Now is the time to pick up the gun safety battle
You may be wondering how we’re doing on gun control. Joe Biden promised to tackle it on “my first day in office,” which he didn’t. Give the man a break — he’s got to get his COVID relief bill through Congress, and you can appreciate that he’s rather distracted. But absolutely no reason we shouldn’t start to nag.
We’ve been hearing a lot about the gun debate in Washington lately, but it’s mostly on the weirdo side. Who can forget the virtual House committee meeting during which Republican Lauren Boebert sat with a pile of large firearms behind her? This was in a session on a proposal to stop members from bringing their guns to committee meetings, so you’d have to admit she was on topic.
When did our lawmakers start bringing guns to the office?
Members of Congress can keep guns in their offices and carry them unloaded pretty much anywhere on the Capitol grounds, except the House or Senate floor. Last month Rep. Andy Harris, a Republican, reportedly approached the House chamber while packing heat. When he was stopped, Harris tried to palm the gun off on a colleague, who sensibly declined the gift.
On the plus side, extremely optimistic citizens might have taken heart when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the fiercest/craziest gun control opponents, recently attempted to boost her credibility by announcing she now believes mass school shootings and the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center actually did happen.
Progress! Meanwhile, in her spare time, Greene has introduced a bill to make it illegal for the federal government to spend money on gun control enforcement.
If there was ever a time to pick up the gun safety battle it would be now. The pandemic, which has made just about everything worse except soap sales, has turned a whole lot of Americans into tortured souls. “No matter how you look at it, gun violence is an epidemic within this pandemic,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety.
The folks at Everytown estimated that 22 million guns were sold in 2020, up 64% from 2019. And given the fact that there are more than 390 million guns in private hands, you will not be startled to learn that a lot have been going off.
You hear stories every day. Domestic violence, little kids accidentally shooting themselves with the gun Dad keeps in the bedroom. Unintentional shooting deaths by children rose more than 30% in MarchMay 2020 compared with the same period in the years before.
Two FBI agents trying to execute a search warrant in a child pornography investigation were killed by the suspect, who happened to have an assault rifle on hand. Back in 1994, Congress prohibited the manufacture of semi-automatic assault weapons, under the leadership of Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Joe Biden.
The ban, alas, included a 10-year expiration date, a compromise to placate the ever-popular Tiny Group Of Swing Votes In The Senate. Nothing could get our nation’s leaders to bring it back, even a mass shooting of six educators and 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary.
There’s not much doubt Biden is eager to get some serious reform underway.
“His heart is on his sleeve when it comes to this,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. Sadly, there often seems to be a gap between the issues Biden really, really cares about and the ones he’s actually going to do something about. But even if he charges ahead, there’s only so much he can do by executive order, and whatever it is won’t have the staying power of real legislation.
If we’re lucky, sometime this year a gun bill — at least a modest one toughening up background checks — will make it to the Senate. In between paeans to the Second
Amendment, opponents will tell the nation that their constituents want to have weapons on hand to defend themselves and their families from evildoers.
You do wonder how the founding fathers would have felt about the right to bear arms if they knew their nastiest neighbor had just installed a printer that manufactures guns in his basement.
The stories about how a Gun Saved The Day aren’t generally all that convincing. The Heritage Foundation recently ran a list of 11 incidents in which “a gun stopped matters from getting worse.” One case involved a robber who threatened employees at a pizza restaurant in Georgia. The workers won the day by grabbing another gun and catching him off-guard. It was indeed good news. But the fact that the workers were able to get the gun because the holdup man decided to use the restaurant bathroom before leaving with the money was … kind of a help.
One problem with our gun debate is that it has the wrong starting point. Let’s raise the bar. Demand that nobody be able to purchase a gun without passing a test demonstrating she knows how to aim it. You’d be astonished at how many enthusiastic owners that would eliminate from contention.
MOSCOW — Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been sent to a prison outside Moscow to serve his sentence, his lawyer said Thursday, a move that comes despite a demand by Europe’s top human rights court for his release.
