Liberal Forum

MIKE LUPICA: America can't wait for shootings to stop to talk guns.

In the aftermath of the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history, we once again witness the phony rhetoric of death, so much of it from politicians who never do anything to make gun laws more sane in a country lousy and insane with guns.

It was all as predictable as hearing that Monday wasn't the day to talk about guns, and that Tuesday probably wouldn't be such a good day, either, so close to what had just happened in Las Vegas.

But if you play out this kind of cockeyed thinking, from all those in Congress who genuflect in front of the National Rifle Association, from politicians and members of their pep squads who have pimped out the honorable and original intent of a Second Amendment originally written for muskets, there would never be a good day to have a gun debate in America.

When would we find the time?

We’ve averaged a mass shooting — one in which at least four people are shot — a day since Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. and murdered 20 children and six adults on Dec. 14, 2012.

We can’t wait for the gunfire to stop, because it doesn’t.

Maybe we could have the conversation while the next active shooter is reloading.

Now it is Stephen Paddock in Las Vegas who kills more than twice as many as Lanza did, this time from the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, with enough weaponry in his hotel room to invade California.

This Paddock reminds you of Jimmy Breslin’s description of Lee Harvey Oswald and his “scrambled egg brain” and the cheap rifle Oswald used to assassinate President John F. Kennedy.

The difference, of course, between Oswald and Paddock is that the weaponry has become more expensive and sophisticated as our country has become this kind of killing field, at Sandy Hook Elementary and the Pulse nightclub in Orlando and Virginia Tech University and now an outdoor concert in Las Vegas where 59 are assassinated and more than 500 are injured.

And what we are once again supposed to believe, especially from members of Congress for whom any moment of silence at a terrible American moment like this is full of unintended irony and symbolism, that the answer is for them to do what they did after Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech and Orlando and all the others.

It means hide under their desks.

They also hide now behind the fact that Paddock, who kept buying guns until he owned 40, passed all of his background checks with flying colors.

And never seem to ask how stronger background checks might actually prevent the next mass shooting in America, or the one after that, now that we are better at this kind of shooting than we are at baseball.

We keep hearing that there is no law passed that can legislate against the madness of what Paddock did on Sunday night.

But the real madness is thinking that this country's laws and policies about guns are working.

Take a look at the map powerfully produced at Vox.com, one that shows all the mass shootings since Sandy Hook, a map covered with blood.



Look at their stats about how the United States has 4.4% of the world’s population and almost half the civilian-owned guns, and how we basically average one mass shooting per day.

Clearly when the subject is guns, the scrambled egg brains here are our own.

On Monday, astronaut Mark Kelly stood outside the Capitol Building in Washington next to his wife, former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who by the grace of God once survived a bullet fired into her head at a meet-and-greet in Tucson, Ariz.

“Your thoughts and prayers aren’t going to stop the next shooting,” Kelly said.

Then Kelly talked about all the gun-related deaths in America, including the suicides, and said that “the response from Congress has been to do nothing.”

It is a shameful crime of neglect, and cowardice.

President Trump was praised for his somber tone when he spoke to the country on Monday about the mass shooting in Las Vegas.

But what would his tone have been if it had been someone from radical Islam who had murdered all those innocent people?

How loud would the reaction have been if it had been someone who had crossed the southern border illegally and then started shooting with some kind of modified automatic weapon from the Mandalay Bay?

“Does anybody think our gun laws are too strong?” Mark Kelly asked, standing next to the victim of gun violence to whom he is married.

Tell the families of the victims of Las Vegas that it’s not even worth talking about stronger background checks that might not have stopped Paddock, but might stop the next active shooter in America.

Ask them why any automatic or semi-automatic weapon, any kind of long gun that can be turned into one, can still be legally owned by any civilian in this country, in what is supposed to be the most civilized country in the world.

Ask the families of the victims in Las Vegas if they think this is a good day to talk about guns.

PostmodernProphet » 03 Oct 2017 7:28 pm » wrote: its okay.....all the **** he did by executive order has already been reversed.......

PostmodernProphet » 03 Oct 2017 7:26 pm » wrote:it would have been even worse if they had actually used personal email accounts to do government business instead of just for personal matters.....

Their use of private email accounts for White House business also raises concerns about the security of potentially sensitive government documents, which have been forwarded to private accounts.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/0 ... use-243389

President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka Trump re-routed their personal email accounts to computers run by the Trump Organization as public scrutiny intensified over their use of private emails to conduct White House business, internet registration records show.

