Obama Calls Out NRA

During the nationally televised town hall on gun violence on CNN, President Obama called out the NRA for not showing up and revealed that the Obama White House has repeatedly invited the NRA to the White House, but they have declined to show up.

The President said:

By the way, there’s a reason that the NRA is not here. They’re just down the street, and since this is the main reason that they exist you’d think that they’d be prepared to have a debate with the President. 

The View On Guns From Down Under

Recently we ran a report on how Australia responded to gun violence. I thought it would be a good idea to gain a perspective on how that action is viewed by the vast majority of Aussies (albeit from a somewhat satirical standpoint). Herewith is one point of view published the day before our article.

******

Australia Enjoys Another Peaceful Day Under Oppressive Gun Control Regime

"...the peaceful two decades that have followed are "probably" because the Australian government decided to strip us of our God-given right to own projectile weaponry capable of shooting down helicopters."

3 December, 2015 10:05

CLANCY OVERELL, Editor  The Betoota Advocate

Due to the nation’s controversial and oppressive gun restrictions, no one has died as a result of a mass-shooting on Australian soil today, for the 7158th day in a row.

Local cinema attendant, Christina Upton can’t believe it has been a whole 19 years and 7 months since a heavily armed white Australian male decided to shoot at a crowd of unsuspecting Australian civilians for no reason.

She says the peaceful two decades that have followed are “probably” because the Australian government decided to strip her of a God-given right to own projectile weaponry capable of shooting down helicopters. 

Supreme Court Rejects Challenge To Local Assault Weapons Ban

On Monday, the high court refused to hear a Second Amendment challenge to a 2013 ordinance passed by the city of Highland Park, Illinois, without giving reason. The NRA and 24 U.S. states urged the Court to hear the case brought forth by a Highland Park resident and the Illinois State Rifle Association, according to Reuters. The Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals previously rejected the challenge, upholding the Highland Park measure as constitutional. Similar bans exist in California, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Hawaii and Connecticut. The Newtown, Connecticut gunman who killed 20 schoolchildren and their teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary used assault weapons equipped with high-capacity 30-round magazines.

10 of the Most Popular—and Wrong—Arguments Gun Advocates Make

By Paul Waldman / The American Prospect 

Gun advocates are trotting out the same old discredited lines.

There has been yet another mass shooting, something that now seems to occur on a monthly basis. Every time another tragedy like this occurs, gun advocates make the same arguments about why we can't possibly do anything to restrict the weaponization of our culture. Here's a guide to what they'll be saying in the coming days:

1. Now isn't the time to talk about guns.

We're going to hear this over and over, and not just from gun advocates; Jay Carneysaid it to White House reporters today. But if we're not going to talk about it now, when are we going to talk about it? After Sandy hit the East Coast, no one said, "Now isn't the time to talk about disaster preparedness; best leave that until it doesn't seem so urgent." When there's a terrorist attack, no one says, "Now isn't the time to talk about terrorism." Now is exactly the time. 

End The Gun Epidemic In America

The following Editorial appeared in today’s New York Times. It marked the first time since 1920 that an Editorial has appeared on the paper’s front page. 

End the Gun Epidemic in America

​It is a moral outrage and national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency.

*** 

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. 

Australia enacted one of the largest gun reforms ever nearly 2 decades ago — and gun deaths plummeted

Christina Sterbenz from the Business Insider

Mick Roelandts of the New South Wales Police in 1997,
examining weapons that were handed over through
a government buyback program. CreditDavid Gray/Reuters

A man and woman dressed in tactical gear — what police called "prepared" — shot and killed 14 people on Wednesday at a Southern California center for the mentally disabled.

This massacre comes just five days after three people died at a shooting that targeted a Planned Parenthood. And it comes two months after 10 people died in a shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon.

So far, 2015 has seen more mass shootings — 352 — than days in the year. Many people, frustrated with the continued violence, want more than "thoughts and prayers."

In 1996, Australia took action. Just 12 days after the worst mass shooting in the country's history, the government passed a law that would become one of the largest gun reforms in recent history. Afterward, gun deaths plummeted.

How It Really Was...

It's all part of the lore of the Wild West: men armed to the teeth ready to shoot it out with one another on Main Street at a moment's notice.  And it's an image, bolstered by Hollywood, that gun-lovers and the NRA are only too happy to cultivate, as they look to our romanticized view of the past to justify having virtually no gun-control laws today. But is that the way it really was in the Old West?

Not according to Katherine Benton-Cohen, history professor at Georgetown University.  

In an article she posted in Politico immediately after the Gabrielle Giffords' shooting in Tucson in January, 2011, she argues that many people have the lesson of Tombstone all wrong, that Tombstone was NOT a place of carefree gun usage and wild shootouts (except for the obvious one): 

They Laughed

Submitted by Paul Zotos

They laughed

They laughed at us

When we wanted to save

The whale

They laughed when we created

Earth day

They ridiculed us and called us

Tree huggers

They laughed at Al Gore for 

Climate change and trying to

Save Polar Bears

The Gun Fetishists Are Going MAD

A Gun Policy of Mutually Assured Destruction?

Ken O’Brien

The Rambo wannabees pontificate to stall progress

Every one of thirty-one U.S. Senators characterized as “pro-gun” refused an invitation to appear on Sunday’s Meet The Press.

Seeking to get their view on the tragedy in Newtown, CT, the program tendered the invitations. Meet the Press producer Betsey Fischer Martin tweeted:

The Democratic Gun Control Plan

Ken O’Brien

The Democratic Party is gearing up for the start of their national convention on September 3^rd in Charlotte, North Carolina.

One subject which has been a recent topic of conversation on The O’Zone that has received little attention on the national scene is the Party’s position on gun control.

All of that is about to change.