A Harsh New Reality for Virginia Republicans

House of Delegates chamber.

This morning Virginia Republicans wake to a new and harsh reality: they are now the minority party with Democrats controlling the legislature and every statewide office.  Some will be quick to try to blame the debacle on anti-Trump animus - Trump's approval rating in Virginia over the summer was under 30% - but much of the fault lies with the Republican base in Virginia which increasingly racist, homophobia and anti-modernity itself and toxic organizations like the NRA and The Family Foundation (the leading hate group in the state) have set the GOP agenda.  That agenda has been one of unlimited guns, feigned "religious freedom" trampling on the rights of other citizens, and efforts to disenfranchise anyone who isn't a white evangelical.  Finally, a majority of Virginians, especially in the so-called urban crescent said "enough!"  It will be interesting to see how the leading hate merchants try to spin this to avoid accepting their own significant role in making the GOP repulsive to more and more Virginians.  Articles in the Washington Post and Yahoo News look at some of the realities of today's morning after for Virginia Republicans.  Here are excerpts from Yahoo News:

Virginia Democrats promised swift action on a host of liberal policy proposals now that they've won full control of state government for the first time in more than two decades.

Democratic leaders said Virginians should expect a higher minimum wage, new gun restrictions and greater abortion rights after their party flipped control of the state House and Senate in Tuesday's election. They also promised ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, making Virginia the final state needed for possible passage of the gender equality measure.

Suburban voters turned out in big numbers to back Democratic candidates, continuing a trend of once GOP-friendly suburbs turning blue. This is the third election in a row in which Virginia Democrats made significant gains since President Donald Trump was elected.

The Democrats' big win was a warning sign for the president and Republicans ahead of next year's election. Higher-educated and more affluent suburban voters — particularly women — have revolted against Trump's GOP both in Virginia and nationwide.

Democrats were keenly focused on gun issues during the election, saying Republicans should be held accountable for failing to pass new restrictions after a mass shooting in Virginia Beach earlier this year.

Tuesday's election could help cement Democratic rule for the next decade, because the winners will decide who controls the next redistricting process.

Poll after poll showed that Virginians want gun control and believe in non-discrimination protections for LGBT citizens. They also are repelled by the GOP's efforts to undermine the Affordable Health Care Act.  Republican refusal to deliver what so many voters want came home to roost.  The Post piece continues some of this analysis:

But singling out Trump as the reason for Republican failures in 2019 “is too easy,” said Mark Rozell, a George Mason University professor of public policy. Rather, he said, Virginia’s GOP over the past decade has gravitated toward the right on social issues and alienated moderate voters.

Gillespie, for example, embraced a hard-line anti-immigrant stance during his 2017 gubernatorial race after having preached the importance of the Republican Party adopting a more tolerant message to attract voters.

“Democrats have had an easy time characterizing the Republicans as out of the mainstream on issues,” Rozell said. “Republicans in Virginia need to rebrand, refocus and broaden their appeal.”

Even before results were announced Tuesday night, leaders of gun-control groups were taking a victory lap at the Democrats’ rally at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Richmond. John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said a key turning point in the campaign was GOP lawmakers move to shut down a special legislative session in July on gun control, in the wake of the May 31 mass shooting in Virginia Beach.

“I think what we’re going to learn tonight is that was a huge political mistake,” he said. “I think Republicans really turned their backs on citizens of the commonwealth by not taking up a single gun safety measure.”

[D]emographic changes in large portions of the state, including a population explosion in Northern Virginia from the early 1990s through 2010, turned the commonwealth from red to purple.

And now?

“At this point, Virginia has become a blue state — how can you call it anything else,” Rozell said. “In a state that was long considered leaning red and two-party competitive at best, who could have predicted that the Republican Party would fall so dramatically and quickly?”

But how Democrats handle their newfound power could determine whether the party remains dominant in Virginia. If Democratic lawmakers push a progressive agenda, for example, the party risks alienating centrist voters. . . . a Democratic operative, said the party’s core of moderate lawmakers — headed by Northam and state Sen. Richard Saslaw (D-Fairfax), who is to become Senate majority leader — retain enormous influence over policy.

“They’re both centrists,” he said. “You’re not going to see a coup from the far left. There aren’t enough votes for that.”

It is definitely a new day in Virginia.  Democrats worked hard to get to this point, but Republican extremism and obstruction of the popular will made their job far easier.  Will the Virginia GOP learn from this debacle?  Probably not given the insanity and toxicity of its party base.

Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Support Major Gun Control Measures

Click image to enlarge.

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.

Let's Talk Honestly About America's Gun Crisis

As regular readers know, I am a strong advocate of drastic changes to America's insane gun laws.  No other advanced nation has the number of guns in civilian hands and no other advanced nation has the gun violence and carnage seen regularly in America.  America is exceptional alright, and not in a good way. Indeed, America's inundation with guns is nothing less than a public health crisis which requires drastic action to address.  While in Charlottesville recently, Beto O'Rourke (family members met him) spoke honestly about the extent of the problem and what needs to be done to address it.  A column in the New York Times looks at O'Rourke's statements and the need to implement actions that will challenge the lies disseminated by the NRA and gun manufacturers and the politicians - mainly Republicans - who parrot the lies.  Here are column excerpts:

Beto O’Rourke has easily emerged as my favorite presidential candidate on the issue of gun control. 

