Month: December 2012

No, it’s not the videogames

by David Atkins

Life is full of funny coincidences: the very day I posted my review of progressive videogame Mass Effect on Sunday, than it appears that some lazy journalist reported the wrong identity of the Newtown killer, fingering his brother instead of the real killer. A slew of fools then searched the brother’s facebook page looking for clues about the “killer”, and found that he had “liked” Mass Effect on his facebook page.

That in turn led to a bevy of outcries blaming videogames and Mass Effect in particular for the killer’s violent outburst, rather than his mother’s survivalist ideology, the presence of multiple assault rifles in the house, and the killer’s own mental instability. Even famed videogame expert Donald Trump even got into the action, tweeting yesterday that videogame violence was “creating monsters.” Not to be outdone, David Axelrod tweeted against videogames as well.

But do videogames lead to increased violence? The answer is, predictably, no:

But it turns out that the data just doesn’t support this connection. Looking at the world’s 10 largest video game markets yields no evident, statistical correlation between video game consumption and gun-related killings.

It’s true that Americans spend billions of dollars on video games every year and that the United States has the highest firearm murder rate in the developed world. But other countries where video games are popular have much lower firearm-related murder rates. In fact, countries where video game consumption is highest tend to be some of the safest countries in the world, likely a product of the fact that developed or rich countries, where consumers can afford expensive games, have on average much less violent crime…

Again, with only 10 datapoints, it’s not a perfect comparison. But it’s hard to ignore that this data actually suggests a slight downward shift in violence as video game consumption increases…

So, what have we learned? That video game consumption, based on international data, does not seem to correlate at all with an increase in gun violence. That countries where video games are popular also tend to be some of the world’s safest (probably because these countries are stable and developed, not because they have video games). And we also have learned, once again, that America’s rate of firearm-related homicides is extremely high for the developed world.

Others who have looked closely into the issue agree:

Chris Ferguson, department chair of psychology and communication at Texas A&M International University, has conducted several studies on violence and its effects on youth. Ferguson, who called himself a proponent of gun control, stressed the importance of mental health treatment access and of parents monitoring what their children are exposed to. However, Ferguson said he firmly believes violent video games do not lead to violence in the real world.

“If we are serious about reducing these types of violence in our society, video game violence or other media violence issues are clearly the wrong direction to focus on,” Ferguson told ABC News. “Video game use is just not a common factor among mass homicide perpetrators. Some have been players, others have not been.”

All some self-proclaimed liberals do by buying into the false lines about videogames and violence is deny themselves and their children some remarkable, engaging and deeply progressive stories and experiences, while perpetuating myths that take the focus off the deadly assault weapons and high-capacity magazines where it belongs.

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Gun nuts have the answers. And they’re doozies.

by digby

It took the gun fanatics a couple of days to get themselves together, but they’re coming out of the woodwork now. In case you were wondering what the Tea Partiers were thinking here’s Tea Party Nation offering advice:

Homeschool. Take away the power of the radicals in the classrooms. Makes your kids safer, too.

Back Right to Work legislation for the public sector. Teacher’s unions have helped cement much of this in place. As long as we have group think in the classrooms we will never see the end of this. […]

Work to devolve power back to the parents, the local officials, and the communities. A society that is top-down will inevitably lead to alienation of the sort we have seen here. This young man was twenty years old, and his actions were neither spurious nor random. As an FBI profiler said on television last night, he undoubtedly felt powerless and sought to remedy that. Why does a twenty year old feel powerless? He could leave his mother’s home at any time at his age. He feels powerless because he has lived in an over-bureaucratized society, one run ultimately from a far-away central location. […]

Restrict the sex in movies, television, on the internet. There is a reason why young people commit these sorts of crimes, and sex plays no small part. Their passions are eternally inflamed, and they wander the Earth with no outlet for their overstimulated glands. […]

Support the creation of local organizations to act as “neighborhood watch” for schools. Had George Zimmerman been at the front door instead of some mechanical card reader those children would still be alive. Perhaps it’s time we start asking for volunteers to protect our children. It will require security checks, but isn’t that worth it? This dovetails with the union problem; the unions will fight this measure tooth-and-nail.

