President Barack Obama on Thursday criticized the National Rifle Association for repeatedly snubbing invitations to discuss gun policy at the White House.
Obama said the NRA should have attended the town hall-style meeting about guns instead of whipping up fears that he wants to take away firearms.
"I am happy to talk to them, but the conversation has to be based on facts and truth," Obama told CNN moderator Anderson Cooper during the event at George Mason University in Virginia. "Our position is consistently mischaracterized. And by the way, there's a reason why the NRA is not here. They're just down the street. This is the reason they exist. You'd think they'd be willing to have a debate with the president."
Obama wants to talk to gun rights advocates? Well, has he heard this?
ReplyDeleteFunny how you like polls when they support your fanatical agenda.
DeleteFunny how you like polls when they support your [pro-humanity] agenda.
DeleteOr another way to say that would be, "Funnny how [Mikeb dislikes] polls when they [refute his genocidal tyranny enablement] agenda."
But whether I "like" these polls (we're talking about two different ones, remember, released at about the same time--New York Times/CBS News, and Washington Post/ABC News--or three, if you include the one conducted by Huffington Post/YouGov) is kinda beside the point. I'm not bothered by polls that claim to show a pro-"gun control" sentiment among the majority of Americans, because Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human rights are in no way contingent on the popularity contest of public opinion And that's without even getting into how many of those polls are conducted by orgniazations that advertise their ability to conduct polls that are worded in such a way as to get the results desired by whomever is paying them (like Bloomberg's Illegal Mayors, Moms Demand Relevance, etc.).
But these multifarious polls--conducted by organizations that obviously do not have a pro-rights bias (and that's putting it very mildly) undermine a favorite plank in the anti-gun platform--that most Americans want more gun bans.
And really, it doesn't even matter what kind of bias, if any, went into the structuring and methodology of the polls, because at least the first two have been conducted for decades, by the same organizations respectively, and are finding this broad-based trend away from bans regardless of any bias.
And the best part of it is that the conventional wisdom is that the precipitous plunge in the popularity of "assault weapons" bans is a direct result of the jihadist attacks in Paris and San Bernadino--exactly what the geniuses on your side were hoping would push the public into your arms. Think about that, Mikeb--if you're right about your . . . unique notion that "gun violence" in the U.S. will rise year after year now, because the nation has reached a "tipping point" in "gun saturation" (giggle), the result in public opinion might just be the opposite of the one your side has always counted on. Wouldn't it be funny if you had to stop celebrating the murder of innocents?
I think you're the one who will have to stop ignoring the murder of innocents. The "tipping point" I often talk about is the one of public opinion in which you gun fanatics are recognized as the callous knumbskulls you are and that sorely needed gun control laws are the way to go.
DeleteThe "tipping point" I often talk about is the one of public opinion . . .
DeleteUm . . . forgetting something, Mikeb?
We've reached the tipping point of gun saturation. Everything will be going up from now on, just watch.
That has nothing to do with public opinion--it's all about your idiotic notion that an increasing number of guns will inevitably lead to increasing violence, despite the decades over which those two trend lines have been moving in opposite directions in the U.S.
Jeez, Mikeb--could you at least give me a bit of challenge here?
Was the NRA invited? It was an INVITATION ONLY event according to news sources.
ReplyDeleteWhile the half-breed Hamite's media circus was going on, Trump is pledging to eliminate ALL Gun Free Zones.
orlin sellers
Yes the NRA was invited to the Town Hall meeting. But the conditions were that they could only ask one question of the President and the Pres had to have the question before hand. Pre-screened question...really? Is Obama that slow on his feet?
ReplyDeleteThis Town Hall was a farce and the NRA was right to turn down the invite.
Why would they waste their time to get one vetted question with the chief spokesmodel for the lack of integrity movement?
ReplyDeleteI watched the Town Hall. Here are my epic, multi-post thoughts on the subject. Sorry if it is TL:DR, but I had some idle time today…
ReplyDeleteObama keeps stressing how he is not out to “take away everybody’s guns”. Note the qualifier of “everybody”. Will he take away your gun? Maybe. It depends on what kind of gun you chose, for one. Obviously he strongly supports bans on the most popular rifle platform in the country, and he supports banning the tens of millions of magazines that feed them and other rifles and handguns. He would start with your right to buy it- promising that if you like your AR-15, you can keep it. But he’ll take it away from your children when you die, and if the political climate is ever ripe for banning possession of those ARs, well… we know the value of his promises already. He also might take away your gun if you fall afoul of one of the many felony pitfalls that he wants to add around gun ownership under the guise of “expanded background checks”. Felons have their guns taken away- for the rest of their life. He talks about the fantasy boogie-man of gun confiscation presented by the NRA, but alters it in a way to make it seem ridiculous to the uneducated public. This is abundantly evident when we talk about Australia. Australia is not an “imaginary fiction” as he accuses the NRA of manufacturing. It’s real, it happened, and Obama praised it. Australia did not take away everybody’s guns. They took away a third of the guns- from good people. This was abhorrent to gun owners over here. The NRA says “we don’t want to become like Australia”, and Obama answers with “It’s an imaginary fiction that I want to take away everybody’s guns- The NRA is lying… but yeah, I want us to become like Australia…” Anderson Cooper really tried to pin him down on this, and directly questioned him about his praise for Australia’s policies, but he completely ducked it, repeating at nauseam that he is not out to take away everybody’s guns. Later he even holds up china’s gun policy. Freaking China!
