We want to say this in a non-sexist way: Kamala Harris has competition.
She has competition in the battle for smartest, toughest, fairest, most effective Attorney General in the USA.
She also has competition in the “best looking” category that got President Obama in such hot water this week.
This photo gallery doesn’t in any way imply that better-looking politicians make better public servants. Nor does it suggest that voters should — or do — make choices based on the looks of the candidates. (Take that, Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.)
Text by Rick Dunham
Photo Gallery by Annika Toernqvist
The embattled National Rifle Association today stuck to its guns — in the hands of “good guys’’ — as the best answer to school shootings such as the one in Newtown, Conn., that took 26 lives.
Speaking at a long-anticipated news conference, NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre was not in the least bit defensive amid a cacophony of calls in Congress for the first significant gun control measures in two decades. Instead, LaPierre called on Congress to fund armed guards in every school and outlined an NRA National School Shield Emergency Response Program “for every school that wants it.’’
The effort, to be directed by former Rep. Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., who also served under President George W. Bush as head of the Drug Enforcement Administration and an undersecretary in the Department of Homeland Security, is aimed at helping schools protect against further violence with an army of volunteer retired police officers and others trained in firearms use.
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,’’ LaPierre said.
LaPierre and NRA president David Keane declined to answer shouted questions at the news conference made more tumultuous with two interruptions by gun-control proponents unfurling signs and shouting “NRA, stop killing our children’’ and “NRA has blood on its hands.’’
In a week of silence after the Newtown shootings Dec. 14, the NRA had said only that it would offer “meaningful contributions’’ aimed at preventing another mass-shooting incident. There had been speculation that with public opinion moving decisively in the direction of more gun control, the nation’s leading gun-rights advocacy group with over 4 million members would give ground on assault weapons, high-capacity ammunition magazines or wider background checks of gun purchasers.
None of that happened Friday, as LaPierre pointed a finger of blame at the media, Hollywood and the promoters of violent gun-shooting video games. He displayed a video clip of one, “Kindergarten Killers,’’ in which school children are targets.
“Here’s another dirty little truth that the media try their best to conceal: There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people,’’ LaPierre said.
Gun control groups called the NRA’s approach a misguided effort to answer violence with greater potential violence.
“The NRA plan, which cynically allows for the continued sale of the assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines marketed by its gun industry corporate donors has already been tried, and it did not work,’’ said Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center.
Sugarmann pointed to the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, in which two armed law enforcement officers present during the assault fired on one of the shooters, Eric Harris, but were outgunned by the assault weapons wielded by Harris and his accomplice, Dylan Klebold.
The Columbine shooting left 15 dead and 23 wounded.
Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, called on NRA members who believe in middle-ground solutions such as background checks for gun buyers to step forward and let themselves be heard.
“To all NRA members who believe like we do, that we are better than this, we send this message: Join us,’’ Gross said in a statement. “Join us in making sure the gun violence ends now.’’
LaPierre insisted that armed guards in schools are an appropriate solution to ensure the safety of children now.
“A gun in the hands of a Secret Service agent protecting the President isn’t a bad word; a gun in the hands of a soldier protecting the United States isn’t a bad word,’’ LaPierre said. “So why is the idea of a gun good when it’s used to protect our President or our country or our police, but bad when it’s used to protect our children in their schools?’’
President Obama invoked the Newtown school massacre Wednesday in tasking Vice President Joe Biden to come up with ideas on fighting gun violence and in urging House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to make a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff.
Speaking in the Brady briefing room named for President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, James Brady, who was gravely wounded in the 1981 assassination attempt against Reagan, Obama asked for speedy congressional action on the recommendations of the Biden group.
“I would hope that our memories aren’t so short that what we saw in Newtown isn’t lingering with us, that we don’t remain passionate about it only a month later,’’ the president said.
In a comment aimed at Boehner and House Republicans, Obama cited the national grieving over the Connecticut massacre and the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy and said: “When you think about what we’ve gone through over the last couple of months. . . the country deserves folks to be willing to compromise on behalf of the greater good.’’
Obama said, “If this past week has done anything, it should just give us some perspective. If there’s one thing we should have after this week, it should be a sense of perspective about what’s important.’’
