The survivors of the Parkland (Florida) massacre created an organization called March for Our Lives, which pulled together a massive event on the Mall in DC in a few weeks after the shootings.
At the time, Trump promised swift action, then changed his mind, and nothing changed. Since then there have been other mass murders with assault weapons, and once again Trump promises to act, the NRA tells him to stand down, and Trump caves.
Now the March for Our Lives has presented its gun control:
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2019/08/gun_control_and_voting_march_f.html
The plan offers the group’s most detailed outline to date of what laws it thinks needs to happen at that level. Described as “a Green New Deal, but for guns,” by one of the organization’s key leaders, it calls on policymakers to:
Pass a federal ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. (A previous federal ban on these expired in 2004.)
Create a national gun buy-back and disposal program to implement that ban.
Create a national licensing system for guns, including limiting firearm purchases to one a month and prohibiting online sales.
Raising the minimum age of gun possession to 21. (Long guns can be purchased at younger ages in many states.)
Create a federal “red flag” law to disarm individuals who are a danger to themselves or to others.
Establish a new National Director of Gun Violence Prevention in the White House who reports directly to the president.
Use a multiagency approach to declare an emergency around gun violence and invest millions in research to address gun violence. (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is currently proscribed from studying gun violence.)
Improve policing and expand suicide prevention and mental and behavioral health programs.
Hold the national gun industry to account by investigating the National Rifle Association, regulating the gun industry, and making a push to revisit Second Amendment jurisprudence.
Institute automatic voter registration for young people.
The plan comes just weeks after a series of mass shootings, in El Paso, Texas; Dayton, Ohio; and Gilroy, Calif. And 23 people have been killed or injured in school shootings in 2019 so far, according to Education Week’s continually updated tracker of school shootings.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There are some interesting ideas here. I don’t know how many of them could ever get past Mitch McConnell, and the president. And I don’t know how many of them could stand up under the 2d amendment.
“Politics is the art of the possible” – Thomas P. O’Neill.
William : A fraud on the American public.” This is how former Chief Justice Warren Burger described the idea that the Second Amendment gives an unfettered individual right to a gun. He spoke these words to PBS in 1990. This conservative appointed by Richard Nixon was expressing the longtime consensus of historians and judges across the political spectrum.
The U.S. Supreme Court didn’t rule that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to own a gun until 2008, when District of Columbia v. Heller struck down the capital’s law effectively banning handguns in the home. Every other time the court had ruled previously, it had ruled otherwise.
The NRA worked to bring its own interpretation of the Constitution through political maneuvering. It supports the profits made by gun manufacturers.
My hope is that the NRA goes totally bankrupt and can no longer buy the allegiance of politicians.
The second amendment is not what it used to be.
The Second Amendment? You mean including that “well-regulated militia” part?
The 2nd Amendment really doesn’t say that individuals have the right to bear arms. It declares that states have the right to maintain their own armies, independent of the federal government. The ownership and use of firearms by individuals was implicit in the Constitutional Convention; it was never questioned; it was assumed. Always has been. Probably always will be.
The Supreme Court ruled in Heller v. DC (2008), that individual citizens have the right to keep and bear arms. “Individuals” and “the people” are synonymous. see
https://www.oyez.org/cases/2007/07-290
The Supreme Court has made disastrous decisions in the past. Look at Citizens United.
This doesn’t mean it is right nor that it can’t be overturned when sanity comes back to the United States. The NRA is paying politicians. Money distorts their thinking. Hopefully, when enough people get fed up with our corrupt system, after enough innocent adults and children have died, things will begin to change.
There are other bad decisions that the Supreme Court has made:
Bennis v. Michigan (1996)
According to the Fifth Amendment, the government may not deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Yet thanks to the widespread practice known as civil asset forfeiture, law enforcement agencies get to seize cash, cars, houses, boats, and other property from people who have been neither charged nor convicted of any underlying crime, if they merely say they suspect the property was connected to a crime.
