The president sends his children to a school full of armed guards, but wants to deny citizens their Second Amendment rights.
On December 21, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, (D-NY), said, "The NRA's response to the Newtown massacre is both ludicrous and insulting, and they are fundamentally out of step with the American people on the issue of gun violence." Nadler continued, "... like enhanced, universal background checks, which the vast majority of its members support ...." There goes Nadler again, spouting off his opinion, but offering no substantiation of his remarks. Nadler is wont to do that. Then Nadler talks out of both sides of his mouth. He first complains about the cost of armed school guards, then says what is needed is a buyback program. Gee, does Nadler think buyback programs have no costs associated with them?
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Article comments
26 - Jet Gardner
Please take this seriously.
Add these Warren to the inconsequencial list of human sacrifices accepted by the NRA as just a miniscule price to pay for the pleasure of bearing arms, add the names of Mike Chiapperini and Tomasz Kaczowka, the volunteer firefighters callously gunned down on Christmas Eve in a town near Rochester..
William Spengler, an ex-convict, murdered/executed Chiapperini and Kaczowka using the same model assault rifle as the one used at Sandy Hook Elementary School to butcher all those kids-and he also wounded two other firefighters after luring them to a blaze he had set in ambush.
Well Warren???? How many bodies need to be added to the altar of the NRA’s worship.
As surely as an AR-15 can mow down kids in moments, LaPierre will find escapes from responsibility in the Rochester killings. Someone or something else will be to blame. He blustered after Sandy Hook that the answer was to have more people with more guns standing ready to kill bad guys.
But there was a cop at the scene of the fire Monday morning: In addition to being a volunteer firefighter, Chiapperini was a 20-year veteran of local police department. And he’s dead, a good guy, killed by a bad guy who was bent on murder and suicide and who had an assaukt rifle.
Are you capable of original/intelligent thought Warren-or are you just a parrot so desparate for attention that you'd say anything to get it?
27 - Glenn Contrarian
"Whatever a liberal supports must therefore be wrong" - that's in essence what's been the conservative viewpoint since the early 1990's. And Warren buys into it hook, line, and sinker.
28 - clavos
Here's an intelligent, well-balanced opinion piece that addresses the dual issues of gun control and mental health treatment as solutions to the mass killings phenomenon.
29 - Christopher Rose
Yes, it is a good article; it refers to a variety of arms limitation proposals as "sensible ideas" and goes on to conclude that both reducing the access to weapons and improving patient care are "necessary".
So should we then conclude that you have now changed your mind and in fact do support the reduction in availability of military grade weaponry?
30 - Not the liberal actor
Re: comment # 26, Jet, you say, "Well Warren???? How many bodies need to be added to the altar of the NRA’s worship?" I am sure that you will point out just how I worshiped the NRA. The article, in case you didn't bother to read it, was about hypocrisy. The ONLY mention of the NRA was in the context of David Gregory's interview. This comment is an example of rants that make it rather difficult to conduct "debates" with people who offer rants (lengthy or otherwise), then insist that their rants are relevant to the topic(s) offered in my articles, or that their rants offer much more than their opinions.
You continue, "Are you capable of original/intelligent thought Warren-or are you just a parrot so desparate for attention that you'd say anything to get it?" Jet, you are as classy as ever.
31 - Jet Gardner
I refuse to get into a battle of wits with an unarmed man...
I consider you this website's equivalent of the ear piercing brat in the middle of a grocery store...
and not worth bothering with because the only "point" you get is your closed minded own.
32 - clavos
So should we then conclude that you have now changed your mind and in fact do support the reduction in availability of military grade weaponry?
I never did not support it' I said it won't make a significant dent in the rate and number of massacres like Newtown, and I haven't change my opinion on that point.
33 - Christopher Rose
Well, each to their own.
34 - troll
The president sends his children to a school full of armed guards, but wants to deny citizens their Second Amendment rights.
who made this tag line up?
Warren wisely imo avoided the subject of the constitution in this piece
35 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
I said it won't make a significant dent in the rate [of availability of military grade weaponry] and number of massacres like Newtown, and I haven't change my opinion on that point.
Actually, if we look at the cumulative cost in human lives of the twelve largest mass shootings in U.S. history while bearing in mind that the assault weapons ban was from 1994-2004, it does look like the lack of availability of assault weapons to the general public does decrease the number of people killed in mass shootings.
