St. Louis gun buy back program such as success that they ran out of money before they ran out of guns to buy back.

Courtesy of Chron: 

An effort to remove guns from the streets of St. Louis is being called a success, so much so that there wasn't enough money to buy up all of the offered weapons. 

Hundreds of people turned out Saturday for a gun buyback program, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported . The city has recorded more than 200 murders this year, the most in two decades, and officials say part of the problem is too many guns. 

Those bringing in guns were promised $100 to $200 per weapon, no questions asked. The Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis, along with individuals and some companies, raised $125,000 in donations.

It wasn't enough, and some people had to be turned away. Police said 303 handguns, 533 long guns and six assault rifles were purchased.

Just imagine how many lives could be saved if this program went national.

That married with more stringent background checks for gun buyers, and mandated gun registry programs, could save perhaps thousands of lives each year.

I don't know, seems kind of worth it to me.

But then again perhaps I care more about the sanctity of life than your average supposedly pro-life conservative. 

Former Trump adviser appearing on Sinclair owned news outlet claims the real problem with violence in America is all this "black African gun crime against black Africans."

On a Sinclair station, Gorka refers to "black African crime on black African crime" & says black men are killing each other "by the bushel" pic.twitter.com/Cbtqm39tTd

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) October 24, 2017

Courtesy of TPM: 

In a round-table discussion on gun violence aired by WJLA — the Washington, D.C. ABC affiliate that was purchased in 2014 by the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group — Gorka attempted to make a point about the legislative effort to ban so-called bump stocks. The gunman behind the shooting massacre in Las Vegas on Oct. 1 had several bump stocks, which mimic the firing speed of automatic weapons, in his hotel room. 

“The biggest problem we have is not mass shootings, they are the anomaly,” he began. “You do not make legislation out of outliers.”

“Our big issue is black African gun crime against black Africans,” Gorka said. “It is a tragedy. Go to Chicago. Go to — the city’s run by Democrats for 40 years. Black young men are murdering each other by the bushel. This is a social issue. Allow the police to do their jobs and re-build those societies. Legislation will not save lives. 

“I assume what he’s talking about is African-Americans,” one panelist said after Gorka finished. 

“Yes,” the former White House official replied. 

“Well, that’s not what you said,” the panelist responded. “I couldn’t figure out who these African— “ 

“African-Americans,” Gorka said.

I believe that is what we in the business call a "Freudian slip."

This Gorka guy is such in innate racist that he cannot even bring himself to call black folks in this country "Americans."

This is just another example of that Trump TV we all heard about late last year.

Trump cannot get the real media to report on what he wants them to report, so he has helped to create his own version of reality in partnership with this Sinclair broadcasting group.

And millions of Americans are seeing this on their TV screens and believe they are watching trustworthy local news outlets.

The Republican's response to mass shootings, or terrorist attacks that don't involve Muslims.

Death by gunshot is the third leading cause of childhood death in the US.

Courtesy of Ars Technica:  

Nearly 1,300 children aged 0 to 17 are killed by gunshots each year in the US, and nearly 5,800 more suffer from non-lethal gunshot wounds, researchers estimate in a study published Monday in Pediatrics.

 In all, about 19 children die or are wounded each day from firearms, either by homicide, suicide, or unintentional shootings. Firearm-related deaths are now the third leading cause of death among US children and the second leading cause of injury-related deaths, behind car crashes. The grim national statistics are even more startling when considered from an international perspective: the US now accounts for 91 percent of all child firearm-related deaths (aged 0 to 14) among high-income countries. 

In addition to the broad figures compiled by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the study also provides one of the most comprehensive looks yet at the factors surrounding those deaths and injuries. 

For the study, researchers tapped into national databases on firearm deaths and nonfatal injuries, including data on gunshots from handguns, rifles, and shotguns. Information was scraped from death certificates, hospital reports, medical examiner reports, and law enforcement reports. The researchers also collected demographic data, such as sex, race/ethnicity, and age.