I long ago tired of hearing politicians who are supposed to be in favor of smarter gun laws and reducing American gun deaths and injuries pull their punches so as not to upset the gun lobby and gun lobbyists.

Among other things, O’Rourke’s “gun safety” plan includes declaring gun violence a public health emergency, creating a national gun licensing system and registry, requiring universal background checks, implementing red flag laws and banning “the manufacturing, sale and possession of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.”

Other candidates agree with some of these proposals, and others have additional ones, but I like the full-throated way O’Rourke responds to being challenged on this front.

This week in Charlottesville, a reporter asked O’Rourke, “How do you address the fears that the government is going to take away those assault rifles — if you are talking about buybacks and banning?”

O’Rourke didn’t skip a beat: “I want to be really clear, that that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Americans who own AR-15s, AK-47s, will have to sell them to the government. We’re not going to allow them to stay on our streets, to show up in our communities.”

This was not the first time O’Rourke’s buyback plan has been challenged. Two weeks ago, the USA Today editorial board complained, “Anything smacking of confiscation would breathe life and energy into the not-from-my-cold-dead-hands crowd, endangering law enforcement and likely putting a full stop to any further gun safety measures.”

When asked this week on CNN about that criticism, O’Rourke responded, “This triangulation, calculation, poll-testing every move — that’s what got us here in the first place.”

Finally, a breath of fresh air. . . . we have to start taking deliberate and thoughtful action to deal with this problem. For instance, a mandatory buyback could be met with a constitutional challenge. A voluntary buyback might be most doable.

The scope of the problem is enormous.

According to a Washington Post report in 2018: “There are more than 393 million civilian-owned firearms in the United States, or enough for every man, woman and child to own one and still have 67 million guns left over.”

Furthermore, The New York Times reported in December:

“There were 39,773 gun deaths in 2017, up by more than 1,000 from the year before. Nearly two-thirds were suicides. It was the largest yearly total on record in the C.D.C.’s electronic database, which goes back 50 years, and reflects the sheer number of lives lost.”

We must reduce the overall number of guns in the population, especially those considered weapons of war; we must shrink the market desire for new weapons; and we must set a course to not only pass a new law in a moment but build in the expectation that federal legislation around guns will be the never-ending, ever-adjusting reality.

People interested in reducing gun violence in America have to stop lying about what that would require. Opponents of new gun legislation will accuse its supporters of seeking the worse no matter what they do.

The point is to see a reduction in all shootings. And that argument actually reinforces a need to aggressively fund studies to figure out which measures would work best.

They are right when they say that restrictions on new purchases would place a burden on responsible gun owners — the overwhelming majority of gun owners — when only a tiny fraction participate in shootings. To that I say: AND?! Nearly 40,000 people in 2017 were killed by guns in this country. If a reduction in that number comes with more red tape for you, then so be it.

This is a public health crisis, as O’Rourke points out, and anything we can do to prevent guns from being used in a crime, to prevent a child from accidentally shooting a sibling, to prevent a depressed person from putting a barrel in his or her mouth, must be a consuming priority for all of us.

Even in the radical District of Columbia v. Heller Supreme Court decision in 2008 that established the right to bear arms as an individual right, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the majority opinion:

“Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”

Guns can be effectively and constitutionally regulated in this country. People who want to do so should be upfront and honest about how far they truly hope to go in that regard.

Can an Anti-Gun Youth Voting Surge Save Us in 2020?

To drive a car, one needs to take both a written test and a test behind the wheel.  Once licensed, at varies periods one has to renew the license and your car must be registered every year.  To practice law or many other professions, one needs to be licensed annually and typically must take a minimum amount of continuing education. Yet, in most states, one can buy a military style assault weapon capable of rapidly killing significant numbers of people without any license or even a background check. Why?  Because of (i) a twisted reading of the 2nd Amendment, and (ii) the lobbying influence of the NRA, a front organization funded by gun manufacturers - and as we learned in 2016, even foreign interests. Meanwhile, mass shootings are on the rise and one literally cannot feel fully safe anywhere. Now, the survivors of the Parkland, Florida mass shooting are pushing for both common sense gun control and a voter registration effort that could wreak havoc on Republicans who prostitute themselves to the NRA and perhaps end the misrule of Donald Trump.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at their effort.  Here are article highlights:

The student activists who crashed the political arena after the mass shooting last year at their high school in Parkland, Fla., are throwing their weight behind a new and ambitious gun-control program that they hope will set the tone for the debate following the most recent mass shootings and headed into the 2020 elections.

The students are speaking out for the first time since 31 people were killed in one weekend in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio. They hope their plan — unveiled Wednesday morning — will be considered by President Trump as well as his Democratic presidential rivals and will serve as a catalyst for a surge of youth voters next year.

“You see these shootings on TV every day and very little happening around it. It’s painful to watch. And I think it’s been really hard for me and many of the other students and people that we work with to find hope in this time. . . . “But I think that this plan is something that we can truly — as a country and as Americans united against violence and fighting for peace — can get behind.”

