Senator Chris Murphy's Gun Control Filibuster Leads To Vote

You know a little bit less about the constitution, than I know about high finance. Nothing!

Are you still here. I thought when Hillary went over the top you would hide in a corner.

And you have yet to retract your statement on semi automatic handgun coming with a capacity of 8 to 30 round magazines. As I stated, I own at least one furnished with a 6 round magazine. I know of no source of magazines with greater capacity for that model. Of course, you are also ignoring the existence of the 1911 Government Model in .45 acp - hardly an unpopular piece.

Aw, just continue to ignore anything that doesn't suit your agenda. Nothing new about that.

Cant you read Roger. You can buy a simi automatic hand gun with a magazine capacity of anywhere from 8 rounds to 31 rounds. I never said one gun would have a capacity of 8 to 31 rounds. You are becoming as smart as ollie. Try reading what I post rather than what you think I posted.

I read what you just posted. Didn't make much sense.

I'm not here to argue, as I don't like to argue, but what's to stop anyone from acquiring several clips for their semiautomatic pistol or rifle? Forty years ago I had a .22 Ruger semiautomatic rifle with a ten-shot rotary clip. I only had one clip, but I'm thinking that I could discharge an empty clip and slap another one in pretty fast.

You could do that with most detachable magazines. I once saw a .45 1911 that had a magazine extending maybe 18 inches. Sure looked awkward, but there it was. Back when I had the income to support the hobby, I had a .45 with somewhere around 5 magazines. I loaded them all before I went shooting so as not to have to mess with loose rounds and reloading with no good place to set ammo, gun, and magazines.

I never owned a 10-22, but it might not have been that great a choice for multiple magazines. Just from photographs, it looked like a great dirt and pocket lint magnet. I might be wrong.

From my own perspective, I see guns, especially handguns as a defensive proposition, so those looking for a sporting justification for their opinions miss the target - at least if I'm that target. Um, maybe target wasn't the best choice of words.

Here is a link to the following article:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-greenwald/nra-convention-dwindling_b_10107208.html


NRA Convention: Dwindling Membership, Desperate Rhetoric

 05/23/2016 12:26 pm ET | Updated May 23, 2016

Any doubts about whether the NRA is feeling the pressure of an increasingly powerful gun violence prevention movement can be quelled by reading Wayne LaPierre’s latest keynote rant. While never the most coherent thinker, this year’s stream-of-warped-consciousness epic hate poem, showed LaPierre giving up all pretense and appealing directly to his audience’s worst fears, deepest prejudices and festering anger. Here’s why:

For years the National Rifle Association has maintained its stranglehold on national politics by convincing politicians that it is politically invincible. But now there is fresh evidence — actual numbers — that show the NRA is increasingly feeling the heat of Americans’ shifting attitudes about gun violence prevention. This is a big deal.

The numbers appear in a tax form known as a 990, which charitable organizations must file every year to let the Internal Revenue Service know what they are up to. The NRA’s 990 for the year 2014 just appeared online at Guidestar, where all such filings are made public.

The invincibility myth has always been just that — a myth — the apocryphal story of a massive army of passionate gun lovers who will exact revenge on any who dare to cross them. The truth is far more complicated. As we show in our latest film, Making a Killing: Guns, Greed, and the NRA, the NRA’s resources come largely from the gun industry and the organization’s actual membership does not actually agree with all their stances.

Nonetheless, too many politicians believe the NRA can’t be beat and so are unwilling to step up and try. The result is the kind of tragedies we chronicle in Making a Killing — suicides that could have been prevented, children unintentionally shooting other children, women living in fear of armed, dangerous domestic abusers. The tragedies continue.

Those politicians should take a look at the NRA’s latest 990s and reconsider their stances - or perhaps, rediscover their backbones.

The major takeaway is that the NRA in 2014 lost money — that is, they spent more than they took in. Overall, the gun manufacturers’ sales and marketing team — our shorthand for the real NRA — grossed $37 million less in revenue than in 2013.

A hefty chunk of that decrease is in members due. Much of the myth of the NRA’s power stems from its constant refrain of the number 5 million — as in, “we have 5 million members willing and eager to do our bidding at any time.” That figure has always been suspect, with numerous investigations uncovering schemes to inflate the rolls.

Now the latest 990 offers more proof that the numbers are smaller than advertised and getting smaller still. In 2014 member dues plummeted by $47 million — from $175 million to $128 million, according to the NRA’s filing.

Other telling and related facts include:

• Spending more to keep politicians in line: The NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action — a.k.a. lobbying arm — spent $47 million in 2014. That’s considerably more than the $27 million they spent in 2013 lobbying to defeat a bill that would have expanded criminal background checks for private gun sales, which gained traction in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre. This spending surge suggests the NRA’s concern about lawmakers willingness to march in lockstep going forward.

• Spending more to polish their image: The NRA’s public relations agency Oklahoma raked it in, with $16.9 million in billing in 2014 — compared to $14.5 million in 2013 — the year after Sandy Hook. That’s hardly a show of strength.

None of this means that the NRA is not still a formidable foe. The gun industry is worth billions of dollars and they will continue to spend what is necessary to keep America frightened, angry and armed. For politicians though, it should be a wake up call: Next time you are faced with an opportunity to do what is clearly right — expanding background checks and keeping terrorists from owning guns, just for starters — think about these numbers. If you are not worried enough about the safety of the people you are charged with representing, perhaps the increasing vulnerability of the NRA will convince you to worry about the safety of your own political life.

