Illinois Bans Sale Of Assault-Style Weapons

In a rare victory over the malign forces of the National Rifle Rampage Association and their coin-operated Republican / Seditionist / Shooters party, Illinois passed legislaation that bans the sale of assault-style weapons like those used in mass shootings. Gov. JB Pritzker signed the legislation into law yesterday, which also includes a ban on high-capacity magazines. The vote on the legislation itself wasn't close: the State's House voted 68-41 and the State Senate voted 34-20 to impose the sales ban:

"Before signing the bill, Gov. Pritzker raised the memory of the July 4th parade massacre in Highland Park last year – which left seven people dead and 36 injured, and left a 2-year-old boy parentless and wandering around.

The shooter used legally-purchased semiautomatic weapon.

Pritzker said the massacre was allowed to happen 'all because our state and our nation have been held hostage by the NRA and their allies time and time again.'

'After nearly every mass shooting, we've seen efforts to ban dangerous weapons thwarted – and then leaders send their thoughts and prayers, while the they throw  their hands up – resigning themselves to the idea that gun violence is a sacrifice that Americans must accept,' Pritzker said. But it doesn't have to be that way.'"  (our emphasis)

The law doesn't affect gun owners currently in possession of those types of weapons, but it does require them to register them with the Illinois State Police and expedites the universal background check process in the State. The gun lobby has already indicated they will challenge the ban in court. 

(photo: Pritzker signs assault rife sales ban/ Getty Images)

 

The NRA: Noxious Russian Asset

A report from the Democratic side of the Senate Committee on Finance is memorializing what's largely been known about the National Rifle Rampage Association's acting as an asset of the Russian government. You can read the full report here.  It's key findings:

o  New evidence that the 2015 delegation to Moscow was an official NRA trip meant to demonstrate Alexander Torshin’s American connections to the Kremlin, contrary to NRA statements that it was an unofficial trip organized by individuals merely interested in fostering gun rights in Russia.

o  New evidence that NRA insiders exchanged access to the American political system for the promise of lucrative personal business opportunities.

o  New evidence that the NRA may have violated tax laws that prohibit the use of any organization resources for personal benefit. 

o  New evidence that NRA insiders may have violated U.S. sanctions by meeting with sanctioned Russian government officials and state-linked weapons manufacturers in pursuit of personal business opportunities. In 2018, Senator Wyden asked Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control to investigate whether some of the Russian weapons manufacturers the NRA delegation met with have evaded U.S. sanctions by abusing domestic shell companies. He is calling for Treasury to provide a response to his original request.

At the very least, the violation of tax laws should mean that their tax- exempt status should be revoked, which isn't happening while the current crop of gun- humper enablers is in power.  That these rotted- out defenders of the right to massacre innocent people with war weapons were more than willing to trade access to their lickspittle Republican gofers in exchange for "business opportunities" only adds more urgency to the need to expunge all of these creatures from our political swamp.

BONUS:  Joan McCarter has a good read on the long relationship between Moscow/ Massacre Mitch McConnell and the NRA.

BONUS II:  Oh, looky here!  The corrupt circle remains unbroken.

(Photo:  Moscow/ Massacre Mitch McConnell, another Russian asset)

Cashing In On Racism And Paranoia

Seth Meyers discusses the dimbulb grifter- in- chief, the grifter gun humpers in the National Rifle Rampage Association, and how they're "selling their base racism and paranoia, and all the while they and their wealthy patrons are cashing in."

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

The National Rifle Rampage Association's multi- year grift continues to show signs of collapse:

The National Rifle Association spent growing sums on overhead in 2018 even as it cut money for core activities such as gun training and political efforts, ending the year deeper in debt, new financial documents show.

The gun rights group’s 2018 financial report, which was obtained by The Washington Post, portrays the longtime political powerhouse as spending faster than its revenue rose.

The records show that the NRA froze its pension plan for employees at the end of last year, a move that saved it close to $13 million, and obtained a $28 million line of credit by borrowing against its Virginia headquarters.

Despite that, the nonprofit group, four affiliated charities and its political committee together ended the year $10.8 million in the red. In 2017, the six groups ended the year with a $1.1 million shortfall.

