America's Slow March to Gun Control

This article comes from CBC, a mainstream media (MSM) organization, which means it leans heavily to the left. Consequently, the views tend to be for gun control. Whether you are for it or against it, this report gives an informative update on the 'progress' of most American States either toward or away from gun control.

People attend a candlelight vigil the day after last February's deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. Progress on gun control has been fitful. (Jonathan Drake/Reuters)

Jonathon Gatehouse, CBC

It's been almost a year since 17 staff and students were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in what ranks as America's ninth deadliest mass shooting.

The survivor-driven (many would question that) movement that followed drew hundreds of thousands to the streets to protest for tougher firearms laws, and helped elect a new generation of pro-gun-control legislators to state and federal office in last November's midterm elections.

But it's proving difficult to make a dent in U.S. gun culture.

In 2018, 27 states passed a total of 67 new gun control measures.

Yet only two states — California and New Jersey — received an"A" grade in the annual gun control report card issued today by the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Five others -- Connecticut, Maryland, Hawaii, New York and Massachusetts -- received "A-" grades, while Washington and Illinois got a "B+" ranking. Florida earned a "C+", passing for the first time due to some post-Parkland restrictions.

In comparison, 22 states received failing grades of "D" or "F", with Mississippi ranking 50th for gun control and fifth for firearms deaths.

A new Ipsos/Reuters poll, released this morning, confirms that a solid majority of 69 per cent of Americans — including 57 per cent of Republicans — want stronger gun measures. Although only 14 per cent of gun control supporters say they are "very confident" that their elected representatives understand their views, and just eight per cent trust politicians to actually take action.

The survey of 6,800 voters found wide agreement on the need to expand background checks, stop people with mental health issues from purchasing firearms, and ban internet ammunition sales. It also found support for Donald Trump's approach to stopping school shootings, with 61 per cent of parents of school-age children saying they favour publicly funded firearms training for teachers.

This year will be a crucial test for American gun control advocates. At least 50 major pieces of firearms restriction legislation have already been introduced in State houses.

Democratic governors in California, New York and Illinois are moving to strengthen their already tough measures. And there is bipartisan support in almost two dozen states for bills that will stop convicted domestic abusers from buying guns, or so-called "red flag" laws to allow police to temporarily seize weapons from people who might pose a danger to themselves or others.

On the other hand, at least 26 states are poised to expand gun access — particularly when it comes to concealed carry provisions—  in 2019.

In Washington, D.C., the new class of House Democrats flexed their muscles this week with a rare congressional hearing on gun violence, paving the way for the introduction of legislation to expand background checks to internet and gun show sales.

Aalayah Eastmond, a Parkland senior who survived last year's massacre by hiding underneath the body of a slain classmate, testified in favour of stricter measures, receiving a standing ovation.

Republicans countered with Savannah Lindquist, a sexual assault survivor and gun rights backer. 

The eventual house bill is likely to suffer the same fate as the last major federal gun control efforts in the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saying it is "highly unlikely" to pass in the upper chamber.  

And there is apprehension about what the new conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court might do to existing gun control legislation, as it prepares to weigh in on a challenge to a New York City regulation that limits how and where firearm owners can transport their weapons.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has been busy making it easier for U.S. arms makers to export their semi-automatic assault weapons, flamethrowers and grenades to overseas customers, doing away with the need for State Department licences.

And while the gun debate rages, the violence continues.

There have been 41 mass shootings in the United States over the first 39 days of 2019, which have resulted in 62 deaths and 128 wounded. 

ANALYSIS - Too Much Democracy? Donald Trump Dividing Republicans Top to Bottom

Before getting into Neil's excellent piece, just a couple of very quick thoughts regarding Trump and the electoral process:

Donald Trump is a caricature of American politics

American politics has ceased to be politics and become entertainment

Mitch McConnell is the Koch Brothers instrument on earth

Trump's ascendancy has Republican thinkers, brass talking of thwarting the will of primary voters

By Neil Macdonald, CBC News

The Republican establishment's dilemma: How to remove Trump's podium without totally fracturing the GOP
(Joe Skipper/Reuters)

It's generally accepted in America that democracy is an absolute good; that, like tolerance, there can never be too much of it.

But absolutism never survives the test of rational thought.

Tolerance goes too far when it tolerates intolerance. And democracy flounders when people are convinced to embrace something fundamentally undemocratic.

That is what the Republican Party appears to be doing at the moment by embracing Donald Trump, who by his own words, would behave undemocratically as a president.

For example, he says he would order the U.S. military to torture captives, and go beyond waterboarding when dealing with enemies of the state.

He says he would bar a quarter of the world's population from entering the U.S. solely on the grounds of religion.