March for Our Lives has been focused on voter registration and outreach across the country over the past year and a half, building a national infrastructure with more than 100 chapters centered on grass-roots organizing. They hope to turn that into droves of voters at the polls next year.

Called “A Peace Plan for a Safer America,” the ambitious platform, which was obtained by The Washington Post, goes much further than the current debate over universal background checks and “red flag” laws, which would apply to people who could be a danger to themselves and others.
 The Peace Plan would create a national licensing and gun registry, long a nonstarter with gun rights advocates; ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines; implement a mandatory gun buyback program; and install a “national director of gun violence prevention” who would report directly to the president and coordinate the federal response to what advocates call a national public health emergency.
 It calls for a “multi-step” gun licensing system, overseen by a federal agency, that would include in-person interviews and a 10-day wait before gun purchases are approved. The license would be renewed annually.
 The Peace Plan takes a holistic approach to gun violence by also calling for automatic voter registration when those eligible turn 18, along with the creation of a “Safety Corps,” which the authors compare to a Peace Corps for gun violence prevention. The plan also proposes community-based solutions like mental health services, as well as programs to address and prevent suicide, domestic violence and urban violence.
 The issue of gun violence has recently become a much more dominant concern for the 2020 presidential candidates. Raw emotions have hit many of them as they have met advocates from Moms Demand Action and other groups whose members have been affected by gun violence.
 “My hope is that they focus like a laser on youth turnout,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said of March for Our Lives’s 2020 efforts, after reviewing the proposal. “The election is over the minute young people decide to turn out. The only reason that Trump would get reelected is if young people stay home. The issue of gun violence is one of the only issues that truly motivate young people to shake off their indifference and aversion to voting.”

Democrats, who in the past would at least nod toward gun owners and do photo ops while hunting, are embracing gun control with greater urgency than they have in any election in recent memory, a sign that they are sensing movement among voters. . . . . nearly 70 percent of registered voters said gun policy was “very important” to them, ranking the issue ahead of taxes and immigration, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.

March for Our Lives is calling for a mandatory buyback of all assault weapons and a voluntary buyback of handguns and other firearms.

NRA spokeswoman Amy Hunter, commenting on the plan, said: “The gun-control community is finally being marginally honest about their true wish list. The simple fact remains their proposals and ideas are out of the mainstream, and most people will understand their real intent goes beyond what they publicly state.”

Hogg called the NRA “the big tobacco of violence in the U.S.” and claimed that “they don’t care about gun owners, like my father.” “The NRA cares as much about gun owners’ safety as the tobacco industry cared about smokers not getting cancer,” Hogg said.

Hogg is 100% correct in his assessment of the NRA.

Virginia's Elections May Show the Potency of the Demand for Gun Reform

With its off-year state elections, Virginia is often viewed as a test case of where issues and voter mindsets are trending.  Now, with Virginia's so-called urban crescent firmly in the Democrat column in state-wide races, 2019 will offer a test of whether demands for sane gun control laws will help flip control of the Virginia General Assembly to Democrats.  After the Virginia Beach mass shooting, Democrat Governor Ralph Northam called a special session of the legislature to address gun control. Despite strong public support for common sense gun control reform, Republicans arrogantly adjourned the session without and debate on the issues and, in my view, basically flipped the middle finger to millions of Virginians. Typical of this attitude is Tommy Norment, current Virginia Senate majority leader, who made obnoxious, derogatory (and uncalled for) remarks about gun control advocates at a CLE - continuing legal education - course where he was a speaker.  A piece in the New York Times looks at Virginia's role in this regard.  Here are highlights

CENTREVILLE, Va. — At door after door, house after house, Dan Helmer, a Democrat running for the Virginia House of Delegates, found voters of both parties telling him one thing as he canvassed for support Tuesday night: Do something about the mass shootings.

“I have it on the TV right now,” Reza Darvishian, a State Department security engineer, told Mr. Helmer on the porch of his home. “I’m sick of listening to all of this stuff.”

The mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, last weekend have rebooted the national discussion over gun violence and ignited a bitter fight between Democrats and President Trump over whether his divisive rhetoric encouraged the violence. Now Virginia’s off-year elections in November loom as the first political battlefield on the issue. Republicans hold only one-vote majorities in both the House and Senate. Democrats are aiming to capture both chambers and pass new gun control legislation next year.

The Virginia elections will help measure the potency of the issue with voters after a series of mass shootings that has outraged many Americans. And it will match the resources of the movement’s biggest supporter, former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, against the National Rifle Association, the long-dominant Virginia-based gun rights organization that faces internal turmoil and a steady loss of influence.

The 2018 midterms marked the first time the N.R.A. was outspent by gun control groups in a national campaign.

The issue is already highly charged in Virginia, which had its own mass shooting in May, when 12 people were killed in a Virginia Beach municipal building. The massacre prompted the Democratic governor, Ralph Northam, to call a special session in July and ask lawmakers to consider a package of eight gun control proposals, including banning assault-style weapons and implementing universal background checks.

Republicans ended the session after 90 minutes . . . . .