Brian Mittendorf, an Ohio State University accounting professor who has studied nonprofits, including the NRA, and examined the 2018 report for The Post, said it depicted “a bad year for them financially.” He compared the NRA to a person living paycheck to paycheck, leaning on credit cards with very little cushion.

In addition to lavish spending on its scumbag chief executive Wayne LaPierre and some of its board of directors, the gun humper grifters were also spending a lot of time and money in court:

From 2017 to 2018, legal and audit spending jumped from $12.9 million to $33.5 million. Legal expenses for administrative purposes rose nearly 400 percent, accounting for the largest increase, from $4.6 million to $21.9 million, the records show.

The rise in legal fees came as the NRA was contending with congressional inquiries into its ties with Russia, as well as various state investigations.

Who could have imagined an organization so closely lashed to fraudster incompetent Donald "Rump" Trump and the rotted out Republican Party would be so full of incompetent fraudsters?

Spoiler alert: Trump still has no clue how trade works:

India will impose higher retaliatory tariffs on 28 U.S. products including almonds, apples and walnuts from Sunday, following Washington's withdrawal of key trade privileges for New Delhi.

The new duties take effect from Sunday, a government notification said, in the latest trade dispute since President Donald Trump took office in 2017 vowing to act against countries with which Washington has a large trade deficit.

From June 5, President Trump scrapped trade privileges under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) for India, the biggest beneficiary of a scheme that allowed duty-free exports of up to $5.6 billion.

India termed that "unfortunate" and vowed to uphold its national interests.

It's almost as if he's working for a hostile foreign government to tank the U.S. economy.  Oh, wait...

The Trump regime's "Gulf of Trumpkin" (h/t Paul Krugman) incident is being received by our major allies with a large dose of skepticism:

While President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have been unequivocal in their assertion that Iran was responsible for the attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman last week, some of America’s closest allies are demanding more proof.

Both Japan and Germany have requested more concrete evidence to support the Trump administration’s insistence that Iran was behind the twin attacks on the Norwegian-owned Front Altar and the Japanese-owned Kokuka Courageous near the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday.

They try so hard, bless their shriveled, war- mongering, wag- the- dog hearts.

Back atcha:

I think the Democrats should incorporate this pledge from the 2016 Republican platform into their 2020 platform. pic.twitter.com/qaw54xZujb

— Steve Metz (@steven_metz) June 15, 2019

Following days of massive protests in Hong Kong, the pro- Beijing leadership backs down, a little.

Hong Kong's embattled leader on Saturday said a divisive bill that would allow extraditions to China would be "suspended" in a major climbdown from her government after a week of unprecedented protests.

The city's pro-Beijing leader Carrie Lam has come under huge pressure to abandon the controversial legislation, including from her own political allies and advisers.

"The government has decided to suspend the legislative amendment exercise, restart our communication with all sectors of society, do more... work and listen to different views of society," Lam told reporters Saturday.

"Suspension" doesn't mean it's all good for residents of Hong Kong, who vow to continue to protest en masse until the bill is withdrawn.

We found the last piece in Infidel 753's link round- up, which could easily form the basis for our entire Monday reading -- but we're not that craven, yet!  Always worthwhile to see what he's found.

Only In America

Seventeen people killed, fourteen others wounded in the shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida yesterday.

Thirty mass shootings (i.e., where 4 or more people are shot), including eighteen school shootings, so far this year.

So here we are yet again, in a country ruled not by popular will, but by a handful of gun manufacturers, their lobbyists (if you want to talk about "pure evil," look no further than the National Rifle Rampage Association), a craven Republican Congress that cultivates the tiny percentage of gun humpers whose votes and blood money they rely on...  and, of course, the Very Stable Genius. We await the flurry of "thoughts and prayers" coming from these morally bankrupt shits.

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, from the State where the gut- wrenching Sandy Hook school massacre occurred in 2012, speaks for us:

Don't tell me tomorrow isn't the appropriate time to debate gun violence. If you're a political leader doing nothing about this slaughter, you're an accomplice.

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) February 15, 2018

BONUS: Sociopath Donald "Rump" Trump's FY 2019 budget would cut the funding for the Federal gun background check system by 16% ($12 million). They're consistently evil.