Yes, he actually compared the unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin to a deranged mass killer and portrayed Trayvon’s killer as a hero. That takes some real imagination.
Then there’s the obligatory curtailment of the first amendment while fetishizing the second as the word of God. Blaming alienated psychopathy on Big Government is a new one, but unsurprising as is blaming the teacher’s unions, despite the stories of great courage among those underpaid elementary school teachers.

And sex, of course. Always a problem that must be solved no matter what. (The only thing he left out was the little temptresses who offer the boys that evil apple in the first place.)They have a real gift for twisting their distorted ideology to pretty much fit any situation:

Back in the 1980’s the moral relativism movement gained momentum, and the worst sin was the sin of judgementalism. This murder is the most recent fruit born of that diseased tree. Yes, we have a right, nay a duty, to judge. Evil cannot be ignored or dismissed lightly. That is precisely what we have done.

You see it in the schools where children may no longer be corrected. There was a time when teachers actually spanked children; now a teacher is in peril if he verbally chastises a bad kid. God, of course, has long been gone from the schools. We tell children they are animals, and that it’s o.k. to do whatever feels right because it’s “natural”. So we have 14 year old girls getting pregnant, 15 year old boys with venereal diseases and multiple children, we have gang warfare, drug abuse, alcoholism, violence. Revenge is a no-brainer to these youths, who have never been instructed in “vengeance is Mine, sayeth the Lord” and taught that an accounting will be made by the Great Judge later. No; you have to get vengeance now or the injustice will be eternal.

As ridiculous as that is, it’s downright common sense compared to this already notoriously absurd comment by Megan McArdle:

I’d also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once.

Maybe that guy has something about movies and TV after all. But it’s obviously cartoon shows that are dangerous.

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Deficit fever today, deficit fever tomorrow, deficit fever forevah!

by digby

Brian Beutler wonders why president Obama would allow Boehner to keep his debt ceiling hostage, even if he promises not to kill it for another year:

If Boehner drops his debt limit demands going forward, fine. But if Obama’s going to have to call Boehner’s bluff no matter what, at great peril to the economy, better now, with the election fresh in everyone’s mind, when public opinion is on his side, when he’s more popular than he’s been in four years, when Harry Reid has signaled he has the votes to raise the debt limit with 51 Democratic votes.

Put the fight off for a year, and there’s no guarantee that any of those conditions will still exist. We’ll be a year out from mid-term elections, and Democrats probably won’t be as steeled for a major confrontation as they are right now.

Everything else leaking out of the talks isn’t all that surprising, given Obama and Boehner’s known predilections, and the tilt of the scale in the negotiations. But I find this part of it pretty baffling.

I thought pushing the debt limit demands off for a year would make sense if it meant that all we had to do was give up some of the already moderate millionaire chump change and forestall any cuts to vital programs in this round. (Every day those cuts don’t happen is a good day.) But if the president is already willing to give up the chained CPI why in the world would he give in on the debt ceiling fight? What does he have to lose at that point?

As Jamison Foser tweeted:

Budget negotiation FYI: If someone “accepts” X in exchange for Y when Y was going to happen anyway, that means they want X.

The most generous explanation is that they just want to get it off the table at the moment. But they must know that it will result in more cutting a year from now. I don’t know what will be on the chopping block, but unless it’s defense cuts it can’t be good.

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Chained CPI of fools

by digby

Dylan Matthews at the Washington Post gives us a good primer on the Chained CPI being contemplated for the “fiscal cliff” deal:

That adds up to a big cut in Social Security benefits. Imagine, for example, a person born in 1935 who retired to full benefits at age 65 in 2000. According to the Social Security Administration, people in that position had an average initial monthly benefit of $1,435, or $17,220 a year. Under the cost-of-living-adjustment formula and 2012 inflation, that benefit be up to $1,986 a month in 2013, or $23,832 a year. But under chained CPI, the sum would be around $1,880 a month, or $22,560 a year. That’s a cut of over 5 percent, and more as you go further and further into the future.