Now Mr. Cox and Mr. Hugo are the top targets for Democrats and gun control proponents. Both represent suburban districts long in Republican control where voters have rejected the party in the Trump era.

“This will be the first thing on the docket,” said former Gov. Terry McAuliffe. “People are fired up. People are sick and tired of saying, ‘My thoughts and prayers are with you,’ and they want action.”

The Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund, the political arm of Mr. Bloomberg’s gun control organization, said this week that it would invest at least $2.5 million in Virginia before Election Day . . . . “Virginia is a bellwether state and we are going to be there,” said John Feinblatt, Everytown’s president. “There is no doubt this is a test. This is the next theater for what’s going to happen everywhere in 2020.”

With its odd-year elections, Virginia has a long record of serving as a leading indicator for national contests the following year. The state’s voters in 2009 were the first to reject Democrats in the Obama era, foreshadowing the rise of the Tea Party, and did the same to Republicans in 2017 following President Trump’s election. That year, Democrats swept out a generation of long-tenured suburban Republican lawmakers while coming within a coin flip in a tied race of winning control of the state’s House of Delegates for the first time since 1999.

Virginia remains a complex state demographically and culturally, with wide swaths of rural areas where Confederate flags are common and belief in gun rights sacrosanct. But the current gun control debate comes as the state has nearly completed a Republican-to-Democratic transition in statewide elections, as urban and suburban voters have swung hard away from Republicans over the last decade.

Help make history.  Make sure you are registered to vote and go to the polls in November, 2019, and vote a straight Democrat ticket. If your senator and delegate are in uncontested races, donate time and money to Democrats in competitive races (this is what the husband and I are doing).  We need gun control reform and a host of other measures which will only happen when Republicans are swept from control of the General Assembly.  

The GOP Lie That Mental Health Issues Are to Blame for Mass Shootings

It is amazing to observe the lengths Republicans will go to rather than admit that America's insane gun laws and GOP rhetoric are to blame for America's growing mass shooting epidemic. Once upon a time - i.e., before the Christofascists hijacked the GOP base - Republicans respected knowledge, science and legitimate research.  Now, the GOP base celebrates ignorance and bigotry and rejects science and knowledge, be it in respect to climate change or the tired and false GOP meme that mental health issues - or even more ridiculously, video games - are fueling mass shootings. Far too easy access to guns, especially assault style weapons, and politics of hate practiced principally by the GOP and Trump in particular are the real causes.  An article in the Washington Post debunks the Trump/GOP effort to lie to the public and blame anyone by themselves and their policies and hate speech for the actions we saw over the weekend in El Paso.  Here are article excerpts: 

Every time a mass shooting occurs, the country talks about mental health. Many politicians are quick to point to the shooters’ disturbed minds. News reporters probe for “loner” tendencies or signs of instability.

“Mental illness and hatred pull the trigger. Not the gun,” said President Trump on Monday, after two mass shootings in less than 24 hours.

So is mental illness to blame for America’s mass shootings? Not according to research.

Some mass shooters have a history of schizophrenia or psychosis, but many do not. Most studies of mass shooters have found that only a small fraction have mental health issues.

And researchers have noted a host of other factors that are stronger predictors of someone becoming a mass shooter: a strong sense of resentment, desire for infamy, copycat study of other shooters, past domestic violence, narcissism and access to firearms.

[S]aid Jeffrey Swanson, a professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine. “The fact that somebody would go out and massacre a bunch of strangers, that’s not the act of a healthy mind, but that doesn’t mean they have a mental illness.”

In a 2018 report on 63 active shooter assailants, the FBI found that 25 percent had been diagnosed with a mental illness. Of those, three had been diagnosed with a psychotic disorder. In a 2015 study that examined 226 men who committed or tried to commit mass killings, 22 percent could be considered mentally ill.

Research has long debunked another common explanation among politicians: that violent video games are driving the mass shooting crisis. The idea was floated again by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Trump, who talked of restricting “gruesome and grisly video games."

There is, however, no statistical link between playing violent video games and shooting people, said Jonathan Metzl, director of the Center for Medicine, Health and Society at Vanderbilt University.

A 2004 report conducted by the Secret Service and the Education Department found that 12 percent of perpetrators in more than three dozen school shootings showed an interest in violent video games. Despite a continuing lack of a link, lawmakers and public figures continue to blame the gaming industry.

 “When politicians like President Trump perpetuate this narrative, to me, it is the height of irresponsibility, because it’s perpetuating a falsehood,” Metzl said. 

The eagerness to blame mental health and video games means society is searching for answers in the wrong places, experts say.

“The irony is clearly we do need more robust mental health system,” said Arthur C. Evans Jr., a psychologist who heads the American Psychological Association. “But that’s separate and apart from these shootings."

“We like to think that anyone who kills others is somehow mentally ill,” said Phillip Resnick, who served as a forensic psychiatrist in cases including Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. In an interview last year, Resnick said, “you have to remember, people kill for all sorts of reasons. They kill for profit or love or greed.”

Mental health advocates say comments such as Trump’s labeling shooters as “mentally ill monsters” can exacerbate false stereotypes about the mentally ill.

“When you blame people with mental illness for things like mass shootings, it’s not just untrue,” said Angela Kimball, head of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “It keeps people from seeking help even when they need it. It spreads unjustified fears about the mentally ill and worsens the stigma around it."