BONUS II:  Former Florida Republican Rep. David Jolly on CNN--

“The idea of gun policy in the Republican party is to try to get the speaking slot at the NRA and prove [to] that constituency that you’re further right.”

He further urged that, to have any hope of sane gun laws, voters must "First, flip the House. Flip the House."

BONUS III:  Bess Kalb (a writer for Jimmy Kimmel) has responses to Twitter reactions from Republican pols, noting their NRA payoffs.

BONUS IV:  Here's why Florida is such a welcoming place for gun violence.

Today's Cartoon Twofer -- Armed Kooks And Their Protectors

(click on images to enlarge)



(Mike Luckovich, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

 
(Jim Morin, Miami Herald)

The National Gun Manufacturers Rifle Association, the world's most evil advocacy organization, and their Republican protectors and enablers need to be told this every day by the vast majority of Americans who support the most basic, common sense reform -- tightening up background checks on gun purchasers.

"The Gun Epidemic"

The New York Times publishes its first front page editorial in nearly 100 years, and it's about gun violence in America and those who foster it.  Here's an excerpt:

All decent people feel sorrow and righteous fury about the latest slaughter of innocents, in California. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are searching for motivations, including the vital question of how the murderers might have been connected to international terrorism. That is right and proper.

But motives do not matter to the dead in California, nor did they in Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut and far too many other places. The attention and anger of Americans should also be directed at the elected leaders whose job is to keep us safe but who place a higher premium on the money and political power of an industry dedicated to profiting from the unfettered spread of ever more powerful firearms.

It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency. These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection. America’s elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday. They distract us with arguments about the word terrorism. Let’s be clear: These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.  (our emphasis)

Let's pause to note that those "elected leaders... who place a higher premium" on campaign donations and stoking voter turnout than our safety are, with a few grotesque exceptions, Republicans.  Let's also pause to note the "industry dedicated to profiting" from the carnage is not about hunters, sportsmen or collectors - it's about the gun manufacturing industry and their spokestoadies, the National Rifle Gun Manufacturers Association.

Unfortunately, politicians who want to take on the gun terrorist lobby are seeing the effects of a decades- long campaign of lies and distortions ("the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun", ergo buy a gun!) by the gun terrorist lobby and their Republican stooges that's making their task more difficult than ever:

About half [52%] of all Americans oppose stricter gun control laws, a larger segment of the population than those who support tighter controls on guns, according to a new CNN/ORC poll released Wednesday.  (our emphasis)

Let's note that poll was taken three weeks after the mass shootings in Roseburg, Oregon, in October that left 9 people dead.  The epidemic is on us and it's spreading because, instead of tackling the problem head on, a majority of us are coming up with the wrong answers.

It Wasn't Always Like This

Remember when this happened in 1994?

... a United States federal law [was enacted] that included a prohibition on the manufacture for civilian use of certain semi-automatic firearms it defined as assault weapons, as well as certain ammunition magazines it defined as "large capacity."

The ten-year ban was passed by the U.S. Congress on September 13, 1994, and signed into law by President Bill Clinton the same day. The ban only applied to weapons manufactured after the date of the ban's enactment, and it expired on September 13, 2004, in accordance with its sunset provision.

Several constitutional challenges were filed against provisions of the ban, but all were rejected by reviewing courts. There were multiple attempts to renew the ban, but none succeeded.

During the decade since the ban expired, Congress has become all the more beholden to/ afraid of the National Rifle Gun Manufacturers Association, perhaps the single most evil advocacy organization in the world.  The N.R.A.'s Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid/ Shooter's Party has a lock on the House of Representatives that may last another generation.  So what are the odds even the most minimal, common sense legislation -- on background checks or limiting assault weapons or magazine capacity -- will emerge from Congress?

It's all the more frustrating and bittersweet knowing we had something reasonable and good, and it slipped away.

Bikers Exercise Second Amendment Rights In Waco, Texas; Nine Die

Nine members of several bike gangs were killed in a shootout in a "Twin Peaks" breastaurant (think "Hooters," but less classy) and parking lot in Waco, Texas on Sunday.  Nearly 200 people were arrested in the aftermath of the carnage.  These thugs good ol' boys had plenty of guns and ammo at their finger tips (over 100 1,000 weapons were seized at the scene).

