Selling handguns to the civilian population, is a US specificity. Most handguns in the world, aside from military possession, are owned by US civilians. Some carry 40 bullets or so… There is no justification for it… except for killing and maiming many US residents (a laudable goal, according to some, I must admit).
- Take on the NRA and its corrupting effect on Washington.
- Expand background checks.
- End the gun show loophole. All gun purchases should be subject to the same background check standards.
- Ban the sale and distribution of assault weapons. Assault weapons are designed and sold as tools of war. There is absolutely no reason why these firearms should be sold to civilians.
- Prohibit high-capacity ammunition magazines.
- Implement a buyback program to get assault weapons off the streets.
- Regulate assault weapons in the same way that we currently regulate fully automatic weapons — a system that essentially makes them unlawful to own.
- Crack down on “straw purchases” where people buy guns for criminals.
- Support “red flag” laws and legislation to ensure we keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and stalkers
- Ban the 3-D printing of firearms and bump stocks
(Bump stocks can make automatic weapons of any gun.) I approve all these measures, of course. But they are all about military weapons… The sort of weapons explaining why US police tends to be trigger happy… There are at least 20 million assault rifles in the USA.
But handguns? Progressive Bernie has never heard of them, he won’t progress that way. The Small Arms Survey stated that U.S. civilians alone account for 393 million (about 46 percent) of the worldwide total of civilian held firearms. This amounts to “120.5 firearms for every 100 residents.”
More than 85 percent of black homicide victims are shot and killed with guns. Bernie Sanders does not mind. The guns. Black Lives Matter not as much as guns.
So today Bernie spoke at the Democratic Convention, supporting for president a guy who didn’t just crucially collaborate to invade Iraq in 2003, but also avoided 500,000 dollars of healthcare tax in two years by posing as an S Corporation. Hey Biden made only 13 million dollars in these two years.
Bernie Sanders attacks the National Rifle Association (see above). It reminds me of Hitler attacking plutocrats (who got him elected). Indeed the NRA financed Bernie Sanders. Official enemies, but, actually collaborators! The NRA did this by handsomely financing attack ads against Sanders opponents…
Sanders lies about guns. Biden lies about health care, or even having common decency. With progressives like that, who needs regression?
How to get out of this mess? By telling the truth. But if one tells the truth about Trump or the Democrats, one gets badly insulted by ignorant, hateful people, so it hurts. But it can be sustained, precisely because they are hateful, ignorant people, similar to mosquitoes, those stinging, ignorant creatures.
Truth hurts, but it is the Truth. And that’s the truth.
(Trump spent most of his life as a very noisy anti-establishment, anti-globalization Democrat; things got sour when Obama personally attacked him… Then Trump took over the Republican Party; this is why the Republican plutocratic establishment prefers Biden: they hate the We The People agenda of Trump… and love Bernie, or Biden aptitude for lying…)
The truth shall not make us free, but it is a divinity worth worshipping.
Patrice Ayme
Tags: Biden, Black Lives Matter, Guns, Sanders
August 18, 2020 at 11:00 pm |
You hit upon many untold truths. Yet you lost me when you give Trump credit for a “we the people” agenda. He may give lip service to needs of we the people but has little to actually show for it unless you are for his immigration tactics and give aways to the donor/pluto/corporate class.
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August 19, 2020 at 1:53 am |
Dear SDM: That was supposed to be tongue in cheek… I will modify it. “We The People” agenda of Trump is relative. For the plutocrats it’s “We The Chinese People Enslavers”. Trump sincerely understands that US workers should have work in the US, and his USMCA treaty IMPOSES $15/an hour wage, which is roughly double what the US Congress has mandated by law. THAT argument is not new and dates from Ross Perot about NAFTA. USMCA is NAFTA 2.0….
The situation with Biden is outright grotesque. At least when Obama became president he was roughly clean: Michelle had got a pseudo-job from Valerie Jarrett at a hospital, 300K/year… But that Biden avoided health care tax on 13 million dollar income is shocking.
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August 19, 2020 at 3:51 am |
Steps are being made to abolish the police, and those that are left are being reduced in effectiveness. George Soros is busy funding prosecutors that are more interested in arresting honest people than criminals. Kimberly Gardener, in St. Louis, is an example. She only prosecutes about 23% of the cases that the police bring to her. St. Louis has had the highest murder rate in the country, but the mob violence has chased police in that and other cities off the streets. Who knows what the murder rates are this year.
In the past I have written against handguns too. Things have changed.
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August 19, 2020 at 4:20 am |
Yes, well, that’s the practical argument. I do agree that the situation is becoming worrisome. It is a direct extension of the “Sanctuary City” argument: some people, thugs, are above the law.
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August 19, 2020 at 4:21 am |
Trump is threatening every citizen of the USA daily. We all need handguns, spears, machetes.
Civilization 101: 2-billion Chinese will come for us someday.