Researchers point out that other countries have similar rates of mental illness but a small fraction of America’s gun deaths. Similarly, video games are widespread in Europe and Asia, yet their rates of gun deaths are much lower than that in the United States.

Epidemiologists say that what sets the United States apart from the rest of the world is guns.  America has nearly 400 million civilian-owned firearms, or 120.5 guns per 100 residents — meaning that the country has more guns than it has people. The second-closest country, Yemen, had 52.8 guns per 100 residents, according to the Small Arms Survey.

"Mental illness is not the real issue, because mental illness is something that happens across the globe. Mass shootings? Not so much,” Kimball said. “The sad truth is that in America, it’s easy to get a gun. It’s very difficult to get mental health care.”

Will the NRA Meltdown Aid Democrats and Gun Control?

On Tuesday the Virginia General Assembly will open a special session to address the issue of enacting common sense gun control.  It is a near guarantee that most Republicans in both houses of the General Assembly will continue their slavish self-prostitution to the NRA and gun industry.  Thus, the question of the hour will be whether the NRA's current upheaval and financial meltdown might embolden a few Republicans to reach across the aisle to join Democrats in at last updating Virginia's abysmal gun laws. At the national level, a feeble NRA could harm the re-election efforts of Donald Trump and far right Republicans. For those who care about gun control and responsible government in general, the NRA's troubles are most welcome.  A piece in Politico looks at the ongoing turmoil and possible consequences.  Here are highlights: 

The National Rifle Association aired an avalanche of TV ads and pushed its 5 million-plus members to the polls for Donald Trump in 2016, propelling him in the Rust Belt states that delivered him the presidency.

Now, the gun rights group is in total meltdown — and senior Republicans and Trump 2020 officials are alarmed.

In recent weeks, the NRA has seen everything from a failed coup attempt to the departure of its longtime political architect to embarrassing tales of self-dealing by top leaders. The turmoil is fueling fears that the organization will be profoundly diminished heading into the election, leaving the Republican Party with a gaping hole in its political machinery.

With the Chamber of Commerce and Koch political network withdrawing from their once-dominant roles in electing conservatives, Republicans worry that three organizations that have long formed the core of their electoral infrastructure will be effectively on the sidelines.

The predicament has so troubled some Republicans that they are calling on the famously secretive NRA to address its 2020 plans. Within the past week, senators have privately expressed concerns about the group to National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Todd Young.

With the organization mired in palace intrigue and confronting a daily barrage of negative publicity, some NRA officials are skeptical a 2020 plan will emerge. Many Republicans are convinced the job of turning out Second Amendment supporters will fall to the cash-flush Republican National Committee, which is constructing a massive get-out-the-vote and data machine devoted to turning out conservatives. Jane Timken, chairwoman of the Ohio GOP, said her organization would work closely with the RNC to microtarget firearm owners. The national party, Timken noted, has compiled extensive voter data through sources ranging from gun licenses to gun magazine subscriptions.

Concerns over the NRA intensified last week after the resignation of Chris Cox, who had been the head of its lobbying arm since 2002. . . . . With Cox gone, it's an open question who will oversee the NRA’s 2020 strategy.  “Chris Cox is the guy everybody dealt with,” said Steven Law, president of the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC closely aligned with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The organization's troubles are hard to overstate. The most serious threat is an investigation by New York state attorney general's office into its tax-exempt status. In April, NRA President Oliver North was ousted in an ugly public spectacle in which he declared the group was in a "clear crisis." News organizations have also reported that NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre used $275,000 of the group's money to buy luxury clothes at Zegna in Beverly Hills, Calif., and that the organization logged tens of thousands of dollars in other expenses that benefited its officials.

Trump weighed in on the NRA's problems Tuesday morning, tweeting that the group is a "victim" of "political harassment by New York State and Governor Cuomo."

Issues surrounding the Republican Party's outside infrastructure go beyond the NRA. The Chamber of Commerce, a key player in Republican politics over the past decade, spent just $10 million during the 2018 cycle, about a third of what it spent during the previous election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The scale back has led many to believe the organization, a staple of the business community, is preparing to play a diminished role in 2020.

Meanwhile, the Koch network is gradually shifting away from partisanship and toward policy issues like addressing poverty and drug addiction. The network, which like the Chamber has at times found itself at odds with the president, plans to sit out the 2020 presidential race and is recasting itself in a nonpartisan fashion.

The uncertainty surrounding all three groups is likely to increase pressure on America First Action, a super PAC devoted to backing Trump.

