Tag Archives: NRA

February 26, 2013 · 11:13 pm

What Researchers Learned About Gun Violence Before Congress Killed Funding

Facts are so inconvenient for some folks….

Some very interesting information from RawStory.com that shows how the NRA, among other interests groups, tries to stop scientific studies that might go against their interests.

And this shows just how explosive facts might be….

But the Right Wing will do all it can to suppress or ignore the facts….

So, they figure it’s best just not to have any….

Saves them so much time and effort to kill or misrepresent them or convince people to ignore them…

President Obama has directed the Centers for Disease Control to research gun violence as part of his legislative package on gun control. The CDC hasn’t pursued this kind of research since 1996 when the National Rifle Association lobbied Congress to cut funding for it, arguing that the studies were politicized and being used to promote gun control. We’ve interviewed Dr. Mark Rosenberg, who led the agency’s gun violence research in the nineties when he was the director of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

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One of the critical studies that we supported was looking at the question of whether having a firearm in your home protects you or puts you at increased risk. This was a very important question because people who want to sell more guns say that having a gun in your home is the way to protect your family.

What the research showed was not only did having a firearm in your home not protect you, but it hugely increased the risk that someone in your family would die from a firearm homicide. It increased the risk almost 300 percent, almost three times as high.

It also showed that the risk that someone in your home would commit suicide went up. It went up five-fold if you had a gun in the home. These are huge, huge risks, and to just put that in perspective, we look at a risk that someone might get a heart attack or that they might get a certain type of cancer, and if that risk might be 20 percent greater, that may be enough to ban a certain drug or a certain product.

But in this case, we’re talking about a risk not 20 percent, not 100 percent, not 200 percent, but almost 300 percent or 500 percent. These are huge, huge risks.

MORE:   What researchers learned about gun violence before Congress killed funding | The Raw Story.

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February 7, 2013 · 7:46 pm

Gun Issue May Drive Women To 2014 Polls

Off-year elections are always terribly problematic for Democrats.  The Republican base of crazies and old, rich white people always shows up at the polls.  The Democratic constituency doesn’t.

That’s how we got stuck with the Republican House and how the GOP took over so many state legislature and thus gerrymandered the Congressional districts to protect the GOP House.  And how so many crazy Republican Governors got elected in 2010….

The Democrats have to find issues that will drive their voters to the polls in these off-year elections.  Gun control may be one of them.  We just have to break through the DC Bubble about Guns and their fear of the NRA.

All the polls say the public widely supports additional gun controls like background checks, banning assault weapons and high volume magazines.  We just have to get the Dems to believe this and come up with a credible and effective messaging process.

That’s always the biggest challenge:   The Democrats just don’t know how to message and make the most of issues that drive their supporters to the polls.

But they may be starting to learn…

From TalkingPointsMemo.com:

 

Women who don’t usually vote in midterm elections — the same women who generally drive Democratic victories — will turn out in 2014 over the issue of guns, according to a recent poll.

The survey released by Women Donors Network, a self-described progressive “community of women philanthropists,” found that a subset of women voters who usually don’t vote in midterm elections are more likely to vote in 2014 on the issue of gun violence.

That echoes what former Rep. Steve LaTourette (OH), now a militant moderate leader in the Republican Party, said on Tuesday when he cautioned his party against sticking too close to the National Rifle Association in the post-Newtown legislative push to reduce gun violence. If the GOP is seen as being in the pocket of the NRA, he said, it could cost the party big with women in future elections.

The survey, which was conducted by Democratic pollster Diane Feldman and Republican pollster Bob Carpenter using live phone calls to 1,500 women, found that “women who may not ordinarily vote in a non-presidential year are among those most engaged with issues of gun violence.” The group also posted a PDF slide deck presenting the poll’s findings.

Feldman explained in an interview with TPM on Wednesday the results mean guns could be good politics for Democrats.

“As we approach the 2014 congressional elections, the question will be to what degree do single women, lower income women, persons of color participate since that’s the Democratic edge,” she said. “And this is an issue that can encourage them to participate.”

MORE:   Gun Issue May Drive Women To 2014 Polls | TPMDC.

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March 19, 2011 · 11:01 am

Avoiding the President | Mother Jones

I’ve noticed this dynamic and assumed it was because the GOP still does not consider President Obama a legitimate President since they think he was born on Mars or something….

I forgot how well he can play them when they go one to one….

May be some truth here….

It is disgusting how the Republicans and special interest groups like the NRA  disowner not only President Obama, but the Office of the President.  Can you imagine how they would have screamed if Dems had treated Bush this way?

Still, in the past there’s always been a bipartisan assumption that the president is the president, and if he invites you to a meeting, you go. That’s broken down recently, and I attribute it to two things: Obama’s appearance at the Republican retreat last January, followed by his healthcare summit a month later. When Obama offered to speak at the retreat, Republicans let him do it. He’s the president, after all. And when Obama initially proposed the healthcare summit, even uber-obstructionist Bill Kristol echoed the old school sentiment: “Obviously when the president invites you to the White House, you go.”

But no longer. Now conservatives do their best to delay meetings at the White House, or they just outright refuse, as LaPierre did. Why? I think it’s partly because Obama scored such obvious public opinion wins at both the retreat and the summit. He’s mastered the art of controlling the conversation and sounding like a voice of reason in settings like this, and conservatives — especially tea party conservatives — don’t trust themselves any longer to come out ahead when they’re negotiating with him. They now consider even closed-door meetings at the White House to be traps, and they are, to put it bluntly, afraid of Obama. I’m not quite sure whether that’s good news or bad.

via Avoiding the President | Mother Jones.

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