The latest annual death estimate breaks down to: 53 percent from homicide, 38 percent from suicide, six percent unintentional, and the remaining three percent were either from unknown intentions or legal intervention. Boys made up 82 percent of those fatally shot, and older children (aged 13 to 17) were 12 times more likely to die from firearms than younger children (0 to 12). 

African American children were the demographic most likely to be killed by firearms, while white and Native American children are the most likely to take their own lives with a gun of some type.

It should also be noted that while firearm homicides and accidental deaths have gone down, that gun suicides have gone up.

It is also worth mentioning that 91% of the children killed by guns in high income countries, have died in the United States of America.

If there were any terrorist organization in the world that was murdering even thirteen of our children every year, we would mobilize our entire military to wipe them out.

But this is 1,300 of our babies, killed by instruments of death that adults bring into their homes to protect them.

When do we pass some laws and spend some money to help keep them safe?

Cowardly Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert uses the shooting of Gabby Giffords as an excuse to avoid town halls. Giffords calls him out over it.

Louie Gohmert, who for all the world looks like an extra on the "Andy Griffith Show," posted this bullshit excuse on his website: 

Unfortunately, at this time there are groups from the more violent strains of the leftist ideology, some even being paid, who are preying on public town halls to wreak havoc and threaten public safety. Threats are nothing new to me and I have gotten my share as a felony judge. However, the House Sergeant at Arms advised us after former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot at a public appearance, that civilian attendees at Congressional public events stand the most chance of being harmed or killed—just as happened there.

Notice there is no mention of the fact that there would be far less risk at these town halls if everybody in the country could not buy a gun as easily as they buy a pint of milk.

It should also be mentioned that the shooting of Giffords happened way back in 2011, and Gohmert is just NOW getting frightened by it?

For her part Gabby Giffords has no intention of allowing this chicken shit to use her unfortunate incident as an excuse not to do his job.

Courtesy of The Hill: 

Being the victim of gun violence didn't stop her from holding public events, she said in a statement. Since stepping down from Congress, Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, have made many public appearances on behalf of their group Americans for Responsible Solutions, which advocates for gun safety reform. 

She further noted that Ron Barber, her former district director who was also injured in the shooting, held town halls after succeeding her in Congress. 

"I was shot on a Saturday morning. By Monday morning my offices were open to the public. Ron Barber — at my side that Saturday, who was shot multiple times, then elected to Congress in my stead — held town halls. It's what the people deserve in a representative," Giffords said. On Tuesday, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) invoked the 2011 shooting that killed six people as a reason not to hold a public town hall in his district.

It just shows that it is well past time to replace these cowardly little candy asses with strong Representatives who are not afraid to face criticism, or even a bullet or two. 

Alaska ranks first in number of gun deaths. Well of course we do.

Courtesy of KTUU: 

Alaska ranked number one in firearm death rates in 2015, according to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Alaska has one of the highest firearm death rates per capita, according to the CDC. And a study by the Violence Policy Center, an organization that studies gun violence, calculates that Alaska's household gun ownership was at 56.4 percent, in 2015. This positive correlation is often observed when it comes to gun statistics. 

The VPC says that in addition to the contributing factor of high gun ownership, the study attributes Alaska’s poor ranking to what it calls "weak" gun violence prevention laws. The VPC also analyzed the newly released data from the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. 

The factors that contribute to receiving a "weak" rating include “adding little or nothing to federal law” and “permissive laws governing the open or concealed carrying of firearms in public.” This holds true for Alaska, a conceal carry state. 

It can become difficult to pinpoint exactly why the gun deaths in Alaska were so high, in 2015. However, the CDC says that out of Alaska's 177 firearm deaths, 123 of them were suicides and 42 of them were a result of homicides.

More guns = more gun deaths.  Seems pretty simple to me.

But hey, at least we have our Second Amendment right, and that's all that really counts.

Right?

Since implementing the "Stand Your Ground" law in Florida killings with a firearm have gone up 31.6 percent. Gee, who saw that coming?