The results by using chained CPI for taxes are also striking. The Tax Policy Center calculated the income tax increases that would be caused by a switch to chained CPI. They’re not big — a little more than $100 a year for most families — but they’re oddly regressive:

The group getting the biggest tax hike is families making between $30,000 and $40,000 a year. Their increase is almost six times that faced by millionaires. That’s because millionaires are already in the top bracket, so they’re not being pushed into higher marginal rates because of changing bracket thresholds. While a different inflation measure might mean that the cutoff between the 15 percent and 25 percent goes from $35,000 to $30,000, the threshold for the top 35 percent bracket is already low enough that all millionaires are paying it. Some of their income is taxed at higher rates because of lower thresholds down the line, but as a percentage of income that doesn’t amount to a whole lot.

All told, chained CPI raises average taxes by about 0.19 percent of income. So, taken all together, it’s basically a big (5 percent over 12 years; more, if you take a longer view) across-the-board cut in Social Security benefits paired with a 0.19 percent income surtax. You don’t hear a lot of politicians calling for the drastic slashing of Social Security benefits and an across-the-board tax increase that disproportionately hits low earners. But that’s what they’re sneakily doing when they talk about chained CPI.

That’s why watchdog groups like the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities argue that the only fair way to do chained CPI would be to pair it with an increase in Social Security benefits, and to exempt Supplemental Security Income, which provides support for impoverished elderly, disabled and blind people. Otherwise, it’s just a typical “raise taxes, cut benefits” plan, and an arguably regressive one at that.

This is the deal I most worried about: chump change from millionaires in exchange for painful cuts to vital government programs that help average people. They’ll call it a tweak, a little accounting change. And no doubt the Democrats will tout the tax hikes as the holy grail that shows the kind of tough, deficit cutting. But the only people who will really sacrifice and sufferare the people at the lower end of the income scale. The top 1% will be “paying a little bit more” which they will not even notice. That’s wrong.

Especially because if you believe that deficit reduction is the be all and end all, there’s a better way:

Several high-profile defense think tanks from across the political spectrum are on relatively the same page, in terms of what kind of financial hit the Pentagon should take in the coming decade, according to a recently released report.

The study, compiled by Washington-based National Security Network, found the average spending reduction to DOD coffers recommended by these think thanks came to just over $510 billion over the next ten years.

That number dwarfs the $100 to $300 billion top defense industry leaders proposed in early December as the most budget reductions the Pentagon could handle, while maintaining national security priorities worldwide.

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Stop the austerity insanity

by digby

Krugman tries, once again, to educate people about the budget. I wish the Villagers in charge would listen.

He starts by pointing out that we have our current deficit cannot be helped by cutting the social insurance programs of the future. And then shows that the long term problem of health care costs and an aging population will not be solved through making the population sicker and poorer in their old age.

But then he takes on the present fiscal challenges:

[L]et’s talk about the numbers.

The first thing we need to ask is what a sustainable budget would look like. The answer is that in a growing economy, budgets don’t have to be balanced to be sustainable. Federal debt was higher at the end of the Clinton years than at the beginning — that is, the deficits of the Clinton administration’s early years outweighed the surpluses at the end. Yet because gross domestic product rose over those eight years, the best measure of our debt position, the ratio of debt to G.D.P., fell dramatically, from 49 to 33 percent.

Right now, given reasonable estimates of likely future growth and inflation, we would have a stable or declining ratio of debt to G.D.P. even if we had a $400 billion deficit. You can argue that we should do better; but if the question is whether current deficits are sustainable, you should take $400 billion off the table right away.

That still leaves $600 billion or so. What’s that about? It’s the depressed economy — full stop.

