Senate Gun Bill Fails to Pass, President Obama Fires Back

(Photo: Mandel Ngan / AFP - Getty Images)


From Think Progress

The Senate voted down an amendment offered by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) to expand background checks for gun purchases at gun shows and online, in a vote of 54-46. The measure needed 60 votes to be included in the underlining bill. As Vice President Joe Biden called the finally tally, Tucson survivor Patricia Maisch yelled, “Shame on you!” Outside of chamber she said, “They have no soul.”

See Who Voted For and Against the Bill on ProPublica

Obama: "No Coherent Arguments for this. It came down to politics."


From Slate

When the vote came down—54-46, not enough to replace the gun bill with the Manchin-Toomey compromise—an impromptu family of gun control activists was watching from the gallery. The activists looked glum but not surprised; they'd gone into the room aware that the votes weren't there. But before she left, a survivor of the 2011 Tucson killing spree named Patricia Maisch stood up and broke the rules of the Senate.

"Shame on you!" yelled Maisch.


Typically, when someone yells from the gallery, security hustles to bounce the heckler out of the room. Maisch wasn't elbowed out very quickly. Two years ago, she was one of the people who effectively shut down Jared Loughner's rampage. She saw him coming, she lay on the ground, and when Loughner fumbled his reload and was tackled, Maisch snatched away his extra magazine. And no one really ushered her out of the Hill today as she told reporters why she yelled.

"I could not stay still," she said, standing in a scrum of reporters. "They should be ashamed of themselves ... if it had been a yes vote, I wouldn't have said anything. It was spontaneous—but I was prepared to do that."

She gave her info and story a few times before one of the other activists started to usher her out. One reporter asked her what she thought of Sen. Jeff Flake's no vote on the amendment. "Sen. Flake?" she said. "I'm embarrassed. He's a flaky flake."

Gabby Giffords at Senate Gun Control Hearing

In a powerful and poignant moment, Congresswoman Gabby Giffords opened the Senate Hearing on Gun Control with a simple but powerful message. Accompanied by her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, the pair made passionate pleas for the government to do something to stem gun violence. Giffords was shot through the head by Jared Loughner and suffered brain damage.



Giffords' Actual Notes for Today's Hearing



Later Giffords' husband Mark Kelly had this reply to NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, who believes background checks aren't necessary

The Tuscon shooter was an admitted drug user. He was rejected from the U.S. Army because of his drug use. He was clearly mentally ill. And when he purchased that gun in November, his plan was to assassinate my wife and commit mass murder at that Safeway in Tucson. He was a criminal. Because of his drug use, and because of what he was planning on doing. But because of these gaps in the mental health system, in this case, those 121,000 records, I admit did not include a record on him. But it could have.

And if it did, he would have failed that background check. he would have likely gone to a gun show, or a private seller, and avoided that background check. But if we close that gun show loophole, if we require private sellers to complete a background check, and we get those 121,000 records and others into the systems, we will prevent gun crime. That is an absolute truth. It would have happened in Tucson. My wife would not have been sitting here today if we had stronger background checks.

Obama's Historic Plan for Gun Control

On Monday, Joe Biden promised us 19 Executive Orders on Guns.

Today President Obama surprised us by signing 23 of them on stage after his press conference surrounded by children who had written letters to him after the Newtown/Sandy Hook Massacre. He said the actions will take place immediately, plus told Congress he expects them to work on several more pieces of legislation such as an all-out ban on assault rifles.

He stressed responsibility, but also the fact that the children and parents of Newtown, Aurora, and other communities have a Constitutional Right not to live in fear of future attacks. So the 2nd Amendment rights of NRA members do not come before the safety of children. Obama stood up for Newtown, and for all of us, against a group that would rather see him dead and he knows it.

This is ground-breaking and earth shaking, and GOP heads are exploding right now.

I am so proud of my President and Vice President! Bravo!

Transcript Here on Washington Post

Details of Gun Control Proposals from the White House

1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.

2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.

3. Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.

4. Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.

5. Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.

6. Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.

7. Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign.

8. Review safety standards for gun locks and gun safes (Consumer Product Safety Commission).

9. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.

10. Release a DOJ report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement.

11. Nominate an ATF director.

12. Provide law enforcement, first responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations.

13. Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.

14. Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.

15. Direct the Attorney General to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies and challenge the private sector to develop innovative technologies.

16. Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes.

17. Release a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities.

18. Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers.

19. Develop model emergency response plans for schools, houses of worship and institutions of higher education.

20. Release a letter to state health officials clarifying the scope of mental health services that Medicaid plans must cover.

21. Finalize regulations clarifying essential health benefits and parity requirements within ACA exchanges.

22. Commit to finalizing mental health parity regulations.

23. Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health.