Courtesy of The Daytona Beach News Journal:

Florida has seen an "abrupt and sustained" increase in killings by firearm since the state's controversial stand your ground law was enacted in 2005, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. 

The monthly rate of homicides by firearm increased 31.6 percent, according to the study. 

The results were to be expected, said Charles Rose, a law professor at Stetson University's College of Law. 

"It's not surprising because when you lessen the standard for self-defense you create more opportunity for the use of deadly force. When you have more opportunity for the use of deadly force you are going to have more fatalities. It's pretty much guaranteed," Rose said.

Florida's stand your ground law was the first in the nation and has been followed by similar laws in other states. The law eliminated the duty to retreat if someone "reasonably believed" that deadly force was necessary to prevent imminent death, great bodily harm or prevent a forcible felony and it protects the shooter both from criminal prosecution and lawsuits. The law drew national attention after George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin in 2012 during a confrontation in Sanford. Zimmerman did not depend on the stand your ground law but did claim self-defense and was acquitted by a jury.

Of course the Florida senator who first proposed the law believes the study is flawed, clearly because it does not reach his preconceived conclusions about the law's impact.

However it certainly does not take a statistician to recognize that if more people feel encouraged to shoot first and ask questions later, that they will in fact shoot first and ask questions later.

We are turning into a country of terrified little panty waists who think our go to position when feeling threatened is to utilize deadly force.

Whatever happened to shaping the response to fit the threat?

When I trained it was beaten into my head to ONLY use as much force as necessary to protect myself and incapacitate my attacker.

The very idea of using deadly force was defined as only something to be used in the most dire of circumstances.

These are the guidelines for an appropriate response to aggression.

It is better to walk away than to injure.

Bettter to injure than to maim.

Better to maim than to kill.

And better to kill than to allow innocents to die.

Going immediately to the fourth option is not the response of a brave man. It is the response of a coward.

A little good news for those of us living in Anchorage, it looks like our serial killer may have been neutralized.

On the left, sketch of the killer, on the right, James Earl Ritchie.

Courtesy of ADN: 

A gun used to shoot a police officer Saturday morning was the same weapon used in at least five homicides in the city so far this year, including two unsolved double homicides, Anchorage police said Tuesday. 

The Anchorage Police Department officer who was wounded, Arn Salao, was shot four times and underwent two surgeries after the confrontation, but was recovering and expected to survive. The suspect, 40-year-old James Dale Ritchie, was killed after Salao and Sgt. Marc Patzke — who arrived during the shootout — returned fire, police said. 

"We know from our investigation in the last 78 hours that the gun used to attempt to kill officer Salao was the same gun used in five other homicides here in Anchorage in 2016," APD Chief Chris Tolley said at a news conference Tuesday.

The police are not yet closing the investigation, as there are still a few threads to tie up, but it appears that Anchorage residents can relax a little. 

For now at least.

Possibly the most depressing group I follow on Twitter.

Visit https://t.co/GKwiFAZQKg for up-to-date statistics and information pic.twitter.com/VNhThmgDni

— Gun Violence Archive (@GunDeaths) October 23, 2016

I know some of these numbers seem high, but if you visit their website they back them up with those pesky facts and statistics.

North Carolina toddler puts gun in his mouth, pulls the trigger.

Courtesy of HuffPo: 

A North Carolina toddler found a handgun in his parents’ bedroom Saturday afternoon, put it in his mouth — and the gun went off, authorities say. 

The Asheboro boy is “extremely lucky,” a sheriff’s captain tells the Winston-Salem Journal, because the bullet missed his vital organs.

This is what constitutes " extremely lucky" in a toddler with gun story these days, "bullet missed his vital organs." Because so often vital organs are hit, either on the toddler himself or some other child or adult in the vicinity.

According to Newser the two year old's father was home at the time (It was his gun.) as were his mother and three of his older siblings.

Yet not one of them bothered to protect this child.

By the way if you have seen this meme pop up on your Facebook of Twitter account lately, Snopes would like you to know that it is true.

And unfortunately most of those lives taken, have been the toddler's.

