Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Support Major Gun Control Measures

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The NRA and the gun manufacturer lobby continues to be successful in buying Republican politicians, but a new Washington Post - ABC News poll indicates that the malevolent forces are losing the battle to win support from average Americans.  Indeed, the vast majority of Americans support laws that are anathema to the gun lobby: universal background checks and red flag laws.  Solid majorities support a ban on high capacity magazines and assault rifles and even a mandatory buy back of assault rifles.  The obstacle to such common sense reforms?  Republicans in Congress and state legislatures across the country. If the overwhelming majority of Americans want these gun control measures, there are simple steps they can take, the most important one being to vote a straight Democrat ticket in every election and let Republicans know why they are doing so.  This process can start here in Virginia in less than two months where Virginia Republicans can be paid back for the arrogance and slavish self-prostitution to the gun industry.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post on the poll findings:

Americans across party and demographic lines overwhelmingly support expanded background checks for gun buyers and allowing law enforcement to temporarily seize weapons from troubled individuals, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, as President Trump and Republicans face fresh pressure to act.

Although the poll finds a continued partisan divide on more far-reaching gun-control proposals, public opinion is firmly behind Democrats’ push for action as Congress returns to Washington on Monday. More Americans say they trust congressional Democrats over Trump to handle the nation’s gun laws, 51 percent to 36 percent, with independents siding with Democrats by a 17-point margin — a divide that could have political ramifications for the 2020 presidential and congressional elections.

The Post-ABC poll finds 86 percent of Americans support implementing “red-flag” provisions, which allow guns to be taken from people judged to be a danger to themselves or others. And 89 percent support expanding federal background checks to cover private sales and gun-show transactions. Both measures are supported by at least 8 in 10 Republicans, white evangelical Christians, members of gun-owning households and other traditionally conservative groups.

More far-reaching restrictions also have majority support, the survey finds, albeit by more modest margins. Six in 10 support a federal ban on gun magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

A 56 percent majority supports a new federal ban on sales of military-style assault weapons, and nearly all who support such a ban also back a mandatory federal buyback program for those weapons . . . .

Late last month, Trump backed away from tougher restrictions, telling NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre that universal background checks were off the table.

 “This is a pattern,” said Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.), a leader of gun-control efforts in the House. “They sort of hope time passes and people forget about it. The good news is, the American people are not going to let them forget about it. They’re going to demand that Congress and the Senate do something to reduce gun violence in this country.”

The poll finds a stark gender divide on the gun issue. More than two-thirds of women say they are worried about a mass shooting in their community, compared with just more than half of men. Women are also 20 points more likely to be confident than men that passing stricter gun-control laws would reduce mass shootings.

Women are more than twice as likely to trust Democrats in Congress than Trump to handle gun laws, 59 percent to 28 percent.

A majority of Democrats (87 percent) and independents (55 percent) are confident new gun restrictions would have that effect, while a minority of Republicans agree (34 percent).

Americans’ anxiety about a mass shooting happening in their own community has ticked up, with 6 in 10 saying they are greatly or somewhat worried about that possibility. A partisan divide on that question has widened: Democrats and independents are more worried now than they were in 2013, while Republicans are less worried.

Besides the red flag bill, the House Judiciary Committee is expected to advance a proposed federal ban on high-capacity magazines and a third bill that would bar people convicted of misdemeanor hate crimes from being eligible to purchase firearms — measures that go beyond the party’s previous comfort zone.

The obstacles continue to be Republicans who argue that the Democratic bills would infringe on law-abiding gun owners’ constitutional rights while doing little to prevent the actual causes of mass shootings. That is a perspective shared with a highly motivated slice of the party’s conservative base and promoted by its most aggressive advocacy group, the NRA. 

But there is a rising concern in the GOP that the party is putting itself at risk if it doesn’t take some kind of action to address the epidemic of mass bloodshed.

Again, if you want gun control, vote Republicans out of office.  It is really that simple.

The Unfinished Struggle for Gay Rights

Here in Virginia LGBT citizens can be fired for being LGBT and can face fully legal discrimination in housing.  Meanwhile, poll after poll reveals - both in Virginia and across America - most Americans believe that anti-LGBT discrimination is illegal even as the Trump/Pence regimes works to convince a rightward leaning U.S. Supreme Court that anti-LGBT discrimination should be fully legal and outside the protections of existing civil rights laws. In Virginia in November, 2019, the state of affairs can change if control of the Virginia General Assembly shifts to Democrats and Republicans are voted out of a majority in the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates.  In 2020, the same opportunity for change exists if (i) Trump is not re-elected, and (ii) Republicans lose control of the U.S. Senate. A piece in The Atlantic looks at the unfinished work to be done in the area of LGBT rights and the mess that exists in a majority of states where gays can marry on the weekend and be fired on Monday for being gay.  