His ban might even apply to Muslims who are already American residents returning from travels abroad; it is impossible to know because Trump speaks in such bizarre, sweeping terms.

And, of course, he would deport 12 million undocumented, mostly Hispanic, workers, throwing the American economy into chaos — he would throw out even those whose children were born in the U.S.A.

So Republican intellectuals are now talking about making a courageous choice, albeit one with potentially calamitous consequences: That would be thwarting, if necessary, the will of millions of the party's voters, many of whom comprise its bedrock base.

Columnist George F. Will, whose conservative credentials are beyond question, has warned that Trump is not just a buffoon ("Is there a disagreeable human trait he does not have?" Will asks) but an "avatar of unfettered government and executive authoritarianism."

Michael Gerson goes even further. Trump, he says, undermines American security and must be denied the Republican nomination, even if he arrives at the party's convention in Cleveland with the most delegates.

'Disqualifying in a president'

Gerson, based in Washington, is a member of America's evangelical intelligentsia, a man whose conservatism is infused with Christian values — the compassionate sort, rather than the ferocious nativism embraced by the more fundamentalist evangelical cohort.

Michael Gerson, a Washington-based op-ed columnist, was an adviser and speechwriter with former Republican president George W. Bush. (CBC)

As a speechwriter and adviser to George W. Bush, Gerson was in the Oval Office the day after the 9/11 attacks, as the president struggled with what to tell an enraged, volatile American public.

"At that moment," Gerson told me recently, "we had no idea how Americans would react to Muslims in U.S. To Muslim-Americans.

"And George Bush set out as a leader to say we're an inclusive, tolerant country… we don't blame a religion for what happened. He went to a mosque within days of the attacks.

"But imagine," Gerson went on, "if George Bush had said, 'Yeah, I'm going to whip up resentment of Islam for my own political purposes? He could have done it in a minute."

That, says Gerson, is what Trump has done, manipulating public fear by proposing his blanket ban on Muslims following the mass shootings by Islamic extremists in Paris and in California.

"When Donald Trump does this as a populist tool … he is directly undermining the national interest of the United States for political reasons," says Gerson. "That itself is disqualifying in a president."

'A hot rock'

Gerson is among a growing group of Republican thinkers these days who feel the party must deny Trump the nomination, vox populi be damned.

"The U.S. government does not have an absolute populist democracy," he argues, "and the parties are not run as absolute populist democracies.

"There's some deliberative role in the party structure that says, is this best for the party? Is this best for the country?"

That's a more refined version of what Republican Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, urged: that the party drop Trump "like a hot rock," even if he wins the primary season.

The calculations and rules for the Republican convention in July are bewildering, but there are options for keeping Trump from the nomination even if he arrives in Cleveland with the most delegates.

Most of these delegates are only obliged to vote for him on the first ballot.

The trouble is, the man now running second, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, is, in some ways, more extreme than Trump, though perhaps somewhat more predictable.

So "moderate" Republicans — and they do still exist, even if they've been pushed into the margins by this wave of bare-fanged populism — need to find someone capable of moving a mass of delegates.

There is no such candidate now in the race. House Speaker Paul Ryan, if he could be persuaded to stand, is a possibility.

There is even the possibility the party brass will orchestrate a rewriting of the rules at the convention to exclude Trump, says Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

That, of course, would mean the party leadership overriding the millions of voters supporting Trump, not to mention ignoring all the anger feeding the party revolt against the Republican leadership itself.

As Ornstein puts it: "That would mean blood on the streets, and on the convention floor."

Be it resolved

In Texas last week, a Republican local president, Buffie Ingersoll, showed me a resolution her precinct had passed following Trump's big Super Tuesday victory. Several other precincts passed identical measures.

It cites McConnell's "hot rock" comment, and goes on: "Be it resolved that Republican voters reject the decision of the United States Senate Majority Leader to abort the will of the people," and condemns any effort to "silence voters" at the convention.

The party had better pay attention, says Ingersoll, "or else."

And yet, that is exactly what people like Gerson, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative columnist Kathleen Parker are urging, if necessary. With all the attendant consequences.

Kathleen Parker is a Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated newspaper columnist in the U.S. (CBC)

"I can easily see vast numbers of people descending on Washington," Parker told me. "I can see people rioting. I think it's going to be a historical moment when that happens. And I don't think it's going to be pretty."

Nonetheless, she says, "I agree with Michael Gerson. I think he [Trump] has to be stopped."

It didn't have to come to this. The party could probably have found a sensible, winning champion had it not remained deaf to grassroots anger and dismissed Trump as a joke for as long as it did.