First of all, the weakness of the economy has led directly to lower revenues; when G.D.P. falls, the federal tax take falls too, and in fact always falls substantially more in percentage terms. On top of that, revenue is temporarily depressed by tax breaks, notably the payroll tax cut, that have been put in place to support the economy but will be withdrawn as soon as the economy is stronger (or, unfortunately, even before then). If you do the math, it seems likely that full economic recovery would raise revenue by at least $450 billion.

Meanwhile, the depressed economy has also temporarily raised spending, because more people qualify for unemployment insurance and means-tested programs like food stamps and Medicaid. A reasonable estimate is that economic recovery would reduce federal spending on such programs by at least $150 billion.

Putting all this together, it turns out that the trillion-dollar deficit isn’t a sign of unsustainable finances at all. Some of the deficit is in fact sustainable; just about all of the rest would go away if we had an economic recovery.

There has always been some fantasy, mostly held by people who are about to be fleeced by Wall Street sharpies, that this country should be run like a cash business. It cannot and should not be done that way. (Ask Mitt Romney about the role of debt in a modern economy.) The problem is that this focus on debt is making it impossible to do the things we need to do to spur economic growth in the short term, which would close the deficit, and apparently the only way anyone in Washington can see to get around that is to sell off the future security of American citizens as some sort of human sacrifice for no good reason. It simply is not necessary, as Krugman shows.

John Boehner came up with a new “offer” this week-end to raise the rates on those who make a million or more each year and also agreed to take the debt ceiling off the table for the next year. Krugman thinks this is a bad deal which Obama has no good reason to take — and I would agree with him if I didn’t still see a very dangerous possibility that the administration wants to pursue some unacceptable spending cuts in order to deliver on that “balanced approach.” A looming debt ceiling fight is a very good excuse for them to do that. If kicking the can down the road another year will stop them from cutting more spending, then I’m inclined to say take the deal.

Obviously, this whole thing is ridiculous. They should get rid of this idiotic debt ceiling vote altogether: after all once they appropriate the funds they’ve agreed to pay for them whether through taxation or borrowing. This yearly vote allows them to get credit for the goodies and then later refuse to pick up the tab. But unless they are willing to give it up completely, I’d be glad to at least see it be delayed until the White House stops talking about cutting vital programs.

And yes, the taxes should go up for all income over $250,000. They can afford it. But not if the price is changing to the Chained CPI which will take the food out of the mouths of 90 year old women and squeeze veterans and disabled people who can’t afford it. In other words, the devil is in the details. If Obama hangs tough as Krugman prescribes and wins on all these points without giving up the store (also known as “making tough choices ” his own base “won’t like”) then I say go for it. I’m just not sure I have much faith that’s the game plan. If it isn’t, then maybe he should take Boehner’s offer, repeal the sequester and put this to bed for the time being. There’s been more than enough cutting already to drag this economy down. Let’s see what happens if we stop the austerity insanity for a while.

Update: This is why I worry

The two men met for about 45 minutes, according to the White House, and neither side is providing any information. However, people in both parties say that Mr. Boehner, for the Republicans, is not pressing any more for an increase in the Medicare eligibility age to 67 from 65, while Mr. Obama has indicated that for the right deal he would support switching to a new inflation formula for federal programs, one that would have the effect of reducing future cost-of-living payments for Social Security beneficiaries.

No. That’s a terrible, terrible idea. And it won’t be fully mitigated by the so-called “bump-up”:

As part of deficit-reduction negotiations, some policy makers have proposed switching to the chained consumer price index (CPI) to calculate the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for Social Security and other programs. The chained CPI would lower the annual COLA, reducing the value of Social Security benefits more and more over time. It is not a more accurate measure of inflation for the elderly – and it would be especially harmful to women, because on average they live longer than men, rely more on income from Social Security, and are already more likely to be poor.

Recognizing that the chained CPI targets the oldest, poorest Americans, some deficit-reduction plans propose an increase in Social Security benefits for long-term beneficiaries in an attempt to mitigate the cuts from the chained CPI. This analysis
examines how effective the “20-year benefit bump-up” proposed in the Bowles-Simpson Fiscal Commission report would be in protecting the typical single elderly woman – a woman with an initial benefit of $1,100 per month, the median benefit for single women 65 and older – and other vulnerable beneficiaries from the impact of the
chained CPI.