Kelo v. City of New London (2005,
The Supreme Court allowed a Connecticut municipality to bulldoze a working-class neighborhood so that private developers would have a blank slate on which to build a luxury hotel, a conference center, and various other upscale amenities.
As I already wrote:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked
The Supreme Court messed up.
I am not asserting that the court was “right” in the Heller decision. It is what it is. The Supreme Court has made many bad rulings. You should read “The Dirty Dozen”, about the ten worst decisions the court ever made. My vote for the worst is Wickard v. Filburn (1940). The court mis-applied the commerce clause in a case where a farmer grew some wheat and he had to pay a penalty.
Picture yourself in the U.S. in 1791, the age of muskets. Let’s say your neighbor acquires a cannon, somewhat the equivalent of an assault rifle or machine gun today. You’re nervous your neighbor might aim the cannon at you, or your children while they attend school. What do you do? You gather with your local community and craft a local ordinance banning the ownership of cannons by individuals. It’s allowed by the 2nd Amendment. There is nothing in the Constitution disallowing state or local laws against the individual ownership of assault rifles, machine guns, high capacity clips, RPGs, explosive ordnance, or any other weapons of mass destruction. The Constitution leaves it to states.
What they are proposing is common sense legislative approaches. The Only reason there is a proscription on studying gun Violence is that the NRA knows the data will implicate them as murderers.
Exactly
Bravo to these young people, it’s a ray of sunshine in an otherwise pitch-black deep abyss of depravity, gun fetishism, greed, lies, disingenuousness, misdirection and never ending obfuscation leading to inaction and nothingness. If we continue as we have for decades, it amounts to nihilism and necromancy. We will need total Democratic control of the White House and legislature; the right wing controlled courts and the lax gun law states will always be obstacles to any sane legislation not to mention the gun loving knuckleheads and ammosexuals.
I second that. Well said, Joe!!!
The Dems need three seats in the Senate: McSally’s seat in Arizona, Cory Gardner’s seat in Colorado, and Susan Collins’ seat in Maine. This is doable. Hickenlooper just entered the race against Gardiner.
Democrats need a credible opponent to Collins.
It will be very interesting to see how the Democratic primary there shakes out. Some are now saying that the race is a toss-up between Collins (R) and Gideon (D). Gideon is looking viable because she is raising sufficient money, but she faces two challengers in the primary.
Joe Jersey,
It is a ray of sunshine, but I’m afraid none of this will materialize until the very politicians who keep on voting no on these measures or keep on refusing to even bring them up for a vote are themselves personally and directly affected by gunfire. Until that happens, the empathy will not exist. And I wish such horrors upon no one!
Those in an ivory tower hear not, see not, smell not, touch not, and taste not. They therefore feel not . . . .
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked
I like that a federal ban on assault weapons is first on their list. I know that assault weapons do not kill as many as ordinary handguns, but it matters just to get rid of insanity first, then the stage is set for restoring the second amendment to what it ought to be, by getting a wide ranging gun control law in place. The right to assault weapons for regular citizens is the most preciously guarded part of gun rights advocates, Everything else can be finessed into weak compromises.
Joe,
You’re a great writer and thinker! I like the way you coin words and phrases cleverly.
I’d like to support your notion:
“I know that assault weapons do not kill as many as ordinary handguns . . . ”
It’s like saying that E-bola in the United States kills people far less frequently than car accidents . . . ”
Shame on the Congress and Senate!
These people are a great gift to their nation. We need a Democratic House and Senate and President to turn these proposals into law. Thank you, Diane, for sharing this!!!
From my part of the country, this will never happen due to those who have swallowed the idea that the 2nd amendment is the only one.
As for me I would add one thing and subtract one thing. In this modern time, we do not have a linear path to responsible gun ownership and use. When I was younger, parents went hunting with children and taught not only gun safety and use but responsible hunting and love for the outdoors. Now we need clubs that do this job, and without them, we should not allow for the use of a gun at all. That will, of course, never fly.