Obama and Boehner are negotiating a package of tax increases and spending cuts against a Jan. 1 deadline — the so-called “fiscal cliff” — when steep spending cuts and tax hikes will go into effect automatically, barring a compromise deal between the administration and Congress.
The president specified that Biden’s group — composed of some Cabinet officers, members of Congress and others — was “not some Washington commission’’ that takes six months to study an issue and then publishes a report that gets pushed aside.
No, the Biden group will be different, Obama said.
He gave them a tight deadline: One month.
He promised to actively push their recommendations, “without delay.’’
And, citing what he said was a growing consensus for some specific policies, Obama outlined what he thought those recommendations might be:
Banning “military-style assault rifles” such as the Bushmaster AR-15 used by 20-year-old Adam Lanza to murder 20 children and six educators last Friday in Newtown, Conn.
Banning the sale of high-capacity ammunition clips.
Criminal background checks on all gun purchases, including those between private individuals at gun shows.
During his 35-minute meeting with reporters, the president also briefly mentioned two non-legislative sectors: Improving access to mental health care and re-examining “a culture that all too often glorifies guns and violence.’’
Obama said guns were a “complex issue that stirs deeply held passions and political divides.’’ He praised “the vast majority of gun owners” as responsible and law-abiding, and told reporters: “I believe that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms.’’
The vast majority of gun owners would “be some of the first to say that we should be able to keep an irresponsible law-breaking few from buying a weapon of war,’’ he said
To change, it’s going to take a wave of Americans _ including gun owners _ to stand up and say “enough,” Obama said.
It also will take courage, he said, citing Dawn Hochsprung, principal at Sandy Hook Elementary School, who was killed in the attack.
“If those of us who were sent here to serve the public trust can summon even one tiny iota of the courage those teachers, that principal in Newton, summoned on Friday,’’ steps can be taken to make the nation safer for children, he said.
Jake Tapper, the White House reporter for ABC News, noting that there have been other episodes of horrible gun violence during his administration, asked Obama: “Where have you been?’’
Obama replied that he has been busy dealing with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the near collapse of the auto industry and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I don’t think I’ve been on vacation.’’
The Newtown shootings should be a “wake-up call,’’ he said, to focus on ways to keep children safe.
Norman Ornstein, a senior Washington analyst with the American Enterprise Institute, said Obama was motivated to delegate the gun issue to Biden and his group to de-personalize the policy recommendations and reduce any opposition based on anti-Obama sentiment. “He wants to make it appear that these aren’t just his ideas,’’ Ornstein said.
Connecticut congressman Jim Himes today challenged Texas Gov. Rick Perry about his contention that teachers with concealed gun permits should be allowed to carry weapons in schools.
Using blunt, evocative language, the Democratic congressman, whose House district is near Newtown, Conn., where 20 students and six educators were murdered last Friday, told a Capitol Hill news conference that “there are no good arguments against doing something’’ to toughen gun control laws.
He ridiculed Perry’s contention that teachers with permits to carry concealed weapons should be allowed to do so in schools, calling it a “pernicious argument’’ in a nation already “awash in guns.’’
Himes, citing a study by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said a gun in the home is “22 times more likely to be used in a suicide or a murder than it is to be used in self-defense.’’ A study by the Rand Corporation of trained law officers in an exchange of gunfire found that those officers “hit their intended target less than two out of 10 times,’’ Himes said.
“So the notion that more Americans . . .in the words of Gov. Perry, ‘packing heat,’ will make us safer is not founded in reality, facts, or history; it is founded in the fantasy of testosterone-laden individuals who have blood on their hands for articulating that idea.’’
Perry, addressing a North Texas Tea Party meeting earlier this week, said local school boards should decide whether to allow teachers with concealed weapons permits to carry weapons in school.
“One of the things that I hope we don’t want to see from the federal government is a knee-jerk reaction from Washington, D.C., when there is an event that occurs, that they can come in and think they know the answer,” Perry said.
Perry’s statement triggered a response from Gilberto Hinojosa, chair of the Texas Democratic Party, who said the governor’s comments were “ridiculous and offensive.’’
“It is 2012, and we have a governor who thinks the answer to our societal problems is a Wild West shoot out,’’ Hinojosa said.
Here’s Hinojosa’s complete statement:
“Gov. Perry recently said,’(if) you are a concealed-handgun-license-carrying individual, you should be able to carry your handgun anywhere in this state.’
