tyrannical.
Yatsuno
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: Freedumb isn’t free. Tree of liberty must be watered and all that. But make them give up their penile replacements? Heresy.
The Other Chuck
Open Letter To Gun Nuts:
I’m through meeting you violent simpleton thugs halfway. I’m now all for repealing the fucking second amendment and taking your fucking guns away. You claim your guns are to defend against tyranny, but what is it you take the the streets to fight with calls to violent revolution? Oh yeah, health care and ending tax breaks for the 1%.
Wrong answer pinheads, fuck you, you lose, game over.
Alison
@Spaghetti Lee: Apparently a bunch of them are pulling the “Is Obama going to say his son would’ve looked like this guy” thing…
http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/09/16/navy_yard_shooting_suspect_aaron_alexis_is_black_so_obviously_twitter_jerks.html?utm_source=tw&utm_medium=sm&utm_campaign=button_toolbar
trollhattan
A rare environmental win.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/09/16/202282/british-company-pulls-out-of-pebble.html#storylink=cpy
IMHO this is a much greater recipe for disaster than Keystone XL, and losing the majority partner probably kills it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Spaghetti Lee: I am curious when the conservatards are going to put two and two together and realize the other they are so scared of can use laws like Stand Your Ground against them .
SatanicPanic
@mai naem: That almost happened to Saint Reagan. If that didn’t teach them nothing will.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Alison: I just barely skimmed the surface of that article, I don’t think I’ll read the rest of it. BARF.
Suzanne
I just made a coffeecake for a client meeting tomorrow. Business Development: Shameless Edition.
I want to eat it right now.
kc
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Obama is the real racist.
Spaghetti Lee
@Alison:
Man, they won’t shut up about that one. Same thing after that basketball player was killed in Oklahoma: “THIS DON’T LOOK LIKE OBAMA’S SON HURR HURR.” It seems (to the rational mind) to be a pretty inoffensive quote, so I wonder why they’re so afraid of it. My best guess is that any sign of minority solidarity, no matter how peaceful or slight, scares the piss out of ’em.
Villago Delenda Est
The Rethugs are cowards.
Spaghetti Lee
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Well, when ‘conservatives’ and ‘figure out’ are in the same sentence, the answer is usually “years, at least”. But I don’t think they have much reason to be afraid here. I don’t like being cynical, but I imagine that in most states, a black guy shooting a white kid on mere suspicion or ‘self-defense’ is going straight to jail, and that it would also be hard for a defense attorney to find a jury that isn’t willing to make that happen. White people waving guns around are noble patriots, defenders of freedom, and responsible citizens. Black people or Mexicans waving guns around are thugs and gangsters, and possibly race-war-inciting commies. That’s just how it is in Conservaland.
Carolinus
UN Syria Report:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/17/world/europe/syria-united-nations.html?pagewanted=2
Tommy
My dad is is a bad ass mother fucker. Military guy. He knows I am a far left liberal. He was over at my house today. He needed some dental work done. I recall telling him this happened as he left. I think saying “somebody attacked the Navy Yard dad …”
He knew I used to live close to there and was confused. I am still confused.
amk
@mai naem: Heck, their crowned king raygun was shot at and jacksquat happened. Only in ‘murka.
Elizabelle
Dang, I wish I’d seen this. Rare “roll cloud” formation over Northern Virginia this morning.
Some wonderful pics.
Elizabelle
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Higgs, lovely to see you back.
Yatsuno
@Elizabelle: MY PEOPLE HAVE RETURNED FOR ME!!! DEATH TO ALL HUMANS!!!
Elizabelle
@Yatsuno:
Yeah, precisely. Eerie looking cloud.
And, coincidentally, about 20 minutes later a mass murder begins at the Navy Yard.
Enough anomalies for one Monday morning.
(Wednesday morning a rocket launch is scheduled from Wallops Island on the Eastern Shore. Supply vehicle to the space station.)
Patricia Kayden
@Spaghetti Lee: And Black people should collectively respond, “So what?” I don’t care about the race of the shooter. I care about the proliferation of guns — especially to people who shouldn’t be allowed to own them.
WereBear
@mai naem: Not going to happen, because THEIR side is the one who seems to love to shoot people. You have to reach back into the sixties, and the Vietnam War, to find murderers on the Left; and they tended to use bombs.
Just saying.
Jay in Oregon
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Ask Marissa Alexander how well that worked out for her.
Aside from the racial double-standard, the real takeaway is this: if you’re defending yourself in a SYG state, it’s best if the other person isn’t alive to challenge your side of the story.
John Dillinger
Umm, a witnesses from one panel doesn’t get to question a witness from another panel. And her panel would definitely go later (the honorable can’t be asked to wait), so if (when) he says something done, she’d have the last word.
Roger Moore
@? Martin:
Yup. Guns cannot fail; they can only be failed. Any apparent failure of being heavily armed is proof that you weren’t heavily enough armed.
glocksman
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
The only practical thing Congress can do is provide a forum for publicizing the abuse of SYG laws (see Zimmerman, George), as these are state laws that deal largely* with state criminal matters and thus are outside the purview of Congress.
The problem is that states like Florida are currently immune to public shaming as long as the Repubs hold a death grip on the Governorship and Legislature.
The most effective tactic would be to build on any publicity and try to elect more state legislators who’ll look at the current ALEC written SYG laws with a skeptical eye.
Giving the righties their due, they just didn’t come to power overnight.
Instead they started running for local offices and used them as springboards to higher offices.
Of course, the Koch money didn’t hurt, either.
*Given racial disparities, Congress could conceivably do something via civil rights statutes, but IANAL.
feebog
@TheOtherChuck:
No need to repeal the second amendment. What we need is a majority on the Supreme Court who can read the amendment as a whole and understand the historical context that the amendment was written in. Political hacks like Scalia have completely co-opted and twisted the reason for the amendment in the first place.
ericblair
@feebog:
“See that thing about well-regulated militia? Y’all ain’t one.”
If so inclined, the Roberts court wouldn’t even need that, since constitutionally they’re happy to make shit up out of thin air now. (See: Voting Rights Act, disembowelment of.)
Roger Moore
@feebog:
Maybe if some lunatic shot up the right wing of the Supreme Court, we could get both a Court that can read the plain wording of the Second Amendment and some public support behind doing so.
glocksman
The second amendment, even as read by the Roberts court, doesn’t preclude reasonable regulation of firearms.
IOW, while total bans won’t pass muster, magazine size limitations and mental health restrictions most likely would.
As for reading the amendment itself, my take is that RKBA is an individual right, but like other rights such as free speech, there are limits.
Finding out the extent of those limits is a job for the courts and Congress.
The other option is to repeal the 2nd altogether.
However I suspect that would be incredibly difficult even without the NRA’s opposition.
LanceThruster