The thing I would subtract is the position of gun violence czar who answers to the president. I am not sure that the appointment of DeVos to the position of sec of ed did not sour me forever on the idea of allowing a president to choose someone powerful over some aspect of my life. The power to appoint is the power to destroy (adapted from Jackson’s argument against the Bank of the United States.)
The only one I have significant issues with (I could quibble with several) is raising the minimum age. It’s completely unfair that someone old enough to get his behind blown off for his country or get thrown in prison for life (or even executed) isn’t old enough to have full legal rights in all other fields. If we want to keep drinking, gun ownership, etc. laws at 21, it’s only fair that 21 should be the minimum age to enter the military, and the juvenile justice system should extend until age 21 (with no being tried as an adult sooner). Since that’s never going to happen, adults should be full adults at 18 with all rights and responsibilities.
I would fully support extending the age for military service and being tried as an adult to 21. Having taught teenagers recently, I can vouch for how immature and addled many 18 year olds are. We know from longitudinal MRI studies that parts of the prefrontral cortex that govern planning and self-control aren’t even fully developed until around the age of 26. This is not surprise, of course, because we all remember (or most of us do) the impulsiveness of our youthful selves. Impulsiveness + powerful emotions unchecked by rational processes and experience + guns–not a good mix. I am extremely fond of teenagers, but they can be extraordinarily crazy. I sometimes think that it’s a wonder that so many make it into adulthood.
cx: surprising
I agree, Bob.
Trump is one such example of an individual who never made it to adulthood.
I know for a fact that he has barely entered adolescence and has stayed there and will remain there the rest of his horrific life.
How dangerous it has been to have a man-child for POTUS. Obama was an angry, hollow man-child as well, but at least he and his public-school shuttering wife had the decency to exercise social skills to always act like adults. Why can’t Trump just be more like Obama?
It makes you wish for Obama to be POTUS again.
Man-child in the Promised Land
In a truly surprising and unpredictable development (hee hee), Sarah (Miss Communications) Huckster-bee Slanders is joining Faux News, where she will doubtless maintain the same standards for honest reporting in service to the greater good that she exhibited in her previous position as Excusator for the Jabba the Trump Whiter House.
SS: When the President said, “s–th–le countries,” he meant “especially delightful like your grandma’s ambrosia salad,” and I am not going to comment further on that.
Applause to the youth who are the only ones pursuing this with persistence.
However, all the lists of common sense laws reacting to the suburban school shootings and the mass attacks somehow miss that kids are dying on porches and streets routinely. In the last two months in our city, over a dozen CHILDREN have been shot and killed.
1 – Change the culture. So the first step must be addressing the culture of guns with the corollary fear mongering and race baiting and putting “rights over responsibility.”. Which is compounded when the culture of guns, jerking the public around, zero responsibility and the actual fear mongering and race baiting comes from the White House ….
And, how about boycotting sporting goods stores that sell more than hunting rifles and legal guns. SHAME ON POLITICIANS who accept a penny from the NRA. Eliminate advertising.
2 – Deal with what’s legal. There are guns purchased legally (and who cares dienne77 if you can drink at 18 your an adult so 18 is ok to own a gun. C’mon – kids are dying). But start with what’s legal – AK-47s, long rifles and other mass murder weapons could be eliminated – won’t be but could be.
And, background checks, internet and gun fairs could be regulated – won’t be but could be.
Deal with what’s not legal: Stolen guns and modified guns. The only recommendation that gets to that is buy back. First – Big time big money year long buy back. Then, on the day after that one year, kick up the consequences for illegally owned and owning modified guns.
Make it a 10 year plan, not a one-time symbolic piece of legislation that will do nothing.
Applause for the youth for taking this on, seriously and persistently – why are they the only ones?
The Orange Swamp Monster is mentally challenged. This is a blatant misusage of creative thinking.
…………………………………………..
