Progress on Guns, and No, It’s Not New Legislation
The high school kids from Parkland Florida are having a profound effect on America; tomorrow, there will be over 800 March for Our Lives events worldwide, over 700 in the US alone. El Jefe is going to the one in Houston. To find a march near you, click here.
But that’s not all that’s happening. The boycotts against business partners of the NRA are being effective. At least 18 companies have severed ties with the NRA. Additionally, several large chains have established a minimum age of 21 to purchase guns. But now even more steps are being taken by large business. Yesterday, Citigroup announced that it will require all of its clients who deal in guns to raise its age limit to 21, do background checks on ALL gun sales, cease selling bump stocks and high capacity magazines. This policy not only applies to borrowers from Citi, but also all retailers who accept Citibank credit cards. If clients refuse to comply, Citi will drop them. This move have been considered more of a social statement than real, but I disagree. If Citi has been moved enough to declare this policy, so have other banks, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. In 2012, the NRA started “anti-gun” shaming, telling its members to boycott companies it viewed as hostile to guns. Well, now the worm has turned, and there are a lot more of us than the NRA membership. Companies are focused on profitability. Normal people are now threatening that profitability of companies which are irresponsibly supporting unlimited gun ownership.
The kids from Parkland are shaming Washington, shaming state governments, shaming the gun lobby, and shaming all of us adults for miserably failing at protecting our own. It’s our fault, and it’s long past time for us to fix it.
I am soooo proud of these young people! I wish I were their age to see the changes they will make in this country…if there is any thing left after trump and company.
1I’m gonna jump on El Jefe’s post to tell you this.
I need you to do something. A model student, class secretary, and high school debater has been suspended for two days.
The story is in the Washington Post.
I want you to call Rep. Mark Amodei,(202) 225-6155, a Republican from Nevada and tell him to go f*** himself and the goat he rode in on.
Yeah well, not as big as a bullet’s impact, you insufferable asshole.
And after you call him, please give him your mother’s / wife’s / husband’s / boss / minister’s / ice cream truck driver’s / phone number to call and tattle on you. And to grow the hell up.
2Skyblue, the best hope I see through this mess is that sometimes somebody like El Jefe lets me know that we *do* still have some responsible businesses that don’t want to see our nation fail and are willing to stand up for good, in spite of the swamp around the white house.
I was teaching at a major university when Chavez was elected in Venezuela and then Bush was picked in the US, and some of my Venezuelan students asked how our government could transition without being turned completely upside down. I said it was because of capitalism, but articles like this make me believe capitalism is much more a reason for hope than I realized.
3Awesome!
4I well remember what the parents of Sandy Hook tried so valiantly to do only to be screwed. Those who took their children with them to hearings etc. were shamed for “using” innocent children. No matter that it was innocent children that were murdered. These Parkland kids instinctively know that their ages, growth, and amazing political savvy can take up the burden and get some damn where. And they have certain music along to make a point. Remember a song that goes I’m not gonna take it anymore! Well, that’s their anthem!. Bless them all!
5These young people are showing what I have known for 50 years. Young people are discounted. I taught secondary school, and those students showed so much potential. The nay-sayers want to bring up the “tide pod” garbage, and I will bet they were among those who did “dumb things” as they were growing.
So proud of these young adults taking the lead in this movement. And to think – they will be voting, if not 2018 definitely in 2020.
6Noah Christensen will qualify to vote soon. Hopefully he will turn 18 before November, 2018. I think this idiot Amodei shouldn’t count on that vote or anyone in Christensen’s family voting for him in November, 2018. That might extend to all the 18 year old classmates of Christensen.
Noah can run as a candidate for the House of Representatives in 2026 or 2028. While I hope Amodei is defeated well before those elections roll around, it would be oh so tasty for candidate Noah Christensen to defeat this idiot Amodei in the first of those races past his 25th birthday.
I HATE REPUBLICANS. I remain unrepentant.
7Suspended for disrespect of a Rethug, IMPOSSIBLE!
8They don’t deserve an ounce of respect, having allowed the ban on assault weapons to expire, passing a bill to allow mentally ill people to buy guns, refusing to ban high capacity ammunition and bump stocks and all after seeing babies killed at Sandy Hook.
Republicans should be suspended for disrespecting us and for grabbing the millions that the NRA dishes out to buy their silence. Hats off to Noah Christiansen for speaking truth to power in no uncertain terms. It’s called FREEDOM OF SPEECH!