Dream on about that one Patrice Ayme
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August 19, 2020 at 4:27 am |
I think what’s more needed is new and better ideas.
2 billion Chinese are not coming over, as the predictions are that Chinese population will go down in the future. The problem of the Xi dictatorship is something else entirely. Xi is literally having border problems, of his own initiative, with at least 9 countries: Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, Bhutan, India…
Xi has inner enemies, and he wants to distract them…
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August 19, 2020 at 10:10 am |
Recent news articles indicate Xi is now under attack from a faction within the Chinese communist party. It may be good reporting but who knows.
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August 19, 2020 at 6:33 pm |
I have a friend who is an insider (more exactly he is outside, but his family was very much, and still is, inside). Xi has ferocious enemies inside. As he should. Xi is making a parody of progressivism, and turning the world against China… In spite of an excellent tech and industrial policy copied on 19C France-UK-Germany. That makes him even more dangerous. Xi got a ride on his father’s reputation… But he is rather his opposite.
What’s that comedy of sending love letters to Gates for the whole world to see?
But anti-Trumpists watch NBC, believe everything there… not knowing they are watching XI TV:
https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2020/07/24/meet-your-plutocratic-owners-xi-finity-comcast-nbc-universal-courtesy-roberts-billionaires/
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August 19, 2020 at 8:19 pm |
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx
Do you think there should or should not be a law that would ban the possession of handguns, except by the police and other authorized persons?
29% Yes — 70% No
Obviously, Americans flunked “basic civilization 101” on this issue and on most other measures of civilization. They’re the reason all our problems fester, and why I knew the USA would become the world center of the pandemic. It’s not really fair to put all the blame on the politicians.
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August 19, 2020 at 9:45 pm |
Hi GlouconX, nice to hear from you. I didn’t know of that poll, but I am zero surprised. Handguns are used, first of all, to shoot significant others (around 2/3 cases)….
Right. when Pelosi goes around, calling it the “Trump Virus”… while people defecate in the streets among the needles less than 1.5 mile away from her 20 million dollar mansion… on a persistent, “sanctuary city” basis… We know the problem is widespread. Right now I am confined because of air pollution from gigantic fires ravaging North Cal…
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August 19, 2020 at 9:35 pm |
Patrice Ayme: yeah, you’re right. Seriously, I would support basic safety and handling requirement first, before a purchase of a handgun. Patrice, I’m an Army veteran, a medic and clinical specialist in a Combat Support Hospital, and while I am not a gun enthusiast per se, I do keep a weapon for protection. I have been mugged, and that will never happen again. I’ve also been punched, so I carry a small taser. Weapons are tools for protection, and I do support the 2nd Amendment. I took an oath to support our Constitution, yet I agree that we need better solutions for the gun issues we have. Universal background checks would help, along with mental health checks before purchases.
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August 19, 2020 at 9:38 pm |
Nice that you have been an army veteran. Since we are comparing victimologies, here is mine, among other things: I have been mugged, I have been threatened with a gun by a guy who claimed he had authority, once in parking lot in Stanford, I was arrested and handcuffed several times (never for any good reasons, just systemic racism), I have been death threatened (several times), the government of Pakistan has declared a fatwa against me, I was physically attacked from behind by surprise twice, resulting in life long injuries, a handicapped status for a while, multiple operations…
Worst of all, long long ago, some (right wing racist) fascists built and exploded a bomb (IED) on me (a musician stepped in front of me at the last fraction of a second, and had his right arm disintegrated instead). The last three cases of aggression happened in Europe, not the USA. Also I was charged by more than one bear, and had to stone one back successfully…. But still I don’t carry a gun.
Obviously as Don pointed out, if it’s going to be the Wild West all over again, I shall arm myself, though… https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2020/08/07/snake-psychoanalysis/
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August 20, 2020 at 4:11 am |
crazy world!!
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August 20, 2020 at 4:13 am |
BTW, I am anti-gun out of safety… Considering the statistics. If I lived in the middle of nowhere, very far from any sheriff… It would be another matter.
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August 19, 2020 at 10:39 pm |
Most other countries don’t have this problem, in part because they have more widespread gun laws. Thus in NZ assault weapons are banned (although there will be illegal ones). You need a licence to own a gun, and you need a special licence to own a pistol, and these are difficult to get. (The rifle licence also involves sitting a short course relating to hunting, so as people don’t get lost in the bush.) I feel the 2nd ammendment is being taken too far in the US, and some restrictions are required, if only to show you are sane. However, significant restictions seem to be political suicide, so they won’t happen, and processes to defund the police are hardly likely to reduce violence or gun ownership.
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August 20, 2020 at 4:19 am |
Indeed. France requires rifle registration (for hunting). Handguns are outlawed, except police, military, special cases (people who were threatened with death).
Political suicide?
I don’t see what prevented Obama to advertise against guns in his second term… They are too afraid of social suicide. Same with metric system. If you tell US citizens they are nuts with their crazy system of units, they think you are deranged, anti-American…
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