Four year old boy fatally shoots himself in the face with unattended firearm. But hey, that's the cost of freedom in America.

Courtesy of KWWL:

The Fayette County Sheriff's office confirms a four-year-old boy dies after accidentally shooting himself Friday. 

This happened at a home in Elgin. 

According to reports, the boy's mom and two children were visiting a friend at the Elgin home. 

The Fayette County Sheriff, Marty Fisher, says the four-year-old, as well as a younger child, were left inside while the mother and friend stepped outside. 

This is when the gun was fired. 

Locals in Elgin tell KWWL the boy's mother and friend did not have cell phones, forcing the mother to run and find help.

Don't have cell phones, but they have a gun. Priorities. 

As of this post there have been 269 children under the age of eleven killed or wounded by firearms so far this year.  There have been 6,309 deaths overall, and 12,955 injuries.

So how many home invasions have been stopped by guns again?

(H/T to Addicting Info.)

Methinks Bristol Palin got a new ghostwriter. Or is Nancy French currently putting bandages on her knees after crawling back into the Palin's good graces?

Courtesy of Bristol's as yet unnamed ghostwriter's blog: 

In light of the two recent events in Florida, with the shooting at the nightclub and the murder of Christina Grimmie, I feel compelled to share my thoughts on the greater scope of life and how precious it is. With the recent birth of our daughter, and starting a new chapter with Dakota; I am now, more than ever, seeing that each moment in life is a blessing. (Translation: "This was supposed to be MY time! Mine I say! I  finally got married and then these two events totally stole my thunder. Dammit, look at me, look at me, look at me now!")

It was just announced that the shooting at the nightclub was a terrorist attack with now 50 people dead and 53 injured. (Oh thank goodness! That means we can talk about it and start attacking Muslims.)This is the worst mass shooting in our history. My heart and prayers go out to the families of the victims. The man responsible is reported to have ties to radical Muslim organizations and was equip with more than just guns, reported he had a “device” of some kind. One could only assume it was a bomb. If this is not a sign that evil is already at our door I don’t know what is. (The guy who shot and killed Christina Grimmie was a white dude, with no ties to Islamic terrorism. So I assume that means what he did is NOT a sign of evil at our door?)

With the murder of Christina Grimmie, it’s tragic how quickly everything can be taken from you. Here is a girl all of 22 years; who went from just wanting to sharing her gift by posting videos on YouTube, to being a huge sensation on the show “The Voice” and still just at the beginning of what promised to be an amazing career. She was very inspirational to many and spent much time with her fans. She was attacked while signing autographs. Her brother was with her at the time and was able to tackle the shooter who took his own life in the ensuing struggle. One thing about Christina people may not know is her humbleness and her faith. She was quoted as saying “I have God, Jesus Christ, I’m Christian. I try to stay as grounded as I possibly can.” So much ahead of her but she is up in heaven now. (Oh, so she was a Christian. I guess in Bristol's world that makes her life more valuable, and worthy of attention. Certainly more worthy than those fifty heathen gay folks.)

So many of us live our day to day lives like there will always be a tomorrow and the fact is one day your time will end and there will be no more tomorrows for you here. There could possibly be a time when your life may be taken prematurely at the hands of another in a cowardly, selfish, horrible act like recently in Florida. Many people are asking why God lets such bad things happen to people? I can’t venture to guess why He would but I do trust in Him and His plan for me. And to say God allowed for things like this to happen would be a misnomer, He didn’t. In John 10:10 is says, “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” (Nancy? Is that you?) What can we take from this passage? We are told that the evil may come for us, yes, but not because we are weak but because we are strong. Life happens… 

Never delay until tomorrow what you could do today because you never know when tomorrow won’t be there. Never be the one who said I wish I had more time. 

You mark my words now that Bristol has her man locked up and back in the corral where he belongs we are going to see a whole lot more of this attention seeking behavior. A whole lot more.

When that Nancy French kerfuffle happened, and Bristol was busy weaving that sex love spell over Dakota, her blog went completely dark for over a month.