I looked at his Facebook page. He is getting a good hiding from everyone, myself included.
9Ms. Juanita Jean Herownself, the folks of NV are on this. The sane among us are doing everything we can to ‘retire’ Amodei. Between the school ‘officials’ and Amodei staff, the ONLY adults involved here are student Noah Christiansen and members of the ACLU.
10Agree with most of y’all’s take on these young people. Don’t watch much ‘media’, but I’ve been really impressed with their intelligence and poise, seeing them interviewed or speaking. Hope that some of them do go into politics and seek office as D’s.
I always get in trouble when I mention what may be our only real option, certainly so if the Democrats do not sweep the November elections. Trump+Bolton+GOP et al are making it more attractive. But I’m not the only one, here’s a perceptive attorney writing about something just short of an Anwar Sadat-type resolution of the US’ problem (the commenters are stirred up pretty good, heh):
11https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/3/22/1751346/-A-Military-Coup-May-Be-Our-Only-Hope
Alas I fear I have to make a terrible, but almost inevitable, prediction that there will be another mass murder.
12And I also predict that we will hear that it is to soon to “politize” it give the victims family time for greif.
OK
If it is to early to politize a shooting it is too early to profit from it.
Gun stores and manufactorers have been using these sad events as spurs in the retail market.
So next time mandate a version of Amber alerts where upon the news of a mass murder all gun sales, target ranges, weapons manufactoring, shipping, repairs etc MUST shut down. Essentially anything that smacks of commercial activity and weapons, including ammunition, hunts, etc. must immediately stop. Workers sent home. Gun shops closed. Ammunition sales stopped. Ammunition manufactoring stopped.
If we can’t talk about the violence promoted and protected by the gun/murder lobby they cannot profit from it.
After all according to buckley money is speech so if the murder lobby seeks to muzzle their opponents it is time that they take an equal hit on their “speech”.
https://marchforourlives.com/
Here are the sites for tomorrow’s March for Our Lives for every location in the country. I thought I got it from you, JJ, but I don’t see it when I scroll back, so I thought it would be good to post it.
13Sadly in the 37 days since the Parklans massacre, 73 of our young people have lost their lives to gun violence. When will the foaming at the mouth gun nuts realize that guns fired by humans (?) are destroying our most valuable resource. A country that kills its future destroys itself. Is that what we have become? A greedy nation of killers whose attachment to weapons transcends our love for our children?
14About those bottom feeders who cite “tide pods” … and also yap about “taking off from school” … They need to check their high school records and be forced to remember all the days of school they missed because it was the first day of hunting season. Also they are likely to miss work for the same reason. And, yes, Karen, they are conveniently forgetting the dumb stupid things they did, and probably still do: there is a reason for the meme “hold my beer”.
15Been thinking a thought. Seriously! People in the streets, businesses reacting on their own volition. Does this come anywhere near a “bottom up” situation? I’m told these are the best kind of results. Kind of unsure about this. there are so many at the top who are bond servants to the NRA.
16I have been watching the coverage of the demonstrations all day. I am so impressed with the poise of the students who have gotten up and spoke (Alex Wind really wound them up! Bravo!) . I pray and pray that this will become a positive push towards all the points the students are demanding. Today, the president is playing golf and mouthing platitudes, and the gop congressmen and women are back home listening to their echo chambers, I am sure. I hope this movement will come to fruition, and the goons who call “crisis actors’ and “tide pods” will drop into the oblivion they deserve.
171) Is there any pictures of the “Educational” event that got the permit that blocked March from congregating on the Mall? Remember handwritten scrawl of an application that supposedly beat the march’s application submission by minutes.
2) With the history of facebooks disdain for users privacy and the nefarious ways and means they have in gathering data on anyone using, communicating or even looking at facebook isn’t it time for all the blogs and businesses to cut off all contact with facebook to protect the privacy of those that visit their sites?
18K @12:
19That was awesome.
I’m so proud of these kids.
20Also, Jim Wright’s latest post on Stonekettle Station should be required reading for all teachers. And non-teachers. So I guess that’s everybody.
Apparently trump had his motorcade take the long way from the golf course back to Marred a Bogus so he could avoid 5000 people who lined the usual route for the day’s event.
The more the NRA bullies these kids the more it raises the anti gun movement. Those who doubt these kids could organize this themselves aren’t paying attention to how savvy kids are with social media, their general smarts, and that a large majority in this country is fed up with the inaction by the NRAs puppets in Congress to stop this insanity.
21