Virginia Republicans May Not Be Able to Smother Gun Control Again

Yesterday, my friend Governor Ralph Northam called a special session of the Virginia General Assembly to consider gun control reform in the wake of the horrific massacre in Virginia Beach last Friday by an individual armed with a silencer and extended magazines - all items legal for purchase under Virginia's current insane gun laws. Coincidentally, I attended a continuing legal education seminar today where the presenter was Republican Senate majority leader Tommy Norment who took time before the seminar began to figuratively take shots at Governor Northam and the majority of Virginians who favor universal background checks and the banning of extended magazines and silencers - things no law abiding citizens needs for self-protection or hunting. If Norment represents the GOP mindset, the special session will be filled with much vitriol and GOP political fellatio of the gun lobby. As a column in the Washington Post lays out, this go round it may be far harder for the Republicans in the General Assembly to smother gun control measures.  Let's hope the column proves to be correct.  Here are column excerpts:

If you want to know how things have rolled in Virginia on the firearms issue, consider that Gun Lobby Day is an unofficial but highly memorable event held every year at the state Capitol on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

“That was so wrong for so many reasons,” Jennifer Wexton, a former state senator who is now a member of Congress, observed about the timing of the pro-firearms offensive. Wexton, first drawn to politics in part by her desire for tougher gun laws, said that the state Senate’s Republican leadership would “put up all the gun bills on that day and kill them, one after another.”

It was quite a spectacle, said state Sen. Janet D. Howell, who, like Wexton, is a Northern Virginia Democrat. “We would have citizens wandering the halls carrying Uzis and other assault weapons,” she said. “That was Virginia, darlin’.”

But it may not be Virginia anymore, or so Wexton, Howell and other advocates of gun safety hope. On Tuesday, Gov. Ralph Northam announced he was calling a special session of the state legislature to take up a package of gun-control bills in the wake of last week’s mass shooting in Virginia Beach. They include many measures that Republicans, who narrowly control both houses of the state legislature, have smothered in committee before.

They may try to do this again. But it will be harder with an election looming this fall and the power on the gun issue shifting toward those who favor regulations that only the most fanatical gun rights advocates would question. They include background checks, restrictions of silencers and bump stocks, and “red flag” laws allowing families to seek the removal of firearms from those they fear pose a danger.

Democrats need to pick up only two seats in each body to take control of the House and the Senate, and after years in which opponents of gun-safety laws had the upper hand in mobilizing and organizing, the energy has switched sides. Wexton says she noticed a large shift after the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

“It’s clear from several recent elections that there’s been a sea change from the old arithmetic that the only people who vote on guns are pro-gun,” said Geoff Garin, who has polled for Democratic candidates in Virginia — Northam among them — for three decades. In his successful 2017 campaign, Garin said, Northam “leaned into support for gun-safety legislation and used his F-rating from the National Rifle Association as a badge of honor.”

Further evidence for this came from 2018 exit polling. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who also faced strong opposition from the NRA, won 82 percent among voters who said they cast their ballot on the basis of the gun issue, far exceeding his 57 percent statewide reelection total.

Almost all of McAuliffe’s gun proposals were killed by the GOP, but Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said that the special session called by Northam puts the party’s gun-control foes in a more difficult position.

“. . . the Republicans in the General Assembly are in a pincer,” Connolly said. “Either they act on the governor’s proposals, which are going to be sweeping, or they risk the rage of the electorate. . . . The patience of the electorate on these issues has been tested, strained and is at the breaking point.”

The changing politics on guns reflect a response to the pace of the threats — and to personal experiences. Democratic state Sen. Jeremy S. McPike (Prince William) told of his daughter’s suburban high school going on lockdown at the end of April after a gun was fired. “As the parent of a kid who was in lockdown, it’s real and it’s frightening to see that nothing’s getting done.

It’s your move, Virginia. The special session calls for a different kind lobbying day, one more in keeping with the spirit of nonviolence that King preached before he was gunned down.

Mass Shooting in Virginia Beach: Will Virginia GOP At Last Support Gun Control?

Historically, Virginia Beach has been a Republican bastion, although during the last few election cycles that distinction is fading as the city becomes more racially and socially diverse.  Yesterday, some of the Virginia GOP's anti-gun control agenda came home to roost as 12 innocent city of Virginia Beach employees were murdered at the city municipal center by another city employee armed with a gun with a silencer and multiple extended magazines - things one does not need if one merely has a weapon for self-protection.  The event was chilling for me since when I worked in the past with a large Virginia Beach law firm and represented developers, I frequently went to meetings in Building 2 at the municipal center which is now a major crime scene.  

As one friend on Facebook asked "How many mass shootings is it going to take before we say NO to the murder merchants at the NRA and YES to gun legislation that actually works?"  Any politician who sends "thoughts and prayers" to the victims and their families yet has voted against gun control legislation is nothing short of a lying hypocrite.  In their own way, they have blood on their hands just as much as the shooter who from the facts known fits the pattern of the quiet loner filled with hate inside - precisely who should not have a gun with multiple extended magazines.  I suspect as more information becomes known, it will be found that the shooter legally purchased the weapon and magazines used to snuff out 12 lives. Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring summed it up well:

In recent years there have been mass shootings at American elementary schools, colleges, government buildings, offices, concerts, movie theaters, nightclubs…even churches, mosques, and synagogues. We have to do more to stop this kind of violence. Life doesn’t have to be this way, and it shouldn’t be this way.

New Zealand acted decisively in the wake of its recent mass shooting.  The usual suspects will whine that now is not the time to talk gun control, which is patently untrue.  The USA could do the same as New Zealand if politicians ceased taking NRA and gun manufacturer gun money and voted for common sense gun control that included strict background checks and rigidly restricted automatic weapons and extended magazines. 

