Friday, December 1st, 2017
Polly Mosendz, - Bloomberg News
Stephan: The regular mass murders, mostly perpetrated by crazed White men, and the 33,000 gun deaths a year in the U.S. not withstanding, those with the gun psychosis want more. They are so fearful they want to be armed no matter where they go in the country, and the Republicans in congress are trying to facilitate their request.
Now ask yourself: What kind of people are likely to want to carry concealed weapons? Do you want to? Would you be comfortable standing in a room, or say a bar, with a bunch of angry White men arguing politics, and drinking alcohol while carrying guns? Even in the old Gunsmoke television show they knew that was a bad idea. Know a couple who aren't getting on, headed for divorce, given to loud fights? Now add guns. Oh, wait, we already know what happens there, women get murdered. Imagine an American society where random fearful people go around armed with a weapon. What could possibly go wrong? It looks like we are about to find out.
Attendees at an NRA convention in 2015.
Credit: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg
The National Rifle Association has called the concealed carry bill, which would make it easier for gun owners to keep their firearms hidden when crossing state lines, its “highest legislative priority in Congress.” Despite concerns raised by Democrats about states’ rights and domestic violence, the Republican-controlled Congress has pushed the proposal one step closer to becoming law.
The House Judiciary Committee late Wednesday voted 19-11 for the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017, which would amend the federal criminal code to allow the concealed transport of handguns across state lines, so long as both states allow it. States will not be able to impose their individual requirements for a concealed carry license on armed travelers from other states.
Republicans rejected Democratic amendments that would ban violent offenders from qualifying under the law, as well as a change that would have prevented forum shopping, which means a New York resident barred from obtaining a concealed carry permit could instead send away for one from somewhere else. The bill, […]
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Friday, December 1st, 2017
Kevin Sullivan, Mary Jordan, - The Washington Post
Stephan: A large part of my social network is made up of academics, scientists, physicians, and philosophers whose lives and careers are entwined formally with colleges and universities. Beginning several years ago they began to talk to me about rightwing pressures they and their universities were feeling, and these pressures they report are growing more and more intense.
Mostly they tell me that these attempts are anti-science, anti-open inquiry, and more and more attempts to influence research outcomes and to present as fact things which are actually no more than political and social fantasies. In addition to the pressures there is also a nationwide push to cutback funding so certain subjects can't be taught at all. This piece gives some flavor of the correspondence and these conversations I have been having. I see this as part of the Willful Ignorance Trend.
Palm trees line a pedestrian path at Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz. The state has cut spending to all public higher education drastically over the past decade.
Credit: Bonnie Jo Mount
Frank Antenori shot the head off a rattlesnake at his back door last summer — a deadeye pistol blast from 20 feet. No college professor taught him that. The U.S. Army trained him, as a marksman and a medic, on the “two-way rifle range” of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Useful skills. Smart return on taxpayers’ investment. Not like the waste he sees at too many colleges and universities, where he says liberal professors teach “ridiculous” classes and indoctrinate students “who hang out and protest all day long and cry on our dime.”
“Why does a kid go to a major university these days?” said Antenori, 51, a former Green Beret who served in the Arizona state legislature. “A lot of Republicans would say they go there to get brainwashed and learn how to become activists and basically go out in the world and cause trouble.”
Antenori […]
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