But if voters must be thwarted, it's probably good that it will be conservatives themselves doing the thwarting. They are, after all, the ones who have complained most loudly about Barack Obama and liberal judges corrupting democracy.

The Democrats need only stand back and watch.

Neil Macdonald is a Senior Correspondent for CBC News, currently based in Ottawa. Prior to that he was the CBC's Washington correspondent for 12 years, and before that he spent five years reporting from the Middle East. He also had a previous career in newspapers, and speaks English and French fluently, and some Arabic.


Now if the party leadership were successful in robbing Trump of victory in the leadership race, he might well start his own party which would make a Republican victory next November absolutely impossible. 8 more years of Democratic government - I shudder to think it. Not that I'm afraid of what the Democrats would do, although I am, but more-so because I am afraid of what all you gun-toting, super-patriots might do. 

McConnell Firmly on the Dark Side - Destroying Democracy

Mitch McConnell sneaks provisions into budget bill to further enable ‘dark money’

Mitch McConnell
© Joshua Roberts / Reuters

The Senate’s majority leader buried provisions in the massive US$1.1 trillion end-of-the-year spending bill that will prevent watchdogs from investigating political spending of companies and imposing regulations on ‘dark money’ groups.

The new bill prevents the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from implementing any “order regarding the disclosure of political contributions, contributions to tax exempt organizations or dues paid to trade associations,” the bill says.

The IRS have also been targeted in the bill, and are now unable to issue a rule in 2016 regarding the level of nonprofit organizations political activity. Advocates for financial reform argue that the current system allows American elections to be bought by ‘dark money’ and ‘anonymous’ donors.

Indeed the current system has gutted democracy in America; it is all smoke and mirrors now. McConnell's unannounced, sneaky provisions will only serve to weaken democracy even further. I think POTUS should have refused to sign the bill and required the Senate to remain in session right through Christmas if necessary to clean this bill up.

I'm amazed at how quick and spirited Americans are in defending their right to bear arms and their right to keep America safe from militant Islam. And yet, they allow their democracy to be gutted, a far worse disaster, with hardly a word. Where are your priorities, people?

‘Dark money’ refers to the funds given to nonprofit organizations that can receive unlimited donations from corporations, individuals and unions, and spend their funds to influence elections, but are not required to disclose their donors.

McConnell has been a continuous advocate of unlimited secret campaign spending in Washington, often citing free speech as the reason.

The senior Kentucky senator’s own campaign has benefited from US$23 million of ‘dark money’ from independent groups like the National Rifle Association and the Nation Federation of Independent Business.

“Spending by organizations that do not disclose their donors has increased from less than US$5.2 million in 2006 to well over US$300 million in the 2012 presidential cycle and more than US$174 million in the 2014 midterms,” according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

For example, the Conservative Solutions Project has run more than 4,882 ads in support of Republican presidential hopeful Marco Rubio, and not a dime of its funding has been made public, reported Mother Jones.

The nonprofit organizations are, in theory, regulated by the IRS, but because of the new legislation McConnell introduced, the IRS can’t investigate the people or corporations who finance campaigns like Rubio’s run for presidency.

Historically, traditional political action committees (PACs) had strict limits on how much businesses, nonprofits and individuals could give. But a landmark 2010 Supreme Court ruling opened the door for unlimited amounts of cash to be donated to influence campaigns, because restricting this behavior would be akin to restricting what people can say, violating the First Amendment.

This isn’t the first move the majority leader has made to push his secret spending agenda. In last year’s budget he pushed through higher limits for campaign contributions to party organizations, making way for wealthy donors to give hundreds of thousands of dollars.

McConnell tried again to remove limits on how party committees spend money during this year’s budget negotiations, but stood down after he received heavy opposition from Democrats, some Republicans and campaign finance reformers, reported The Hill.

"We do feel good about what we did get and would love to have achieved more. And it's going to take a new president of a different party to achieve what we'd like to achieve,” McConnell said to the Associated Press when speaking about the bill.

And what is that, Senator. It seems you just want the richest man in the US to appoint the President. That's basically what you appear to be working toward.

At a 2010 DNC rally, President Obama said that special interest groups that pour money into attack ad campaigns without ever having to disclose their spending are “a threat to our democracy.” In July of this year, it was reported Obama was considering an executive order to require all federal contractors to disclose their dark money spending.

"The president is pleased with the final product, even if it does reflect the kind of compromise that's necessary when you have a Democratic president negotiating with large majorities of Republicans," said press secretary Josh Earnest after Obama signed off of the latest budget bill.

What on earth did they threaten him with? This is very disappointing. The most powerful country in the world will be run by a handful of unelected oligarchs whose only goal will be to get even more filthy rich regardless of the cost in lives and suffering.