But clearly everything is back on track again, which means that the Grizzled Mama's plan for Dakota and her little mini me is once again a go.

As for the puppet master, well she is moving back to the main stage as well.

She has her own post on Breitbart today:

Tremendous sorrow is shared with all those affected by the horror witnessed in Florida. May God’s grace envelope victims’ loved ones. From across the nation, our prayers join yours for peace. 

The solution to these Islamic attacks that would hurl us toward transforming into an intensely frightened, cowering nation? No, it is not more “gun control” that further strips us of the responsibility and means to protect the innocent. The solution begins with acknowledging the threat, for it creates a dark and deadly situation for every American when the leader of the free world leaves Islamic terrorism out of our calculations, when they are among us.

First off if anybody thinks that President Obama is leaving any kind of terrorism "out of our calculations" they are so incredibly ignorant that they would have to be....well they would have to be a Palin.

Secondly clearly Palin's main concern is not for the lives that were lost in Florida, but that this latest mass shooting will give gun control advocates more ammunition (Pardon the pun) to use to reinvigorate talk about stricter policies to keep Americans safe.

Which is true, for a change.

Thirdly, well thirdly I think we can all assume that we are going to start hearing from Sarah, Bristol, and of course their pet war hero Dakota Meyer a whole hell of a lot more in the near future.

Count on it.

So far this year toddlers have shot 23 people.

Courtesy of the Washington Post:

Last year, a Washington Post analysis found that toddlers were finding guns and shooting people at a rate of about one a week. This year, that pace has accelerated. There have been at least 23 toddler-involved shootings since Jan. 1, compared with 18 over the same period last year. 

In the vast majority of cases, the children accidentally shoot themselves. That's happened 18 times this year, and in nine of those cases the children died of their wounds. 

Toddlers have shot other people five times this year. Two of those cases were fatal: this week's incident in Milwaukee, and that of a 3-year-old Alabama boy who fatally shot his 9-year-old brother in February. 

These numbers represent only a small fraction of gun violence involving children. For instance, the pro-gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety has found at least 77 instances this year in which a child younger than 18 has accidentally shot someone. And there is a whole different universe of gun violence in which toddlers are shot, intentionally or not, by adults. 

Looking at a map of where toddlers are pulling the trigger, some states stand out sharply.

It appears that if you want to avoid being shot by a toddler that Georgia, Texas, Florida, Michigan and Missouri are certainly the states to avoid.

Though to be honest there is hardly any place in the country where you are truly safe from gun violence these days.

Thanks to the NRA and cowardly politicians there are now more guns than people in the United States. That mean there is more than enough loaded weapons to take out every man, woman, and child in the country many times over.

If that doesn't send a cold chill up your spine then I don't know what would.

The guy who shot and killed three people and injured nine others in the Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic actually tried to blow the place up as well.

Courtesy of the Washington Post:  

The man accused of killing three people and injuring nine others during a shooting rampage at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado last year told police he unsuccessfully tried to set off an explosion during this siege, according to authorities. 

Detectives said that Robert Lewis Dear Jr., who has been held without bond since the November shooting, told them he brought propane tanks to the Colorado Springs clinic thinking that they would blow up when he shot them. Dear did shoot them, but the explosion never happened, police said. 

This was one of several details included in a set of documents released Monday by a Colorado court. These documents — an arrest report and a set of search warrants — offer a new account of how the shooting spree unfolded. They also provide a glimpse at Dear’s state of mind, describing how he told detectives that he expected to go to heaven and “be met by all the aborted fetuses at the gates of heaven and they would thank him.”

I think expecting to be thanked by a bunch of fetuses is a pretty good indicator of mental illness. 

You know if this guy were inspired by ISIS we would be going after the individuals who inspired him to commit his act of terror and taking them out.

So with that in mind just when will the Feds lock this little prick up and throw away the key?

David Daleiden the guy behind the doctored videos attacking Planned Parenthood.

Report states that half the people killed by police are disabled.