Aurora, Colorado ~ The "Legal" Arsenal of Killer James Holmes

The Preliminary Hearing for the Aurora "Batman Movie" shooting last year is going on in Centennial, Colorado, and disturbing details are emerging.

According to the Denver Post, here's the list of incredibly dangerous items that James Holmes, the mentally ill shooter, bought in the months before the massacre:

• four guns;
• 6,295 rounds of rifle, shotgun, and handgun ammo
• dozens of gun magazines
• ballistic gear
• weapon slings
• two laser sights
• two tear-gas canisters
• hundreds of practice targets
• explosive chemicals
• fireworks supplies
• handcuffs
• a military first-aid dressing

ATF agent Steven Beggs said the purchases — all from online retailers or the Gander Mountain and Bass Pro Shops sporting goods stores in the metro area — began May 10 and ended July 14. There were five purchases in the first week of July alone.

Did you catch that ~ almost 7,000 rounds of ammunition, and no one even blinked when he bought it. Tear Gas? No problem. Explosive Chemicals? Just some good clean fun for a young white man in Colorado.

Defense attorneys made it clear that all of that stuff was acquired legally under Colorado Law, and that there is no screening process for mental illness no matter how dangerous the purchase:

After prosecutors finished questioning Beggs, defense attorney Tamara Brady asked him whether it was illegal, for instance, to buy body armor or tear gas.
Beggs said it wasn't in Colorado.
"Is there any process in place in Colorado," Brady persisted, "to screen out whether a severely mentally ill person is purchasing these items?"
Beggs said no.

Also, police didn't test Holmes for drugs or alcohol, even though he was acting strangely and his pupils were dilated:

In afternoon testimony, Aurora homicide Detective Craig Appel testified that police did not request a blood sample from Holmes after he was arrested. He said Holmes' pupils were wide, but that "I saw no indication that he was under the influence of anything."
But under defense questioning, he said Holmes' behavior was at times odd while he was under observation. Paper bags had been placed over his hands to preserve evidence and Holmes played with them as though they were puppets, Appel said. He also tried to place a staple into an electrical socket, he said.

Obviously by then the police were as in shock as everyone else from the horrific shooting, and maybe they figured he was crazy so why bother with a drug test? The Defense is trying to protect their client from as many charges as possible, and the age old way to do that is to prove that the police and the state laws are somehow lacking or negligent. All well and good for Holmes, but what the testimony really does is damn him for playing the flawed system so well.

He knew that no matter how many weapons or scary substances he bought, alarm bells wouldn't go off in the stores where he bought supplies. No one could legally ask about his mental history even if his eyes were rolling around in his head and he showed schizophrenic tendencies. He knew the state laws allowed him to buy as much ammunition as his heart desired in order to carry out his vicious plot.

And on top of that, Holmes booby-trapped his apartment in a diabolical way that he hoped would cause a fire at the same time as the shooting, drawing away police resources so he could shoot up the movie theater. This is really over the top. If police hadn't realized the apartment was rigged, how many more lives would have been lost?



From NBC News:

There was a trip-wire leading from the door to a thermos filled with glycerine that was perched over a frying pan filled with potassium permanganate, Gumbinner said.
. . . On top of the fridge was a remote-controlled “pyrotechnic” box filled with 6-inch fireworks shells. Holmes left the remote for it outside, in a trash bag with a toy car and a boom box on a timer, the agent said.
His fantasy was that someone on the street would hear the music, open the bag, decide to play with the car, fiddle with the remote and detonate the explosives, Gumbinner said.
. . . "He said he rigged his apartment to explode or catch fire in order to divert police resources to his apartment,” Gumbinner said, recounting an interview with Holmes.
No one played with the toy car or banged on the door, though. And when Holmes was arrested outside the Century 16 multiplex – after allegedly killing a dozen people and wounding 58 – he quickly told police about his traps.

We may never know why Holmes wanted to hurt so many people in such a flamboyent and destructive way, and maybe there just is no answer. But something good can come of this if states like Colorado will begin to stand up to the NRA and create more hurdles. If government can't do it, then gun shops and sporting goods stores should realize they may be held accountable in the future if they don't support a screening process. Hey, if bartenders can be arrested for serving drinks that lead to deaths, then gun runners certainly can.

Obama vs. Romney on Guns

These two candidates couldn't be more different. You can't tell me that "both sides are exactly the same" or "both sides are just as bad." There's a fundamental difference between a thinker like Barack Obama who actually cares about people, and a glib businessman like Mitt Romney who seems to have no convictions or opinions of his own beyond what the Neocons tell him to say. And at least the President has his facts straight. Romney still thinks the Aurora shooter bought weapons illegally, when actually everything he had was legal under the laws of the state.