While some bikers directly participating in the violence were cuffed, here's a photo of another group after the shootout:

(AP Photo - Rod Aydelotte)

Are you noticing anything...  odd?  Like maybe the biker on his cell phone, others hanging around like they were maybe getting a "time out" from the cops?  Oh, yeah.  They're all white.  They're also potential shooters or, minimally, witnesses to the shootout.  Charles Blow detects a teensy disparity between the treatment of Waco and these good ol' white boys and the "blahs" in Baltimore:

Wonkette wonders if the gun-fondlers in the National Gun Manufacturers Rifle Association will come up with a catchy new slogan defending the Second Amendment rights of the bikers to use their shootin' irons in such a way, and adds:

As of press time, we have not yet heard from Alex Jones on the matter, so we aren’t certain whether the bikers were all crisis actors pretending to have a shootout so the feds can seize all the guns, or if the incident is part of Operation Jade Helm 15, and hence a slightly different flavor of false flag incident staged so the feds can seize all the guns. The one thing it couldn’t possibly be was a bunch of armed thugs blowing each other away because guns are always the solution.

Because an armed society is a polite society!

A Bad Guy With A Gun

A crime story from 51 years ago:

Shortly before dark on the evening of April 17, 1963, Robert J. Dowlut went looking for a gun inside the city cemetery in South Bend, Indiana. Making his way through the headstones, he stopped in front of the abandoned Studebaker family mausoleum. He knelt by the front right corner of the blocky gray monument and lifted a stone from the damp ground. Then, as one of the two police detectives accompanying him later testified, the 17-year-old "used his hands and did some digging." He unearthed a revolver and ammunition. As Dowlut would later tell a judge, the detectives then took the gun, "jammed it in my hand," and photographed him. "They were real happy."

Two days earlier, a woman named Anna Marie Yocum had been murdered in her South Bend home. An autopsy determined she had been shot three times, once through the chest and twice in the back, likely at close range as she'd either fled or fallen down the stairs from her apartment. Two .45-caliber bullets had pierced her heart.

Less than an hour after her body was found, two police officers had gone to Dowlut's home and asked him to help locate Yocum's 16-year-old daughter, whom he'd dated. After a short, fruitless search, the officers took him to police headquarters. Though Dowlut was booked as a material witness, investigators soon came to suspect that the tall, polite Army private, home on a two-week leave, had killed Yocum. After a day of intense questioning, Dowlut allegedly broke down and confessed in detail to the murder as well as to a botched robbery attempt earlier the same night in which the owner of a pawnshop was seriously wounded.  (our emphasis)

And who and where might this Dowlut fellow be today?  Why he's the general counsel of the National Gun Manufacturers Rifle Association.  Funny how socio/ psychopaths tend to cluster together.

Great reporting by Dave Gilson at Mother Jones.

Saturday Cartoons - Happiness Is A Warm Gun Edition

(click to enlarge)

(Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

(Drew Sheneman, The Star-Ledger, Newark, NJ)

The Problem With the N.R.A.

We've Got Your Problem Right Here: Wayne LaPierre

Ana Marie Cox went to last week's National Gun Manufacturer's Rifle Association meeting in Indianapolis and put her finger on the core problem with the NRA:  it's leadership, specifically its craven loon of an executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, and those around him:

"I ask you," LaPierre grimaced at the end of his litany of doom. "Do you trust this government to protect you?" 

This is not one of the items the membership voted upon. Indeed, Wayne LaPierre's confidence in making this question rhetorical is one of its most frightening aspects, though of course it's his prescription that truly alarmed me: 

"We are on our own. That is a certainty, no less certain than the absolute truth – a fact the powerful political and media elites continue to deny, just as sure as they would deny our right to save our very lives. The life or death truth that when you're on your own, the surest way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun!" 

You cannot defend this as anything other than the dangerous ravings of a madman. LaPierre’s description of the world is demonstrably untrue, and not just in concrete, objective terms. To cite just one example: crime rates in the US have been falling for 20 years – a statistic that some gun rights advocates brandish as proof of the selectively defined cliché, “more guns, less crime.” Just as troubling is LaPierre's internal inconsistency about what it means for NRA members to be "on their own". [snip]

Anyone backing with full faith the argument made by LaPierre likely made up their minds long before they ever stepped on a target range or fired a round. The problem with the NRA lies with the people who lead it. 