To me, the ultimate irony is that civil rights laws are supposed to protect against immutable characteristics such as skin color, country of one's birth, age, sex.  Medical and medical health knowledge tells us that sexual orientation cannot be changed - despite the lies disseminated by Christofascist proponents of "conversion therapy."  Indeed, of currently protected categories, only one is NOT immutable: religion.  People can and do change religious affiliation all the time while others leave it entirely based on things ranging from Christian hypocrisy to the reality that neither science nor historical evidence confirm the gospel narratives.  If any category deserves not non-discrimination protection, it is religion. embracing myths and ignorance is a choice. One's sexual orientation is not. The Equality Act passed by the House of Representatives which contains no religious exemptions recognizes this simple reality. Here are article highlights:

Roughly half of Americans think federal law bans discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Despite four years of nationwide same-sex marriage, despite rapidly growing cultural acceptance for LGBTQ people, despite extensive annual Pride celebrations—these Americans are wrong. Now that all of this summer’s glitter floats have been dismantled and the rainbow confetti has been cleared, lawyers, legislators, and judges have turned back to the ongoing fight over whether federal law does, and should, specifically protect LGBTQ people from being fired, denied a rental lease, or refused service because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
 This year will mark several important milestones in the battle over LGBTQ discrimination. In the spring, the House of Representatives passed the Equality Act, a sweeping bill that would prohibit anti-LGBTQ discrimination in all aspects of public and commercial life, without any religious exemptions. While the bill has basically no chance of gaining traction in this Senate, if Democrats sweep Congress in 2020, it will likely be high on the party’s priority list. In the fall, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case R. G. & G. R. Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC & Aimee Stephens, about a former funeral director who was fired after coming out to her employer as transgender. The justices will consider whether existing workplace protections in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 already cover discrimination on the basis of gender identity.

And yet, the legal status of LGBTQ rights remains murky. As the movement has gained cultural momentum, activists have largely moved away from a posture of compromise—they believe they can win full protections for LGBTQ people in any context, without exceptions. A small but significant group of conservative religious leaders has been working the middle ground, trying to build support for a bill that would protect LGBTQ people but leave space for institutions, such as Christian colleges and Catholic hospitals, to operate according to their religious teachings. But they’ve faced resistance from their right, with prominent pastors and conservative legal groups opposed to any kind of bill that would mark sexual orientation and gender identity as special legal categories.

As America has largely moved on from its gay-rights moment, with many Americans believing everything got taken care of with same-sex marriage, legal advocates on both sides have been left with bitter disagreements about where the country should go next—and the possibility that the status quo will perpetually remain in place.

[Lying and dishonest] Conservative advocates argue that LGBTQ people face little to no discrimination, and that their identities have been normalized . . . . Ask LGBTQ people themselves, however, and they consistently see discrimination in their daily lives: A recent study from the Williams Institute at UCLA found that lesbian, gay, and bisexual people reported much higher rates of being bullied, fired, or denied a job, promotion, or lease compared with heterosexual people. Still, these experiences can be subtle or hard to document. And the incentives for bringing a formal, legal complaint vary wildly, depending on where someone lives: 20 states fully prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, while 28 states don’t. “Because it doesn’t look just like Jim Crow,” said Doug NeJaime, a law professor at Yale University who focuses on LGBTQ legal issues, conservatives argue that “it then doesn’t merit attention.” But, he said, “there’s lots of reasons why discrimination against LGBT people looks different than other forms of discrimination … [That] doesn’t mean it’s not discrimination that needs to be remedied.”

In the past 30 years, the Supreme Court has ruled sex stereotyping illegal; declared sodomy bans unconstitutional; struck down state measures blocking civil-rights protections for gays, lesbians, and bisexuals; and, of course, legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states. But even as the inevitability of legalized gay marriage was becoming clear in the early 2010s, “the narrative really began to take hold that you could be married on Sunday and fired on Monday and lose your housing on Tuesday,”. . . . This question has been particularly fraught for transgender people, such as the plaintiff who will go before the Supreme Court this fall. Ironically, as LGBTQ rights have expanded, it has become harder for advocates to make their case to the public. Before the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, “people could see very clearly the fact that same-sex couples couldn’t get married,” McBride said. “People have a more difficult time understanding the way civil rights work in our country, the absence of protections.” The movement has also developed powerful allies from Wall Street to Hollywood, and those alliances have been used against advocates. . . . “The irony about antidiscrimination laws is: Vulnerable groups don’t get protected until they’re actually … [able to] muster the political power to gain momentum.”