For the typical single elderly woman:

• The cut from the chained CPI would
reduce her monthly benefits by an
amount equal to the cost of one week’s
worth of food each month at age 80.
She would still have two years to wait
before receiving any help from the
bump-up.

• The Bowles-Simpson bump-up would
restore her monthly benefits to current law levels for only two years – and then
benefits would fall behind again.

• By age 95, the cut in her benefits would
equal the cost of three days’ worth of
food each month.

This is why we called it the “catfood commission”.

There is no good reason to do this. There is plenty of money in our society for the most vulnerable to be adequately taken care of while still allowing the “job creators” the ability to buy their disposable luxury goods and pay the servants. Just say no to this.

Update II:

Never mind. If this is right, we’re screwed:

Boehner offered to let tax rates rise for income over $1 million. The White House wanted to let tax rates rise for income over $250,000. The compromise will likely be somewhere in between. More revenue will come from limiting deductions, likely using some variant of the White House’s oft-proposed, oft-rejected idea for limiting itemized deductions to 28 percent. The total revenue raised by the two policies will likely be a bit north of $1 trillion. Congress will get instructions to use this new baseline to embark on tax reform next year. Importantly, if tax reform never happens, the revenue will already be locked in.

On the spending side, the Democrats’ headline concession will be accepting chained-CPI, which is to say, accepting a cut to Social Security benefits. Beyond that, the negotiators will agree to targets for spending cuts. Expect the final number here, too, to be in the neighborhood of $1 trillion, but also expect it to lack many specifics. Whether the cuts come from Medicare or Medicaid, whether they include raising the Medicare age, and many of the other contentious issues in the talks will be left up to Congress.

The deal will lift the spending sequester, but it will be backed up by, yes, another sequester-like policy. I’m told that the details on this next sequester haven’t been worked out yet, but the governing theory is that it should be more reasonable than the current sequester. That is to say, if the two parties can’t agree on something better, then this should be a policy they’re willing to live with.

On stimulus, unemployment insurance will be extended, as will the refundable tax credits. Some amount of infrastructure spending is likely. Perversely, the payroll tax cut, one of the most stimulative policies in the fiscal cliff, will likely be allowed to lapse, which will deal a big blow to the economy.

As for the debt ceiling, that will likely be lifted for a year, at least. In contrast to a week or so ago, when the White House was very intent on finishing the debt ceiling fight now, they’re sounding considerably less committed to securing a long-term increase in these negotiations. The argument winning converts, I’m told, is that since the White House won’t negotiate on the debt ceiling now and won’t negotiate on it later, there’s little reason to make it the sine qua non of a deal.

As is always the case, the negotiations could fall apart, or the deal could change. But right now, the participants sound upbeat, surprised at how quickly the process has moved from evident disaster to near-agreement, and fairly comfortable with where they think they’ll end up.

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Money isn’t everything, but it isn’t nothing either

by digby

FYI:

The National Rifle Association accounts for about 60 percent of what gun rights interest groups spent on lobbying in 2011 and the first three quarters of 2012. The other gun rights advocates include the Gun Owners of America; the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms; The National Shooting Sports Foundation; Safari Club International; Boone & Crockett Club, a group that aims to preserve a “hunting heritage”; and The Ohio Gun Collectors Association.

The NRA alone has spent more than ten times as much as gun control interest groups on lobbying in 2011 and the first three quarters of 2012.

Since 2006, 15 different organizations have mentioned the words “gun control” in their lobbying reports. Smith and Wesson, one of the nation’s largest firearms manufacturers, has done so most frequently, mentioning the term 115 times. The National Rifle Association has the second-most mentions at 68. 

For gun rights groups, 2012 was the most active election cycle since 2000. They contributed a total of $3 million to candidates, 96 percent of them Republicans, through mid-October. That also makes 2012 its most Republican election cycle, with 2000 and 2002 close behind with 93 percent of contributions going to Republicans. 