Trump said doctors left operating rooms to greet him after mass shootings. Hospitals in Dayton and El Paso say that’s not true.
August 23, 2019
Speaking to reporters on the White House’s South Lawn on Wednesday, President Trump claimed he was warmly welcomed at hospitals in the wake of recent mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, and intimated that surgeons had even deserted their patients to meet him.
“The doctors were coming out of the operating rooms,” Trump said. “There were hundreds and hundreds of people all over the floor. You couldn’t even walk on it.”
But the hospitals he visited say that isn’t what happened — and that doctors would never pause surgery to greet the president.
“At no time did, or would, physicians or staff leave active operating rooms during the presidential visit,” Ryan Mielke, a spokesman for the University Medical Center of El Paso, said in a statement to The Washington Post on Thursday. “Our priority is always patient care.”…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/23/trump-el-paso-hospital-doctors-operating-rooms/
She sold her soul to the Donald.
Just cleaning up some dust Donalds here
The Donald Wears Prada
Well, speak of the Donald!
Do that and there will be the Donald to pay!
He had a Donald may care attitude.
Oh Lord, I am having a Donald of a time here!
To play the Donald’s advocate, what if the moon was made of cheese?
That fellow is the Donald incarnate!
I’m doing it, and the Donald take the hindmost!
You didn’t deserve that, you lucky Donald you!
They were completely lost, somewhere between the Donald and the deep blue sea.
Bob Shepherd: Trump is getting more deranged everyday. He is truly scary. The IDIOT continues to rule the world by Twitter and holds no serious press conferences. He is now ordering corporations to no longer work in China. [Who listens and obeys his daily rantings besides Faux.]
……………..
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
· 1h
Replying to @realDonaldTrump
….better off without them. The vast amounts of money made and stolen by China from the United States, year after year, for decades, will and must STOP. Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing..
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
….your companies HOME and making your products in the USA. I will be responding to China’s Tariffs this afternoon. This is a GREAT opportunity for the United States. Also, I am ordering all carriers, including Fed Ex, Amazon, UPS and the Post Office, to SEARCH FOR & REFUSE,….
26.1K
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He freaking thinks he is Stalin and can order companies not to buy from China. Good Lord. Meds. He needs meds. Now.
Trump is loosing it.
Trump is mentally deranged. He makes up his own versions of reality and nobody can ever do anything as well as him. According to the nation’s leading psychological experts Trump’s narcissistic mental state puts him in the exact same category as a number of infamous tyrannical dictators like Muammar Gaddafi, Adolf Hitler, and Saddam Hussein.
Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman said Trump is “obviously mentally ill.”
Harvard professor and renowned research scientist Howard Gardner said that Trump is “a textbook narcissist.”
A registered psychotherapist from Johns Hopkins University Medical School, John D. Gartner, says that Trump is one with a serious problem.
…………………………………………………………………
President Donald Trump hammered NBC reporter Peter Alexander while slamming the media at large during a wild White House press spray on Wednesday.
As Trump touted his economic policy amid recent troubling recent developments, he swatted at Alexander for asking about his attacking Joe Biden for his gaffes when “you said that the mass shooting happened in Toledo, when it happened in Dayton.”
“This guy is the most biased reporter,” Trump fumed. “I made a lot of money for NBC with the The Apprentice and I used to like them, but they are the most biased. Peter, you should be able to ask a question, same question, in a better way. You are so obviously biased and that’s why the public has no confidence in the media.”
“NBC News has less credibility in my opinion with guys like you than CNN,” Trump said before turning to attack CNN’s Kaitlan Colins. “You hear what I said? NBC has less credibility than CNN. That’s not saying much.”
Bad news. RuthBader Ginsburg is being treated for pancreatic cancer
She should have retired in 2013 when was 80
Trump is once again blaming others for his shortcomings. He never stops. I wish he’d be officially declared mentally incompetent.
……………………………………………………………….