Navalny lawyer Vadim Kobzev didn’t immediately say what prison he was sent to. Russian news reports have previously indicated that Navalny, who has been held in a maximum-security jail in Moscow, would likely be sent to a facility in western Russia.
Navalny, 44, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most vociferous foe, was arrested Jan. 17 upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusation and accused Navalny of cooperating with Western intelligence agencies — claims he has ridiculed.
Earlier this month, Navalny was sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison for violating the terms of his probation while convalescing in Germany. The sentence stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that Navalnyh as rejected as fabricated— and which the European Court of Human Rights has ruled to be unlawful.
Navalny’s arrest has fueled a wave of protests that drew tens of thousands to the streets across Russia. Authorities have detained about 11,000 people, many of whom we refined or given jail terms ranging from seven to 15 days.
Russian officials have dismissed demands from the United States and the European Union to free Navalny and stop the crackdown on his supporters.
Lady Gaga’s dogs stolen: Lady Gaga’s dog walker was shot and two of the singer’s French bulldogs were stolen in Hollywood during an armed robbery, police said. The singer is offering a $500,000 reward.
The dog walker was shot once Wednesday night and is expected to survive his injuries, according to Los Angeles police Capt. Jonathan Tippett, commanding officer of the department’s elite Robbery-Homicide Division. The man was walking three of Lady Gaga’s dogs at the time, but one escaped. That dog has been recovered safely.
Tippett told The Associated Press that the dogs belong to the pop star. It’s not yet clear if the dogwalker was targeted because of his celebrity client, the captain said.
Lady Gaga is currently in Rome to film a movie.
Trump’s tax records: A New York prosecutor has obtained copies of Donald Trump’s tax records after the U.S. Supreme Court this week rejected the former president’s last-ditch effort to prevent them from being handed over.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office enforced a subpoena on Trump’s accounting firm within hours of the Supreme Court’s ruling on Monday and now has the documents in hand, a spokesperson for the office, Danny Frost, said Thursday.
District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. had been fighting for a year and a half for access to Trump’s tax records for a criminal grand jury investigation into his business dealings. The documents are protected by grand jury secrecy rules and are not expected to be made public.
Vance is conducting an investigation that includes an examination of whether Trump or his businesses lied about the value of assets to gain favorable loan terms and tax benefits. The district attorney is also scrutinizing hush-money payments paid to women on Trump’s behalf.
Armenian tensions: Armenia’s prime minister accused top military officers on Thursday of attempting a coup after they demanded he step down, adding fuel to months of protests calling for his resignation following the country’s defeat in a conflict with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has faced opposition calls to step down ever since he signed a Nov. 10 peace deal that saw Azerbaijan reclaim control over large parts of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding areas that had been held by Armenian forces for more than a quarter century.
The opposition protests gathered pace this week, and the feud with his top military commanders has weakened Pashinyan’s position, raising concerns about stability in the strategic South Caucasus region, where shipments of Azerbaijan’s Caspian crude oil pass through on their way to Western markets.
Vaccine-sharing halted: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial plan to ship surplus coronavirus vaccines to a group of allied nations was frozen Thursday following a legal challenge to the deal, his office announced.
It was the latest twist in a saga that has raised questions at home about Netanyahu’s decision-making authority as well as his move to help far-flung nations in Africa and Latin America at a time when the neighboring Palestinian territories are struggling to secure their own vaccine supplies.
The plan has also illustrated how at a time of global shortages, the vaccine has become an asset that can be used for diplomatic gain.
Netanyahu announced on Wednesday that he had personally decided to share small quantities of surplus Israeli vaccines with allied nations.
He did not identify the countries, but an Israeli TV station said they included a number of nations that have supported Israel’s claims to the contested city of Jerusalem as its capital.
Netanyahu’s governing partner and rival, Defense Minister Benny Gantz, on Thursday called for a halt in the shipments, saying Israel’s stockpile of vaccines is the property of the state.