Maybe I need to send them a couple of bucks. They do keep asking.

No myth. It is actually a lot of fun voting gun banners out of office. They always start crying when they lose. It is wonderful to watch.



Those politicians know that they need to deal with reality instead of getting their heads clouded with some delusional Leftist propaganda film.

That would help a little. What really helps though is to remember the NRA's voter guide on election day. Nothing gets the gun banners' attention quite like getting voted out of office.

Emailing and/or phoning your Congressmen in support of the NRA's positions helps too. But don't forget the NRA voter guide on election day. That counts more than anything else.

"By Sitting Down, We're Really Standing Up" says AMERICAN hero John Lewis

It's not splitting hairs, it's using the correct words and meanings for things. You want to make standard capacity mags sound like high capacity mags. It's all meant to change the definition of what a standard capacity mag is. Those of us who actually know what we are talking about will not allow you to change the language to fit your anti-gun purposes.

This is such fatuous twattle; beloved by either aging baby-boomers who are nostalgic for their hippy days, or immature youth who have no conception of reality because very few of them have had to deal with it.

It is though a very smart and effective political tactic, in large measure because the MSM have been wetting themselves from delight in covering this.

The House of Representatives has rules. Without rules there is chaos.

Lewis and his followers broke the rules, and if the tables were turned and it was Paul Ryan leading a stunt like this each and everyone who thinks this nonsense was some sort of heroic effort would be screaming bloody murder.

They might get a chance to do that screaming. Republicans have a history of adopting Democratic tactics and using them against the Democrats.

Case in point: at the end of the Bush Administration in 2008, Democrats were maliciously blocking Mr. Bush from making any appointees to his own government. There were not even any political gain to be expected, as such executive branch appointees would have left the White House when Mr. Bush did. The Democrats just wanted to be mean-spirited.

Now the Republicans are blocking Mr. Obama's nominee to replace Justice Scalia until after the election, and if Mr. Trump is elected they will have prevented the Democrats from gaining a seat on the Supreme Court.


I've tried telling Democrats before that when they do stuff like this it will just be turned around and used against them. They never listen.

On the other hand, this current tactic isn't actually achieving anything. The Republicans probably won't bother to use it against the Democrats unless a way can be found to get practical gains from it.

And yet you did your damdest to change the meaning of what I said with more of your bull shyt. As usual.

Finn, you have made some valid points. Civil Disobedience has often been considered as non-violent peaceful illegal acts. That has been understood in our country's history. Especially during the civil rights movement. Although the acts of civil disobedience during the civil rights movement were often illegal, the illegal acts were still moral and non-violent. The participants were prepared to accept the consequences of their acts, even if it meant being arrested. The primary emphasis is that they were MORAL, NON-VIOLENT, AND PREPARED TO ACCEPT THE CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR ACTIONS. The civil disobedience that is occurring in the House is no different. Speaker Ryan has the authority to have law enforcement forcefully remove the participants and possibly arrested. That would be a public relations nightmare for Speaker Ryan. The visual image of having House members handcuffed and forcibly removed by law enforcement officials for having an illegal, but peaceful non-violent sit-in would make Speaker Ryan look bad in the public's eyes. That's often why civil disobedience has been effective throughout our history. Many wrongs were made right because we had brave people participating in Civil-Disobedience.

Here is a link to the following article regarding Civil Disobedience
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/civil-disobedience/

First published Thu Jan 4, 2007; substantive revision Fri Dec 20, 2013

What makes a breach of law an act of civil disobedience? When is civil disobedience morally justified? How should the law respond to people who engage in civil disobedience? Discussions of civil disobedience have tended to focus on the first two of these questions. On the most widely accepted account of civil disobedience, famously defended by John Rawls (1971), civil disobedience is a public, non-violent and conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in laws or government policies. On this account, people who engage in civil disobedience are willing to accept the legal consequences of their actions, as this shows their fidelity to the rule of law. Civil disobedience, given its place at the boundary of fidelity to law, is said to fall between legal protest, on the one hand, and conscientious refusal, revolutionary action, militant protest and organised forcible resistance, on the other hand.

This picture of civil disobedience raises many questions. Why must civil disobedience be non-violent? Why must it be public, in the sense of forewarning authorities of the intended action, since publicity gives authorities an opportunity to interfere with the action? Why must people who engage in civil disobedience be willing to accept punishment? A general challenge to Rawls's conception of civil disobedience is that it is overly narrow, and as such it predetermines the conclusion that most acts of civil disobedience are morally justifiable. A further challenge is that Rawls applies his theory of civil disobedience only to the context of a nearly just society, leaving unclear whether a credible conception of either the nature or the justification of civil disobedience could follow the same lines in the context of less just societies. Some broader accounts of civil disobedience offered in response to Rawls's view (Raz, 1979; Greenawalt, 1987) will be examined in the first section of this entry.

This entry has four main sections. The first considers some definitional issues and contrasts civil disobedience with both ordinary offences and other types of dissent. The second analyses two sets of factors relevant to the justification of civil disobedience; one set concerns the disobedient's particular choice of action, the other concerns her motivation for so acting. The third section examines whether people have a right to engage in civil disobedience. The fourth considers what kind of legal response to civil disobedience is appropriate.