“To call Rick Perry’s recent statement ridiculous and offensive would be an understatement. As Chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, and as a father, I could not be more revolted by his harmful suggestion. Perry thinks that the answer to horrific violence is to have more guns in schools, and at soccer games, and frat parties, and large scale public events where alcohol and emotion already lead to too many fist fights.
“Twenty children have died, and Perry sees it as an opportunity to push his own radical agenda. Nothing could be sicker and more of an abuse of power. It is 2012, and we have a governor who thinks the answer to our societal problems is a Wild West shoot out.”
The National Rifle Association on Tuesday broke its silence over the Newtown, Conn., tragedy just enough to say it would offer “meaningful contributions” aimed at preventing another mass-shooting incident.
Faced with a crescendo of calls for gun control in the wake of last week’s Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in which a gunman armed with a Bushmaster AR-15 .223 semi-automatic rifle killed 20 children and six adults, the NRA said it was not commenting “as a matter of decency’’ while families mourned and the police investigation continued.
But the nation’s premier advocacy and lobbying organization for gun owners said in a statement: “The National Rifle Association of America is made up of four million moms and dads, sons and daughters — and we were shocked, saddened and heartbroken by the news of the horrific and senseless murders in Newtown.’’
In the statement, the group said it “is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again.’’ It did not elaborate on what those “contributions’’ might entail, or whether it would sit down with President Obama and lawmakers on Capitol Hill to discuss an updated assault weapons ban to be introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and the proposal of Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., to expand background checks for individuals purchasing guns.
The group said it would hold a news conference on Friday. NRA director of public affairs Andrew Arulanandam did not respond to an email request for further explanation.
The NRA has been an implacable foe of gun control, seeing even limited proposals such as last year’s requirement that border-state firearms dealers report multiple semi-automatic rifle purchases to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives as threats to Second Amendment rights.
“They are an effective lobbying machine because a consistent portion of their membership makes the calls, talks to members (of Congress) and shows up at their town meetings,’’ said Josh Sugarmann, a Newtown, Conn., native who is director of the Violence Policy Center and author of a book “NRA: Money, Firepower and Fear.’’ Members “follow directions from the NRA without question. That’s their greatest asset.’’
NRA’s PAC, the NRA Political Victory Fund, invested more than $17 million in the 2012 election but their chosen candidates mostly went down to defeat, including GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
The NRA PAC spent $3.4 million targeting four Democratic incumbents — Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri — and two Democratic competitors for open seats — Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Chris Murphy of Connecticut. All six won their races against NRA-backed Republicans.
That’s a far cry from the group’s heyday in 1994 when it was widely credited with winning control of the House and Senate for Republicans midway through Democratic President Bill Clinton’s first term. The Republican sweep came just two months after Congress approved Feinstein’s original assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004.
In an interview after the 1994 election, Clinton himself credited the NRA with being instrumental in ushering backbench conservative Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., to the pinnacle of power as Speaker of the House.
But some critics now say the group’s power was overstated and that in any case, the leadership’s views were often at variance with its membership.
A poll by the GOP pollster Frank Luntz earlier this year for N.Y. Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns found that 74 percent of NRA members and 87 percent of non-NRA gun owners support background checks for anyone purchasing a gun.
The NRA gradually came to support background checks when they could be done instantly over a computer instead of requiring purchasers to wait for days until they could be completed. But the group has opposed expanding background checks to transactions between unlicensed private individuals, known as the “gun show loophole.’’ Under current law, only guns sold by federally licensed firearms dealers require background checks.
Whatever the reality, the prospect of NRA opposition inspired fear in many office-holders and candidates who came to believe their political futures depended on not offending gun owners in their districts by opposing NRA positions.
“Washington is a town where perception is power,’’ said Paul Helmke, former Republican mayor of Fort Wayne, Ind., who directed the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence from 2006 to 2011. “The NRA sold its story and people believed it.’’
President Obama, joined by the entire congressional delegation from Connecticut, today endorsed a new federal ban on assault weapons in the wake of the Newtown school massacre where a 20-year-old man used an assault rifle to murder 20 children and six adults.
Obama is “actively supportive” of efforts to reinstate an assault weapons ban, White House spokesman Jay Carney said this afternoon. The president, in his remarks Sunday night at Newtown High School, had urged unspecified actions to curb the rash of mass shootings, though as a member of the Senate he had supported a ban.
