{"id":3843,"date":"2011-01-12T12:15:58","date_gmt":"2011-01-12T20:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=3843"},"modified":"2011-01-12T12:15:58","modified_gmt":"2011-01-12T20:15:58","slug":"how-tom-delay-helped-enable-the-arizona-massacre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/01\/12\/how-tom-delay-helped-enable-the-arizona-massacre\/","title":{"rendered":"How Tom Delay Helped Enable the Arizona Massacre"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jared Loughner was subdued only after his Glock was empty, and he had expended all 31 rounds the gun held with the extended clip and he was following Palin\u2019s advice: \u201cDon\u2019t retreat! Reload!\u201d  Until 2004, Loughner would have had to reload after 11 shots, not 31, because extended magazines were forbidden under the assault weapons ban.  Sadly, that ban was never renewed.  The gun industry makes too much profit selling extreme weapons to extreme wing-nuts for their lobby, the NRA, to allow such a ban to continue.  Of course, it was the Republican Party that killed the ban, and the person most responsible for that was Tom Delay.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"12delay\"If the Federal Assault Weapons Ban had been renewed in 2004, there’s a good chance that its restriction on high-capacity gun magazines would have prevented the Tuscon shooter from killing so many people. So who’s to blame for allowing this common sense law to lapse?<\/p>\n

Certainly not the American public. During the 2004 debate on renewing the ban, the Annenberg Election Survey at the University of Pennsylvania released a poll showing that 68 percent of the public\u2014including 57 percent of all gun owners and even 32 percent of all NRA members\u2014wanted the ban extended<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Enacted in 1994 with the support of Ronald Reagan, the Assault Weapons Ban was politicized during the contentious 2004 presidential race. "I don’t understand the philosophy that says you’re making America safer when you take cops off the streets and put assault weapons back on them," John Kerry said at a rally in Missouri. Though Bush<\/strong> was chastised by Kerry for siding with "powerful friends in the gun lobby," he had claimed he’d sign the assault weapons ban extension if it crossed his desk<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Yet the bill never made it that far.  House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) dismissed the ban as "a feel good piece of legislation" and flatly told<\/a> the New York Times that it would expire even if Bush made an effort to renew it. "If the president asked me, it would still be no<\/strong>," he said. "He knows, because we don’t have the votes to pass the assault weapons ban. It will expire Monday, and that’s that."<\/p>\n

His role in ending the ban made DeLay a hero among gun nuts<\/strong>, who printed up bumper stickers<\/a> that said, "I’m for NRA and Tom DeLay." The NRA invited DeLay to keynote its annual meeting in 2005, just as ethics investigations were ramping up against him. He took the podium and choked up slightly as he proclaimed<\/a>: "I’ve been in elected office for 26 years, and this is the highlight of my career<\/strong>."\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Mother Jones<\/a>><\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to play Republican for a second and take a strict constructionist view of the Constitution.  The founding fathers could not have intended the Second Amendment to include anything more advanced than single shot, muzzle loading firearms.  Therefore those are the only firearms guaranteed under the Second Amendment.  To be clear, I do not support such a position.  As a former hunter in the days when I could do so, and as an NRA Sharpshooter with all nine bars in the days when the NRA was about gun safety and training, not lobbying for assault weapons, I favor responsible gun ownership.  However, I also support common sense gun control laws including bans on weapons, ammunition and accessories not needed for hunting or sport shooting, closing the gun show loophole, and licensing that requires proof of the knowledge and practical ability to use guns safely, similar to what we require to drive a car.<\/font><\/p>\n

In closing, guns are not responsible for the massacre, just as cars are not responsible for road rage.  But that does not mean we should be lax in regulating their use.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jared Loughner was subdued only after his Glock was empty, and he had expended all 31 rounds the gun held with the extended clip and he was following Palin\u2019s advice: \u201cDon\u2019t retreat! Reload!\u201d  Until 2004, Loughner would have had to reload after 11 shots, not 31, because extended magazines were forbidden under the assault weapons […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3843\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}