Cox spent time "undercover," meaning she was able to interact with some of the 70,000 (!) attendees, many of whom she found to be friendly and sensible (perhaps because they felt unthreatened in a sea of people of like interests).  But it was LaPierre, with his dystopian, eliminationist, anti-government ravings that set the overall tone of the gathering.  LaPierre, with the backing of the gun manufacturers that run the NRA (while purporting to be the voice of the sportsman), has turned the NRA into a far-right wing of the Republican Party:  an absolutist, unceasing fear machine telling whoever will listen that [fill in the blank] is comin' to getcha, so you better be packin'!  Of course, it's not just LaPierre and his coterie;  if he didn't exist, the gun manufacturers would just go out and hire another cast of sociopathic creeps.

So as long as the gun manufacturers value profit uber alles, vicious loons like LaPierre will be around doing their dirty work.  Do any of you see that equation changing?

BONUS:   Jon Stewart covers all the crazy (video and transcript here).

Ding-Dong. Secret Service Calling! (Cont.)

Today we have a current and potential recidivist candidate for a visit from the Secret Service:

The U.S. Secret Service paid a visit to the Florida state House candidate who advocated for President Barack Obama's execution on Twitter. 

Joshua Black, a Republican who is running in Florida House District 68, told the Tampa Bay Times that Secret Service agents had come to his home following the uproar over his comments 

"I'm past impeachment. It's time to arrest him and hang him high," read a message on Black's campaign Twitter page Monday.  [our emphasis]

The Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid Party, a.k.a. "House of Nuts."

And, blog favorite Ted "Crap Pants Fever" Nugent is apparently off his feed again, saying on January 17:

I have obviously failed to galvanize and prod, if not shame enough Americans to be ever vigilant not to let a Chicago communist raised communist educated communist nurtured subhuman mongrel like the ACORN community organizer gangster Barack Hussein Obama to weasel his way into the top office of authority in the United States of America. I am heartbroken but I am not giving up. I think America will be America again when Barack Obama, [Attorney General] Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton, [Sen.] Dick Durbin, [former New York City Mayor] Michael Bloomberg and all of the liberal Democrats are in jail facing the just due punishment that their treasonous acts are clearly apparent. 

So a lot of people would call that inflammatory speech. Well I would call it inflammatory speech when it’s your job to protect Americans and you look into the television camera and say what difference does it make that I failed in my job to provide security and we have four dead Americans. What difference does that make? Not to a chimpanzee or Hillary Clinton, I guess it doesn’t matter.

Crap Pants Fever Nugent, who never served his country in or out of uniform, is a National Gun Manufacturers Rifle Association board member who's well-known to the Secret Service for his past blowhard bullshit.  Having a crackpot on the NRA board is par for the course;  but a crackpot who's also a vicious racist?  Is the NRA "tent" that big?

Sunday Cartoon

(click to enlarge)

(Kevin Kallaugher, via gocomics.com)

Police Blotter - N.R.A. Edition

From Betty Cracker at Balloon Juice, posted in its entirety (minus the photo art):

"The NRA thinks President Obama’s daughters are appropriate fodder for the gun control debate. Well, turnabout being fair play and all, I wonder if NRA President David Keene’s (adult) son has anything instructive to add to the conversation? Oops — we can’t ask him because he’s in the slammer for shooting at another motorist in a road rage incident!

'In 2003, David Keene’s son, David M. Keene, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for discharging a firearm in a crime of violence after he shot at the driver of another car from his BMW on the George Washington Memorial Parkway in northern Virginia. Police said the shot missed the other driver’s head by inches. At the time, the younger Keene, then 21, was serving as [American Conservative Union] ACU’s director of online communications'.

"In addition to Blam-Blam Junior’s legal travails, current NRA President Keene’s ex-wife pleaded guilty last year to embezzling $400K from the ACU. The Keenes sound like exactly the sort of people who need access to a vast arsenal. Honest to god, you can’t make this shit up." (our emphasis)

Bad Guy Cartoon of the Day

(click to enlarge)

Of course, most sane people (which excludes the National Rampage Association's leadership) would say bad guys shouldn't have guns in the first place.

(cartoon: Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press)