Obama “does want to move,’’ Carney told reporters. “He wants to move in the coming weeks, which is a fairly short period of time. And while he supports, and strongly, renewal of the assault weapons ban, and strongly other measures, he wants to expand the conversation beyond those specific areas of legislation to look at other ways we can address this problem.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the author of the assault weapons ban that became law in 1994 but expired in 2004, says she will introduce an “updated’’ assault weapons ban when Congress convenes Jan. 3.
Her new bill would outlaw 100 specifically-named firearms, weapons that can accept detachable magazines as well as certain semiautomatic rifles, handguns and shotguns that can accept a detachable magazine and semiautomatic rifles and handguns with a fixed magazine that can accept more than 10 rounds.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., took the floor of the Senate on Tuesday to describe how Adam Lanza, armed with a Bushmaster AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, a 10 mm Glock handgun, a 9 mm Sig Sauer pistol, and magazines filled with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, invaded Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown and killed students and staffers.
“There is no single new law, no simple solution, that will be a cure-all’’ to the violence, Blumenthal said, “but there are sound, sensible steps that we can take. . . . We need to do something to effectively ban assault weapons. I am talking about weapons that are not designed for self-defense or hunting, but rather for killing and maiming human beings, often as many as possible, as fast as possible. Weapons that are civilian versions of military weapons. There is no reason that such weapons should be for sale today in America.”
Ben Marter, a spokeman for Sen.-elect Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said the incoming lawmaker “won’t just vote for (a ban) — he’ll work hard to make sure that it passes.’’
The state’s five House members — Democrats Jim Himes of Greenwich, Rosa DeLauro of New Haven, Joe Courtney of Vernon, John Larson of East Hartford and Murphy — said they supported a ban on assault weapons, though they would wait until they saw specific legislative language before endorsing any particular bill.
The drive to reinstate the assault weapons ban also picked up the endorsement of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which announced its support of the legislation that Feinstein is preparing.
Feinstein was the sponsor the 1994 ban that outlawed 18 specific models of semiautomatic weapons. The law expired in 2004 and lawmakers, mainly Republicans, refused to renew it.
By pushing for a new assault weapons ban, the Obama administration could reap political benefits among suburban voters who abhor weapons of that type. On the other hand, if House Republicans thwart any effort to renew the ban, the Obama administration could gain among those voters who would blame Republicans for blocking a new ban.
Meantime, the campaign against assault weapons broadened Tuesday to include legislation against ammunition magazines that could hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
A bill backed by Reps. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., and Diana DeGette, D-Colo., would ban magazines for more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
“Right away we could pass . . . the ban on the assault magazine,” House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Tuesday. “Just to ban the magazine, the assault magazine, we could do it right now.”
Advocates of stricter gun legislation, emboldened by a shift in public opinion following last week’s school shootings in Newtown, Conn., pushed Monday for a renewed assault weapons ban and other gun control measures that have failed to gain traction over the past decade.
Three days after a gunman took the lives of 20 children and six adults with a Bushmaster .223 semi-automatic rifle, several pro-gun lawmakers — including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. — said they were willing to consider new firearms legislation.
“We need to accept the reality that we are not doing enough to protect our citizens,’’ said Reid said in a statement on the Senate floor. “In the coming days and weeks, we will engage in a meaningful conversation and thoughtful debate about how to change laws and culture that allow violence to grow.’’
Even Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a longtime NRA member with an A-rating from the powerful gun lobbying organization, said “everything should be on the table.”
Appearing on MSNBC, he added that Second Amendment rights would not necessarily be violated by controls on high-capacity magazines. “I’ve never had more than three shells in a clip,” said Manchin. “I’m a proud outdoorsman and hunter, but this doesn’t make sense.’’
Statements from Democrats such as Reid, Manchin and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., — who said Monday “the status quo isn’t acceptable’’ — are a key measure of strength for gun control because even though the party is generally sympathetic to restraints on firearms, these senators and others with significant pro-gun rural constituencies have insulated themselves in Republican-leaning states in part by championing gun rights.
But it wasn’t just lawmakers who were reassessing their views. Support for stricter gun control measures has reached a five-year high in the aftermath of the Connecticut school massacre, according to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll released today.
