NRA: Scary Black Man and Jew Gonna Take Your Guns

Concerned? You should be.

Racist NRA Appeal Meets Heavy Criticism

The National Rifle Association is targeting Sen Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) for daring to vote to consider the most minimal of expanded background checks for guns with a new ad that is a naked racist, anti-Semitic appeal to rightwingers across the nation.

Manchin remains defiant of the NRA, daring the NRA to bring it on.

This morning Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, both obviously appalled at the new NRA ad, showed the spot which features a darkened depiction of President Obama next to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with the voiceover of the ad's narrator warning, "Manchin is working with President Obama and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Concerned? You should be. Tell Sen. Manchin to honor his commitment to the Second Amendment and reject the Obama-Bloomberg gun control agenda."

Scarborough and Brzezinski then showed the darkened Obama-Bloomberg-Manchin ad image for a full 12 seconds (reader says more like some 45 seconds) as a static screen shot this morning after their segment, before cutting away to a commercial.

Manchin is not up for reelection until 2018, having been elected to a full term in 2012 with over 60 percent of the vote. The ad is a warning to GOP senators saying in effect: Look what we're doing to Manchin, you're next if you go against the NRA.

The NRA's appeal to the most vile political forces in America is made right as the families of victims in the Newtown school massacre returned to the Capitol yesterday, and some nine GOP senators are said to be unable to offer "an explanation on the merits of why they couldn't vote for the background check," Vice President Joe Biden told Democratic donors Tuesday. (Michael A. Memoli. LA Times)

The Scarborough and Brzezinski segment is below:

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Hadas Gold reports this morning:

In a statement to POLITICO, Manchin defends the bill and said he is still ”the same proud gun owner and NRA member that I have always been.”

“The Washington NRA could spend one hundred million dollars on ads against me; it still won’t make what they say true. If they were honest with their members they would see that my bill not only protects 2nd Amendment rights, it enhances and strengthens them. Unfortunately, the NRA leadership in Washington has lost its way and is more concerned about political power than gun rights and gun safety,” Manchin continued. “I believe that criminal and mental background checks are a commonsense approach to protect our neighbors and children without infringing on our 2nd Amendment rights. I think most NRA members agree with me.”

Manchin has become a champion for gun control legislation, co-sponsoring a failed gun control bill that aimed to expand background checks for gun purchases.

Effort isn't over, says President Obama; GOP maneuver on anti-gun violence bill condemned

President Obama tells the American people that we can still bring about meaningful changes that reduce gun violence. Speak out, says White House, as shocked Newtown families express disbelief at Republican filibuster.

GOP Blocks Background-Check Bill from Vote; Bill Has Majority Support

Update: Obama’s Fury over Failure of the Background Check Bill in Seven Lines

Anti-massacre bill scuttled in its entirety, as President Obama rails against a shameful day

"A woman in the Senate gallery shouted "shame on you" at the members below, but she, like the Newtown families, Gabrielle Giffords, and 90% of the country were ignored, " writes Steve Bennen.

The weakened and modest background check bill was defeated with the minority of 46 senators defeating a majority of 54 senators on a vote in the U.S. Senate on the Manchin-Toomey compromise amendment.

A typical day in the world's greatest deliberative body in the world's greatest democracy. "The good news? Our political system is still way better than North Korea’s," writes Jonathan Chait.

The American people and American families enjoy the status of  irrelevance when it comes to the machinations of the Republican Party.

"I’m going to speak plainly and honest about what’s happened here. Because the American people are trying to figure out how can something have 90% support and yet not happen, " said President Obama in an angry address.

"They (the GOP) need to be ashamed of themselves," Ms. Patricia Maisch (survivor of the mass shooting in Tucson) said as she was being escorted from the Capitol. "They have no souls. They have no compassion."

In Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin voted for letting the popular initiative come to a vote; Sen. Ron Johnson voted to block it.

SC Decision Striking Down Gun Control Is Fine with This Progressive

Update II: Supreme Court pushes the gun issue back to the forefront of the nation's agenda
Update: Candidates React to Supreme Court’s Gun Ruling
via mal contends - The Supreme Court reinterpreted the Second Amendment in its landmark decision, District of Columbia v. Heller (07-290), and found a right to own and carry a handgun.

That's okay with me. I like the result.

Quote from ScotusBlog:

Examining the words of the (Second) Amendment, the Court concluded 'we find they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation' — in other words, for self-defense. 'The inherent right of self-defense has been central to the Second Amendment right,' it added.

I think DC v. Heller is a partisan opinion by a corrupt and partisan Supreme Court (consonant with Republican electoral strategy to ward off Democratic gains in the west), but a citizen cannot have too many rights.

Hey, we may have to remove this government, in theory, by force sometime in the future.

As for politics, I have met women who keep guns in their homes and on their person for the sake of feeling safe. What man would presume to tell a woman that she cannot feel safe?

It's time for Democrats to realize that the libertarian urge to carry a gun is not all that different from the liberty interest that is vested in the right to privacy, and in the enumerated liberties in the Bill of Rights that progressives cherish and Republicans despise.

I personally do not like guns, so I don't own them.

But the liberty interest in owning a gun is valid, even if the rightwing jurists made up their interpretation of the Second Amendment out of whole cloth and political electoral concerns.

Let's hope Obama realizes this and realizes that not everybody who owns a gun is a nut. Some people, rational people, just like guns.

Some like guns for safety, some like guns just for fun. And as Scalia and the disingenuous members of the five-four majority know, a lot of these gun-liking folks live in swing states in 2008.