The move, made just days after Kushner’s use of a personal email account first became public, came shortly after special counsel Robert Mueller asked the White House to turn over records related to his investigation of Russia's interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion with Trump associates.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol ... 728467001/

PostmodernProphet » 03 Oct 2017 7:23 pm » wrote:pass a law that no district shall have more than four corners......of course it would mean the entire Black Caucus would lose their congressional seats.......

crimsongulf » 03 Oct 2017 7:22 pm » wrote: Were they rigged starting in 2010?

Republican strategists spent years developing a plan to take advantage of the 2010 census, first by winning state legislatures and then redrawing House districts to tilt the playing field in their favor.

Their success was unprecedented.

In states like Ohio, Michigan and North Carolina, Republicans were able to shape congressional maps to pack as many Democratic voters as possible into the fewest House districts.

The practice is called gerrymandering, and it left fertile ground elsewhere in each state to spread Republican voters among more districts, increasing the GOP’s chances of winning more seats.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/gop ... ems-house/

Misty » 03 Oct 2017 9:47 pm » wrote: That's exactly what they did.

Misty » 03 Oct 2017 9:59 pm » wrote: Republicans used the 2010 census to gerrymander districts in their favor.


Because of gerrymandering they were able to keep control of the House in 2012 even though Democrats actually got more votes.

Misty » 03 Oct 2017 9:38 pm » wrote: Yeah, by Executive Order.
More hypocrisy.

Misty » 03 Oct 2017 9:52 pm » wrote: You're a funny guy.

Rex Tillerson Said Trump Is a ‘Moron’ Then Threatened To Resign

There is no hiding the fact that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has not always seen eye-to-eye with President Trump over the last eight and a half months, but a new report coming to us from NBC News indicates that the divide between the two may be much larger than many political pundits had initially thought.

According to multiple sources on the President’s national security team and within his own cabinet, in late July, shortly after the President made a political speech to the Boy Scouts, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson threatened to resign.

Tillerson, who himself was once a leader of a youth organization, apparently did not agree with the President’s speech.

Tillerson was at his son’s wedding in Texas when Trump’s Boy Scouts speech took place, and according to reports, he threatened to not return to Washington.

Then following a meeting at the Pentagon on July 20, Tillerson openly referred to President Trump as ‘a moron” and was clearly angered by his public behavior.

As tensions built following Trump’s highly criticized Boy Scouts speech, and as Tillerson was reportedly ready to resign from his position, Vice President Mike Pence, as well as other White House officials, were brought in to convince him otherwise.

It is not known what Pence or the other officials had said to Tillerson in order to convince him to stay on board, but whatever it was, Tillerson has remained at the helm of the State Department ever since.

According to sources, tensions between Tillerson and Trump has eased somewhat, but the relationship is far from perfect.

In fact, just last week the President undermined Tillerson while he was meeting with North Korean diplomats, tweeting:

Misty » 04 Oct 2017 11:01 am » wrote:TrumpleThinSkin is not going to like this.

President Donald Trump once again made the Las Vegas shooting not about the 58 people killed, nearly 600 injured and thousands terrorized and made it about him.

“It’s a very sad day for me personally,” Trump told reporters as he left the White House for Marine One Wednesday morning.

https://www.rawstory.com/2017/10/trump- ... nally/amp/

Misty » 04 Oct 2017 11:09 am » wrote:Just like with his trip to Puerto Rico yesterday, it's always all about him.

PostmodernProphet » 04 Oct 2017 6:36 am » wrote:hardly.....cancelling Obama's executive orders is totally consistent with saying executive orders are wrong, even if it takes another executive order to eliminate the error......

roadkill » 04 Oct 2017 11:12 am » wrote:Did Trump dumb you years ago?

Misty » 04 Oct 2017 11:27 am » wrote: Did you enjoy his self-congratulatory visit to PR yesterday?
Not one scintilla of empathy for the victims of the storm.
It was all about eliciting praise for himself.

Are you so brainwashed that you don't see it?

roadkill » 04 Oct 2017 11:08 am » wrote:BTW...Hillary has no skin.
She's graciously accepting the results of the election with a foot in water and a finger in a light socket.

roadkill » 04 Oct 2017 11:28 am » wrote:I was right wasn't I...he dumbed you. lol

Termin8tor » 03 Oct 2017 12:16 am » wrote: Because Trump was competently dealing with the problem, so the golf picture is just your usual dishonest propaganda.

PostmodernProphet » 03 Oct 2017 5:11 am » wrote:
what type of proof would you like.....