Fifty-four percent of Americans back new controls on guns — and 59 percent back curbs on the high-capacity ammunition clips used in many of the recent shooting rampages.
Another shift: Gun control supporters now have more intensity than opponents of stricter controls. Forty-four percent of Americans say they “strongly” favor stricter action while 32 percent say they oppose new controls “strongly.”
Gun control advocates — led by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and backed by Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy — pushed for swift action in Washington.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she would introduce an “updated’’ assault weapons ban that would outlaw 100 specifically-named firearms, weapons that can accept detachable magazines as well as certain semiautomatic rifles, handguns and shotguns that can accept a detachable magazine and semiautomatic rifles and handguns with a fixed magazine that can accept more than 10 rounds.
Feinstein is the author of the assault weapons ban that became law in 1994 but expired in 2004 when Congress refused to renew it.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., also is likely to re-introduce legislation to require universal background checks on all weapons transactions. Current law requires background checks on weapons sold by federally licensed firearms dealers. Schumer’s measure, along with a similar bill by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., in the House, would also require background checks on transactions between private parties, with a few exceptions.
Nevertheless, members of Congress who favor gun control face what may prove to be an insurmountable barrier of lawmakers from both parties who are not likely to change their support for gun rights.
For the most part, pro-gun Republicans who control the House remained conspicuously silent Monday. “One indisputable call to action from the Connecticut tragedy — SECURE YOUR GUNS IF YOU OWN THEM,’’ Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, said via Twitter.
But opposition to new laws nevertheless percolated from a few House members such as Rep. Gene Green, D-Texas. “Instead of saying we need to outlaw certain types weapons, we need to find better ways to enforce current law,’’ Green said in an interview. “The kneejerk approach of those who want to control firearms may not be the solution.’’
He predicted that neither the proposed assault weapons ban nor the expanded background-checks proposal “would move in the House.’’
Gun control advocates acknowledge the climb may be steep to get gun-control legislation through Congress. But they say that unlike previous incidents such as the one at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., in July, in which a shooter, James Holmes, took the lives of 12 and wounded 57, the drumbeat for change in gun laws is much stronger in the wake of the Connecticut shootings.
“We have to change the paradigm and culture on this issue,’’ said Colin Goddard, federal of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, who survived four gunshot wounds in the 2007 Virginia Tech attack in which 32 died. “We’ve got to get over the dismal, bleak outlook that nothing can be done.’’
In the aftermath of the tragic Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., most Americans say they want a serious debate on gun control.
The president and supporters of gun legislation have complied, either with proposals (on Capitol Hill) or non-specific pleas for action (from the White House). However, another key player is staying mum.
The National Rifle Association, universally known as the NRA, has stayed silent ever since the news of Friday’s school slaughter broke.
According to BuzzFeed, this is not the first time the organization has chosen to remain silent on social media after a mass shooting. In July, following the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, the NRA did not tweet for 10 days. Twelve people were killed in Aurora.
Following two other, more recent mass shootings with lower counts of fatalities, the NRA refrained from tweeting for one day. The shootings in question were Aug. 5 shooting at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin, with seven people dead, and Dec. 11 shooting at Clackamas Town Center in Oregon with three people dead.
Furthermore, to prevent a flood of comments posted on its Facebook page, the NRA has taken it down just days after reaching 1.7 million likes on Dec. 13., reported Slate.
While gun control supporters have saturated the airwaves since the weekend, NRA allies have kept a low profile. Several prominent gun rights advocates, including Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, canceled scheduled television appearances in the days after the shooting. (Hutchison cited laryngitis as the reason for begging off an appearance on CBS’ Face the Nation.)
Among the Second Amendment activists who have taken to TV are Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, who has urged caution when tackling legislative changes, and Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, who suggested that teachers and school administrators be empowered to possess weapons on campus.
Late this afternoon, the NRA issued this “important statement” to the media:
The National Rifle Association of America is made up of four million moms and dads, sons and daughters – and we were shocked, saddened and heartbroken by the news of the horrific and senseless murders in Newtown.
Out of respect for the families, and as a matter of common decency, we have given time for mourning, prayer and a full investigation of the facts before commenting.
The NRA is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again.
The NRA is planning to hold a major news conference in the Washington, DC area on Friday, December 21.
Details will be released to the media at the appropriate time.