36 - Jawknee
Those of you claiming the President gets special protection because he's the president are forgetting that our Bill of Rights says 'we're ALL created EQUAL'. His life is no more important than any of ours. He's not a King, he's a man who was created by the same creator. If he gets 24/7 armed security for him and his family, we get the rigt to KEEP and BEAR ARMS.
37 - clavos
it does look like the lack of availability of assault weapons to the general public does decrease the number of people killed in mass shootings.
Did the "lack of availability" to which you refer remove automatic weapons already out in the hands of the public? Because, if not, I would say any reduction in deaths is likely merely a coincidence.
38 - Not the liberal actor
Re: comment # 28, clavos, I agree that the article you cite is well written and thought provoking. Joe Nocera offers one sentence, however, that (IMHO) captures the essence of the dilemma we gun rights advocates face: "Torrey [E. Fuller Torrey] told me that Connecticut’s laws are so restrictive in terms of the proof required to get someone committed that Adam Lanza’s mother would probably not have been able to get him help even if she had tried." Kinda places us in a "Catch 22" situation, doesn't it?
Re: comment # 31, Jet, I want to thank you for perfectly illustrating the point I tried to make in my comment # 30.
Re: comment # 36, Jawknee, good point.
Re: comment # 37, clavos, good point.
39 - Dr Dreadful
Jawknee,
You do have a point, although it's hardly the fault of Obama or any other individual president that the office has become, through circumstances of time, politics and history, inflated in its role and importance far beyond what the founders originally intended.
There's also the question of whether the phrase "shall not be infringed" implies that there can be no restrictions on firearms ownership whatsoever. The Supreme Court's current interpretation suggests that it doesn't mean that, in which case Obama isn't proposing to take away anyone's Second Amendment rights. The charge of hypocrisy seems very far-fetched to me.
40 - Igor
@36-Jaw: if you are a member of a militia you : ¨... get the rigt to KEEP and BEAR ARMS.¨
41 - Glenn Contrarian
Jawknee -
As I told Warren, when you start getting thirty death threats per day every day for over three years, and when you also have your finger on the nuclear button, THEN I'll support you and yours having the same level of protection that the president and his family has.
But until then, you're full of crap.
42 - Glenn Contrarian
y'know, I just wonder how many of these people who are soooooo offended that there's Secret Service protection were also offended that Bush's daughters had the same protection. They aren't really offended and never were - all they're doing is trying to find an excuse to say something bad about the black guy in the white house.
43 - Dr Dreadful
To be fair, Glenn, Bush never pushed for enhanced gun control while in office - although no doubt he would have if he thought it would get him or his friends re-elected.
44 - clavos
I'm offended that they get protection (on our dime) after they're out of office. I'm even more offended by the enormous retirement pay and allowances they and all those asshats in the Congress get when they retire.
45 - clavos
It's funny how one of the principles the founders and colonials held dear was separation from Britain and its king and all the nobility, yet we've grown our own over the years in the form of presidents and all those elected parasites in Washington, who are just as useless the 18th century British nobility were.
46 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
I'm offended that they get protection (on our dime) after they're out of office. I'm even more offended by the enormous retirement pay and allowances they and all those asshats in the Congress get when they retire.
C'mon, now, Clav - you know that a former president knows things that other nations would love to know. The Secret Service protection for former presidents isn't there to protect them from getting assassinated - it's there to keep them from getting kidnapped and forced to talk.
47 - clavos
it's there to keep them from getting kidnapped and forced to talk.
Oh horseshit, Glenn. He doesn't need the huge retirement income and enormous expense account to keep him safe from foreign threats. It's there for prestige, nothing more.
And the Congress twits owe us, not the other way around.
48 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
I think you'll agree that I've never called you ignorant before, but if you don't think that what's inside a former president's head is a true national security issue, well, let's just say you have a great deal to learn about this world.
And you call it a 'huge retirement income', but he gets a lot less of a retirement income than your run-of-the-mill Wall Street hedge fund manager or corporate CEO, despite the fact that none of the ever held a responsibility more than a mere fraction of the 24/7 life-and-death responsibility held by the President of the United States.
What's the real reason for your opinions about this matter?