Obama at the Urban League Convention in New Orleans:

. . . we’ve been reminded recently that all this matters little if these young people can’t walk the streets of their neighborhood safely; if we can’t send our kids to school without worrying they might get shot; if they can’t go to the movies without fear of violence lurking in the shadows. (Applause.)

Our hearts break for the victims of the massacre in Aurora. (Applause.) We pray for those who were lost and we pray for those who loved them. We pray for those who are recovering with courage and with hope. And we also pray for those who succumb to the less-publicized acts of violence that plague our communities in so many cities across the country every single day. (Applause.) We can’t forget about that.

Every day – in fact, every day and a half, the number of young people we lose to violence is about the same as the number of people we lost in that movie theater. For every Columbine or Virginia Tech, there are dozens gunned down on the streets of Chicago and Atlanta, and here in New Orleans. For every Tucson or Aurora, there is daily heartbreak over young Americans shot in Milwaukee or Cleveland. Violence plagues the biggest cities, but it also plagues the smallest towns. It claims the lives of Americans of different ages and different races, and it’s tied together by the fact that these young people had dreams and had futures that were cut tragically short.

And when there is an extraordinarily heartbreaking tragedy like the one we saw, there’s always an outcry immediately after for action. And there’s talk of new reforms, and there’s talk of new legislation. And too often, those efforts are defeated by politics and by lobbying and eventually by the pull of our collective attention elsewhere.

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. . . I, like most Americans, believe that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual the right to bear arms. And we recognize the traditions of gun ownership that passed on from generation to generation -– that hunting and shooting are part of a cherished national heritage. But I also believe that a lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not in the hands of criminals – (applause) – that they belong on the battlefield of war, not on the streets of our cities. I believe the majority of gun owners would agree that we should do everything possible to prevent criminals and fugitives from purchasing weapons; that we should check someone’s criminal record before they can check out a gun seller; that a mentally unbalanced individual should not be able to get his hands on a gun so easily. (Applause.) These steps shouldn’t be controversial. They should be common sense. So I’m going to continue to work with members of both parties, and with religious groups and with civic organizations, to arrive at a consensus around violence reduction – not just of gun violence, but violence at every level, on every step, looking at everything we can do to reduce violence and keep our children safe -– from improving mental health services for troubled youth – (applause) – to instituting more effective community policing strategies. We should leave no stone unturned, and recognize that we have no greater mission as a country than keeping our young people safe. (Applause.) And as we do so, as we convene these conversations, let’s be clear: Even as we debate government’s role, we have to understand that when a child opens fire on another child, there’s a hole in that child’s heart that government alone can’t fill. (Applause.) It’s up to us, as parents and as neighbors and as teachers and as mentors, to make sure our young people don’t have that void inside them.

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Mitt Romney with NBC's Brian Williams

Political implications, legal implications are something which will be sorted out down the road," Romney told NBC's Brian Williams during an exclusive interview here in London. "But I don't happen to believe that America needs new gun laws. A lot of what this young man did was clearly against the law. But the fact that it was against the law did not prevent it from happening.

Romney, who enacted an assault weapons ban as governor of Massachusetts (with the support of a Democratic legislature) would not say whether he still believes that weapons like the AR-15 assault rifle used in the Colorado shooting were "instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people," as he described them during the bill signing ceremony in 2002.

When Williams followed up later in the interview on the Aurora attack, Romney argued that it would take a change in heart, not laws, to stop future violence.

"And so we can sometimes hope that just changing the law will make all bad things go away. It won't. Changing the heart of the American people may well be what's essential, to improve the lots of the American people."

More on Romney's "Gun Flub" as Salon calls it:

. . . As Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates explained: “All the weapons that he possessed, he possessed legally. And all the clips that he possessed, he possessed legally. And all the ammunition that he possessed, he possessed legally.”

Holmes used a handgun, a shotgun and an AR-15 assault rifle in his massacre — all legal, thanks to the expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban in 2004, which had previously prohibited some versions of the AR-15. Holmes also had body armor, tear gas grenades, a gas mask and tactical gear. All are legal and widely available online at minimal cost (one website sells tear gas grenades for just $16 a pop). The only way it would have been illegal for Holmes to have his guns would be if he had been diagnosed as mentally ill or was a convicted felon, but neither was the case. His only record was a speeding ticket.

“Background checks, as required by federal law, were properly conducted, and [Holmes] was approved,” said a spokesman for Bass Pro Shops, where he bought one of his guns. Holmes had also booby-trapped his apartment with homemade explosives, but there’s no evidence yet that any of these devices were illegal either, as he made them himself with common materials like gasoline.

President Obama Speaks in Aurora

"Scripture says that 'He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore. For the former things have passed away.'"