On Apr 19, 8:05 pm, "Dechucka" <
Dechuck...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> "JohnJohnsn" <
TopCop1...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>>>>> Julia Liar <
Julia.l...@ALP.org.au> wrote in message
>>>>> news:atb948...@mid.individual.net...
>
>>>>>> On Fri, 19 Apr 2013 07:56:53 +1000 Dechucka stated:-
>
>>>>>>> .... something as simple as universal background checks couldn't be
>>>>>>> passed. Maybe the US is just a sick and violent society
>
>>>>>> Pretty sure it is the gun culture there - their so called "God given"
>>>>>> rights to bear arms.
>
>>>>>> Violence breeds violence. And after a while people become immune to it.
>
>>>>>> Since the Newtown School massacre, there has been > 3,513 further gun
>>>>>> deaths in Godz Own country!
>
>>>>>>
http://tinyurl.com/dxx9724
>
>>>>>> Sadly says a lot about the collective sanity of Americans, most of
>>>>>> whom I have dealt with are friendly people.
>
>>>>> and of course the vast majority from polls support universal background
>>>>> checks
>
>>>> Then why didn't the bill pass?
>
>>> because the Senate is not representative of the populations views
>
>> Actually, the US senators are _more_ representative of their
>> "populations {GIC} views," as they answer to the voters of their WHOLE
>> state and not just those of the "territoriality" of the relatively
>> small segment of the state's population; like US representatives do
>> (excepting "The Granola State," that is: who put `Daffy Dianne' and
>> `Baba Boxter' back in office again; and Again; and AGAIN!).
>
> doesn't seem that way
REVIEW & OUTLOOK - Wall Street Journal
Updated April 18, 2013, 7:35 p.m. ET
The Gun Rights Consensus
The real reasons the Senate trounced the Obama agenda. .
'A pretty shameful day for Washington," President Obama called it,
with "pretty" being the only remnant of his famous cool. In the Rose
Garden, he blamed the failure of gun control in the Senate Wednesday
on three causes: "The gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about
the bill." The Senators who voted against it are cowardly and had "no
coherent arguments as to why we wouldn't do this. It came down to
politics." And finally "a minority was able to block it from moving
forward" through "this continuing distortion of Senate rules."
The media are amplifying Mr. Obama's themes with less subtlety, amid a
collective aneurysm in Washington and New York. Yet this combination
of animus and overreach explains why the post-Newtown gun debate has
been such a lost opportunity.
The President might have forged a compromise from the political center
out that reduced gun violence at the margins while respecting Second
Amendment rights. Instead, liberals cleaned out their ideological
cupboards in favor of gun restrictions that would have little
practical effect but would have notched a symbolic victory over the
National Rifle Association and those benighted rubes in the provinces.
By so overreaching, Mr. Obama couldn't even steamroll moderate members
of his own party.
http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/ED-AQ684_1guns_G_20130418190605.jpg
A word, first, about that Senate "minority." Majority Leader Harry
Reid was free to bring the deal struck by West Virginia Democrat Joe
Manchin and Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey to the floor for an up-
or-down vote, and this background-checks amendment might have passed.
It did convince 54 Senators, including four Republicans.
But under Senate rules, a simple majority vote would have opened the
measure to up to 30 hours of debate, which would have meant inspecting
the details. The White House demanded, and Mr. Reid agreed, that
Congress should try to pass the amendment without such a debate.
Majority rules would have also opened the bill to pro-gun amendments
that were likely to pass. That would have boxed Mr. Reid into the
embarrassing spectacle of having to later scotch a final bill because
it also contained provisions that the White House loathes. So Mr. Reid
moved under "unanimous consent" to allow nine amendments, each with a
60-vote threshold.
The White House was right to worry. An amendment from John Cornyn of
Texas that would have required all states to recognize every other
state's concealed-carry permits earned 57 votes, 13 Democrats among
them. The nearby table has the list. On Thursday, Wyoming's John
Barrasso offered an amendment to protect gun ownership privacy that
passed 67-30.
Editorial board member Joe Rago on why gun control legislation is
likely dead in the Senate. Photos: Getty Images
.The media are attributing the demise of Manchin-Toomey to the clout
of rural states, as if those voters don't count; or claiming it would
have passed under a secret ballot, as if democratic accountability is
bad. Our guess is the amendment would have received fewer votes in a
secret ballot. Many red-state Democrats wanted to avoid handing Mr.
Obama a larger defeat on a bill that was about to fail anyway, but
more might have parted company once the specifics were scrutinized.
Manchin-Toomey was rushed together on a political timetable, and a
thorough scrub would have revealed that its finer legal points aren't
as modest as liberals claim. Tellingly, the White House blew up
earlier negotiations with Tom Coburn on background checks. The
Oklahoma Republican favored more and better checks across secondary
firearms markets like gun shows and online, but liberals insisted that
federally licensed dealers had to keep records.
In other words, keeping guns away from dangerous or unstable people
was less important than defeating the NRA. The Senate GOP offered an
alternative background-checks amendment that failed 52-48. Nine
Democrats were in favor, but their colleagues voted en masse to block
it from moving forward. How's that for incoherent?
Mr. Obama is technically right that Manchin-Toomey would not create a
federal firearms registry. Then again, its most clamorous supporters
are also contemptuous of the Second Amendment, and they are explicitly
hoping for a fifth Justice to overturn the Supreme Court's landmark
gun-rights rulings. Manchin-Toomey opponents can be forgiven for
worrying that gun controllers will attempt to build a registry from
whatever records they get.
***
Meanwhile, political reporters are ignoring the disintegration of Mr.
Obama's overall gun agenda. Restricting large capacity magazines went
down 46-54, with 10 Democrats breaking with the President. Banning
certain types of semiautomatic rifles failed 40-60 with 15 Democrats
opposed. Those 15 or so Democrats, along with numerous Republicans,
are the true mainstream on guns in America: open to reasonable
compromises as long as they safeguard individual rights.
People who cling to their guns, or merely to the Constitution, aren't
part of the coalition that Mr. Obama believes re-elected him, and his
mistake was thinking they would simply dissolve into history's
rearview mirror in his new progressive era. Mr. Obama was routed this
week because he tried to govern from the left and thus played into the
hands of the NRA. If the Newtown families want someone to blame, they
can start with the President.
[A version of this article appeared April 19, 2013, on page A14 in the
U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Gun
Rights Consensus.]
-30-
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324493704578430672176449846.html