Capitol Hill Blue Forums Thread Like Summary - Time for serious control of guns and those who promote their sale, illegal use

By Doug Thompson

As a gun owner, longtime hunter, and supporter of the Second Amendment, I feel it is time to ban the sale and ownership of assault-style rifles. However, it is too late to do so. Our society is riddled with military-style weapons, and stopping the flow now is too little, too late.

I’ve owned AR weapons in the past. Bought them on sale when a gun store was going out of business. Even then, it was a waste of money and I donated them to a museum, along with some other weapons that are more suited for military use.

When I served as chief of staff for a member of Congress in the 1980s, I knew and dealt with the lobbyists of the National Rifle Association. Over drinks at the Capitol Hill Club one night, NRA lobbyist Terri O’Grady told me that what she and others do were “a sham on Congress and America.”

“We serve the gun manufacturers, not the owners of firearms,” she said. “Our sole goal is to help them sell more firearms to more people and block any legislation that gets in the way of that goal.”

NRA executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre padded his personal finances with NRA money, embezzling millions, yet remains on the job because the gun manufacturers feel he is “one of us.”

In other words, a crook. Over the weekend in Houston, at NRA’s annual meeting, the board re-elected LaPierre. As the New York Post reported: “Scandal-scarred Wayne LaPierre re-elected as NRA CEO.”

Reuters reports:

The National Rifle Association board reappointed Wayne LaPierre as executive vice president on Monday, turning back the latest leadership challenge amid corruption allegations and flat membership for the still-powerful gun lobby.

The board vote came as the NRA held its annual meeting in Houston, about 280 miles (450 km) east of the site of a mass shooting on Tuesday, when an 18-year-old armed with an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle killed 19 children and two teachers at a Texas elementary school.

New York Attorney General Letitia James sued the NRA in 2020, saying the organization paid for family trips to the Bahamas, private jets, and expensive meals and clothes that contributed to a $64 million reduction in the NRA’s balance sheet in three years, turning a surplus into a deficit.

The organization claims LaPierre is “reimbursing” them for his lavish spending and embezzlement.

“The N.R.A. is now mainly a media company, promoting a lifestyle built around loving guns and hating anyone who might take them away, ” writes Mike Spies in the New Yorker.

He adds:

Marc Owens, who served for ten years as the head of the Internal Revenue Service division that oversees tax-exempt enterprises, recently reviewed these records. “The litany of red flags is just extraordinary,” he said. “The materials reflect one of the broadest arrays of likely transgressions that I’ve ever seen. There is a tremendous range of what appears to be the misuse of assets for the benefit of certain vendors and people in control.” Owens added, “Those facts, if confirmed, could lead to the revocation of the N.R.A.’s tax-exempt status”—without which the organization could likely not survive.

But the NRA, and LaPierre, survive to fleece its members and America while promoting the sale of dangerous weapons that are used far too often to kill people, including the 19 fourth graders in Texas this month.

It is time for serious gun control and prosecution of those who facilitate the use of dangerous weapons to massacre children.

Copyright © 2022 Capitol Hill Blue

After they buy back all those AR-15s, let's send them to Ukraine.

On a more positive note, CNN had a story about Florida's Red Flag law, passed by Republicans before DeSantis became governor. People get to tell police about anybody who threatens with their gun. Often those are suicide gestures. The police investigate and can go take all their guns for a year. Then they get reevaluated to see if that ban should be extended. I think it said 31 states actually have such laws. The NRA is actively fighting them.

You can't fix stupid pero.

it seems to me that many of the mass shooting are being done by teens. I thought I would google "mental health for teens". I got about 301,000,000 replies. This is a LOT of replies. When I google for something and get a return like that I think that it probably indicates that the subject is being looked at by a LOT of people! It also seems that these kids can be helped if you can get to them they can be helped, I am assuming whoever gets to them are shrinks and also suspect that they are easily led by bad if given a chance. There are also literally millions of these kids in trouble and there is international concern about this as well.

I suspect what it all means that we are going to have to figure out a way to help these kids to actually save an entire generation.

Interesting times..............

Doug, like you I’ve been a gun owner from a very early age. My dad gave me my first gun, a .410 when I was 12 or 13 and I have owned guns ever since. I remember riding my bike 8 miles into town to buy shells for it at the Western Auto. Too young to drive. Now I never owned any semi-automatic. I never had use for them. I had an M-14, then an M-16 and later a M-203 assigned to me while I was on active duty, the 203 is nothing more than an M-16 with a grenade launcher on the bottom, the old M-79.

I also never belonged to the NRA. I’ve always been turned off by them. Neither did my dad or grandpa. I never saw a reason for any civilian to own a semi-automatic rifle, pistol or whatever. I also carried a .45 while in the army. I loved the .45. But once I retired, I thought about getting one. But what would I use it for? I never did get one.

I look at gun control differently than most, regardless of which side of the issue one is on. We’ve been talking mass school shootings. A mass school shooting I would classify as 3 or more deaths. The first mass school shooting occurred in 1968, the UT Texas tower shooting. That one was followed up by 2 in the 1970’s, 2 in the 1980’s, 10 in the 1990’s, 7 in the 2000’s, 13 in the 2010’s and 2 so far counting Texas for the 2020’s.

Which brings me to my point, I believe banning all semi-automatics would limit the damage done in each mass school shooting incidence. But not eliminate them. That the incidences of mass school shootings along with mass shootings in general will increase. Because we have left the cause, the root problem alone. We haven’t gone looking for it. We’re putting a bandaid on a sucking chest wound so to speak. I suggest while we ban semi-automatics, we also delve deep into our society. Compare our society to the society when there was no mass school shootings, pre-1968 to post 1968 when mass school shootings along with mass shootings in general have become a normal part of our lives. In other words, go looking for the cause, the reason that all of a sudden mass school shootings went from zero to many. Banning semi-automatics isn’t about to give us the cause or reason. It’s nothing more than a limiting factor. That cause and or reason remains alive and well. Even with no guns at all, mass killings will continue only by other means, bombs, arson, chemicals etc. because we have done nothing to find the cause, to eliminate it.

Most gun control folks think I’m nuts. I think they’re nuts in expecting banning AR-15’s or even all semi-automatics will stop the killings. Maybe we’re all nuts. My 2 cents.

I think that the solutions are pretty much known and utilized by the the rest of the world! The shame is that the Republicans are quite willing to sacrifice everything in an effort to convince everybody that they are right and the entire rest of the world is wrong! What stuns me is that people are willing to vote for people like that. It also means that the Dems are doing a REALLY poor job of selling themselves to the voting public. If this is right then we deserve to lose our democracy.

I now have high hopes for gun control legislation, because apparently Black folks are rushing to buy guns for self-protection. Soon, White Supremacists setting out for mass murder are likely to be killed by "A Good Black Guy" who had a concealed carry permit. I think that's going to throw a monkey wrench into the thinking of many gun lovers.