Still, that momentum has redoubled the resolve of LGBTQ activists. Maybe they won’t win at the Supreme Court this time, or get nondiscrimination legislation passed through this Congress. But, they believe, theirs is a cause of progress. They will eventually win it all.

And that has left a number of their opponents very, very nervous.

When the Equality Act passed in the U.S. House of Representatives this spring, there were no amendments on the floor—it was just an up or down vote. . . . The legislation won the vote of every Democrat in the House who participated in the roll call, along with eight Republicans—a clear sign of its broad support. The bill also sent another message: The days of compromise are over.

In recent years, claims of LGBTQ rights have been repeatedly brought into direct conflict with claims of religious conscience. Just this week, the Trump administration proposed a new rule that would allow federal contractors to make hiring and firing decisions based on their religious beliefs and practices; progressive advocates believe the rule will be used to target LGBTQ people.

The Equality Act specifically bars any group from using the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, known as RFRA, to try to opt out of the bill’s protections.

For religious groups and institutions that teach that homosexuality is a sin, and that men and women were created as such by God, the prospect of this kind of legislation is worrying. “It would be years of litigation . . . Hoogstra has been part of a coalition pushing an alternative to the Equality Act called Fairness for All. Her organization, along with groups such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Seventh-day Adventists, believes federal LGBTQ discrimination protections are inevitable—the Equality Act’s passage “was a proof point,” Hoogstra said. They want the final law, whenever it passes, to reflect their needs. . . much like exceptions that were written into parts of the original Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

When the evangelical World Magazine broke the news that the CCCU and the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), which claims to represent roughly 45,000 churches, had voted to support the Fairness for All effort, a prominent group of conservative religious leaders signed a letter of condemnation. . . . The signers included Franklin Graham, the evangelist Billy Graham’s son, who has been known to make inflammatory comments about homosexuality; but also Russell Moore, the head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s political arm, who is often seen as a moderating voice in the evangelical world.

If the Democrats make a full electoral sweep in 2020, holding on to the House, taking back the Senate, and winning the White House, it seems likely that the Equality Act will be on their agenda—and it’s unlikely the party’s leadership will be open to finding a middle ground. Meanwhile, the groups totally opposed to this kind of legislation are preparing for legal war.

The story of the LGBTQ movement has lately been one of triumph, but it’s not clear whether that will continue. Graham, of Georgia Equality, told me he believes some kind of federal legislation will eventually protect LGBTQ people from discrimination, “but I’m not optimistic that it will happen quickly,” he added. In this political environment, the possibility of moderation and dialogue seems almost antiquated. “It really feels,” he said, “like everything is a battle for the soul of the nation.”

My take away?  If one is LGBT or has family members or friends who are LGBT allies, the course of action is simple: vote a straight Democrat ticket in Virginia in 2019 and in the 2020 federal elections.  Religious based bigotry and ignorance has harmed lives for centuries.  It's time to make it illegal. 

Blue Commonwealth Gala - Reflections

Last night's political gathering was quite impressive - and much larger than I had expected.  A friend who is a regular at such things said about 1,400 - 1,500 people typically attend.  But, as the conservative (and typically anti-Democrat) Richmond Times Dispatch reports, 1,800 Democrats from all across Virginia gathered at the fundraiser featuring two presidential candidates -  Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar  - which party officials said brought in more than $425,000.  The event was designed to kick off the fall state legislative elections, but the desire to defeat Donald Trump in 2020 was palpable throughout the evening. 

Many people that we spoke with had never attended before and all seemed committed to seeing Virginia send another message to Trump and the Republican Party.  In 2017, Virginia saw control of the Virginia General Assembly flip from GOP control, with the GOP losing 15 seats in the House of Delegates.  That turned out to be a precursor for the flipping of the House of Representatives in 2018.   The goal in 2019 is to finish what 2017 started and to see Democrats win control of both chambers of the General Assembly which will set the stage for passage of a large number pieces of progressive legislation, not the least of which will be con control measures long thwarted by the Virginia GOP.  The other hope is that 2019 will be the beginning of the defeat of Trump and Trumpism which is nothing less than a cancer on America.

There were plenty of speakers, some of whom I have heard numerous times before (e.g.,Mark Warner, Terry McAuliffe and Tim Kaine), but the true headliner of the evening was Pete Buttigieg - who many first time attendees cited as their reason for attending.   Amy Klobuchar gave a fine speech, but Buttigieg's delivery was stellar.  If his debate performance on June 27th is as good as what we saw last night,it could shake things up and certainly make other candidates look tongue tied in comparison.