Come November, the entire Virginia General Assembly is up for election.  Take the time to register to vote and get out and vote for pro-gun control candidates - which will mean voting a straight Democrat ticket.  Vote the political whores of the NRA and gun lobby out of office. Regular mass shootings does NOT have to be the norm.

2 Dead Young Heroes: It’s Time to Stand Up to Guns

The family of Riley Howell who died stopping a gunman.

Growing up I attended a small rural school system where a number of students, especially the boys, hunted and had guns in their homes.  Most such guns were hunting rifles and no one to my knowledge possessed military style assault rifles. Yet, despite this availability of guns at home, none of us students had to live in fear that our lives might be in danger while in our classes from past or present students - or others - out to commit murder and mayhem. Indeed, out only worry about guns were hunters who constantly disrespected property rights of others and trespassed , utterly ignoring "posted" and "no trespass" signs.  Over the intervening years, the number of guns in America has mushroomed and there are now more guns than people and, as a column in the New York Times notes, it is more difficult to adopted a pet from a shelter than it is to buy a gun.  Something is seriously wrong in this nation which has the highest rate of gun carnage of any developed country.  The 2nd Amendment, which the Founding Fathers included in the Bill of Rights for a limited purpose - i.e., maintaining a regulated Militia  - has been utterly perverted by the gun industry and its tools within the NRA.  The referenced column looks at the sickness in America and the need for gun control now.  Thoughts and prayers - a GOP favorite sound bite - do nothing.  Here are column excerpts:

Politicians fearful of the National Rifle Association have allowed the gun lobby to run amok so that America now has more guns than people, but there is still true heroism out there in the face of gun violence: students who rush shooters at the risk of their own lives.

Let’s celebrate, and mourn, a student named Kendrick Castillo, 18, just days away from graduating in Highlands Ranch, Colo., who on Tuesday helped save his classmates in English literature class from a gunman.

At least three boys in the class — one of them Brendan Bialy, who hopes to become a Marine — tackled and disarmed the gunman. “They were very heroic,” Nui said. Bravo as well to the police officers who arrived within two minutes of the shooting and seized the two attackers. The courage of those students in Colorado echoes last week’s bravery of Riley Howell, a student at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Riley, 21, charged a gunman there and continued even as he was shot twice. As he tackled the gunman he was shot a third time, in the head, and killed, but he ended the shooting.

Riley was deservedly given a hero’s funeral, and presumably the same will happen with Kendrick. But their parents didn’t want martyrs; they wanted children and grandchildren. And it is appalling that we as a society have abandoned American kids so that they must die to save their classmates.

When New Zealand experienced a mass shooting in March, it took the government of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern just 26 days to tighten gun laws and ban assault rifles. In contrast, America has had 53 years of inaction since the University of Texas tower shooting in 1966 claimed 17 lives. Sandy Hook … Las Vegas … Parkland — so many dead; so little done.

Since 1970, 1.45 million Americans have died from guns — suicides, murders and accidents. That’s more than the 1.4 million Americans estimated to have died in all the wars in American history going back to the American Revolution.

This should also make us all cringe: In a typical year, more American children ages 4 and younger die from firearms (110 in 2016) than police officers do in the line of duty (65 in 2016).

So let’s send thoughts and prayers to the families of victims in Colorado and North Carolina, but let’s also push for a sensible gun policy that would make such heroics less necessary.

Granted, this is complicated. . . . . Still, there are obvious steps worth taking. A starting point would be to require universal background checks before all firearms sales. Some 22 percent of guns are still acquired in the U.S. without a background check; a person wanting to adopt a rescue dog often undergoes a more thorough check than a person buying an assault rifle.

Safe storage of guns — in gun safes or with trigger locks — prevents children and others from accessing firearms. Voluntary gun buybacks would reduce the pool of firearms out there. We should also invest in “smart gun” technologies that require a code or fingerprint to fire. We need more “red-flag laws” that make it more difficult for people to obtain guns when they present a threat to themselves or others.

And tell me: Why do we bar people on the terrorism watch list from boarding planes while still allowing them to purchase guns?

Every day in 2017, the last year for which we have figures, an average of 107 people died in America from guns. We’re not able to avert every shooting, but we can save some lives. We need not have the courage of the students who charged gunmen; we just need to demand action from our members of Congress and state legislators.

That’s the best way to honor heroes like Kendrick Castillo and Riley Howell, by making such heroics less necessary in classrooms around America.

Many parents likely think gun violence could never happen to their children - or grandchildren - yet the truth of the matter is that it can and the possibility goes up every year that meaningful gun control fails to be enacted.  Look at the photo above and realize someday this could be you or your family members.  Vote against any politician who will not stand up to the NRA and gun lobby and support comprehensive gun control laws.

"Thoughts and Prayers": A BS Response to Mass Shootings

Chabad of Poway synagogue .