You're still insisting on painting government with the same broad brush, never actually realizing that the vast majority of government employees are just as good and just as honest (and often more so) as their counterparts in the private sector. The problem isn't reality, Clav - the problem is that you're continuing to allow your cynicism to color your opinions to such an extent that you're sometimes unable to distinguish far-right societal and political assumptions from reality.
49 - clavos
And you call it a 'huge retirement income', but he gets a lot less of a retirement income than your run-of-the-mill Wall Street hedge fund manager or corporate CEO, despite the fact that none of the ever held a responsibility more than a mere fraction of the 24/7 life-and-death responsibility held by the President of the United States.
They don't get paid with my money, and most work much longer than eight years to earn their pensions. Ex presidents don't need a government pension; they make enormous sums of money giving speeches, lending their names and support to organizations, some serve on corporate boards of directors and as advisors to corporations.
Bill Clinton has made a substantial fortune on his own since he left the presidency. Though he thankfully never was president, algore has (and continues to) done the same.
50 - clavos
What's the real reason for your opinions about this matter?
I don't think they either deserve or need it.
51 - clavos
the problem is that you're continuing to allow your cynicism to color your opinions to such an extent that you're sometimes unable to distinguish far-right societal and political assumptions from reality.
My societal "assumptions" are anything but "far-right:" I'm an atheist, I support gay rights , including the right to marriage, I think churches should pay taxes, I believe the government is overstepping its bounds with the Patriot Act and its electronic surveillance activities, I think churches and religions should stay the hell out of public schools, and on and on.
Wow! What a great psychologist you are -- NOT!!
And you're also a former gummint employee, so you naturally defend your ilk. I've seen too much idiocy on the part of the united states government and its personnel to believe your line of fantasy about how great it (and its employees) are.
52 - clavos
if you don't think that what's inside a former president's head is a true national security issue, well, let's just say you have a great deal to learn about this world.
He doesn't need a pension for that.
53 - Baronius
"I consider you this website's equivalent of the ear piercing brat in the middle of a grocery store"
Like it or not, Jet, he did write an article that made a point. What point did your comment #31 make? (Actually, I think it made a really strong point, just not the one you intended. It's a point that a lot of comments on this thread have made.)
54 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
And you're also a former gummint employee, so you naturally defend your ilk. I've seen too much idiocy on the part of the united states government and its personnel to believe your line of fantasy about how great it (and its employees) are.
And you just proved my point about you, and about conservatives in general.
55 - clavos
And you just proved my point about you, and about conservatives in general.
...And your government has proven and reproven my point to me for more than a half century; almost on a daily basis.
56 - Glenn Contrarian
Clav -
I think you're overindulging on confirmation bias. If people are people are people - as you seem to agree with your support of gay rights, women's rights, and opposition to racism - then it logically follows that the proportion of good people to bad, of intelligent people to not so much, of ethical people to corrupt, would vary but little in the public sector as compared to the private sector.
57 - Baronius
Glenn - You said that Reagan slashed the funding for social programs for the mentally ill in the 1980's. That's not true. As I've pointed out on this site before, it happened in the 1960's and 1970's. See this article for more information.
58 - Glenn Contrarian
Baronius -
I'm still reading the article, but I wanted to tell you that I appreciate it very much - I especially appreciate credible information that evinces falsity of what I previously believed. If there's anything I appreciate, it's that which proves me wrong.
59 - Igor
@49-Clav: Hey, why keep badmouthing Al Gore? I voted against him in 2000, but on reflection he would have made a far better president than the nitwit that GWB turned out to be.
He wouldn't have promoted that Rich Mans Tax Cut that GWB did at his oligarchic masters command. That's the reason for half of our economic problems now, that will haunt us into the future.
Maybe Al Gores NSA would have been awake when they got the warnings about OBL being determined to use highjacked airplanes to attack the USA. Maybe they'd have been alert enough to stop it. They couldn't have been any worse than GWB, Condoleesa Rice and their gang of clowns.
And even if OBL succeeded, maybe Al Gore would have put togeter the right team of Special Forces to extract OBL from Afghanistan and bring him to trial, or die trying.
I voted for GWB in 2000 but I'm not dumb enough to defend that choice now that he turned out to be such a bum. He couldn't do anything right.
"...Though he thankfully never was president, algore ..."