By contrast, gun control groups contributed less in this election cycle than in any cycle as far back as OpenSecrets has data (1990) — again, through mid-October. After campaign spending peaked in 2000 with $581,000, politicians only saw $4,000 from gun control groups this year. All of those recipients were Democrats: Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), losing candidate Lori Saldana (D-Calif.), and Sen.-elect Tim Kaine (D-Va.) The interest group is made up of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and the Violence Policy Center. None of those groups are active enough to warrant their own pages on OpenSecrets.org.

On the other hand, as David eloquently laid out over the week-end, there’s this from Greg Sargent:

Ron Brownstein did a deep dive into older polling data and moved the ball further, establishing that the groups Obama relied upon for reelection — the emerging coalition of the Democratic Party’s future — are all behind gun control.

Now we have a brand new Washington Post/ABC News poll that really drives this home. What’s really striking is that opposition to stricter gun control is largely driven by white men — blue collar white men in particular.

The question really is this: do we have a democracy or do we have a plutocracy?

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by tristero

We are going to have some kind of a ban on assault weapons – Obama has been as clear as he can be about that. There will be many arguments about exactly how to implement such a ban. It will be difficult to accomplish but we must remember one thing:

Accordingly, this is great news:

“NBC’s Meet the Press said it had invited the 31 senators, Republican and Democrat, who openly oppose stricter gun control laws to appear on the programme with Bloomberg and Feinstein. None accepted.

The National Rifle Association, the largest and most influential of the gun rights lobby groups, has been similarly silent since the massacre.”

Excellent.

And for many very good reasons the anti-ban lobbyists should remain off the media. After all, they have nothing serious to contribute to the discussion of how to ban guns because they never bothered to address the possibility. Therefore, they are irrelevant to the present debate. Remember: The debate over whether there will be a ban is over. The fanatics who love the idea of making it easy for lunatics to get their hands on combat-grade weaponry lost. 


Of course, the NRA, etc will be back. And they will try to deliberately roll back the question to whether guns should be banned. The best thing we can do is to put pressure both on politicians and the media to make sure the debate remains focused only on how to ban guns.

It will not be easy to convince both the media and the politicians to stay on topic in the face of the enormous pressure the extremists will bring to re-open an argument that has been settled.

Time for gun control advocates to pull out all the stops.

No, more guns won’t help

by David Atkins

Digby touched on this briefly yesterday, but it bears repeating: more guns won’t help, and armed civilians haven’t stopped a gun massacre in at least three decades despite an exploding proliferation of guns. Mother Jones makes the obvious point:

we set out to track mass shootings in the United States over the last 30 years. We identified and analyzed 62 of them, and one striking pattern in the data is this: In not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun. Moreover, we found that the rate of mass shootings has increased in recent years—at a time when America has been flooded with millions of additional firearms and a barrage of new laws has made it easier than ever to carry them in public. And in recent rampages in which armed civilians attempted to intervene, they not only failed to stop the shooter but also were gravely wounded or killed.

America has long been heavily armed relative to other societies, and our arsenal keeps growing. A precise count isn’t possible because most guns in the United States aren’t registered and the government has scant ability to track them, thanks to a legislative landscape shaped by powerful pro-gun groups such as the National Rifle Association. But through a combination of national surveys and manufacturing and sales data, we know that the increase in firearms has far outpaced population growth. In 1995 there were an estimated 200 million guns in private hands. Today, there are around 300 million—about a 50 percent jump. The US population, now over 314 million, grew by about 20 percent in that period. At this rate, there will be a gun for every man, woman, and child before the decade ends.

There is no evidence indicating that arming Americans further will help prevent mass shootings or reduce the carnage, says Dr. Stephen Hargarten, a leading expert on emergency medicine and gun violence at the Medical College of Wisconsin. To the contrary, there appears to be a relationship between the proliferation of firearms and a rise in mass shootings: By our count, there have been two per year on average since 1982. Yet 25 of the 62 cases we examined have occurred since 2006. This year alone there have already been seven mass shootings—and a record number of casualties, with more than 140 people injured and killed.