Yet another shooting at a synagogue - this time in the San Diego area - apparently by yet another white supremacist and what is Der Trumpenführr's response?  Thoughts and prayers for the victims.  This from the man who has striven to normalize white supremacists and who has called neo-Nazis terrorists bent on intimidation and threats "very fine people."  Meanwhile, his political party has blocked all efforts at reasonable gun control measures, including bans on assault rifles such as the one used in this latest attack which left one dead, three injured and many traumatized. Any politician who mutters the bullshit response of "thoughts and prayers" while opposing gun control is a liar and needs to be treated as such.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at this latest atrocity, the perpetrator of which took inspiration from the mass murder at a Pittsburgh synagogue and the mosque massacre in New Zealand.  This is what Trump's four year message of racial and religious hatred has sown.  Here are article highlights:

A 19-year-old man with an assault rifle opened fire at the Chabad of Poway synagogue in Poway, Calif., on Saturday morning, leaving one dead and three injured, authorities said.

Four people were transported to Palomar Medical Center with gunshot injuries around noon, Pacific time, officials said in a news conference Saturday afternoon.

One of the victims, a woman, “succumbed to their wounds,” according to Poway Mayor Steve Vaus. The three others — a girl and two men — remain in the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Rabbi Yonah Fradkin, executive director of Chabad of San Diego County, identified Lori Kaye, 60, of Poway as the woman who was killed, according to the Associated Press. Fradkin said those injured were Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, Noya Dahan, 8, and Almog Peretz, 34.

The San Diego County Sheriff’s office identified the suspect as John Earnest. According to Sheriff William D. Gore, the assault weapon might have malfunctioned after the gunman fired inside the Chabad of Poway, preventing a more extensive tragedy. An off-duty border patrol agent fired at the shooter when he was fleeing, but missed.

Saturday’s shooting in Poway, approximately 20 miles north of San Diego, came six months after the massacre at Pittsburgh’s oldest synagogue, Tree of Life, where an armed shooter killed 11 people and injured six others in the deadliest attack on Jews in the history of the United States.

Earnest is a California State University San Marcos student, the university’s President Karen S. Haynes said, according to the Associated Press.

In a manifesto published online Saturday under the name John Earnest, the writer described plans to kill Jews, referring to himself as an “anti-Semite” and “white supremacist.” It referenced the alleged shooters at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue and the New Zealand mosques, Jesus Christ and Adolf Hitler as role models. The writer expressed no remorse for his impending actions.

In the document, the writer confessed to setting fire to a mosque in Escondido, Calif., located fewer than nine miles from the Poway Chabad, a month earlier, and dedicated the arson to the alleged New Zealand shooter. The writing mirrors the alleged New Zealand shooter’s manifesto.

In a post on 8chan, an Internet message board, a user who appears to be Earnest shared the manifesto and announced his plan to live-stream his actions on Facebook and shared a link, but the social media platform blocked the profile before it gained widespread attention.

In his 8chan message, the user references the “red pill” movement, which developed on Internet message boards and revolves around the idea of men’s rights, anti-feminism and the alt-right, and generally promotes a misogynistic worldview.

New Zealand To Ban Military-Style Semiautomatic Weapons

New Zealand's prime minister.

In a stunning display of what can happen when politicians are not bought and owned by the gun lobby, less than a week after it experienced a horrific mass shooting, New Zealand is moving to ban military-style semiautomatic weapons.  Meanwhile, in the USA where mass shootings are all too prevalent, Congress continues to fail to pass common sense gun control legislation.  While the Democrat controlled House of Representatives will try to change this sad reality, the political whores of the NRA and gun manufacturers in the Senate will likely kill any such legislation.  Huffington Post looks at the quick and dramatic action underway in New Zealand.  Here are article highlights (note the stiff fines and possible prison time for offenders):

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Thursday that the country will ban military-style semiautomatic weapons in an announcement that comes just six days after shootings at two mosques in Christchurch killed 50 people.

“Every semiautomatic weapon used in the terrorist attack on Friday will be banned,” Ardern said at a news conference.

Ardern said Thursday that the shooter used two legally purchased semiautomatic rifles that were modified with high-capacity magazines, “turning them into military-style semiautomatic weapons.” A suspect in the massacre, a white supremacist extremist, has been arrested.

A day after the shootings, Ardern pledged to change New Zealand’s gun laws and said she would announce plans within 10 days.

The ban includes military-style assault rifles, high-capacity magazines and tools to modify firearms, and the arms “will be categorized as weapons with an E-class endorsement” until legislation formally passes, according to Ardern. Most people in New Zealand likely do not have a license for that class of firearm, meaning an owner of such weapons would be breaking the law with the new categorization. Once legislation on the ban passes, which is expected, possessing such firearms will result in a $4,000 fine or three years in prison.

The ban is also supported by the opposition party in New Zealand, according to its leader. Parliament is hoping to create a buyback scheme in which gun owners will be compensated for returning their weapons. Ardern said weapon sales “should now cease” and expects stores to return their firearms stock to suppliers.

Police Minister Stuart Nash said Thursday that “owning a firearm is a privilege and not a right in New Zealand.”  Nash also said the full ban will go into effect in three weeks and that anyone who applies to buy a gun during that period is wasting their time.

The prime minister said her Cabinet will meet Monday to consider more changes to gun laws, saying there are still loopholes.

How inspiring to see politicians who put the safety of the public first rather than lining their pockets with campaign donations from the gun lobby.