Naturally, Virginia Republicans put down the gala and were as arrogant as ever and described Buttigieg and Klobuchar as candidates have "zero chance" and tried to revive the February debacle when some Virginia Democrats allowed themselves to be played by far right operatives and engaged in a circular firing squad.   Similar arrogance and nastiness were on display in 2017 as well and, with luck, a similar humbling will hit the GOP in November, 2019. 

Democrats Don’t Need 23 Presidential Candidates

Time to end McConnell's power.

One has to wonder what kind of vanity pushed some of the 23 Democrats vying for the Democrat 2020 nomination to throw their hats into the ring.  Some have almost zero name recognition outside of their own states and are currently registering close to zero in the latest polls in places like Iowa.  They seem only to be making the process far more complicated while having a snow ball's chance in Hell of winning the contest (polls also show Democrats want a number to drop out of the race).  Meanwhile, some could be engaged in far more winnable and important U.S. Senate races that could flip control of that body to Democrats and end the foul and democracy destroying reign of Mitch McConnell, a man some see as doing more harm than even Der Trumpenführer.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this reality and names some names of those who would be perhaps better serving their party and the country by changing races.  Here are column highlights:

Dear Democratic presidential candidates: I know all 23 of you want to run against President Trump, but only one will get that opportunity. If you truly believe your own righteous rhetoric, some of you ought to be spending your time and energy in another vital pursuit — winning control of the Senate.

I’m talking to you, John Hickenlooper of Colorado, who would have a good chance of beating incumbent Republican Cory Gardner. I’m talking to you, Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana, who could knock off GOP incumbent Steve Daines. I’m even talking to you, Beto O’Rourke, who would have a better chance than any other Texas Democrat against veteran Republican John Cornyn.

And I’m talking to you, too, Stacey Abrams of Georgia, even though you haven’t jumped in. You came within a whisker of being elected governor, and you have a national profile that would bring in a tsunami of campaign funds. You could beat Republican David Perdue — and acquire real power to translate your stirring eloquence into concrete action.

As the Republican Party has long understood, it’s all about power. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) could not care less about lofty words and high ideals. Coldly and methodically, he has used his power to block widely supported progressive measures such as gun control, to enact a trickle-down economic agenda that favors the wealthy and to pack the federal bench with right-wing judges whom we’ll be stuck with for decades.

That’s how McConnell rolls. He exercises his power to its full extent and is not bothered by what you or I or anyone else might think. Charges of hypocrisy do not trouble his sweet slumber.

McConnell is not going to be reasoned, harangued or shamed into behaving differently. The only way to stop him is to take his power away, and the only way to do that is for Democrats to win the Senate.

That will not be easy this time around, but it is possible if Democrats can build on the blue-wave momentum they generated in last year’s midterms — and if they put forth the candidates who have the best chance of winning. But fortune favors the prepared. Good things are much more likely to happen for the Democratic Party if it backs up the presidential nominee with down-ballot candidates who have their own appeal and their own pizazz. Imagine a Texas Senate race featuring O’Rourke, whose near-miss campaign last year against incumbent Republican Ted Cruz resulted in nearly twice as many Democratic voters turning out than in 2014. All of a sudden, Texas’s 38 electoral votes don’t seem like such a mortal lock for Trump. Texas begins to look like a state in which Trump has to spend time and money — resources he would rather deploy elsewhere. Likewise, Georgia’s 16 electoral votes look genuinely up for grabs if the electrifying Abrams is on the ballot. There and elsewhere, whatever boosts voter registration and turnout is likely to help the Democratic Party — and ultimately make our government more representative of the nation it serves.

Who am I to tell Hickenlooper and Bullock not to run for president and to go for the Senate instead? A realist. In a Des Moines Register poll released Saturday, each was the first choice of 0 percent of likely Iowa caucus participants. Yes, it’s early. Yes, Joe Biden could stumble. But will Bernie Sanders stumble, too? And Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg, and Kamala D. Harris, and Amy Klobuchar, and Cory Booker, and all the rest who at least have measurable support?

O’Rourke, at 2 percent, is at least on the map in Iowa. Maybe he’ll light up the first debate and climb in the polls; if he doesn’t, I urge him to assess his options. And Abrams, of course, has a perfect right not to run for anything. I just wish she would reconsider.

We don’t need 23 presidential candidates. Some of you, please, fight for the Senate.