Here’s the problem, though: this article was written before the Newtown massacre. It was only updated yesterday with the latest awful statistics.

These self-evident facts didn’t alter the stupidity of our gun debates prior to twenty toddlers and six teachers being needlessly gunned down in Connecticut. And they aren’t likely to alter the debate now, either.

Anyone with an ounce of sense knows that more guns won’t make us safer.

Facts won’t matter here. Only anger and action will. Our side has to be more angry and motivated to act than theirs.

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“The primary obstacle is not constitutional it’s political”

by digby

If you are looking for thoughtful, informative dialog on the gun issue, take the time to look at Chris Hayes’ show on both days this week-end, if you happened to miss them. Here’s just one segment:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I think Chris is the only one I’ve seen so far talking about the chilling possibility that the reaction to this is just as liable to be things liberals don’t like as it is to be a turn to a more reasonable policy. Never underestimate America’s willingness to do exactly the wrong thing. In fact, it seems to be our specialty more often than not.

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Guess who nixed renewing the assault weapons ban?

by digby

Jake Tapper gives us a little context:

[A]ccording to Daniel Klaidman’s Kill or Capture:

“Now Emanuel had his sights set on Holder. The attorney general had gotten off to a rocky start with the White House with his ‘nation of cowards’ speech. One week later, Holder stepped into it again. On February 25, (2009) Jim Messina, Emanuel’s deputy, walked into his boss’s office to inform him of Holder’s latest ‘gaffe.’At a press conference earlier that day, Holder had told reporters that the administration would push to reinstate the assault-weapons ban, which had expired in 2004. The comments roused the powerful gun lobby and its water carriers on Capitol Hill. ‘Senators to Attorney General: Stay Away from Our Guns’ read a press release issued by Senator Max Baucus of Montana-a Democrat, no less.

“Emanuel was furious. He slammed his desk and cursed the attorney general. Holder was only repeating a position Obama had expressed during the campaign, but that was before the White House needed the backing of pro-gun Democrats from red states for their domestic agenda. The chief of staff sent word to Justice that Holder needed to ‘shut the fuck up’ on guns…”

The back story on this is important. Emanuel, as a congressman who chaired the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (and as such helped recapture the House) came to understand that for many Democratic members of Congress is swing districts, supporting gun control was a liability. The “majority makers,” as then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi came to call them, were often from rural or blue collar districts where the NRA was active.

Yeah, he and the Party pretty much came to “understand” that adopting the Republican agenda lock stock and barrel (so to speak) was easier than trying to persuade voters that their interests were better served by Democratic policies. Obviously, if you don’t have any principles, winning is a lot easier.

Here’s that letter from the Senators:

Dear Attorney General Holder:

This letter is in regards to your recent comments suggesting the reinstatement of the ban on assault weapons. We oppose reinstating the ban on the sale of assault weapons, and we call on the Department of Justice to enforce existing laws before it considers imposing any new restrictions on gun ownership.

Your comments noted increased violence among international drug traffickers as a reason to reexamine the ban on assault weapons within this country; however, this statement fails to acknowledge laws already in place that work to address this issue. Under current law, both transferring a firearm to someone knowing that it will be used to commit a violent or drug-trafficking crime as well as possessing a firearm in furtherance of a Federal drug trafficking crime are already federal felonies punishable by imprisonment.

We will strongly oppose any legislation that will infringe upon the rights of individual gun owners. We value our outdoor heritage, and a large part of that is our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Passing this heritage down from one generation to the next is a sacred part of being a Montanan, and something that we will always fight to protect. In the light of the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling of District of Columbia v. Heller, affirming the Second Amendment right to bear arms as an individual and constitutionally protected right, we urge you to avoid any legislative proposals that would jeopardize the Constitutional right of law-abiding Americans to own firearms.

Sincerely,
U.S. Senator Max Baucus
U.S. Senator Jon Tester