Jerome Powell was appointed chair of the Federal Reserve by Trump in February 2018. Speaking at the Fed’s annual Jackson Hole symposium at 10 a.m., Powell said Friday that uncertain trade environments have created a “new challenge” for policymakers and vowed to “act as appropriate to sustain the expansion” in the U.S. economy, according to the Financial Times.
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
· 6h
As usual, the Fed did NOTHING! It is incredible that they can “speak” without knowing or asking what I am doing, which will be announced shortly. We have a very strong dollar and a very weak Fed. I will work “brilliantly” with both, and the U.S. will do great…
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
….My only question is, who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?
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Great idea.
………………………….
Let’s ‘gut check’ all of Trump’s vulgar, unpresidential statements
by Dana Milbank
…Instead of a fact check, I propose a “gut check” of how unpresidential Trump is. Instead of Geppetto and Pinocchio, this uses Beauty and the Beast.
One Beast: Routinely unpresidential.
Two Beasts: Extra gross, vulgar, narcissistic.
Three Beasts: Downright beastly, uncouth, uncivilized.
Four Beasts: A wild rumpus. We weep for our country.
On the rare instances when he behaves in a “presidential” manner (usually a teleprompter is involved), he will be assigned a “Beauty.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-beastly-is-trump-the-post-gut-checker-investigates/2019/08/23/72b70ab2-c5b3-11e9-b5e4-54aa56d5b7ce_story.html
Well, the kids did it. Due, in very large part, to the activism of Sunrise (organized by kids, who are the real adults in the room…every room), On Wednesday night, Sept. 4th, CNN will host ten Dem presidential candidates (Castro got squeezed in at the last minute, & good for him! Not your Montana guy, though, Diane…a shame) for a town hall strictly on the subject of climate crisis.
&–I am sorry to have to say this–waiting to hear what comes out of Biden’s mouth. Once again, the gaffer gaffed–from the AP (in today’s Chicago Sun-Times: “Biden at Campaign Stop Wonders, What if Obama had Been Assassinated”–in Croyden, N.H., Biden said (&, please note, NO reporter or audience member asked him), ‘”Imagine what would have happened if, G-d forbid, Barack Obama had been assassinated after becoming the de facto nominee? What would have happened in America?” Biden has long been prone to gaffes & misspeaking,* another aspect of his candidacy that has come under scrutiny during his latest presidential run.”
I’ll say!
(Yesterday, a friend bet me that the Dems would replace him w/someone else {no, no one currently running} at the 2020 Convention.)
Well, Michael Moore is calling for Michelle to run…
(I don’t agree w/him at all.)
This is off topic but one I consider very important. The State Department is being decimated by the Orange Swamp Monster. This should be a big concern since our ratings with the rest of the world have gone down.
……
My Final Break With the Trump State Department
By Bethany Milton
Ms. Milton is a former Foreign Service officer.
Aug. 26, 2019
What is there left to defend to foreign audiences, other than a promise that we’re a democracy and that there are future elections to come?
…No one knows exactly how many employees have left the State Department because of this administration’s policies and mismanagement; for every high-profile or well-publicized resignation, there are other officers who quietly decided it was time to retire, go back to school or find a new line of work. A private Facebook group for Foreign Service officers contemplating a career change has moved in the past year from a place for hushed and agonized conversations to a bustling job board with new members joining daily. Analysts have lamented the loss of senior State Department officials, many of whom were pushed out the door in the first few months of the administration. But no one seems to be paying much attention to the growing exodus of entry-level and midlevel officers, who take with us ground-level expertise that is difficult to replace.
As a Foreign Service officer, your job is to support the administration. Without exception. Despite my personal views, I spent more than two years working to carry out the administration’s immigration and foreign policy priorities. I continued to do so until the very minute I handed in my badge and headed to the airport.
But on Friday, I cleared immigration and officially returned to life as a private citizen. And today I have a new challenge: putting my time and energy into helping elect new leadership that serves the true interests of all Americans, regardless of where they were born…