Taya Kyle was great, and I was pleased to see Obama have to admit that murder and violent crime are at historic lows. That’s not a point that gun control folks like to admit when they would rather play Chicken Little and claim the sky is falling due to gun proliferation. Obama had to fall back on MikeB’s typical response by saying “yeah, but it would be even better if we had done the exact opposite…” which should sound ridiculous to anyone who is unbiased. Score a point for the good guys.
Kimberly Corban was ok, but unfortunately her situation isn’t a good example. She didn’t articulate what policies make it harder for her to own or carry a gun, so Obama was able to counter by saying he is not stopping her from getting a gun. Regarding carry rights, he was able to deflect it very well by saying he is leaving it up to the states, and she lives in a pro-gun state where she was able to get her CCW so she can’t complain. It would be better if there was someone from say California up there pressing him on carry rights by saying she is denied her right to bear arms, and if he truly respects the Second Amendment, then what is he doing to support the right to carry. He has routinely appointed judges who do not see carry as a right, and this affects people at the state level who are trying to advance carry rights through the courts. The entire gun control movement hates- absolutely HATES concealed carry and Obama is no exception. That wasn’t exposed very well at this town hall. However, he couldn’t help himself from throwing jabs in there about how dangerous it is to keep a gun even in the home, and suggested how rapists will just take away guns from women and use it against them, though he softened it by using words like “it’s debatable”. If he really wants to present himself as supporting good people’s 2A rights he shouldn’t go there at all.
Obama: “Now, we can't guarantee that criminals are not going to have ways of getting guns. But, for example, it may be a little more difficult and a little more expensive. And, you know, the laws of supply and demand mean that if something's harder to get and it's a little more expensive to get, then fewer people get them. And that in and of itself could make a difference.”
ReplyDeleteThis works both ways. If it is a little more difficult and a little more expense for good people to get guns, then fewer good people will get them. This is what we are talking about when we talk about infringements. Making a right more difficult and expense is violating that right, though he keeps saying he respects the second amendment because he is not going to take away everybody’s guns, as if elimination of a right is the only way it can be infringed. Also, the people who are going to be affected more by difficulty and expensive are those who are constrained by the law- i.e. the good people. And we see then when we examine the effectiveness of gun control policy. It hasn’t worked. Also, he does not really understand what the black market supply and demand does for guns. If the street price of guns increases, then there is more profit to be made in black market gun dealing. The demand to steal guns also goes up. As Mike likes to point out, most crime guns are supplied through theft, not private sales. He was only thinking about criminals who buy guns. Criminals who sell guns would make more money as the price goes up.
Along those lines, his whole target with these executive orders is the mysterious “unlicensed dealer”- those engaged “in the business” of selling guns without holding an FFL. The thing is, in order to buy at wholesale, you have to have an FFL. If you intend to sell guns as a business and make a profit then you need to find a way to buy them cheaper than you sell them (duh). Buying guns at market value and then selling them at market value doesn’t make for a good business plan. Do people do that? Sure, but that falls under “collectors and hobbyists” who need to make room in the safe for new things, and wouldn’t be affected by Obama’s EO. Obama used the example of “vanloads of guns” coming into Chicago, which he admitted is already illegal (also referred to as “gun trafficking” or “Leland Yeeing”). It is more illegal than dealing without a license, so again, what’s the point?
Obama: “There's nothing else in our lives that we purchase where we don't try to make it a little safer if we can. Traffic fatalities have gone down drastically during my lifetime, and part of it is technology, and part of it is that the National Highway Safety Administration does research, and they figure out, you know what? Seat belts really work.”
ReplyDeleteYou know what? Gun accidents have also gone down drastically during his lifetime. It is total bullshit that these people blatantly imply that the gun industry doesn’t give a crap about safety. Accidental gun deaths have gone down 93% from their peak (a much larger drop than cars) in part from technology advancements (such as transfer bars) and through education, led by… guess who… the NRA.
Obama: “Air bags make a lot sense, let's try those out.”
Airbags were not the government’s idea. These advancements came through the industry and market demand. It was only after most cars had airbags when the government steps in and mandates that the rest of the cars must also have airbags. Obama said that no other industry is treated like guns… well he’s right, but the exact opposite of the point he is trying to make. In no other industry does the government try and dictate and drive technology like they attempt to do for guns, especially with the force of crimes and bans. He brought up “smart guns” completely ignoring what the real objection is by basically accusing the industry of being luddites. I wished somebody called him out on that by bringing up New Jersey. He even asked the audience why anyone would oppose “smart guns” because he is completely baffled (though convenient for him it is not a format where people can just blurt out answers).