Courtesy of NBC News:  

Almost half of the people who die at the hands of police have some kind of disability, according to a new report, as officers are often drawn into emergencies where urgent care may be more appropriate than lethal force. 

The report, published by the Ruderman Family Foundation, a disability organization, proposes that while police interactions with minorities draw increasing scrutiny, disability and health considerations are still neglected in media coverage and law enforcement policy. 

"Police have become the default responders to mental health calls," write the authors, historian David Perry and disability expert Lawrence Carter-Long, who analyzed incidents from 2013 to 2015. They propose that "people with psychiatric disabilities" are presumed to be "dangerous to themselves and others" in police interactions.

I have actually had some experience with this, and on at least two occasions been called into to deal with a situation that the police have only escalated with their ham fisted approach.

Often police officers believe that due to the fact that they are authority figures people are supposed to automatically respect them and succumb to their will.

However mentally ill people respond in all kinds of unexpected and even inexplicable ways that police have not been trained to identify or deal with effectively.

I will say that police are being better educated these days than was the case even five or ten years ago, but the training they receive is quite inadequate for the challenges they may face in their communities.

This is why I was so pissed off that the conservatives were blaming gun violence on mental illness, and then paying lip service to the idea that we need to increase mental health funding.

They are NEVER going to do that willingly, and the fact is that we desperately need that money.

I do not believe in any way that fixing our mental health system will decrease the number of civilians shooting each other with guns, but it most certainly WILL keep police from gunning down so many mentally disabled people in the streets.

NRA head Wayne LaPierre blamed the shootings in America on gun free zones. And did so while standing in a gun free zone.

Courtesy of RT: 

NRA head Wayne LaPierre spoke Thursday at the annual conservative convention, lambasting the creation of gun-free zones. He called the areas ‒ which often include schools, movie theaters and restaurants ‒ "the worst and most dangerous of all lies." 

"The simple truth [is] that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” LaPierre said, repeating a favorite conservative talking point. “The politicians and the media be damned."

There was of course this rather embarrassing fact about the convention at which LaPierre was speaking.

At CPAC there will be no good guys with guns :/ pic.twitter.com/Kn8tUWyubs

— Betsy Woodruff (@woodruffbets) March 3, 2016

Yep the conservatives want to allow guns at every public place in America. Except in one where they might be shot of course.

On a related note:

On Thursday, gunmaker Smith & Wesson (SWHC) reported huge quarterly numbers. Third quarter revenues rose 61% year-over-year to $211 million, boosted by a 25.3% jump in handgun sales. Earnings per share of $0.59 beat estimates by $0.18, and the company is even more optimistic about the future, issuing strong guidance for next quarter. 

In the company’s latest annual filing, the gunmaker said, “We experienced strong consumer demand for our firearm products following a new administration taking office in Washington, D.C. in 2009. In addition, speculation surrounding increased gun control at the federal, state, and local level and heightened fears of terrorism and crime can affect consumer demand for our products. Often, such concerns result in an increase in near-term consumer demand and subsequent softening of demand when such concerns subside.”

In other words with the NRA's help gun manufacturers were able to dramatically increase gun sales with claims that the Obama administration would soon make some gun sales illegal, or would even be "coming for our guns."

That fear, punctuated by reports or mass shootings, helped to put more guns in the hands of frightened people, terrified by the government, crime, and of course terrorism. (The Islamic kind of course, not domestic.)

Finally somebody introduces a common sense gun law to protect children.

Courtesy of CBS St. Louis:  

Missouri adults who leave their guns in reach of children who end up shooting someone would face stiffer prosecution under a bill introduced by a St. Louis-area state lawmaker. 

Rep. Stacey Newman wants the law changed so that if a loaded gun is unsecured and readily available in the presence of a minor, the adult can be charged with endangering the welfare of a child. 

Last year, Missouri led the nation for child gun tragedies, with five toddlers who shot themselves or others. Nationwide, there have been 13 children “accidentally” shot so far this year.