Let’s take an exact parallel but for car safety advancements. The concept of a self-driving car is currently being developed and tested. An exact parallel would be if the government says, “Wow, ‘smart cars’, what a great idea. Think about how many idiot drivers lives could be saved if we make computers do the driving. I know, let’s pass a law that says after the very first ‘smart car’ gets sold to the public, three years later all cars that don’t self-drive will be banned from being sold.” Do you think the government would do that for cars? Hell no! And this is exactly what they want to do to guns.
Obama: “Now, to me, this does not make sense. If you are a gun-owner, I would think that you would at least want a choice so that if you wanted to purchase a firearm that could only be used by you, in part to avoid accidents in your home, in part to make sure that if it's stolen, it's not used by a criminal, in part if there's an intruder, you pull the gun, but you -- somehow it gets wrested away from you, that gun can't be turned on you and used on you, I would think there might be a market for that. You could sell that gun. Now, I'm not saying that necessarily would be the only gun that's available, but it seems to me that that would be something that, in any other area, in any other product, any other commercial venture, there'd be some research and development on that, because that's a promising technology.”
He’s either lying or is not familiar with the “smart gun” debate, because the gun control lobby is indeed trying to say that would the only gun available, and they are trying to take away the choice from the consumer. If he is being honest with this statement, then somebody could easily explain to him what is going on, and then maybe he would agree with the gun rights advocates on the stance they took.
Obama: “Toys, we say, you know what? We find out that kids are swallowing toys all the time, let's make sure that the toys aren't so small that they swallow them if they're for toddlers, or infants. Medicine, kids can't open Aspirin caps.”
ReplyDeleteIronically, more kids still die from medicine poisoning than they do from gun accidents. What did Obama say about keeping to the facts? Since Obama doesn’t like the idea of storing guns with “dumb” lock technology, are we going to see him advance the use of biometric caps on pill bottles too?
http://www.asthealth.org/medications-leading-cause-accidental-poisoning-deaths-children
Next we go to Mark Kelly’s question: “But, when we testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, we heard not only from the gun lobby, but from United States Senators that expanding background checks will, not may, will lead to a registry, which will lead to confiscation, which will lead to a tyrannical government. So, I would like you to explain with 350 million guns in 65 million places, households, from Key West, to Alaska, 350 million objects in 65 million places, if the Federal government wanted to confiscate those objects, how would they do that?” [laughter]
Again, Mr. Kelly is falling back on the false notion that gun owners only oppose the confiscation of every firearm when clearly the gun community has been up in arms about any amount of confiscations, even small scale confiscations like post Katrina. That said, I’d like to point out a very good point that Mr. Kelly brings up that works quite well for the pro-rights side. He mocks the feasibility of rounding up 350 million guns, which is true. It’s technically impossible (as well as politically impossible). Yet the entire premise of the gun control movement is we can somehow control who touches these “350 million objects in 65 million places” which is even more absurd. This ties into a saying I came up with: gun control operates on the ridiculous premise that you can prevent free people who have free-will (who are not incarcerated- though we’ve deemed them as “dangerous”) from getting their hands on a legal and abundant product. What on Earth would make people think that is possible when we can’t even stop imprisoned people (whom we watch and have some degree of control over) from getting completely illicit products, like drugs?
Superb analysis, TS. Thank you.
DeleteWow, that's TS on steroids.
DeleteYES, the NRA was invited, but they are not interested in civil discussion.
ReplyDelete"but they are not interested in civil discussion."
DeleteAnon, as you can see by reading TS's comment about the town hall format, it wasn't a real discussion. It was submit your question ahead of time to give the President time to get a focus group to help with the answers.
I bet if it had been a real face to face no rehearsal discussion not only would some interesting people on the pro-gun side would have shown up, but the President would have not done very well..
You can't have civil discussion with one who relies on ignorance and fallacy. The NRA was justified in not attending the clown show.
DeleteWhy should gun owners be any different than another group defending their principles?
DeleteI watched it. It wasn't any different than his other town hall meetings. The audience was able to ask questions. If your precious NRA was there, they could have asked questions. Do you think Obama is afraid of the NRA?
Delete"The audience was able to ask questions."
DeleteAs was mentioned earlier, as long as the questions were submitted beforehand.
"Do you think Obama is afraid of the NRA?"
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll meet you for a one on one, one-hour debate with a mutually agreed upon moderator on any network that will take it. No prescreened questions and no gas bag answers. Americans will judge for themselves who they trust and believe on this issue. You or the NRA?” Mr. LaPierre advises in the new video."
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jan/14/nra-chief-wayne-lapierre-invites-president-obama-o/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS
I guess we'll find out.....