Conventional wisdom was always that the parents of children who kill themselves with guns have been punished enough and that making laws which punish them further are punitive.

However as we have seen the numerous deaths of young children by unsecured guns in the home has done nothing to reduce the number of gun deaths in this country.

So I am 100% behind laws like this which punish the adults who place the lives of their children in danger through carelessness and negligence.

Hopefully if this law, and others like it, are passed it will finally get through to people that the guns they buy to keep their families safe, more often than not do the exact opposite.

Taya Kyle, wife of American Sniper Chris Kyle, questions President Obama during town hall focused on gun control.

Courtesy of Yahoo Finance:

Taya Kyle was the first member of the audience to ask Obama a question. Kyle is the widow of Chris Kyle, the Navy SEAL whose life as the deadliest sniper in US history was detailed in the film "American Sniper." Kyle was killed when he was shot at a shooting range by a Marine veteran. 

Taya Kyle questioned whether Obama's actions would prevent shooting deaths in the US. She asked why he didn't choose to provide "hope" to the American people in a different way — for example, noting that the rate of violent crime in the US had dipped to its lowest level in more than three decades. 

"I understand that background checks aren't necessarily going to stop me from getting a gun, but I also know that they wouldn't have stopped any of the people here in this room from killing. And so it seems like almost a false sense of hope," she said. "So why not celebrate where we are?" 

Obama told Kyle that she was correct about the decline of violent crime. But in his answer, Obama compared further steps on gun control to making car travel safer, even in the face of declining traffic deaths. 

"In the same way that we don't eliminate all traffic accidents, but, over the course of 20 years, traffic accidents get lower — there's still tragedies," Obama said. "There's still drunk drivers. There's still people who don't wear their seat belts, but over time, that violence was reduced, and so families are spared." 

"That's the same thing that we can do with gun ownership," he continued. "There is a way for us to set up a system where you, a responsible gun owner ... can have a firearm to protect yourself, but where it is much harder for somebody to fill up a car with guns and sell them to 13-year-old kids on the streets."

Now I know that Taya Kyle is the new conservative sweetheart, who is being used to put a pretty face on ugly political points of view, but I have to question the strategy of sending a widow whose husband was killed with a firearm by a man that he took to a gun range to work on his PTSD, to question a President who is working to protect others from a similar fate.

That just seems counter intuitive and not just a little ironic. It is almost like having a mother whose children died after being thrown from a vehicle to speak out against mandatory seatbelt laws.

For those who are interested here is a transcript of the entire town hall.

President Obama announces gun initiatives in press conference.

Courtesy of HuffPo: 

In the first working week of his last calendar year in office, President Barack Obama defied Congress and pursued long-stalled gun control methods through executive action. 

Obama gave a speech on his proposals at the White House on Tuesday, where he was joined by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), who was shot in the head along with 18 others at a supermarket in Tucson five years ago this week. The president was introduced by Mark Barden, the father of one of the 20 children killed in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. 

Tearing up during his remarks, Obama emphasized a point he's made after the many mass shootings that have occurred during his presidency, saying that America is "the only advanced country on Earth that sees this kind of mass violence erupt with this kind of frequency." 

"Somehow, we become numb to it and we start thinking, 'This is normal,'" Obama said. 

"Instead of thinking about how to solve the problem, this has become one of our most polarized, partisan debates," he added.

You cannot help but hear the pain in the President's voice, or recognize the sadness in his eyes.

You can even see him tear up when he mentions Sandy Hook at the 30 minute mark 

And who can blame him?

After all it seems as if every week he is addressing yet another mass shooting. That is the kind of thing that would destroy a lesser man.

So I hope that he not only gets these guidelines in place, but that the next President is willing to not only support them but to strengthen them as well.

By the way some of those on the other side are already using this to fund raise.

Like Ted Cruz for instance:

Gee nothing histrionic about that!

Just another reminder of why it is so important for Democrats to get out and vote this November.

Thou shall have no gods before me.

And to this god we sacrifice hundreds, if not thousands, of our people every year.